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  • Michele, My Belle

    Lughnasa                                                         Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

    My representative.  Michele, my belle, Bachmann.  Even the very low tide of American political consciousness that washes up on our civic beach heads these days has the collective will to turn back Michele.  My instincts have been wrong before, but I cannot imagine an American election where a person with the ideological baggage Michele has wins.  I think the election in recent memory that seems similar is McGovern-Nixon in 1972.  That time, I was a member of the analog to the Tea Party, the anti-war movement, New Left wing of the Democratic Party.

    Nixon was not a popular president, but he was lucky.  He ended the Vietnam War and opened a way to China.  The economy was ok, too.  McGovern’s nomination felt like a real victory for the American left.  Finally, a banner carrier in the race.

    Oops.  Forgot.  The American electorate votes centrist politics, perhaps center-right a bit.  Think Bill Clinton or Gerald Ford, even George Bush in his first race.  Michele’s power right now comes from her energized base, a cohesive and well-funded movement on the far right of even her own party, the Republican.  To win a national election she has to widen her base beyond the Tea-Party and Libertarian right and I don’t see that happening.

    Here’s a cynical thought I’ve had lately, though.  You know the gaffes that keep on coming?  Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire.  Congratulating Elvis on his birthday which turned out to be the date he died.  And most recently her admonishment to watch out for the rise of the Soviet Union.

    What if these are a carefully orchestrated attempt to separate her from the “elites”, that is, most of you who read this blog, the college-educated upper middle class and upper class folks who run most of the countries businesses and institutions.  And the reporters, artists, intellectuals and political operatives of the left like union organizers and community organizers.

    Here’s how I imagine it goes.  Michelle makes a gaffe.  The elite delights in running articles proving how stupid and unaware she is.  Just like the Bushisms and now Perryisms.  The result is that those Americans who wouldn’t know how to answer the questions either–general knowledge is at an all time low in America–have  a moment of fellow feeling with one of their own, a victim of the elite’s petty insistence on knowing everything.  This fellow feeling gives her a wide margin of error with those folks,  in fact a presumptive imprimatur.

    We need to debate her on the substance of her proposals and their impact on middle and working class families, not sit on our degrees and howl with laughter at the rube, my representative, Michele, my belle.


  • Will You Still Need Me? Will You Still Feed Me?

    Imbolc                                                 Waxing Bridgit Moon

    Iconic birthdays.    Sweet sixteen.  18-old enough to die.  21–when I was young, this was THE iconic birthday.  Ok to drink.  Woops.  A few years later I was an alcoholic.  Then for my generation there was 30.  We didn’t trust anybody over 30.  Uh-oh.  That came and went.  Then, 40.  40 was a big one because it was the time you might buy a red sports car, hunt for that trophy wife and make strange vocational decisions.  Close.  I met Kate, my wife who has been a wonder and a major Valentine ever since we got serious.  I made a strange vocational decision.  Got out of the ministry and in to writing.  Yes, there was, too, that little red sports car.  Bought it in 1994.  OK, I was 47, but hey.  Still driving it.  There was another major birthday for me, 46.  My mother died at age 46.  To pass your own mother’s age is a strange sensation, I imagine, at any age, but at 46, it seemed more than strange.  Sad. Painful. Happy to be alive.

    After those, 50 was not a big deal.  60 was 60.  I mean it’s a big deal in a way, but still, the only thing I felt was that I had passed into the new late middle age.

    But.  64.  Now that’s a biggy.  Wouldn’t have been I suppose if not for that Beatle’s song.  It managed to set a date for a change in attitude, a time when our life and love might change, might change so much that we would ask if we were still necessary to the people we love.  That’s too grim a statement for the light-hearted tenor of the song, but I think it did capture a fear resident in many a then 20+ years old heart at the time it came out:  what can life be like when we’re old?

    Those of us in the baby boom generation had created an entire culture around youth, rebellion, drugs and rock and roll.  Sgt. Pepper came out in June of 1967.  The summer of love.  Wearing flowers and heading for San Francisco.  How could acid-dropping, hard rock lovin’, anti-war, free love folks like us ever grow old.  When I’m 64 was like a time that would never come.

    Of course, no generation, at least none so far, gets to re-write the rules of aging.  We passed through our 20s, then our 30s, then 0ur 40s and 50s and have now begun to crest upon the shore of social security and medicare.  We have started to hit our mid-60’s.  As iconic ages go, of course, the big one for years was 65.  The finish line.  Throw away the work clothes, grab the gold watch and go golfing, then fishing, then drop dead.  Not now.

    We hit 64 and we’ve just begun to pick up speed.  It’s not an age; it’s a speed limit.

    Suddenly we’re here, many of us, and we realize that the song was written by youngsters.  It expressed their and our fear of moving on beyond the wonder of the sixties.  What would it be like?  What could it be like?

    I’m happy to report that it’s just fine.  Just as I told Kate, yes I still need you and yes I’ll still feed you; she tells me the same.  We have come a long ways from the days of the summer of love and the march on Washington.   Those were great days, so are these.  I’m happy to be 64.


  • Superduper

    85  bar steady 29.84  0mpn N dew-point 66  sunrise 6:18  sunset 8:14  Lughnasa

    Full Corn Moon

    Back from Costco and Festival.  Costco combines an open space so vast that a four year old girl ran happily up and down the aisles like she was on a playground and an abundance of stuff that would make even Qin Shi Huang Di gasp.  It’s not stuff fit for imperial burial, except for all the polyester and plastic.  They will last into the next world and beyond.

    Shopping there involves navigation of a labyrinth designed to lead you to the Minotaur (the check out lanes) with as much of the abundance as you can fit in the superduper sized carts.  I purchased bread, not just one loaf, but 3 2 pound loaves.  Two 44 pound bags of dog food.  24 bottles of Propel. 4 pounds of 13-15 count shrimp.  You can not buy just one; it would be unAmerican.

    Festival supermarket has a bit more restraint, but it too involves navigation of rows and shelves designed for the impulse purchase of antipasto, squid, the odd pasta you have never seen before.  Not much to buy there.

    Final stop.  Best Buy.  I picked up Beatles albums–Sgt. Pepper and Beatle’s 1–so I could have When I’m Sixty-Four to play tonight for the Woollies.

    Time for lunch.