• Tag Archives liberty

  • All in a Morning’s Jaunt

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                      Bloodroot Moon

    Today is the much nicer day of the next three.  Tomorrow the high will be 46 and windy, Monday 41 with ice and snow. Today it is 53 and sunny. I chose walking over museums today.

    Before leaving I ate my first and last breakfast at the hotel.  Their main breakfast is a buffet, served for the  many students staying here.  The coffee was weak and served in tired blue plastic mugs.  Jack Reacher would have scored the coffee very low.  A group of 18 students from Germany didn’t seem to mind the coffee though.

    Outside the wind was mild, though the temperature in the morning was in the high 30’s.  I saw people in shirt sleeves but I stuck with my hat, Chilean fjord special muffler and my Ecuadorian coat.  There were a number of people out enjoying the sunshine when I passed the Willard Hotel.

    (apparently my Android takes self-portraits.  This one showed up in my pics today.)

    Those of you who watched House of Cards would recognize the Willard from the scene where Clean Water held its fund-raiser on the steps, then crossed the streets with trays of food for the striking teachers.  Up close it looks like money and power compressed into architecture.

    About a block from the Willard and right next to the Whitehouse–how did I not remember this?–is the department of the Treasury.  Keep the nation’s finances right close by the Oval Office, I guess.

    Michelle’s garden is on the south lawn and visible from the fence where we all gathered, gobsmacked by the presence of this icon of politics and American might.  The Whitehouse has been the home of all U.S. presidents except for George Washington though Truman vacated for four years while it got a top to bottom rebuilding.

    Onward to the Mall, entering the green west of the still not open Washington Monument.  It’s having repairs and rejiggering of its foundations due to a 2011 5.8 earthquake whose epicenter was in Virginia.

    Walking along the reflecting pool on my way to the Lincoln Monument I saw a very large Irish Wolfhound, gray and stately, walking its people, unfortunately too far away to meet.

    At the monument there were a lot of people though not the crush I’ve  experienced at other times.  This is a moving place as I’m sure you already know.  It is, as it says right over Lincoln’s head, a temple.  Immersed as I am right now in Greek and Roman mythology it’s easy to see the architect and sculptor’s reach back to those ancient worlds for adequate ceremonial features.  He was and is a giant in our history and this haunting building makes that place clear.

    A brief thought passed through my head that this was a monument for the ages, then Ozymandias came in its wake and I realized I was a citizen of Rome at Rome’s peak.  London at the height of the British Empire.  Xi’an during the T’ang empire.  Edo during the Tokugawa era.  And the glory of those cities now lies in the past, a memory, not a present fact.  So it will be with Lincoln and Washington, D.C. itself.

    After the Lincoln Monument I went by the additions to the Vietnam Memorial, two statuary groups, one three men, the other three women, and wandered on to come upon what must be the most jingoistic of all our monuments and one built under the reign of George II, George W. Bush.  Nothing against the vets of WWII, among them were both my parents and an uncle, but this monument reeks of American exceptionalism and the projection of US power.  With George W.’s name on it it will forever be linked, as I’m sure he intended, with his misguided efforts in Iraq.

    This is an example of the unintended consequences of the use of power.  No one can or should compare the US WWII effort, the last ‘good’ war’, with the ill-advised and deceitfully sold war against the Iraqi people.  This monument will itself stand as stone and metal irony on just this point.

    In case, though, all these monumental treatments of liberty and freedom seem ill-advised, I found this on the back of a truck parked on the corner of Constitution and 15th, just two blocks from the Whitehouse.  There is always someone who would take freedoms away.

    By the time I trudged my way back–I figure 4 to 5 miles round trip–this guy had exhausted himself.  A lunch at the Elephant and Castle then a long nap.  Woke up refreshed and ready to go back to the PRB show tomorrow.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Dogs News of the Strange Politics Travel US History World History 📎and tagged

  • Our Body, Our Politic

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                        Bee Hiving Moon

    OK, I admit it.  I got suckered in by that warm weather.  Now I miss it.  So, sue me.  Even so, I still prefer the usual seasonal transition, but if you’re gonna make a change at least stick with it for the duration.

    Interesting art day today.  College modern history class this morning going through art developments from 1880-1930. I’m ready and looking forward to it.  Then, at 11:15, I meet Ode in the Sports Show, walk through it with him and afterward have lunch.  The Great Scanning Project from 1:00 or so until 3:00 or so.

    Saw the Supreme Court may strike down the Health Care Law.  If they do, probably in the interest of limiting the power of government.  Our polity demands a tension between the liberty and freedom of the individual and notions of fairness and equity in the nation at large.

    A strong, stubborn part of me recognizes liberty and freedom as essential to a good, full life.  Another, also dominant, part reacts viscerally to a society that tips the scales against the poor.  That puts a thumb on the balance.  Discrimination, out right bigotry has broad, systemic power.  And that hurts me when I see it.

    Our country, this rich country, does not need to withhold from its citizens.  We can share while maintaining our wide zone of individual liberty.  I know we can.  Look at how much we shared as a nation to turn back Hitler and Japan.  Look at the dramatic, substantive changes since the Civil Rights Act.  We’re better as a whole than the limited vision of a few.

    No matter where you stand in terms of faith the West’s great religions insist on equitable and just treatment of the poor, of women and children.  Surely we can agree on that, at least.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Commentary on the news Humanities Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Five Fists In the Air

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain                                  Moon of the Winter Solstice

    Protesters as Person of the Year.  Tyranny comes at a price, at first often with an invisible price.  Who can see thwarted dreams, diminished freedom?  An early reaction to tyranny may be to turn anger toward oneself, increasing domestic violence, suicide, anxiety, depression.

    If tyranny has an effective enforcement arm, then the early reactions can change to despair and, worst of all, resignation.  Eastern bloc countries under Soviet rule.  Native Americans on reservations around the turn of the last century.  Nanking under the Japanese.

    Even despair, though, masks, does not eliminate, the human desire for liberty.  Any tiny crack in the casing of despair or fear can bring outsized responses.  Just ask Qaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, Wall Street.

    Protest speaks the language of despair, gives visibility to the invisible.  Protest changes our perceptual range so we can see into the infrared end of the political spectrum, the place where the oppressor’s hand lies heavy but hidden.

    Some Occupy Wall Street folks say their time in the occupying camps are the highlight of their lives.  Of course.  Whenever we stand up, say enough, our lives themselves become visible, tangible, even to ourselves.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • Freedom. A Powerful Word.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                    Waxing Bridgit Moon

    This Valentine boy would like to send a big Valentine to all the folks in Tunisia and Egypt, to all folks anywhere, including Iran and Pakistan, even to the Tea Party folks, who yearn to be free.  The yearning for freedom and liberty, a chance to steer toward a future of your own choosing is a powerful force.   Once it becomes a dominant theme, its power can and has toppled governments and tyrants.

    That said, it carries the same dangers as any revolutionary movement.  As the Who sang, “Here is the new boss, same as the old boss.”  Those yearning for freedom may be no better equipped to create a climate that nurtures freedom than those they’ve ousted.

    Why?  Because, no matter the ideology, right or left, Islamist or evangelical, there lies, underneath the layered texts imposed on it,  a human heart, a heart that has its own agenda, no matter the rules imposed upon it.  Often that heart surprises us with its generosity, compassion, fellow feeling; but, too, with its fear, prejudice and ruthlessness.

    Still, to paraphrase a UU campaign, I’m committed to standing on the side of freedom and equality, so I give a hearty tip of the hat to all those brave enough to stand up for what they believe, even ones with whom I disagree.

    My hope is that whenever freedom lovers grab power, they will reflect a moment on the injustices that brought them there and determine how, this time, their reign will be different.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • The 4th

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                        Waning Strawberry Moon

    The 4th of July.  A time to think about our country, our home, our sea to shining sea.  Are we in decline?  This chestnut has begun hitting the op ed pages again.  I don’t know, they don’t know.  Only history will tell us.  Does it matter?  Not to me.  We’ll still be Americans, just like the British are still British in spite of the collapse of the empire on which the sun never sat.

    Are there major problems within our body politic?  Oh, my, yes.  Does this make our time different from any other time?  Emphatically, no.

    Here’s an example from a Frederick Douglass speech quoted in the Star-Tribune today:

    “Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”

    To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

    My subject, then, fellow citizens, is “American Slavery.””

    Does this harmony of misery make us any less accountable for the unemployed, the dying lakes and rivers, the immigrants who would live among us and share this land?   Emphatically, no.

    Whether in decline or doggedly ascending the hill to that Bright Shining City so beloved of our forefathers, we must attend the great American ideals of liberty and equality, the twin conceptual mounts on which both our past and our future rest.

    And not these only.  We now have before us the Great Work, the demanding and joyful task of creating a human presence on this planet that is benign, not malignant.

    Here are the things make me believe we will continue to rise to these challenges no matter our relative status in the world:  we ended slavery.  we fought and defeated fascism.  we looked at old age poverty and created social security.  we have a statue at what used to be the main entry point for immigrants; it is a statue of liberty and one which says to the world, give us your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.  we have brilliant scientists, great laboratories and universities, students even at this moment learning to be the future leaders that we need.  we have poets, movie makers, authors, critics, musicians, painters and sculptors all ready to help us see what we do not see.  we have neighborhood after neighborhood of people who want only a chance, the same chance many of our ancestors have already had.  we are a people who have won great victories for humanity.  we are a land unparalleled in its ruggedness, its beauty, its flora and fauna, rivers and streams, lakes and forests.

    All of these things make me happy and hopeful on this 4th of July.

    –


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Humanities Our Land and Home Politics US History 📎and tagged