• Tag Archives radical

  • A Paradox

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                                       Waning Last Frost Moon

    Groceries.  Bees.  Check in for cruise.  That’s my day today.  Well, I might watch a bit of the 500, just see how it goes.

    It Broke From Within (see post below) is based on a quote from a p.r. piece for an early Walker project that read:  Remember France?  It broke from within.  That can happen here.

    It goes on:  We can only protect our own country within by making more of us more understanding of each other’s freedom and each other’s work and possessions.  We must learn to place a high value on the things that we have created and built and which we would inevitably lose through disunity and social revolution.  Nothing is more important to us than those civic institutions, of which the art center is one, that create a broader appreciation of our common bonds–our homes, our work, and our personal expressions.

    At first I read this as an artist’s statement by Goshka Macuga and wrestled with its obviously conservative tone, especially in the sentence:  We must learn to place a high value on the things we have created and built and which we would inevitably lose through disunity and social revolution.  The first we here seems to encompass all, all Minneapolis, all Twin Cities, all Minnesota, all USA while the second we encompasses those who build and create, mostly the upper classes, who then, the third we, stand to lose things during a period of disunity and social revolution.

    Then I realized that, no, it was not an artist’s statement, but a statement from the Walker Art Center fund drive brochure in 1941.  Oh.  Well, it makes sense then. However, in that time between first reading it and realizing it was a fund drive brochure quote, I did consider a conundrum, a paradox that dogs my thinking and my working life.

    It is this.  Since the mid-60’s I have considered myself a political radical, willing to act outside the law if necessary to protest and resist unjust laws and unjust governmental or corporate actions.  I’ve not only considered myself a radical, but have, on many occasions, been a direct action activist.  What I’m saying here is that my political sympathies and my political work lie considerably left of center and left of liberal.

    Here’s the rub.  I love art.  I love being around art and talking to other folks about art.  Especially in the context of a museum.  I love the outdoors and mother earth.  I love being outside and talking with others about being outside. I love the garden and growing things, working with bees.  I love my family, keeping them close and supporting them.  I love the classics in literature and music, too.  I love them enough to learn Latin and translate a 2000 year old Latin text.  These are all conservative impulses.

    Art in museums and the purpose of a docent lies in admiring and sharing the work of artists over thousands of years and vast spans of geography.  This requires, quite literally, conservation and an appreciation for the past.  Working on behalf of mother earth and our great outdoors, even gardening and beekeeping, are, by definition, conservative.  That is, they act to conserve our natural world through good stewardship.  Loving family is a time honored conservative theme, because it too, quite literally, preserves and conserves our  species.  Even religion, which has been an important part of my life for a long time, entails conforming ones life to an often ancient code and deposit of tradition.

    So.  There it is.  Radical leftist in politics.  Conservative in many of the areas about which I’m most passionate.  What’s that?  They’re categorically different uses of the word?  Well, maybe, but I think the underlying theme suggested in the Walker Brochure tries to argue for a universal conservative impulse, one oriented toward stability and fear of social chaos, yes, but also toward preserving the best of what we have learned, of what we have come to believe important.

    Here is my current thought.  While I love art, nature, and family and will and do act to protect and nourish them, conservative intuitions, I also recognize that not all folks have equal access to art, to the natural world, even to stable families.  Those of us who have “created and built” must understand that all wish to do so.  That the culture and the families we love must see to it that others have that privilege, too.

    We also must recognize that while we cherish certain institutions and achievements, others have them, too, often ones we have not recognized.  Jazz is a good example.  So is the native american’s delicate dialogue with the natural world.  So is the rich extended family life of the Latino culture.  They wish to conserve the things they have created and built just as much as we of the middle-upper and upper classes want to conserve ours.

    It is this tension between what could be and what it is that drives the difference between the radical and the conservative.  And ever will.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality Humanities Politics 📎and tagged

  • Stay In It

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

    As winter loosens its grip on our state, the legislature begins to tighten theirs.  In the last half of the first session of the 2011-2012 legislature, budget bills dominate the news.  From my perspective as both a liberal and an environmentalist, the news is grim.  Environmental permitting, a public process designed to tease out and prevent negative impacts, has been weakened.  A bridge over the St. Croix, negotiated to a smaller, less intrusive version, has suddenly come back to life, bigger and more expensive than ever.  Up until the Japanese disaster, the nuclear moratorium in the state seemed headed for repeal.  Last night, in what must be one of the more peculiar–not to mention outrageous actions–an amendment passed attaching to an omnibus environmental budget bill a provision to fund state parks by cutting down black walnut trees in two of them, White River and Frontenac.   Let’s see, cutting down trees to save the state parks.  Like selling the children to support the family or auctioning off the planes to save the airlines.

    Since the halcyon days of the 60’s, it’s been tough for those of us with liberal to radical political sympathies.  Victories have been few and defeats numerous.  It is possible to despair, to wonder if a sense of communal responsibility will ever again influence policy; but, it is in precisely these circumstances where those of us with a historical perspective and active engagement must not allow despair to over run our convictions.  To shuck off politics now is to insure that the field is left to those whose politics create the need for us.

    No, as the conservative hand closes around the gavel in state after state and in Congress as well, those of us in the opposition must be more vigorous, more active, more vocal.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on the news Faith and Spirituality Great Work Politics US History 📎and tagged

  • Radical Expectations

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    86  bar falls 29.66 3mph N  dew-point 59  sunrise 5:56 sunset 8:42 Summer

    Waning Crescent of the Thunder Moon

    Lughnasa, August 1st, comes on a new moon night.  This means the first harvest festival of the Celtic year (it ends just before the last harvest festival on October 31st, Samhain.) will coincide with the dark moon.  In some pagan systems the new moon, the dark moon, is a time for introspection, for reflection.  It is a time to consider your life, to meditate and consider new beginnings.  This convergence of Lughnasa and the new moon may make for an interesting holiday.  Look to the Great Wheel posting on August 1st for some thoughts and a description of our celebration in the garden here at home.

    Tonight is the second Sierra Club political committee meeting.  More endorsement work and consideration of targets for the up coming election.  I can’t talk about the details, but the political work makes a certain part of me thrum.

    Speaking of cycles and elections the fall campaign has begun already.  Obama visited Europe and the Middle East.  McCain visited a German restaurant.   No kidding.  Look it up.  While my broad political sympathies lie with the Obama camp, my particular politics seem distant from the tug and pull of rhetoric which focuses on tax cuts and forcing people to buy medical insurance.  Where are the poor?  The disadvantaged?  The environment does seem to have traction in this race, part of the reason I decided to go with the Sierra Club work, but even there the radical, cut to the true bottom of an issue and deal with that, hears only faint echoes of itself.

    Of course, expecting radical solutions from a political/economic system devoted to moderate policy initiatives, policy initiatives often vetted by the very industries and political interests targeted by them, remains, as it always has, an exercise in futility.  I know that.  I see it.  I feel it in my gut.

    Which begs the question, why work within it?  Unlike those long ago days of movement politics drugs sex and rock and roll I sense no significant political minority roused.  The environmental advocates, who, if any, should be advancing with some power right now, seem fragmented.  In a moment without a vanguard and in a moment without a popular, even if disorganized, front clambering for change the politics of most use happen within the messy gears of our quasi-democratic process.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Wheel Politics 📎and tagged