Wandering Toward My Shifting Self

Winter Revolt

 ‘Hurry up and finish your breakfast.’ Mom’s eye was on the clock. Dreamer focused on sorting Cheerios floating in his bowl into color islands.

‘Get your boots on.’ Mom tried to hustle Dreamer along. Minnesota winters are cold and snowy. Dreamer sat on the floor carefully sorting a jumble of winter boots into pairs.

Stuffing Dreamer into his coat and hat, Mom wrapped a big scarf around his neck, ‘Go get in the car, hurry.’

Finally, they pulled into the baby sitter’s drive way. Half way up the snow covered side walk, Dreamer stopped. He turned toward his Mom; feet firmly planted, he said, “I like to go slow!”

Mom sagged with frustration. Only twenty feet to the baby sitter’s door and this three foot bundle of winter clothes stages a rebellion. She picked him up and wrestled him through the door.

The gentle whip lash of her necessity to hustle and Dreamer’s need for tranquility to explore his rich inner mind had no middle ground. She drove to work weighed down with conflicted guilt as gloomy as the leaden winter sky.

Caught between the racing clock of providing food and shelter and the calm nurture of her special needs son, what’s the right thing to do?

Push back for serenity of soul against an oligarchy pushing for hurry-up profits. Or accept an agitated America where delay is a dirty word!

We talk faster, walk faster, and travel faster - our clocks race at digital speed. We insist on fast food. We demand express check-out lanes. We expect overnight delivery – free! We accept nothing less than ‘right now’ service.  Our questions must be answered instantly with tweets and text-messages.

Now at sixteen, Dreamer is officially labeled ‘handicapped/disabled’. He still demands serenity to find himself in the rich inner mysteries of his mind. His “I like to go slow!” revolt is not so cute anymore. It’s un-American!

I wonder! Who has a disability?

Those who massage Rule of Law to nullify a Social Contract that protects citizens from the insatiable demand of a hungry for profit oligarchy?

Or Dreamer, who plants his feet firmly, and says, “I need time and space to discover who I am”?

What do you think? The Bill of Rights allows us a loaded gun to protect our body and belongings. Do we also have a right to protect serenity enough to be ‘comfortable in our own spirit’?

Snowbound Rant

Breaking News! A new world record! Snow on the ground in 49 states for Valentine’s Day!

We live in a ‘metric mad’ culture. Depending upon your geography, we are buried by blizzards, floods or mud slides of numbers.

Polls measure our opinions and optimism. Statistics count everything. Do you want to promote a ‘Flat Earth Globe’? Go on Google and you can find polls and statistics to support your argument.

What does it mean for me as I sip my first cup of coffee and ponder should I get dressed for the day?

Consistently, Polls tell me 75% of Americans are of the opinion we need a smaller government. Amen and Alleluia! Every time I open my mail, I’m hit with another tax, fee, surcharge, whatever – money out of my pocket. I’m informed of another restriction, regulation or restraint on my daily activity. No doubt about it we need smaller government!

How do we ‘smallen’ it? Aye, there’s the rub!

Hard count statistics tell me our Constitution authorizes 80,000+ elected governments with power to regulate my actions and/or tax my wallet. We have a complicated hierarchy of Federal, State, County, Municipal, Township, School Boards; a long list of overlapping governments that impact me in my abode.

Hard count statistics from the Census Bureau tell me that 100 Urban Metros generate 90% of our GDP wealth.

Common Sense seems to have taken a leave of absence from the Good Old USA! I ask, ‘What do I buy with my taxes?’ Silence! Rarely do media mention roads and police, courts and firefighters, hospitals and schools, parks and libraries, college football and civic arenas and many less visible infrastructure services.

I hear over and over that my residential street will be plowed. When an emergency grant from the Feds provides enough money!

Common sense tells me that more and more of these governments are taxing my wallet and constraining my daily choices in order to sustain fewer and fewer citizens in their jurisdiction with essential community services.  That’s expensive.

What can I do to ‘smallen’ government?

I answer telephone polls. This brightens gloomy snow day after snow day. I adopt different personas. I’m an out of work forty year old with five kids living on a shrinking 401K. Or I’m a sixty year old recluse who traps small furry animals for a livelihood. Or I’m eighty and barely surviving on oxygen and pills. Or whatever my mood inspires.

It’s great fun to hear TV analysts report the results. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to be one of six to eight hundred in a typical poll to inform citizens about the state of our nation.

Valentine Love

This year blizzards and mud slides will cancel many Valentine’s Day celebrations.

In my own history holidays are celebrated with lively gossip and giggle feasts. These hectic events also nurture children Valentine Love brings into the family.

 

“Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through white and drifted snow.” was only a story in my Grandpa’s repertoire.

 

In high school, Holiday Feasts were a two hour ride by light rail and subway to our relatives in Chicago. More convenient than the four hour drive by auto!

When it was time for our own kids to visit Grandma for a Holiday Feast, passenger rail had disappeared. The nation was more crowded with a doubled population. But even on a crowded freeway, Chicago to Milwaukee was a two hour drive.

When our first grandchild was born, flying to a Holiday Feast took two hours. The seven and a half hour drive made Grandma impatient. When this granddaughter graduated high school, we drove to this feast. Six hours on the highway beats seven hours in airports. The War on Terror and new Interstate highways through Iowa corn fields flipped the trip time.

By the time the Census Bureau announces a 2010 population of three hundred million plus – triple my high school days - our Holiday Feasts will be held on Skype web cams.

How can you call it a Holiday Feast staring into computers in widely separated spaces? Where’s the food? Cell phones and home delivered pizza pies are ubiquitous.

‘The times they are a’ changing’!’ Of course, they always have. Only today they’re doing it real fast.

Certainly a web cam is more convenient. Who will miss the effort and expense of sharing one big meal in a three day holiday? Or the hassle of white knuckle moments on crowded often slick high speed roads. Or the frustrations of jumping through hoops in long airport lines.  

I will miss the gossip and giggle chaos of our traditional feasts. Calm sweet smell and soft cheeks of the newest baby passed around for all to cuddle. Rapt stillness as a seven year old stumbles through a piano piece learned just for the party. Then thunder of encouraging applause. An intimate corner conversation as an angry misunderstanding is resolved with tightly clasped hands, moist eyes and a forgiving hug. A bright look on a sullen teen age face when Grampa tells a funny story of their parent’s teen misadventures. Light hearted teasing about who wins the grand prize of cleaning up the kitchen.

Web cams are no doubt convenient. I wonder, can they replicate character nurturing hubbub?

Super Bowl

What a Good game!!!

When asked who he was rooting for, one commentator said both. He explained; The Colts enjoy a record of cool skill at all positions and a system that works well. My mind is rooting for their demonstrated competence. The Saints have struggled for 44 years to find enough skilled players and a system that works. My heart is rooting for their emotional exuberance.

It was a super game. I did, however, find it hard to follow. So many booming commercials between plays were disorienting.

I’m glad I live in the ‘Land of the free, and the home of the brave!’ That game gave me the courage to do something I’ve been thinking about for some time. I am going to buy a DVR!

I’ve become increasingly disoriented by TV. News channels can’t seem to talk about anything but the “You’re a skunk! You’re a stinkyer skunk!” of the political schoolyard brawl. Documentaries glory in blood and guts of history and current events. Entertainment programming is addicted to sniggering sex and cynical scandal.

I shrink back into my chair with titillated fear and trembling.

I shall program my DVR to record only commercials. Everything is fun and easy. Children are always cutesy and offer profound advice. Smiles are the order of the day for seniors that grow ever more healthy, wealthy and wise.  The sun always shines. The grass is always green. A simple pill cures all illness. Workers swing on trapeze, grin while sharing healthy snacks over cubicle walls, and, of course, walk briskly into the office anticipating another amusing day.

With this bright, bouncy consumer world playing on my big screen HDTV, I shall ever after sit happily in my big blue chair.

Snowbound

True fact! Just before Christmas we got a five day blizzard that dumped thirty-six inches of snow. After six weeks of being confined to my Condo, driving around the Metro is still difficult.

Part of the difficulty results from too much government.  I’m retired in one of America’s smaller Metros. Road maintenance in this seamless Urban geography is the responsibility of a hub city, several smaller cities, two states, several counties, townships and villages all competing for tax dollars. No one government has adequate equipment to do an effective job. Coordinating resources is frustrated by jealous turf wars between the governments.

True fact! In the 1940’s, twenty-four inches of snow fell overnight. On Sunday, my Mom’s cousin from South Dakota hopped a street car. A day’s shoveling cleared a very long driveway buried under deep snow.

Her cousin was a management trainee at Allis Chalmers. Over a hot supper, I told him; my tool and die training could get me a summer job there at full union wages when I turned sixteen. He told me not to count on it. Part of his training was figuring out how to move the manufacturing operation South away from Union interference with Corporate decisions about hourly wages.

True fact! In the 1960’s, thirty-six inches of snow in less than twenty-four hours paralyzed Chicago. It took our whole block to shovel the street to the main drag and dig out our cars. The women and kids took sleds to Main Street for food supplies. They set up rest stations on porches.

We finally got my neighbor’s Plymouth unburied. It wouldn’t start. We opened the hood and poked around in the engine. Much swearing, but no go! We noticed a tag that said the car was built in Canada. Somebody knew a few French swear words. We gathered around that engine and chanted French swear words. It started!

We shoveled all day to clear the street while enjoying a fun ‘block party’!

True fact! Yesterday, I heard a talk show host say, ‘I can’t keep agreeing with you. It makes a boring show. Let me ask you a different question.’

My question is: can a true fact be Truth? Isn’t it more accurately a measurable transient episode? Doesn’t a line from a hymn – “Time makes ancient good uncouth” – more realistically express the narrative arc of enduring truth?

I’ve had a privileged life.

It took time for Allis Chalmers to move. I paid for my college education with summer jobs at full union wages.

With the disappearance of public transportation in the form of inter-city light rail and passenger trains, foreign autos kept reliable cars affordable so my kids could regularly visit grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and also ‘See the USA (not necessarily) in a Chevrolet!’

My life moves on in a privileged time!

In this blizzard, a rancorous Media cacophony about ‘Government Takeover’ and ‘Jobs’ is one more raucous entertainment like ‘Battle of the Stars’ that adds sparkle to being snowbound in digitally enhanced comfort.