Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Me

1. On Sunday, November 18, I drafted the following, intending to post it today (November 20):

          “The current issue of The Sun has at least two pieces of wisdom for our nation:

          “Sparrow writes (p. 18): ‘In American politics we no longer use the term “extremist,” but I would like to bring it back because I am one. I believe in the extremes of human hope, generosity, and intuition. I believe our whole nation needs a massage: one of those deep-tissue massages that are excruciatingly painful but that “release blockages.”’

          “And Will Durant is quoted on page 45: “Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.”

         “Wisdom for our nation, for our world, for our neighborhoods, and for ourselves.”

2. Last night I saw Abraham Lincoln inhabit Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s film. Go see it.

3. This morning I am thinking the above two quotes reflect fairly naive understandings of political process. I am quite sure that, had Lincoln given and received massages, the Union in the form we know it would not have survived, and slavery might have persisted for decades.

4. But he did demonstrate “the extremes of human hope, generosity, and intuition,” and he remained remarkably civilized (if not entirely legal) in the midst of incivility and chaos. At great cost, he prevailed.

5. I have a lot to learn about politics.

Who’ll Deliver the News Now?

I was not an outstanding paper boy.

Yes, I did the job faithfully. I rose early on all manner of 1950’s Iowa mornings, ventured forth on my balloon-tire bicycle to the corner of 8th and Main in Grundy Center, Iowa (pop. c. 2,500), and stuffed my allotted number of Des Moines Registers into the canvas bags fastened with bailing wire over the Schwinn’s back fender.

During the several the years I delivered the Register, mine was the shortest route in town. Despite our route boss’s best efforts - a man whose name (sounds like “Mr. Euwin”) I still remember because he told us “You ‘n’ me are friends,” which sounds pretty creepy 60 years later) - despite his attempts to bribe us with valuable prizes and an annual summer watermelon feed, I was never very enthusiastic about knocking on strangers’ doors to ask them if they wanted to subscribe to the big city daily, especially when their response was likely to be, “No, we get The Grundy Register every Thursday, and that’s all we read.”

Saturday morning collecting was also a chore I didn’t enjoy, but I did it and put a few dollars each week into my Farmer’s Saving’s Bank account. I kind of liked that, though even then amassing large sums of money was not a goal of my existence. Besides, I usually lost newer customers as soon as the “deal” they’d been offered to get them to sign up ran out. I resented trying to collect my 50 cents from such short-timers, knowing it would be my last.

But I loved delivering the paper itself because by the time I got home from my morning ride around the north side of town I had read the entire front page of the Register as well as the top halves of the first pages of all the other sections. (I learned that I could read much faster in the dead of winter than on a balmy spring morning.)

My route being short, I had little need to hurry through my deliveries, and as I slowly walked from my bike to each house to place the paper carefully inside the storm door or in the mail slot, I learned a whole lot about the world beyond Grundy Center, and Iowa even. I was first in my house to know that the governor of Iowa had been killed in a car crash and that Sputnik had flown off into space and all kinds of other momentous things. If knowledge is power, I possessed it, and anything that would hinder my acquisition of knowledge - such as a longer route - was not to be sought.

Of course, my dalliance at signing up new subscribers is one reason that the Cleveland Plain Dealer is rumored to be about to stop daily publishing and go to, say, three days a week. If only I’d found more new customers and built a bigger base!

Whether or not part of the fault is mine, I am devastated at the thought of Cleveland joining the growing ranks of cities that do not have daily newspapers. Yes, the world is changing. I check on-line news updates regularly through my day. My two adult children do not get the daily papers of their respective cities...and they don’t have land lines, either. They witness their parents slide deeper and deeper into cultural irrelevance.

But to be able to pick up, to touch, to linger over a daily newspaper! To wonder why a person who is willing to sign his or her real name would write such a stupid letter to the editor! To ponder the deep meaning of Doonesbury and predictable ordinariness of Marmaduke! To learn what the Indians/Browns/Cavs must do to win next season! To read dueling perspectives on a controversial issue right next to each other on one page and imagine what would happen if those two writers ever talked together! To be shocked by a scandal gradually unfolding headline by headline one day after another, or to be inspired by a columnist’s tale of unrehearsed kindness! To save “Kennedy Assassinated in Dallas” for your posterity and to stare at photographs whose stillness is destined to seal their moment in national consciousness forever! To know how to fold the paper so you can read it on the bus or subway! To see what’s at the movies and who’s preaching at First Pres and what charity benefit everyone who is anyone attended last weekend and who tried to shoplift what from Kohl’s the week before and who died ... the daily newspaper is a treasure trove of culture’s sublimity and silliness all in one fragile, but preservable, package. It will be missed, if not by my children, then by generations after them who will have to try to figure out how to “read” some antique flash-drive or floppy disk found in deceased parents’ attics.

Meanwhile, a new edition of The Grundy Register is printed and published each week as it has been since I can remember. It no doubt faces its own set of challenges, but perhaps it’s one of those icons always to remain beyond changing. All politics is local; and in the end, so is all news.

Tell all the Truth Slant

“...it’s been a gift that I was born baffled and have trusted my bafflement more than my certainties. I have my certainties, of course, but I don’t altogether trust them, because so many of them have been derailed over the years. I do, however, trust the kind of certainty you find in poetry. The poets have a way of nailing the truth without nailing it. It’s what Emily Dickinson was talking about when she said, ‘Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant.’ I love the notion that you can see more out of the corner of your eye that you can by looking straight ahead.”

- Parker J. Palmer, in the November 2012 Sun, p. 11

Vote (Mostly) for Democrats

I thought I would do no more partisan political blogs, but Superstorm/Hurricane/Windstorm/Blizzard Sandy has pushed me over the top as if I were hit by a surge of water.

I doubt any climate scientist would say Sandy is “proof” of global climate change. But I am sure most would say that this ongoing tragedy is another sign of what most scientists have warned about: that the warming of the planet will result in more extremes of weather. Katrina...the continuing drought in our midwest...Sandy; they are all pieces of predicted patterns resulting from climate change.

People advise that we “not make politics from this disaster.” But why not? This is a political issue, for our political systems are the only power we-the-people have to stand up to short-term profit motives that compromise the long-term viability of our home planet. Healthy and responsive political power is the sole means by which we might assure our survival as a species, living at anything more than subsistence level.

The Republican Party is in the thrall of “know-nothing” self-anointed constitutional literalists. They only see things through ideologically-colored glasses, facts be damned. These are the very people who have brought us the idea of “legitimate rape,” of pregnancies that result from rape being “the will of God,” of childbirth never threatening the life of the mother. These are the people who call evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory “lies from the pit of hell.” These are the people who believe Obama is waging a “War on Coal” (actually I think waging such a battle is a pretty good idea) and that “Obamacare” is a government "take-over" of the health-care non-system. These are people revising our economic history since Ronald Reagan to try to convince us that allowing the very rich to become very much richer somehow benefits the rest of us. (Check out “Why Obama Now” on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9G8XREyG0Q for a very partisan, but I believe much more accurate, telling of the story.)

And climate change? It’s as if they have never heard of it. I look forward to a video of Mitt Romney repeating to the people of coastal New Jersey what he said a few weeks ago: "I'm not in this race to slow the rise of the oceans or to heal the planet. I'm in this race to help the American people." Canned goods don’t cut it, Mr. Wanna-be President. We must lengthen our perspective on the challenges we face, and then face them. Doing that is the kind of “help” we need from our nation’s leaders, from our politics. Now. For our future.

Let me be honest: many Democrats are not a whole lot better. Too many of them/us wear blinders (not binders!) regarding our fiscal crisis. Too few of them/us make dealing with climate change a priority. If Obama is elected to a second term, he must pound the presidential bully pulpit and exercise strong political leadership regarding climate change. But if Romney is elected I am sure that won’t happen at all. Not a peep will come out of his mouth...well, unless he changes his views...again.

Not all Republicans are beholden to this historical aberration of cultivated ignorance, and a few Democrats are. And while a poll I saw today says more people believe Romney can “reach across the aisle” than can Obama, there’s little likelihood even Romney’s reach will extend as far as his party’s fundamentalist wing. Even John Boehner had trouble reaching that far, and he’s almost one of them. That’s why it is important to defeat as many far-right-wing Republicans as possible in congressional races, and to elect Barack Obama as President.

I have been tempted to vote for “Green Party” candidates to express my environmental concerns. But I cannot throw my vote away when the choice is so plain between electing leaders who despise science and other learning and those who pay at least some attention to facts and are thus more likely to make informed decisions for our nation’s present and future.

Given the choice between what the Republican Party offers and what the Democratic Party offers I urge you to vote (mostly) for Democrats...first for Barack Obama, and then, if you live in Ohio, for Sherrod Brown. They are by far the more informed choices.

Volunteer Tomato Gives All

During the summer I’ve subjected my Facebook friends to a short series of photos of a volunteer Roma tomato plant that had taken up residence in a window well on the south side of our house. For posterity’s sake, I will now commit (and finish) this story into the permanence of cyberspace on my Coeli et Terra blog.

In early summer I noticed, through the plastic cover over that window well, a huge green leafy mass filling the space. I removed the cover, and there, much to my surprise, was a somewhat bedraggled tomato plant in need of water and air. I carefully freed its vines and tied them to a stake, later adding adding two more stakes. I put this picture on Facebook...

Someone wondered if a volunteer tomato could/would produce fruit.  It was teasing me with blossoms. ”We’ll see,” I said. From time to time I watered the plant. That was about the extent of my contribution to its health and productivity. By September its fruit was growing under the thick foliage, but it was so thick I had no idea how much fruit might be there. As the tomatoes ripened they tended to fall into the well, making them very hard to retrieve. I practice defensive harvesting, picking tomatoes before they were fully ripe, when I could find them. Harvest was the hardest part of the whole story.

By October I had picked and/or retrieved quite a few tomatoes, and they were beautiful. When I posted this picture and wondered what to do with all the still-green tomatoes on the vines, people suggested fried green tomatoes and Kosher dill tomatoes.

The plant was beginning to look a little tired. It had worked very hard in the hot sun for three long months. It still hid most of its bounty from me, I being afraid to paw through the vines too much out of fear of breaking them.

On October 29, Frankenstorm’s rain falling and winds picking up, I decided tomato-growing season was over. With regret I cut and yanked out the vines, pulled the remaining tomatoes off, and replaced the cover over the window well. Maxine counted 70 tomatoes of various sizes and stages of ripeness. I think my volunteer tomato produced at least 100 tomatoes this year.

That for which I did nearly nothing did very well. The tomatoes I nurtured from seeds nearly died and didn’t produce a thing because I had no idea what I was doing. The hot house plants I put out in my garden did just okay...maybe 30 tomatoes from about 6 plants.

But the one that was a gift to me and that I just let be...that plant out-produced them all at least three-fold. Sounds like some parables I’ve heard somewhere.

Discovery

At the start of Sunday afternoon’s walk in my familiar South Chagrin Metropark, I obeyed a notion to take a trail I had never taken before. It was by no means a brave decision. I know that park; I am well-oriented to it; it isn’t far to a paved road from anywhere in it .

Still, I felt a certain thrill, a moment of anticipation: what would I experience on that unfamiliar route to some assured destination?

The trail was slightly obscured by the season’s leaves, and required a muddy detour around a fallen tree. After just ten minutes or so I came to a picnic pavilion I knew. A man was addressing a large gathering inside. He seemed to be giving instructions.

From there I took off on another new-to-me trail. It wasn’t difficult, and I enjoyed what I saw and smelled and touched. I loved the new experience.

When I reached a paved path, I saw small groups of walkers huddled around sheets of instructions. From one group I overheard a discussion of whether they would next try to find “number 45” or “number 36.” Another group was debating how to get to the bridge whose boards they were to count. I am sure they were on a scavenger hunt that had set out from that pavilion. Like me, they were no doubt walking new trails and seeing new things.

True explorers push into wildernesses whose only trails may be those of animals. They also strike out through dense green undergrowth or across trackless deserts or snow fields. The earliest humans probably explored such places with little sense of where they fit in to any bigger picture. Later, compasses and other navigation gear told them their direction, if not their destination.

Now we rarely explore anything without being quite sure how we will get there and where we will end up. Few of us ever explore what’s totally unknown, maybe because there’s precious little that’s totally unknown available to us.

So we follow paths new to us, but which others have laid out, enjoying the path we are on until we come to what we know. Or we follow directions toward specific outcomes and, focused on our goals, pay little attention to the path itself.

Do any of us dare dream of being first to blaze a new trail to a wholly new destination? Probably not.

Still, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able both to appreciate our own journey and to anticipate its end? Wouldn’t it be fulfilling to absorb completely both our progress toward and our discovery of the purpose life holds for us?

Turnpike "Evangelism"

In the men’s room of an Ohio Turnpike rest stop I recently heard the good news. Sort of.

As I faced the row of urinals, a man’s voice from behind me – from near the row of lavatories – rose above the other sounds echoing off the tile walls. He was preaching. This is what I remember of his words:

“‘Gospel’ is the good news of the love of Jesus for you. You cannot ever understand his love, or know why he has chosen you to receive it. All you can do is believe it.”

Then his tone changed.

“I don’t know why you said and did what you said and did to me. It hurt me a lot, but I forgive you. The love of Jesus is stronger than anything that happens. He has forgiven me, so I can forgive you. You must accept him and trust him with your life today, and you will receive eternal life from him.”

I lingered a moment longer, not sure if I wanted to turn around and see who was preaching to whom.

When the person to whom the man was apparently speaking said nothing in reply, the preacher concluded his sermon:

“The tragic thing is: the bulk of humanity will reject Jesus and spend eternity burning in hell.”

I finally turned, walked toward the lavatories, and snuck a furtive glance. Who had been involved in this attempt at evangelism on that early evening just off the Ohio Turnpike?

Two men - one black, one white - stood facing each other. I assumed, perhaps from the way he had been talking, that the speaker was the white man, but I could be wrong about that. I washed and dried my hands, looking straight into the mirror in front of me, and made for the door.

As I waited for my wife, the white man came out of the restroom. If I had to guess I’d say he was a truck driver, based upon the the way he was dressed...but again, I could be wrong. The black man did not leave while I waited.

Questions: If you have to believe something given to you that you will never understand in order to be saved, why would anyone be condemned for not believing? And why does such good news for one have to be bad news for the many?

Maybe this news isn’t so good after all.