I feel this in my bones. In only four short months I have moved from active rage to silently trying to figure out how to live under a fascist regime. I cannot wrap my head around this. I will still go to protests, still make calls, but honestly feel the old days are gone and are not coming back even with a change of regime. Too much has been destroyed. My struggle is how to live with the change both financially, ( I have an adult disabled son and when this eventually affects him, it will then also impact me) but also psychologically because at 68 years of age, and having ancestors who fought for this country in both the Civil War and the American Revolution, it shakes the very core of who I am and what I always believed about the aspirational ideals of our country however much we fell short of them time after time.
There is disbelief and grief.
I also turn to nature for solace, and am fortunate to live in a small New Hampshire town on a river’s edge with
lakes, forests and hills in my backyard.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry has always spoken to me, but never more so than in these perilous times.
Thank you for this piece. It’s good to feel connected amid the despair.
Thank you for your posts. I love your writing and find that words and visions of fields of sunflowers lift my spirits but it feels too scary to imagine where we will be in a year, much less by 2028. I am glad that at 76 I won’t likely be around for too many more years of mess , where men and women of the GOP, claiming to believe in God, vote for greed, not kindness. I think I may have to see my doctor for a script for anti-depressants, but wonder if they will swap out fluoride for water treatment making us zombies.
I also struggle, wondering how to live in Trump's dystopia. I've not given up, I'll keep writing and protesting, and taking time to sit by the lake in the forest. But it's a struggle.
I gathered two thoughts from your essay this morning. One, from the first three words, “The natural world…” It has long been in my mind that the very existence of these radical conservative philosophies are based on the insularity if not quarantined beliefs that their lack of diversity in thought and implementation is not a natural thing, that its substance is critically flawed beyond redemption. Can one exist on such singularity, indeed, a construct of an entire way of life from such a philosophy, simply illustrated by the anti DEI approach? There is one fact of the natural world: "Nothing in the universe — or possibly even beyond it — exists entirely without dependence on something else." (I knew this in my heart but wanted it confirmed by ChatGPT.) I don’t feel the need to expand on this reality, save for the horror resultant of the miasma of lies that have emanated from such constricted beliefs.
The second thought was the happenstance of the playing of the video embedded in your essay. A simple pan of a breeze swept field of sunflowers. (I would have enjoyed it more had it been twice as long.) Did the one sunflower become many based on it’s ability to self perpetuate, dependent on nothing but itself? No need for dirt, water, sky, birds nor seed? Nor traveling Mexican labor, many of whom lay beneath other fields, who sought to secure a place to help in other’s plantings and harvests? That came into my mind. But during that mental wandering a weird occurrence took place. Words emerged from my computer. It was Bishop Barron discussing the “Holy Spirit.” It was the subsequent YouTube video that began playing after your sunflowers. The title of the video was "The Holy Spirit Will Teach You Everything.” It did give me a startle and a chuckle. It may be that Bishop Barron’s chat was on par with Reinhold Niebuhr, but, frankly, I just didn’t want to spend the fourteen minutes on the Holy Spirit this morning, not after reading of your harvest from the sunflowers. Though bleak, I welcomed it, and thank you for it.
Perhaps Mathew should have considered the sunflowers instead.
Incidentally, this is what Teddy Roosevelt did, too: After his mother and wife died, he hopped on a horse and headed for the wild lands. Apparently, it saved him.
The natural world, ultimately, was not enough to save Teddy. He had urged his son Quentin to join the French air force during WWI, and when he was shot down by German flyers, and killed, the bullet might just as well have taken out TR. He was dead less than six months later. His physical infirmities became acute, and his heart was rendered broken and non-functional.
I feel this in my bones. In only four short months I have moved from active rage to silently trying to figure out how to live under a fascist regime. I cannot wrap my head around this. I will still go to protests, still make calls, but honestly feel the old days are gone and are not coming back even with a change of regime. Too much has been destroyed. My struggle is how to live with the change both financially, ( I have an adult disabled son and when this eventually affects him, it will then also impact me) but also psychologically because at 68 years of age, and having ancestors who fought for this country in both the Civil War and the American Revolution, it shakes the very core of who I am and what I always believed about the aspirational ideals of our country however much we fell short of them time after time.
There is disbelief and grief.
I also turn to nature for solace, and am fortunate to live in a small New Hampshire town on a river’s edge with
lakes, forests and hills in my backyard.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry has always spoken to me, but never more so than in these perilous times.
Thank you for this piece. It’s good to feel connected amid the despair.
Thank you for your posts. I love your writing and find that words and visions of fields of sunflowers lift my spirits but it feels too scary to imagine where we will be in a year, much less by 2028. I am glad that at 76 I won’t likely be around for too many more years of mess , where men and women of the GOP, claiming to believe in God, vote for greed, not kindness. I think I may have to see my doctor for a script for anti-depressants, but wonder if they will swap out fluoride for water treatment making us zombies.
I also struggle, wondering how to live in Trump's dystopia. I've not given up, I'll keep writing and protesting, and taking time to sit by the lake in the forest. But it's a struggle.
I gathered two thoughts from your essay this morning. One, from the first three words, “The natural world…” It has long been in my mind that the very existence of these radical conservative philosophies are based on the insularity if not quarantined beliefs that their lack of diversity in thought and implementation is not a natural thing, that its substance is critically flawed beyond redemption. Can one exist on such singularity, indeed, a construct of an entire way of life from such a philosophy, simply illustrated by the anti DEI approach? There is one fact of the natural world: "Nothing in the universe — or possibly even beyond it — exists entirely without dependence on something else." (I knew this in my heart but wanted it confirmed by ChatGPT.) I don’t feel the need to expand on this reality, save for the horror resultant of the miasma of lies that have emanated from such constricted beliefs.
The second thought was the happenstance of the playing of the video embedded in your essay. A simple pan of a breeze swept field of sunflowers. (I would have enjoyed it more had it been twice as long.) Did the one sunflower become many based on it’s ability to self perpetuate, dependent on nothing but itself? No need for dirt, water, sky, birds nor seed? Nor traveling Mexican labor, many of whom lay beneath other fields, who sought to secure a place to help in other’s plantings and harvests? That came into my mind. But during that mental wandering a weird occurrence took place. Words emerged from my computer. It was Bishop Barron discussing the “Holy Spirit.” It was the subsequent YouTube video that began playing after your sunflowers. The title of the video was "The Holy Spirit Will Teach You Everything.” It did give me a startle and a chuckle. It may be that Bishop Barron’s chat was on par with Reinhold Niebuhr, but, frankly, I just didn’t want to spend the fourteen minutes on the Holy Spirit this morning, not after reading of your harvest from the sunflowers. Though bleak, I welcomed it, and thank you for it.
Perhaps Mathew should have considered the sunflowers instead.
Matthew, dammit. Don't know if it got auto corrected, but there is a difference.
Incidentally, this is what Teddy Roosevelt did, too: After his mother and wife died, he hopped on a horse and headed for the wild lands. Apparently, it saved him.
And he created five nation parks for others to enjoy wild lands.
The natural world, ultimately, was not enough to save Teddy. He had urged his son Quentin to join the French air force during WWI, and when he was shot down by German flyers, and killed, the bullet might just as well have taken out TR. He was dead less than six months later. His physical infirmities became acute, and his heart was rendered broken and non-functional.
Yes, but I didn't want to dwell on some of his more Bully thoughts, and his health spent search for the source of the River of Doubt.
Stop my heart- 🥹