Three Things - Surviving the News, Our Web, Hiking Pix

9/16/2022

Len and I went on a hike yesterday at the Monches section of the Ice Age Trail and the photos are from there. 

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Was it only a week and a half ago? My how time flies when one lives in an open and free society under daily assault.

Early last week Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon (appointed AFTER he lost the election) said that the bazongo “Why Do You have All Those Secret US Government Documents at your Golf Club” case COULD NOT JUST PROCEED. It should have a Special Master, i.e., a friend of Trump who would one-by-one look at the 11,000 documents. Slow walking it. Tie up American foreign intelligence?

Sometimes the news feels like being slapped; the barrage of injustice and abuse of power feels almost physical. Here we are, ordinary citizens trying to live our best lives, while others are shredding law, order, justice, and what we hoped was the American Dream growing stronger and more inclusive. It’s witnessing baby seals being beaten to death for a luxury fur we do not need nor want.

I’m an old, secure white person and it feels like this. How do people of color even breathe?

I decided to pay attention to how I live through this stuff. We all get through, but how?

I looked at social media a little less for a couple days. I didn’t quit it. I know some people sharply restrict their social media exposure and I get that. Personally, I feel as if Twitter leads to much of the best, clearest, deepest, and spunkiest news.

But when I feel assaulted I intentionally ratchet back how often I check it.   When I do look, I go to feeds of people I respect. (Like Angry Staffer and Heather Cox Richardson) They know experts I don’t know. They retweet helpful explanations about how to understand what’s going on.

Next day constitutional lawyers were weighing in. Counter legal opinions were being discussed. By the end of last week smart lawyers and politicians were throwing monkey wrenches at and into Judge Cannon’s directive.

Is this solved? Not at all. But I watched myself make a path that worked for me. I didn’t go into overdrive. I didn’t despair. I paid attention to smart people. I read some things that are relevant and then I went back to whatever I was doing. And I donated money to a good organization.

Here’s one thing I realized: We need to acknowledge how easily we slam lawyers and politicians. So many of our cynical jokes assume all lawyers and politicians are cut from the same cloth. Yet without smart and responsible lawyers and pols we would be hosed. I am becoming more respectful of what those particular people are living through. I am glad they are exist and are working and acting.

Heads up, MB. It isn’t my job to personally defend democracy. It IS my job to be smart enough to watch the process and support the people doing this job in front of us. and then to vote and to work for good candidates,

Breathe deep. We are in it now.

And if YOU follow smart people on social media – who are your folks?

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Regarding my health. Yesterday I finished the second round of the medication that fight the c diff. I feel as good as one can feel when energetically hiking a beautiful trail in a place where a grizzly ate a hiker a couple days ago. Enjoying my life. Paying a LOT of attention. Kinda freaked but we won’t talk about it too much.

PS: No hikers have been eaten by bears anywhere around here.  There ARE a lot of chipmunks in our woods, thugh. 

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We were in the car with some friends. They pointed out a house and said Brian’s parents used to live there. I said, “But Brian lives in Minneapolis and you knew him when you guys were kids Up North.” They explained that Brian’s dad had a peripatetic career. I commented, “Oh you guys know too many people in too many places.” They said, “You knew Brian and his wife’s BFF’s who were your BFF’s years ago in Racine.” We agreed people are a lot more connected than we generally think about.

A few weeks back I read the dense and absolutely fascinating book, An Immense World, by Ed Yong. He does deep science diving to tell us, as much as anyone can know, how various bugs and birds and animals experience the world. The point being we humans are precisely one species of animal. Our senses are awesome, but many critters sense and live out their lives in a world that is extremely different from what we know.  

Take spiders. I know many people (such as Len) seriously do not like spiders. I don’t want them as pets but I don’t mind them. Possibly I read Charlotte’s Web to too many kids in my life so I anthropomorphize - but spiders seem like contented and introverted women (I think a lot of them are women) and I can respect that groove.

But here’s the thing. We see spiders as generally small creatures. (I don’t live in the Southwest. My spider equanimity might not extend to those creatures you guys have that are as big as skedaddling fists). Spiders are so attuned to their webs that their webs should probably be understood as extensions of their bodies. They know when anything hits the web and they know from the way their web wafts or waves what that bug or breeze or bit of flying flotsam probably is. They sit their quietly but that web catches most of the news of the big world around them.

So back to Brian who nearly everyone knows. Do we understand how interwoven we are?  

Like this. We were camping in South Dakota’s Black Hills. There was a couple next to us. We said hi. They said hi. One of us asked where we were from and with one minute we knew these people were Denise’s brother and sister-in-law. Denise lived in Chicago and Len had been at a social action meeting with her a few days earlier.

One of our kids was interviewing for a job in Chicago. The interviewer asked if she could write long reports. She said yes, listed her credentials, then laughed and said both her parents were writers. The guy asked what we wrote. My kids answered. The guy replied, “Your mom wrote that book with Carol Stoner?” Like, my kid met one of the six people (I exaggerate but not much) who read that book? 

He decided to hire her (on the basis of her resume, not essays her mom had written15 years earlier). So then he called HR. The woman recognized the name Danielson. “Is this woman you are hiring mid-twenties, blonde, smart and lovely?” The guy responded, “Yes, Nancy, but you’re freaking me out.” “Oh, we lived across the street from each other when our kids were little.”

How interwoven is your world? When you thought the world was enormous and foreign and risky, who did you meet?