Mom Reviews the Political Scene

Leelanau County, Michigan, is not the place it used to be.

There are fewer children in the county and fewer schools than were here a century ago, while at the same time there is a larger (and growing) population of older people in comfortable financial circumstances. Ironically, other than in the building trades, the rising number of retired “transplants” has not resulted in a matching increase of opportunities for full-time, year-round employment. It’s possible now, after all, to live in a specific geographic area almost anywhere in the world without being forced to support the local economy. Also, many officially “fulltime” retired residents spend several months a year traveling or in second homes elsewhere.

There have been other changes, as has been true in the United States at large.

Leelanau County these days has a different kind of Republican party from what was here even thirty years ago, and the local change mirrors that of the present Republican party across the United States. The county always had a conservative flavor, but old-time Republicans represented a wide spectrum of views. Recall that Governor Milliken was a Republican. Someone with Milliken’s moderate views could never even be nominated by the Republican Party these days, in Michigan or anywhere else in the country.

The current Leelanau County Board of Commissioners is a microcosm of broader American politics, with all the gridlock, hostility, and rejection of “working together” – at least on the part of the Republican commissioners -- implied by the comparison. I do not lay the blame on one party with any kind of partisan glee. Look through the glass sides of the fishbowl. Watch the fish. See what they do, and listen to what they say.

Party politics used to be close to irrelevant at the village, township, even the county level, and that was a good thing. Local politics was about getting things done, not about party allegiance. We are seeing the death throes of those good old ways.

Until quite recently, composition of the board was four Republicans and three Democrats. Then one of the Republicans stepped down. Known as “the swing vote” on the board, that member had earned the ire of many of her Republican constituents for whom bipartisanship is anathema. She occasionally voted “with” Democrats! Clearly, she was a traitor and a turncoat! There were efforts within her party to lead her to the light, but she tired of the wrangling and resigned rather than cave in to orthodoxy and right-wing political correctness.

From all appearances, there are only two “principles” at work today in the ideology of the Republican party. One is that whatever or whomever Democrats are for, Republicans must be against. This principle is not limited to matters of fiscal responsibility: even a measure that would cost nothing must be opposed by Republicans if brought forth by a Democrat. And a candidate with lifelong Republican credentials, should he or she stoop to bipartisanship on that or any other measure, must be drummed out of office and purged from the Party.

The other principle, the primary principle, the one that is the reason that adherence to other is demanded, is that government should not do anything – other than, of course, make war and police borders. But nothing else! And even that border policing, like policing in general, like schools, like prisons, would be done better, most Republicans are coming to believe, by private enterprise. Government is always the problem, never the solution!

One Republican member of the county board is pleased with the current 3:3 deadlock because it ensures that the board will be unable to do anything.

Stop and think about this for a moment. The phrase “do-nothing government” used to be harsh criticism. Today, from hard line Republicans, it is the highest praise. The right wing aspires to the establishment of do-nothing government.

A naive question may arise: If you think government is evil, why would you want to be part of government? Sadly, the question is easily answered: If the do-nothings were to give up control, government might once again be empowered to act! Hark back to an irony from the days of the Vietnam conflict: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”  Do-nothings must at all costs keep control of the paralyzed “village” (government) in order to ensure its power will not revive.

Can county and national politics be enjoyed simply as a clown show, as some suggest? Should we expect it to be and accept it as nothing but “sound and fury, signifying nothing”?

Our country has long proclaimed itself the leader of the free world. We promote our political system as an example to other countries, to peoples around the globe. Look what we can do! You could do it, too! That has been the lesson of our history, from 1776 onward.

What example, what lessons, do we hold forth to the world today? You, too, can make lethal weapons! You, too, can make war! You, too, can elect “leaders” determined to let nothing be done to improve your lives, and you can sell off government functions to the highest for-profit bidders! This is democracy, the best in the world!

Is it, really? Is this the best we can do?

NOW PLEASE GO READ THIS.

Mom and Pop and Stardom

Mom: I got three comments on my new blog.

Pop: Three? That's not very many.

Mom: It's more than zero.

Pop: Have you ever had zero?

Mom: Yes, many times.

Pop, who is a star, sees Mom as some kind of star, but in reality she is more like a dust bunny.

"Why Paris?"

In the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris, France, talking heads keep asking, “Why Paris?” They ask if the reason is this or that or the other thing, everyone looking for a simple answer. But the world is complicated, not simple.

France, like the United States, has long been a nation of both native peoples and immigrants. Both countries also have legacies of imperialism, France with official colonies, the United States with de facto cheap labor satellites in service to American capitalism. In both countries, the past haunts the present, and the present in one place on earth touches the present in other places. 

France and the United States are very different when it comes to geographic area and neighbors. The U.S. shares borders only with Canada and Mexico, and the contiguous states between those two borders is immense, while France forms part of a much smaller continent, divided into numerous smaller nation-states, with much more porous borders since European Union.

Terrorism attacks, it should be remembered, have not been confined to France and the United States. They have taken place this month in Lebanon and Jordan; the bombing of a U.S. embassy in Kenya in 1998 killed 247 Kenyans (20 for every American who died); nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls between the ages of 16 and 18 were abducted in 2014.

Historically, “war” has meant the clash of armies. Sending troops to war meant they would go into battle against other armed troops. American troops in the Revolutionary War and Vietnamese troops in the last century adopted techniques of guerrilla warfare, rather than charging at each other across open fields, but they were still armed troops engaging other armed troops in what could be recognized and called battle – a deadly game, to be sure, with civilian casualties, but still with a few recognized rules.

No more. No rules. When and how (no doubt gradually) the changes came about can be argued, but the fact is indisputable.

Do we in the West care more, care disproportionately, about “our own” and ignore terrorism elsewhere? One Facebook post decried the lack of posts on Beiruit, at the same time Paris postings were everywhere. One reason for that, I think, is that we share the news we hear, and what we hear on American radio and read in our newspapers is by and large the news that touches Americans most directly. When I want news about Ethiopia, I have to seek it out; what’s happening in Paris is on the radio 24 hours a day. But I agree that it is important to look beyond the headlines to the rest of the world.

To the original question, “Why Paris?,” however, there is no simple answer. But after September 11, 2001, did anyone ask, “Why New York?” It seemed obvious, didn’t it?

Paris is obvious for the same reason.

Paris, like New York, has long been a dream city for people all over the world. It is a center of art and culture, of business and finance, of fashion and of government. It is, if you will, New York and Washington, D.C., combined. And it is beautiful. Many who live elsewhere hold it in their hearts as a second home, and many who have yet to see it for the first time hold it in their dreams.

It is important that we not forget victims and grief and fear in other parts of the world. Did you know that Beirut was once called “the Paris of the Middle East”? Even had it never been called that, the people of Beirut are as deserving of compassion as the people of Paris. At the same time, it’s only natural that our hearts are drawn to what is familiar, to the country President Obama rightly called “our oldest ally,” the city that welcomed American GIs and artists and writers and students, following World War II.

Paris, c’est une phare. Que la lumière sois jamais èteinte.

Dear Young Ones

Parents, step-parents, and grandparents, we have come to an age where the greater length of the path lies behind us. It is a strange realization, one that prompts me to tell you a story. Isn’t that what old folks do? Tell stories to the young ones? Here’s mine, and I make no excuse for its rambling nature or scanty conclusion.

A couple of decades ago, David and I made an expedition to the other side of Michigan, “the sunrise side,” where both his parents were born. Out in the countryside beyond Tawas we found his father’s old one-room school. We explored on foot the nearby area where his grandfather’s farm had been, though no trace of it remained. A short drive away, we found his grandparents’ graves in a little country cemetery. 

By chance, also, in a restaurant on the shore of Lake Huron , we ran into one of his distant cousins, a bald man with the unforgettable name Waldemar. He was sitting in a booth next to ours, and when the waitress addressed him by name, David said, “I wonder if that could be my cousin Waldemar.” It was, conversation ensued, and in the end Waldemar gave us directions to the homes of a couple more cousins on nearby farms. All these cousins, I should say, were of the first-cousin- once-removed or second-cousin relation.

The first old farmer we tracked down, Howard, lived with his wife at the end of a tree-lined dirt road in a most picturesque setting. Their farmyard featured among its outbuildings an old log barn like nothing I’d ever seen before, and to the north of that barn, concealed by a pretty line of trees, was a charming small brook. Howard and his wife make us welcome, and Howard climbed up into the loft of a newer barn to retrieve a piece of furniture put aside for David years before, a rustic twig table made by David’s paternal grandmother, who died before he was born. (We still have that table. You all have seen it.) I always thought we might return to Howard’s farm, so steeped in family history. We never have, but we sometimes speak of it, and David tells me stories of going there as a little boy, stories of fish-head skulls nailed to a shed wall, of driving a horse-drawn sulky (is there another kind?) down the dirt road when a wheel came off – but those are not my stories, not what I want to tell you today.

The other old farmer, Herman, a man well into his 80s, lived at the end of a long driveway going straight south off the east-west two-lane highway. Herman’s house and outbuildings sat out in the open, exposed to the sky like farms on the central Illinois prairie. We were not invited into the house but kept standing outside to talk with Herman, who stood on the stoop, just outside the doorway, his wife standing behind him, inside the door, silent. Herman might have invited us in (or he might not), but he was on his way out, hot on the trail , he told us, of a neighbor’s spotted pony he wanted to buy, and so we took our leave.

Our memory of Herman and the spotted pony entertained us for years. We would laugh and shake our heads and ask each other what that old man in his 80s thought he needed with a spotted pony! Lately we understand better and no longer laugh, although we still smile.

And this is what I want to tell you. It will probably come as quite a surprise, and you may have trouble believing it’s true. No one , no matter how old, ever gets over wanting that spotted pony.

David watches the special features that come with movies on DVDs , telling me, “I learned a lot,” as if he will be directing a movie in the near future, and I read farming magazines as if I’ll very soon be bringing worn-out soil back to fertility and breeding livestock. When we travel together, we assess strange towns and wild landscapes as if we might start new lives there. We picture to ourselves and to one another the wilderness cabins where our novels will be conceived and birthed. In conversations in strange motels we imagine the furniture re-arranged, paintings and bookshelves added, picturing a whole life we might put together in that one room. You have no idea how many parallel lives we have going!

No doubt you see us as completely settled into our chosen grooves, the dreamy painter and bookseller, content to be what we are and as we are for the rest of our lives, not at all busy launching new careers or building new houses or setting off for distant parts of the country. (Maybe even another country! A houseboat on the Seine!) Not very likely, is it? After all, how much energy do we have to make serious changes, to make new beginnings? How much savings do we have socked away for acquisition and startups?

We’re not deluded, young ones. We know what’s real and what’s feasible, and we do not regret the lives we have made. At the same time, our fantasies continue to blossom in ways that would astound you. It’s a jungle in there, fertile and crowded with possibilities of all kinds, and in that largely shared space – because a shared life is built on conversation -the two of us are still young and vibrant and full of dreams.

You cannot fully grasp what I’m trying to tell you, never having been as old as we are now, but I thought I should give you at least this little hint. It will better explain, perhaps, my excitement over that old scythe from the farm auction and David’s satisfaction in buying the bright-orange rowing scull. In his mind, he is skimming over Lake Leelanau, you see, and in mine I am mowing our back meadow by hand, like one of Tolstoy’s peasants. And it goes way beyond that! In imagination we are writing and directing movies together and applauding one another’s published novels. Every road we drive down leads through towns and past houses we look at with an eye to their possibilities for us. Can we see ourselves there? Could we make a life there? What would that life look like? He envisions a smooth, empty road in front of his Hayabusa as he cruises at 100 mph, and I become the world's oldest jockey on my lightning-fast Apaloosa.

Our projects at home may appear small to you these days – insignificant and barely there. You may puzzle over my modest pile of old bricks and David’s four stout wooden posts and wonder, if you even notice them, what we hope to make of such small beginnings. Ah, but if you could only see our future with our minds’ eyes!

Spotted ponies! Spotted ponies by the thousands, still out there on the horizon, thundering along the ridge, raising clouds of dust!

11/1/2015

Warning: More Than Nursery School Attention Span Required

What is “scientific”? I wonder if my friends and I see it the same way.

I was delighted by the first two paragraphs of Wendell Berry's letter published in October 22, 2015, issue of New York Review of Books (received in my p.o. box this morning) before I looked down to see his name, upon which my delight increased tenfold. Finishing his letter, I went on to read Edmund Phelps in what was billed as a reply, whereupon my delight vanished.

Berry's points, sufficiently clear that one need not possess a degree in economics to understand them, are that (1) agriculture is a huge part of the American economy and that (2) current industrial and chemical practices visited on the land are toxic and unsustainable. Nowhere in his so-called reply does Phelps address these points. Instead he leaps to a generalized defense of "modernity," as he defines it,dragging a string of red herrings across the path.

Phelps sees threats to free speech, in the university classroom and elsewhere. This is no answer to economists ignoring agriculture or to the current and widespread destructive practices of corporate-scale farming. And where is his evidence for the claim that free speech is "ever more limited"? Who in this country has been jailed recently for speech? What newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses have been shut down? As far as university classes go, administration guidelines to faculty probably have much more to do with the fact that higher education is now run more and more on a modern business model -- mustn't alienate "customers"! -- than with any fears of government censorship.

And does Phelps really find mandatory testing of new products an undesirable curb on ingenuity? Is this a scientific, "modern" view? Would he return us to the days of thalidomide on the market?

The general attitude of Phelps is one I have encountered before, often in individuals with backgrounds such as engineering. They seem to feel that whatever comes out of a laboratory is, by definition, "scientific" and, therefore, to be adopted without question. I find this view unscientific in the extreme. A more enlightened view of modern science is to recognize its necessary reliance on ceaseless experimentation and testing. Independent studies of agricultural practices point in a very different direction from corporate-subsidized studies. I recommend readers to the monthly magazine AcresUSA, "the voice of eco-agriculture," published since 1971.

If I were a cartoonist, I would draw a picture. Wendell Berry and the Acres people, along with all the organic farmers and CSA families I know, would be standing at the edge of a precipice, holding up big detour signs, while a river of lemmings, wearing t-shirts with slogans for GMOs, CAFOs, and agrichemicals would be running at them full-tilt, pushing them aside to leap to their doom. Sadly, if the lemmings succeed, the rest of us will not be left standing on the cliff but will be dragged along to our doom.

Surely, "the West's modern project" – that which Phelps takes himself to be defending against Wendell Berry and imaginary quashers of free speech -- can do better. All that's needed is objective and rigorous scrutiny of the evidence and a willingness to adapt. Is that not modern and scientific?

-- 

I posted the foregoing on Facebook, having modified somewhat a letter sent to NYRB editor. Facebook (for those few unacquainted with that bantering, slogan-ridden, wisecracking social media platform) does not generally offer high-level exchange of thought, but I did receive an insightful comment from one friend, who included this link. The bottom line is that as bad as things were before, they are worse since 1996 with the rollback of the Delaney Clause, a legislative protection in place since 1950 and now removed by Congress, with only one voice raised in protest. Read it and weep. For those who attention span has   already been overtaxed, here are a few highlights: 

"With the Delaney Clause dead on the floor of Congress, some 80 pesticides that were about to be outlawed as carcinogens will now remain in use. Call it the Dow-Monsanto bail-out bill, since these two companies make most of the chemical killers that were on the list to be banned."

“Chemicals go a long way in a small body,” Clinton said. He could have been more specific. The new law now ensures that when children eat strawberries, they will also be ingesting the deadly chemical residue left by benamyl, captan, and methyl bromide. The average apple and peach has eight different pesticides embedded in it. Grapes have six and celery five. Children get as much as 35 percent of their likely lifetime dose of such toxins by the time they are five."

Junk Mail

Tear open the envelope.

Turn it inside out:

A clearing for a poem.

Haiku Before Dawn

Light and darkness pull

apart in increments. First

bird begins to sing.