America, the Beautiful

Why does everything have to be so complicated?

Boquillas Canyon, Rio Grande River, Big Bend National Park, Texas

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, moan.

I love this country. I particularly love the public lands and the numerous waterways I’ve had the privilege to float. From the Rio Grande on the border of Mexico from Boquillas Canyon to Langtry, Texas, to the Magic Skagit in North Cascades National Park where one of my first Washington river running experiences was being dumped into its icy currents.

I love the diverse landscapes contained within our borders from the old, worn down hills in the Smokies to the sculpted rock around every bend in the Grand Canyon.

I love the entrepreneurial opportunities available to those who want to follow their bliss. I can’t tell you the number of people I know who have followed the road less taken instead of what was expected of them.

I love that I can express my opinion and not expect a knock at my door.

I love that I can travel across the country without begin asked for identification papers.

I love the cultural content available to me around the clock, so that I know when I’m awakened at all hours of the night by a dog that hasn’t yet adjusted to being back home after traveling or who is confused by the change in time zones, I’ll have numerous means of entertaining myself.

I love the diversity of communities trying desperately, doggedly, determinedly to live up to the motto, “E pluribus unum”.

But - and you knew there had to be a ‘but’ - right?

There is no reason the wearing of masks during a pandemic should be divisive or controversial once we learned the science behind the virus.

There is no reason an armed teen ager should feel compelled to attend a protest rally in a neighboring state. And then take two lives for no good reason.

There is no reason a state government should be striving to make voting more difficult, not less difficult.

There is no reason filing tax returns should be so stressful or complicated or lengthy. For a country that became a country due to “tax issues”, we sure do go out of our way to make them dreadful. Australians can’t even tell you when their tax day is because the procedures there are so innocuous.

There is no reason the nation wide minimum wage should still be $7.25 - it’s been 11 years since it was raised and it is woefully inadequate where it stands now.

There is no reason we should be allowing the tyranny of the minority to rule over us - not so long as we have the freedoms enumerated in our Constitution.

The enthusiasm we are seeing right now over this election is the enthusiasm we should always be seeing about every election. Our nation wide intransigence about voting is what got us in this mess. And the mess I am speaking of goes from the White House to the city council to your county commissioners.

My lousy history memory tells me that Karl Marx made the remark about “religion being the opiate of the masses.” This was referring to the pacification of the general public causing an indifference to how they were being ruled or who was ruling them. America has so many different opiates to choose from.

That’s why I often sarcastically remark that “the problem with America is it has too many options.” I’m only half joking. I’m not sure “jaded” fully covers the attitude over the past few decades. Thanks to the 45th best president we’ve ever had and his coterie of ghoulish back-slappers, it appears we are coming out of it a cycle, or two, too late.

At least, in regards to the soon-to-be-packed Supreme Court and already-packed federal courts across the country.

It’s going to be painful even if we succeed in sweeping the executive and legislative branches. All of the progress we’ve made since the time of FDR will be on the line with the woman who has been picked to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg poised to take that seat. I so very much wish that were hyperbole, but I think not.

As I said yesterday and many times before, our work will not end with this election. If we are successful, it will only be the beginning.

Personally, I think expanding the Supreme Court should be one of the first things considered. After all, modern day America has 13 Circuit Courts of Appeal. As it stands at the moment, the 9 Supreme Court Justices are a reflection of the 9 Circuit Courts that were in existence in the late 1800s.

And, by the way, the Constitution has nothing to say whatsoever about the number of Supreme Court Justices.

Take that! Constitution “originalists” peddlers!

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I follow a writer named Greg Olear on Substack. He gets down into the weeds in regards to politics. One of his more interesting columns was about how that big explosion came about in Beirut, Lebanon, a few months ago. It was very interesting. Lots of details you would never have thought about just by reading the news.

In any event, he included this bit of writing from a writer friend of his named Sean Beaudoin. I liked it and I figured a few of you with kids might really like it.

This is a short letter by an imaginary novelist to said novelist’s imaginary son, who is named, for some reason, Brexit.

Amidst all this, my wife has given birth to a boy so beautiful even his midnight wail suffuses me with love. And so, being somewhat prescient, I have decided that during the inevitable Swine-99 outbreak of 2050 he will have, like me, become a young and struggling writer. So I have decided to write this missive, with pen on actual paper, sealed in an envelope upon which is scrawled OPEN ON YOUR THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY. Hopefully my words will still be relevant, carry some meaning, trigger a flash of recognition. Or even just be mildly diverting in a time that is almost certain to be so much worse than now. 

October 11, 2020 

Dearest Brexit, 

Well, madness abounds. Of course, as always, there is beauty within the madness, or possibly formed because of it. There is no lasting art that did not arise from some sort of deprivation, whether great or small, from pandemic to simple ennui. The Sorrows Of Young Werther didn’t write itself, you know? On the other hand, maybe I’m really talking about the bushes in front of our porch that have barely survived over the last ten years due to lack of light but have somehow bloomed this month, flowering for the first time ever! I know you want to become a novelist, which for any of us is an agonizing decision, and I’ve often thought about what kind of advice I might give. Then along comes a virus which has gripped the world, and made it apparent, or even more apparent, that I know almost nothing at all. 

I suppose I would say that it is in this time that those who would artfully record their honest and emotive perceptions are needed more than ever. There are refrigerator trucks full of bodies parked outside funeral homes in the Bronx, idling with dread and diesel fumes even as I type this, and that fact alone can bring one nearly to tears, but afterwards, should also prompt reflection (and perhaps a lengthy verse poem). What do we really want in this life, in this world? To be wealthy and famous? To have the respect of our peers? To go to bed every night knowing we accomplished at least one genuinely exceptional thing? Or maybe we welcome the chaos and nihilism. Perhaps our secret desire is to abandon the false shade of community and connection, wanting only to be left to our devices, hermetic, surrounded by electronics, swathed in fear and loneliness and the Tyranny Of Small Technologies. 

Sad, I know. Perhaps this is not information you care to know about your father, but I will share it anyway. I am prone to pessimism and despair. I do not see a rosy future. I drink heavily and low into the mist late at night, naked in the back yard, strangling the neck of a bottle of near-empty Gentleman Jack, fearful of the lessons our leaders have taught us so well: there are no solutions, nothing can be fixed, we are, as unthinking and regressive beasts, doomed to doom ourselves. 

And then I stand over your crib! I kiss your hands and feet. I smell your sweet sweet-potato breath, dear Brexit, and my depression fades. The world is beautiful after all. We will find a way through this because we must. For you and all the infants like you. And so I wake refreshed, prepare scalding coffee and bacon and eggs and toast with real creamery butter and I know we will all be okay 

Listen, it has been a century since we have been swept with something so virulent as this, and I often find myself thinking back to 1918 and the Spanish Flu and those who endured it, the rudimentary medicine and unrefrigerated food, the terror of not knowing if it would ever end, or if it did, might still come back every Spring until there was no one left to sweat themselves away on a dirty blanket with no medicine or even a mild understanding of what afflicted them. 

We are lucky, after all. 

Okay, so here’s my advice: just like saxophone or ballroom dance, it’s important to practice feeling. Work hard on honing your ability to touch, to finely tune your tactile senses. Be vulnerable. Be aware. Experience fully. And then write it down. See everything around you. Embody true perception. Be a camera. Record it all. Let the flash recoil, take a photo in words, let us know what you truly know. It’s possible that’s all there is. To leave something behind for others to consider. To learn from or not learn from as is their whim. 

Love, 
Dad 

Also, ta-da! Done!

One small step for humankind!