I awoke this New Year's morning to a red sky and felt grateful to be a landlubber. I was up early to hug my son and daughter-in-law farewell following a short and welcomed visit. They were headed out the door in sober finery, leaving for a New Year's Day funeral in NC for a man in his eighties who had committed suicide because he had been in terrible pain from cancer for far too long. If you tell me it doesn't occur to you that this is a hell of a way to start a new year, you're lying.
All over America today, we'll be eating peas for luck and greens for money, pork for prosperity and seafood for fertility. If the fireworks and noisemakers were loud enough at midnight, we'll have driven the devils away for the coming year. In some homes, nothing will be removed from the house all day, not even a bulging plastic trash bag, lest the coming year be spent mourning loss. And no laundry or dish washing unless you want to be responsible for seeing a loved one wash away. Homespun voodoo layered with longing.
And right now we're all thinking how silly these rituals sound, how superior to superstition we are today, how we're only going to choke down our turnip greens or our collards because...because...um, it's traditional. But I am most struck by the helplessness implied in these practices--a helplessness that resonates for many of us today.
2010 was a year that even the sanest and most rational of us had to write off to voodoo: I'm reminded of Dire Straits' lyric, "money for nothing and your chicks for free." We were expected to believe that we could only move forward by scrambling backward on social policy, that deficits only matter during campaigns, that Americans really want their old health care back, that BP had done its best, that anyone who really wanted a job could find one, that Michelle Obama wants to force raw broccoli down our kid's throat, and that Christine O'Donnell is not a witch.
Today, I'm sorry to say that I cannot imagine how we'll find our way to health, to real community, to fiscal solvency, to troop withdrawal, to energy responsibility, to accountability in government. And yet we must. We must, despite our national exhaustion and soured mood, our generational weariness, our confusion. We must because we are not the last ones standing. 2010 birth rates are not yet calculated, but preliminary counts show there were 4,131,019 babies born in the US in 2009.
We must because we're the grown-ups.
Typical of me, I've been reading, looking for the wise men and women who'll point the way. There's lots to read, but no clear winners--just erudite arguments. The headlines tell the story.
Economic Optimism? Yes, I'll Take That Bet , John Tierney, NYTimes, 12/27/2010
The New Voodoo , Paul Krugman, NYTimes, 12/30/2010
Was It Really So Bad?, Michael Elliott, TIME, 11/2010
Why 2011 Will Be A Happier New Year, Fareed Zakaria, TIME, 12/28/2010
Eat, Pray, Love And Other Resolutions For 2011, Kathleen Parker, Washington Post, January 2, 2011
More Stimulating Than The Stimulus: In 2010 we learned that many of us are Neanderthals, George Will, Newsweek, January 1, 2011
Veterans of recent wars confront grim employment landscape, Michael Fletcher, Washington Post, Dec 30, 2010Yesterday was DH's sixty-sixth birthday. He's my hero, by the way. As I'm writing, I'm aware of a flurry of activity in the house. I ask what he's doing and learn that he's changing all the air filters in the house because New Year's Day is a good day for stuff like that. Because it's important to do something.
With this first post of the year, I want to open a particular and very personal discussion, one that you might want to take up in your own blogs. Many of us feel stalled out, stuck because things aren't the way we thought they'd be at this point in our lives. It has finally sunk in that the economy won't be springing blythely back, after all. That the wacko political reactionaries didn't just go away. That no one is sure how we'll restore adequate jobs to our people. We feel angry. We feel cheated. We want to blame someone. And we sense that it's time to get beyond that state.
How shall we personally respond, rather than react, to the daunting conditions we face?
Where will our personal hope, our energy and our will come from?
How will we rise above our personal discouragement and contribute constructively?
How should we live now?
If there was ever a new year that warranted a thirteenth grape, it's 2011.
P.S. A self-administered quiz: Did you open any of the headline links? If not, why not? If you did, which did you open first?
Happy New Year, my BFF. May 2011 bring you the peace and serenity to see the beauty amongst the dross. For there is beauty and grace and the will to make change; I have to believe that it is so. DH is doing something every bit as important as changing the world; he's tending the hearth.
ReplyDeletePerhaps that's a good place to start - living greener ourselves by reducing reusing and recycling sounds too simple to be valuable but I look at it as my personal statement that I care about Mother Earth.
Individual projects are more appealing to me these days. I want to feel that my donations (of time or money) are well spent, and that's the best way to be sure. Kung Fu for Coral Health....Kiva's micro-loans.... buying a toy for a child on a charity's gifting tree... I can't fix the deficit or the lack of political will in our governing bodies but I can make a little bit of a personal difference.
I'm going to think about your questions and will continue the conversation over in The Burrow. Now, I am going to go thru your links... starting at the top :)
a/b
Happy New Year. I will be a difficult year. Hopefully, we'll manage to get through it and then move past the next.
ReplyDeleteWhat we need is a change in culture and societal mores. In other words, we need to all get educated and think before we react. It's a hard road ahead, but there may be just enough of us to move it forward. My resolution will be to attract some Repubs to our way of thinking. If we can all move just a few, it might help pave the way for a better society and country.
Hope you had a great new year!
Answer: George Will's. I saw nothing that would help us, just reminders of how far we have to go.
ReplyDeleteNow, as for the other questions...
I can only respond in small ways. As I always have. I really don't have the energy to do much more than that. I wish I did. I also wish I was twenty three years old and just married. Filled with optimism and hope for the future. With what I know now, I think I could have made a difference. Now, forty seven years later, I see only missed opportunities to have been a voice for change in the places where I lived.
Still, it's a great life...except for the irritations you noted. When reading the news I have to control my anger far too often these days and that requires a lot of energy.
There's a group that stands on a corner in downtown Chico every Saturday. They are there to protest the war. The current war. They've been doing it for over 40 years and they've never run out of wars to oppose. Maybe I could take a chair and join them.
Ashleigh,
ReplyDeleteThe answer I turn to, too, is to try to bring my focus home to my own homely goals, to pasta e fagioli, a well-made bed and a satisfying visit with a friend. Before...and that term means different things to each of us...I felt deeply gratified by these things, but change on a national and global scale intruded. My sense of safety and reasonable control vanished. Can we hold those two worlds--the smaller satisfactions and concerns along with the larger, looming crises--without spinning into agitation or oblivion? I'm wondering how many of us find that the "news" is ruinous.
Stan,
You've bitten off a gigantic wad, my friend, and I salute you. Please, keep us posted on your progress. I would love to hear that just one person's mind changed.
Steven,
I understand the need to protect ourselves. I'm glad for your healthy diversions in speed walking and art. We've reached the age where we burn ourselves up so quickly...the more so because we think we are counting down the years.
Isn't it fascinating that you would go to George Will first? There you are, taking care of yourself so thoughtfully, but you go straight to the article most likely to piss you off royally! Curiosity, that dangerous attraction.
I think that what you have said here is very important. That you summarize the mess in our country so well in such a clear, concise way is no great surprise. You hit all the crucial nuts and bolts very well. What am I going to do? I'm going to keep bombarding my Congress Crit ters with emails, calls, blogs and letters; I'm going to keep working on campaigns to get rid of bad people in office and I'm going to take time for me so I can stay sane for dealing with the idiots we got stuck with the past November.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen The Baseline Scenario(http://baselinescenario.com)? It's an economics blog that makes a lot of sense.
Hope your holidays have been great!!! Happy New Year!!!
Happy Birthday to DH!!!!
I read all the links in the order you listed them.
ReplyDeleteI think things will only appear better in the future if we redefine what we mean by "better". Yeah some guy's cell phone is now cheaper and does more tricks; he can text while he waits for his unemployment check.
For me the future was read quite clearly, but less eloquently, but George Carlin in this not-so-funny monologue.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the case may be, I agree with George! I miss the bastard.
I read about some of these traditions today, cannot say I have ever practiced anything like this for the New Year. Hope you have a happy and healthy 2011.
ReplyDeleteKay,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link to Baseline Scenario--a keeper. I like your energy and direction. So often, we think that a letter to our congressional representatives is wasted energy, but I have it on good authority (Sheria,The Examined Life) that politicians are strongly affected by feedback...they are dependent, after all, on our opinions and our votes.
Robert,
I counted on you to represent the skeptical viewpoint, but I hadn't counted on the awesome (and dark) disparagements of George Carlin. He's been the court fool for our generation, telling the truths that only the fool can get away with. Here, I think he's eloquent in voicing our very worst thoughts. If he is right--unfortunately right, as you note--then what do we do?
I have no boat to live on in the Caribbean as my acquaintance Capt. Fogg has elected to do. I can't leave this country when my children and grandchildren are here and I don't want to live or die an expat. I can't afford to move, anyway, since I can't sell my house.
And I cannot afford unrelieved depression; a classic, unrelieved Melancholy requires care and feeding, someone to cook and someone to clean and someone to pay the bills, so that the melancholic can lie about on a swooning couch in soft clothes, penning delicate verse and sipping chamomile tea.
I know of a man with three children and three step-children who recently took a look at his financial situation, read his insurance policy carefully, and determined that he was worth more to his family dead than alive, so he did the next logical thing.
I mean to say that I don't take these questions lightly. And I know your thoughtfulness, so I know you don't take them lightly, either.
How do you lift your head off the pillow each day, if Carlin's view is the only one you hold? I miss the bastard, too, but he's out of it now and we are very much in it.
Bucko,
My hearty and sanguine young friend, I wish the very same to you. Keep that nuclear power plant in the road for another year and we shall all be grateful to you.
Nance: In response to your question - we try to hold on to what little we have, if only by our fingernails. We toyed with the idea of leaving the country as well, but all our family is here so the thought is fleeting at best.
ReplyDeleteWe are mostly sad for our children and grand-children but are resolved that we cannot grieve for their future, they will have to deal with it the best they can. We actually take some relief in the fact that we feel we will be "checking out" about the time the country is in it's final throes.
We had this discussion this very morning as we listened to NPR talk about how the Republicans are more motivated than ever to reduce Social Security and Medicare. The defense budget was not even mentioned. How are more people shoved into poverty, by reduced income and higher medical costs, good for America?
The salient statement in Carlin's video is that "they don't care about us"... not one wit.
I thought that the brokers of power would be afraid that this is a country were everyone has guns. But the mind control over most of us is so adroitly executed and managed - case in point, the Tea Baggers who angrily rally to undermine their own self-interests.
The worst part of the people in power Carlin talks about is that they are laughing at us as they gut our future. They are laughing at what suckers most of us are!!
Thank you for your kind words!!! I wasn't much of an activist in my misspent youth and I'm not now -- then again, I just put a call to action for elders at The Mahablog. I think we need to rally at the mall when the weather breaks. We did in the 60s! And I wish those guys at the The Baseline had been my econ profs -- they really de-mystify a subject that makes a body's eyes glaze over.
ReplyDelete@Robert: Sadly, I think George is right. We sold our souls long ago. However, I'm not ready to roll over and play dead.
Great that you started us off with some fun traditions before asking us to think about the hard stuff.
ReplyDeleteBecause it sometimes seems like it is all smoke and mirrors to me, I read The New Voodoo first.
Will go back an read the others but must pace myself. One bite at a time is all I can handle.
Darla
I went for the Fareed Zakaria one because I thought it would be the most palatable! It was, and then I dug into the Michael Elliot. I wonder if 90 percent of the American public has any idea who all these financial puppetmasters are? Scary.
ReplyDeleteRobert,
ReplyDeleteYessirree, clinging to what's left of my nest egg with both arthritic claws! And I am ever so confused about Social Security. Depending on who you believe, it's either a welfare program that's drowning the country in debt or it's a viable entitlement that adds only a fractional percentage to the deficit. It's a political football, but that's all I can ascertain reliably.
Kay,
Not rolling over here, either. I'm no longer agile enough;-)
Darla,
I'll cop to that sneakiness! And you're wise to take it a little at a time; my eyes were crossing!
Meg,
Zakaria is rarely so optimistic. Should we attribute that to his superior fortune-telling skills or to his new-found celebrity, which seems to trivialize even the most learned talking heads?