Monthly Archives: September 2016

Looking for a moose

maine_2016_lighthouse_walkI went for a morning run in Owl’s Head, Maine, along the Northern coast, in the light cool rain – and no one was on the roads or the paths through the woods.

In the difficult places, in the woods along the waters of Owl’s Head, you have to pause to walk or run slowly, to move more carefully.

In this way, alert to a trip or a fall, I found inch high purple orchids, slightly agape, hanging in an array, against a seeming wall of wide green leaves and stems.

There were large patches of soft green-white moss beneath my foot fall, and tender fibrous growths clustered on obstructing over-hanging limbs.

Where there wasn’t moss on the forest floor, there was what had once been vibrant flora, flattened dead tree limbs, pressed moist leaves and branches, fallen by age or wind or the brush of a deer, or even another human passerby.

You had to dodge and tip toe carefully past swollen tree roots snaking across the narrow path, holding fast the earth below, knitting together what had been proudly strewn about the walk way over time.

Last week, there were leaves already turning to bright colors, ferns bordering the dark woods beyond, where there were shimmering shapes in the near distance in the morning’s soft wet breeze.

There were open air views from within the woods, indeed a vast dramatic expanse, when you looked out from the forest, to peak from the paths, as you turned around this or that deciduous column in the natural cathedral that held you close, reminding you, you have to do more of this.

There were the waters far below the cliffs, ebbing and flowing away, in rolling translucent waves of softly-changing colors, in elongated pools of blues, and greens, sometimes almost black, with silvery highlights, all the way eastward toward the gray morning light.

The moist air filled you up, opening your lungs, almost as effectively as a shot of espresso.

And it was quiet, except for the sound of the surf and the leaves and the trees brushed by the wind.

Man more and more exists separate from this entwining connection with nature that can make us whole and authentic. Continue reading

Presidential timber

hillary_clintonWhat kind of person climbs out of bed to fight to lead the country when told to stay in bed because of pneumonia?

What kind of person, still sick, wearing a bullet proof vest, in the heat of a NY day, but on a momentous public day, especially for NY, forgoes recovery, an easy excuse, because she doesn’t want to miss a ceremony, a public ritual, remembering and honoring those who died on 9-11?  It meant that much to her.

Plainly, it’s the kind of person who has given all her life and was first noticed when she spoke truth to power in a graduation address.

And she hasn’t stopped since to speak her mind and make a difference when and as she had the opportunity, and, when no one else would lead, Hillary did.

Women have always had to do more, and to do it better, to be taken seriously in this nation – even now

Wouldn’t you know in this election year there is a roar of sexism and male chauvinism tearing at Hillary Rodham Clinton at every turn, from the clothes she wears to the way she laughs, how serious she is, indeed every act or decision she’s made in her life, for fear the nation will follow electing a black man with electing a white woman, to steer the ship of state.

Like many, I felt a sense of deep concern when Hillary had to leave the NY ceremony because her recovering body wouldn’t let her stand and stay, and this was soon replaced by rage at what people said and now say, days later, about Hillary, for being human, for giving her all, to the point of exhaustion, and contracting pneumonia.

I know more than ever, given her sacrifice to lead, her warrior commitment, what a fine example she is, for every other citizen to mimic, who claims to be a patriot, that the choice is clear, favoring the only candidate who cares about everyone from kids to seniors and everyone in between.

We need a person, and Hillary is that person, who will work for us no matter our color, our nation of origin, our sexual identity or preference, even, I believe, our partisan preference.

We need a person who has cared her whole life for this nation and its promise.

We need a woman who will bring us together.

Not drive us apart. It was a former great official from Illinois who warned that a nation divided could not stand.

This year there is a pathogen loose in our politics preaching division and disunity and hate and intolerance.  Continue reading

Is protest the only way to be heard?

Phil Little Thunder Sr. protesting

Phil Little Thunder Sr. protesting

Phil Little Thunder Sr. joined the protest of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota – an iconic figure marching with thousands from other tribal nations – in order to stop a noxious crude oil pipeline from tunneling under Lake Oahe, a tribe’s crucial water source, fearing the pipe will leak its oleaginous poisons into these life-giving waters, and because the line, if not adjusted, will destroy the tribe’s burial grounds, and historic and ancestral cultural sites.

The proposed Dakota Access pipeline, if allowed to proceed, under the auspices of “Energy Transfer Partners,” would travel 1,170 miles, crossing the Sioux land, en route to the Gulf coast.

You may think this has nothing to do with the Commonwealth of Virginia.  But there are lessons to learn so we may resist the risky fossil fuel industry energy choices close to home including Dominion’s effort to lay 550 miles of fracked gas pipelines within feet of the homes of many Virginia landowners, at the risk of these volatile gases exploding, as did occur in Appomattox, Virginia.

We can’t count on the General Assembly, not the Democratic nor Republican parties, as Dominion has showered its financial largesse on key members of both parties.

The success or failure in fighting this Dakota pipeline and the key lessons learned from the defeat of the XL pipeline instruct us how to represent ourselves when those elected fail to represent us.

Last Friday, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg denied the tribe’s demands to stop the pipeline, saying that the tribe had failed to show “it will suffer injury.”  In what alternate universe is the risk that a critical water source may be destroyed not a cognizable “injury?”  Continue reading

Land of the free? About our national anthem!

Flag_wavingOn Friday night, my wife Holly and I took out the Iron Horse (little Harley) and had dinner at Anthony’s in Purcellville.

A Starbuck’s friend at the next table over asked what I thought about the quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, with the San Francisco 49ers, who wouldn’t stand during the national anthem.

I said I had no problem with his protest.  And I don’t.

I think there is good cause because of our poor race relations that we promote discussion about race and equality – so that we might thereby achieve the equal rights for all Americans, male and female, and fulfill the promise of equality that has eluded this nation’s grasp since we declared our independence.

Blacks failed to become full “persons” in our much revered Constitution at the birth of our nation; they were recognized as fractional three-fifths “persons” for purposes of allocating political representation among the several states, but not allowed the vote.

Still, we have folk insisting on the “original” meaning of the constitution, what our founders “believed.”

What our founders “believed” was that it was necessary to compromise individual rights to ameliorate regional differences.

In 2011, there was some congressional embarrassment when our U.S. Congress thought to read the Constitution on the floor of the House so that we could focus on our nation’s “original” meaning.

The “reading” deleted certain “original” passages from the Constitution including the language in Article I, Section 2, that references slaves as “three fifths” persons.

Many are beside themselves that anyone would protest the Anthem?  But we should examine the context and content of the Anthem.  I have never done so, not from the perspective of being black, or having had ancestors who were slaves.  When you do, you can’t ignore that our Anthem contains these words, “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”

Continue reading