First Week of November: Fear and Gratitude

Here we are, Saturday of election week, vote counting continuing.  There are still chores to be done, so sheets are in the washer and the sourdough starter is warming up on the counter.  We are under a tropical storm watch, the latest in a hurricane season that I remember being under watch conditions in years, if not decades, if not ever.

Yesterday our internet at school went out at 11:45, and it hadn't come back on by the time I left.  It was strange to spend the whole afternoon unable to check on much--I am one of the last people in the U.S. who hasn't bought a smart phone, so I couldn't check that way.

In a way it was peaceful.  I had work that didn't need the Internet, so I did some of that--updating the faculty forms that we update once a year.  This year, I'm doing it for my faculty members because I have their forms stored electronically, and in many ways, it's easier for me to just do it so that all the forms match in the ways that pass muster.  I'd rather faculty members focus on teaching and helping students than to spend hours on these forms.

It's been a strange week with grief and fear zapping me in strange ways.  I feel this deep sorrow that our Thanksgiving plans with extended family members have been scuttled.  I know it's the right thing to do, but I still feel this grief.  I was expecting different election results, and even though I knew we might not have results for days, it's still strange to me.

My larger fear isn't about this election and this set of possible leaders, but further down the road.  Trump has shown us some of the weaknesses of our political system, some of the ways we could be vulnerable to someone who wanted to grab more power than the office is supposed to allow.  I've been grateful that Trump has been an ineffective dictator.  But with that gratitude comes the fear that the next person who decides to move from president to dictator will have learned some important lessons.  This article at The Atlantic website does this analysis in a much more researched way than I have.

But let me focus on a more happy gratitude.  My quilt group that cannot meet in person will have a Zoom meeting this morning.  Let me get ready.

Days of Binder Clip Repairs

On Tuesday, I made this Facebook post:  "Even with an election distracting me, there are still college administrator tasks that must be done. I fixed the toilet chain with a binder clip when I discovered that the metal part that attaches the chain to the handle was corroded so much that there was no longer a hole that would hold the chain in place. Another one for the 'things I never learned in grad school to prepare me for my academic job' file."

I am happy to report that the binder clip fix is still working.  I am weary with the realization that we will likely have the binder clip holding the chain until the building crumbles into dust.  My campus rents space from an owner who fixes the landscaping but leaves the gaping cracks in the edifice for all to see.

As we've been waiting for election results, and as I've been using that toilet throughout the week, I've been thinking about that binder clip as a metaphor for our election process.  Or maybe it's the whole flushing apparatus that's the metaphor.  It's old and rusted through in parts, but we still make it work.

Or maybe I'm comforted by a different metaphor.  We could wait for someone to come along and fix the rusted mechanisms of the nation--or we could do it ourselves.  We may not have the right tools.  We may not be able to get to the store to buy a new mechanism and do a replacement.  But we can look around, see what we have, and repurpose it to make a fix that lasts.

And so another day of waiting.  There are moments when I think we all may be safer in this liminal time when each side thinks they may still have a chance of winning, and therefore are less likely to take up arms.

"Midlife Spells" for the Day after the Day after Election Day

I found it hard to concentrate yesterday; I suspect I was not alone.  But I did get to our new faculty member's class; our accrediting agency requires that new faculty hires be observed in their first 30 days.  And while I was there, I got an idea for a poem, which I will start this morning.

It's not the first time that I've been observing a class and gotten an inspiration.  

For today, let me post a poem that got its birth in a different way.  On January 6, 2019, I made this sketch:

Careful readers may have already noted that January 6 is the Feast Day of the Epiphany.  Other readers will note the houses made of gingerbread and either think of Christmas cookies or Hansel and Gretel.

I went on a hunt to figure out which came first, the poem or the sketch.  I was surprised to see how many baked goods are in my poetry drafts at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, all kinds of baked goods and crumbs of baked goods.  I still haven't found the original poem.

I almost always write my first drafts on purple legal pads.  I make revisions and then I make additional revisions as I type the poem into the computer.  I did type this poem into the computer on January 7, 2019, so it's probably older than I thought.  I almost never write a first draft and type the next day.

Still on my quest for the origins of the poem, I went to blog posts and found this one.  Now I have the glimmering of a memory.  I think I wrote the poem on scrap paper at church.

And now the poem has found a home in the literary journal Adanna.  I'm always happy when that journal accepts my work.

It seems a good poem for this day when so much remains uncertain.  And lately, every day feels like a day when so much remains uncertain.

Midlife Spells



Some see the new star as they study
the skies each night. Some find
a trail of crumbs made from inedible
heels and crusts, or larger meanings in the detritus
of daily consumption. Angel choirs
will sing to a few, but most of us
will hear no message.

Study the texts, the ancient
ones and those composed
by your compatriots.
Pray the words in your ancestors’
book, a litany in words both strange
and familiar. Write the codes
on the soles of your most rugged shoes.

Collect your treasures, the buttons
from your grandmother’s blouse, her ring
that fits on your slimmest finger.
Keep the best recipes and the best photos.
Cast away the clothes that never fit.
You can have one shelf of books.

Winnow your possessions down
to your favorites and your constants.
Avoid the houses made of gingerbread
and all the traps the world will set.
Make your way through the forest
of enchantments with the protections
only you can carry.

The Day After the 2020 Election, with the Winner Yet to be Determined

Well, this is not the morning after the election that I was expecting.  I truly expected a Biden landslide, and while I knew that we might have to wait a few days for ballots to be counted, I thought there was a good chance that we'd know a Biden landslide was coming early on election night.

Right now, the race for president is still not settled and may not be for days.  It's a much closer race than most of us expected (or at least, most of the people whom I know personally and whom I read).  Why does it always surprise me to discover how deeply divided the U.S. is?

I also did not expect to wake up to find myself in the cone of a possible storm.  I made this Facebook post this morning:   "Well, obsessively following this election has been interesting, but I must now turn my attention to Hurricane Eta. South Florida is now directly in the cone of a hurricane that's already set records for strength and landfalls late in the season. Woe comes in so many flavors this year."

And so here we are, all of us who have gambled by continuing to live near a coastline.  Here we are, all of us who voted and who wait.   Trump has declared himself a winner, as he said he would do. But the counting continues, and I have no idea who is likely to be a winner at the end. Right now, it feels like we're all losers on the cusp of losing something even more essential--like gamblers who have lost more than they could afford to who then decide to make one last huge gamble, to bet all the remaining money one last time.

But let me talk myself back from the edge of this abyss.  Let me remind myself of the record number of people who turned out to vote.  Let me remind myself of all the kindnesses that I've seen people show to each other in past weeks and months and years.

Let me also remind myself that repressive regimes do come to an end, sooner or later.  But let me also acknowledge how easy it is to become the thing we've been fighting against.

Let me take a larger view and remember that neither party offered a deeply compelling view of the future.  If they had, they would have won.  Let me not get bogged down.  Let me dream new dreams and visions.

Election Day 2020 with Gale Force Winds and a Halloween Golf Cart

It is very early on election morning; it's been a night of gale warnings and wind and things going bump in the night.  The winds have ushered the cold front to our area.  You folks in the further northern states hear the words "cold front" and think of snow on the pumpkins, but our autumn cold fronts aren't like that.  Yesterday evening as I walked from my office building to the car, I didn't sweat the way I did in the morning--that's how I knew the weather had changed.

The wind crashing through the palm trees, rattling the windows in their frames, making it impossible to tell if  the noises mean a serious threat in the dark or a harmless plastic flower pot--this wind seems like a good metaphor for election day, at least for this election day.

Many of the essayists I'm reading and the tweets I'm seeing are treating this election as if it's the last word that will plunge us into apocalypse or pull us out of the abyss.  I know that we have challenges ahead, challenges that we already know and those that we can't possibly anticipate.

I have been watching and listening to this version of Woody Guthrie's "All You Fascists Bound to Lose."  The song reminds me that humanity has survived tough times before.  We'll survive this too, although we may not be able to hang onto all the things we loved before.  I'm hoping that this time of winnowing makes us appreciate what we do still have.  I'm hoping that good art comes out of it.  I'm hoping that we love more fiercely.

I'm heartened by signs that although it may seem like the apocalypse is here, we are on a path to voter turnout like we haven't seen since 1908.  Yes, over a century.  Because of the pandemic, we have made it easier to vote.  And thus, people have voted.  For politics nerds like me, who always argued that we'd have more voter turnout if we actually encouraged voting instead of putting up blocks to voting, it's been fascinating to see this situation play out.

Here's one thing making me happy this week, another sign that the end may not be as close as we think.  At some point over the past week-end, I noticed a golf cart in my neighbor's driveway.  It had a tarp over it, but I didn't think much about it, since our forecast called for rain.  On Sunday afternoon (Nov. 1), I noticed that it had been decorated for Halloween:

But wait, it gets better.  At night, the lights glow and twinkle: 

I need a better picture, but you get the idea.  

Last night, I watched the father of the neighborhood take his children for a ride.  I thought about the world we live in, the world where we can't take our children to have the same trick-or-treating experiences that we had as children.  But if we persevere, if we apply our creative skills, we can create a new world which might be better or it might just be different.  

As long as parents decorate golf carts for their children, I'll take it as a sign that the world isn't ending. 

Plague Cancellations

Last night my immediate family had a Zoom meeting; we needed to decide what to do about Thanksgiving.  Since 1994, we've gathered once a year, either at Christmas or Thanksgiving.  For the past twenty some odd years, it's been Thanksgiving, always at Lutheridge, usually at the biggest house on the camp property.  It feels like coming home, whether I'm arriving with a car load or by plane. 

This year, we'll all be staying in our primary homes.  I am not surprised we made this decision, although I did wake up several times in the night wondering if it was the right one, even though I know that it is the right one.

In an ideal world, if we wanted to be together, we'd arrive 10-14 days early and quarantine before we'd report to the house at Lutheridge where we could be together.  Most of my family members don't have lives where we can do that.

And then, some of us would need to quarantine for 14 days after we gathered--that would mean working from home, if it could be done, and some of us don't have those kinds of jobs.

We thought about ways to gather safely without quarantine--with masks, without masks, sleeping in other places so that we weren't sharing the same air for as many hours, keeping 6 feet between us always.  But in the end, the risks outweighed the benefits, at least this year of rising COVID-19 rates, no vaccine, no cure, very little in the way of alleviating symptoms if one isn't the leader of a wealthy country.

I feel a mix of emotions, most of them in the sad-resigned-sadder spectrum.  I know it's wise.  I know we'll likely be able to gather next year.  I do worry that other events will intervene.  I do worry that people will die or become disabled in the coming year and that we'll never be able to gather again.

I also know that if one of us went home infected this year, I'd kick myself for the rest of my life.  And if some of us can't come, it made sense this year for none of us to come.  Would I have been able to have a good time knowing about other members of my family who yearned to be with us but couldn't?  No.  I'd rather have a year where we don't gather.

I know that my losses are small, compared to those that so many others have suffered.  My loved ones are still with me on this side of the grave.  My academic programs (those I take, those where I teach, those where I'm the chief administrator) are still intact--different, but intact.  I still have employment and a house, as do those I love.

Today is the Feast Day of All Souls, the last of our three day festival cycle (Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls) that reminds us of the cyclical nature of life and that the cycle ends in one type of death.  Some years these feast days seem to come to us from an ancient time, and they do.  I think of them as more medieval, and in many years, they've felt a bit irrelevant.

But in many ways, this past year has made medievalists of all of us--after the events of 2020, most of us are much more conscious of death and the fragility of life than we have been, although probably not as much as we would be if we lived in the medieval age.  Perhaps we are more aware of life's precarious nature--more aware now than we might have been in 1996, say, and more than your average medieval person.  Most of us have experienced a much wider range of options than your average medieval person, and we might have once believed that the precarious nature of our options was a feature of an earlier time, not ours.

This year, I suspect that not many of us have managed to maintain our illusion of control.  And I predict, with sadness, that there are more lessons yet to come.

Halloween in a Time of Plague

I went to bed last night without setting the clocks back--so this morning I sprang out of bed thinking that it was 5 a.m., as the bedside clock said.  My Fitbit watch reminded me.

By then I was awake, so I stayed up, scrolling through my Facebook feed that was filled with delightful children in costumes and pictures of the full moon.  Here's the type of picture I was posting yesterday:

My spouse and I made cookies for a Halloween get-together.  He's the one who dug through the bag of cookie cutters to find all the possibilities (you might recognize moons, ghosts, bats and cats, in addition to the pumpkins I was planning to create).  He's the one who tinted the icing into different colors.  He's the one who did the icing and the arranging on the platter.

In between bouts of baking, I had some phone conversations.  I talked with my mom and dad; we've been exchanging lots of e-mails about what makes the most sense for Thanksgiving.  Longtime readers of this blog may remember that my far-flung family gathers at a big, ramshackle house at Lutheridge every year.  We have begun to wrestle with the idea that gathering together may not be wise this year.  My mom's doctor flat out told her not to go, and thus, they've made their decision, which I fully support.  Tonight all the far-flung family members will gather for a Zoom call to discuss what the rest of us should do.

I also got a phone call from a friend from church.  She's moving to Missouri.  Part of me isn't surprised, at least not that she's moving.  Almost everyone I know contemplates the idea of moving, especially since most of the people I know are making middle or lower class wages, and we're living in a place with a much higher than average cost of living.  Still, it does feel like the end of an era; she was one of the key members of the various creative enterprises that we tried at our church.

All Saints feels different to me this year and not just because we're in the middle of a plague.  I think of all the people who have moved away, many of them far away.  I want to believe that we'll see each other again, but it doesn't seem likely.

Back to the Halloween update.

Our Halloween down here was very rainy, so we didn't see much in the way of trick-or-treaters--but as I've said before, we usually don't have many of them.  We went to our friend's house to enjoy a glass of wine together.  We had planned to be outside on the front driveway, in case any trick-or-treaters came by, but the driving rains sent us to the back yard, where there's more shelter.  It was delightful to have grown up treats and to catch up with each other.

If my family does decide not to gather this year, we will likely spend Thanksgiving with these friends.  I feel lucky that not all my friends have moved away.  I feel fearful that the last remaining ones down here will succumb to the lure of selling the house and pulling up stakes--but for now, let feel that gratitude for good friends.