Sylvia Plath's Wisdom

I woke up at 2 a.m. and thought, let me get up and see how the election is going.  I knew I wouldn't be going back to bed.  But I didn't expect the election to be so nearly settled.

I've been scrolling and writing in my offline journal and writing an e-mail here and there.  I thought of my poem "History's Chalkboards."  When I wrote it back in 2016, I didn't think it would continue to be relevant in the way that it has.  As short a time ago as yesterday, I didn't think it would continue to be relevant. 

In 2016,  I couldn't get the Sylvia Plath quote out of my head. Did I read Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" before I wrote it?  I think I was writing it, and the title came to me, and I looked it up and proceeded to read it.  

The poem scared me a little, but my spouse liked it.  It was accepted for publication more quickly than just about any other poem I've sent out.  Adanna published it in 2017.

This morning, I find the reference to the violence and societal upheaval of the 60's (the fire next time) to be both alarming and comforting.  We have been here before, and a better society emerged out of those ashes.  Perhaps we will be that fortunate again.  Perhaps we will survive the societal winnowing again.


History’s Chalkboards


“Every woman adores a Fascist,  
The boot in the face, the brute  
Brute heart of a brute like you.”
                            “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath


Every woman adores a Fascist.
Turns out men do too.
But we imagine the boot
on someone else’s face,
a face that doesn’t look
like ours, the face that arrives
to take our jobs and steal
our factories, while laughing
at us in a foreign language.

No God but capitalism,
the new religion, fascism disguised
as businessman, always male,
always taking what is not his.

Brute heart, not enough stakes
to keep you dead. 
We thought we had vanquished
your kind permanently last century
or was it the hundred years before?

As our attics crash into our basements,
what soft rains will come now?
The fire next time,
the ashes of incinerated bodies,
the seas rising on a tide
of melted glaciers.

And so we return to history’s chalkboard,
the dust of other lessons in our hair.
We make our calculations.

Non-Partisan Words of Hope on Election Day

I have now voted in many elections.  Some seemed like the most consequential ones in my lifetime--and in later years, I looked back at those oh so consequential elections that no longer loomed as large.  I've voted for a variety of people, and usually, I could assume that the ones I didn't vote for would do their best and wouldn't be that bad.

I've voted for women before; at times I felt hopeful about their chances, and at other times, I was voting for the thrill of voting for a woman.  My first presidential election was in 1984, and I was one of the few people who voted for Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.  How long ago that seems, when an incumbent candidate was running on a "Morning in America" theme and the opponent offered similar sentiments, if not similar policy proposals.

On election morning of 2016, I made this Facebook post:  "For those of us feeling fretful on this election day, I say, "Be not afraid!" We are a nation of quilters, adept at taking frayed scraps and turning them into comforters. We are a nation of tinkerers, who can take metal scraps and turn them into cars and computers. We will be OK."

Most days, I still believe that.  There are seasons that remind me more forcefully of that truth--like the month after Hurricane Helene where I've been astonished at how many people were out helping each other.  There are other seasons that lead me to despair.  Most seasons are a fairly even mix of hope and despair.

Here's a look at my office door, with sentiments that we need today and every day:

I take a long view; even when it's bleak, I think that there have been much bleaker times, in both U.S. history and world history.   I'm thinking of eastern Europe--that wall that came down suddenly in 1989. I'm thinking about Nelson Mandela released from jail and shortly thereafter, to become the first freely elected president of South Africa and a nation transformed--that outcome was so impossible that few of us dared to hope for it. Somewhere in my photo albums, I have a fading picture of a friend wearing his "Free Mandela" t-shirt. He'd been in jail for our whole lives, and we expected he would die there, t-shirts or no t-shirts.

I think it's important to remember how strong the forces of evil seemed then. But we built our shantytowns on the lawn, we helped Central Americans get to Canadian safety, we demanded changes in U.S. policy which were ignored or dismissed. We bought our protest albums and went to concerts. Elders sneered and warned us about the necessity of establishing anti-communist bulwarks, even if they were staffed by genocidal maniacs, as much of Latin America was in the 1980's.

Now those seem like very different times--but perhaps they are not so very different.  Now we wait, and in the coming days, we'll have a better sense of the work that will need to be done.  Now would be a good time to pray and to visualize and to hope.

If you came here hoping for prayers, I wrote some non-partisan prayers for election day and put them in this blog post.

Soup for All the Saints

I had a fairly easy trip across the mountains yesterday, much easier than last week.  I was able to take I 26 the whole way, and much of the landscape was relatively undamaged.  Along the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, however, the damage was astonishing--the pictures just don't prepare me for the changed land.

We had a good All Saints Sunday at Faith Lutheran.  I was very happy with my youth sermon (go to this blog post for details about how to connect saints and gourds and braided bread) and my adult sermon was fine, but not as creative.  

I headed home to my spouse who's struggling with a back injury after too much time with a chainsaw.  I'm trying not to worry, but I'm worried.  I do wonder if I would worry as much if he hadn't had the horrible back issue that led to successful surgery in 2013.

I got some seminary writing done while my soup was warming.  I ate several bowls of broccoli cheddar cheese soup and wondered why I don't make this soup more often.  In part, because the clean up is annoying, in part because the blending is annoying, in part because I don't make soup as often as I once did.

Why was I making soup?  To be part of this:

Our neighborhood had an All Saints Soup gathering in the late afternoon, so I went up the hill to help set up.  It was a beautiful event, and even though some part of me is bone tired all the time once we get to November, there's still enough of the non-tired part of me to take joy in these kinds of gatherings.

I am taking over the position of being the person who plans these events in the coming year.  Happily, I won't be reinventing the wheel.

It was good to be with my neighbors, many of whom are also good friends.  It was nourishing to catch up, and I felt better knowing that I was not the only one wondering where October went, feeling sad because one of my favorite months just slipped away from me.

Clean up went fairly quickly, and soon we were home, waiting for football to be over, waiting to watch The Simpsons.  It was the Halloween special, the Tree House of Horror, and as with most years, I found myself comparing it to past years:  not as brilliant, but still better than much pop culture.

I was sad this morning to hear about the death of Quincy Jones--what a life he had!  I knew that he had done amazing things, but reading about them all, in one article, really made me appreciate him further. 

 

And it makes me even more strengthened in my resolve to appreciate my own life.  October may be gone, but November has its own autumnal beauty, especially this year, when we're having very mild days.  Let me remember to appreciate it all.

First Morning, Eastern Standard Time Returns

My body has no idea what time it is, but that's often the case.  I've been up for hours, in part because of the time change, in part because I'm often awake very early in the morning.  My normal wake up time is between 3 and 4.

I've been working on seminary papers, working on sermon revisions (the minor kind), getting ready to drive across the mountain to Bristol, Tennessee to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran.  I'm told that a lane each way on I 26 is now open, but even if it's not, the detour through the town of Erwin is not bad. The other routes are in much worse shape.

Yesterday I felt a bit sad and grumbly.  I didn't want to write my seminary essay that's due today, and I didn't want to write my sermon.  What a difference a day makes!

I went for a walk in the mid-afternoon.   Lutheridge was busier than I expected, and I made this Facebook post:  "Although we're surrounded by giant piles of dead trees, a group of YMCA youth plays football and a coach says, "Hustle up." And just like that my sad mood lifts a bit."

It occurs to me that even though I'm keeping track of time and expecting a normal-ish trip, that I shouldn't linger here on this writing.  Let me close and get ready.  It will be nice to leave in the not-pitch-black darkness.

Days of Dwindling Light and Lingering Exhaustion

It's been a strange week, full of attempts to vote (and finally casting our votes) and gathering gloom.  In some ways, it hasn't been gloomy but unseasonably warm.  Still, for the last couple of days, I've just given up and gone to bed between 7 and 7:30.  I've had this deep exhaustion, and it's an exhaustion that sweeps in periodically throughout the day.

It may be a post-hurricane exhaustion, or it may be the tiredness that I often experience in November--the exhilaration of early autumn has worn off, but there's still a ways to go before the semester is over.

Tonight we set our clocks back, which will probably mean that I go to bed between 5 and 6 p.m. for a week or two; I'll resist, but there will be a night or two for these first weeks of November where I give in and go to sleep even before toddlers do--that's what happened last year.

That said, I'll be very glad to get the extra hour of daylight in the morning.  My MWF commute down the mountain to Spartanburg has felt very harrowing in the past week or two, especially when it's been drizzling.  It will feel less harrowing when it's not pitch black.  Let me be honest--it's also harrowing because of the road being a bit more broken up after the hurricane. In the light, I can see the new potholes and seams that are coming apart.

Let me record one last thing, and then I need to turn my attention to seminary writing and sermon writing.  Yesterday on my way home from Spartanburg, I stopped and got the ingredients for a sensible dinner:  salmon and salad fixings.  But as I drove home with the groceries, I decided that I really wanted pizza, so we ordered pizza, which we ate while we watched a Muppet movie on Disney+.  It felt both like a special occasion and evidence of exhaustion.

Hurricane Debris and Early Voting on Halloween

We had a quiet Halloween last night--but that's not unusual for us.  We live in a quiet neighborhood that's not really safe for kids walking in the dark, because we have very few streetlights and no sidewalks.  It's not really safe this year, with all the remains of downed trees.  We have very few families with children who live in this tiny residential section of Lutheridge, the church camp.

Before our quiet evening, we headed to Fairview to vote, which I thought would be an easier polling place, once we finally got there.  It was much easier, once we finally got there.  There was exactly one person in line ahead of us.  The polling place was well run, and we were in and out in fifteen minutes.

The town of Fairview had more severe damage from Hurricane Helene, including the library.  The library itself wasn't open, but voting happened in the small meeting room.  I'm not sure what the damage was, because everything looked to be normal.  I didn't see a tarp on the roof, for example.  There wasn't mud that indicated flooding had happened.

We took Cane Creek Road, and there was plenty of mud along Cane Creek Road.  Cane Creek runs beside the road, and it had overrun its banks during Hurricane Helene.  The damage was staggering, with stacks of debris all along the way.  I cannot imagine where all this debris will end up, debris from all across the mountain.

It was a gorgeous day, another sleeveless shirt kind of day.  On our way back, we stopped at Turgua Brewery; I wasn't sure it would be open, since it was so close to the creek.  I knew if it was open, they could probably use our business, but more than that, I wanted a place to sit outside in the sun with my sun-starved spouse.

The brewery was open, and although the outdoor space had a few picnic tables, so we got ourselves settled.  The beers were tasty, and the sun was glorious.  I felt relief at getting voting done early, along with happiness that so many people are voting.  I always get a bit emotional thinking about what the ancestors did to get more voting rights for all, and I'm always happy when people are voting.

I am also amazed at the pace of hurricane recovery, at the presence of disaster assistance folks from the federal government to private groups.  We went through several hurricanes, under several different administrations, in South Florida, and never had this level of help.  Is it because Hurricane Helene was more severe?  Is it because it's an election year?  Do people care more about the mountains than South Florida?  Is it because the mountains are closer to assistance than the tip of the Florida peninsula?  It seems like any or all of those things could be true.

We ended our Halloween by watching the original Halloween movie, the 1978 John Carpenter film.  I'd seen bits and pieces, but never the whole thing.  It's about as scary as I can stand, and it's not as scary, because I had seen the ending, so I knew that one babysitter would survive.  I'd still have preserved something lighter, but if those shows exist in our streaming services, we couldn't find them.

I feel like I should end by saying something pithy about the survival instincts of virginal babysitters and the value of a good coathanger in a closet and our modern time, but I'll just close by remembering one of the best compliments I've ever gotten, on Nov. 1 of 1983 when one of my male friends said that I reminded him of the character in Halloween who survived, because I would be able to stay cool in an emergency or any kind of crisis.  

May it continue to be so.

Summer Vibes on Halloween

Yesterday I spent a chunk of time sorting through photos for a haiku creating module that I'm doing with my English 101 students.  Although I took this picture in late August, this one leapt out at me as having a spooky, Halloweeny vibe:

But as I looked through the file this morning, I thought others might work better:

The first picture will give students more to write about--more about this project later.  Back to today's writing vibe, which is more late summer than autumnal.

Here I am, astonished at the fact that it is Halloween.  In past years, I've spent more time in stores that have costumes, bags of candy for trick-or-treaters, and decorations, and these displays often go up in August.  This year, there is a Helene shaped hole in my October.  I went to a few stores in Columbia, SC, when I went down to get internet access and electricity at a friend's house, and I remember feeling astonished that the calendar had kept rollicking along without me.  The grocery stores here have very small displays of candy.

Plus, it's been a very warm autumn.  In fact, the last few nights, I've had the windows open, and yesterday, I went for an afternoon walk in a sleeveless shirt.

How long ago it seems now, back in early September, when I bought my first pumpkin to create a pile of pumpkins that I like to have at the end of the driveway, by my mailbox:

Last year, we were well into 2024, months after I tossed the pumpkins in the back yard to make room for Christmas displays before the squirrels began to nibble on them.  This year, they've begun--and that's fine with me.

It's rattling to think that in a month, I'll need to be thinking about those Christmas decorations for the fence line.  My favorite time of year, from late August to December 24 is quick slipping away.  Let me try to be more present in the current moment.