A Rose By Any Other Name

I have had a terrible writer's block this year; I can sit at the computer and stare at a blank screen, willing my fingers to move and they can not. I have tried many writers' methods of getting jump started - but those seem to work only on my fiction writing. I maintain my fiction work on a separate site, and that one seems to be flourishing this year, but my poor blog - the one I write for my family - is really suffering.

I know that the move has something to do with it. Sometimes when I open the blog, I look at the title and description, and I feel like I'm no longer on "the path less traveled." Living out on the farm, working toward sustainable living, having our crazy adventures made me feel like we had taken a path of living separate and different from the average bear.

Now we live in town, just like every regular Joe. Our adventures are still pretty entertaining, of course, but I think that it's time that they fall under a new title.

My love of great literature generates a tendency toward finding a metaphor everywhere I go, in everything I do. Unless I'm in the company of a fellow literary junkie, I try to keep all my references to myself, and live in my own head much of the time. When I started the blog I felt inspired by Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. It was a both a literal and figurative representation of our life on the farm, and I wanted the name of my blog to reflect that. Of course, every possible variation of that was already in use, so The Path Less Traveled was as close as I could get.

Once I decided that I needed a new name for our new chapter, I began searching for the right moniker under which we would continue our family tales. I pored over my literary favorites, looking for allegories and references that felt right. I'm not sure why Ray Bradbury rose to the surface; I have so much love for Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison...I feel like Emerson and Thoreau wrote the template for my life. But Bradbury's collection of The Martian Chronicles has a stubborn pull. I teach several of his short stories to my 8th graders; he masterfully built a collection around the idea that humans would start over on Mars. His stories are realistic yet fantastic. His characters have depth, they are real in their interactions, despite the surreal environment in which they find themselves. Each story has a deep human truth buried underneath the bells and whistles of a future imagined by that great storyteller.

We are starting over, in a way, by moving to town. We've turned a page and imagine a future for ourselves beyond the borders of the farm where we began. So The Gudahl Chronicles it is.

We move forward, we evolve, just like the Bittering family from Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed, the final story in Bradbury's collection. We cling to our identity, yet press outward in an effort to acclimate. I just love that story; it used to make me shiver when I read it, anticipating some dark outcome from an unseen threat. The threat, it seems, is no threat at all; the change comes from within. It's wonderful. Dark They Were And Golden Eyed (full text)

The World We're Living In

I'm not sure if I'm going to share this post on social media or not; jury's still out on that one for me. I usually link my blog to my Facebook and Twitter, where a few interested parties read along with my musings. This one, though, will ruffle feathers. Normally I don't mind a few ruffled feathers, but we're living in a more dangerous world than the one I grew up in, and feather ruffling sometimes has some pretty negative consequences.

My purpose has always been the same - to tell our stories. I've centered most of my time on family tales and largely ignored life outside the walls of our home. But I think I have to stray from the formula today; I'm feeling so passionate about how events in our world are unfolding. I want my kids to know where I stand on things; I want to tell them, to talk about the precipice the world is approaching.

Kids, you are too young right now to understand the crisis I feel our country is facing; I have no idea what world you will be living in 30 or 40 years from now. I feel compelled to go on record; if the world descends into madness, at least you will know my thoughts on that as we stand on the edge of it today.

We are approaching another presidential election; these have come and gone with great fanfare over the last century. With just a handful of notable exceptions, I would say our country made perceptible but incremental actual changes from the leadership of one President to the next. It would seem that our most recent president has elicited more criticism than average because he attempted to initiate actual sweeping change in large ways in this country. America is deeply divided; ask anyone, and they will tell you in no uncertain terms what they think of our President. I'll tell you, children, that I voted both times for President Obama. While I haven't agreed with 100% of his decision making, I have believed strongly in the direction I knew he was trying to go, though he was embattled by Congress, even his own party, at every possible turn. In case you are wondering, Obamacare was the best thing to ever happen to our family. We were able to get health insurance coverage at a rate we could actually afford, and you reaped the benefits of that in a big way. He's done big things for our veterans, for the unemployment rate, for wage earnings. Don't let the haters fool you - independent fact checking is always better than drinking whatever Kool-Aid the political machines are churning out. (Fact Checking the Obama Administration).

His term is ending, though, and the people emerging to take the reins of the once-great America make me very nervous. I say "once-great" because as the gauntlets are thrown down in the political arena, it is becoming clear to me that the country once viewed as welcoming of all races, cultures, and religions - the "melting pot of the world" has been quietly transforming into something else.

Terror exists in the world; it has always existed, everywhere. America enjoyed a period of several decades in which we were largely untouched by it. I grew up in a childhood where our teachers mentioned Muammar Gaddafi and we had merely a vague sense that Libya might not be a country where we should vacation anytime soon. The Gulf War brought Sadaam Hussein to the forefront and President Bush waged his "weapons of mass destruction" argument to support his foreign policy agenda. Still, the American people were somewhat detached and emotionally removed from the troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan., unless you were a military family directly connected with the Middle East.

But 9/11 brought the terror to our doorstep. And that has had an undeniably significant effect on our people. Terrorists brought their agenda to our door, and they happened to be of middle-Eastern descent. I often wonder; if the terrorists had been blond haired, blue eyed citizens of Scandinavia, would our country have responded the same way? In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy, in our fear, our uncertainty, our helplessness, we have allowed long-dormant racial prejudices to re-surface in America. We have become suspicious of anyone, anything, that doesn't fit the 1950's version of white middle class America. It's almost as if the last 65 years of American progress have been wiped out. We are seeing a return to communities who discriminate and victimize people of color. Gun violence is at an all-time high.

Our presidential candidates have a tough job; they must reassure the American people that we will be okay. As I listen to their platforms, to their agendas, I find myself increasingly alarmed. There is no calming voice, providing rational guidance in the storm. Instead, we have inflammatory proselytizing from people who are preying on the fear of a nation and using it for political gain. The idea of living in a country under some of these candidates makes me nauseous. I don't make this statement lightly; our country is primed for change. If we allow a person with racist, bigoted ideals to be the vehicle of change, we are headed for absolute disaster. Make no mistake, political correctness is another term for tolerance. By eschewing the need to be "politically correct," we are actually embracing the xenophobic agenda of a man poised to take us to God-knows-where.

I would like to believe that we will never elect a leader that would go against the fabric of our nation by closing our borders to refugees and people in search of a better life. I would like to believe that in America, no one would be profiled, singled-out, identified and villainized for their ethnicity or their religion; yet some of our prospective contenders are advocating for exactly that. At least one particularly loud politician wants to close our borders to people searching for a better life, for people looking to escape persecution. (Umm...our forefathers founded this country on that premise exactly...? Although maybe we should ask the Native Americans how that turned out for them...) He wants to create religious registries to identify Muslims. Ten years ago, I would have laughed at anyone who suggested that such a man could be nominated to public office in this country. Today, I'm not so sure. The emergence of reckless politicians and their inflammatory statements have emboldened the common man to put a voice to the racism and prejudice that is apparently still simmering below the American surface.

This isn't new, actually. During WWII Americans became so suspicious of Japanese-Americans that we put them in internment camps. For real, America did that. Consider the Red Scare of the 50's; accusing someone of being a Communist, even as a passing comment in a heated argument resulted in real consequences for people. Every time time there is a conflict, every time that fear is ignited, people respond irrationally. Sadly, our country responded irrationally, and perpetuated the fear and ignorance that fueled our prejudices. You only have to read the history books to understand that the exact same thing is happening today. The actions of a few have fueled a fear and ignited the prejudices that still live here. We are set to repeat the mistakes of yesterday, unless the American people have the strength to choose differently.

I watch my Facebook feed, watch the posts of my own friends and family, and I see them "liking" these kind of pages. They click "share" on articles that full of fallacies, half-truths, and sometimes outright lies. I will be completely honest here; it is difficult for me to feel the same way about these people in my life when I realize that they share and perpetuate the hate and bigotry being presented on the platforms of some of these political aspirants.

Ask yourself this question: if the 9/11 terrorists had been white Lutherans, would our country have gone off the deep end in the way that it has over Muslim-Americans? The Sandy Hook massacre was perpetrated by a white kid. When did white kids become public enemy #1? They didn't. Instead we chalked it up to "one of those terrible tragedies" and refused to institute even one measure of precaution when it came to gun sales. By the way, you know why we are so reluctant to give up our guns? Because not enough white people are dying because of them. (Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound - if my previous opinions didn't cause half of my friends to un-friend me, then this one should do it) This is the sad truth; people of color are more than twice as likely to die from gun violence as white people. (Gun Deaths By Race) And white people are holding on to their "right to bear arms" with a ferocious grip, because it isn't a problem for "us."

If you take a statistical look at who is perpetrating gun violence in this country, you need look no further than your own backyard. Of the mass shootings occurring since 1982, 65% of them were committed by White Male Americans. More than half. (http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/27/us/mass-shootings/) And political aspirants are worried about the illegal immigrants who want to come to the US for a better life? Hispanic-Americans barely register on the single-victim gun violence statistics in this country. (http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/15/opinion/frum-guns-race/).

Listen up, politicians: if you want to do something IMPORTANT that might ACTUALLY affect the health and well-being of Americans and will go much further in keeping them safe, why don't we focus on mental illness, education, and poverty? We don't need a wall to keep people out and we don't need more guns to saturate the population. We need access to medical care! We need access to education! We need access to basic needs like housing and clothing and food!

I can barely open social media these days and read what the world is saying. I watch people share post after post of information that was written by non-experts, fueled by inflammatory language and perpetuated with fear and ignorance without a reference to actual fact or statistical data anywhere. I see support for an agenda that would radically change the direction of this country. What if our future leadership was suggesting that we close our borders to all white Europeans? What if they said, "That's it, we have to keep an eye on those Baptists - they're nothing but trouble." Would you still cheer for them and call them "brave" for not being "politically correct?" It is almost unbelievable to me that these people are becoming legitimate contenders for nomination.

These are my worries, today, in the America I'm living in. This isn't a Democrat/Republican thing. It isn't a Muslim/Christian thing. This is a human issue. It's a love thing. If I have anything to say to you, my sweet darlings, is that I hope your future world is a good one. I hope this generation does the right thing, has the right intention, weathers this terrible domestic storm of hatred on our shores and America emerges stronger, better, than she was before.

I'm long past the debate stage of my life; at 41 years old I can say with relative certainty that no Facebook meme is going to change the way I view the world. I don't give any weight to the arguments of people who know how to click "share" but don't know how to research actual facts for themselves. Posting publicly about my feelings won't change their minds, and only opens me up to the trolls. That's partly why posting this might not be a great idea. As a schoolteacher, I have to be very careful not to let my feelings about the world color what or how I teach in the classroom. Fortunately, we spend our time in 8th grade English reading the classics and we work on poetry skills - I can immerse my day in the development of good readers, and hope that I'm giving them the tools they need to further their education and improve their life. (I'm kind of glad I don't teach Current Events. That might be much more difficult for me!)

So here it is - whether the world agrees with me or not, this is my view, this is how I feel about what's happening to our country. I just wanted you to know. Maybe this period will quietly pass and be a tiny blip on a timeline of events. Or maybe it will be a turning point; there's no way really to know right now. But at least you will know who I was and what I thought about the world at the time.

And also: if your mom suddenly loses all her friends and her job and nobody talks to her for days and months and years - this is probably why - people don't like it when you ruffle their feathers. On the bright side, we'll be able to play lots of board games. Please pay attention the world around you, kiddos. Read the news, read all the news, strive to see the whole picture, and never take anyone's word on something unless you've fact-checked it yourself. And when you do have opinions, vote. Put the right people in charge of this messed-up world. Put people in charge who will leave everyone in their care better than when they found them. When in doubt, love. Lead with love, no matter what. XOXO