Uncivil discourse in America, 2010

I am appalled at the turn political discourse has taken over the past several years. By political discourse I mean how people of any stripe air their political views.

Years ago the public was shocked when abortion opponents turned out to picket and demonstrate against abortion providers. Laws and regulations were enacted that allowed those folks the right to express their views but allowed unfettered public access to the clinics. Unpopular though those rules were, protestors abided by them. Words were exchanged, but being present was what counted, on both sides. It was civil.

Then abortion providers began to be murdered, and abortion clinics began to be bombed. Less civility, and the first real step into violence as a solution.

Early on in the health-care debate US Senators and Representatives went home to conduct "town meetings" on the subject. Many were met by constituents (and perhaps some instigators) who believed that name-calling and hurling expletives were appropriate ways to express their views. Far less civility, plus some thinly-veiled threats were issued, bringing us another step closer to violence as a solution.

I have believed that inflammatory, demagogic, declamatory political radio and TV talk shows (Limbaugh, O'Reilly) were to blame for the decline in respect and civility. Now I believe that the Internet should share the blame. As we all know, the Internet allows us to find "people like us" without ever leaving our own homes. That's how I found my knitting blogs. It's how we find Facebook friends.

But what does "people like us" mean? Every member of a virtual community (I include myself) has complete control over how much personal "stuff" the community knows. There's a famous cartoon where one dog says to another, "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog." Unless I disclose it, no one can judge me by my looks or by my age or by the clothes I wear or by where I live or by what I do. The lure of virtual communities is "All over the world there are people just like whoever you say you are, whoever you claim to be."

Internet communities don't have to tolerate the dissenter, or accomodate the "local strange person", or decide how to deal with a community mischief-maker or even wrong-doer. Internet communities can simply cut those people off. No longer do we have to alter our views or our behaviors or our prejudices to find a place in a community. Internet communities never demand that we learn anything about the people who are "not like us", and in so doing the Internet makes real-life communities difficult or even unattractive.

In a real-life community, people who are not like us remind us that the community is bigger than ourselves and our own desires and preferences.When we don’t have to engage with people who are not like us we can easily cease to value them as fellow citizens or even fellow human beings. Instead of doing the hard work of building community for all the community, it's so much easier to say "My way or the highway". 

It's a short step from "people like us" to "Us vs. Them".

Now that an inadequate-but-better-than-nothing healthcare bill has been signed by the President, US Senators and Representatives are receiving real death threats. Their local offices are being vandalized. Some of these politicians are concerned, legitimately, that their homes and families are next to be threatened.

We seem to be entering an "Us vs. Them" world, where physical intimidation and violence are actually becoming the solution of choice to disagreement. Not enough Congressional and political voices are saying that violence is unacceptable.

Read this blog about a recent event. Regardless of how your legislators and congresspeople feel about the healthcare bill, insist that they speak out about respect and civility and community.

It's official

Today, March 20, is the First Day of Spring.  It has been as warm and breezy as Spring should be, but not very sunny. I'm not going to quibble about that.

The day was full of spring sights.  Alberta, my next door neighbor, took her mare out for a ride. Ray Churchill let some cows out on a very small piece of dry pasture. Ferns have leafed out in the woods. My hellebores have sprouted (see a picture here.) Someone was enjoying the first four-wheeler ride on Ray Peck's fields, and everyone's dogs are racing and romping.

I have honored the day in several ways:
 
  1. I put the snow shovel and the roof rake away.

  2. I picked up my new lawn mower from Sears. So much of the snow disappeared so quickly that I can get to the shed, to put the mower away. I even read the Owner's Manual, and learned several new things.

  3. I hung the laundry on the porch clothesline with the expectation that it would dry without freezing.

  4. I opened not only Ernie's porch window, but the small crank-outs, to fill the porch with fresh air.

  5. I raked all the driveway gravel (moved to the grass by snow-plowing) back into the driveway, and threw grass seed on the raked spots.

  6. I prepared a raised bed for growing lettuce. I've been looking forward to planting lettuce since January. Guess what I forgot to buy. Of course, lettuce seeds. I'll do that tomorrow.

We know this is just one day. The temperatures will drop tomorrow, and cold weather will return on Monday. But it doesn't matter. Spring has stopped teasing us. Today Spring made a statement.

Almost ...

Happy Birthday, Mike!

It's only 1:24 pm Eastern time and already it has been one of Mike's All-Time Unforgettable Days. He attended a Q&A hour at American University (his school) where the person on stage was Bobby McFerrin, one of the stellar vocal and music performers of our day.

McFerrin's big hit was "Don't Worry, Be Happy", but Mike and I have been Bobby McFerrin devotees since he performed the Wizard of Oz soundtrack on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion a long,long time ago (YouTube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1mvfzoHm9g). When Mike was in high school we saw McFerrin live in Newark Symphony Hall. There's a story there, too.

McFerrin is more than a "trick singer". He's an accomplished musician, jazz artist, conductor and teacher. He led the St. Paul (MN) Orchestra for years. Look here for the CD on which he collaborated with Yo Yo Ma

I will leave the full story of the day to Mike. But the very short version is that Bobby McFerrin sang him "Happy Birthday". That plus an hour of talk with this music luminary has made Mike's day.

Happy Birthday, sweetie!

Evening excitement?

I left home at 5:45 for an evening of knitting in Randolph.  It was still daylight (oh joy), and the road was just damp and a little muddy. 

Upon my return at 8pm, in pitch dark,  I drove over my brook's culvert and drove over very large pieces of ice lying in the road. Strange. Very strange. I didn't investigate. It was DARK and muddy.

I walked into the house and the phone rang. My neighbor said "You should check your cellar for water." Oh no. I looked.  Dry. Bone dry. (Imagine rejoicing.) "There was a flood sometime after dark.  It looks like the beaver dam above the highway let loose again." Therein lies a tale that's too long to tell here, but I believe that some back-yard regrading in 1999 has unintentionally but fortunately saved the house from two floods.  The state claims to be watching that swamp but money is tight now and beaver dams are certainly not a priority, if they ever were.

Apparently the water roared down, flooded the culvert, crossed the road and rushed down the other side, destroying another neighbor's drive, just as it did in 2007.

We'll know more in the morning.  Stay tuned for details.

Update: Morning dawned and the picture was clearer.  A lot of water went through the culvert but ice piled up somewhere and forced the water out of the brook and  into Paul's cow pasture, across the road  in another place, and straight down Jack's drive, carving small furrows as it went.  But this water joined up with the water that got through the culvert and Jack's driveway looks once again as though God rained boulders.  Like 2007 except the washouts are only 3 feet deep, not 6 feet. Small consolation for Jack.  If you'd been here in 2007 you'd understand what an event this is.  Also amazing is that no one heard anything. Paul's wife was home and heard nothing. Jamie across the street was running her dishwasher and heard nothing. Ray's girlfriend thought the brook sounded "a little loud".  This is a flash flood that comes and goes in no time at all.

It might be time to start saying the S----- word.

Spring, dear readers, Spring. Elevate your thoughts.

March is here. We’ve had Town Meeting. The Mud Season signs, which tell trucks over a certain weight to stay off dirt roads, are posted. The roads are indeed softening up, and some deep ruts have appeared, notably on the road to Thelma’s house, where they are deep enough to catch a car’s undercarriage. We timid drivers are forced to drive up the wrong side of the road, hoping not to meet anyone coming down.

But the real indicators are that Redwing Blackbirds (the earliest of the returning migratory birds) have been sighted in the Killington area, and the temperatures are on the rise. Yesterday the high was 43, today the high is (gasp) 47!!

It was so warm that I did barn chores at Thelma’s in a rain jacket over a sweatshirt and was warm. I went to the car wash, and by the time I finished driving the almost-2-miles up West Street to home all of the car below the windows was dirty again. I couldn’t deal with that. I filled a 5-gallon bucket with water, got out a sponge, a cloth, and a small saucepan, and sloshed water over the lower half of the car and washed it AGAIN. All out in the warm sunshine.

Ernie's porch window is open and he's taking a long nap on one of the porch chairs.

Saturday was No Sales Tax Day, so I bought a new lawn mower. The mower I bought when I moved here shouldn’t be ready to retire yet, but either because I just do not understand how to keep oil at the proper level, or because the mower guy does a poor tuneup job (depending on who I talk to, either is likely), the mower starts poorly, burns oil, and overheats. It’s done this since mid-summer 2008, and I’ve spent entirely too much money trying to get it to run right. So I’ve given up on it.

People have recommended Toro and Husqvarna but I’ve always had a Sears mower and I don’t switch brands easily. I got myself to the Sears appliance store in Barre at 10am, and the line of people was out the door. No Sales Tax Day is THE DAY to buy appliances and save 6%, which is not an amount to be sneezed at given the cost of washers, dryers, stoves, fridges and lawn tractors. Buy a walk-behind lawn mower, maybe you’ll save $10-15 bucks, but it's the principle of the thing.  I lucked out to find the Assistant Manager taking a break and asked him if there was any difference between a mower with a grass-catcher bag (a bag I never ever use) and one without. “Yes,” he said. “About $100. The engine is the same.” Well, that sealed my choice. But I’d have to wait over an hour to pay, and they were going to have to order that model anyway.

So later in the day I called the store and sure enough, the place was no longer overrun with people. I ordered and paid for the lawn mower. “Call me when it comes in and I’ll pick it up.” “Do you have a place to put it?” “Of course not. I bought it to save the sales tax. It will live on my porch until the snow melts and I can get to the shed.” “Well, it’s paid for and will have your name on it. You can wait to pick it up until April 15.” “Really? You will store it for me?” “Sure. We do it all the time.”

The week’s weather forecast is for nights in the 20s and sunny days with temps in the 40s. Perfect maple sugaring weather. A colleague at work started boiling last week, and saves vacation days in order to do his sugaring. The Howards started boiling yesterday.

A long-dormant urge to do a serious house-cleaning stirs within me. I just finished a hands-and-knees job on the bathroom floor. Thelma calls this “Spring praying”.

I am even tempted to try to dislodge the 3 feet of snow covering the daffodils, just to encourage them.