This is a wonderful example of crone energy — the editors of Persimmon Tree, a publication for/by women over 60 — have started a page they call “Troublemakers Making Trouble”, and invite responses to the Rump debacle. They start off with their own stories, and I’ll share one of them, but you should read them all — they are uplifting and gave me hope this morning:
www.persimmontree.org/…
Wendy Barker, Poetry Editor: Like so many of my friends, I woke up on November 9 feeling as if someone had died. As if I suddenly lived in another country, one whose values and actions were not only repellent but downright dangerous for me, my family, my friends, my communities, and the world. The world! With climate change at crisis point, to suddenly have in power a man (man?!) with no principles, a serious narcissist, sexual predator, cheat, scammer, misogynist, racist, Islamophobe, anti-Semite, and xenophobe who has unleashed such hatred and viciousness has brought me to despair. For days I was bent in deep depression. My students were stunned and depressed. I told them, “We must keep on keeping on. We must. Your voices are more important than ever. You must keep writing and we all must keep on keeping on.” In class, I quoted Yeats’ “The Second Coming” and Dickinson’s “I Dwell in Possibility.”
And then, on Saturday, November 12, my depression turned to fury. And energy. I wrote the director of our wonderful independent arts organization in San Antonio, Gemini Ink, and suggested that we organize a gigantic protest gathering of regional writers around the time of the inauguration. She and her staff got right on it, and now we have over a hundred people committed to participating on January 15. Turns out that, thanks to PEN America, communities all over the U.S. are organizing such events on January 15, MLK’s birthday.
We will not be silent. I will give all the money I can possibly manage to causes I believe in. I will do everything I can to feel that the little bit I can do, the little I can give, will make a difference. If in my twenties I was too busy teaching, trying to keep fourteen-year-olds in West Berkeley from overdosing down by the train tracks, now, in my seventies, I can become an activist.
On my refrigerator, on my desk, and in my purse, I keep this statement from the Talmud (and I’m not even Jewish, though my husband is): “Do not be daunted by the world’s grief. … You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.”