Hope

"Hope is a good thing - maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies"

Stephen King

The last seven years have been a horror show of one damn thing after another: mutagenic environmental degradation; corporate lobbyist boogeymen writing consumer protection lawsand setting the government agenda; junior varsity jock snifferrunning the Executive Branch from the back seat; treasure and lives lost to incompetence, venality or worse; shambling zombies of political hacks overriding scientific fact; government b-team alien like toadiesusing the Constitution as bum fluff wiper and making the "little people" take the fall...




But I'm here to say that in my life I've seen just as bad, and I'm still here. Lets talk about a really powerful four letter word, shall we?

"We could go over the cliff. You would hope not. You would hope that people see what needs to be done. It's not rocket science. It's not difficult. It's not even all that costly. It's actually about the way you think about the world."

Tim Flannery

Jane Goodall  in a recent book gives four reasons why we should hope:

*The Human Brain
*The Determination of Young People
*The Indomitable Human Spirit
*The Resilience of Nature




Very hefty reasons for putting off despair. But we are up against an ingrained culture of unsustainable greed and avarice, and vested interests who are just starting to show how far they will go to protect their entitlements and priveleges.




But, if I could add to Ms. Goodall's list, I'd dare to mention what looks like a counter argument at first - Human History.




We, especially here in the western hemisphere, are descendants of people who have undergone massive changes in culture, failures of old systems, insurgencies of new philosophies, and the rolling wave of change.




It may be a shock to some, but Adam Smith's view of the economy is really no more accurate or permanent or tenable to the "human condition" than Karl Marx's. It took several tries for capitalism to oust feudalism as the dominant way of things. I have no doubt in what history shows us - we can make the change because we have made the changes when we had to make the changes.




The people that succeed in forming this new culture may have as little in common as I would have with my Haudensaunee and Wendat and Cornish and Teutonic and Breton ancestors, but they will be our children, and they will succeed.

Back then[in 1970], the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted it caught fire. The Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, N.Y., was permanently evacuated when a chemical dump was discovered just below the topsoil. Bald eagles were dwindling toward extinction. And as the EPA administrator Steve Johnson remembered recently, "air pollution was so thick that in some cities people had to change their shirts twice a day."

Even with the intentional damage and rollbacks that Bush and co. have fostered with their licence and avarice we are still better off than we were, and better than we could have been.




I remember in the late sixties, sitting on the front stoop with my Dad and his cousins from Michigan and discussing what life could be like by the turn of the century. It was agreed by even the most optimistic there that we could expect days or weeks with practically unbreathable air; a population of asthmatics and worse; the death of most birds.



Truly silent springs.




What happened was that people got off their backsides and militated for needed change. Some of the strongest environmental regs and laws were passed in the US during the Nixon administration.




Reasonable people prevailed before, they can again. There is no law written in stone that dictates that the stupid and petty and ignorant and self satisfied have a lock on government, (at least not yet).

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come." -

Anne Lamott

"He, who has health, has hope; and he who has hope has everything."

Arabian Proverb

I'm an early riser. I  catch the bus to work. But I don't have to get up early to catch the bus. I like to. It actually takes me about ten minutes less time to commute  by bus than by car.




And I'm not taking the bus out of any morally significant act of will. I have to, because the insurance company and the gasoline companies have made it worth my while (though that was not their intent, I am sure).




But a side effect of having to take the bus is that I have to walk to the stop (about two klicks) and jog to catch a connecting bus (about half a klick).




Guess what? In the two months I've been commuting this way, I've lost 7 pounds. No change in diet. Just that extra bit of walking every day.




And what do I see on my walks? There is a woodlot on the way to the main artery from my house. I see rabbits and raccoons and once an oppossum. I hear robins and redwings. I think hope sounds like robins in the early morning.

May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.

Psalm 25:21

"May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places you walk"

Prayer of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom

We all could stand a little looking after. We all need someone we can depend on. We all want to be rescued. We all want a do over, a boost, a hand up, a shoulder to lean on, to cry on, to join us as we push the wheel.




Guess what?




We're the only grown ups we'll ever meet.




Here's an idea:  Instead of looking for the problem solving candidate, the Daddy or Mommy, the magic pill, let's all start looking for trouble.




We can work up to it. Work our way up into big trouble.




Lets start finding small problems and fix them. When we do we can show other people.




We can be the hope.

"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."

-Lyn Yutang

"Gam zeh ya’avor" (Hebrew) / "This too shall pass."

– King Solomon

I was born at the tail end of the Eisenhower administration. I have lived through Nixon, Reagan, and Bush - twice. In those times of travail I have been comforted by leaders who have given me reason to hope (King, Kennedy, Chisholm, Jordan, Trudeau) and by poets and teachers who have nourished the dreams of my hope, (Angelou, Dylan, Whitman, Seeger, Guthrie, Springsteen) but it is time to walk the path and make the road.

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." – Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is a boy. He is in one of my classes. I taught his older sister last year. He is the youngest of four. Both of his parents are incarcerated for drug crimes. They abandoned the children long before that happened though.




This year he gave up. He would not do work. He wasn't too defiant about it; he just would take the handout or exercise or game sheet and doodle on it.




He is smart. He knows the answers if you ask him. What's more, he can explain how he found the answer while you were asking the question. He just is not interested in performing in class and he doesn't see much use for following any instructions. It is a rare time when he is in his seat.




He is handsome, if a bit skinny and underfed. Though he never smiles, he sometimes laughs in derision or scorn. He never bullies, but he does join in. Sometimes his face lights up at the oddest times with excitement over a concept or idea or image or situation, then he catches his face and puts it  back where he thinks it belongs.




He has lived with his grandfather and grandmother for the last 5 years or so. His grandmother is old and ailing, and his grandfather just found out that he has cancer and he is being assessed for the best treatment options.




Today there was an altercation in class involving this boy and another. It started over nothing and quickly proceeded to grand opera and then subsided into recriminations and threats.




I took him  outside the class door. I told him that both my grandfathers had died of cancer. I told him that if cancer was a thing, I would strangle it and stomp on it and beat it and shred it and spit on it. I told him he could be as mad as he wanted to be, and any time he was mad he could drop whatever he was doing and come see me. I told him also that he was a tough guy, and if his grandfather was half as tough as he was then his grandfather would stand a very good chance of beating this thing. I also told him that his older sister and older brothers and he  were just about the best family for toughness and togetherness I'd ever seen.




We went back in the class. He took up the assignment and finished ahead of everyone in the class.




I am under no illusions. He will not change overnight. But he knows that his family is there for him, and he knows that I think he is tough and can take it.




Hope.

"I still believe in Hope – mostly because there’s no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas." – Molly Ivins

In the Democratic Party right now, you have an embarassment of riches. Two capable candidates who are still in the race (though IMO only one stands any real chance.)




When I started this diary a week or so ago I vowed that I would stay away from the unhappy sticky topic of our disfunctional little family, but - like hope - candidate diaries turn up unlooked for in the strangest of places.




What I'm saying is that, instead of bashing th eother candidate, we all can make common cause around the fact that the Democratic Party has such a strong base and such appealing values that such strong candidates can be so well supported for so long.




All the other side has is McCain... and Faith.




We have Hope  - and reality.