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Sunday, February 17, 2008

Midnight in America...Waiting for the Other Shoe...And Considering Obama Among the Wreckage....
Posted by Melina | 3:24 PM




...This is the America of the lucky, folks...the luck of the Russian-Irish/Catholic-jew, where a girl from Brooklyn wakes up in a cottage in the woods to find that her young hens have decided to start laying...
How did I get here? Pure luck...hard work...kindness in the face of anger and dysfunction....but, probably really just sheer tenacity and luck...
It's that pie-in-the-sky America that is hard for me to understand; like the lottery and the forces of nature that decided not to flood my basement or throw a tree on my house...or what made me live through it all, and how did I get through all of these years.


And its the middle management America of getting by, but looking towards the sky for the other shoe falling, while others who I have, by some sort of divine intervention crossed paths and become close with, can barely buy food or go to the doctor as opposed to heat and electricity...and what that could possibly mean in the scheme of the richest country in the world, that made me look to John Edwards as a light in the proceedings that have been grinding forth for these long months...
And now? I'm waiting, like I always do, for the other shoe, whistling to earth like the road-runner's anvil, and in that Edwards will endorse Hillary, thus making my last drop of faith just a salty circle on the sand, proving that none of this is real or true, and all we can do is the busywork of trying to move, snail like, towards some outcome that will be a blip on future historical time lines of the rise and falls of empires just like this one...
If this is the pyramid stone that we are spending our entire lives dragging across the desert in order to complete some monument to the empire, then so be it...Who ever told any of us that we were any more special than anyone else? ...our brothers and sisters who are hungry around the world, or those who live in war torn countries looking heavenward for a bomb, much less a shoe?
Its all just luck...and we could be them, as easily as they could be us...and that "myfriends" is the very foundation of our society's more socialist tendency's, which are....surprise!...the very things that make us who we are!!

I know who I am. Who are you?

I'll just enjoy my eggs for now...enjoy my chickens...and try to figure what comes next.
Of whats left in this race, besides the coming heartbreak of thinking one thing and the dawning realization of another, I like the danger of Obama. Tell me that you are not sure of his experience and if he can get anything done, and I am interested....because the safety of the same old beer with a buddy at the bar is what got us into this place, and the only times that America has really shone in its founding ideals is when some brave people took a flying chance and let the chips fall where they would. Sometimes thats a life or death decision, and sometimes its folly, but it always has historical significance, and more importantly, those moments have had a real effect on we Americans , and how we view the evolution of our society. In fact, those people and those moments have been the shining moments of discovery, invention, and the words and actions that make us who we tell ourselves we are...or who we strive to be...a more perfect union, and kinder, more humane, beings.
When I was a young girl, I stood on a crowded curved street in Chinatown, holding my mom's hand, and watched as RFK Sr. drove through on the back of an old Cadillac convertible, waving. His brother had been shot, and he could've easily been shot there in the middle of the dense crowd, moving slowly past that old orthodox church with the tiny fair in the back complete with live goldfish to win and an erector-set sorta ferris wheel, knowing the danger and still grabbing hold of the moment to say the words that would be part of history....that would change my world as yellowing newspaper clips on the wall over Mom's old radio in the dark dining room in Brooklyn, where she sat for hours listening to talk radio in her grandmother's rocking chair.

So bring on the instability and unsureness of Obama over the same old Clintonian bureaucracy any day...bring it on quickly...because I've lost my faith in almost every part of this thing that I have been hanging on to and trying to believe in. And all thats anymore left is to tell myself that this piece of history is way to tiny for us to see the effect...way too tiny to matter in our lifetimes...and the real faith here has to be that what we do today will be realized by our children and their children...right?...and, that takes a kind of faith that I may spend the rest of my life trying to muster and I blindly move forward trying to divine whats right in this circumstance...as if we could ever imagine that what would be put forth would NOT be impeachment, criminal investigation, jail...a big change....Is there even a question? I don't know how to do anything else but watch and wait and chronicle this as best I can....

easy over or scrambled?

c/p RIPCoco

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5 Comments:
Blogger ThePoliticalCat said...
Hi, brilliants,

In honor of B.A.D. (Blogroll Amnesty Day), I have added you to my blogroll. Would you be so kind as to reciproll me, please? Thanks.
2/17/08, 4:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Melina

One cure for the feelings of helplessness and despair is to do something concrete with other people, something that makes the world better in a small but visible way.

I've found that the Nature Conservancy has local projects that you can work on, most everywhere; their work is saving the good parts of the natural world, a bit at a time. The people I've met through the Conservancy are interesting, knowledgeable, involved; and those near you likely know of restoration projects where your hands and mind could make a difference.

Some things do get better, even in this, the reign of King George the Intransigent.

PS: nice coop. No wonder your chickens are happy enough to lay.
2/17/08, 7:51 PM  
Blogger Jill said...
Easy over, please. And when do you get yourself a pig so we can have fresh, organic bacon? ;)
2/18/08, 8:45 AM  
Blogger Melina said...
Yeah, the baconz is a problem. I try not to eat pig unless its from Whole Foods or the like, and the butcher can tell me that its not been factory farmed...i.e. been in a field at some point and able to at least walk around. I don't mind the circle of life, but I think that we go pretty far towards corrupting that cycle when we don't allow our prey the respect of seeing a blue sky or blade of grass...and surely, as most foodies (and hunters) know, the stress hormones that are released from the circumstances of life (and death) ruin the quality of the food.
Ben has lately been eating this Hormel instant microwave bacon sometimes, and I'm pretty sure that its not in keeping with my ideals...but, anyone who has had kids will tell you that you don't raise kids who will make the right decisions by banning them 100% from the unhealthy or non PC things. I just inform them to the point that they are no longer able to stomach things like factory hamburgers and the like.
Pigs are smarter than dogs and really nice. They are also clean if you don't let them wallow in the mud....but their poop stinks pretty bad. I wanted a mini pig but I'm not sure i can deal with the poop, even if the thing were housebroken!
I don't think I could keep animals to butcher, though more and more people do. Many people on the Yahoo group, chickens 101, keep mixed flocks for eggs and meat. They also raise rabbits for meat, and discuss killing techniques and all that.... I just cant...but I don't think its wrong. I'm sure its more humane than the Perdue factory.
I'm trying to get all of my meat from organic farms or at least non-factory, non-antibiotic using sources. Luckily, Im not much of a meat eater from the get-go, but groceries are getting more and more expensive and I am starting to think that the inequities in our society do serve to force the underclasses to choose foods that are unhealthy and cause more health problems...and in a country with no preventive health system, we are in effect funneling money to the huge corporations and then paying the price via Medicaid as the poor folks in this country get sicker and sicker. Which ultimately serves the huge hospitals as well...and the bloated salaried CEO's of those "not for profits"...
Because its not the nurses getting rich...and its not the workers in the factory farm getting rich...
but its definitely the American without a voice, like the poor, old, and school children, who depend on their government to protect them, who are getting the shaft.
Follow the money....

Im actually writing a post about this...so stay tuned for more of the same!


Joel...yeah, something concrete with other people...;-)
I actually help inner city folks with the horrible maze that our country has become for the poor or those in need of medical care.
I'm actually striving to spend a little more time with my chickens and animals so that I don't end up stark raving mad just from the craziness of the system...
and I'm making a difference, such as it is...but I'm not sure if its enough.
Yes, things do get better, and I see alot of movement here in the schools, at least...but I also see that the schools have to go against the government to serve the children, and that the budgets are unrealistic in regards to the real needs of the people who are going to take over this society.
What I can see, is that our best case scenario is a president who has the right intentions about funding education and social programs, and getting private business out of our government services and programs.
Still, we will be stuck more or less by the need to clean up the mess that this administration has made. Just that could take years...and by then, people will be complacent again and there will be another opening for bad people to try to get back in...
And if McCain somehow gets in...well, I may have to leave for a few years. I don't know if I want to be part of a country that is represented by that man...its bad enough to think that the American people put Bush back for a second term. But, we can say that people were terrorized and not paying attention and complacent...we can say something. Right now, the American people have to know that something bad is happening, and if they put someone in office who wants to continue this horrible war....well....then we know what we are...
2/18/08, 9:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
baconz

You should know about Niman Ranch.

I have no connection to Niman except that I personally know (through Nature Conservancy) one of the farmers who grows hogs for them in North Central Iowa. He has put most of his farm back into prairie pothole and wetland and oak groves; the hogs grow fat on acorns and run free in a diverse landscape. The pork is expensive, but worth it I think.

Another family agricultural concern that deserves your attention is Lundberg Farms rice products. These wonderful people were some of the first in Northern California to purposely manage their rice fields to support the millions of migratory geese that show up after the harvest. I was driving through there some years back when tens of thousands of mixed snow and blue geese were doing the rolling-wave thing across one of their fields -- the birds in back flying low over the heads of the ones on the ground to reach the front, only to be overflown in turn. Stunningly beautiful.
I quite like Lundberg brown rice cakes, and their varietal rices.
2/19/08, 10:07 PM  
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