Happy Fourth of July!

Except for so many people, it doesn’t seem to be…happy, that is. The South and Midwest are suffering under dangerously high heat. The East Coast continues to breath air heavy in ash from the onging wild fires in Canada. There was another mass shooting Monday night for another unknown reason that killed five and wounded two children. Many people on the left are mourning recent court decisions they think will harm the already-disadvantaged populations of the black and the brown and the gay and trans and poor communities. Many people on the right believe their leader is being unjustly persecuted in a political witchhunt by an unauthorized prosecutor who is out to get him, regardless of truth or the law.

Sigh. As Rodney King asked nearly two years ago, “People…can’t we all just get along?”

Our to echo someone more recent, my TV hero Ted Lasso, quoting what was NOT by Walt Whitman, can’t we “Be curious, not judgmental”?

It is in that vein that I post this link to a short video. It’s by Jordan Klepper for The Daily Show, so I suppose it’s supposed to be humorous. But I ask you to watch it not as a comedy nor in judgement, but in a state of real curiousity about how some of my fellow US citizens seem to be living in a totally different understanding of our country’s operations than I do: https://youtube.com/shorts/0J_seGFoVwY?feature=share

I honestly can’t wrap my head around how people can really believe what the people in that video say, but it sure seems like they do. Do they think there are not only two militaries, but two of everything? If there a “good” Supreme Court that eliminated not only a right to abortion, but last week denied affirmative action admissions policies in US colleges and rejected President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, but also a “bad” Supreme Court that voted 6-3 against an attempt by the North Carolina Republican party to give the Republican-led NC legislature the right to ignore the popular vote and send whatever electors they wanted to the Presidential Electoral College vote, as former President Trump was asking states to do in 2021? I truly am curious how such people could imagine this idea of Trump still being the actual President and Biden being a “pretend” President and how it plays out on a daily basis.

And without being judgemental, it is very, VERY concerning that our populace is divided on the matter of who is actually the President. In 1983, U.S Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, talking about his work as a member of the National Commission on Social Security Reform, wrote the following wise words in an op-ed article for The Washington Post.

There is a center in American politics. It can govern. The commission is just an example of what can be done. First, get your facts straight. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Second, decide to live with the facts. Third, resolve to surmount them. Because, fourth, what is at stake is our capacity to govern.

But today, it’s not only that we’re choosing to live with our own facts…about the economy, about the environment, about the Justice Department, about our national elections…it seems some of us, at least, are insisting on living in our own reality.

And this American Democracy that we celebrate today was not designed to operate in an atmosphere like that. It was designed to be run by what Moynihan called “the center.” It was designed with the idea that people were going to have strong conflicting opinions over most issues, but compromising to a middle path that both sides could live with, even if it was grudgingly, would result in the best, wisest, strongest policies.

So I started the day baffled and discouraged. Still, I believe what we focus on grows, so I wanted to find a more positive was to celebrate the day. And I remembered a newletter post from Sunday from one of my favorite positive musicians, Carrie Newcomer. This is what she wrote:

In times when so much does not make sense, I often ground myself in the things that do make sense. On a week of tough news, I head out to the garden or into the woods. I take close up photos of things that are growing and beautiful. A drop of dew on a lush green leaf makes sense. 

Here is the poem I wrote after time on the farm this week. 

What Makes Sense

I pledge alliance to a drop of dew 
Wobbling on a broccoli leaf,
To the silver pattern on a zucchini frond
A perfect spiral at the center of a cabbage head. 
I bow my head to the licorice smell of fennel filagree,
The taste of rounded peas and knee-high corn
And the perfect dun of barley hay.
I namaste a row of beans, 
To garlic scapes and turnip greens
To the sweetness of sweet potato vines
To the last red radish and first blueberry.
I lift up my face to the summer sky
The sound of larks
And the feel of dirt
To all that keeps making sense
In senseless times. 

-Carrie Newcomer 2023

From her Substack newsletter, https://carrienewcomer.substack.com/p/sunday-thoughts-and-one-inch-photos (I don’t know if you can see it without subscribing, but I recommend subscribing to at least her free newsletter–it’s always uplifting and inspiring).

She went on to invite us all to take our own 1 inch photos of nature and/or to write a three-line poem or haiku about our experience. So out I went this morning DESPITE the fact it was 78 degrees and 87 percent humidity and it was only 7:00 AM!

At first, all I saw was wet greens. I don’t think I saw a single bird or animal except a few other sweaty walkers or joggers and their dogs. Then something caught my eye. It was a tiny wildflower that I knew to be an Asiatic dayflower, a creeper vine whose flowers blossom for only a single day. That flower wasn’t there yesterday and will not be there tomorrow. I thought about how easily I could have missed it if my mind was wrapped up in conspiracy theories and court decisions I disagreed with and judging my follow Americans.

So here is my own version of a 1 Inch Photo and Haiku

Asiatic Dayflower

Small flash of bright blue
Graces us one day only 
Thank you for this gift

–Carol Cross, 2023

I came home sweatier but in a much better frame of mind. Thank you for that, Carrie Newcomer and beautiful blue blossom no bigger than the tip of my pinky. Look at the power of one of Nature’s smallest and most ephemeral of ambassadors!

Thursday is the 88th birthday of the Dalai Lama, another man who is a role model for me for choosing to find joy in the midst of circumstances that can be troubling. So I thought I would end with an paraphrase of one of his most famous quotes:

“Find beauty whenever possible.
It is always possible.“

Happy Fourth of July, American the Beautiful!