Our World Today

Sun in the morning, moon at night

Sunrise (almost) over Northport harbor

We humans pay more attention to sunrises and sunsets than to the rising and setting of the moon, and that only makes sense, since our planet is dependent on the sun for light and warmth, and without it earth would be lifeless. There would be no us.

 

The moon, on the other hand, we could live without, right? We only see it, with no light of its own, because it reflects sunlight, and when earth blocks the path of that sunlight and the moon is “dark,” invisible to us, how much does the darkness of the moon change our daily lives? It’s only a satellite. 

 

And yet, I love a moonrise. It reminds me of summer nights when friends used to visit and we all (younger then) sat outdoors and watched the moon come up over the meadow. These nights it still comes up over the meadow and sets behind my big barn, but the other evening I drove to higher ground to watch the moon come up and the sun go down.

Moonrise on Saturday evening

Sunset afterglow

This is the little world of my country neighborhood, a peaceful place, and we have been having a beautiful, balmy fall. I didn’t even mind the rain on Monday, perfectly timed to begin at the end of Sunny’s and my agility session with our coach and then gently watering the rooted viburnum cuttings I’d gotten into the ground on Sunday afternoon. For me, the rain was perfectly timed.

Viburnum cutting in the ground

Sometimes forces we can’t control work out well in our favor, sometimes not. The onset of Monday’s rain worked out perfectly for Sunny and me, but not so well for the team that was supposed to follow us. 

 

 

About Trust (books mentioned in this section)

 

Do you have people in your life whom you trust? What does that mean to you, trusting someone? On one website I found with definitions of trust from people in a variety of disciplines, my favorite was this one from Brené Brown: 

 

Trust is defined as: choosing to make what’s important to you, vulnerable to the actions of someone else. Distrust is defined as: what I shared with you, is not safe with you.

 

In the novel Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrik Backman, the main character recalls the way her family life deteriorated after a road accident took the life of her sister and left Britt-Marie alive as an only child: Her father came home later and later, and her mother talked less and less, finally not at all. “They never spoke about the accident,” the author writes, “and, because they didn’t, they also couldn’t talk about anything else.” The death of a child, if it results in silence or blame, can also be the death of a marriage. 

 

In my own life, there have been at least a couple of times when someone (a man in both cases) ruled one particular subject out of bounds for discussion. It was not the same subject with the two men (one was personal, the other political), but both times it was a topic important to me and something I wanted, felt I needed—to explore and understand. 

 

Well, didn’t we have a lot of other mutual interests, other things to talk about? Certainly, in both cases, and yet in both cases I found the unilateral gag order chilling, which is why that sentence in the Backman book (you’ll find it on page 50 in the paperback edition) struck me with such force. Having one topic absolutely forbidden did not incline me to pursue other subjects with enthusiasm but rather to find other conversational partners who would not place limits on what I would be allowed to say.

 

My best friend is my best friend in large part (besides our history together) because I feel I can say anything to her. She doesn’t have to see everything just as I see it or agree with every position I take. Trust, as I understand it, does not demand total agreement or even complete understanding. It is, however, a willingness to hear and, if possible, to respond. 

 

Trust, for me—and anyone can make the first trusting move—creates room for dialogue in Martin Buber’s I-Thou sense. In this wonderful presentation by Ben Sax, he talks about taking off our armor. What a great way to put it! 

 

In another novel I read recently, What the Fireflies Knew, by Kai Harris, it was a father who died (of a drug overdose), and the child narrator remarks that her mother’s grief was so overwhelming that the mother had no room to deal with the grief of her daughters, who had lost their father. Again, a family death had become a forbidden topic, and the enforced silence damaged relationships. 

 

These limited examples of refusing dialogue on a particular subject don’t touch on other ways we may refuse trust. It’s a narrower focus that I address today. Obviously, we may fear that a certain person may harm us physically or take advantage of us financially or even betray a confidence. But Britt-Marie’s parents were not concerned that she would tell someone else about her sister’s death: Everyone already knew about their loss. You might say they had been hurt too badly to open themselves up to the possibility of further hurt by letting themselves feel their pain. (A losing proposition!) Kenyatta’s mother, in the second novel, takes a more positive step, going into therapy to deal with her loss so she can get back to mothering her children. 

 

“Feeling safe” with someone does not have to mean entrusting that person with a secret. Values important to me are not secret. Far from it. You are reading about them here. Actually, I think that “feeling safe” can be at least as much a matter of self-confidence as of trust in another, but that’s another large topic, one I won’t get into today.

 

Trust isn’t something we owe anyone else. (It’s more than respecting someone’s personhood.) If you are leery of trusting faceless strangers online, that just makes sense. Not giving someone a blank check, not handing over your car keys to a drunken friend—that’s simple prudence. And anyone who attempts to force your confidence is unlikely to be someone you’ll trust very far, if you're anything like me. 

 

There may be people, though, who would say it’s better, it’s ideal, to trust everyone. I can’t go that far. But I will stick my neck out to trust those I love and admire, and it’s important to me that they reciprocate so we can see and hear each other.

 

Color is coming on.

The larger scene

 

I have said before in this space that I am a lucky woman, despite having lost the love of my life. I live in a beautiful place and have what feels like meaningful work. (I believe in books!) I have in my life family, friends, a dog, many books, and lots of outdoor space to explore, thanks to continuing health. I have good neighbors. Given all these blessings, it’s not difficult for me most of the time to heed the wish, “Have a good day!” 

 

Because the majority of the inventory in my shop’s curated collection are used books, I am often asked, “Where do you get all your books?” and here’s my answer: I order most of my new books from Ingram, a national distributor, and a few I can’t get that way from self-published authors or small presses that don’t deal with Ingram, but the used books generally come to me. After over 32 years in the business, people with “too many books” either know me or easily find out that I’m here. Some of these books I buy outright, if they meet my criteria and budget; a very limited few I take on consignment; I frequently offer trade credit; sometimes, yes, books are simply given to me; but some I turn away (musty or otherwise unsalable), though always thanking the person who brought them in for thinking of me. However the books come to me, though, costly or free, I invest my judgment and my time.

The other day I was asked a different question, and the wording of the query landed strangely on my ear: “Where do you get your opinions?” Beg pardon? I don’t shop for opinions or buy them wholesale or pick them up at a social media thrift shop. If I did, they wouldn’t be “mine,” would they? I form my opinions in part from my own limited experience but also from facts at my disposal, which are generally also at the disposal of anyone willing to spend the time gathering and weighing information from reliable sources. 

Sunny's opinion: It's playtime!

My questioner was asking about political opinions, and I should say that his opinions and mine are at variance, to put it mildly. But as I told him, facts about current events are readily available. Sometimes we have to seek them out—no single source of news will present all the available facts—but they are there to be seen and heard. 

 

For example, the president of the United States speaks, and his rambling, insulting, threatening words of hate and derision are there on radio, television, and online video to be heard. ICE is ordered out, masked, in full tactical gear, into neighborhoods, and what they do is there, out in the open, to be seen, televised, and disseminated. Those words and actions are not my opinion. Now the governor of Texas has volunteered his National Guard troops and sent them to Chicago, against the wishes of the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois. My very negative opinion is my judgment of those words and actions, combined with American values taught me from childhood. 

 

Where does my questioner get his facts? Which issues does he consider important, and how does he weigh the relative importance of the vast variety of important issues facing us today? Does he see immigrants and Democrats as enemies of the United States? (The president holds and encourages such a view.) Does he envision one-party rule as a solution to current divisions? 

 

Supporters of the current administration in Washington love to talk about “the law” when they discuss immigration. They want people to apply for citizenship through legal channels and “wait their turn.” I’m not sure how they feel about anyone seeking asylum. Usually it’s just “Do it the legal way!” -- end of story; that’s all she wrote. Adults brought here as children? Ship ‘em back to where they were born, even if they don’t speak the language, and let ‘em apply from there! Obey the law! But when it comes to the president following the law—NOT; or the president governing according to the Constitution—NOT; or the president pursuing frivolous, baseless lawsuits against a newspaper for criticizing him or against a judge for ruling against him—when it comes to a felon convicted on 34 counts sitting in the Oval Office rather than in prison, an American president claiming to be above the law—there these same vociferous “law and order” folks see no problem. Doesn't it hurt their brains to maintain belief in such a blatant contradiction? 

 

They also like to say our country is not a democracy but a republic. A republic? (Not a democratic republic?) But somehow it’s okay to send National Guard troops from the State of Texas to the State of Oregon when Oregon doesn’t want them? Where are the rights of Oregon when the U.S. president and Texas governor can conspire against Oregon? Read about it from a far-from-unbiased news source.

 

“We support law enforcement,” they say. They don’t add, “as long as the law is not applied to ‘our side,’” but how else can their talk of support for the rule of law be understood, given the many illegal outrages on which they remain silent?

Now the president, the same man who incited his followers to storm the capitol on January 6, 2022, to overturn an election he lost, is considering invoking the Insurrection Act to place Chicago under military control. The irony is unsurpassable.  

As for out-and-out corruption, read how a true conservative sees it. Can you read this without wanting to vomit? Without thinking the words BANANA REPUBLIC? I can't.

 

How to Remain Sane

 

I should put a question mark there. How do we face up to what's happening and not lose our sanity or our courage? Again, I live in a beautiful place, and if I were to close my eyes to the rest of the country I could pretend that I am living in Paradise, but innocent people in this country are being detained without cause in my name; children in this country are being separated from parents in my name; hard-working government workers are losing their jobs and the health coverage in my name; and slaughter continues in Gaza in my name. The list goes on and on. Because I am an American, what my country does it does in my name, and I can’t pretend otherwise. I cannot enjoy the benefits and privileges of citizenship in this country and wash my hands of its ongoing crimes as if they have nothing to do with me. Like it or not, I am implicated. 

 

It’s a narrow, wobbly walk from one day to the next, remaining aware and informed and vigilant and taking responsibility, on the one hand, while at the same time being grateful for the gifts of life, maintaining vital, loving relationships, and continuing to work and hope for a better tomorrow. I wake in the dark with a torn and lacerated heart but take up my hope and resolve again when morning comes because I love my country!

Salute and gratitude today to Governor J.B. Pritzger of Illinois. 

  

¡NUNCA TE RINDAS!

Never give up!

P.S. to those who need a refresher course in geography: Chicago is not on the border with any other country. Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that lies wholly in the U.S. Look it up. You might start here, but any map or atlas will show the same thing. Border Patrol operating in Chicago, therefore, is way out of its jurisdiction, although I see they have redrawn the maps to show something very different.

The opinions here are mine.
You can verify the facts yourself.

“Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

It’s a question that can freeze the heart of a creative person, but specific questions can get worse. To the writer of a novel about a dysfunctional family: “Were your parents really that crazy?” To the painter of landscapes that blend reality and dream: “Where were you standing when you painted that?” (Or, “Is that painted from a photograph?”) I’m sure sculptors and poets and clothing designers could easily give the typical question that they are asked over and over, but I’m also sure that all creative people must be asked the general question, “Where do you get your ideas?” 

 

Whether an answer is given graciously or irritably or not at all – whether the artist questioned knows where his or her ideas come from or not! – will vary. As a sometime writer of occasional poetry (almost all unpublished), fiction (all unpublished), and nonfiction (some traditionally published, much self-published here), I can only say that for me ideas come, unbidden, in strange, wondrous, and puzzling forms. A stranger glimpsed one day may be a character in my mind when I wake the next morning, or an unforgettable image germinates after weeks or years as the core of a situation. Sometimes the seed is neither character nor image but simply a phrase that won’t leave my thoughts. Jot it down on a paper napkin and carry it around, and maybe it will generate further phrases – and maybe it won’t;

 

I do not give myself as an example because I am some kind of great writer to be worshipped and studied! It’s just that my own process is the only one I know intimately. Other writers have told their stories in their own books and interviews, but probably none of them can tell the whole story, any more than I can. There is a lot of mystery to it. 

 

What turns an idea into a work is the more important question and much easier to answer. As a writer, you sit your butt down in a chair and see where sentences on paper or a screen take you. A painter or sculptor or dress designer gets to work with her or his given tools. Work never gets dreamed into being. That’s why it’s called work. It has to be done.

***

 

Other kinds of ideas and beliefs motivate life choices we make every day. We are not cameras or digital recorders making copies of the world beyond our own skins. Our senses do not simply send copies to our brains to be filed. All our prior personal experience, however limited (and there is no one on earth whose experience is unlimited), comes into play, interpreting what we see and hear and read. I remember sitting in the same room years ago with my then-brother-in-law as we watched a political debate, televised live. Same screen, same faces, same words presented to us both. I actually felt sorry for one of the debaters, who seemed to my mind to make a pitiful showing, but at the end my brother-in-law turned to me and said, “Well, he [the one I felt sorry for] really came out on top, didn’t he?” It was as if we had been in two different rooms, watching two completely different events. 

 

Even on-the-scene eyewitnesses can “see” what isn’t there or miss what is, as many experiments have shown. We see for the most part what we expect to see. We also see what we look for. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we can become aware of our prejudices – pre-judgments – and work to develop more accurate perceptions.

 

***

Originally I thought that this post on creative work and perception/misperception involved a leap from one idea (creating) to another (perceiving), but I see now – and there is an example of what we can learn for and from ourselves when we start working, which in this case for me is writing – that both come from the same place: being open to the world. Being open to seeing something new.

 

Today is Inauguration Day, and while I would like to feel celebratory, my feelings can better be described as a mix of anxiety and weariness. Don’t get me wrong: I voted for Biden and Harris and am grateful for a change of course in Washington, D.C. My anxiety comes from the events of January 6, my weariness from conversations with those who see a different America from the one I see. --Which leads me to the questions I was asking people yesterday, questions that I hoped would give me some clarity on their perceptions and opinions (so different from my own), questions that gave me the idea for today’s topic on Books in Northport. The questions did kickstart this blog post, but I gained no clarity on views held by those who disagree with me.

 

Where do you get your news? Over and over for months I have been hearing and reading jeers of “Fake news!” Some monolith identified as “mainstream media” is accused of spreading lies. What I have tried to ask in the past two days is, What news sources do you distrust, and, more to the point, what sources do you trust? Because the people who disagree with me – so vehemently! – are getting their beliefs in reality from somewhere, and if I knew where, if I could look in that direction, maybe it would help me understand why our perspectives are so completely far apart that even a Venn diagram of them hardly yields common ground. But there must be some common ground, and we sure as hell need to find it if we’re going to reunite this country! 

 

Here is one important truth I have managed to uncover recently. It is that across the divide we opponents have many shared values. We don’t share all values, by a long shot, but we share many of the most basic, and that is not trivial. We disagree in many places on translating values into action. Well, ‘twas ever thus, and that’s what makes politics. The much, much larger and deeper and more intransigeant problem is that we disagree on facts, on truth.

 

And that brings me back to my question: Where do you get your news? What sources do you trust?

 

I wish I could report that I received even one concrete answer to that question, but I did not. I was told from more than one person that s/he relied on multiple unnamed sources. “Then I turn it off.” (What do you turn off?) Or, “Honestly, I don’t know what to believe.” Yet the people who "don't know what to believe" have beliefs. Where do they come from?

 

Over seventy percent of Republicans still believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election! Where did this come from, and why do they believe it? 

 

County clerks around the country, many of them Republicans, scrupulously distributed ballots and counted votes. State governors, both Democrat and Republican, certified election results from their states. There were recounts. Courts upheld the results and dismissed lawsuits claiming fraud as baseless. “Mainstream media” did not invent these results. The election results come from all across grassroots America.

 

“People have concerns about the legitimacy of the election,” we have heard over and over. Yet all of those concerns, wherever they have been voiced, wherever they have been reported, can be traced to one source, one man: the outgoing president. What must be so painful and difficult for his supporters to acknowledge is that the person to whom they gave their vote and pledged their faith is lying to them. The “concerns” about election fraud come from the same man who started the rumor that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, the man who flogged that falsehood for months and then, finally, after making as much political hay from it as possible, took credit for revealing it as falsehood, as if that made him some kind of saint.

 

I went to my township office and picked up my absentee ballot in person from the township clerk and delivered it back in person. She is someone whose integrity I trust. For me, it really comes down to that. Nor rumors or conspiracies or “alternate facts” or one corporate news source over another but trust. 

 

I can understand feeling disappointed in election results. (I have felt that more than once in my life.) What I cannot understand is taking the word of a compulsive serial liar and his enablers over people whose business is truth. And while I can forgive the misled, I find it hard to forgive the misleaders, who have taken cruel advantage of many good hearts and set brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, parent against child, for nothing but an illusion.

Postscript 1/21/2021: So many dates long awaited have come and gone without banishing my nightmares, but last night at last I slept well and awakened today calm and hopeful. We listened to the inauguration on the radio, and I found it dignified, sincere, meaningful, and moving. There will be so much work yet to do -- and so many Americans yet to convince that the sky has not fallen -- but I find my heart renewed for tasks ahead.