The Best Things in Life -- and --

Redbud on the creek, Northport

Northern Michigan is in bloom!

Let’s start with beauty, because there is no such thing as too much beauty. Leelanau County has been bursting with blossoms. Cherries first, then apple blossoms, now lilacs. Not only orchards, though. There are lots of flowering plants in the villages, too. 

Chokecherry and viburnum, Northport

Closer look at viburnum called 'Chenault' (somewhat past peak)

These blooming trees in Leland stopped me, too.

At home, wild violets gave me enough for two batches of violet jelly (lots more violets, but how much violet jelly do I need?) and made a stunning setting for photographing my dog when Sunny Juliet plunked down in another little sea of deep purple. And while there aren’t many redbud trees this far north, those few do their part, even the spindly little volunteer behind the old henhouse at my place.

Wild Violet Jelly

Redbud flower closeup

It’s worth looking close to the ground, as well, for beauty you would not be able to take in from a speeding car.

Not much to look at?

Look closer!

And gardens! This is the time of year I live for! I think of it as my real life, with before and after mostly prologue and epilogue. 

Lobelia! Need I say more?

Black petunias! Bacopa! Splendid iris from the late Al Bona!

That got me to thinking the other evening about seasons and how, for me, here in Northern Michigan, the four seasons as generally divided don’t make sense. Spring isn’t really March-April-May, but (in my opinion, in my life) April-May-June, with summer July-August-September, and so on. December is more late fall than early winter, and winter usually hangs on through most of March. What do you think about that?

My reading these days--

As is so often the case, my attention hops like a flea (or buzzes like a bee?) from one book to another. Having trouble with Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (I could not seem to hear the characters’ voices in my head), I picked up a less demanding book, Dark Light, nonfiction about the dawn of electric light and all the promises and fears any revolutionary new technology spawns, but have yet to finish it, because morning reading on the porch for several days was Remember, by Lisa Genova, neurologist and author of the novel Still Alice, in which the main character develops signs of early onset Alzheimer’s. Not being able to recall a name, Genova assures readers in her new nonfiction book, is not a sign of dementia. It happens to 20-year-olds as well as 80-year-olds. Older people simply worry about it more. 

Remember is an easy read and a quick one. Whatever your age, and whether or not you worry about your memory, it’s worth learning what helps us remember, what gets in the way, and what we can do to keep memory as sharp as possible as we get older. Pay attention, the author tells us at the beginning. (“Stop, look, and listen,” I think to myself, remembering the lesson about crossing streets that I was made to repeat over and over when young.) You can’t remember that to which you have not paid attention. I particularly like this piece of advice, since I decided years ago that paying attention is my #1 job in life. There are other pieces of advice. Sleep, exercise, a healthy diet—all the things that are in general good for our physical health are also good for preserving our memories. Alcohol is a culprit, better avoided. Caffeine in moderation and not too close to bedtime. 

***

Then there was One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad, a hard book to read, not for the difficulty of the writing but for its subject matter. Still, the urgency of El Akkad’s book is such that I believe every American should read it now. Because, as he says --

No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness? Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

- Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025)

That will be one day. What about today? Where do you and I stand today? 

Detail from book cover

I did, finally, finish As I Lay Dying. Faulkner will never be my favorite writer, but reading one of his famous works was a duty I could not neglect forever.

Big Life, Little Life; or, Macro, Micro

“Big Life, Little Life” is the title I gave to my most recently filled volume of journal writing. “Macro/Micro” are the terms used by Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse on their Saturday Coffee Klatch videos. For those of us fortunate enough to live far from war and famine, the contrast is often stark between happiness in our personal lives and the agony we feel over our country’s disintegration and its role in world suffering. My parents were spared this, I have thought so often. My (late) husband was spared this.

Recently I had my annual Medicare wellness visit. Am I depressed? No, I can’t say that I am depressed, because my personal life is fulfilling. When I wake up in the middle of the night, however, I often wake into rather than out of nightmare, as I remember what is happening in my country and in the world. Anxiety? Yes, on a daily basis. You are not alone, I was told. “Ninety-nine point nine percent” of her patients are anxious about the country and the world, she told me. And we are the lucky ones! We did not send our children off in the morning only to have a bomb drop on their school and kill them. We are not handcuffed and shackled and herded from one “detainment center” to another, treated worse than American pet owners would ever treat their dogs and cats. We are not starving. Why are we anxious, and what do we fear—if not the theft of our souls? And the death of freedom and the actual deaths of innocent human beings, our brothers and sisters?

What can we do? First, we must speak up. Then -- what practical, doable action have you found that you can take in your community?

Here and now, though...

...Tree Guy and I are putting a life together. This is quite an unexpected late-life gift, as we see it, and Sunny Juliet, who is part of it, may not “count her blessings” in quite the same way, but she loves being part of a pack and having a home and people to play with her and provide her with special treats. She is a lucky dog, and Tree Guy and I are a couple of lucky humans.

A few books, a few words

 

"What's with all this reading, anyway?"

Earth may be blown to smithereens (one of my mother’s oddball words) any day now, but until that happens I continue to go to my bookshop, continue to communicate with friends with phone calls, texts, emails, letters, and in-person conversations, go for walks with my dog, and yes, I am still reading. Here is the list of the books I’ve read since the beginning of the year. There are not as many as usual for over two months into 2026’s twelve, but here they are:

1. Binet, Laurent. Perspective(s) (fiction, 2023)

2. Raskin, Jamie. Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy (nonfiction, 2022)

3. Letts, Elizabeth. The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis (nonfiction, 2016)

4. Giffels, David. Barnstorming Ohio to Understand America (nonfiction, 2020)

5. Field, Isobel. This Life I’ve Loved (nonfiction, 1937)

6. Stevenson, Robert Louis. An Inland Voyage (nonfiction, 1878)

7. Stevenson, Robert Louis. Crossing the Plains (nonfiction)

8. Sixsmith, Martin. The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (nonfiction, 2009)

9. Morris, Heather. The Tattooist of Auschwitz (fiction, 2018)

10. Hill, Justin. The Drink and Dream Teahouse (fiction, 2002)

11. Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country (fiction, 1948)

12. Buchan, Elizabeth. Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (fiction, 2002)

13. Power-Greene, Ousmane K. The Confessions of Matthew Strong (fiction, 2022)

14. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Scotch (nonfiction, 1964)

15. Paul, Elliot. Linden on the Saugus Branch (nonfiction, 1947)

16. MacDonald, Ross. Sleeping Beauty (fiction, 1973)

17. MacDonald, Ross. The Name is Archer (fiction, 1946-1983)

Make what you will of my Books Read 2026 list so far. Ask questions if you have them. I can tell you that I am currently reading Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree at bedtime; with dinner, a book about trees written for artists (forget title and author name; the book is at home, and I am not); began The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jim Robbins, sitting in my car by the side of an icebound inland lake; and have a George Elliot novel, The Mill on the Floss in the wings, ready to follow Thomas Hardy.

Sometimes I find it hard to justify (to myself) the hours I spend reading books while the country and the world fall apart; however, giving up the hope of making certain others care about what breaks my heart, I am now spending less time online, having realized at long last that sharing and forwarding stories to people who either deleted my messages without reading them or maybe even blocked me and never saw the messages at all was a lost cause. As long as they continue circling their golden calf and cheering him as their savior (incomprehensible!), they will be unable to take in messages that conflict with their "true belief.” (Here's another.) Time to re-read Eric Hoffer?

I won’t deny, either, that much of my reading is escape (just look at the dates of some of those novels and memoirs and travel books), but who wouldn’t want to escape from a present in which one’s own beloved country bombs a children’s elementary school in another country, kills over a hundred schoolgirls, and our “leaders” express not a single word of regret? Everything else—all the threats to voting rights, violations of the Constitution, outright lies left and right, incompetence and corruption—all of it pales for me in the light of those dead schoolgirls. Will Iran be better off now that the Ayatollah is gone? Those little girls, dead, are not better off. You think opposing abortion regardless of circumstances means you reverence life, and yet you say nothing in opposition to these murders? And because I am an American, these murders were done in my name, also! For shame, America! For shame!

Beautiful earth! Beautiful trees and mountains, lakes and rivers, hills and prairies alive with life! Potentially beautiful human animals with your lacerated hearts and stumblings and gettings-up-again and attempts to love one another! Open your eyes!

Beautiful Michigan!

Golden Valleys

 

Back in Michigan, not all that long ago, we had a beautiful, mild autumn, with September stretching through October and leaves remaining on trees into November. Here in southeast Arizona now in early December, fall lingers in a similar way. There are no flaming red and orange maples here, none of the purples of green ash, but there is gold in abundance. I think of prospectors violating the mountains for metal, while all around them nature clothed the valleys in bright leaves. 

This past weekend the Dos Cabezas Mountain Gallery resumed its annual holiday show and sale, interrupted last year by COVID-19. It was my privilege and joy earlier in the week to help set up the “tree” on the porch – and then to see the entire house transformed by unimaginable hours of work by the local artists and craftspeople. 

On Saturday a basket maker from Pearce demonstrated his craft in the sun-warm side yard, while indoors visitors shopped for Christmas in a mellow, festive atmosphere of happy conversations, sparkling lights, bright colors, and soft music. When Carol on her autoharp and her brother Walter on his harmonica gave their rendition of “Red River Valley,” the favorite song of one of my grandfathers, I had that exquisite feeling of a perfect moment and knew there was nowhere else I’d rather be. The Christmas spirit came to me at last, as it has in the past in Northport at concerts of the Leelanau Children’s Choir or the downtown tree lighting on a snowy evening.  Added knowledge here is that Walter was born in this same little house where we all were gathered, next door to what used to be the town post office.

Next door...

Look closely to see the building's identification.

The husband of my long-time friend Juleen (we worked together in Kalamazoo back in the 1970s) has written his autobiography, A Life in Three Acts: My Journey from Wartime Burma to America, by Solomon K. Samuels, and that book is my current reading. As was true of the World War II experience of families in eastern Europe (Unbreakable revealed a Czechoslovakian family story to me; see book report section of this previous post), what people in Burma suffered during and after the war is largely unknown to Westerners. Sam’s youth in British-ruled Rangoon as the son of an Indian civil servant was a comfortable middle-class existence before the war, but then came food shortages, bombings, Japanese occupation, flight from the city, return, his father’s death, and years of hardship. Maps aid the author in his developing the story of the wartime troop movements. He also details the history of political divisions and strife among Burmese revolutionaries and failure of so many to prepare for a future of independence. 

 

But I am struck, as well, by small, personal notes. The family, hiding during dark evenings from bombing raids, often kept their spirits up by singing. As Christians, many of the songs they sang were traditional hymns, such as “Abide with Me” and “Nearer My God To Thee,” but they also sang American “cowboy songs,” and when Samuels notes one particular favorite, “Red River Valley,” he cites its lyrics as particularly poignant to his family. That same song my grandfather loved (my mother's stepfather, he was, a north Florida "cracker"), the same song sister and brother Carol and Walter played so beautifully on Saturday here in Dos Cabezas.

 

All of this – the gallery scene, tales of wartime decades ago, my surroundings here in the ghost town – bring to my mind thoughts of mountains and valleys. As human beings, we know numerous metaphorical valleys in our lives, some of despair, others of delight, and we also know metaphorical mountains. A mountain can push us to our limits, sometimes even threaten death, while others – or maybe the very same, those of arduous climb! – are exhilarating in the effort required and the clarity of the air, the summit’s view its own reward.

Are these my "golden years"? Here in the mountains, looking down into the valley, I only know that today I feel at home and as fortunate to be here, now, as I am to be at home in Leelanau when I am there -- these two little places filled with loving-hearted friends.

STILL COME HOME: Book Review

The novel opens with a young woman in Afghanistan daydreaming of an apricot:

…She wants the fruit. She wants her freedom. She wants to do everything she shouldn’t. She shoves back her purple headscarf and walks to the open window of her small, second-story apartment. She sticks her torso out and leans, hanging her head upside down. Her hair dangles like a black flag in the breeze. Positioned like this, she won’t have to look up the street at the remains of her family compound. She won’t have to wish she’d died in there three years ago either.  

-- Katey Schultz, Still Come Home

This morning I finished reading Katey Schultz’s new novel, Still Come Home, a story focusing on four main characters: Aaseya, the young Afghani woman in her early 20s; Rahim, her 40-year-old husband; Miller, an American second lieutenant stationed in Afghanistan; and Miller's wife, Tenley, back home in South Carolina. I don’t want to tell you very much about them, because you deserve to meet them as I did, as Schultz introduces them. Let me say only that their worlds and cultures and experiences are light-years apart from each other but that as a reader I was completely pulled into every scene, fully believing in their reality. 

This is a powerful novel. From beginning to end, there is no slackening in the tautness of either the action or dialogue. 

…A headache balls at the base of his skull. He watches the city face into shadows, block by block. Airborne particles of sand catch the sun’s rays, Mother’s Nature’s tracer fire. Within minutes, the horizon appears lit by a throbbing Armageddon. Four tours and it has come to this. The night before Miller’s last mission outside the wife, Chaffen’s voice echoing like a challenge inside Miller’s head: That’s how you’ve got to start thinking, in all directions.

Miller’s mind is fixated on responsibilities to his men and his family back home but tortured also by an earlier mission that went badly. Rahim, hungering for a future with sons of his own, has not escaped his own nightmare boyhood, and his present is confused and cruelly limited. So both men try to focus on tasks at hand and not think or plan or dream too far ahead. Their wives, too, can only meet each day’s immediate challenges and hope, dimly, that the future will be better. 

A poor, scrawny, mute, orphaned or outcast child plays a pivotal role in the story. 

…Flecks of dirt line his closed eyelids, and she can see a few fleas in his shaggy, dark hair. His lips are chapped, his earlobes bitten and red. Scuff marks fall in a line down his torso, likely from belly-crawling over rocks or wriggling through shrubs. At the bottom of his shorts, each leg pokes through the opening of fabric like a tent pole.

Such a frail and unlikely survival — so far! — in this country torn by endless war! We fear for Miller and Rahim and Aaseya but especially for Ghazél as the story’s tension amps up page by page. Does this child have a chance?

Describing the most barren landscape, Schultz’s lyrical sentences convey the love its inhabitants have for their home:

Rahim darts across the road, taking his weapon off safety, then leans his side against the embankments from shoulder to ankle, blending into the land as seamlessly as a scattering of dirt. The desert is amazing like that, the way it stretches and folds across the country like the broad, sloping belly of a giant. The way it holds almost everything a man could ever need, including his shape, until they’re practically one.

But maybe you think you don’t want to read a novel about war in the Middle East. 

Perhaps Afghanistan is the last place you think you want to envision with your mind’s eye. 

It’s too alien, too faraway, too nightmarish. 

What I’m telling you is that those “reasons” count for nothing. It is not only the American soldier and his wife back home with whom you will feel kinship but also with Aaseya (from the book’s very first page), Rahim, and Ghazél, and this story will bring home to you the truth of universal humanity like nothing else I’ve read for a long time. 

*. *. *

Katey Schultz visited Dog Ears Books in 2013 to read from her book of short and short-short stories, Flashes of War. Among her many awards, Schultz was awarded a Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America for that earlier work. I’ve been anticipating more from her ever since, and Still Come Home has exceeded my high expectations. Her connection to Michigan, in case you’re wondering, is through Interlochen Center for the Arts. 

George Orwell Warned Us

In most places and most of the time, liberty is not a product of military action. Rather, it is something alive that grows or diminishes every day, in how we think and communicate, how we treat each other in our public discourse, in what we value and reward as a society, and how we do that. 

 - Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

Coming to this book on Churchill and Orwell, it didn’t hurt that I had read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia not long ago and still had that story pretty fresh in my mind. Orwell identified as a Leftist all his life, but Catalonia opened his eyes to the true nature of the Communist Party. He quickly realized that the Communists were every bit as totalitarian in their approaches and their aims as were the Fascists and that his real enemy, therefore, wherever it reared its ugly head, was totalitarianism.

He would leave Spain resolved to oppose the abuse of power at both ends of the political spectrum. After Spain, observed the literary critic Hugh Kenner, he would be “a leftist at odds with the official left.” “It is unfortunate that so few people in England have yet caught up with the fact that Communism is now a counter-revolutionary force,” Orwell wrote in 1937.

Churchill, in a strange way, was more a presence in my life as far back as I can remember. “Winston Churchill without the cigar” is how my parents described their first baby (me). But I had never studied his life, so Churchill’s many political setbacks and disappointments (both before and after WWII), as recounted by author Ricks, gave me a new perspective on the British leader’s startling tenacity. Before England’s declaration of war against Germany, Churchill had been unpopular both personally and for his belligerent views.

The leaders of the Tory Party felt [in the 1930s] that as part of keeping Hitler mollified, Churchill must be excluded from a position of leadership.

But in 1940 Hitler began his invasion of Holland and Belgium, bringing Parliament at last to a realization that Chamberlain must go. So Chamberlain would resign, but who would replace him? Lord Halifax, the king’s first choice? Lord Halifax who had requested that the British soccer team give the Nazi salute when playing against the German team in Berlin? No, said Chamberlain, Churchill is the man you want. And so Churchill was appointed rather than elected to serve as Prime Minister.

“I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.”

Churchill never sugar-coated the truth when he spoke to the English people, and they trusted him for that, almost instinctively it would seem. Neither Churchill nor Orwell was willing to forsake truth for a party line, and both at times suffered for their inflexibility when it came to truth-telling. For instance, largely because the U.S.S.R. had been an important wartime ally of Britain and the United States, Orwell had a hard time finding a publisher for Animal Farm -- surprising difficulty considering publishing track record up to that time.

Both men also had strong opinions and made sure they had facts to back up their viewpoints. Orwell especially proved a ready willingness to change his mind when faced with facts repudiating his earlier position. It must be admitted, however, that either would have been a difficult life companion. 

Churchill was as relentless as a terrier in his pursuit of facts but at dinner parties would launch into monologue, showing so little interest in other people’s lives and stories that he would even recite memorized poems to ensure his ability to hold the floor. He always knew more than anyone else about the topics that interested him, and he had no patience for any other topics. Then there was the drinking. All in all, difficult!

Orwell, unpretentious in dress and manner, comfortable with and sympathetic in general to common people, was overly sensitive to smells, but worse – the real deal-breaker for me – was the lack of self-awareness he showed in what Ricks calls his quick and casual prejudice against the Jews.

The fact of the matter is that Orwell was always tin eared about Jews. During World War II, Orwell would write extensively against anti-Semitism, but in the course of doing so he failed to reexamine his own writings of the previous decade. After the war, he had surprisingly little to say about the Holocaust....”

It is easier to find excuses for his anti-Zionism, since he was suspicious of all nationalisms, but was this particular nationalism more distasteful to him than others? One cannot help but wonder.

Churchill’s genius lay in seeing the Nazi threat for the world danger it was; his virtue was believing in the courage and perseverance of the English people, despite the many strikes against them at the outset of the war. Heaven only knows where Western civilization – and one uses the word with some trepidation in this context – might have gone without Churchill holding out against Hitler and against all the appeasers in the British aristocracy and government.

Orwell’s intellectual gift was his ability to see through party propaganda and cant to the dangers of totalitarianism on both ends of the political spectrum, and his artistic gift, in a spare style very different from Churchill’s oratorical writing, enabled him to bring that clear-sightedness to life in dramatic popular fiction.

What would Orwell make of our world today? Ricks notes that the question is often asked. Notably, individuals living under repressive regimes the world over recognize in 1984 the way their governments twist truth and relentlessly curtail freedom. Also, ironically, apologists from both the right and left eager to claim him as their own.

In 1984, protagonist Winston Smith lives under constant state surveillance. Fear of Big Brother and Communist repression of individuals dominated political discussions in the United States throughout the second half of the twentieth century, explaining why so many agreed with the slogan, “Better dead than Red.” Big government, regardless of party, was the enemy to be feared. Ricks points out that today’s surveillance in our own country is done more often by business than by government. It is not “the State” but “the Corporation” that follows Americans through every step of their day, noting what products they buy and use, which entertainments they most enjoy, and how they interact with family and friends.

Orwell saw that people might become slaves of the state, but he did not foresee that they might also become something else that would horrify him—products of corporations, data resources to be endlessly mined and peddled elsewhere. He would no doubt have been a powerful critic of such things.

And so, once again, two political extremes face Americans. This time the dilemma popularly posed (i.e., in misleadingly simplistic terms) is not between Fascism and Communism but between unrestrained “predatory capitalism” (the leftist view) and what has been called a “nanny state” (the rightist view). But as was the case with the twentieth-century dilemma posed between Fascism and Communism, I would argue that today’s debate too begins with a false premise. There are avenues and choices beyond simply a “nanny state” and unrestrained “predatory capitalism”), and we should, in the name of freedom, reject both extremes.

Unhappily for the present moment in our country, the State and the Corporation have joined forces, with the State holding onto its authority over citizens at the same time that it grants the Corporation, now legally recognized as a “person,” huge unfair advantage over us. Our own Congress! Over and over, they purport to be “saving” us from a "nanny state" by stripping us of legal, environmental, and other health protections rightly the role and responsibility of government. (We may be moving toward a “police state,” but at the moment we are definitely galloping away from anything that could remotely be called a “nanny state”!) At the federal level (and in many states), executive, legislative, and judicial branches appear to have agreed to sacrifice the interests of American citizen to rich and powerful corporate interests. The latest such legislative move protects financial institutions against citizens’ class-action suits. Anyone who is surprised, however, hasn't been paying attention. Farmers have had to pay attention, because their oxen are being gored, outrageously, on a regular basis. 

This is a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into! Where is an Orwell to show clearly of the dangers we face? Where is a Churchill to lead us back toward freedom?

My Muddled View of Current Events

Wednesday started out early as "one of those days" -- beautiful morning with heavy dew (I went out barefoot to hang clothes on the line); horror statements emanating (again) from the White House; smiling friends’ faces on the streets of Northport; sad news that a Northport woman had died at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City; no long lines at Tom’s, where I went to buy a paper, but I’d forgotten it was 5% senior discount day and hadn’t gotten together a full shopping list; a man slipping into the bookstore before I was ready to open – I told him I’d be right back and ran next door to Deep’s, but found coffee pots empty; then a string of happy bookstore customers, including one woman who returned to tell me how much she loved Mr. Rochester – had about 80 pages left and needed to hurry back home to finish it! Up, down, the momentous and the trivial all mixed up.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After the usual morning errands, instead of sitting in the car by the harbor to read my newspaper ... or taking Sarah out somewhere north of town to escape village streets a while longer ... I decided to walk around with my camera (and dog) to look for happy sights. I needed some happy sights. One of the first I found was the smiling face of George Twine of Abundance Catering. George and I discussed the sad topics of death and politics -- how could we not? -- but were also mindful of our good fortune in being where we are, among familiar Northport friends.

Colorful blooms and blossoms everywhere in town, both nurtured and volunteering on their own, were worth stopping to admire. 

I would have photographed David Chrobak and his new dog, but his dog took exception to Sarah's presence, so we continued quickly on our way -- stopping, however, for an unexpected beauty down by the creek. Hushed, we stood quietly and watched.

You can tell dog parade is past and the start of another school year coming on by glancing around at all the parking spaces on village streets. Even Tom’s parking lot on 5% senior discount day was not crowded.

Author Sarah Shoemaker stopped in, and I wasted no time in handing her a signing pen. But why didn't I think to grab my camera and photograph her signing her book? Next time! (Sarah, be forewarned!) People are still coming in to tell me how much they love Sarah's novel. Sometimes someone takes a break to come in and talk about it, reluctant to reach the end. I know the feeling!

The other evening I finally settled down to reading something very different, a book by George Orwell I’d never read before and one I probably would not have appreciated in my younger days. In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell describes in detail (he must have kept a daily journal) his time in the Spanish Civil War, both how he felt at the time and how he looked back on the time afterward. There are also chapters in which he discusses the politics of the conflict, both the official versions put out by journalists far from the action and the very different reality he and friends confronted on the ground. The author advises readers not interested in politics to skip those chapters, but why would anyone not interested in politics be reading the book in the first place? Well, that’s my at-home reading, anyway, in the morning dark and before going to sleep. 

...I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. ... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. ... There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I believed that things were as they appeared....

What Orwell initially believed he had found among the Catalans was a true classless society, a society of “complete social equality between all ranks,” even in military fighting units.

At the bookstore one day, during a quiet moment, I also got back to a book on Camus that had been buried in a tall stack. Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena, by Emmet Parker, is one I need to start over again at the beginning, but opening to where I left my bookmark (Chapter 4, “Men of Justice; ‘To Err is Human...’”), I find the author focused on Camus and the French Resistance during the World War II, and the parallels to the case in Spain a decade earlier fascinate me.

Many in the Resistance, Camus included, looked on the end of the German Occupation as an opportunity for meaningful social revolution; as was the case in Spain in the 1930s, however, there was no cohesive organization uniting all the different groups known collectively as the Resistance. Another parallel was the war/revolution conundrum: Must revolution wait until the war was won, or could war and revolution go forward together? There was no general agreement on this question. Thirdly, in both 1930s Spain and in France following World War II, there was a strong sense that the Communist and Socialist parties “betrayed the revolution.”

In France, following the Liberation, the Socialists proposed bringing prewar leaders, including collaborators, into a new provisional government.

Camus categorically rejected this proposal. Acceptance of it, he was sure, would mean the return to an order characterized by cowardice, abdication of responsibility, conniving parliamentarians, and personal ambitions, an order that was merely [sic] disorder.

Not long ago I read a book called The Ambiguity of the American Revolution. Looking back on the American Revolution, the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Nazi Occupation and Allied Lliberation of France, I can’t help but wonder where we are now, in our country, on the long arc of the universe. One of my favorite movie lines goes something like this: “God loves you just the way you are ... but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.” It’s easy to point the finger at people we judge to be worse than ourselves. But how can we be better? That is the question life poses to each one of us.

Are you dead certain or hopelessly confused? I am both. Pretty clear about the world I want to see but confused as to what I can do to move it in that direction. Give in to rage -- and escalate division and violence? Take the nonviolent high road -- and allow hate to flourish? Would the methods of Gandhi have been effective against Hitler? Did our Civil War resolve sectional animosity? Some of my friends come down 100% on one side or the other, either total warfare or absolute peace and love. Do I wish to see the matter that clearly, or would clarity only be oversimplification?

 

I live in a beautiful place, but I am part of the “real world” of hard work and anxiety and conflict, too, and there is no “path forward” laid out for any of us in advance. We can only do our best to carve one out. And then, sooner or later, whatever we do, the grass covers our bones, and the next generation takes its turn. That’s true, I know, but ... it doesn’t tell me what to do while I’m on this side of the grass....