Just a little more than usual
I guess I can see why people are deciding to live somewhere other than here. Four more years of Trump’s ham-handed idiocy? Say no more. I get it. Will we have a country left when the unserious manchild is done this time?
And what’s up with Elon Musk’s influence? What’s his role going to be, and why did Republicans listen to him, well, at all, but especially before the Trump administration even takes office?
I have to say it. The slogan, the catchphrase.
Make America Great Again.
Where does one begin, when it comes to unpacking this white bread, generic, contrived excuse for a rallying cry?
First of all, who gets to define greatness? What makes anything great?
Second of all, if making America great again involves going back in time, deporting people and taking away rights because the Bible says so, running the country like a private business, and abusing power– then what’s so great about that?
Make America Great Again? Might as well be, “Hooray for America! Aren’t We Something? Just Don’t Look Too Close.”
A cozy place for my stuff. A well-insulated nook with a door and a view. Not necessarily free standing, with a couple of comfortable chairs, a small table, and decent lighting. A window or two, a mini fridge, a Bluetooth speaker, heated and air conditioned. Simple, uncluttered, but not Spartan.
From London to New York in 30 seconds, or Philly to D.C. in one second. Four hundred thirty thousand miles per hour. This is how fast NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is traveling around… the Sun!
It’s close enough to travel through a solar eruption, if one were to occur. As one writer puts it, this would be like “a surfer diving under a crashing ocean wave.”
The well-insulated probe is well inside the orbit of Mercury, only 3.8 million miles from the surface of our closest star, having to withstand temperatures 500 times hotter than the hottest day we experience here on earth.
And it’s getting pretty hot here on earth. Thanks to the mindset and inclinations of the incoming administration, it’s gonna keep getting hotter.
1700
Just about anything from Toyota. They’ve made consistently dependable vehicles for a long time. Not necessarily the most stylish, I guess, but that has never mattered to me. They’re stylish enough. Their dependability more than makes up for any lack of pizazz.
Another tough one. I don’t feel that I’m all that creative. I think the closest I come is when I’m sitting at the piano and stumble on a tuneful riff using my rudimentary knowledge of chords and chord structure.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, and creativity might be something born of desire and opportunity. But I also believe there’s something magical about it, that real creativity can’t be forced or manufactured. It magically flows. It’s organic. People are born with something extra, with proclivities and inclinations and curiosity in search of expression or a catalyst. Solutions in hand or mind, searching for problems to be solved or beauty to be revealed.
This isn’t to say that we can’t learn to do things, to refine a craft– whether it’s writing or drawing or dribbling a football. In the extreme, I guess I’m imagining that a group of people can’t sit down at a table and just say, “Let’s be creative.” There might be a bit of synergy, something spontaneous, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a Da VInci or Jobs or Chopin.
Anyone who actually cares about this country should be alarmed, and angry. Sure, we don’t know exactly how things will unfold in the coming months and years. But let’s admit that we have a pretty good idea: it’s gonna be a shit show, an abuse of power, to one degree or another.
There are already hints of oligarchy, with Elon Musk holding sway and initially sabotaging the debt ceiling debate. A bit of a preview of the self-serving, fish-out-of-water incompetence and arrogance ready to land on January 20th.
On first thought, I’m not sure there are many. I’m not sure how much molding and shaping is left to do. There are people who, in the moment, still affect my outlook and evoke emotions. But my essential character, for better or worse, has been shaped already. It seems to be more a question of who were the biggest influences in my life.
I recently mentioned my father. He played a role, as did my mother. Then there are my wife, my siblings, a friend or two, a couple of seminary professors, various musicians that I’ve listened to, one or two athletes, including Bobby Orr.
Politicians either aggravate or resonate, depending on their personalities and platforms. I guess I’ve always gravitated toward the more humble voices, the peacemakers and dreamers, most of whom the world has never been quite ready for.
I make it sound like it’s “put a fork in me” time– I am who I am, and all that blather. But of course I still hold out for a moment or two of revelation, a teaching moment.
Now that I think about it and keep writing here, there are a few people who currently have my attention: Juval Noah Harari, Sam Harris, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. A triumvirate of secularists who, with the possible exception of Harris, speak respectfully of religious faith, but speak more fervently and forcefully about reason and logic and the blatant hypocrisy of supposedly “religious” people.
OK. So there are people I listen to, opinions with which I wrestle, and opportunities for enlightenment and maybe even growth. The reality remains, though, that the cast of influential voices may just keep changing.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was President; The Brown v Board of Education decision was handed down; the first mass vaccinations against polio began, in Pittsburgh; the first Burger King opened– in Miami; the first Godzilla movie premiered in Tokyo; “Rock Around the Clock” was released as a B side; the DJIA closed at an all-time high of 382.74, not seen since before the crash of 1929; things were quieting down and heating up in Vietnam; The USS Nautilus was launched in Groton, CT; Texas Instruments introduced its first transistor radio; the U.S. government announced the testing of a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, and the U.S. Senate roundly condemned Joseph McCarthy.
I needed a memory refresh courtesy of Wikipedia… the only things about 1954 that I remembered off the top of my head were the Brown v Board… decision, and that Dwight D. Eisenhower was POTUS.
There might still be a bit of spidey sense happening, or at least first impressions made, but I’m retired and don’t usually spend time with anyone other than people I choose to spend time with. Apart from the occasional door-to-door salesperson, I don’t have opportunity or reason to have to size anyone up. Ok, salespeople and political candidates.
In my years as a pastor, I became somewhat astute at being able to tell who the troublemakers were going to be– the occasional backbiter, chronic complainer, saboteur, and passive aggressive type who made life more interesting, i.e aggravating, than it needed to be. But it’s not like I could fire parishioners (technically, I could, but there was a process involving me and members of the congregation, and the infraction would have to be grievous). Most often, we had to learn to coexist, try to be Christ-like.
When it came to our small staffs, deficiencies sometimes emerged. I had to be responsive and caring, and on rare occasions had to have conversations and be part of decisions that were difficult but necessary.
Most parish pastors wear a lot of hats, but I don’t think I would have made a very good personnel director.
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