My mom loved the old saying that "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." As a kid, this didn't make a lot of sense to me; I'd wonder why I would want to catch flies at all. I was more interested in lightning bugs and praying mantises and caterpillars--critters I could catch, watch a while, and release. (Unless I forgot the release part, which I did once in a while. Sorry, bugs.)
Eventually, I understood the saying as my mother intended it: You can influence more people by being pleasant and kind than by being bitter and sour. My parents lived that idea. Mom and Dad were both easy-going, low-drama people for the most part. They had a strong religious faith, but they also revered reason, and they weren't afraid to change their minds. They were Eisenhower Republicans from the Land of Lincoln until Vietnam and Watergate made them reconsider their loyalty to the GOP.
I've been thinking about Mom and Dad a lot this week as we mourn a famous woman of their generation who shared my mom's first name. Ruth Bader Ginsburg also shared my parents' devotion to the common good and to finding common ground. The late justice was rightly hailed as a liberal lioness, yet she was no firebrand. When, as a young litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union, she brought cases before the then-all-male Supreme Court, Ginsburg didn't frame them in terms of "women's rights" but of equal rights. And although she supported a woman's right to end a pregnancy, she favored legislative reforms to safeguard access to reproductive healthcare. She correctly foretold how the sweeping Roe v. Wade decision would ensure pitched battles over the issue for decades to come.
One of the RBG quotes I've seen most often this week is this reminder: "Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you." As David Cole, current national legal director for the ACLU, wrote this week in The New York Review of Books, "Her dissents did not aim barbs at the majority, but instead coolly,
painstakingly, and effectively dissected the ruling’s errors, and often
placed her emphasis on areas of agreement and avenues the majority
decision left open." She was able to dissent without being disagreeable, and she famously was close friends with her opposite on the high court, Antonin Scalia.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg consistently chose honey over vinegar. When she died a week ago just as Jews prepared to observe the High Holy Days, Jewish theologians noted that the timing made her a Tzadik, a person of great righteousness. I'm not sure what this makes Mitch McConnell, who refused to take up President Barack Obama's nomination of a Supreme Court justice more than seven months before the 2016 election, yet who now seeks to swiftly confirm a third lifetime appointment for a man who lost the popular vote four years ago and seems likely to lose it again on November 3. Calling on another religious concept, I'd like to think that karma will eventually have an answer for the likes of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, but I'm not sure where that leaves us this fall.
"The problem for America, as for many other democracies at this point in
history, is this is not an even match," Robert Reich wrote in The Guardian this week. "Those who fight for power will
bend or break rules to give themselves every advantage. Those who fight
for principle are at an inherent disadvantage because bending or
breaking rules undermines the very ideals they seek to uphold."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg became an icon, but it wasn't a role she chose. Like Thurgood Marshall, her life and work were grounded in principle as she fought to make sure everyone's equality was recognized under the law. Is there still time to make this election about that fundamental (if yet-unrealized) American value? And if nakedly unchecked authoritarian power prevails--even as it is being dismissed by a majority of voters, many of whom are already casting ballots--what happens next?
Our news feeds suggest we're about to find out. I miss my thoughtful and moderate parents. Part of me wishes they were still here to see what they would make of this circus--and another part is grateful they didn't live long enough to experience it--but their legacy of valuing love over fear remains strong with me as I seek to chart a course of nuance, reflection, and hope in these darkening autumn days.
I also take heart remembering that my parents were people who were never afraid nor ashamed to change their minds. Just as my folks eventually turned against Nixon, I am sure others like them have finally seen enough to put country over party.
Rest in Power, Justice Ginsburg, and thanks for all you did--and the way you did it.
It's been nine days since I've been outside for more than about five minutes. Six months ago, I stayed home on March 13, the day the seriousness of the pandemic really hit home in the United States. But once I knew that it was safe and even smart to continue walking outside every day amid COVID-19, I did exactly that, every morning--until the middle of last week, when the air quality here in the Northwest became too dangerous to venture outside.
The first few days of the air-quality quarantine were the worst, but as I heard more about what was happening in Oregon, I could not feel anything but gratitude for what I have: for the roof over my head, for food to eat, for breathable air inside my apartment--and for plenty of time to read, think, and learn. I've had that all year, of course, but making the best of this homebound week-and-a-half, I've leaned into it a bit more.
"I am fortunate because I have been able to spend my life in the study of the world," says Alma Whittaker, the main character in Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, which I read with uncharacteristic speed over just a few days this past week. Indeed, that is why I became a journalist: because I am curious about just about everything. I, too, am an avid lifelong student of the world, and while I may not be getting paid for my curiosity very often these days, I can indulge it more than ever.
Online conferences, webinars, classes, lectures, and concerts have helped me get through these past six months, and I've taken especially great advantage of them during these recent smoky days. Since last weekend, I've attended three online church services, a real-time film screening and post-movie discussion, a lecture on the presidential race, a virtual walking tour of Seattle's Denny Regrade, and a "Moth"-like program of stories about the pandemic and the fight for racial justice.
I have relished personal connection, too. A college classmate has convened a Zoom happy hour every few weeks, and it's been fun catching up with a fascinating, opinionated group of folks, even if everyone but me is in the Eastern time zone, ready to raise their glasses when it's still mid-afternoon in Seattle. I've talked with a few friends on the phone, including one whose daughter-in-law is the acting ranger on one of the hardest-hit forests in Oregon. I haven't seen anybody in person since my last shift volunteering at the food bank two weeks ago, but I don't feel as isolated as I might.
It sounds like the rain will start tonight and we may have clean air again sometime tomorrow. I look forward to walking outside and to opening my windows again.
Autumn arrives in a few days, and lately, it's always been a season of introspection for me, ahead of our long, dark, wet winters in Seattle. I know this pandemic winter won't be easy, but after the past nine days, I feel better prepared for the many months of interior life ahead.
It's funny how books and ideas show up at the right time. I've been doing a lot of camping this summer, mainly because it's the one kind of travel that feels low-risk during the pandemic--until this week of hellfire, that is--and also because it is cheap and it gives me lots of distraction-free time to read. For a recent trip out to the Olympic Peninsula, I brought along Plan B, one of Anne Lamott's collections of essays about faith that had been on my bookshelf a long time. I thought I remembered picking it out of a Little Free Library, but a receipt buried in its pages revealed that I actually bought it at National Airport in Washington, DC, on March 19, 2008, when I would've been on my way home from a national bloggers' conference.
A dozen years doesn't seem so long in the course of a lifetime, but at this point, 2008 feels like many lifetimes ago. By 2008, I had been heavily involved in politics for much of that decade, thus the invitation for the all-expenses-paid weekend of training for progressive bloggers. I gladly took the trip, but I was actually trying to back away from politics at that time, turning my attention toward a three-quarter-time contract job with a favorite client that had hired me to extend the then-still-new tools of blogging and social media to communities doing important small-d democracy work. It felt like I was living a calling. I was as happy as I have ever been in my professional life.
Yet within a few months, I'd pivoted back into politics. An opportunity had arisen with my state Democratic Party for a job I'd sought a few years earlier. We were on the cusp of electing the first Black president and maybe Idaho's first Democratic member of Congress in many years, too. It felt like the right decision at the right time. Although the job turned out to be heartbreaking on many levels, I don't regret taking it. I did some good work and I was able to share the historic 2009 inaugural with my daughter and some dear friends. Still, I wonder what might have happened had I stayed on the contract gig with my all-time favorite client.
Fast-forward to 2020. Once it became clear that most of my pre-pandemic freelance work was gone, I began looking for a full-time job, focusing on things that could feel like career capstones, or at least really good fits for me. By late July, I was demoralized: I'd come close on a few opportunities, but rejection is hard, and I was ready to give it a rest. Then I saw one more possibility--from my long-ago favorite client, for a lightly advertised job that seemed as if it had been written with me in mind. I applied and immediately got an interview. I was sure it was meant to be.
But after a few weeks passed with no news, I learned that the job had gone to a Black man, a talented young writer. And honestly, that is how it should be. The organization's central focus is on helping communities face up to racism--something which, although I have a heart for the work, I have no lived experience. (Of course, I know that better in 2020 than I ever have before.) I was crushed, but I understand that things usually happen--or don't--for a reason. I was ready to move to New England for this job, for one thing, and maybe that simply wasn't supposed to happen because I love the Northwest and my family is on this side of the country.
Now it's September, and I've given up trying to find full-time work, at least for the time being. Too many people are looking, and I am older than most of them. But I am too young to retire, so I have to find ways to make ends meet--likely some combination of freelance and seasonal work, which is what I've done much of my working life, anyway.
This brings me back to Lamott's book. As best I can tell, I read part of it on my cross-country flight, then forgot about it for 12 years. Still, it had survived many moves and lots of serious book-winnowing missions, so I was keeping it for a reason. Plan B finally found its way into my tote bag last month and I read most of it in one afternoon while camped near the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.
Early in the book, Lamott explains how, two years after her mother had died, she still hadn't scattered her ashes because she was mad at her mom and keeping her remains stashed in the closet seemed like fitting punishment. She was also deep in grief about the turn our country had taken since September 11, 2001, especially the unfounded decision to make war on Iraq. Then one Sunday, Lamott's pastor preached about how, in a time of war,
... now was not the time to figure everything out--for instance who was to blame. It was not the time to get a new plan together and try to push it through. It was the time to be still, to center ourselves, to trust what we'd always trusted in ...
Lamott writes how, taking these words to heart, she was able to quiet herself and her harsh, scary, "thinky thoughts." She took long walks. She sat in prayer and meditation. Then she found a photo of her mom that she hadn't seen for a while, and she just knew: It was time, and "scattering her ashes was the next right thing."
Those four words. "The next right thing." It feels impossible in this moment to know what awaits us with the election and its aftermath, or when COVID-19 will be over, or the trajectory that climate havoc will take. Long-term plans feel impossible; there are too many x-factors. But as individuals, we can know the next right thing, whether it's something small, like working to get out the vote or checking in on a loved one, or embarking on some really big change we've truly thought through a while. Intuition is not impulse.
As I finished this post, I read a new piece in The Atlantic that blames America's poor pandemic response on failures of intuition, comparing our situation to that of ants following one another into a death spiral. I want to make clear that when I talk about the power of intuition, I'm talking about how we can use it on a personal level--not as a guide for public policy, where science and reason must prevail. But in our own lives, I know we can be guided by intuition--on following that invisible thread, those few feet of headlights you need to make your way home, even when you can't see where you're going. (Thank you, William E. Stafford and E.L. Doctorow.)
In some ways, this has been the hardest week of the pandemic for me. The news of the world is unrelenting, and mostly grim. Smoke-choked air means I can't even enjoy a long daily walk, which has been the one constant in my life since March. Of course, that is a small inconvenience compared to the loss of life and homes up and down the West Coast. My heart goes out to the people working on the fire lines and in the fields. May they be safe.
Let the rains come soon, and justice, too. Meanwhile, I will try to remember that rest is fuel--and sometimes it is definitely the next right thing.
P.S. To those of you who get Surely Joy via email (thank you!): Please check out the web version of this post--click on the headline--for Loosen Loosen Baby by Aly Halpert, a musical meditation that has been pure soul balm for me since I first heard it at church earlier this year. I like to sing along. I've also included a beautiful video from Leon Bridges that was featured at our congregation's vespers service just a few nights ago.
I know I said I'd be taking this week off from posting, but I'm excited about a few time-limited projects I've heard about, so I want to pass them along to you.
Today (September 4) only, you can spend $20.20 (or more) for "Good Music To Avert the Collapse of American Democracy." Yep, that is literally the title of a digital-only compilation album release that--again--is available today only, with 100 percent of net proceeds going to Fair Fight, an organization that promotes fair elections. The album features 40 tracks, and it's a great way to hear from some longtime favorites and sample new talent, too. Get it while you can! There's also super-cool cover art and a limited-edition poster by Shepard Fairey; proceeds from the latter will benefit racial justice organization Color of Change.
I was absolutely charmed this morning by an account of how the Berkshire Theatre Group has pulled off the only Actors Equity-approved live theatrical production of the summer, a revival of Godspell. The show's run has been extended, and while tickets are spendy by regional theater standards ($100), that's a bargain in a year without Broadway. If you live in Massachusetts or can present a negative COVID-19 test to enter the state, you can get more info here. Listen to Michael Paulson's story on The Daily, and check out this video showing the protocols in place for the audience.
Finally, closer to home--but open to folks from anywhere given the magic of Zoom--I plan to attend Jet City Improv's women's improv jam tomorrow afternoon (a first for me, though I've done some in-person improv). In a similar vein, Playback Theater Northwest has a show set for 5 p.m. Pacific tomorrow, "What Have You Learned Lately?" Given that "learn" was my word for the year--and how much we've all learned these past six months--it should be good. Maybe I'll see some of you there.
