It Is Not About Them, It Is About Us in Everyday Ramblings

Senator John McCain said that about a policy that allows torture.

This is the sunrise from “the hill” behind where I live. The camera and the eye don’t experience color the same and to my eye the sun was this deep red orange from the leftover smoke.

Today the ground is wet! We aren’t actually having rain, it is more like we are ensconced in a cloud.

So my poetry friend was truly grumpy about my writing prompt. She thought that I would choose a contemporary poetry prompt from say an MA program or a famous poet but instead I picked this thorny political topic, much on my mind, about how Democracy works and our part in it.

In spite of being grumpy she was game enough to try it. I had no idea that she had very strong feelings about the restaurant owner asking the White House Press Secretary to leave her restaurant, politely, because her staff was disturbed and upset by her presence.

Yesterday at lunch I read her your responses and we had an interesting discussion about it all.

Meanwhile Portland has been inundated with those inexpensive rideshare motorized scooters. As we were sitting there we saw the first person either of us had seen riding one with a helmet. You are supposed to both have a driver’s license and wear a helmet but nobody does.

From the first day I saw them I thought, oh this is a future revenue stream for me as a yoga teacher dealing with the long term impact of injuries and the simple act of riding with one foot in front of the other throws the hips out of alignment. (I have thought this about skateboarders for years.)

My poetry friend thought that was quite cynical and she is right. It was a thought place to put my anxiety about how dangerous these things are.

I understand in San Francisco they outlawed them until they could get some enforceable regulations in place and people are calling the day they all disappeared “The Scooter Rapture”. Love that.

In the discussion about our feelings about civility in this current political climate I found out that she is doing these amazing things as a political activist. She has been to all the local detention centers for asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants. She has cautiously protested at the local ICE office, which is quite close here to where I live.

But the activity she has been doing as much as she can, working part time with local grandkids, is being a silent support witness in Federal Immigration Court. She goes to the court, meets the attorney and the asylum seeker (she says here they are mostly from Honduras) and she sits with that person so that the court knows they have local support.

She also writes letters for detainees. Oh and her knees and legs were sore because she had been actively working to remove invasive plants at a local park on Saturday.

I was totally inspired and awed by what she manages to do in a very busy life. She had a fall back in June and broke 3 fingers and it has been a long recovery as happens as we get a bit older.

We both felt that we were not assuming civility and that we certainly don’t stand idly by and wring our hands at power grabs. Both of us are providing heath coverage for ourselves (and in her case her husband) through our work and so therefore our acts of civil disobedience need to be measured and thought out so that we can maintain employment and our passports.

I heard this interesting discussion yesterday afternoon on Politico about the attorney who worked with McCarthy during the hearings of the House Un-America Activities Committee (HUAC), Roy Cohn, and how he mentored the President as a young man. I knew about this but not so much the actual tactics and strategies and total disdain and disregard for the rule of law that Cohn espoused. They are specific echoes in what we are hearing today and it is so disturbing that an extremely flawed and unhappy man could leaves us a legacy that is literally influencing the whole world.

Much as I disagreed with him on so many levels, Senator McCain was right about torture and he is right about civility.

This is not about them. This is about us.

Last updated August 27, 2018