That Thing With Wings in Everyday Ramblings

After a run of record-breaking heat, we are supposed to cool down this evening. Everybody I know is ready for that even though we will be sad to see the sun go away. It feels as if a desert planet has moved in and taken over with those hot hot winds last night.

Last Friday June 3rd a Union Pacific train carrying crude oil fracked from the Bakken Shale derailed and caught fire in the Columbia River Gorge near Mosier, Oregon. The surrounding neighborhood, including an elementary school, was evacuated, oil spilled into the Columbia River, and the fire burned into the night.

The Gorge, you know, where I went hiking recently…

When I was a teenager the Unitarian church I went to was very progressive and full of young activists that were demonstratively resisting the Vietnam War. At one point my father was so concerned that being associated with these activities would affect his security clearance as an aerospace engineer working on government projects and forbade my brother and me from going to church.

We went anyway. :)

Yesterday I received an email about a local grassroots activist group organized by some enterprising young women that wants to develop a strategy for banning these trains going through our area as well as other actions to call attention to Climate Change and was totally chuffed to see that the meeting was going to be at my church.

In the big gloomy room I taught in until it became apparent it was way too cold in there last winter.

After I finished my class last night downstairs the place was buzzing! There were little groups of knobby-kneed older men with cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts clumped up in hallways with gorgeous young women in little black summer dresses with laptops and other mobile devices… on the floor, around kid-sized tables in classrooms…

Our weekday entrance is confusing and when I came out front there was a group of adorable young men with long hair and some young women in all sizes and very creatively dressed for the heat and one friendly older woman, very healthy and strong, looking, trying to figure out where the meeting was.

I lead them all in. The energy as one got closer to the room was electric. It was really something.

A meeting full of folks from the late sixties, who haven’t given up, and a majority group of young energetic people who clearly believe they can make a difference!

I felt a surge of hope (you know, that thing with wings?) for the first time in a very long time.

I know it is a long shot in the current political climate, but oh man did that hope feel good.

Last updated June 08, 2016