Search Results for: I Saw An Angel Last Night

In a world where our value is determined by our productivity ( and money), writes author Jenny Odell in her landmark book How To Do Nothing, Many of us find our every last minute and most of our dollars “captured, optimized, (tracked) or appropriated as a financial resource” by the technologies, corporations and political parties we are assaulted by daily, hourly, minute by minute.

We submit our free time to numerical evaluations, interactions with algorithmic versions of each other, and struggle to build and maintain personal identity and space to think. This kind of economy, this kind of politics, does not enrich us or protect us. It’s more likely to destroy us.

We are increasingly angered, agitated, distracted and robbed of our resources,  made anxious by this feeling of being alarmed, overstimulated and often unable to be left alone with a coherent or realistic chain of thought. We are increasingly angry and aggrieved by the loss of community or people who speak the truth to us.

Horrific and disturbing pours down on us and blackens our consciousness and vision. Vast techno-platforms that pretend to unite us instead teach us how to hate and lie and embrace conspiracy and get us to pay for our denigration and the destruction of our civic life.

How many children paid for this betrayal with their lives this year?

Day by day. we see the ravages of the attention economy, it doesn’t liberate people, it addicts people,  misinforms and confuses them, turning them into unthinking, enraged, gullible-minded robots. It is so easy to fall into this sinkhole way of life, it is liberating to break away from it.

There isn’t a day when I am not flooded with hysterical pleas for money from people who call themselves progressives. or disturbed by the hatred and lies that have become the ideology of an entire political party, which also defines politics as money.

More and more, I am beginning to understand that neither of these ideologies, red or blue, is the right path for me. In fact, it has nothing to do with me. The farther I get from it, the richer and happier I am. And that, I will admit, is a shock to me.

I need to break away and stay away from the people who see me only as a customer or consumer or and  campaign donation or monthly payment for something I don’t want or need.  I am learning to mistrust and ignore people who make assumptions about what I believe and what I think. I will not be taken for granted.

(You can pay monthly? Yearly? Get our discount and your special code now? We see you went to the bathroom this morning? Want 30 per cent off on a big box of quilted toilet paper?

A reader almost broke into tears when I said I didn’t want Alexa in my house. She said Alexa was now essential to her life. Somewhere out there, George Orwell is spinning his grave. Big Brothers is a angel compared to the people running Facebook, Tik-Tok and Twitter. He wanted our souls. They just want our money.

Algorithms track my every move online, and everything I see becomes an e-mail that bombards me with more e-mail. Social media is a hydra, a creature from space that can’t stop growing us and ensnaring us and can’t ever be stopped.  fu We noticed you were looking at this, can we help, were you looking for something? We love you, come back and buy, it’s 20 per cent off. I know when I look at a shirt for 10 seconds, I will be looking at it for the rest of my life, every time I check my e-mail. ,The Techno-masters have spawned the Techno theives. It is no longer safe to pick up a telephone, there is no end to the people seeking to trick me and steal from me. One of my neighbors won’t play back a voice-mail unless I come over to hear it first. 

My e-mail grows by the day, thieves and robbers pepper and scumbags stalk me with phone calls and text messages.

Everyone wants my money, nobody wants me, and I don’t even have a lot of money to steal. I sometimes feel I’m a silver ball hanging in space, billions of people surrounding me to persuade me, enlist me steal from me. It is a s tate of madness, and yet everyone wonders why so many people are angry. They’ve bought Congress and the government, I’m a lot cheaper.

Twenty years ago, before it got this bad, I decided to begin my escape from  this new social and corporate economy (Odell calls it the Attention Economy because everyone wants our attention.) I decided that I would not measure my life by money, but by peace of mind and happiness.

I wasn’t going to live for retirement funds. I wasn’t going to lie for a sense of false security. Real security never comes from money, it comes from the soul.

I wasn’t going to abandon what I love do with what I was told I needed to do. My work would be a calling, not a job.

Honestly, it was as if I stepped out of a giant foul sinkhole and awful chaos and into a quite field next to a soothing stream. My life changed. It is by no means perfect, but it is quiet and beautiful. Compassion and empathy are permitted, community can still grow, government can still care about the needy and the vulnerable.

I  have less money than I ever had before but I have never been happier or more fulfilled. I hear this message from people again and again. It is one of the great secrets of our times. Stay away from the  day job, it is the devil’s road.

It is absolutely true that money, which we are all manipulated into thinking is the goal and purpose of our existance, does not bring happiness or peace of mind. Just think of the wealthy people you know. Ask them if you don’t believe me.

Thomas Merton says the answer is finding solace in solitude, but its more than that now.

If you want to be happy and have a meaningful life, you really do have to change the way you live, and put your faith and hopes in yourself. You have to learn to be nothing, and want nothing before you can be amything.

I am my salvation, no political party I see can give me the life I want, or even wants to.

Sometimes I think the haters and the trolls are the happiest people I know, since they are finally free to do what they love to do – hate without restraint or consequence. Because they are stupid, they are free. The demons have been unleashed and are free to roam at will.

In her book, Odell, a writer, artist, and Stanford University professor, quotes the great philosopher Seneca:  “Look back in memory and consider…how many have robbed  you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire [in rage and hatred], in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you, you will perceive that are dying before their season.“

More and more, this is what life and America seems to look like for many people. I am determined to live my life in a meaningful and compassionate way. Once I gave up the idea that I could allow myself to be measured in money, that I need to save money out of fear, and buy  so many things I don’t want or need When I broke away from that way of thinking, the shadows began to recede and I saw my path much clearly.

What I didn’t realize is that I had to change so many things in my life that I had always been told were essential for a good life. Every one of them involved money.No one had ever talked to me about a good and meaningful life without couching it in terms of a fat salary, early and continuous savings, and money to die with when I got old, as if I would care.

The challenge and the goal is how to hold my place in the sun, not to save a million dollars so that I could grow old and die in in a fancy nursing  home.

I remember reading something that stuck in my mind more than a decade ago: it was that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs strickly limitted or forbid almost all of the things they created and marketed to the world. They may have changed the world, but their children were raised in a different one.

There is no simple or one way to escape the web around us. One thing at a time, one step at a time. For me, the most important thing was to stop – I spent a year on top of a mountain – and decide what kind of a life would make me happy and give me meaning apart from money and things. I bought a farm with animals. And started my blog. And committed myself to doing good for other people.

That’s the path I got on, the path I am still on. A lot of people don’t understand it. A lot of people don’t like it. I don’t care.  It’s the right path for me. It’s the light and the salvation. My life will not be deetermined by whether or not Donald Trump becomes President again. That is yet another device to entnrap us into their greedy and valueless world.

I will choose the kind of life I want, and work day night to create it for myself. It’s on me, not them.

Death is, in fact, the great equalizer, I’ve seen that at the Mansion and in my hospice therapy work.There is far less difference between those fancy fragrant places and Medicaid’s assisted care than one might think. When you get very old, you stop thinking of things that don’t really matter in the long run.

I am learning do less and less while doing more and more. I have broken with the idea we all are taught from the day we can think: that money will buy us happiness, that an economy that rapes and ravages us at every turn will give us meaning. Perhaps I don’t have to die before my season.

“…the pitfalls of the attention economy can’t just be avoided by logging off and refusing the influence of persuasive design techniques,” writes Odell,  (and gimmicks and moneys-sucking toys),” they also emerge at the intersection of issues of public space, environmetnal politics, class and race.”

And of compassion. An economy devoide of love, compassion, empathy – of anything but greed – can’t fail to diminish, corrupt and degrade us, as it has been doing for years now. Just look at the news. Ordimary people are turned into monsters every day right before our eyes.

I choose to not be one of them.

Rejection this kind of economy is now an act of political resistance. Compassion and truth have become radical beliefs in the information economy. They are seen as weak and valueless. They don’t make enough money.

The political parties pretend to be so different, but look at your e-mail. The all want to scare us into giving them money. And what, exactly will they do with our money that will make us happy and secure? I believe it is time for me and other people who perceive life to be more than a step or instrument towards something else and therefore something  that cannot be bought or optimized or marketed or tracked or scammed.

I refuse to believe that me and the people I love are not enough, can never be enough. Even billionaires are not enough.

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram, writes Odell, act like dams that  manipulate and exploit our nature desire for community and our interest in others, exploiting our deepest and most intimate desires. And raking in billions of our dollars for the privilege of destroying our minds.

What has Facebook done to bring us all together? Facebook feasts on our best to profit from our worst.

“Solitude, observation, and simple conviviality should be  recognized not only as ends in and of themselves,” writes Odell, “but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky to be alive.”

This is an amazing time for anyone who thinks. It is full of chaos and hope and opportunity.

There are amazing rewards for people who are willing to change and go inside of themselves for truth and direction.

I know now that I can’t look outside for the life I want. I need to separate myself from the platform and attention economy and take responsibility for my own life. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to come along, but I will be happy to share the  trip.

 

When I was sick, my mother drove me to my grandmother’s house with an overnight bag, opened the car door, and drove off hurriedly. My grandmother always pretended to be shocked by my sudden appearance, but there was always a bowl of borscht soup with sour cream waiting for me at her kitchen table.

My grandmother grew up in the Ukraine, where beets were often the only food they would find to get them through those awful winters. She believed that borscht soup had extraordinary powers to cure almost any illness.

After the soup, she would lock me in a spare bedroom, apply mustard plasters to my chest, turn the radiator up to full blast and close the door. In an hour or two, the trouble had been boiled out of me, and I could return home with my bag of shiny pennies and penny candy. She would call my mother to come and get me.

My grandmother made a lot of dentists happy. Whenever I ran away from home, which was often, I ran to her. Her unwavering love for me saved me in many ways.

For nearly a week now, I’ve been mostly confined to the living room and under strict orders not to move or put any pressure on my foot, at least until today, when I visit the surgeon for the first time since the surgery.

Maria, not a caretaker by nature or disposition, has been heroic in helping me bathe, get dressed, ice my foot, keep it elevated. She policed me aggressively, stopping my scores of efforts to escape, drive, go for a walk, or go and throw the ball for Zinnia.

But the good caretakers have a predisposition for the work Maria doesn’t have. After a day or two, she gets claustrophobic and starts thinking of all the art she could and should be making. Her looks get steadily less loving and a bit edgier and more restless.

She starts gritting her teeth and trying to be gentle. I know the caretaking time is rushing to a close, which is fine by me. If I time it right, I can get her back to her studio before trouble happens.

She didn’t start to get edgy or impatient until the weekend, which was terrific. While tending to me – the tone in her voice was changed in style from sweet and caring to “what-the-fuck-do you want now?’ She never says it, but the message was clear. She was happiest when she was designing the art for the photos in my recovery journal all week.

(Minnie Cohen, left, don’t know the identity of the other woman. I’m sure she was a relative. Minnie made wonderful borscht)

She was trapped, I couldn’t be left alone yet, and she was slowly going mad without her work. I admired her for this, but also braced myself for what was coming. It just didn’t come in any way I expected

Sunday, she said she was thinking of my grandmother – Minnie Cohen. I should say that my grandmother did not hold Christian women – shiksas, as she called them – in the highest regard when it came to cooking or housecleaning.

She warned me repeatedly not to marry one, they do not, she cautioned, take good care of their men.

She didn’t live long enough to know I married one, but I took Maria to her gravesite in Providence to introduce her and assured my grandmother that Maria took wonderful care of me and also had her own life as an artist, something perhaps unimaginable to Minnie Cohen from Kiev.

I had the sense she approved though, mostly she wanted me to be happy and if she knew I was, that would be okay.

Over the weekend, Maria who had heard the borscht story several times, got it into her head (without telling me) to make some borscht as a healing gesture and something my grandmother would have done. I was wary when I learned of this, my grandmother had an even lower opinion of gentile women’s cooking than she did of their housekeeping.

To be honest, I do most of the cooking in our home, Maria doesn’t like to cook and she really doesn’t like to do housework. I’m not sure how Minnie Cohen balanced art versus good food and a clean house, but I can guess. And I know Maria – she would be competing with Minnie Cohen’s ghost, even if she didn’t know it. She didn’t like being second to anybody, and she was very diligent about caring for me, at least at first.

Challenging Minnie on borscht is brave,  a big order for a shiksa.

During the week, I saw Maria getting increasingly agitated, irritable, and snarky.  This began in small, barely noticeable ways, but I could feel it. Cooking borscht all day was not her idea of a meaningful life. The thing is, she never stops loving me.

The problem comes because she loves me a lot. Taking on Minnie Cohen’s borscht is like my taking on Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It can’t work.

The borscht was not going well. It look strange and smelled funny. I had the sense it had gone off the rails somewhere.

She was getting angry at the thought she had wasted a whole morning. I asked her where she found the recipe – she had gone online – and had this queasy feeling she was looking at the wrong borscht.

And I could hear my grandmother asking while shaking her head, how could your wife possibly know what good borscht was? She was a goyim, a shiksa.

The recipe seemed to be very different from my grandmother’s and it sure smelled different. I politely told Maria that the small was off – she was already talking about feeding it to the chickens. I tasted it and it was quite awful.

Maria’s mood was plummeting, she is fiercely proud of the work she does, and the fact that she might have screwed up a borscht soup was not a small thing.

She would come into the living room while I was reading and say “what?” as if I had asked for something. After the surgery, she gazed lovingly at me as if I were an angel. By Thursday, she looked at me as if I had fallen out of the back of a horse.

She is not used to failing at anything and rarely does. I think she was also out of joint at the idea that my grandmother, who I loved dearly, could make borscht soup – not the most difficult soup to make – and she had blown it. Maria says she never expected to make better borsch than Minnie, but I’m not sure she means it.

From the smell of her cooling soup, it became clearer by the minute that this wasn’t working, and yes, instead of making quilts and potholders she had spent hours making borscht that didn’t work and that I obviously didn’t like and that she was already planning to feed it to chickens, something that would have absolutely horrified my grandmother.

Maria, the sweet person,  had been preparing this surprise for days, stockpiling the ingredients she was told online she would need. Maria the artist was already going mad from a week of icing my foot and bringing me things.

I assured her my grandmother would love the idea of her making borscht for me.

She sat down and decide to channel my grandmother. She got a cryptic message from her which said simply, “beets saved us” but she didn’t get any approval, absolution, or encouragement for her soup. It was as if my grandmother was blessing the enterprise, but not stooping to help out. Perhaps she didn’t want Maria’s soup to be that good. She was just as touchy as Maria.

By now, Maria looked both angry and miserable. This was looking bad for my weekend.

She kept asking me for my opinion about her borscht, but I could try to hide them. It was inedible, perhaps the ultimate example to my grandmother of shiksa cooking. Besides, I’ve never cooked borscht.

The final surrender came when we got home from taking a drive, I was checking my e-mail in the car and I heard Maria shouting something at me. “See!” she said grimly, “the chickens love it.” And they did, they loved the smell and devoured every drop.

I had a flash. Look, I said, let me go online and find a recipe that looks like the borsch my grandmother made. I was getting a little desperate, I was running out of time. Maria is not the most patient person in the world, and she has absolutely no patience for failure. I was running against the clock.

Warily, she agreed. Just one more time. This is a good thing, I said, I love that you’re channeling my grandmother.

I saw all kinds of recipes for borscht, from Ukrainian borsch (beef shank and cabbage) to Classic European borsh (ribs, potatoes, olive oil.) Some borschts had salt pork and potatoes and some, like the one Maria cooked, emphasized cabbage. It was cabbage, in fact, that I smelled. I hate cabbage. I also smelled onions. Her soup was thick and heavy.

I googled “Jewish Borscht” and hit pay dirt instantly. I could see from the photos that I was looking at Minnie Cohen’s borscht, made in the simpler, vegan, Jewish way.

The recipe offered by kosher.com was it, I just knew it: four fresh beets, 1/2 an onion, one and a half teaspoons of salt, a tablespoon of sugar (we would use honey), a tablespoon of lemon juice, and a cup of sour cream.

I was sure that was it.

Maria grabbed the phone and disappeared into the kitchen. About an hour later, she came in and asked me to taste her borscht, which had just come off of the oven. I saw the chunks of beet were too large, but otherwise, it looked and smelled like my grandmother’s borscht.

I did need some seasoning, which she already knew. She informed me testily that she wasn’t done yet. I fled the kitchen. She’s got to get back to work, I thought.

I tasted the borscht. It was perfect, it was just like my grandmother’s.

We went to bed, Maria had little to say and she fell asleep as if she had been drugged.

She put the soup in the refrigerator to cool and we tasted it again this morning. She nailed it. I looked up at the ceiling and saw my grandmother smiling and nodding. “She’s all right, this one,” she said, “for a shiksa. You are happy.” Bless you, I whispered back. I am happier than I have ever been.

This morning, I told Maria she was banned from caretaking all morning until we had to go to the doctor’s this afternoon. It was time for her to get back to work, I said. I could take care of myself and if I needed anything, I could just text.

She nodded, no argument. I’m eager to have the borscht for dinner. I will say this. I know it will be good, but I will love it either way. I love Maria for who she is, there is nothing I would change.

She got me through the worst of it like Mother Teresa.

I think her plunge into Jewish borscht and Jewish lore – the challenging of the grandmother was amazing – reminded both of us once again of who she is and who she isn’t.

She is an artist, first, last, and always.  She is a Sicilian, which means she might even get jealous of a deceased Jewish grandmother.

The idea of Maria’s life was beyond my grandmother’s grasp or imagination. Giving Maria the nod was generous for her and more than enough. She just couldn’t bear to say it to Maria’s face or in her head.

I’m very much looking forward to having borscht for dinner tonight. I will love it.

And Maria’s wonderful caretaking is over. She lasted a whole day longer than I thought she would. As I write this, she is happy engaged in making a new quilt and selling out her potholders and yarn. I can tell she is loving me again.

 

As I promised, I said I would only write about politics if I felt our terrified progressive movement and hysterical media have lost perspective, as both tend to do.

I can feel the hysteria boiling up again, the worry and the confusion. Is our democracy in danger from the very people sworn to uphold it?

There is a lot to be concerned about, even to be angry about, but still, I feel like I’m witnessing a repeat of the summer of 2020, which  I think of as the Great Freakout.

We have another freakout underway, and I suppose this will be our story as long as progressives are fearful and the zealots fearless. Our media is so disconnected and addicted to Armageddon reporting, hyperventilation, and overreaction it is almost impossible to comprehend what is really happening.

The bad news was bad enough when it came once a day with a newspaper. Bad news delivered every minute of every day on every kind of screen device is apocalyptic, a pandemic all of its own, a brutal intrusion into our consciousness. Almost everything is exaggerated, incomplete, enraged,  false, or relentless.

At some point, we will have to deal with this.

When it comes to the Apocalypse, people, be careful what you wish for; you might make it happen. I’ll repeat what I said so many times a while back. Stay calm, choose what you listen to carefully, and accept that modern media, online or off, can no longer help you sort it out factually or truthfully.

We are on our own.  You are on your own. But Don’t Drink that Cool-Aid yet.

I’ve wondered for a long time how progressives got themselves so outmaneuvered and outworked when it came to appointing ideologues to courts and local, state, and national offices. Were we asleep, lazy, arrogant,  or indifferent? Or maybe all of those things.

I’m working on a theory about this. Progressives tend to be interior people, preoccupied with their lives, social interactives, and cultural interests.

Trumpism and far-right conservatism is a grievance movement centered o slights, insults, intrusions, and weakness. It is an exterior movement. It doesn’t deal with what’s inside but what is perceived to be outside. People like you and me propel this movement; we inspire them with hatred and the prospect of vengeance.

It isn’t that one side is better or smarter than the other; each approaches life in very different ways. It is true that working and rural people in America have a lot to be aggrieved about. They have, in fact, been forgotten, ignored, abandoned, and treated with contempt.

Elitism isn’t just another crackpot conspiracy; it is genuine. They are returning the favor, and more.

The dark side of this is that it has also turned millions of Americans into anti-democratic zealots, who have been working hard for a half-century to take control of our political system.

This is the essence of  Trump and Trumpism as well. Democracy doesn’t work for them any longer, they are looking to dominate instead and ram every single one of their values down everyone else’s throats.

They are on edge, angry, wrapped in righteous flame, perhaps biting off much more than they can chew and turning themselves into persecutors rather than victims.

That’s an old story, from the  Taliban to the Greeks. Zealots overcome a movement, and zealots are difficult to defeat because they are driven, angry, and increasingly obsessed. Fortunately, the United States is not Afghanistan; we are used to freedom and leaders who show us some compassion.

The new zealots are playing with fire; they are angry all the time and far out in front of most Americans, who tend to be centrist and slightly to the right, not a million miles from the center.

Cruelty, arrogance, and fascistic intimidation are not long-range policies likely to succeed.

Mostly, the far-right, aided by the smoldering remains of the Republican Party, is scaring the hell out of many more people than they are converting.

It seems as if this movement hasn’t gained a single voter since 2020, and The Trumpists haven’t lost one. They just get louder and angrier.

That is a statemate much like the American Civil War. The South didn’t give an inch until there was no choice. Soldiers did not change one another’s minds

The far-right extremists’ latest move, to turn much of the population into vigilantes and spies ratting out each other, is both a horror and a nightmare and a weapon that can cut both ways and tear a society apart.

I do not for a second believe this stupid and vicious law can ultimately remain in place. The heart of the American experiment holds that elected leaders represent all people, not just the ones who voted for them.

Anti-abortionists are entitled to that respect, but the difference is that they are receiving it. That makes the governor and the legislature corrupt betrayers of their own because the Constitution intended.

The justices of the Supreme Court showed their own contempt for the troubled and frightened women of Texas, who deserved better and are entitled to better. They don’t have to win, but they deserve to be considered.

Abortion is divisive. Each side claims absolute righteousness and moral purity.  Neither side speaks directly to one another, as human beings with feelings.

But what Governor Abbott has done is to pass legislation that sees millions of women as criminals, people so evil they are worthy of being informed on, turned in, and exposed. They are not citizens are deserving of respect, consideration, and compassion.

They are not even entitled to confront their elected representatives; they are simply targets. Only citizens can be accused. Women who were raped or impregnated by their brothers and fathers cannot get abortions. No legislator seems to have given them a thought.

A friend driving them to the airport to get an abortion in Mexico is now a criminal in Texas.

Progressives are not angels and heroes; they seem disinterested in the shouting and brawls and lies that have come to dominate our politics. Perhaps they are naive; perhaps they are spoiled; perhaps they talk too much to themselves instead of their neighbors.

None of us saw the cesspool social media has become or it’s catastrophic impact on our civics; few of us saw any of this coming early enough to stop it. It is never too late; the now is just the future waiting to fool us and change.

From Greek Tragedy to modern times, one political story is repeated again and again: the oppressed with power become the oppressors. Day by day, the extremists pushing ideologically driven legislation inspire and mindlessly create the next generation of victims and grievance people. They have paved the way.

Wait until people start informing the governor and legislature for helping to kill children.

Who’s to stop them?

For progressives, the challenge is to remain calm, be strong, and get to work rather than read the New York Times and listen to MSNBC and whine and weep and worry. In a sense, they’ve taught everyone how to do it, and if we don’t follow up, we deserve what we get.

Democracy, like war, is ugly and messy, and far from perfect. Right now, the winners in our political struggles are the loudest and angriest. Everyone else seems paralyzed in comparison.

But that is an illusion. As they demonstrated in 2020, they are not paralyzed. And they are getting angrier by the day. The Trumpists can’t know that because they only watch Fox News and never speak to anyone on the other side.

For all of its troubles, democracy remains, I believe, better than all of the other options. More and more, the far right is sounding and feeling like Mussonoi, not Hitler, and certainly not like Jefferson.

Like most spoiled Americans, their messages are conspiracy theories and rich people’s money. Texas has become a Hate State; people are fleeing to other places so that their children can be raised in safety.

More and more, this new movement is drifting to fascism, turning us against one another, brushing aside the laws and political conventions that have pulled us together, promoting hatred of those who disagree rather than defending their right to speak at all.

But we are not at the end of our world or even close. It’s so important to remember that.

First, some injections of perspective:

The Trump Republican Party is no longer a conventional or democratic political party as it has always been defined. They are a fringe phenomenon compromised mostly of white people (mostly men) who seek to stall or block the ride of a more diverse nation.

They are a White Christian Nationalist Movement. They got in and want to shut the doors behind them.

It’s important to recognize that and look beyond it. That is the reality now. People who support this hateful ideology must take responsibility for it and like who they see in the mirror.

The student vaccination dramas in Florida and Texas will haunt these selfish people for years and trigger a massive counter-response from those with equally strong beliefs and lots of money. There is no duty more sacred than protecting our children.

This unnecessarily cruel and clumsy assault on abortion will also blow back on the zealots who launched it. It will not be forgotten.

The abortion issue is complex and worthy of long debate and discussion. Lots of good people oppose abortion and hope to see it restricted or banned. Fair enough. But cherishing life is not the same as frightening, ignoring, and persecuting women – citizens – who have fought so long and hard for their freedom and equal treatment.

Millions of them will not put up with it, that is certain. Once empowered, they can never again be cowed or silenced; this is not an issue that can be resolved in this way, any more than it could have been dictated and imposed by a single law.

It has to be worked out amongst ourselves in an empathetic and civil way. Neither side can be bullied into submission, which only creates new movements, even angrier and more determined than the first.

Shame on the ignoramuses who wrote this law; they can’t possibly win their fight in this way over the long haul, any more than the other side can or should.

Just think about it.

But they did just make any reasonable solution so much harder, all in the name of life.

For 50 years, while most progressives have been content to read a lot and argue and cluck about the last stand of the white man, the white men ( and women) have been busy and focused on setting the country up for a (mostly) not violent coup.

They’ve been electing judges, school board, congressional and county officials and believe they are close to controlling our national political elections.

But I am nowhere near believing the dunderheads who wrote this law and are busy killing children for political gain can take over and control a nation as diverse, free, and outspoken as Americans are.

They are a stain on our democracy and a threat to it, but no, they are not Nazis or nearly as smart.

The hard cold truth is that we who believe in empathy and compassion as a political goal have work to do, just like the other side had work to do. They did it.

I am reading and hearing on local media (not cable news channels) that progressives all over the country are electing judges in counties and states.

That seems to be the future for people who love democracy. Pay attention, listen, stay calm, do good, and do the work.

Abortion is a long way from being illegal throughout America or even Texas. The Supreme Court has not ruled that the Texas Bill recently passed is legal; they have put off ruling on it, cowardly as that is.

Meanwhile, abortion pills and medications are selling out at pharmacies all over the country. It seems inevitable that technology and big pharma will boom in the face of this assault, and any movement that gets in the way of big money will learn some bloody lessons. This is America. Nothing comes before big money.

Think about it. In this global economy, all connected by mushrooming new technologies, can anyone political movement stop abortions all over the world, from pills to hospitals? Are there enough courts in Texas to prosecute the millions of Democrats and progressives who will want to help women decide their own futures? Yes, even those facing pregnancy from rape or incest? Will Texas become a state of two people, those in jail and those free?

Please take a look at this advertisement for a new form of tele-medicine and a simple way to get an abortion in your own home: Get used to it. It is the future, and Texas just gave the industry a big sweet smooch. Women all over the country can already get abortion medication shipped to them in two days.

The fanatics’ idea of morality can not be legislated or bullied. It has to be accepted. That is true of both sides.

That market for new and safe ways to get one’s own abortion will soon explode. In America, capitalism is the true faith. Maybe they want to jail all the pharmacists too.

Once again, as happened in 20-20, the Trumpists are running wild are determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This isn’t myopic; it is shameless. Just think back a bit to when the idea that Joe Biden would beat Donald Trump by a substantial margin in 2020 was considered ludicrous. But it happened.

Love and compassion are much stronger than hatred and extremism.  In 2020 we created our own reality. In 2022 we will do it again. And again and again, until the next movement explodes and grows.

Journalism has failed to give us a clear picture of this epic conflict.

Journalism no longer writes our history; it simply repeats what they think it is at any given moment. Hysteria has replaced information; reporting has been replaced by polls that are often wildly inaccurate and almost always incomplete.

I’m not sure why we keep buying this obsession with mostly inaccurate polling, but I can guess. Taking polls saves a lot of money for media moguls, who don’t need to hire reporters.

Most of the “new journalists” talk mostly to one another,  report from behind their computer screens or on Facebook and Twitter, and go nowhere.

There is simply no substitute for real reporting. Those who depended on the hysteria and greed of modern media are simply not learning the truth.

Planned Parenthood, for one,  has been reporting a lot of good news lately, but nobody knows anything about it. The newspapers and cable news channels, and social media sites don’t like good news; it just doesn’t get people excited or frightened enough to keep coming.

It doesn’t generate a lot of revenue.

This year, over 90 bills were introduced into state legislatures that protect or advance access to abortion, says Planned Parenthood.

The American Rescue Act, recently passed by Congress, including $50 million in Title X funding, radically expanding abortion access to the poor and vulnerable.

For the first time in 40 years, the budget does not include the Hyde Amendment, prohibiting foreign aid from going to any country where abortion is legal.

Democracy is like that. Things can go forward and back at the same time; the process is hopelessly messy and indirect.

This new Texas law is shocking, and in many ways, outrageous. It will not stand in this form. This is a new chapter in this very bitter struggle. It is by no means the end.

Unfortunately, given what our media has become, it’s up to each person to think clearly and make their best judgments. All I can say is don’t buy the idea of imminent ruin.

America is a divided, not a conquered, country.

Permitting aging old and angry white men to tell women they have no power over their own bodies is not a winning policy position in modern-day America. This bird will not fly.

The anti-abortion movement is trapping itself by its own successes. Since we no longer talk to one another in our politics, we end up talking to ourselves. They have no idea.  That is the reason for this awful legislation.

Instead of simply weakening or knocking out an abortion, they have found politicians who will cheer this fascistic, Constitution-violating nightmare that will come back to bite them many times. The Stasi (the dread East German Secret police) is not the future for us.

It was Mussolini and then the Stasi who perfected the informant culture.  Wives turned on husbands; children turned on adults.

The idea is you get half the country to inform on the other; government becomes both invisible and completely unaccountable, the demons behind the curtain.

None of these governments lasted; people found a world of informers more offensive than anything the government was really pushing. This is not a nation of informers, and I doubt it will ever be. I know they think this bill is a great victory, I don’t think so. I think the names of these sponsors will be blackened through time.

If the creators of this law could think ahead, they might have slowed down.

If this is the future, liking guns will soon be illegal. So will opposing vaccines. So will letting educators run schools. So will letting educators interfere with schools. If anyone says or does anything you like, make a citizen’s arrest.

Talk about chaos and insanity. It will not happen. It’s not even possible for it to happen.

Imagine a world where being offensive is illegal. Trump would go bankrupt in a minute and head for jail. Don’t we have a right to disagree and be obnoxious about it?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg often suggested Roe Vs. Wade was not a good idea since the bill created a bitter and continuing division that should have been resolved over time, much as the issue of gay rights was.

Now, the Texas legislature has gone and done the same thing again, just from the other side. There are 50 states in America, and most of them are not like Texas or Florida, or South Dakota.

Americans have made it clear they want to elect people who govern in the center, not the extreme edges.

The Republicans believe they can take over the government as a minority party forever shrinking rather than expanding its base. That’s what Putin is shooting for.

But we are not Russia, a nation used to centuries of Czars and dictators. I don’t think the United States will go for it.

As the country becomes more and more diverse, and as women and people of color continue to seize and demand true power, their position becomes less and less tenable.

Governors Abbot and DeSantis are way out on the far edges of extremism; obeying Donald Trump worshipfully doesn’t seem like a smart policy to me.  They might remember that he lost and that a lot of people dislike him intensely.

Because of Trump, they can’t turn back or shift gears. They can only do just what he did and step in it deeper and deeper.

And thanks to them, any fool with a grudge can buy a gun without restriction and walk around with it. It is not easy to imagine any side of any national debate will find a sound policy in the coming years. That is the tragedy to come.

If it is stupid and outrageous to tell American women that people who advise and care about them can be fined $10,000 for speaking their minds, it is even dumber to permit scores of children to die because you are a governor who plans to run for President.

What are these people smoking?

The Texas legislature has just painted a picture of the reality of a far-right Republican takeover of Congress or extreme Republican domination in Washington.

Marjorie Taylor Greene cannot wait for her moment in the sun or her place in the cabinet.

The Republicans, if you can still call them that,  are obviously terrified by the new and diverse America overtaking their angry white bottoms. Otherwise, why restrict voting and make it illegal to give Grandma a drink while she sits at the polls and waits to vote?

Why arouse women, now the most powerful single political force in American life? This is the politics of the angry and the dumb. It is, as Jefferson foresaw, a dangerous combination.

I’m sorry, but I can’t buy this as a winning political strategy. The Republicans have given the Democratic Party a giant smoking gun to use in 2022.

It’s all different now.

Perspective: Joe Biden’s poll numbers are down. So what? The election is more than a year away, and poll numbers go up and down more often than a teenaged boy’s penis, and they are still wrong almost every election.

Biden was and is a decent person, in contrast to Donald Trump. He will still be a decent person in a year. The people who hated him then will hate him now. The people who loved him then will love him now.

People don’t like to see American soldiers blown up while doing noble duty. Why would they? Next year, Biden will be judged by the state of the pandemic and the economy.

No one can rightly predict the outcome of a campaign like this or start sounding alarms a year out.

In a few months, Americans will be much happier that the country is not at war for the first time in decades than they will be upset about the American retreat.

On some level, even the ordinary know that wars are horrible; there are no simple, clean, or bloodless ones.

If I were running for President (god forbid) and could pick the three people in America I would most like to run against; I would choose: 1/Donald Trump, 2. Governer DeSantis of Florida, 3. Governor Abbott of Texas.

I can’t say what Joe Biden’s prospects are; nobody knows. I doubt he will even be the Democratic candidate. I can say it’s way too soon for hand-wrigging or Armageddon freakouts.

The liberals and progressives needed spine in 2020. Women gave them some, along with the young. Just wait until you see how women get even more fired up by the Republican’s determination to take away their right to choose.

It is well understood in politics that the most difficult thing one can do in a democracy is to take away a freedom that exists. If you read polls carefully, as I sometimes do, you will learn that many women will say they oppose abortions. But far fewer think they should be banned or that their freedom to choose should be taken from them by mostly older white male legislators.

The media persists in portraying Donald Trump as a fearsome force threatening our country. He is, in fact, a largely ignored and increasingly pathetic scold who is trying to threaten our country.

Why would any of us forget how he bungled an almost lose-proof election – Tulsa, Chlorox Vaccine, his ranting meltdown in the first debate. He didn’t just lose the election, he committed political suicide, and his poor judgment is infectious.

Trump picked the worst advisers in the world – Rudy Guiliani (who pulled his pants down during a staged interview), Mr. Pillow (who gathered scores of computer experts to watch him prove absolutely nothing), the nasty son Donald Jr. (who is, like his father, unable to open his mouth without lying), to be his advisers.

I understand why people are afraid of Trumpism and how it is tearing our country apart. Fear and hysteria don’t accomplish much.

I respect many of the people who oppose abortion.  They deserve to be heard. Most have been playing fair. This new law is not fair. I think it has already changed the dynamics of American politics. This is the biggest Pandora’s Box I have seen in my years of political writing.

Trump woke a lot of people up in 2016 and all through his term. When I think of the ascending women’s movement, I think of MeToo and all the strong women coming into Congress.

When I think of our future, I think of those moms in Portland who marched in front of their sons and daughters and drove those heavily-armed and hated federal agents right out of town.

I drove up to check on the foundation Moise dug for his new home just a few yards from the new barn.  The start of work on the Millers’ new home is a big deal.

I cautioned him to take the new driveway seriously; it could be an icy nightmare for horses and cards and trucks in the winter. We considered some alternative approaches.

Moise asked me a bunch of questions about my foot and the upcoming surgery. He also asked if I could drive him and Jacob to Hoosick Falls in the morning so they could take a bus to Bennington Vt. just a few miles away. “We’d love you to drove us; we’ll have a lot of fun.”

He said he thought a short drive would be fine for me; he understood I couldn’t go on a long one. I didn’t know what my doctor might say, bud. The fun we had would be good for morale. I think these rides were our Amish-style equivalent of a night at the bar watching baseball on TV.

I never turn down a chance for the Three Unlikely Amigos to get together. But I was confused.  Bennington is only ten minutes away from Hoosick Falls.

Why not just ask me to drive them all the way?

“We can’t,” said Moise. “If there is a bus or train, we have to take them; we are not allowed to be driven if there is other transportation. Others only drive us as a last resort.

I shook my head, “you guys have more rules than my sixth grade English teacher.” Moise laughed. They also have a lot of integrity. If Bennington were 100 yards from Hoosick Falls, they still wouldn’t accept a ride because they aren’t supposed to. They do not bend the rules or duck from their faith. If it’s poring, as I suggested it might be, then so be it. Time to suffer as Jesus did.

Then my cell phone rang, and I went to answer it; I saw it was Maria. I noticed Moise get a wicked and mischevious gleam in his eye.

He leaned over to get close to the phone and said loudly as if he didn’t know I was on the phone: “Hey, Johnnie Boy, why don’t you come right over to the house and let me take a look at that food. I  take care of your bone spur with a few tools I  have.”

We both could clearly hear the gasp coming out of my cellphone. “Just kidding,” Moise added in a few seconds, but he was clearly enjoying himself.

“Well,” I said, as Maria joined in the laughter, “I was glad to see you can do fun. I’ll be happy to drive you to Hoosick Falls so you can catch a bus for a ten-minute ride. And I’ll pick you up in the afternoon when you take the bus back to Hoosick Falls. I’m sure you and Jacob are up to no good.”

Moise was pleased with himself for getting Maria to gasp. “Well,” he said, “I took good care of Tina when I had to take off part of her leg.” She gasped again.

That’s great, I said, “but you’ll never get near my toes. I don’t intend to limp for the rest of my life.”

As it turned out, he won’t need me to drive him in the morning; Jacob had already asked a neighbor to do it a couple of days ago. I was disappointed, but my food wasn’t. There will be a lot more rides to come.

Moise is going full steam on his new house. With his son Joe, his two big draft horses, and his new dirt scraping and digging machine, he is beginning to dig out the house’s foundation; it will, he said, be at least six feet deep.

The concrete backs are all stacked on the hill. This work fills him with joy; he can’t stop smiling.

When he gets the foundation dug to six feet, he’ll pour concrete into it. When the horses drag some dirt to the barn, Moise and Joe took their shovels and shoveled the dirt to the sides, deepening the road from the street up to the barn.

Moise will come by the house and tell me when to pick him up for the trip to Hoosick falls with Jacob and when to pick them up on the way home.

So we can all have fun, after all, in the silly and timeless way of guys. I keep underestimating Moise and our friendship.

Moise is heading to Bennington to buy building supplies for his new home. He is full of joy and anticipation when he talks about it.

Friendship has always been a hard thing for me to find and accept. Two of my friends died recently; one is near death. Moise appeared like an angel out of the mist to fill a void in my life, perhaps in his.

Were there ever two more unlikely friends to come together in mid-life and beyond? When I first came to the country and spent a year on my mountain, I wrote that life is full of crisis and mystery.

I’ve decided to sit back and enjoy it.

They came in wagons all morning, 13 families, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children, in their white shirts and special bonnets and brushed horses, some from more than 20 miles away, to consecrate Moise Miller’s new barn, just two days old.

By the time the service started around 9:30 this morning, 20 horses were securely stabled in beautiful and roomy new stalls, each with grain and hay and water sent through a system of new chutes and troughs.

When the services began, each of the church members was sitting on benches brought in by horses all last week.

This is the spiritual life, I think, or one side of it.

In my mind, spiritual life is more than anything else, a life. It’s not just something to be studied on Sunday, if it is to be real, it has to be lived.

For the Amish, today in Moise’s spanking new church, God is present all of the time, there is no life apart from him.

Today, his church – the Amish district within 25 miles of the farm – worshipped in this new barn, after he worked day and night to ready the stalls, clean the floors, set out the prayer benches.

Spiritual life can exist outside of a man’s nature, but it lives inside of him (or her) in the realm of the angels.

The Amish seek to live by Jesus Christ’s sermons on the mount. I think of this quote from Christ when I think of the new barn: “Therefore, whoever hearth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will like him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”  – Matthew 7:24:27.

This building was built upon many rocks.

To me, spiritual life is about empathy, honor, and the willingness to see the truth in ourselves, rather than listen to the voices of others.

It means sharing community and concern for the poor and the vulnerable.  It means doing good for others.

When I stood in the barn yesterday, I felt at times that I am living in a world of heretics masquerading as faithful.  I am not a Christian, but I pay attention to where the spirit of Christ really lives. It lives very strongly among the Amish.

One day perhaps, I’ll believe in the devil, so many people seem false, could anything else make this happen?

Say what you want, the Amish live their faith, they don’t just talk it.

Moise’s barn is not an agricultural project, it is a spiritual affirmation, a small miracle of love and connection. Moise lives as a spiritual man, everything he does is in the honor and search for his God.

Thomas Merton wrote that laziness and cowardice are two of the greatest enemies of spiritual life. Hard work and courage are the reason this barn exists.  That, and love of thy neighbor, as the Bible commands.

The spiritual life, wrote Merton, is the life of the whole person as much as it is the life of anyone church or religion.

Most of us flirt with the spiritual life in the hope of salvation or healing, Moise lives the spiritual life in homage to his idea of Jesus Christ. Everything he says or does is in that spirit and means to be faithful to it.

There is no guarantee of redemption, no blessing that will promise a path to heaven. He will have to work for that until the very end.

We seekers are left with faults we cannot conquer and with no guarantee of victory.

But the faithful never give up, they never fear to try. They never quit.

That’s at the heart of Moise’s incredibly brave decision to uproot his family two years ago and his life behind and move to Cambridge, N.Y., where there was nothing waiting for him but hard work and faith.

This resonates with me in a special way. In a different way, I did the same thing. I know what it feels like to leave everything you know behind and set out on the hero journey. We can each call it different things, but we both know it is the same thing, done in differing ways.

Moise told me yesterday he never doubted for a moment that his vision was true and that this strange place was the place for him to build a new life with his family.

The barn is the strongest possible sign that his vision was correct. The first time he stepped off a bus with his brother-in-law Jacob on that cold winter night without knowing a soul or having a place to eat or sleep was, he said, the greatest moment of his life.

A glorious day, he said, he was never afraid. I guess that comes with believing in God. I can’t imagine doing it.

Two years later, the barn sings his song.

(Above, the church benches. They move from farm to farm every other Sunday, every Amish family hosts Sunday services in turn.)

Today, the Amish community Moise founded in my county is coming together to worship on the upper floor of the barn. It is a church if any structure ever was.

The church benches have all been brought in, the area swept, the wooden chips cleaned up.

Moise’s daughters and wife Barbara have also been working day and night to prepare meals for everyone coming to celebrate the farm and praise God for making it happen.

Last night, Moise proudly gave me another tour of the barn, showing me the various shutes and slides for bringing water, feed, and hay to the horses on the ground floor, all of whom are moving into the barn today.

The Amish have been building farms for centuries, their environmental and practical experience is on display.

(The grain system in Moise’s barn, this is where it comes down to be scooped up from above and fed to the horses.)

The upper floor of the barn, where the hay will be stories has a beautiful, cathedral-like quality to it, as I sit here writing on my computer, I can hear the singing from Moise’s barn down the road and through the woods as the end of the service.

The carriages are heading home, the men and women singing, all dressed in their special clothes for worship.

It gave me chills. The spirit lives in that barn and raise their voices to their God. The barn has a lot of feeling, once inside. Moise glows with pride, although he will never compliment himself out loud.

As stirring as it was to see those men climbing up on that roof was the long and hard work the daughters and wives put into making everyone comfortable, to cooking, baking, cleaning carrying, and coming together to make their quilts in honor of the raising.

I’m finishing a piece about what I learned from the barn raising. I’ll share one thing now: the spiritual life is about empathy and honor, and facing the truth about yourself in a world full of voices telling you what you are, what you should be, what you should do.

Moise and I share one thing.

We will never submit to that, the dark side of our technological society. We will never let other voices define who we are and what we should do.

I wish him every blessing and good luck as his barn is christened in such a beautiful and meaningful way. If he is not permitted to praise himself, I can say without hesitating that I saw what it took to make this barn and I am proud of him.