Prepare, adapt, and celebrate
Another difficult winter holds harsh beauty and lessons to help us resist the false promise of eternal summer.
Dear friends: Another difficult winter continues.
As we learn more about the attempted undermining of the 2020 presidential election, chilling facts come to light. It is becoming ever more apparent that this was an organized, planned attack, with the actual violence on January 6 just one tactic among many: propaganda, misinformation, intimidation, and corruption among them.
These efforts have not ceased in the last year, which makes the passage of the (now-titled) Freedom to Vote/John Lewis Act even more essential. It’s a good week to contact your Senators and voice your support. Constituent calls and emails can make a difference.
We are also experiencing another assault, as the omicron variant of Covid interrupts the ability of hospitals to help patients and schools to teach children. Even so, an extremely conservative Supreme Court struck down the ability of the federal government to use OSHA to enforce vaccination/testing mandates on the slim rationale that since Covid is not specific to the workplace, OSHA does not have standing to regulate it. (Dr. Heather Cox Richardson offers an excellent explanation of the ideological push to extreme deregulation and dismantling of federal power behind this decision - I encourage anyone interested to read it. Link after the photo.)
It’s a good week to refocus on your health and the health of those you love, doing all we can to help turn this wave of the pandemic back down.
Weather events, driven by climate change, are impacting folk across the country and around the world. It’s a good week to make sure your emergency kit is ready and accessible, and to check on people who might need assistance (or just a pick-me-up phone call, text, or note.)
A difficult winter, no doubt.
And the thing about winter is that it calls us to adapt. Our often frustrations come from trying to continue the activities that are at home in other seasons, as if nothing has changed. An icy sidewalk, a giant snow berm left by a plow, a cold and dark early evening, remind us that things have, indeed, changed. We need different tools and different rhythms to make it through.
This acceptance of difference is far from passive. Acknowledging the realities of winter requires three distinct act: preparation, adjustment, and celebration. We must prepare for the change of seasons, adjust to its demands, and celebrate its arrival, its sometimes harsh beauty, and its departure.
Our country is currently being led by too many people who try to convince us they can return us to an eternal summer, if only we will turn off our senses and observations of reality. They want us to believe that the key to freedom is to support their ravages of the environment, of the poor and working class, and of the future for generations to come, and to turn our attention to the past, where summer lives forever.
Here in our valley, we are coping with the aftereffects of a storm that dropped nearly two feet of snow in less than 24 hours, on top of six inches or so already on the ground. The snowplows constructed massive blocking berms on street sides and parking areas; and freeze-thaw-freeze cycle since then has left sheets of bumpy ice and patches of black ice on roads and sidewalks. It would be absolute madness to go about our business as if the roads were clear, the ice had melted, and the berms were invisible.
Just as it would be absolute madness to fail to prepare for the changes in our society, to fail to adapt to them, and to fail to celebrate them. The ongoing ripple of change is the only thing that sustains us, after all.
Sent with great love for this community, and wishes for your health, safety, and joy in this challenging winter.