January Blues

Collards covered with frost for the tenth day! How discouraging to all of us who are trying to grow anything. The Glavitches who farm vegetables and sell them in a farm stand told us that the temperature in their strawberry fields was 13 degrees this morning! But still, they had the cherry tomatoes I needed for an old fashioned egg strata I will take to the garden club tomorrow.

We went over to Warren's orange grove to pick fruit to squeeze. At mid afternoon there were still columns of ice around the young trees from the all night watering he's had to do to preserve his grove during this prolonged freeze. But we were all happy to be out with Warren and his big gentle dog and the long handled pickers, getting a little warmth from the late sun. We cut into a few oranges to see if they were damaged beyond salvation. They seemed fine to me, and I know that my students tomorrow will enjoy making juice from them that they'll drink with the bread and butter they will be making.

These doings are small and beautiful gems of hope and pleasure in what I increasingly see as a depressing world. I have begun to think we have reached the tipping point (to what?). The age of civility has definitely passed. I used to love the so-called American spirit of independence, generosity and competence. Now, I don't know where it's gone.. Americans get their information from quick twitters, rumors, and charlatans, aka talk show hosts, pundits and bloggers.

We have "tea party" politicians who oppose abortion in a knee jerk way, and yet can't do the hard work to think through and act to protect the kids we already have. (More than seventy kids in Florida died or were killed last year through neglect or abuse!)

Seems everything is about politics and getting elected next time. I am not sure that our politicians are listening to what people really want. (We all want lower cost and predictable health care! Anyone would love a public option or single payer health care where you could just go and get the health care you need!) Problem is we want everything for free, no new taxes.

The world is just going too fast. How can we think about health care, the wars, climate change and the economy all at once? We don't need this constant yammer about who said what and did what and slept with whom and took what performance enhancing drugs. We need to let our current administration lead us and focus on what NEEDS TO BE DONE to keep our country on track without constantly fending off the gnats.

I did not vote for Bush, but I knew that when he was elected (sort of), he was our president and that the office of President must be respected. I am an American. It seems that so many in Congress are just trying to undermine our magnificent Constitution. We are all a People and this partisanship has elevated to very dangerous levels. Republicans and Democrats- come on! We are all Americans, not out to shoot each other, but to hunker down and work on some hard problems we all have whatever political stripe.

I am discouraged because I now think that in almost all cases our politicians can be bought for the right price. They are beholden to the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies, big oil, local companies. There is a scandal every day. (Did we forget how to be honest? Was integrity forgotten in the wild days of the last decade?)

My husband often reminds me that history replays itself. FDR was hated by many but he navigated the country through a depression that lasted far longer than this current recession will. Lyndon Johnson put in place many social reforms that we now take for granted. I was appalled that my own child had no idea who Lyndon Johnson was and what a long lasting stamp he put on our social policies. What happened to social studies education? Belatedly, she got this information by visiting the LBJ library in Austin.

Is all knowledge of history a thing of the past, so to speak? Do we have to reinvent the wheel over and over again? Has our instant world of the internet and trivial knowledge supplanted everything? Can we have it both ways? Our small grandson has technological know- how beyond mine, but still, we ride around and he asks me the questions of the ages: "Who is god?" and "Do starfish have eyes?" and "When will my mom be back?"

I am not at all sure that I would want to have kids if I were now of childbearing age. I can't see clearly that our values will prevail. I love each day living in this wonderful place, probably an anachronism.