Age of Reason

I willed myself out of the house on what might otherwise have been a sleepy weekend afternoon.

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The simple song of “It’s a beautiful day; you should do something,” played on repeat in my consciousness until I could stand it no more and decided that “something” should include something besides laundry and other routine chores.

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In the olden days -- where the watery memories of way back replay a muddled soundtrack of babies that never sleep, toddlers who never sit still, and weekends that taxed our souls with hour-by-hour activities — I would have happily stayed on the couch, under a blanket, nodding off to a non-linear stream of Hollywood extremism mixed with journalistic gut punches.

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Those days are long gone, it seems.

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I’ve had ample amounts of rest, lately, if not a dearth of peace.

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Still … as a woman of a certain age and immovable habits, I find myself unable to veer too far off course.

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I didn’t have a clear plan. Just the inkling that I should take advantage of the rarity of the sun shining and not needing to be anywhere or do anything for anyone. I could make myself a fancy cup of caffeine and just walk around looking up at cornices and front doors as I strolled up and down sidewalks. I could go into a posh shop and just browse.

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I might jog through a new neighborhood.

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I would do something that I could consider a reward for tasks I have put off because, in my mind, they are also treats: things like buying a fancy yogurt at the grocery store when I cash in the bottle deposits. Or, as I would decide before lacing up my shoes, perusing the racks of clothing at the thrift store when I finally offload the dozen bags of donations I’ve been driving around the county these past three months.

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I may not be able to do anything about the current president, or the tsunami of racism and hatred that seems to be growing stronger as it engulfs us all, but I can plug in to another reality for a while.

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I settled on Goodwill.

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It’s been a while since I feel a strange rush when I reach for the door and it gives way, since I never can tell if the place is open.

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The donation bins are tidy, with plenty of space for the bags I’ve brought for deposit. I chart my course through the aisles counter-clockwise. Men’s department, children’s, housewares, small appliances, until finally situating myself amid the vast array of women’s accessories and clothing, gravitating toward the blues and greys and purples segments of the inventory.

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Nothing ever changes in this store; I like that.

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The place smells of inoffensive but uniform detergents rather than dust.

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I also like that, as I click the hanger of one azure sweater into another – perhaps more lapis than indigo – I am comforted by the conversations all around me.

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A professional woman, her chin tucked into her phone, discusses plans for the weekend as she skims through blouses. A boy skips up to his mom, who is selecting jeans, with hope burning in his expression and a prize clutched in his hand. She is equally delighted to extend the award. Three twenty-somethings – who I imagine are home for the holidays – discuss their shared understandings of age and grace as they push an empty cart from one end of the rainbow to the other. They are so in sync, they seem to finish each other’s sentences.

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And for an instant, I am right there with them.

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Their laughter is so familiar. It is effortless and honest as they catch up with each other.

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I find myself edging closer, ready to revisit the joy and freedom of youth.

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“My mom turned 60 this year … and I am not ok with it. For the first time in my life, it really feels like she looks old. Not that I would EVER tell her that.”

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For an instant, the realization felt a little like a gut punch as I recalled a recent conversation with my daughter about feeling old. She had countered with fierce enthusiasm that I was still a youthful apparition. Of course, it wasn’t true. Although the blow softened as I accepted that I, too, would never have told my mom she looked her age.

Bad Sports

 

This week, President Trump pardoned a trail runner who was convicted in September of a misdemeanor for going off-trail in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park, which is prohibited, in a quest to set a time record for running up and down the 13.2-mile, 7,000-foot-high peak.

Michelino Sunseri, 33, had appeared to shave off two minutes from the previous record when he submitted his results to Fastest Known Times, but the governing body revoked the record after learning Sunseri had cut a switchback on the descent to avoid day hikers, which also shaved off a half mile from the course.

That revocation alerted park officials that Sunseri had used a prohibited trail that was closed for restoration to prevent erosion.  

What happened next caused much controversy between nature lovers and adrenaline junkies. The sides clashed over the appropriateness of the punishment, since leaving the trail is prohibited and punishable by a reported $5,000 fine, a ban from the park, and/or the imposition of community service.

Was it justified, or a case of over prosecution, or was it something else?
Officials weigh many circumstances when deciding how to proceed with sanctions in National Parks. They are especially concerned with intentional rule-breaking and prosecute such to the full extent as a deterrence.

In May, the NPS itself tried to withdraw the charges against Sunseri, but the Justice Department forced the case to proceed, eventually going to trial and leading to the conviction. Before his pardon, prosecutors had agreed to seek a case dismissal if Sunseri completed 60 hours of community service and a course on wilderness stewardship.

News media labeled the pardon a rare non-partisan move despite the fact that the case fit squarely into this administration's deeply partisan disdain for any power welded outside of the executive branch. They may even have forced the case to continue just to have another cause to rebuke the administrative state.

Essentially, it seems, this administration doesn't want experts – National Parks or other agencies – telling them what to do. And with recent Supreme Court decisions upending agencies’ ability to make and enforce new rules that cleave to the spirit of other environmental laws.

They don’t want to defer to the experts, and they think we are gullible enough to agree.
Especially when they can grab a few lines of an incomplete story and spin it into a wider web.

Whether leniency in any specific case is warranted will always be debated, but we should be careful to consider what will become of our natural wonders after we’ve damaged the authority of those entrusted with maintaining them. Property damage, illegal activities, and other unforeseen harms, such as when people leave the trails, harming themselves and endangering the lives of their rescuers in the process, will likely grow.

What’s so disheartening is that it could have gone another way.

Mr. Sunseri could have simply said he was sorry and used his platform to educate peers on how to be better stewards of the land.

Instead, he accepted a pardon and denounced his treatment by officials. Perhaps he was a pawn, too.

This is truly an exercise with no winners but a heck of a lot of bad sports.

Sometimes we win

 Election day this year was a breath of fresh air for those of us who had been feeling breathless these last ten months.

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Nationally and locally, Democratic candidates showed their resolve and won the hearts and the votes of their respective electorates. In this county, we saw the party gain a majority on the Troy and Rensselaer City Councils; in the latter city, a democratic mayor ousted the incumbent. We cheered as Albany elected its first Black mayor and Columbia County ushered in its first Black Sheriff, also its first woman.

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I stayed up way too late to watch the national results trickle in from our time zone: the Governors of New Jersey and Virginia. A proposition in California on a three-hour delay.

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The City to our South felt like the headliner as a young, vivacious immigrant pulled out a historic win with a campaign that beamed with bravery, positivity, and humanity: three things we all desperately need as so much pain comes at us full speed.

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As I fell asleep in Wednesday’s wee hours, I felt the sweet comfort of relief … knowing, but not much caring, that in the morning and in the days following, there would be detractors. Scores of them. Headlines and opinions we can always interpret to mean: “Why Democrats lose even if they win.”

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Inevitably, infighting will come when disagreements arise. It’s possible that we will remember what it felt like to watch a video feed of masked federal agents lobbing teargas into a crowd of peaceful protestors. How revolting it felt to watch a teacher being dragged out of a school in handcuffs … without any legal proof that she was even in civil violation of U.S. immigration laws. How horrifying to know that children may never see their parents again after leaving school.

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Don’t they know what they are doing is wrong? Can’t they see their actions as villainous? Are they acting only on impulse? Do they have charm yet no regard for people’s rights, or social norms, or basic safety? Are they ALL true psychopaths?

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Why else, I wondered, would the Supreme Court absolve a POTUS of murder while the District Attorney for DC fights tooth and nail to charge a protesting sandwich tosser with a felony?

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Now I’m not going to say that Mr. Hero Lobber is a hero, but the jury that acquitted him is an inspiration. Civic duty sometimes means saying the punishment doesn’t fit the so-called crime, but mostly it means accepting the role of juror when your number comes up.

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Evil might still win on occasion, but it won’t be sustainable.

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The good folks are still out there, doing hard work. And their inspiration is deeply satisfying.

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We are not without agency. We can all look back and see a time when things seemed better, simpler. But we should remember too that we probably had a child’s understanding of the world back then. Time has marched on. And with it come developments that have enriched us all. That’s really something we won’t abandon.

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So hope is still here. Kindness can prevail. We are not without agency. We, The People, have the power to change; all we need is the will.

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Snakes and Ladders

The weather is getting colder, and many changes are upon us.

As such, my husband and I start to churn through our semi-annual arguments. He will say, We lose an hour of sleep because the clocks turn backward,” and I will calmly explain that we gain the hour because we get to repeat the 60 minutes prior to midnight when it resets, presumably while we are sleeping.

Neither of us quite knows how to explain the evidence we both try to commandeer – that the clocks on the stove and in our cars, will remind us that it’s earlier than we think – even though our “smart” devices will have adjusted without our awareness.

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He doesn’t get mad when I stop him from turning on the heat or building a fire when the temperatures dip below comfortable in shirtsleeves. It’s not just an inherited desire to be virtuous and hold out on cranking the heat until All-Saints Day. There is also the matter of dragging a ladder to the roof, where he will clean the chimney of its soot and grime.

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“There’s never a build-up of creosote,” he’ll good-naturedly kvetch, reminding me anew that its  lack of a fitting door gasket means everything gets burned up fast in hot fires, even the dangerous residue. “But you are right, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

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Likewise, I don’t harbor any anger for the foibles of our kitchen sink, which seems to rebel at the first snap of cold as if it is on a similar schedule.

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It doesn’t exactly “sneak up” on us: this biannual slowing of pipes leading from the dual-drained sink into a tangle of ductwork in the basement has, with each attempt at improvement, seemed only to grow unmanageable with each passing year.

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It’s a longer, slower process to root the problem.

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I’ll notice the slowing drain and will mention it to the husband when it becomes a recurring development., He will commiserate and explain that it happens to him, too. He rectifies it by sweeping the basket of vegetable chunks, which he most likely rinsed into the strainer instead of tossing them into the compost.

I will commence plunging when the wash water pools, which will work for a while. But when the water ceases to drain, and it may be time to snake the pipes of the grossness that has settled by way of a drain-impeding incline, he will insist on using one of five different varieties of liquid drain-clearing products available at the grocery store.

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Of course, I want to remind him that, as memory serves, the bottle has never solved any of the clogs. He’s always had to endure the most nauseating task of releasing gray water from a midline pipe by wedging himself into a crawl space with a wrench or a snake.

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It wouldn’t deny it is gross, or suggest I take over the task, so I don’t want to gloat when he soaked the pipes for two nights straight without as much as an air bubble of progress. Soon enough, he’ll have to change tacks. I don’t need to say ‘I told ya so.’

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Though I never expected him to be the one to say it.

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“Hey! I got the sink working!”

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“With the drain cleaner?”

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“Kinda. I think it got the clog loose enough so I could plunge it.”