Late Life

I detect foul odors in the air, the smell of fear, as we enter the last anxious week before the election. The beast is on the loose. Many people are trying to find their own personal sweet spot between ingesting too much information  and taking a deep dive into denial. I’m finding that it’s a delicate balance that is easily thrown off center. The Jeff Bezos decision not to endorse a candidate in the editorial pages of the Washington Post left me teetering. I’ve read that the Substack higher-ups are also in favor of “not taking sides” in the interests of journalistic impartiality, as if anyone is at liberty to be neutral in this perilous moment. The coverage of the MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden was another critical juncture. It had everything but the swastikas. It turns out that majoring in 20th century European history as I did in college sixty years ago can be damaging to one’s mental health. I’ve seen all this before. Of course, there are differences. But the drift is unmistakable and the goosestepping minions have marched right into my nightmares. During my waking hours, I’ve done some door knocking and some phone banking, but I’m finding that the first order of business is to maintain my own sanity. Easier said than done. 

Photo by Mahbod Akhzami on Unsplash

The overlap between the World Series and the lead-up to the election provides diversion and enriches the otherwise screeching public discourse. For example, I recently learned that high spin fastballs are said to have late life. I believe - correct me if I'm wrong - that this means that the batter thinks he sees the ball in a certain location but late in its arrival in the vicinity of the plate, it goes and does something else entirely, something unexpected. This is a heartwarming and inspiring way to look at the opportunities for positive change in a high-resistance democracy. Numbers of people who imagine that they are ordinary folks who are just trying to put food on the table, who have doubts about prisoners getting government-sponsored transgender surgeries, who are wary of being overrun by people who crossed the border illegally, wake up one morning in the next week and realize that NO.  IT’S NOT TRUE. They did not sign up for an oligarchy. They want their fair share of the American pie. They want publicly supported high-quality medical care and education. They want the fence that used to separate church and state to be repaired so that they regain control over their own reproductive decisions. They want their vote to matter and voting itself to be sacrosanct. I’m counting on Late Life in the electorate. Is that too much to ask?                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Photo by Ben Pattinson on Unsplash

At my age, Late Life is on display all around me and it is giving me some comfort. On an October walk in the sun at Lake Bde Maka Ska, I found lilac-tinted cosmos and red gaillardia with yellow tips. The ducks and geese are paddling around out  on the pond and the older folks in the neighborhood are taking in the last warm weather before whatever comes this winter in Minnesota. The neighborhood around the lake is thick with Harris-Walz lawn signs. People in Minnesota, where every schoolchild gets a free lunch, where part of the sales tax goes to support access to a world class museum at no charge to the public, where people have a deep relationship to the natural world and understand the threat of climate catastrophe, voters seem to get what’s at stake next week. Because we have to love the world fervently to want passionately to see it overcome the threats to its survival. Not only the environmental threats, but also the threats to free speech and free elections. We have to make the connection between our own health and the health of the ocean, between the education of our children, the wellbeing of our own families and the larger wellbeing of entire communities of people. Above all, we have to elect people who share our love. Not people who are motivated by hate and greed and a lust for power, but people who want to see everyone fed and housed and educated and cared for when they are ill. Because this is what it comes down to, doesn’t it? Electing people who hear the beating heart of wild, messy, diverse, many-colored America and who love that sound. 

seventysomething will be sleeping it off next week. 

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