Summer Day

 

Today, I chose to have hands in soil.

Poem 133: The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Solstice Morning

 

It is Solstice Morning--  a perfect summer dy. The sky is clear blue, no clouds, with a light breeze that smells of forest and ocean, and a vegetable garden that is visibly growing. The cat is sleeping on the bench. The rabbit is basking in the sun. The chickens are having quiet conversations about the nest box. We have even taken a whack at the pile of compost that needs trimming. The neighbor’s cherry tree is bearing this year; I see a pie for the evening celebration. The garden is peaceful under the strong morning sunlight.

However, we are an urban garden. Cars cruise down the next street over. The trash is being picked up one neighborhood over. Dogs bark. Neighbors are having distant conversations. Sometimes people are overly generous with their music and drama.  Occasionally someone looks over the fence and talks to the chickens (or pops an escapee back in).  In the evening, lights from the apartments across the alley may shine into the space, illuminating the way back to the coop. We have more rats than a country garden. I am constantly trying to crop cars, or piles of wood, or recycling bins, or the neighbor’s roof from my photos. We do not have the long views I see in so many garden plans and photos.

Mark and I both dreamed of acreage when we were younger. I imagined sprawling gardens with rock walls, greenhouses attached to my kitchen, maybe sheep in the barn. He wanted a cabin backed into second growth forest, where he could pace for hours, pondering the nature of the universe. Yet here we are, with a tenth of an acre, intensely cultivated, in the center of a small city in Oregon, far from our original homes. This Solstice morning, as I plant the seeds for our fall crops, it is a great plenty.

Oregon Senate

 

The Oregon Senate has been unable to work for six weeks now. Republican senators are not showing up on the floor to create a quorum and vote on legislation—any legislation, because they do not like two bills. This is the third time we have been in this situation; it is so bad that the state voted 68% in favor of not allowing legislators who do not attend the session for a specific number of days to run for office again. There’s a bit of loophole—some of the senators are in the first year of a four year term and others were not planning on running again anyways. So here we are.

                The cost of this stalemate is huge. Hours and hours of writing bills, vetting them, discussing them in committee—gone. Time spent in the community crafting language people can agree on—gone. Time we spent writing letters, lobbying for bills—gone. And then there are the financial costs—all of the salaries doing the work for no result, not even a vote-- gone. Keeping the state house open for no action wastes energy-- gone. The uncertainty created by this situation costs money; OSU will lose students: some will go elsewhere, some will not go to college at all if they cannot count on their tuition.  People will be laid off. People will lose their jobs. People will not be able to pay rent, put food on the table, gas in the car to take kids to school. The impact on the most to the most vulnerable in the state is huge. Without the money from the state, our local providers are not able to operate. The shelter may have to reduce beds and lay off employees; they have enough funding to stretch until early September, if they reduce operations now. The ripples keep going, even after the budget is passed (at least, we hope it will be passed).

                I am an elected official. It is my job to represent my ward. I go to council meetings, propose policy, and cross my fingers that four others, at least, will agree with me. Beforehand, I may run an idea by a fellow councilor or staff person for a reality check. I may ask my people to weigh in on a specific issue and look right at one councilor while they speak. Sometimes council agrees with me. Sometimes they don’t. As frustrating as it can be, that is democracy. We vote. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, sometimes we are handed glorious surprises. The stakes are too high—people’s lives, our nation’s democracy—not to.

                Thank you to everyone who does show up to vote for change in our communities.