It is raining. The house smells like cookies and granola, oat bread and yeast bread, as I work my way through food prep for the week. Solas plays on in the living room, drowning out the sounds of the rain. Outside, the cat is sleeping in the greenhouse—a golden ball of fur on the plant shelf, beside the geranium I moved in a few days ago. The rabbit is in his hutch with an apple; the chickens in the coop resting on a garden bed. Leaves cover the ground. Mark hung the storm windows last night while I made dinner and we sat by the first fire inside of the season. We are moving, a little reluctantly, into winter this year.
While I worked, I tried to focus on the task at hand—measuring oatmeal and baking powder, doubling a recipe in my head. But the news fills my mind….and it is not good. I read, last week, a section of Alexi Navalny’s diary from prison that was in the New Yorker. He came back to his country, knowing he would be arrested and probably die and he said, “I have my country and my convictions. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.” (p 45, 10/21/24) And that idea melded with the end of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. He did not step up to protect a friend from a bully and regretted the action for ever. Later, he observed:
For me, though, it did matter. It still does. I should've stepped in; fourth grade is no excuse. Besides, it doesn't get easier with time, and twelve years later, when Vietnam presented much harder choices, some practice at being brave might've helped a little. (P. 150)
We will be facing some difficult times ahead no matter who wins this election. Climate change is with us. Challenges to our rule of law, our democracy will continue. Are we practicing standing up for our convictions, now, when things are little less fraught? How we will behave in the coming years, if we are not?
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