Walking Helps, History Hurts…

I’ve been walking 32 blocks every day since December 31st except for Friday. Friday it was raining, so I decided to stay indoors and wait for a better day. I don’t plan to walk on weekends, but if I miss a day or two due to rain, I’ll make it up on the weekends.

 

Walking helps me feel better. I live in a semi-rural area so when I go out, I’m surrounded by nature, walking along acres of fenced pastures containing cattle, goats, llamas, alpacas, chickens, dogs, and various species of birds, from chickadees to crows to bald eagles.

 

So there’s always something lovely to look at, and other beings to smile at or talk to. And on the final leg of the journey I face Mount Rainier for at least ten minutes. It never fails to draw my attention, sticking up the way it does from its foothills, metaphorically proud, literally majestic.

 

 This time of year, I also read a lot, at the rate of about three books per week. This week I read three books, one of them massive: The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History by Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes. I got it at St Vincent’s for a dollar.

 

It helped me realize how blessed I am to live here when I do. Because it wasn’t all that long before I was born (in 1951) that the Pacific Northwest was a hinterland–hard to get to, hard to make a living in, hard to survive during inclement weather. The Natives who lived here knew how to do it without destroying it, but short-sighted, “manifest destiny”-brainwashed European immigrants were a ham-handed bunch, most of them accustomed to living in well-organized, fully-civilized (the white man’s rules and regulations in place) eastern cities.

 

The first white American citizens to cross the Continental Divide  were trappers, mappers and other intrepid, mostly-solitary explorers, most of whom were welcomed and aided by various Native tribes.

 

But as the immigration onslaught continued and treaties were ignored, native peoples began to understand that unless they took some kind of stand, they were doomed to inherit the wind and rocky, far-less-inhabitable outreaches, deprived of the buffalo and other indigenous species that had helped sustain them.

 

But by then the die was cast: it was far too late to mount an effective battle against further immigration. Federal armed forces had arrived,with forts and soldier patrols dotting the way west all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

 

Indian tribes that took a stand for land they’d inhabited for more than ten thousand years got killed by the newcomers.

 

Mexicans who’d owned land in the west from what is now British Columbia in the Northwest to what is now the Mexican border got killed by the newcomers.

 

Chinese and blacks got used to do the heavy lifting and then got legislated against so they couldn’t vote, own property or improve their own lots in life.

 

You know the story. For every advance European immigrants made, other cultures suffered.

 

Later, even the environment suffered as hordes of people sawed down forests, polluted rivers, dammed major waterways (denying salmon the only natural routes to their spawning grounds), and created arsenic-belching towers, the result of manufacturing the region’s resources.

 

And here I am, the beneficiary of all that, my heart burdened by what it cost so many people–native and pioneer–and so many animals–beaver, mink, bison, coyotes, wolves, bears, otters, burros, oxen, mules, and more–for me to be walking here, enjoying what’s left…

 

A Neighbor’s Holly Tree                               Next Door (more or less) Neigh-bor

Moo-ving right along….                            here’s some pampas grass on 96th…

Two cool, old-style barns on 48th Ave East and 96th Street

“My” Mount Rainier                                        A neighbor’s goats

(I took this photo today.)                         (His llamas weren’t out today.)

                    A field of cattle                                       and a horse-boarding Facility on 96th….

 

A Neighbor’s Bird Brains

One of A Neighbor’s Exotic Funky Chickens

 

…and then there’s this boney neighbor…

So it’s impossible for me to kill a marauding, chicken-killing  raccoon or coyote. They’re among the survivors of a century and a half of systematic slaughter.

 

And I’d find it hard to find fault with a marginalized human caught in the act of stealing from me because most of them, too, are survivors of many centuries of systematic marginalization: few will hire them and those who do all too often pay so little that they’re still living homeless or in their cars despite holding down two or three part-time jobs.

 

I ask myself, what would I do if I had too little income despite working long hours, or no income because I’d been worn down and out from looking and applying and had no luck?  Curl up in a heap and die? Or do whatever it took, including stealing from those who have plenty, dealing or transporting drugs, prostituting myself, or doing whatever else was available to me to keep hope alive in the hope that things might get better for me tomorrow as long as I find some way to keep my head above water today?

 

OK, that was a downer. But it’s life, and it’s part of our history and the legacy of imperfect–even pathetic–policies, past and present.

 

The fact is, every time I read an unexpurgated history book about America, I get upset.

 

I was sure sold a bill of goods when I was in school about what a blessed, exalted land this is.

 

The books always neglected to add “for white, property-owning men”. The rest of us? Not so much. We’ve always been necessary “means to an end”–white men’s end.

But not all white men are opportunistic predators. Not by a long shot. Many are feminists and on the forefront of correcting the most egregious situations: Bernie Sanders is among them.

 

It’s just that so many white men in positions to help are clueless when it comes to the privilege they inherited when they were born white and moneyed. Here’s a great primer on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K5fbQ1-zps

 

The above takes a atd over four minutes to watch. It’s the pondering that follows that takes a while. When it all finally sinks in, it’s a wake-up call for a lot of people in power–and for people who will one day be in power. They should watch it on a monthly basis to remind them.

 

The Rest of this Week’s and Last Week’s Reading List

 

Grand Theft Jesus (about the theft of the historical Jesus by far-right wingnuts who are busy doing exactly the opposite of what Jesus preached and did. A book about the highjacking of religion by far-right zealots.)

Being Flynn (a memoir by an author whose absent father spent his life in a state of delusional dissolution; the younger Flynn finally meets him while working in a homeless shelter; the story is pathos squared, a truly brilliant book about how the sins of the father affect their children, even when they’re absent. Now a major motion picture.)

Primitive Skills and Crafts (I got interested in this as a result of revisiting the history of the Pacific Northwest)

The Language of Hoofbeats (a wonderful book by the author of Pay It Forward, if you’re familiar with that)

The Hate U Give (about the African-American experience in America from the perspective of one woman)

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint (about a Lutheran minister who ministers to the “down-and-outs” like herself)

Reading keeps me both sane and riled up, depending on the title and subject matter.

I can’t fathom people who don’t (won’t) read. I’ve lived several thousand lives because I read a lot. People call me smart, intelligent, brilliant. If I am, it’s because I read a lot, and have, from a very young age. That’s all it takes: opening yourself to other worlds and different perspectives. I’m not scared of much of anything, as a result.

I wish fearful people would read more about the things they’re afraid of. I think it would lessen their fears and they’d live less-stressful lives…and pass their new, more-relaxed status along to their loved ones.

Fear begets fear. Facts beget facts. Faith begets faith.

The truth will set you free–but sometimes it will piss you off first–ROYALLY!

Far-right folks, try BLINDED BY THE RIGHT: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, written by one of your own (well, formerly one of your own). He lets you know he and his cohorts made shit up out of whole cloth just to scare you into believing the party line about Democratic policies and people. And he’s sorry he started the ball rolling because he sees where it has rolled to, and what it has caused.

Let’s all wake up and move forward together in a direction that makes sense for everybody, not just for the chosen few. This is America. Our own ideals proclaim life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness a bedrock statute. To have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all people need work that pays sufficiently so we’re not always one paycheck away from homelessness, education enough to survive and compete in a global economy, health care as a right and not a privilege and other necessities that our taxes should be paying for instead of killing people of color in foreign wars in every direction we can point.

We’re killing more of our own people than they ever will because of the way we’re treating each other. Let’s stop that, shall we, and figure out what has to happen to give every American a shot at a life that’s worth living.

Amen and amen.

So while I’m walking, I’m thinking, “How can we make America truly great instead of just potentially great?”

While I’m walking, I’m thinking, “How can we de-escalate the us-versus-them meme that has been carefully erected to keep us from working together, walking together, and talking together to make things better for each other?”

What are your suggestions?

Mine would be at least two years of mandatory free education after high school. (Not necessarily all at once. Night school and weekend school can help schedule education around working hours.)

Studies in logic and debate.

Studies in public persuasion (including disinformation, so people can spot it a mile away).

The reading of at least one non-fiction book per month.

Twice a year (minimum), choose a nonfiction book that is highly-praised by people you believe you wholeheartedly disagree with politically, spiritually or economically. (Get a different perspective. You don’t have to adopt it. Just consider it so you aren’t treating people you disagree with like demons, devils and delusional idiots.)

I think the biggest threat to our nation is the lack of education and the fact that teachers teach us to recite/parrot back what they tell us to get a good grade instead of teaching us how to think, discern, and weigh the truth about what we’re told and what we hear. Educated people don’t scare as easily as uneducated people do.  (My little sister was deemed a rebel when she told her junior high school teacher that what he had said about male llamas wasn’t true. The teacher had stated that female llamas were kept for their milk, their hair and their ability to produce baby llamas and that male llamas were killed for their meat, skin and hair. When Jackie said, “If there were no male llamas, there wouldn’t be any female llamas or baby llamas.” HORRORS!!!!  The teenager was referring to reproduction! HORRORS! Bad girl, bad girl…)

And so it goes…