The Wild Winds of Fortune

Today begins Advent.

Lent, the other significant Christian season, has passed into popular culture, mostly as “the season to give up chocolate and beer.” Advent has not, perhaps because it is overshadowed by the “let’s drive ourselves crazy by overspending getting presents for people that in some cases they don’t need and occasionally don’t even want” frenzy.

Sadly, in the past few years Advent has become the time for spurious claims of a faux “War on Christmas.” The flashpoint this year was the plain red Starbucks cups, which those who look for persecution in every nook and cranny proclaimed that Starbucks was anti-Christmas. After all, last year they had red birds and snowmen, and those are clearly symbols of Christmas, right?

Those who claim that Starbucks is throwing away Christmas should go into one of their stores sometime. There, in the merchandise section, or maybe near the registers, sit the Advent calendars.

Advent calendars.

Advent calendars count down to Christmas. To the arrival of the Christ. They are about as Christian as you can get: more than Santa or his reindeer, more than mistletoe. Certainly more than generic red birds or the snowflakes which graced the cups in the past.

Starbucks doesn’t dismiss Christmas, it embraces it with both mermaid arms. If anything, people of other faiths should be understandably unhappy with the chain, except that almost every other chain in America does likewise.*

The entire issue would be entirely too silly to spend breath over, except it obscures a very real problem with Christianity in America. Far from being persecuted, all too often American Christians — especially fundamentalists — insist on persecuting others. Matters which properly belong between a person (usually a woman) and God become the province of a stern and oppressive government.  State legislatures felt no qualms about outlawing Shariah law and following that up with outlawing same-sex marriage because “it’s contrary to God’s law.” Abortion, even contraception, is forbidden because they decide what God requires for all of us. Contrary to what they claim, they are not interested in freedom of religion, if that means that other people get to express opinions or act in ways that do not comport with what they believe their stern and unforgiving God requires.**

Not all American Christians, of course. I know too many good and honorable Christians who nonetheless get tarred by the abusiveness that passes for religion in some quarters. Not all priests were pedophiles, either, not be a very long shot.

So, the squeaky fundamentalist wheel gets the media grease. Their insistence  that they are persecuted would be laughable, except that there are Christians in this world who are killed or tortured for their faith. There are places where being found carrying a Bible can mean prison. And, lest we forget history, places where a few decades ago wearing a simple silver cross might get you hauled in by the KGB.

Next to that, complaining about a paper cup looks almost obscene.

*The Resident Shrink, who is Jewish, for the past two years has been waging a letter writing campaign to our neighborhood store to get them to hang Hanukkah decorations. It hasn’t worked, yet.

**They claim that theirs is a forgiving God. They don’t act like it.

I love going to the farmer’s market on Sunday morning. I spend more than I usually would for the same produce as in the grocery store, but that’s only because I don’t buy organic at Safeway. Organics at the farmer’s market are cheaper.  And I can’t get Rainbow Farms fresh apple cider or Acme bread* at the supermarket. (I can’t get the cider for half the year at the farmer’s market, for that matter: they only sell it during the fall and winter.)

But most of all I love to people watch. All sorts of people go to the market; all ages, all enthnicities. The market gives a snapshot of the diversity which I love so much about this city, which is being eroded by insane housing prices and low wages** for non-tech workers.

Best of all are the families with small children. Four-year-olds with huge eyes holding tight to their dad’s hand while tasting a strawberry or sample of persimmon. Babies in strollers looking bored with the market but fascinated with their own toes.

The farmer’s market always has a musician playing. I usually tip buskers on general principle, but for whatever reason (probably because I usually do not go past where they are set up) I don’t often tip these guys.  The guitarist who was there this morning was pretty good, and was set up right near the Acme truck, so I was going to toss a little bit his way, when I was through standing in line to get my pain epi and sourdough loaves. (Long lines, but so worth it.)

Then a little boy who appeared to be about three showed up. The musician smiled warmly at him, talked to him for a minute, and then launched into one of the best versions of “Wheels on the Bus” I’ve ever heard, which was broadcast through the market. I mentally decided to double the musician’s tip for being so sweet to the little boy. Until he got to the last verse, which he sang as  “[spoken]This is totally shameless , but… [sung] when the people get off they tip their musician, tip their musician, tip their musician…”

I quadrupled his tip. The man deserved it.

*You can get some Acme bread at the local Costco, but not the particular varieties we eat.

**I am happy to report that the Mountain View City Council voted last week to have a $15 city-wide minimum wage by 2018.

Tonight the clocks are turned back. In a few hours, we will gain the sixty minutes we lost in March. It’s not much.

It’s one of my favorite days of the year.

Night is gentle, closing around like a cape full of stars. Daylight hurts, sometimes physically, always mentally. Summer makes me crazy — I do not have enough dark to recover from the light. Winter makes me calm.

Which is not to say, I don’t feel sadness, or pain, or depression during the winter. I do. But being able to walk open-eyed into my yard and not feel my skin crawling, as I sometimes do on the hottest and brightest days of summer and fall, makes everything better, more manageable.

People seem confused when I celebrate the summer solstice with gladness (the days will be getting shorter!) or the winter solstice, as beautiful and spirit-filling as it is, with a vague sadness, knowing that before too long the sunshine will stretch across the sky from early to late. Everyone seems to understand being depressed in the winter; they seem to reject the notion that summertime is just as bad for me.

I have friends who will be turning on their light boxes next week. They’ll be trying to recreate the sun they so desperately need. For some of them, November and December brings the same sort of pain that I feel in July and August. I’ll remember that. I’ll be sympathetic as they strive to cope with the winter nights.

I only hope they’ll do the same when I struggle with the summer days.

I despair of my country.

I have great hope for my country.

I despair of a country where two leading Republican candidates for President demonstrate a manifest unsuitability for that position, and engage in fear-mongering, misdirection, and outright falsehoods to bolster their popularity.

I hope for a country where the two leading Democrat candidates for President seem to understand the issues facing us, and offer solutions instead of blaming outsiders.

I despair of a country where guns are cheap and easily obtainable, and where when a mass shooting occurs our only response is to call for increased mental health services (all while mental health services across the country get cut).

I have hope that most of us have hit a breaking point, and that both gun control and mental health will get the attention and funding they deserve.

I despair of a country where forty-two percent of the populace do not believe in evolution.

I have hope that the increasing numbers of STEM graduates can make headway against the ignorance.

I despair of a country where young black men and women get harassed and killed by police officers all too frequently.

I have hope for a country where the Black Live Matters movement flourishes.

I despair of a country where a state can go to desperate lengths to get drugs just so they can kill somebody.

I have hope for a country where a state as red as Nebraska can decide that the death penalty is in no one’s interest.

I despair of a country that imprisons more of its people than any other in the Western world.

I hope for a country where calls for dealing with mass incarceration seem to increase daily.

For all our fear, for all our insularity, we have within us the promise that we can be great again. Not in the jingoistic, bullying way that Donald Trump would have us be, but as a good and ethical people who no longer shy away from our history.

I despair. I hope.

Dear New York Mets:

Thank you thank you thank you thank you. Even if the whole country wanted the Cubs to win the NLCS, you are still my Mets and I am very happy you are going to the World Series.

Just four more.

Signed,

Maybe your only fan in Silicon Valley.

********

Dear AirBnB:

Corporate taxes — and hotel taxes fall into that category — are not donations. You don’t get brownie points for actually having paid them, especially since you fought for years to avoid doing so.  The billboards passively-agressively hinting so are obnoxious.

Also, the fact that you ran these while in the middle of an election that could have a large effect on your bottom line showed …. incredibly poor political judgment. Don’t you have consultants who vet these sort of things for you?

Signed,

Someone who has a lick of political sense, unlike you guys.

********

Dear Sean Hannity (and, by extension, Donald Trump):

For heaven’s sake, check your sources. Repeating statistics off of fake news websites just makes you look like an idiot.  Although I’m not sure I care….

….except there are far too many people who rely on you for their world outlook. Stirring up resentment against the administration for things they’re not even doing may be par for the course with you, but it’s bad for the country.

Not that I think you care about that.

Signed

A person who actually knows how to read stuff on the Internet.

********

Dear Ben Carson:

Stop using the Nazis rhetorically. It’s offensive, and you have your facts wrong to boot. The Nazis did not restrict gun ownership except among Jews; in fact, they loosened the gun regulations that existed before Hitler took office. 

Somehow, I don’t think you’ll care much about that.

Signed,

A history major.

********

Dear Hillary:

I have not always been a fan, but I have to say you were mighty impressive in the ten-hour circus that was your grilling by (half of) the Select Committee on Benghazi. By staying calm, no matter how ridiculous and repetitive the Republicans’ questions were, you gave a master class in political cool.

I’m still rooting for Bernie, though.

Signed,

Not quite won over.

********

Dear Tammy Duckworth:

Wow. You managed to wrap a softball question up in tough sounding words so it actually looked like you were going after Clinton. I am assuming that her hitting it out of the park was your intended result.

Signed,

Someone who would be very happy to have you as my representative.

*******

Dear Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney, and everyone else who doesn’t know how the tax code works:

Stop using “taxes” when you really mean income taxes. Even people you despise for not paying income taxes are on the hook for payroll taxes, and excise taxes (not to mention state and local taxes, which are generally regressive).

And, even if what you said was true, and the top one percent paid forty-five percent of all taxes, I’m okay with that; they possess as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

Signed,

Disgruntled.

********

And finally…..

Dear CSI: Miami* writers:

No one, but no one, who lived in Miami would ever use the phrase “down to St. Pete.” St. Petersburg is over 250 miles northeast, taking I-75 across Alligator Alley and up the west side of the state. Next time, either say “up to St. Pete” or “down to Key West.” Sheesh.

I guess that’s what you get by being based in L.A.; still, given how many years the show was on before this episode, you could have looked a map sometime.

Signed,

Someone who lived there who knows basic geography.
*Yes, I know, CSI:Miami went off the air in 2012. I still watch episodes, in no small part because I like the stock shots of south Florida. (The interiors are all shot in California.)

When I was in my twenties, I remember visiting my parents and watching the Iran-Contra hearings on television. I was faintly embarrassed about the way my Dad would yell at the witnesses on the television, as though they could hear him.

This morning I watched the Benghazi hearings on television, and it was me who was yelling at the Congressmen and women. I guess I have gotten old enough where it doesn’t matter to me. Railfan was sitting in the same room playing on his Nintendo 3DS, and looking faintly embarrassed at my outbursts.

When I needed to go, I started to turn the television off. “Actually, mom, I’m listening to that,” he said.

In thirty years, I fully expect him to be yelling at the television in front of his kid. What goes around comes around.