Day: December 3, 2016

Dogs and children are very different things, but there are similarities. Both are easily bribed and hard to train well.

Maria and I are heading to Brooklyn Sunday morning, we are getting up before 5 a.m. and heading to the train station in Albany. I hope to rush over to B & H Photo to check out a portrait lens I am hoping to purchase soon, then taking the subway out to Brooklyn.

We are bringing Robin two board books,  two rattles (they make a  lot of different noises) and this little stuffed animal – a bear, I think – that we got at Battenkill Books this afternoon. Hope to have lunch with Emma and Jay and Robin and maybe take her for a walk. Going to be chilly tomorrow. We’re taking an early evening train back.

This will be the holiday visit, I don’t think we’ll be back before 2017. I love these short hits to New York City, traveling to and through the city is never simple, but it will be good to catch up with Emma and her daughter.

The other thing about babies and puppies is that is great to visit them, and then leave. People say that one reason grandparent love is so pure is that grandparents aren’t really responsible for much, other than spoiling babies, hugging them and getting out of there.

Since I last saw Robin, I can see that she’s changed quite a bit. I love bribing  babies.

She said she wanted to meet us, she had something to show us. Treasure asked to meet us in the Cumberland Farms parking lot on Main Street, she had just come from the arts and crafts fair being held at the local high school. Treasure was exhausted and freezing, she had been outside all day, but she pulled a score of her hand-made creations out of the trunk and gave one of them to Maria.

Dream catchers of twigs, sinew and feathers have been made for centuries by the Ojibwa and other peoples.

I love Treasure, she has a pure heart and great spirit and whenever I am with her, I feel her love and warmth. She has the air of the prophet about her. She and her partner Donna helped us to rescue the four Romneys, the Gang Of Four.  She loves animals and speaks to their spirits.

I always appreciate the chance to take her photograph, her face is so full of character. I love sharing some of the remarkable people that I know. I think of Treasure herself as a dream catcher, it is simply who she is. We stood outside for ten or fifteen minutes, and she was so tired, she went home to rest. Glad she called.

A month ago, I was shocked by the election, and I realized that I had lost touch with at least half of my own country, perhaps more. I was briefly fooled into thinking that the way our news media covers the news would prepare me for what was going to happen, that it would inform me as to the mood and drift of the country. And I had absolutely no doubt as to what would happen.

And I could not have been more wrong.

I take responsibility for being deaf, dumb and blind to what was really happening to the relatively small confines of my world. I resolved to not be one of those people lamenting and whining and wringing my hands about the end of democracy and Western Civilization, I do not hear the jackboots marching down to the White House or my farm.

I wish to open my eyes and ears and mind and learn what I need to learn and grow where I need to grow and change where I need to change. And keep my own ideals, of course.

I will simply not be consumed by fear and anger and argument for a good portion of my remaining years. Everyone is free to make their own choice that is mine. I reject the labels of the left and the right. We are all responsible for our beliefs.

This morning, I was startled to read that Donald Trump has been yakking with foreign leaders on the phone. Some were leaders no American President has talked to for decades, one was one raging a brutal war against drug dealers in his own country, a conflict that our laws and traditions would have forbidden. Another was a brutal dictator contemptuous of American polices, traditions and politics.

Each of the calls was controversial and radical in its own way, in that they occurred beyond the control and  policies of the institutions of diplomacy and government. Watching the huffing and clucking, I couldn’t help but think of Buckingham Palace, and the hide-bound bureaucrats of royalty and their dread of informality or change.

Good for Mr. Trump, I thought, can talking to other leaders really be such a bad thing? How deep does this new American idea go of hating and avoiding what we disagree with?

Perhaps if these powerful people talked to one another more often and casually and openly, it would harder for them to wage war on one another, and on their own people. Isn’t it important for us to talk to one another rather than retreat into our rigid ideologies and positions and dogma?

I made an effort to suspend knee-jerk judgment and self-righteousness. To start listening. In a way, Mr. Trump was, perhaps unconsciously, advocating for peace and connection. I can’t know his motives.

In his powerful encyclical, Laudato Si, Pope Francis wrote that when media and the digital world become omnipresent in our civic life, their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously.

Globalism, disembodied communications, the effect of technological innovations, we now see, have had a devastating effect on employment, social exclusion, an inequitable distribution of wealth, social breakdown, increased violence and rise in new forms of social aggression.

We are coming to see that we can’t judge the quality of life and progress solely on the profits of corporations and the wealthy.

If the election reminded me of nothing else, it is that have to learn once more how to speak to other people in a civil way, not to simply judge them and call them names.  I have no great love for Mr. Trump – I wish he had appointed an unemployed steelworker to his cabinet, rather than Generals and billionaires. But all the more reason to listen to him and carefully consider what he is trying to do.

More than anything else, the people uttered a primal scream for change on November 8, and Mr. Trump is bringing them just what they asked for. I don’t pretend that I know how much good or how much bad is up ahead, I am eager to see. I do not believe the world is coming to an end, that our democracy is being dismantled, or that the Nazi’s are not at our doorstep.

Until the future is clearer, I will keep my mind open. Hysteria, fear and self-righteousness will not help a single frightened immigrant or poor person in need of health care or women seeking to control her own body or help a compassionate and fair-minded judge get to the Supreme Court.

That will all take some long and hard work.

I suppose that picking up the phone and talking to a dictator or world leader is a naive idea when it comes to diplomacy. We humble citizens cannot comprehend the secret symbols and meanings and rites of the powerful. We use disconnection as a powerful political tool, that policy seems a  failure to me.   We ignore people we dislike all the time. What precisely has that accomplished?

I couldn’t help but think of myself in all of this. I have learned in recent years never to try to resolve conflict and misunderstanding through intermediaries or  Facebook messengers or e-mails or blog posts or rigid ideological positions. That solves nothing, indirect communications are disastrous when it comes to  exploring or resolving conflicts.

When there is confusion or conflict, I do just try to do what Mr. Trump does. I pick up the  phone.

Recently, a student messaged me that she was taking an abrupt turn in her writing, moving in a direction that seemed impulsive and mistaken to me.

I tried e-mailing to set up a phone talk, but she messaged back that she didn’t wish to speak on the phone, she would prefer meeting face to face.

This got my back up a bit, and I said I didn’t have time to meet face to face, our business would only take a few minutes. I was very busy that week, and not inclined to let a student dictate my time and style of communicating. I started wondering if she should stay in the class. I was annoyed that she wasn’t respecting my time and workload. The tone of our e-mails got stiffer and more tense.

But she is a valued student and a gifted and sensitive one, and the silliness of this way of communicating struck me. I picked up the phone and dialed her number and she got right on the phone. In just a seconds, I realized what the problem was, it was in her own personal life, and had nothing to do with me or her writing. We were both happy and relieved to speak to one another, I could feel the tension melting away. In several minutes, we had explored her new direction, reached full agreement on it, and agreed to have lunch in a week or so. My e-mail impressions of what was happening were completely wrong and could have caused harm.

E-mail and texts are a bad way to resolve conflict. Watching Donald Trump’s burst of informal conversations with foreign leaders – media and diplomats are all aghast at his complete avoidance of protocol and diplomatic nuance – I wondered if it is really such a terrible thing to be able to pick up the phone and talk with the people we fear and disagree with? Aren’t those the very people we most urgently need to talk to? Perhaps it’s time to push the hide-bound bureaucrats away and try something different?

Bureaucrats and journalists hate this kind of informality, it takes away so much of their power.

I think Americans are losing the knack of talking to one another directly, and resolving their differences away from the anger and misunderstanding of disconnection. We so rarely see one another any more, it is even rarer to resolve differences face to face, the very best way to resolve them. I hope Mr. Trump is trying to address that, not just say on TV.

We are obsessed with controversy and outrage.  We can’t see beyond it.

The questions and arguments started right up and raged all day. Why didn’t Mr. Trump go through channels? Why wasn’t he briefed more thoroughly on the implications involved? Why did he praise the very popular foreign leader who advocated the execution of drug dealers outside of due legal process?

But isn’t that only part of the story? And who appointed us the Lords of the world, the judge and jury for the earth?

I do not tell other people what to do, and I certainly cannot honestly judge the decisions of people and leaders I have ever met or seen from thousands of miles away. Some of these conversations  made me queasy for a number of reasons, as Mr. Trump himself makes me uneasy for a number of reasons.

I speak for no one but myself, he speaks to and for many millions of good and hard-working people. I want to understand the conversation, not just cluck my tongue about it.

When I step back and think of my own life, and of the Imperial Government that has sprung up around our leaders – the palaces, gates, motorcades, protocols, bureaucrats, flunkies, lobbyists, aides and procedures, I see that this is part of the change people were clamoring for this year. Mr. Trump may change that dynamic, he may become another prisoner of it. I don’t know.

A President who can’t talk with other leaders without the involvement and support of a vast bureaucracy can’t talk to his or her own people either. And doesn’t. It sometimes feel that our Presidents have become Kings, they are so far removed from us. People in democracies hate Kings.

So Mr. Trump is evoking an ethic that has also entered my own life – when there is conflict or misunderstanding, I always insist on talking to the other person directly. It is the times I didn’t speak directly that I most regret. Conflict thrives on misunderstanding and distance.

I was once a best-selling Imperial Author, no one ever got to speak to me face to face, that was considered heretic. Today, scores, sometimes hundreds of people e-mail me or message me to tell me what food to give my dogs.

I strive to study the news with more detachment, and less judgement about what is appropriate and what is not. Truthfully, I rarely know for sure what to believe and no one has appointed me their judge. I do not live in a black and white world. I seek humility, not more arrogance. I know what is right and wrong for me, not for you.

I want to learn what I need to learn and know what I need to know. If there is a time and place for me stop watching and start acting, I will be there, for sure. And I will know that time when it comes. The philosophers have long argued that we learn more from the people we fear and disagree with than anyone else in our lives.

In my own life I am drawn to the idea of more community, not less, more direct conversations, not fewer, no obstacles to face-to-face meetings and conversations, not more obstacles. That is when community lives, peace has a chance, and the world can come together, not only be torn apart. Pick up the phone.

War and disaster come when leaders and people stop speaking, not when they do. I don’t care for many of the things our new President says, but I do credit him with being willing to talk with almost everybody. I believe good will come of that, in his life, and in my life.

The Quakers, among the world’s great peacemakers, have long advocated that powerful people learn to speak to one another, often and openly. I hope the idea spreads.

I believe we need to learn how to talk to one another again. How to live wisely, think deeply and to love generously. I can’t control what Mr. Trump does or does not do,  but I feel, partly because of him, that I am on my path now.

Red is the sweetest dog away from the sheep, inside the pasture gate he is a true authoritarian, humorless, insistent, ruthlessly focused. His gaze will free a flock of sheep right in their tracks,and hold them where they stand until somebody blinks. Red never blinks.