Hi friends,
I’m assigning some reading and encouraging you to make two phone calls.
Timothy Snyder, historian and intellectual, prefaces his thoughts about what Biden might do by calling on us to use our imagination.
This is a time when we need imagination more than impulse. Because the stakes are high, our emotions speak loud and clear. We might admire the president, and so find change hard to imagine. We might fear the future, and so avoid the additional fear associated with change in the present. But when we listen to our own fears we could be screening out our fellow Americans.
I took 3 minutes to make two calls this morning: one to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (202-225-5936) and one to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (202-224-6542).
Say what you want. Here’s what I said:
I agree that Biden has been a very good president. What is at stake now is not only his legacy, but our future. I am working to get out the vote for whoever the Democrats run. I believe it is a mistake for Biden to run again. Please tell the president what you're hearing from the voters.
Here’s a poem, because it is always a good time for the transcendent power of art.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
with love,
L