Once Upon a Time . . .

B.C., before Covid, before 9/11, There was an "American Dream"narrative many believed. That dream followed Americans from childhood all the way through adulthood then well into the "Golden Years." We lived on a consistent message that these United States of America held a certain promise that was guaranteed by the words written into the U.S. Constitution before we were born. Before now, we took that promise for granted, assuming it would stand the test of time for all time, or at the very least, for our own lifetime! Think again, my fellow Americans.

In 2016, on a frigid, snowy Sunday morning in an historic, New England church where many sermons and hymns had been sung before, a retired minister stood up unapologetically to say that although it had not been his practice to speak politically from the pulpit, this day he knew he had to. He was about to send up a warning flare like the night the Titanic did so. In vain.

In the 1960's, his mother had been an activist, he said. She had spoken up and worked against those who tried to oppress all others who belonged to the "protected" classes* under the Constitution. She had taught her son to speak up and that brought him to where he was standing on this day before a small congregation in one of the poorest, most depressed cities in the State of Massachusetts. He told us that when his mother passed away, he discovered a full dossier of her activism assembled by the FBI. He, too, as a young man had been documented for his affiliations with his mother! That didn't stop either one of them from speaking up, out, and outloud about the injustices many Americans suffered on a daily basis.

Their words and actions, along with many others, were instrumental in making it possible for everyone to vote, regardles; making it possible for women to receive safe, legal reproductive health care in their own community; making it possible to find asylum from brutal dictators elsewhere; making it possible to become an educated citizen through local schools; making it possible to breathe clean air and drink safe water; making it possible to attend synagogue or mosque or church without fear. This was the short list of possibilities that the minister juxtaposed against the long list of Presidential candidates that Spring in 2016. Then, this retired minister living out his Golden Years, spoke like a prophet that morning:

"We thought we had addressed and resolved many of the wrongs. We were the ones who were wrong! All the hatred, all the prejudice, all the evil, had just gone into a Pandora's Box. Now, in 2016, someone has the key and is about to open it in the next four years."

In 2023, we can attest to those prophetic words having been written into our American story. We American citizens must face this truth head on before it's too late. Too late for what? To late to speak freely, to write freely, to read freely (almost too late already), and to vote freely, which is becoming as precarious as in dictatorships that so many people flee against all odds. Is this the ending we want to write?

In 2024 . . . If we do not wish our story of a free democracy to come to an end, we must, each of us, act now, speak up now, against that very real and very present danger against OUR Democracy.

In the end, Pandora did open that box and unleashed all that was evil on an innocent world. But, the preacher told us not to forget that inside the box, there was also Hope!

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*www.eeoc.gov race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic information (including family medical history).

“The frogs (and unicorns and dinosaurs) will be defining ideographs of this period of struggle.”*

Posse Comitatus: A group of people who are mobilized by the sheriff

A 150-year-old United States Federal Law that:

• bars Federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement except when expressly authorized by law

• embodies an American tradition that sees military interference as a threat to democracy and personal liberty

• no constitutional exceptions

  
  

  That said, there are lots of loopholes as work arounds.

• History of the 1878 Act:

  
  

• passed after the end of Reconstruction and the return of white supremacists to political power in both southern states and Congress

• consists of one sentence ending with ". . .(Whoever) willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus. . .shall be fined. . .or imprisoned not more than two years, or both"**

No Kings Day crowds everywhere outnumbered those Posses, including military-style police that showed up where I and my neighbors joined in. Since last winter, when I attended the first loosely organized gathering the numbers have grown exponentially from 50 to 3,000 who turned out in full frog and chicken and unicorn regalia!

*Lisa Corigan quote from heathercoxrichardson@substack.com

**brennancenter.org

KINGfishers with nothing to prove.

A good friend moved from Florida to go back home where the birds that he knows live. I get that. Birds define habitats by their sounds, and colors. I've been a birdwatcher for as long as I can remember. Whenever I changed habitats, I discovered birds for the first time. On Cape Cod, I was awed by the elegance of prehistoric herons in flight. I learned that Ospreys nesting on the towers had made a comeback from near extinction. Songbirds in my backyard woke me early in the morning, summer, spring, and fall. Winter fell silent when the birds took off on the Atlantic Flyway. These days, I live on their flight path.

While I have been recovering from a medical procedure, nothing has been better than sitting with binoculars to welcome back my feathered friends. While summer lingers in Northeast Florida, I sometimes forget that back home the seasons are turning. The first few years that I lived here, I had to check the calendar to see which month it was. October was sweater weather in my mind, but I was still swimming in the pool. Since acclimating to these longer seasons, I look to the birds to tell me the time of year. Kingfishers are the colorful harbingers of all those other birds soon to follow.

Arriving from as far away as my grandparents' homeland, they crossed the border between Canada and the US, tariff free! Nobody could catch 'em or detain them for doing what Kingfishers do, naturally. Wish that it were so for those currently stopped from moving freely in the "land of the free".

Used to be that crossing the Canadian border, without a passport, at the drop of a hat to camp in "Novy" (Nova Scotia) was popular. A drive up for Canadian Thanksgiving (October 13), during peak foliage season through rural Vermont and back down through rugged Maine, was a weekend thing. Not so long ago, my daughter's high school French class spent the week in Old Quebec at the iconic Chateau Frontenac. No questions asked.

"Snowbirds"(folks from Canada) used to come and go from the Great White North to winter here in Sunny Florida. Their absence is noticeable, not only economically, but culturally. Maybe it is my heritage speaking, but I can spot a Canadian in a crowd! It is like spotting that red-headed woodpecker flitting from tree to tree by its distinctive calling card.

On one side of my townhouse is a river where the Kingfishers, Ospreys, Blue and White Herons and Roseate Spoonbills soar high and low, sharing the fishing grounds on the changing tides. Above it all flies the American Eagle, "national bird" of the US. Notable by its size, but mostly identifiable by the way it makes time crossing the river with just a few flaps of those eight-foot wings, like none other. One so mighty does not have to show off its might to the one named KINGfisher, her rat-a-ta-tat call that says she is hanging around here for a while. They co-exist, along with all the varieties of blue, red, brown, black and white.

Living on the Atlantic Flyway is like waiting for the world to come to you. When it becomes frosty in the early mornings, my favorite of all will appear magically one day gliding on the river. White pelicans look like swans passing by. At high noon, they can be seen soaring majestically up and up on the thermals like angels with silver wings. They stop over on the way to their breeding grounds on the Southern border where they are free to come and go, as they please.

Wish that it were so . . .