Danger, Danger!!!

An expert in authoritarian regimes, Sarah Kendzior captures the danger like this:  

Authoritarianism is not merely a matter of state control, it is something that eats away at who you are. It makes you afraid, and fear can make you cruel. It compels you to conform and to comply and accept things that you would never accept, to do things you never thought you would do.  

Authoritarian regimes, she says,  

… can take everything from you in material terms—your house, your job, your ability to speak and move freely. They cannot take away who you truly are. They can never truly know you, and that is your power. But to protect and wield this power, you need to know yourself—right now, before their methods permeate, before you accept the obscene and unthinkable as normal.   

We are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave—and it is often hard to be brave—be kind. But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value. [1]  

Take note of the date of this original post.

[1] Sarah Kendzior, “We’re Heading into Dark Times. This Is How to Be Your Own Light in the Age of Trump,” The Correspondent (online news platform), November 18, 2016. 

Vive le Canada!

I am Franco-American. What does it mean to be a Franco-American? Let's just say, it's personal. My French Canadian grandparents, Memere, Marie Laure, and Pepere, Arthur, were born in the Province of Quebec in the village of St. Patrice de Beaurivage (beautiful shore). Early in their marriage they emigrated to the United States. Their Quebecois roots outlasted their departure from a homeland they loved and shared through language, food, faith, and music with their many descendents.

Like many immigrants to the U.S., they sought work opportunities. During the industrial revolution that meant mill jobs. My first-generation American-born mother was a "mill girl".  Her education ended at grade 10. She talked about twelve-hour days standing on her feet in hot, unventilated, noisy vast rooms where textiles were made on huge looms. Her paltry pay was turned over to help the large family in which she grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. Those same Mills are now part of the National Park Service* where those conditions have been replicated. Noise-cancelling headphones are handed out to visitors as a precaution to the deafening slamming of loom against loom. I chose not to wear them for the

one hour when I walked in my mother's well-worn shoes. Her beginnings were so unlike my own, yet we shared a Franco-American heritage. Hers is a story of another time, while at the same time being deeply embedded within my own.

There is no way to shake loose from family folklore and rituals even when no longer practiced. My many cousins have a million stories to share whenever we get together. We help each other to remember the Sunday dinners after Mass; the Saturday suppers of toutiere (pork pies), a staple in all our households; the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve followed by the reveillon de Noel (more pork pies!); the required French spoken with Memere and Pepere, even as we struggled in our bi-lingual classrooms to read and write the phrases we knew by heart; the Uncles with their fiddles (everyone had one, hand-made by Pepere).**

"Little Canada" where my grandparents settled in their adopted country was surrounded by the "Irish", the "Greek", the "Polish" people, each with their own customs and foods and music. They had their celebrations, we had ours, and sometimes it all overlapped in one gigantic melting pot!

Canadians are not Americans, anymore than Americans are Canadians. How could they be? Erasing cultures is impossible. Everything embedded in a person, say in a Franco-American girl, is once and for all.

I'll never stop wanting the "perfect crepe" that my mother made from her mother's recipe. I'll never stop seeing clothing as a fabric made by someone at a loom. I'll never stop remembering the words of "O Canada" which we sang in our Catholic school after the Pledge of Allegiance. I'll never forget the fiddles in the glass case in the parlor in my grandparents' home. Whenever they opened those French doors to the otherwise off-limit room, there was stomping and singing and playing music of a heritage harking back to Vieux Quebec. The tiny French-speaking Province in the Great White North is a neighbor, not a foe, and for many a family.

Canadians, like Americans, fought for their freedom.

The 1774 Quebec Act*** gave the Quebecois, my grandparents, their place and language with local rights and customs and protected their Catholic religion. That act stands today.

This is a Canadian story passed along from grandparent to parent to daughters and sons. Nothing can change that history! Rien!

*https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/the-mill-girls-of-lowell.htm

**https://youtu.be/qno-ac4R7dU?si=egm5-D6WrUYit7Gp

***https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quebec-act

Waxing and Waning

"Bye-Bye Miss American Pie"* was a song written and played incessantly on the radio in the early 1970's. The lyrics were so obscure that it was never clear to anyone what we were singing about. It didn't matter. Still doesn't, because the prophetic words evoked something about to be lost forever.

As the memory of a song fades, so with it goes an era. Were those better days? Well, compared with what? If we look at the Middle Ages with its Black Death and barbaric laws imposed from Church and State combined, the answer is yes. As compared with the US Civil War, when the homeland was ravaged by horrors? Again, yes. When we turn our eyes back to the 1960's, '70's, '80's, '90's it is easy for some of us to say those days were better than before, while waxing nostalgic.

Each generation,overlapping with the next, creates a narrative of our times, our lifetimes. Stories are unique, but a shared history places us in a particular time together. These are our times.

As I go about my daily life it is impossible to comprehend that while I take my seat at my writing desk, or, order my online groceries,( a habit since COVID), or, walk in the late afternoon, or play my piano, or text with my kids, or Zoom with my friends, or, rise at 3 am to see the full lunar eclipse (only chance in five years), or, sit in meditation in the evening, or, fill the car with gas, or, cook dinner, or sleep "perchance to dream", that these days are fast becoming the "good old days".

As I write, and as you read, we are on the precipice of plunging into a life and world order that shakes everything that has been the status quo for entire lifetimes.

Younger generations on the rise cannot know all that this implies. Others caught in the middle will have to scramble as the rug is pulled from under their planned trajectories. Those of us of a certain age, have the benefit and dread of hindsight. We understand our hard-won rights because we were there to fight for them. We know the truth of a segregated world because we saw school kids from one neighborhood get bussed to another. We still lament ill-fated decisions made by our government to send our able-bodied young friends to foreign countries to fight and die. We witnessed assassinations that fractured hope for freedom that some leaders dared to dream. Is this nostalgia for an America soon to be lost? Yes and no.

As compared with today, when we are living under the threat of a couple of greedy white men with tentacles reaching across borders while strangling those within our own, there is way too much normalcy in our daily living. Chicken Little is screaming his head off for us to look up to see the skywriting before it disappears.

Bye-Bye Miss American Pie . . .

"Oh, and while the king was looking down

The jester stole his thorny crown

The courtroom was adjourned

No verdict was returned . . ."

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z13vOA7s0FI

The full Blood Worm Moon is seen during a total lunar eclipse on March 14, 2025 in Merritt Island, Florida. (Image credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)