- Celebrating the America We Love …for Real! - October 17, 2025
- IMHO …… - October 6, 2025
- Bring Me Your Tired, Your Poor - September 25, 2025
… Without it, HOPE is just another four-letter word.
Hello again, Rascals & Non … here we are more than halfway through not only the month of June but the year 2025, which will in all probability go down in history as momentous, to say the least. But how will it be remembered and how will it be recorded?
Will 2025 be the year characterized by Courage or Capitulation? Can we learn (as I said in a recent post) how to Dance on Broken Glass? Will we create and nurture enough Collective Momentum in time to rescue our Democracy or will we be taken over by the Autocratic Breakthrough that much of America is sleepwalking further into every day?
Last Saturday, dressed in full Raging Granny regalia and on my way to the “No Kings” gathering in Tigard, Oregon where I joined 21 other Portland Raging Grannies and some 1,500 Oregonians of all ages, sizes, and colors, I was confronted more than once by folks curious to know “what is going on?” and “what are you protesting?” (Seriously?!) Enough said about that. Here’s a picture … in my book still worth at least a thousand words. And BTW, if you’d like to see the Portland Raging Grannies in action, some of them will be gracing the Sanctuary of the West Hills UU Fellowship in Southwest Portland on Sunday, July 6th as part of our “Poetry & Music of Resistance & Protest”. If you’re local to the Portland area, join us in person or watch it on our YouTube channel.
Let’s take a minute to shift gears and breathe in the words of what I consider to be Wendell Berry’s most provocative poem. He has a lot of poems and I love them all, but this is the one that always gives me pause … usually accompanied by tears.
Questionnaire
by Wendell BerryHow much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroyIn the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.
In 1963 I was a 23-year old wife and mother just trying to keep up with three rambunctious offspring and live up to the expectations of ‘60s housewifery. I had no time for the Big Picture. 63 years rocked and rolled their way to Now, and at 86 I am blessed with time and energy to do what I can to cast light on the darkness that Democracy dies in. And bless his aging rascal heart, Bob Dylan, who first sang this song in 1963 is still around too. Safe to say we’ve both changed a lot!
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I like to point my readers in directions they might be interested in, but haven’t yet come upon. Given the month so far, this Light Waves missive could be very dark, but I will try to shed some Light in those dark places and maybe even a bit of Joy. As we say in some circles, “Take what you need and leave the rest”.
Trent Corbin, whom I’m growing fonder of by the day, offers provocative insights via “America’s Undoing”, which sounds ominous, but I find well worth reading. Here you can visit his podcast and its transcript. And here’s another one from Trent with a little different slant. 5,000 People Just Showed Up in Red Tennessee. Here’s Why.
The Conversation, self-described as Academic rigor with journalistic flair, gets my attention some days more than others. Here are links to two that lit a little fire in me recently. Scholar on Orwell on rewriting history today & What is CREC? The Christian nationalist group has a vision for America – and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s support.
Something I hear a lot lately is encouragement to fact-check the information we receive, even if it’s coming from sources we have deemed reliable in the past. Things change. Capitulation happens where we least expect it. What Timothy Snyder describes as “Capitulation in Advance” is a major contributor to the slide into fascism/tyranny/oligarchy/autocracy/dictatorship, as is the normalization of behavior that not very long ago would have been considered not only shocking but worthy of prosecution. Sound familiar? Example: I live in Washington County and if you happen to as well, you may have already seen this Opinion Piece in the Beaverton Valley Times. But if not, I encourage you to check it out. Thank you, Dorian Russell, for giving us “Washington County caving to Trump’s DEI demands erodes democracy, local power”.
And speaking of reliability and historical accuracy, I have to say that Thom Hartmann, (like Heather Cox Richardson) is one of my most trusted thinkers. If you’re one of his subscribers, you may have already seen his piece from June 20th … “How Autocratic Breakthrough Happens & How We Can Stop It” If not, here it is. It will take a bit of time to read it all, and I know you’ve got a busy day, but … here are Thom’s opening words. You decide.
The Trump administration has arrested a mayor, a judge, a member of Congress, and beaten a United States Senator to the ground. They’ve deployed the military, over the objections of the governor and mayor, into a major American city. We just experienced a political assassination.
What does all this mean?
“Autocratic breakthrough” is a phrase you’ll be hearing more and more about in coming months. It refers to the moment in time when a wannabe dictator and the oligarchy that supports him push a democratic country toward authoritarianism so far that its political systems “break through” into full-blown autocracy/dictatorship.
All Right! Enough Already!! I promised Light … and what better than this from Regina Brett, whose Substack newsletter, Little Detours, is another of my favorites. What was that about a picture being worth a thousand words? As she says … Art has the power to save us. I could not agree more. Take a stroll with Regina through the Cleveland Museum of Art. And if you happen to be a Clevelander, aren’t you a lucky one to maybe visit in person! 
Last but not least … Speaking of ACTION, don’t forget that 5 Calls App you can put on your phone. And just for good measure, here’s a beautiful reminder about music from an unexpected source.
This morning I have been pondering a nearly forgotten lesson I learned in high school music. Sometimes in band or choir, music requires players or singers to hold a note longer than they actually can. In those cases, we were taught to mindfully stagger taking a breath so the sound appeared uninterrupted. Everyone got to breathe, and the music stayed strong and vibrant.
Yesterday I read an article that suggested the administration’s litany of bad executive orders is a way of giving us “protest fatigue” – literally causing us to lose our will to continue the fight in the face of the onslaught of negative action. Let’s remember MUSIC. Take a breath. The rest of the chorus will sing. The rest of the band will play. Rejoin so others can also take a breath. Together, we can sustain a very long, beautiful song for a very, very long time. You don’t have to do it all, but you must add your voice to the song.
With special love to all the musicians and music teachers in my life, Michael Moore
So … until we meet again, please also remind yourself to sing and dance a little every day and exercise those laugh muscles whenever you can. As Joyce Vance likes to say, “We’re all in this together”. For me, believing that to be true, makes Hope so much more than just another 4-letter word. And so does this song by Holly Near.