I am writing this from my hotel room in the Wicklow mountains of Ireland. I was awakened this morning by what I thought was the sound of the steam heat going on. I was wrong. It was dripping from a hatch in the ceiling of my room. A steady drip of water was landing right in my left boot. I was planning to wear those boots home and so, I jumped into action, calling the front desk, moving the boot, getting a plastic waste bin under the leak and a towel on the carpet to soak up the water. The front desk rang back and sent a maintenance man to check out the leak. He rapped on my door and came in with a ladder. Opening the hatch, a small stream of water cascaded onto the floor. I spied a bucket sitting on the rafter above the hatch and more hotel towels around that.
“Aha,” I thought to myself. “It’s great to see that I am not the only one who does things temporarily.” The man emptied the bucket in the toilet, returned it to its place, placed fresh towels around it, mumbled an apology and walked out. Perhaps the hotel may work on the problem, but like a lot of problems, it most likely will persist until something really drastic happens, like the ceiling falling in. And so, things move along.
I, too, must move along. It has been 18 days since I last was home and today will become a long day of driving to the airport with my tour group, checking in the luggage, last minute duty free, going through customs, getting onto the airplane and hopefully, on-time on this dreary rainy day, this plane will fly me home.
Being away from home has made me acutely aware of home. The news of what is happening in my neighborhood comes in on texts and emails. People being taken off the streets and the tension that comes with not knowing when that will happen. The collateral damage of these actions is that an unsettling stress sets in. Fear that anyone can really be subject to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s one thing when it is crime, but another thing when sanctioned and cheered on by your government. Where my siblings live, far away from urban Chicago, there will be no worry about these sorts of actions. The steady drip, drip of democracy being attacked is not on their radar. And if it is, they, like the maintenance man in my room, will bring in a ladder, empty a bucket and replace it, moving the problem to another day, and only allowing it to increase in scope and size until the ceiling gives in. It is easy to pretend that there are no consequences for not maintaining democracy. But a day of reckoning will come.
The rain continues here as I write. I can see it falling in steady streams, unrelenting as it comes down over the deep green Irish landscape. We are living right now in a steady cold rain in America. We know that we have a problem with our democracy. And this time, we cannot really afford to kick that problem down the road. The dripping problem has to be addressed before it becomes too big to ignore. Or else, there will be no safe place for anyone, just a miserable, cold, sodden shell of what was once a beautiful, elegant room.
READ MARTIN'S OTHER BLOG HERE.