Dear journal
Today is the first Sunday of November 2025. The temperatures here in Albuquerque will be in the seventies and sunny all week. There is something about the sweater weather of mornings and evenings combined with the sunshine of midday that makes me smile. The leaves are in their full color. I hear the first sounds of birds migrating as I write this. Soon the cranes will be stopping in the Bosque for a bit. I’ve household chores I’ve neglected that need to get done and a broccoli /cauliflower soup to make, but also a book I just started which is promising to be so good and a Dylan box set of early recordings which I wish to give my full attention. It is a day to look forward to here at first light and I’m already looking forward to the contentment of this eve with a cup of tea, a day casually enjoyed behind me, and a week of good work ahead of me.
Also, there are thoughts always in the back of my brain. A tyrant is in office. This month people will go hungry. Can anyone except millionaires afford health insurance premiums ? Will people be able to travel by air come Thanksgiving? Why can’t we deport non documented people without cruelty? Why do we need troops in our cities? Will the man who pardoned J6 rioters really invoke the insurrection act over peaceful protests? This whole rush to AI without regulations. And so on and so on and so on.
Nothing in either of the first two paragraphs negates the reality of either paragraph. It is in fact ok to have the day I intended and to push the thoughts of the second paragraph away. In fact in a strange way it makes the fact that today I can make a soup, sit outside in a sweater while reading a book, organize my cabinets while listening to Dylan, more precious. The cranes will come like they do every year. There is a comfort in that.
Bifurcation is always a part of our life. We separate home and work. (Yet I’m happier working from home). We have our public and our private sides. We put our worries about tomorrow away to enjoy the day or we spend a horrible day knowing there will be a better tomorrow. There is nothing new under the sun. Still, for me, I struggle for a balance at this time. My New Year’s resolution was not to do the type of obsessive news watching, doom scrolling I did during the first Trump administration. I think I’ve accomplished this even as I stay inform and up to date. I give myself breaks and then allow the shock to overwhelm me when I catch up. I feel the anger, the futility, and the fear. Then I say, I’m not going to let it impact my ability to have a good life. Then I feel guilty for not doing enough to change the future and then the sense of futility sets in and then…. I don’t think I’m alone in this balancing act
My work gives me solace. When I studied the protest groups of the sixties as a graduate student, I came to the conclusion that I did not have the personality to get into the kind of good trouble John Lewis talked about. I admire those who get arrested in protests and chain themselves to a tree. I am not made for those endeavors. I also came to the realization that there are all kinds of ways to be quietly subversive against the norm. In my mid thirties, learning that I would not be able to have children, divorced, and looking at work as the place I could throw my energies, I made a commitment to myself to spend my working hours in a way that would have an impact for the better. Since then my work has always been a quiet kind of subversion against the norm. Today, I spend my work hours supporting those with disabilities to advocate for the change they want, encouraging caregivers to care for themselves, and last week I presented to caregiver advocates on the legislative process. It is good work and I am more grateful than ever for opportunities to earn a living in meaningful work. These days I am also trying to be a kinder person. I am not always successful but I am trying to understand that we are all struggling in some way.
I don’t have the answers as to how to make the future better in a big picture way. I think we need protests I think we need people willing to engage in big good trouble behavior. I’m against government shutdowns in theory, but am in support of this one because somehow the Democrats have to reassert the Democratic checks and balances and health care is a good line to draw in the sand. Will it work? What is the end game? I don’t know. What I know is that in this day the smaller subversive ways are equally important. In this day- to feed your neighbor, to be kind instead of hateful seems against the norm. In this day- simply proclaiming your identity is an act of bravery. I am an atheist. Oh, you are a Muslim and you a Jew and you are a Christian. We are Americans. Yes and you are gay? I’m straight and I offer you an embrace. I’m an Irish/Native American who enjoy a bit of mariachi music and pass me a tamale, please. I value you wherever you came from and whatever your skin color. In this day- greeting each other with a sense of humanity and the grace to let each other be who they are is perhaps the most subversive thing we can do. In fact, as it has forever been. Treating all humanity itself as valuable, as the subversive Jesus taught is still the best subversive action we can take. There is nothing new under the sun. Hope- is, perhaps, the most subversive thing of all!
Oh, yes, and I was talking about balance. There is something about a casual Sunday spent that restores the balance. Let me sit with a book and a cup of tea today.