Getting closer to the big election

post #509

            I'm not a credentialed political pundit, but I have always cared about politics/ social change/ community support and such. (I was going to be a government major in college until I decided to go with a degree in French literature.  After I discovered photography, I began to wish I was young and hardy enough to be a photo journalist.)

        Our current national mess interests me. When it gets dangerously out of hand, like it currently is, I am always trying to figure out WHY something is happening, what can we each do to make it better, and why do so many people accept the difficult without thinking they can instead contribute to the search for change. Even the Appalachian area of Kentucky, where I live, has a long history of passionate political activity. It's like a glue that keeps our national heart beating and renewed.

     I'm also curious about a lot of things. I like figuring stuff out for myself. I'm fortunate to have discovered a love for photography in my fifties, so I continue to have a lot to learn. I wanted to share tonight just some pleasures I get from noticing the small and the lovely in my every day walking around.  And I found a cartoon from the The New Yorker in July that I recently realized speaks to what I do every day.

This is actually lavender, one of my few tended plants, and it has provided blooms almost all summer! The deer don't eat it.

Panicled Aster! Who knew! A weed is never just a weed....

 I totally missed seeing this poor squashed baby snake at first, but there it was on my return.  Then the next night, it was all gone. Was it eaten? if so, by what or whom? or totally smashed by a tire?

 

 

(See the cartoon ahead.)

a Golden rod variety -- this is the first year I've noticed it

        Yesterday I happened on this cartoon in a pile of New Yorker magazines, and this time it struck me as hilarious, my own little way of seeing the world.  No one is going to believe me all that much either. I don't arrange my photos. I just work with what I see, though that does require getting out in the world you're in. None of us needs to be spectacular every day, but we can still be both amazed and honored to be present.

         Now it's fair to remark that some day no one is going to believe the close call we are currently having concerning our precious democracy.  We are letting our President get away with doing anything he pleases with no concern for the well being of others or of the world. Right now the main thing I ask is for EVERYONE, including Republicans in the Senate, to be clear-eyed about our tomorrows. Let's be kind and be attentive to the world we are forging for our kids and grand kids. Greed or fear have never provided a true key to happiness or made our lives better.