The Winter Ends

Sun Rise

This is an old coaching expression – “no matter what the outcome of the contest, the sun WILL come up tomorrow”.  Life will go on, win or lose; so whatever the outcome: take the credit or the loss, and move on.  I know that the Cincinnati Bengals will struggle with their Super Bowl loss.  But I also know that they are incredibly successful athletes, honed by years of effort.  They will suffer the loss, but they will also use that suffering to motivate the next effort.  The sun came up on Monday, so “Who Dey!!”  Get to work.

Klaxons

But it was a more literal sun rise this morning.  Today was a “sub day”, when I struggled to get out of bed to the 5:30 am klaxon alarm. Into the darkness I wandered through the house, and let the dogs out into the back yard.  All of us, three dogs (two slept on) and I, had sleepy, half-closed eyes.  

The dogs wandered back out of the darkness, the icy yard; and quietly waited at the door for me to let them in.  Meanwhile, I downed the first cup of the first pot of coffee for the morning.  While caffeine has an absolute definite physical impact, even the first sip clears cobwebs from my brain.  That must be a matter of “placebo effect”; no way the caffeine can hit my system that fast.

The other two dogs made their sleepy appearance, the oldest smiling with half open eyes.  So there are five, looking for breakfast, waiting for the “treats” of the morning (bits of cheese with the meds, bits of carrots for the rest), their morning hors-d‘oeuvres before the regular meal.  All but one finally ate (really – 5:45 is far too early for a pit bull puppy to eat, especially when she can lay her head to the fire) and then I started to get myself together.

Early Light

By 6:45 I was out the front door, starting the Jeep to warm up against the ten-degree cold.   Then I noticed:  the sky was lightning.  There was no need to leave the porch light on – I could see around the car, and up the stairs.  Spring will come, not the fake spring of  the day after tomorrow when the temperature will approach sixty, but real spring, leaves coming out and grass growing spring.  It’s on the way.

I drive to school into a red sunrise.  Sailors might take warning, but it was beautiful, uplifting.  Sure there’s still a month of snow and ice to go, and this week’s warmup is really a false hope.  But the sun is coming up earlier, and while the geo-physics that create the seasons are inexorable, it’s still good to see the evidence.

Dis-Heartened

Last week I wrote an essay that seemed hopeless.  The extremism that has infected America is using the Covid virus to infect other countries.  Some Canadian truck drivers, anti-vaxxers, are fouling the roads, using their vehicles to block commerce and daily life.  Ninety percent of Canadian truck drivers are vaccinated, so, like the Insurrectionists of January 6th, it’s dangerous to infer a broader movement from the actions of a few.

But millions of dollars poured into Canada to support the protestors.  Extremists here in the United States bragged how much more the “truckers” raised than either of the two Canadian political parties.  But the parties raise their money from Canadians. It is the US extremists, interested in exporting their movement, that are donating across the border.  I suspect most Canadians aren’t appreciative of another American incursion into their lives.

The Canadian Way

The Canadian government is taking it’s time.  No need to provoke violence, they are carefully winnowing down the protestors, getting to the hard core crazies that may require force and incarceration to move them out of the way.  Canada isn’t interested in a spectacle, of Canadian police being beaten with Canadian flag poles (purchased with US money).   So they’ll move cautiously, courteously.  It’s their way.

And there are protests in Europe, the spread of a right-wing nationalism using Covid as the excuse to be anti-government.  I’m sure US money is behind that as well. Steve Bannon is getting his “dream-shot”, an autocratic union of the “white Northern Europeans”.  It’s what he talked about since he emerged as “Trump’s Brain” in 2016.  It was in one of my earliest essays, when “Our America” was called “Trump World”, back in February of 2017 (The Bully and Bannon).  Whether he’s “behind” all this or not, he’s definitely enjoying it.  The sun came up for him, even after the election of 2020.

Robins

But I didn’t publish my sad, dis-heartened essay last week.  It was a day, not a season, and a day I didn’t want to become a legacy.  So it wrote it, and buried it in the files.  Because the sun came up, and the Canadians are handling their extremists in the “Canadian Way”, and Omicron is diminishing, and the Supreme Courts of North Carolina and Ohio seem dead set to making voting districts fairer.  

We’ve had our “red sky” warning.  But just as spring is eternal, so is hope.  So I’ll bury dis-heartened, and believe this morning’s sunrise, and in the hope that we will continue to be a nation dedicated to becoming “more perfect”.  No matter there will probably be a blizzard next week.  The sun will come earlier, and the grass will soon grow.  Last week I saw the robins flocking in my neighbor’s tree.  They are fat – they’re going to make it through this winter.  

And so shall we.