Sometime around fifth grade, I decided Nazis and Communists weren’t opposites. They were more like the tips of a horseshoe, curving around to arrive closer together than either was to the middle. I didn’t yet know the word authoritarian, but I understood both Nazi and Communist systems were the opposite of freedom.

I had a pretty secure childhood. My family was intact. My dad had a job. I brought milk money to school without having to wait for payday. We didn’t hold air raid drills to stir fears of nuclear war. Who would bother to bomb West Virginia?

It’s easy to value freedom when your world feels safe. It’s harder when your expectations wither and you lose agency or control. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . . The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” (W B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 1919). That happened amid the horrors of World War I. It happened in the Great Depression. It happens when Americans lose trust in the possibility of a better life than their parents, the hope of ever getting out of debt, or the notion that their sacrifices are for something worth sacrificing for.

When freedom feels like anarchy or victimhood, many prefer tough, charismatic leaders who promise to set the world in order. How do we build trust in ways that sustain democracy instead of undermining it? I don’t know the full answer. I suspect it begins with creating conditions in which most people feel both free and secure, with a sense of agency and hope.
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Images: (left) The Haymarket Riot, in Harper’s Weekly, May 15, 1886. (right) Winter Olympic Games, photograph by Heinrich Hoffmahn, Feb. 6, 1936. German Federal Archives.

A felony conviction generally precludes getting a top secret security clearance. That doesn’t affect presidents, vice-presidents, members of Congress, or Supreme Court justices, none of whom require a clearance. As the U.S. Constitution spells out the qualifications for those offices, no criteria can be added except by constitutional amendment.

Access to classified information is still limited by “need to know,” such as membership on a relevant Senate or House committee. Sharing such information with unauthorized people is still forbidden. Staff still need clearances and must sign nondisclosure agreements.

Background checks and clearances recall the Vietnam era, when my boyfriend/husband served in the Army Security Agency. Though warned to expect an in-person visit (“Don’t say, he’s a great guy, we used to go out and steal hubcaps together”), I received a form to fill out. As I recall, it attested not only his honesty but also a lack of skeletons that might expose him to blackmail. Later, before we married, I had to list all my relatives who were not U.S. citizens. If someone ruled that Canadian aunts, uncles, and cousins posed a risk of divided loyalties, we’d face a tough decision. Losing his top secret clearance would mean a job reclassification, probably to light weapons infantry.

​As for the elected officials who don’t need clearances in the first place, tradition says their election shows voters deem them trustworthy. That’s why trust is, or should be, among the most important factors in deciding how to vote. Our national security may depend on it.

In 62 BCE, a Roman politician was accused of infiltrating a women-only festival to try to seduce Julius Caesar’s second wife, Pompeia. The politician was tried and acquitted. Caesar divorced Pompeia anyway, saying Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. Appearances matter.

Hearing this story in high school, I thought it unfair if she had done nothing wrong. No one should be punished on rumors alone. The phrase “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion” keeps coming back to me as perceptions of bias threaten the reputation of our courts. Is it fair to fault judges for the actions of their family members? Is it fair to restrict free speech or action by a private individual just because they’re married to a judge?

It's starting to fall into place for me. No one I know of proposes to limit spouses’ First Amendment rights or to hold judges responsible for how those rights are exercised. This isn’t about corruption, impropriety, or proven bias. It’s about taking seriously the provision in the U.S. Code, “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Democracy depends on trust, including trust in the rule of law free from conflict of interest. Appearances matter.

Images: (left) Pompeia, second wife of Julius Caesar, in Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum,1553; (right) United States Supreme Court, Great Hall.

The Maldives is. The Falklands are. The Netherlands is. The British Isles are. Geographical grammar is far from straightforward. While groups of physical features are plural, nations rate singular verbs. So why not a self-governing territory like the Falklands? Why plural or singular for the Azores, depending on your source? It’s a matter of emphasis and convention.

The U.S. Constitution treated the United States as plural: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies” (Article III, Section 3, italics mine). The Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 did the same: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The Civil War prompted growing treatment of the Union as grammatically singular, especially in the North. The Supreme Court retained the plural in most decisions until the turn of the century.

The nation still struggles with the perennial tenson between “United” and the plural “States.” The singular has won the grammatical contest. The practical contest between healthy pluralism and dysfunctional polarization is anybody’s guess. Many refuse to compromise. Some threaten to secede. Will we need to go back to saying, “the United States are”?

​Image: Henry Mosler (1841-1920), Betsy Ross sewing the first American flag. While possible, no credible evidence supports the legend that Ross had any role in designing the flag. 

People's lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable - deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.
                               - Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women, 1971

I never heard of the literary subgenre “Southern Ontario Gothic” before exploring obituaries of Alice Munro in May. Another Canadian author, Timothy Findley, coined the term half a century ago when an interviewer compared his fiction to writing from the American South: “Sure, it’s Southern Gothic: Southern Ontario Gothic. And that exists.” It exists in Munro, Findley, Margaret Atwood, and more.

Classic Gothic literature features crumbling castles or mansions, innocents isolated and trapped, with undercurrents of potential violence and horror. American Southern Gothic is haunted by a history of racial violence. What haunts southern Ontario?

My ancestral roots run through Ontario on both sides of the family. To me, southern Ontario culture feels as ordinary as it comes. I have to step back to grasp a sense of place distinguished by what The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature calls “the merciless forces of Perfectionism; Propriety, Presbyterianism, and Prudence.” Then I can sense the ghosts of family secrets buried deep under the kitchens of small Ontario towns.

​Image: Gothic architecture of Hillary House National Historic Site, Aurora, Ontario, built in 1862.

Remember how impatient we were, four years ago, for the pandemic to be over? We hoped to get back to normal in a few weeks, then a few months, then by end of summer. Hospitals were overrun, medical staff burning out, supply chains interrupted, grocery stores out of toilet paper. Four years later, here we are. Covid-19 is shifting from pandemic toward endemic. How’s that working for you?

Several friends have mentioned a surprising nostalgia for the period of public emergency. Not everyone, of course; not those who lost loved ones, got seriously ill, or suffered in isolation. For some, though, lockdown slowed us in ways we hadn’t slowed in decades. Unsafe to travel, attend indoor concerts, or gather with crowds of friends, we rediscovered quieter pleasures. Reading. Working jigsaw puzzles. Baking. Gardening. Sorting old photographs.

We learned about ourselves. Extroverts might discover that bigger and busier isn’t always happier. Introverts might find they miss the casual day-to-day contact of earlier times. Now it’s for us to invent a new normal that incorporates what we’ve learned.

Image:  Covid-19 ICU patient in São Paulo, May 12, 2020. 

Five Americans on three motorcycles stared at the road ahead, twisting down into Africa’s deepest canyon until it zigzagged out of sight. We couldn’t see Ethiopia’s Tekeze River at the bottom. With a deep breath, we left the plateau to coast downhill for miles, using only our brakes. The surrounding forest showed no sign of human habitation. A baboon loped off among the trees. At every switchback the temperature rose. By the time we reached the bridge we were sweltering. Only fear of parasites kept us from jumping into the river to cool off.

Eventually we stopped at a village high on the opposite side. The milder air felt glorious. The villagers sold us soft drinks. On the return trip, we vowed, we would cross the river in the cool of the evening.

A week later we came back through the village, only to find a heavy log blocking the road. “You can’t go now. It is almost dark,” an English-speaker told us. “Bad men live in that forest. They will cut your throats and take your money.” To travel earlier is too hot, we insisted. Under protest, the villagers moved the barrier and we started down.

At first all was calm. Then half a dozen ragged Ethiopian men with guns appeared in front of us. Suddenly the villagers’ warnings seemed more real. Was I afraid? I think I mostly felt numb. With no options, we prepared to hand over our belongings and hope the best for our throats.

One of the men addressed us in English. They were policemen, he told us. The forest held bad men, who would cut night travelers’ throats and take their money. We should stay at the police encampment until daylight. Unsure if this was true or a hoax, this time we didn’t argue. The police showed us where to spread our sleeping bags. They sat up all night singing. Sleepless but safe, in the morning we thanked them for breakfast and rode on.

Why do some memories of drama feel adventurous from a distance, while others turn my stomach even in retrospect? Maybe the numbness brought detachment. Maybe rehashing with my travel companions made the difference. I don’t know. From a 55-year distance, this is a memory that makes me smile.

Images: Mike Wallach, “Road Trip to Axum,” November, 2012. My experience on that road long predates the construction of the controversial Tekeze hydroelectric dam.

Last week, three near neighbors whose homes back onto a natural resource area woke to find their birdfeeders and trash bins ravaged. No mere raccoon was strong enough to bend the poles and chew through the feeders. We had a bear in the neighborhood.

An estimated 24,000+ black bears live in Wisconsin, up from 9,000 in 1989. Most live in the north, far from us, but their range is expanding southward. They wander in late spring and early summer to find food and mates. In the past few years, bears have been seen in Madison, Middleton, Waunakee, and Windsor, practically shouting distance from my home.

How I’d love to see last week’s vandal! Preferably from a distance and through the window. I still recall with delight watching bears as a child in Yellowstone, before the park changed its practices to reduce bear/human contact and resultant injuries. With reluctance, I must admit it’s probably better for the neighborhood if our midnight visitor has moved on.

Image: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

“It’s clean-up time! It’s clean-up time! Put all the toys away,” the toddlers sang with glee as they moved playthings from the floor into the toybox. In a few years they’ll be sweeping the porch with child-sized brooms. When will they learn to tell work from play? “Need to” from “want to”? The price from the pleasure?

Work is an activity to achieve a goal or result, or a task that has to be done, or both. But is the difference from recreation so clear? I work in the garden to tidy our grounds, but even more to soak up the long-awaited sun and sweet spring air. Don’t some athletes play in part to reach the finals or earn a college scholarship?

Some work is arduous, painful, and unavoidable. Some workers must carry that burden for exhausting hours at a stretch. For others of us, including but not limited to writers and artists, the line between work and play is thinner. In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, as I recall, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a building custodian who makes a game of his job by guessing how many minutes each task will take.

Next time a week feels encumbered with obligations and appointments, I’ll try to imagine myself an innocent toddler who hasn’t yet tasted from the tree of knowledge of work and play.

Memories:

• Collecting empty pop bottles door to door in grade school, to return to the store for cash.
• Leaving empty bean cans by an Ethiopian roadside after lunch, knowing local farmers would use them after we rode out of sight.
• Inhaling incinerator smoke in an Ohio town where residents paid for trash collection by the barrel, motivating them to burn what they could.
• Driving piles of newspapers to the municipal recycling center.
• Moving into a house with an old 1970s trash compactor, cleaner than incinerators but long made obsolete by recycling.
• Buying new kitchen appliances because parts to repair the old ones were no longer manufactured.

So much has changed. Some journalists suggest a dark side to certain changes.

Packaging. Bradford Plumer wrote in Mother Jones (“The Origins of Anti-Litter Campaigns,” May 22, 2006) that industry groups started the anti-litter campaign after World War II to keep consumers buying new goods in disposable packaging instead of refillable containers. This, and resultant state laws, shifted responsibility for needless trash from manufacturers to private citizens.

​Plastics. Laura Sullivan reported on NPR’s Morning Edition (“How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled,” Sept. 11, 2020) that oil and gas companies knew all along that recycling plastic would cost more than burying it. Plastic degrades after just a few rounds of recycling. With or without the familiar triangle of arrows, nearly all plastic goes into landfills or the ocean. Industry groups still promote recycling because it keeps us buying plastic.

Image: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.