Once in a Blue Moon and Every Four Years

Thursday night as I traveled back to the farm from Katherine’s, the moon was near full and both bright and beautiful. I was somewhat surprised because it seemed as if we had only shortly before had a full moon, but time is passing so fast these days that I assumed it was a full thirty days since the last one. Even after a cloud passed in front of it, it shone through gorgeously luminous, and I allowed it to both light and lighten my trip home.

The next day I learned that Friday night was to be a blue moon—the writer explained that when we occasionally get two full moons in one month that is what a blue moon is. Someone else wrote that we would not have another until 2015. Friday night the rain clouds and the good gentle rain here at the farm kept me from seeing the orb again just as tonight’s rain is now doing, but it had been so beautiful that I am still seeing it in my mind. I feel unusually blessed that I had been allowed to enjoy it on Thursday night, because I needed that beauty.

We appreciate these rains, which while too late to help the corn crops, will help the later soybeans and will also help the ground be ready for next year. We are just sorry that others had to experience that terrible hurricane and flood damage for us to finally receive rain. I don’t know how people bear going home to flood destroyed homes—or out west to the fire destroyed homes. Certainly these brave ordinary people are heroes as they face starting over.

Gerald and I were at Katherine’s this evening when the television announcer was telling the people in nearby Carbondale to take shelter for a tornado. We were on the alert too until after 6 when things seemed to calm down, and as far as I know, no one had a tornado after all. But for the first time I ever remember, Carbondale fell victim to flash floods. Cars were flooded out and stalled, and the tow trucks were busy. We’ll find out in tomorrow morning’s newspaper how bad it was. Here although the rain continues, it is not harsh or in excess yet.

It is an unusual Labor Day weekend for us since we don’t have company. I thought Mike and Leslie might be coming up from Nashville, but then I found out that I had mis-remembered; it was Columbus Day weekend that they plan to be here. I think the Taylors are still coming down from central Illinois to their home here, but so far they have not arrived.

Gerry thought about coming if they did not have practice, but decided to stay home whether they did or didn’t. His clan was all at the football stadium today and saw Georgia win. Erin at University of North Texas and us Southern Illinois University fans were not so fortunate with our teams’ results. Marion High School played up at Mattoon last night (my brother’s town) and they not only won but Sam’s friend Josh, a sophomore, was put in for five minutes’ play again. Not being a football fan myself, I don’t really care who wins or who is playing whom, but hearing all the others’ football excitement heralds that fall is here. However, I am a kid fan, and I felt happiness just thinking about that great tall guy Josh playing the game he has anticipated since he was a little short guy pitching a football back and forth in Sam’s front yard.

I limited my television viewing of the Republican National Convention to evening hours throughout the week and plan to do the same with the Democratic Convention this week. I think I know how I will vote in November, and tell pollsters who torment me with phone calls who that is. However, I won’t be absolutely certain until nearer the election. Anything could happen between now and then. Who knew, for example, that a movie star would pull a stunt like one did Thursday night and be so vulgar and disrespectful to our President? I did wonder about the morality and patriotism of the folks who applauded him. (I often wonder that same thing about those supporting comics who mock the opposite party.)

I am grateful we have a good family man with either party’s candidate to set a good example for our youth. I love our present First Lady, but Mrs. Romney would succeed in that role. The emphasis this week on hard work bringing success was inspiring, and I am sure we will hear that emphasis this coming week also. I liked it that someone (maybe several people) pointed out that if we can keep our kids in school and if they will postpone sex and babies until they are properly ready, the statistics are in their favor for successful adult lives. I want good public schools for all children, and I am not satisfied with either party’s plan for achieving them.

I think whoever is elected will get credit when the economy turns around as economies always have in the past. I think the turn-around has started. I am not fearful that our nation will go down the drain as so many are predicting. But I know there are many hard problems that we must face, and I think we will do so just as those ordinary folks will manage somehow or other to survive and go on with their lives after all this summer’s natural disasters.

At the Base of the Mountain: Tough Times Ahead

My tears came as I watched President Elect Obama give his heartwarming acceptance speech in Grant Park. The crowd looked like a Norman Rockwell painting of America—all ages, all colors, famous people and ordinary people. One young white woman was so overcome with emotion that she was on her knees with her head in her hands sobbing. I understood.

One of my favorite shots was of two young white men, who were mature enough to have voted in previous elections, facing the front with joyous smiles as they waited for Obama to come join the crowd. I understood that too. I saw them again a time or two today as stations replayed last night’s events, so I knew there was something about their vitality, expectation, and excited happiness that also attracted the ones editing that film.

My tears came again when I saw the tears of Jesse Jackson, and I smiled as I watched Oprah smiling as she blended inconspicuously with those around her. And I cried and laughed as I watched the emotion and delight of black Americans there—some very young and some very old. I knew I could never fully understand their emotions. Spike Lee said this morning in an interview that he was still processing and sorting it all out. This was too big for any of us to understand. But the recognition that from now on the world is different has continued to fill the TV and computer screens today.

More than one commentator quoted Obama’s warning that we have difficult times ahead. We have enormous problems that can’t be solved in a year or a four-year term. But we can work together, suffer together, stick together, and get through together the problems we are in.

I have often heard people say that they were poor during the Depression, but because everyone else was, they did not know they were poor. I also have read accounts of those who lived on tight budgets in crowded student barracks on the G.I. Bill following World War II, who said that those were some of the happiest days of their lives. The camaraderie of living in community with those in the same circumstances made for warm friendships and caring neighborhoods.

At this time of economic crisis, we have an opportunity to readjust our values and learn to exalt in both companionship and challenge. People experienced that last night at Grant Park and in living rooms across the land. And because we live in a global world, in lands across the sea.

Now we need to get to work to better our nation. Jobless families may need to plant food on their patios and in vacant lots until new jobs arrive. We need to keep our food pantries full. Let’s conserve the resources of our planet Let’s not lazily put good items in our landfills if someone in the community needs that mattress or chest-of-drawers. If we have the ability to create jobs, let us do it. Let us help one another build strong families. Let’s all work to educate ourselves to a higher level than we now are. We can learn from Obama’s grandmother the value of hard work and from his mother the value of education that caused her to get up before dawn to give her son extra tutoring.

Let’s teach ourselves to have courage just as those young men and women who went to Iraq had to have unbelievable courage to function. Let us learn to love one another whether we can understand one another or not.

I was touched last night by Senator McCain’s speech and today by President George Bush’s sincere expression of good will towards the new President. As Barack Obama is fond of saying, only in America. Only in America can that kind of cooperation and respect between opposing political parties take place. Regardless of whom we supported, almost all of us voted for the candidates we thought would be best for our country. The issues are complicated, and it is not surprising we don't all agree on what is the best solutions.

We can rejoice that the democracy will go on. Whether it goes on successfully or not is up to all of us. We can face the future with fear and despair. Or we can acknowledge the dangers and the fear, but do so with dignity and courage that we can get through whatever challenges lie ahead.