Author photo of neighboring pond aeration at dawn

The above fountain of light seems fitting for the burst of a watery display in lieu of fireworks for me this year. On July 4th I could hear the distant crumps of town fireworks and local backyard Pop! Pops!. The best sparkles in the nighttime sky for me were fireflies. There are only a few bobbing around my lawn compared to a magical field full of them from my childhood. But they sufficed to light my sky.

This year it was challenging for many of us to happily celebrate America as it is today and where it it is rapidly heading. Kendal has a master organizer who for 20 years has created an annual event in our auditorium recapping the history of the founding of our nation. This year he pointed to the many, many struggles, resistances, marches, and deadly rebellions, led by individuals and organizations to right the wrongs of our laws since the very beginning of this experiment in democracy. It was clear that the time is upon us to to rise up once again in peaceful, purposeful demonstration of our rights against this attempt to roll back the many gains that have been achieved in the past, ensuring a more just future.

It was a stirring and hopeful hour as residents participated in reading quotes from Harriet Tubman, suffragettes, gay rights activists, Martin Luther King, Gloria Steinhem, to president Obama and many more, speaking for the oppressed and underserved. I do have hope and refuse to feel helpless. We are ripples of light in a dark pond.

 In 2013, Erica Chenowith came up with this political science statistic: If 3.5% of a population under authoritarian rule rises up, a regime change can be accomplished. In America that would amount to 12 million people. The No Kings marches included 6 million people. If everyone who marched found one more person to join in protests, write postcards, make phone calls and door to door contacts, the effect would be enough to turn the tide. And yes, even peaceful protests may result in loss of life, just as civil rights protestors, union organizers and others have selflessly lost their lives in the past. Time to do what you can where you can locally and trust that every one of us counts.

I include some poems to hold as July unfolds with ever more disturbing news. I write to keep me centered in these difficult times.

Interdependence Day- What You Desire                         7/4/25

Blessed with a huge landscape-

‘sea to shining sea’-

full of diverse resources to be gobbled up

by those with greater numbers,

more effective weapons

inflated entitlement, greed and power

as it has always been with our species,

enacts the willingness to obliterate anyone or anything

standing or living in their way

to claim and defend even

to the death, (of) the land itself,

thinking they prevent their own demise.

Here we are today.

An experiment in self-governance gone

awry with plenty of mistakes and course corrections,

some benefitting the few, some, the many

trying to rewind to benefit the few again

with so many more left behind than ever before,

imagining they will rule forever.

They won’t, of course.

Interdependence is reality.

No way around it if living, not possessing,

is what you desire.

 Birds of a *Molting Feather

Photo by author: *The word molting is based on the Latin mutare, meaning ‘to change’.

Goose feathers flip across the grass.

Do they remember when breezes

challenged or floated their winged progress

here, to this pond, this mate, these goslings?

Losing tails, showing blue ‘blood feathers’

the geese must wait a month to fly again.

In my lifetime, not everything I drop

will grow back, though

modern medicine does its best

to replace that which I am losing.

My lifelong mate will not return

and our goslings have found their own ponds

to live and raise their young.

I, too, have found a new flock and

we share with geese the air,

the ponds, the grounds we walk upon.

We birds of diverse feather,

remembering our wings,

choose to molt and stay together.