A Dog Named Cooper

Mornings are not what they used to be.

The quiet hour, sipping half a cup of coffee,
maybe or maybe not having made breakfast--
maybe just a snap of Costco biscotti or two--
the Times and the local Tucson paper,
have become a juggling act.

We have what purports to be a dog now,
again after a couple of decades with cats,
and the mutt insists that we bond.
I don't want to bond:
I want to rehearse political madness;
not the madness of the candidates,
but the lamentable basket of shallow voters that we are,
unable to see that the scientific, economic, demographic,
and social and psychological facts have shifted everything,
something like the earth wobbling on a new axis,
but we stumble along, mumbling old slogans,
offering modified New Deal programs on the one hand
and semi-fascist aspirations for a Strong Man on the other.

Because neither represents a clear articulation
of the tectonic shifts beneath our feet--
that the old economy and the old jobs and the old solutions
have more to do with what used to be than with what is,
people hate government (which is like hating family
and proposing to live alone out in the woods
next to everybody else hating family and living alone out in the woods,
and pretending that is community).

We are going to have to put up with this nonsense
until someone articulates plainly and compellingly
what the new landscape really is, and how and why
some people are really hurting and others are prospering,
and what we can do to fashion a better society;
how to understand the situation,
what to invest our resources in,
how to change the tax laws to reflect where the money is going,
and to describe what we can achieve by working together.

There has not been an ounce of hope in this election
because hope has to recognize where we are
and where we want to go, or else it is just a town in Arkansas.

As a symbol of beginning over,
our rescue dog changed his name.
It was Taz. He changed it to Cooper.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

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