I’m an occasional listener to the Tent Show Podcast, which plays excerpts from the Big Top Chautauqua concerts that happen every summer under a big tent on a hill not far from the shores of Lake Superior in Bayfield, Wisconsin. My podcatcher told me Roseanne Cash was up next.
Now, I’m a big Roseanne Cash fan, especially the more recent Roseanne Cash. Those Cashes improve with age; her father Johnny’s last series of albums is his level best.
Right after the first song she said she had been writing some of the most personal lyrics she had written in a long time.
“I feel like women my age still have a lot to say and a lot less time to say it, so the time for hedging your bets is over,” she said. “Put it out there, let the chips fall where they may, right?”
I thought that would be a good launching point for a post, but, I mean, what else do you need to say?
I wrote this a decade ago at the conclusion of a little essay called “We’re all gonna die” (page 31):
“Refuse to be afraid. Resist the impulse to yield to the fear and let someone strip your liberty in the name of security and protection. Live like you were dying – because you are dying, someday, so better to live free than in chains.”
Our rulers successfully changed the subject when they got us to start arguing over masks and injections. We had been arguing over whether governors have the right to shut down an economy, to prevent people from assembling in groups larger than 10, to tell barbers they can’t cut hair, to tell theaters they can’t admit patrons.
It was clear to most people that those were not lawful acts of governance — heck, that assembly thing is even in the First Amendment — so they had to find something else to distract us. Now we argue over whether wearing a mask is healthy, or whether a vaccine developed in nine months can be trusted as much as the polio or smallpox vaccines, which took decades.
“It’s just a piece of cloth, vaccines save lives, what’s the big deal,” say the supporters of the state, forgetting that this conversation started with de facto house arrest and crashing the economy, which was a big deal. Once they’ve initiated an economic depression in the name of public health, it’s hard to trust the same people about any little thing.
I don’t care if you buy my book, I just want to repeat its message in the context of our present crisis. These people are trying to scare us. Sure, it’s a scary disease and people have died, but the extent to which they have disrupted our lives in the name of a New Normal is even scarier.
These are scary people who want us to be terrified. We used to call people like that terrorists; I still do.
It’s easy to be scared, but we need to fight the fear, refuse to let the fear grow to the point where we surrender what’s left of our basic freedoms. Refuse to be afraid, that is to say, refuse to let the fear control your actions. Free yourself – In the most basic sense, the only way you can lose your freedom is to surrender it. And dream of a better way of living than curled up afraid to venture outside.
We need to overcome the fear and live in freedom. Otherwise, the terrorists have won.
We brought Summer home on Saturday, 11 days before the first day of autumn. Summer, of course, is our new golden retriever puppy, who takes the place in our home that had been held by Willow The Best Dog There Was, whom I expect to mourn until I join her in the afterlife.
(Does anyone seriously believe dogs don’t go to heaven? They are more deserving beings in every sense of the world. But I digress.)
Bringing a new pet into a home always comes with a period of adjustment, for everyone. This poor little 8-week-old creature is taken from the nine siblings and parents and the only humans she has ever known and placed in a new home with humans she previously met for barely an hour. The humans and the other creatures in the home must figure out how to co-exist with this feisty little newcomer.
Summer has looks in common with Willow; that’s only natural, she is another golden retriever. Time will tell if she will mellow into the gentle personality that Willow and, before her, Onyah, had, or if she will be as rambunctious as Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars, our other canine companion these past eight years and also a golden but of the “English cream if you please” variety. Blackberry the cat resumes her role as the last remaining member of her species, a feline in a cast that once numbered seven. (For the record, seven cats is too many, but perhaps one is not enough. And we loved all seven, but wow! Seven? Really?!)
My sleep was interrupted three times the first night of Summer, as I took the first shift to respond to any puppy whining after lights out. Sleep patterns take a beating in the early days, too.
I don’t want or need another Willow. That bond was one of a kind anyway. I want Summer to find her own way, to be her own dog, and to love it here. I do want Summer to feel welcome, Dejah to feel sisterhood, and Blackberry to feel safe. Now the oldest of our pets, Blackberry dashed across the path of my car as I started down the ramp to Highway 41 one summer day 14 years ago. The 4-week-old emerged from the bushes when I parked the car, crying (I swear) “Home! Home! Home!” over again until I almost named her E.T.
This is a ramble, isn’t it, more of a “hi, how ya doing, here’s what’s happening at our house” letter than something with a specific point, more of an excuse to post puppy pictures and isn’t she adorable. It’s early days: Summer hasn’t even quite recognized that her name is Summer yet, or has she? She has looked up a time or two when we say the word, which is more than we can say about her grasp of the word “no.”
They’re all different, you know, even if they’re of a breed that supposedly all have certain personalities. Just like people. The worst disservice we do any species is to assemble them into groups and make assumptions about each group based on the behavior of individuals. “Oh, they’re all like that.” “They can’t help it, they’re __.”
Anyway, please welcome Summer into our cast of characters. If you’ll excuse me, I hear an insistent, “No! No! No, no, no, no, no” in the other room, and I’d best see if my help is needed.
