The last few mornings I’ve been awakened by glimpses of the moon rising in its last phase over the tail end of Elephant Back. It’s the golden sliver like cows jumped over in the nursery rhyme of my youth, and my mother’s youth and who knows how many other generations.
I hadn’t realized how unfamiliar I was with this phase until this morning. I’m the kind that watches for the first new sliver to appear silver in the evening sky, and take hope from it as it builds toward fullness. Then, as it begins to flatten out, my hope does, too, as if the down side of the cycle represented some kind of decline in life’s quality. In my work, I’m more familiar with beginnings than endings.
But Friday’s good news of the county’s approval of the signatures on the recall Notice of Intent gave me sudden hope in endings: the end of Townsend’s dynasty that began to crumble when he fled this community, the end of business as usual at city hall. The hope for a community where people walk tall because they’ve helped in building it instead of having something handed to them. Walking through a community landscape that reflects their values of hard work and good reward rather than the shiny dazzle of a tourist trap. A community where the town folk and the country folk remember their connections and can celebrate them.
Oh, it can be very scary when hope shows up, especially in an ending. In a short while, the moon will seem to disappear and the nights will be totally dark but for the stars. But that’s when the real work will occur: when the sympathies that have been lying dormant for years become activated, when the animosities and injuries from the last ten or twenty years convert to alliances and commitments for a new future for this town. Oh, the possibilities are endless with this waning moon.
I was given an extra dose of hope by last week’s article on Manny Jimenez, the UC Small Farm Advisor who just received a Peace Prize for his work in Woodlake. The California Wellness Foundation’s recognition that Jimenez’s work with youth had provided an alternative to violence by "teaching them about responsibility, leadership, confidence and respect through gardening," struck me as an important difference in approach from what we’ve employed in Lindsay. Through McDermont, we teach kids the importance of play and competition, while Manny and his volunteers teach kids to work and cooperate, providing something of value for the whole community. It’s worth comparing more closely.
Here is my greatest hope in the recall effort in front of us: that we might defrag the consolidation of power that has occurred since we became a charter city, and return that power to the hands of people who really live here. It might seem like a big job, but there’s that waning moon....
I hadn’t realized how unfamiliar I was with this phase until this morning. I’m the kind that watches for the first new sliver to appear silver in the evening sky, and take hope from it as it builds toward fullness. Then, as it begins to flatten out, my hope does, too, as if the down side of the cycle represented some kind of decline in life’s quality. In my work, I’m more familiar with beginnings than endings.
But Friday’s good news of the county’s approval of the signatures on the recall Notice of Intent gave me sudden hope in endings: the end of Townsend’s dynasty that began to crumble when he fled this community, the end of business as usual at city hall. The hope for a community where people walk tall because they’ve helped in building it instead of having something handed to them. Walking through a community landscape that reflects their values of hard work and good reward rather than the shiny dazzle of a tourist trap. A community where the town folk and the country folk remember their connections and can celebrate them.
Oh, it can be very scary when hope shows up, especially in an ending. In a short while, the moon will seem to disappear and the nights will be totally dark but for the stars. But that’s when the real work will occur: when the sympathies that have been lying dormant for years become activated, when the animosities and injuries from the last ten or twenty years convert to alliances and commitments for a new future for this town. Oh, the possibilities are endless with this waning moon.
I was given an extra dose of hope by last week’s article on Manny Jimenez, the UC Small Farm Advisor who just received a Peace Prize for his work in Woodlake. The California Wellness Foundation’s recognition that Jimenez’s work with youth had provided an alternative to violence by "teaching them about responsibility, leadership, confidence and respect through gardening," struck me as an important difference in approach from what we’ve employed in Lindsay. Through McDermont, we teach kids the importance of play and competition, while Manny and his volunteers teach kids to work and cooperate, providing something of value for the whole community. It’s worth comparing more closely.
Here is my greatest hope in the recall effort in front of us: that we might defrag the consolidation of power that has occurred since we became a charter city, and return that power to the hands of people who really live here. It might seem like a big job, but there’s that waning moon....
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