Winds of Change....

“It is ignorant money I
declare myself free from, money fat
and dreaming in its sums,
driving us into the streets of
absence, stranding the pasture trees
in the deserted language of banks.”
-- Wendell Berry

Feel that wind? That’s change coming.
“Change is hard,” mumbled Lindsay City Manager Rich Wilkinson during his staff report at our last council meeting. He had mentioned that some citizens were concerned about the removal of the roads from the interior of Lindsay’s city park in the plans for its reconstruction starting this month.

The implication is one we’ve all heard before, that progress comes at a price, and one of the normal costs is discomfort from sheer change. Another assumption behind that statement is that change is good, that the benefits naturally outweigh the costs.

But I think that’s questionable. Not all change is good, especially that imposed from the outside. The Dust Bowl migrants didn’t feel the change forcing them to uproot from their farms and turn into landless peasants in their own, rapidly modernizing country was good, any more than the landless peasants in Mexico who now have to pay drug cartel brutes instead of mere coyotes to carry them over the borderline is good. Nor can we who receive these migrants consider that change good. We pay the costs those migrants have paid in other ways, some in the lives of our own children.

But change that comes internally, even if it is triggered by an external factor, can be effortless and highly beneficial. I’ve been feeling one coming with regard to HomePages, but until Reggie called asking if I might be able to shorten up, I hadn’t identified what it was. As the news has grown, so has the need for space for it. What I’ve been writing, especially the last few months, are more position papers than useful editorial statements of column length. At the same time, I’ve felt that where this writing should be aimed is developing legal briefs and research reports to government agencies. Time for a change.

So I’m going for 500 words, shorter and sweeter, more concise. Luckily, in writing editorials for the Times-Delta and Recorder last week, I learned that sometimes less is more.
Much can be said in 500 words. Wendell Berry, the poet above, said it all in 33. A song can do it in 10: “This land is your land, this land is my land...” In Spanish, it only takes 8: “Esta tierra es tuya, esta tierra es miya...”

Feel that wind through the window Reggie opened? We’re moving from Pages to Notes, with FootNotes for longer pieces on this blog. Many thanks to those people who have read HomePages and let me know. If you want to help support this paper and keep Lindsay’s change in the news, pamper yourself with a subscription.

See you next week.