This is written before beginning any contact with election-day reporting. A first acknowledgment is that decisions/actions (conscious or not) are happening as I write that will affect me and all. That is the way time and space work. Light has its waves and particles; I am faced with an expected linear sequence of personal and political situations asking for a next response and unexpected jumps in new opportunities. This pairing of fate and creativity are continually interacting.
Another on-going interaction is between the various systems that are the water in which I swim and myself as a rock eroded/shaped by those systems and as a resistance to the flow (slowing them, displacing their center). Whatever the system or election outcome, I still have myself to deal with.
Will I read too much into the election results? Undoubtedly, that’s what I’ve always done. It has taken me a while to listen to others as well as to try on various opportunities the system and election bring.
Usually, within a month, I can begin to articulate what I see has happened and identify one place I can apply my gifts to enhance or retard the latest shift in direction.
In the midst of rising and fading expectations of how things are matching up with my desires, there is the important question of a vision for some 7 generations down the line (175 years hence).
Considering this current time to be a 7th generation—What was going on in 1845 that is still lingering, hasn’t yet been resolved, broke in to initiate a significant difference between then and now?
Well,
- 1845 established the date for yesterday’s election (in 1845 it was a November 4 election).
- Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning met for the first time (new love is still happening).
- Florida and Texas were admitted as states (how did they affect things this time?).
- A fire devastated Pittsburgh (was there looting this time?).
- Scientific American began publication (what is the state of science in the culture today?).
- In Germany, Friedrich Engels published, The Condition of the Working Class in England (and the state of the working class today? are we closer to a revolution?).
- The precursor of the Band-Aid® was patented in France (what everyday aid is born this year?).
- The first Black law firm in the United States was opened (16 years before the Civil War).
- Henry David Thoreau moved to his shack by Walden Pond (what reflection are you doing?).
- Among the many achievements of Michael Faraday, in 1845, he wrote, “I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light” (will we continue learning or return to a darker age?).
- A potato blight in Ireland begins the Great Famine and its resulting migration (and today’s refugees?).
- John Franklin’s expedition toward a Northwest Passage disappears (“Great” can only be ahead, and it is risky?).
- The first screw-propelled iron steamship crosses the Atlantic Ocean (did it have redundant backups or crossed-fingers?).
- Johnny Appleseed died (will the frequency of Covid-19 deaths finally be address with more than denial?).
- A fine 1845 Liberty Head large penny is now worth about $30 (what will today’s penny be worth?)
I’m not expecting much to be clarified by the time this is posted. One immediate question I have is how widespread any violence is and how it is dealt with. The rest can be sorted, but deaths and maimings are all too final.