Mr. President --
I am writing this open letter to you following the tragedy in Charlottesville on Saturday.
One of your spokesmen has announced your goal is to pull the nation together. That is what you should be doing, but you are not.
I have been thinking about how two of your predecessors, who had a good grasp on what Americans felt and knew exactly how to direct the best in them, would have acted. How would Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have tried to unite us?
First, they would not have hesitated in pointing out that the white supremacists, who came armed for trouble, and the anarchists, who were ready to sign their dance cards, are not representative of the vast majority of Americans who abhor the views espoused by the neo-Nazis, KKK, other white supremacists, and anarchists.
Both groups seem to believe they are living in Germany in the early 1930s when Nazi thugs and Communist and Socialist thugs battled in the streets of the Weimar Republic as a dress rehearsal for the Spanish civil war which was a preview of the Second World War.
Second, they would then point out that the views of the demonstrators on both sides are protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment exists to protect unpopular views -- to give a free space where we can all meet to discuss our political philosophies.
And this the tricky part. Leasers need to be very careful about saying viewpoints have no place in American society. That runs the risks of legitimizing physical attacks on the proponents of unpopular views. It is exactly the same mistake we made during World War Two with the internment of the Japanese and in World War One with the incarceration of Eugene Debs.
The First Amendment prevents us from punishing people for what they think. If we say anarchist thought has no place in the American marketplace of ideas, we run the risk of objectifying them and turning them into legitimate targets of violence.
Third, the First Amendment does not prevent us from punishing people for the crimes they commit. And that brings us to the rather silly argument about whether James Alex Fields committed an act of terror. What he did was far worse. He committed murder -- for which he should be tried and punished. Bearing the mark of Cain is far more damning than being forced to wear a political label.
Fourth, both Reagan and Clinton would then bring their audiences back to the fact that most Americans are decent people with children who feel sympathy for the family of Heather Heyer. They are not anarchists. They are not white supremacists. They live their lives as best as they can praying that America will not turn into Weimar Germany.
Mr. President, if you could for one moment think along those lines, you will know the right thing to do. You need to stand up in your official capacity and say enough is enough. If people are going to commit violence in espousing their political views, there will be a cost.
But it is far more important that you do something tangible to pull this nation together -- and there is no better moment.
I suggest a Day of Prayer. At the National Cathedral. And because we are to pray for our enemies, all political and social factions should be invited to pray and speak -- to commit themselves to a nation where there is peace in our streets. That means former presidents (all of them). Republican and Democrat leaders. And, yes, even representatives who hold unpopular beliefs but who are committed to espousing them in free debate.
I am an optimist. And one day of prayer is not going to solve the rifts that are splitting the nation at both the extremes and the center. But it may be a start.
I pray that it is.
I knew Barra de Navidad had experienced downpours a few days ago. But I did not know the storm was accompanied by high winds.
What was once a very grand umbrella in my patio delivered the news to me when I opened my front gate. Piles of dead leaves corroborated the testimony.
Earlier this week, I had been following an Atlantic storm named Franklin. It stomped over Yucatan as a tropical storm and then switched clothes to become a hurricane just before it made landfall on Mexico's east coast.
The mess in my courtyard was Franklin's gift to our area. It brought us our first good dousing this year. We needed it. We could have done without the wind.
Interestingly, Franklin was reborn briefly as a hurricane when the storm passed over the Pacific. Jova by name. It has now slumped into a tropical depression.
So, here I am -- back at Mexpatriate headquarters doing what I enjoy. Writing. Reading. Picking up leaves and doing other domestic chores.
It is time to sit back and enjoy the good life in Mexico -- until 9 September when I head back to Oregon for one week to celebrate my 50th high school reunion.
And the umbrella? I may just keep it as is. After all, I have purchased lots of art pieces with less character.
My brother and mother live in a Norman Rockwell neighborhood.
Neat bungalows set on tidy lawns. Modest with no pretensions. Tree-lined streets. And flags. Lots of American flags.
I walk that circuit every day. Sometimes, more than once.
Walking is a great time to think. And not always constructively.
I started thinking about the families who live behind those flag-decorated porches. Why do some fly flags while others do not.
When I was a boy in the 1950s, lots of homes flew flags. If the families could afford them. The residents of Powers did not have a lot of excess income for frivolous flag purchases.
Back then, flying a flag meant one thing -- you were an American. Some homes continued the habit they had acquired during the Second World War. No matter our differences, we were united in the aspirations of the nation.
The late 1960s changed that. The hard left decided the flag did not reflect their values. So, it became a symbol to burn, not to admire. And a rift was created through my generation of Boomers -- some retained traditional values; others railed against them. The flag was no longer a symbol of unity.
That changed on 11 September 2001. Under attack, we united. Americans openly supported their troops -- and the flag once again was a symbol of one nation.
I am not certain if that is still true. That is why I wondered about the families behind those flags in my mother's neighborhood.
Last year I had a conversation with a friend who dresses to the left with his politics. I had commented on the number of flags in his neighborhood. He responded that most of the flag displayers were probably racist -- though he did not know any of them. I was shocked because I had never equated love of country with a political ideology. Good grief, even that paragon of liberalism, Garrison Keillor, regularly lectured liberals to show their love of country by flying flags.
But I found myself doing the same thing when I assumed the flags were flown by Trump voters. They may have been. But, a quick look at the precincts results for the 2016 election does not support that theory. It doesn't discount it, either.
The precinct is split almost equally between Democrats and Republicans -- with a slight Democrat edge. This being Oregon, the non-affiliated voters are nearly as strong as each of the parties.
And the precinct's presidential vote mirrored that split. They supported Hillary by a handful votes -- and bushels of votes for other contenders. Like most of America, the voters obviously were not enthralled by either one of the major party candidates.
I may have completely missed the point of those flags. Because of my background, I pay far too much attention to politics. Most people do not. They are wise enough to know that they and their families are seldom touched by politics in their daily lives.
It was not until we left the Powers reunion picnic that I realized during the Sunday picnic and the Saturday night dinner, I did not hear one mention of Trump's name. Neither positive or negative. He was simply not present at the festivities.
And that made me happy. Almost every social media channel is crammed with compulsive ramblings about the president. It was nice to have a three-day break from the hyperventilation. It gave me hope that the country had not obsessed itself into a Mad Hatter existence.
And those flags in the neighborhood? I suspect they are there because the owners are simply proud to be Americans. No matter who they voted for in 2016.
With that, I concur.
Tom McCall was governor of Oregon from 1967 to 1975.
He is probably best known for two things: 1) being the political godfather of Oregon's bottle bill and 2) for telling tourists "Come visit; don't stay."
At the time, when I was working for him, I thought that sharp elbow to the ribs of California tourists (because it was Californians the jab was aimed at; this was the era of the "Don't Californicate Oregon" movement) was merely campaign showmanship. After all, McCall was not a politician; he was an entertainer -- a political commentator on one of our local television news programs.
But he was serious. A liberal Republican, he did whatever he could to protect Oregon's environment -- including protecting the state from outsiders moving here. (He had a bit of the same spirit that seems to animate the current American president.) I suspect he would consider his efforts a failure if he could see the current steady stream of Priuses into the state.
That spirit is not dead. While walking through my brother's neighborhood, I caught a glimpse of two stickers low on a van's bumper. I had to stop to read them. And it was worth breaking my healthy steps pace.
It was almost as if Old Tom was walking amongst us again -- with the attitude of a Millennial. Nothing says 2017 like sarcasm.
Bend is now one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. And its housing prices are soaring even higher. Little bungalows are regularly selling for $300,000.
I know that would be a bargain in New York City or Vancouver. But this is little Bend. And a lot of that price inflation has been induced by California home equity money migrating north. It was McCall's nightmare.
There is a lot to preserve in Bend. I thought of that today when we visited the High Desert Museum south of town.
We had talked taking about a mountain hike this morning, but the temperatures have been higher here than they are in Barra de Navidad. A visit to the natural history museum seemed a good compromise.
And it was. The museum traces the development of the great desert basin that makes up a large portion of the western states. Bend sits on its western rim.
It is all there. The geological development. The Indian migration across the Bering land bridge by foot and canoe (even if you do not buy that partly-discredited theory). The evolution of Indian culture. The arrival of settlers. A fascinating exhibit on how federal money in World War Two turned an extractive economy into one based on technology. And a frank discussion of the bracero worker program with Mexico, the treatment of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, the enlistment of Indians in the armed forces, and black troopers serving as firefighters.
My favorite exhibits, though, were the animals from the high desert. Bobcat. Porcupine, Raptors. Otter. Fish. Gila monsters. Skinks. Snakes. Turtles. It was better than going to most zoos.
Natural history museums are always a bit wistful. They remind us of what has been lost. But they also assure us our present would not be what it is without the past we have "lost."
Governor McCall was not my favorite politician. His view of the world was far too reliant on government involvement in the lives of a free people. And, for all of his King Lear railing, he could not stop the wave of immigration that has flooded Oregon. Some that may have improved the place.
But I am happy to be living elsewhere.
I may have lied to you yesterday.
I claimed I was not a person of place -- or a "someplace" person, to use Goodhart's term. At most, I am an "inbetweener."
But I certainly could have been a person of place. I share a lot of the same values -- with the obvious exception that I believe the world is better off with free trade and better access for trained immigrants across borders. Thus, my hybrid status.
What I lack is a place. And that became evident to me during our visits to four cemeteries on our trip south. What better locale to consider being a person of place than in a cemetery. You can't get much more place-oriented than when your body is planted.
The Powers cemetery sits on a hill above the county park. Almost all of the original graves are people who lived, but who were not born, in Powers. After all, the town was incorporated only a century ago.
The gravestones read like a genealogy of my grade school days. All the families are there. Bushnell. Adamek. Shorb. Frye.
And, of course, my brood. Rolfe. Munro. And one Cotton grave -- my older brother who died of a burst appendix when he was less than two months old. My mother has a plot next to his.
The cemetery brought home a hard fact of life in Powers. When we left Powers in 1957, I had a lot of relatives in town. Aunts. Uncles. Grandparents. Cousins.
They are all gone. Some are buried here. Others moved away. There were about 1500 people in town when we exited stage right. There are fewer than 700 now. And, it appears, most are families whose names I do not know when we lived there.
If Powers was to be my place, it appears that time has passed.
And it was not for wont of trying. When I graduated from law school, I talked with a lawyer in Myrtle Point who was thinking about retiring. He liked me, without really knowing me, because "my grandfather was a good man. What could be more "somewhere" than that?
I did not take him up on the offer. He has now moved on, but the office still houses an attorney. That could have been me.
Better yet, Mast Hospital, where I was born, is just across the street. But it is no longer a hospital. It is a rest home. Talk about closing the circle. I could have simply been carried from my office to my convalescent spot.
We visited my half-sister's grave in Coquille. She died of birth complications -- a death that sounds like a diary entry on the Oregon Trail rather than Oregon in the 1970s.
We also stopped in Norway (Oregon has some very interesting second-hand town names) to search for the graves of my mother's grandparents -- Curtis and Dora Rolfe.
Both were born in Quebec in the 1850s, moved to Minnesota and then on to Powers, dying in the early 1930s. My mother, born in 1928, barely got to know them.
Their migration (that started in England in the early 1600s and moved through Massachusetts and Vermont before Quebec) may be one reason I am not a person of place. At least, on my mother's side of the family. They were an incredibly mobile group.
Not so, on my father's side.
I grew up on tales of being a fifth generation Oregonian. That certainly sounds as if I could be a person of place. And our visit to the Dora cemetery is evidence enough that I could have been.
My great-great grandfather, John Alva Harry and his wife Chloe Amelia Cook (who bears an interesting relationship to my mother's family, something to relate in a bit) came to Oregon in the early 1850s eventually settling in a Coos County broad valley. In the 1870s, they established an inn in Sitkum known as the Halfway House (half way between Coos Bay and Roseburg). "Sitkum" is Chinook for "half." ( I point that out because Mexpatriate is a diverse place.)
Sitkum is a special place in my memory. When I was around 4, our family spent the summer there logging. It is one of my few childhood memories -- and it is extremely clear.
I spent my days wandering the banks of the East Fork of the Coquille River doing the things boys do, along with my faithful dog companion Uncle Jiggs. (You may recognize the name.) Once I found an abandoned fishing tackle box. At least, I thought it was abandoned.
At night, my father taught me how to tell time. And how to count. Using coins. Coins turned out to be an inspired technique. I learned the algebraic concept of how an 8-based number system (think quarters) can coexist in a decimal-based system. They were heady days.
On our Monday drive, none of us knew exactly where the site was. But I had no doubt about its location. We were parked below a bridge on the river and a large house (the Halfway House) was across the street.
We missed it on the first pass through Sitkum -- which consisted of a few dilapidated buildings. But, once I put the elements together, we found where we spent that special summer. A house is now built on the site, but it is no less special.
According to the Dora cemetery, this could have been my place. John Alva Harry's son and my great grandfather, Osmer Colfax Harry, settled a claim in Dora in the early 1950s. The family was to farm the land for decades. His daughter, Beatrice, the poet and my grandmother, married mu grandfather,Jesse Ray Cotton, in 1919.
The new Cotton family did not appear to be people of place. They moved from farm to farm in what was to be a marriage marred by personal tragedy -- most of it swaddled in the whispered tones of polite society. Their only child, my father, was raised by his aunt and uncle.
What was possibly my opportunity to become a person of place was simply not to be. Instead, I started life as a gypsy. To hear my mother tell it, our young family lived enough places before I was 6 to require our relatives to use an Etch-a-Sketch as an address book.
Oh, yes, I was gong to tell you about my great-great grandmother, Chloe Amelia Cook. When her husband John died, she married a fellow by the name of James Laird. Thus, adding another layer of local relatives to our family. The Dora cemetery if filled with marhers for Harry, Laird, Butler, and Cotton. Such as my great grandfather James Andrew Cotton, who lived to almost 100.
But that was not her greatest contribution. While running a relationship calculator on my family tree, I discovered something very odd. In addition to being my parents, my parents are also my cousins. In fact, they are each other's cousin.
Not like Ozark cousins. The relationship is rather attenuated. They are ninth cousins once removed.
Chloe is the culprit. Nicholas Noyes and Mary Cutting married in Newbury, Massachusetts in 1640. Little did they know when they launched their DNA into the world, that their streams would reunite when Chloe married John in 1857. And again when my parents married.
Thus, I am my own cousin. And I suspect that is a far better tale than being a person of place.
The label is old. But it is no less accurate for it.
My friend and philospophical racconteur, John Hofer, and I share similar backgrounds. We were both small town kids. Before he left his central Washington farming community for college, he was raised primarily by his Congregationaliust grandmother surrounded by a bushel of aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Whenever we would discuss our backgrounds over lunch or dinner, John would get a bit wistful about his family roots. As if he were an exotic plant re-planted in foreign soil. He really cared about the place he was from. I believe I even wrote a poem about that facet of the human condition.
I, on the other hand, felt a bit rootless. As if I did not quite belong where I was -- or that I could belong wherever I was.
That distinction led to a label for John. He was a person of place. And I was either a person of no place or anyplace.
A similar analysis appears in David Goodhart's The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics.
He uses different labels -- a dominant minority of people of "anywhere" against a majority of people from "somewhere." But the concepts are the same.
"Anywheres" have achieved status based on professional and educational success. They value social and geographical mobility. "Somewheres" identify themselves by place, honoring family, authority, and nationality. In Goodhart's parlance, I am an "Inbetweener."
What I am not is a person of place or a person of "somewhere." And I felt that strongly on our trip to southern Oregon.
My mother was born and raised in Powers. She did not leave there until she went to college. After marrying, she returned. But, even when we moved to Portland in the mid-1950s, she remained a Powers girl. Her background informed all of her decisions. The town has not worn well since then.
Even though I often say I am from Powers, at most, I lived there for five years. But I do not identify with the town. Nor do I identify with Milwaukie, where I lived twenty-three years. Or Texas, Colorado, California, Greece, or England where I was stationed with the Air Force. Or Salem where I went to law school and practiced law for thirteen years. They were all pleasant places, but not my "somewhere."
Having said that, Mom, Darrel and I experienced a pleasant two days in her old home town. There are very few places I have lived where the town itself has a town reunion. That is not remarkable when you realize the town's civil society and its high school are the same thing. People may diverge on church and social clubs, but being a Cruiser is the community's cement.
Darrel and I talked with several old childhood friends who lived on our street. My brother had a better recollection of events; I had a better memory of who was related to whom. One neighbor even put on a full court press to convince me I should move back.
The offer was tempting. I retain enough "somewhere" volunteer conservatism to be tempted to live in a community based on personal involvement. School events. The library. Bike races through town. All need people to keep the town running -- or pedaling.
One of the community's great accomplishments is a county park at the north end of town. When we moved away in the mid-1950s, logging put meals on the table in Powers. But The Cancer had set in. Within a decade, the woods were shut down -- or shutting down.
Where the park now sits was a thriving lumber mill. When it shut down, it was an eyesore for a decade. Then, someone stumbled on the great idea that it would make a perfect recreation site. After all, I used to catch tadpoles in the mill pond. Why not turn it into a fish pond?
So, they did. The place is now an RV campground with day use picnic facilities.
And, if you have feel a transcendental urge to become Henry David Thoreau, you can rent a pond cabin for $45 a night.
With this as your contemplative view -- where you might be able to make some sense out of Thoreau's ramblings. "If the day and night make one joyful, one is successful."
I doubt I will move to Powers. Well, that is me being nice. There is next to no chance I will move to Powers. But I will most likely return for a visit. Even though it is not my somewhere.
Tomorrow I will share a visit the three of us made on Sunday that defines a somewhere I could have owned.
This is a story about life. And a manure spreader.
Yesterday, Darrel, grandson Baron, and I ventured forth into the hinterlands of La Pine -- a flat plain spotted with juniper and ponderosa. But we were not searching for trees. We were on our way to audition a used bicycle for Christie.
While Darrel did what he does best (chat and negotiate), I wandered off onto a portion of the owner's 400 acres. When we drove in, I saw an interesting piece of farm machinery near the road.
It turned out to be a manure spreader. Until recently, the owner's parents used it regularly. It had now been relegated to a genre trendy in these parts -- farm yard art.
What had until recently been a utilitarian part of the farming process had been demoted to an aesthetic artifice. Similar to those dead airplanes on sticks favored by air force bases.
The symbolism was not lost on me. The spreader was passing through its stages of life. Once a robust part of the family, it had been literally put out out to pasture. To rest and to provide artistic enjoyment as it rusted into oblivion.
Very similar to our own lives.
Take me, for instance. That is easy because I am the one tapping on the keys.
I decided I wanted to be an attorney when I was a sophomore in high school. When I discovered it would be another seven years of schooling after I graduated from high school, I was sorely disappointed. I wanted to be an attorney right then.
As it turned out, I did not graduate from law school until 12 years later. An unplanned five year detour to the Air Force intervened before I got back on course.
Not everything was rosy about my law career. In 1988, I lost a very narrow race for the Oregon legislature, my law partnership broke up, and I turned 40 -- all in the span of three months. It was my personal annus horribillis.
But, just like one of those cheesy Eastern religion movies, I learned a lesson from tragedy. I had fallen into the same trap as so many people have -- especially American men. I had defined myself by what I did for a living rather than realizing I am a moral agent who is not dependent upon a profession to define my being. It was an awareness raiser.
I suspect that terrible year was what made retirement so easy for me. When I stepped away from the position I adored at SAIF Corporation, I had no regrets. And, unlike a large number of attorneys I know, I did not fail retirement. The reason was simple: I was focused on what I could now do without the restraints of my profession.
Rather than finding my sole worth in my title, I found it in life. Writing. Reading. Traveling. Simply doing whatever popped into my head.
As I walked around the manure spreader (an apt analogy for an attorney turned essayist), I wondered if it was happy with its lot -- or if it longed to spend its day flinging cow patties. Was its new-found role as an art object as fulfilling as its former job?
Of course, it was the wrong question. For it -- and for me.
What we all need to ask ourselves is whether we have learned to settle for what we get? Railing against inevitability is the madness of youth (and some political activists). A lesson we should have learned long ago from Merrily We Roll Along.
As for me, I am happy that I am here -- and that you took time today to visit.
Now, I need to head off to Powers to meet another side of my destiny.
