T-posts and Pain

Take the time then get to work

I found a better way to work by the end of the day, but by then I was pulling smaller posts. Maybe we need a better way to make our democracy work, too, so it’s easier on all of us.

Readers: Looking for community? Use the comments section to offer constructive ideas. What are you doing these days to process the elections? What way do you see forward? What are first steps?

Good six-foot T-posts weigh in at more than seven pounds each. I always try to carry a bundle to make a trip worth it. Sometimes I carry them in my arms at my side like a football, sometimes balanced on my shoulder. I may never learn.

Last week, I put three large vegetable gardens to bed as part of a long list of chores that waited until after Election Day. First I drag the chicken wire away from the bottom of the welded wire while grabbing the dangling garden staples that kept the bunnies out. Then I pull the welded wire away from T-posts and roll it up. Then I pull out about 40 posts from the fence and another 20 smaller ones in tomato cages. Finally I roll up the landscape cloth.

Here’s the thing with T-posts. If you didn’t set them down right and pick them up carefully from the center, or even if you did but your foot lands on a groundhog mound or a puppy, they quickly get off balance. It starts with one skewing toward the front, and as you reach to grab it, another makes its escape sliding backwards. Others get dragged along a few inches here and there, then start to slide.

By then you’re just hoping the neighbors aren’t watching.

You can let the whole mess come crashing to the ground, stepping out of the way to keep your toes safe. Or you can try to hang on tight til the very end. Either way, you land in the middle of a life-size, shoulder-wrenching game of pick-up sticks.

As a big batch of posts crashed around me one day, I couldn’t help seeing our democracy in action. It’s made up of meat and bones, like me, and rigid objects like corporate greed and poverty. (I once thought those things flexible, fungible and even curable, but they aren’t.) Once we lose our focus and make a misstep, we head out of balance, eventually crashing every which way with a lot of noise and pain.  

I’ve been feeling the pain. I’ll admit cruising the internet for land in Costa Rica. That would avoid a trip to the metaphorical ER. But something - call it a conscience, a responsibility to my fellow humans, whatever - won’t let me step away and leave this mess behind.

What just happened is the result of 50 years of long-range, well-funded organizing by the Heritage Foundation and its evil spawn. The only way to survive this is to become better organizers. I don’t know what that looks like right now. I don’t even know my part in it. I only know the campaign, like the one I just ran and lost, will take a lot of energy, vision and endurance.

Ugh.

This is how we felt after the derecho. So many trees down. Homes without roofs. Lives pushed over the edge. Yet just enough remained – a waterlogged baby book, a volunteer chainsaw crew, free barbecue - to give people hope.

And like then, it’s hard to know where to start and easy to fall into exhaustion. Isn’t it someone else’s turn to take over? Can’t this be someone else’s problem for once?

But unlike a derecho, the betrayal is real. The woman who smiled in her front yard talking to the candidate, then voting for his opponent. The men who nod politely and hold the door open after voting to give a maniac the reins of a government rigged to let him run wild. 

That’s Iowish for you. East Coast people like me call it being two-faced. Iowans call it being polite. But after months of driving, walking, climbing stairs, knocking, fending off dogs, eating pancakes in crowded fire stations, after raising money and mobilizing volunteers, after stressed days and sleepless nights, “polite” just doesn’t cut it.

Why couldn’t they just say it to our faces? “You seem like a nice guy, but I’m not voting for you.” “You’re a nice lady. You should be home with your husband.” “The guy’s an a-hole but I’m voting for him anyway, just because.”

“Polls show Harris leads Trump in Iowa by 3 points.” Someone didn’t know Iowish.

I’ve always thought the only difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats are cheaper prostitutes. (No offense to prostitutes. Everyone’s gotta make a living.) When the Dems held the governor’s seat plus majorities in both houses here in Iowa, no Confined Animal Feeding Operations were banned, no riparian buffers were mandated, no labor or abortion rights were enshrined in the Constitution, no minimum wage was increased.

Democrats were afraid of overstepping, alienating donors, picking a fight they couldn’t win. They were afraid of losing.

In other words, they were spineless weasels. Then they lost. And now we’re watching something much worse that Republicans take their place.

Ruth B. Anderson was a mentor of mine in my 20s. It took her 16 years to become a county supervisor in Blackhawk, the first Black supervisor in the most segregated county in Iowa. By then she had pepper gray hair and deep grooves around her smile. When she jumped passionately into the work on Day 1, friends and allies told her to tone it down. She might not get reelected.

“It took me 16 years to get here!” she told them. “I don’t care if I get reelected. I’ve got work to do now.”

I haven’t met an elected Democrat like her since. And now there are hardly any left in Iowa. No wonder.

The sun is setting. There’s a chill in the evening air. The leaves have all dropped. Winter’s coming and I haven’t laid in a stick of firewood yet.

I pick up two T-posts at a time and carry them back to the barn. My knees ache because I’m getting old. My thighs hurt because I haven’t been out here doing honest work lately. I can feel the arthritis starting up in my gloved hands, but I keep at it.

No one is coming to clean up this mess.

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Ways to Plug In

I can’t recommend any of these from long personal experience, but they will get you started. Please post in the chat others you’ve found and help us all move forward together.

We are Worth Fighting For - Two days after the election they hosted 140,000 people on Zoom. Launched by MoveOn, Working Families Party, Public Citizen and others, they offer simple, nonconfrontational ways to get organizing in your own community.

Progress Iowa - for ways to communicate progressive issues effectively.

Barnraiser - a progressive rural magazine/newsletter.

Rural Urban Bridge Initiative - “We develop political, economic and communications strategies that build bridges and serve the common interests of all working and middle class Americans.”

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Meet the newest member of the family - Gunnar!

Pronounced “Gunner” he is a rescue Red Heeler/Border Collie mix from a home in Western Illinois. He’s sweet and shy and we look forward to watching him come into his own here at Draco Hill.