LIVE ON - Through Shelter Swelter, 2020's Long Hot Summer

Swelter Shelter, 2020's Long Hot Summer

The longest day of the year just passed this weekend, conversely ushering in shorter days. I’m conflicted. To me, the time and the season to accomplish all kinds of tasks has arrived. On the other hand, time is short. I was grateful to hear Al Sharpton announce the season’s arrival at George Floyd’s memorial service. Seeds are being sewn in a ‘new time and a new season’. The difference this time, will be in the biodiversity and in the fertilizer. Its very clear that America’s amber waves of grain will remain a choppy sea, flooding the streets and lapping at the doors of the Whitehouse until we replace his Orange Highness with some purple mountain majesty. Its been 20 days since I started this literary protest march towards election day, with 136 days to go. Did you know that late grain is ready for harvest in 136 days? America’s maturation is better late then never and though we seem to have skipped civics class, I hope we earn an honorary degree while filling the grain elevator during November’s harvest.

I used to joke that the country should have substituted the last election with a collective 4 year degree in civics. I’m not laughing anymore. Instead I’m suggesting that America take a crash course on this topic over the long hot summer to come. Including a course primer on etiquette, which might just help us avert the abbreviation of ‘crash course’ from a seemingly inevitable ‘CRASH!’. The degradation of dis-course in the realm of political theater has been longer than many can remember, and certainly shorter than the patience of those wishing to forget and retain their sanity.

Fortunately, ‘CRASH! aversion’ is taking the form of a furious (as in fast and angry) acceleration of people exercising their 1st Amendment Rights. While our world is still dealing with the horrors of the Covid pandemic, I am grateful that it has also created an extended town hall for Americans to exercise the privilege of Freedom of Speech. Perhaps the only redeeming viral element of this pandemic is mass realization and conversation about troublesome issues and inequities. I don’t want to hear any suggestion from Mike Pence that we need to be inoculated from this very necessary homeopathy. I would like to see America do something other than succumb to Trump University’s suggest that we bypass the course segment on the 1st Amendment and hurriedly move on to the 2nd. He would have us replacing the necessity of etiquette with his example, one that could be deemed ‘Amendment 1.5’. That’s defined as exercising ones freedom of speech by shooting off one’s mouth while aiming at one’s feet, or loosing one’s nose in the process, in spite of the face of truth. I’m hoping (extremely cautiously) that the long hot summer ends with less bullets of the real or idiotic kind, and more ballots of the transformational kind.

Need some extra help to survive it all?

Check out: Shelter Swelter, a recipe for surviving the Long Hot Summer