Move a little
Nature’s secret
Our perceptions are not necessarily showing us that our earthly habitat is on the move. Let us begin first, as what has been described as an ever expanding universe, with the notion that the cosmos, with its trillions of stars and planets, is on the Move.
Dismiss for a moment the urge to meditate on that condition of space and time, that is seen as an ever expanding and infinite construct. Instead we will redirect ourselves a little closer to home.
Our galaxy, labeled the Milky Way Galaxy, spirals its existence in a movement all its own. In concert with the larger context astronomers have discovered the complexity of motion in our own galaxy, our neighboring familial galaxies and beyond. The Sun orbiting elliptically about the galactic center of the Milky Way moves, and is not stationery. Our nine planets follow her motion in a rhythmic speed, path, time and distance. Nor are the galaxies fixed, but moving cosmically, often to and fro, and to us, again, imperceptibly.
Bring it on in, to this place, Earth. We quickly learn in basic science the planet Gaia is a marvel of its own, spinning on a tilted orbit, an orbit also elliptical, around the Sun in a fairly uniform day and night, month and year, for millennia. This phenomenal order of all this movement, from our earth to the never ending reaches of the cosmo, are truly worthy of our attention. Grandpa Nonno has much to glean from the daily patterns of moving a little.
Stellar winds swirl about dark matter in space, while on earth prevailing winds bring visible evidence in the moving branches and leaves of terra firma’s trees. Waves of water ebb and flow at the banks and beaches of rivers and seas, ponds and lakes. Precipitation sometimes white, often clear, moves from the clouds in the sky to the receiving surfaces below. Hurricanes and tornadoes move cataclysmically. Air moves. A world pandemic beginning in 2019 has demonstrated this fact with millions and millions human deaths worldwide, and counting for the foreseeable years to follow.
Where are you moving? Moving to the pastoral countryside, another part of town, another foreign country? Movement is everything, our attention stirs. Do we allow ourselves to view imperceptible movement? One area that strikes me profoundly is political movement.
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I learned decades ago the policy of the people matters to all the people.
You too?
Another word in a political sense for ‘movement’ is government. In a democracy such as the one in the United States of America we rely first and foremost on the “vote” to move us. We ask that those that we elect lead us with honesty, integrity, and selflessly. Yes, they are altruistic values, yet, necessary for the common good. To make those choices of leadership, political assemblies come together. What is your choice today? Are you a conservative, an independent thinker, a progressive advocate, a fascist, a neoliberal, a domestic terrorist promoting a hate-filled agenda, or an apathetic non-voter?
Recently we have been knocking on doors as volunteers in an Ohio 2021 Special Election. Moving through the neighborhood, some doors remain shut, although a person may be within the abode when we knock or ring the door bell. When the door does open we introduce ourselves. We ask if the prospective voter is aware of the special election to be held in a short few weeks, and we ask if they are familiar with the congresswoman we are canvassing on her behalf. If the voter has no support for her or no desire to vote, we move on to the next house. It is the ‘Get Out To Vote’ (or GOTV) portion of the campaign. Meeting the most people in a small window of time, face to face, is significant in promoting a candidate for an elected governmental role.
Canvassing is a mobilization of the people. The political movement by a candidate or a political party results often in social change. Objectives, ideology, leadership, programs and organization are the major components of social movements. They are the spirit of democracy and dynamics of society. Our favorite word associated with canvassing is ‘handiwork’. To achieve an objective of the campaign an effort must be exerted, work applied to accomplish the goal to have a voter act, take steps to vote. The endeavor requires one to make a move, be it at the polling station or the voter ballot drop box, and initiate a choice or selection or blank check as a mark of an undertaking. This deed can be considered positive or negative, good or bad or indifferent, wise or mindless, needed or unwanted, but a move nonetheless.
So the steps taken to see the movement of a candidate is important in the political endeavor. The results are unique for each election tally. One sees that some people exploit their position attaining or remaining in power.
As in the case of the current Ohio Special 2021 Election (#OH15) the Republican candidate supports a twice impeached, authoritarian inclined, one term ex-US president. He also advocates for the use of DEAD fossil fuels, those same fuels science has proven to the world that their use changes our climate, dramatically and drastically.
Apparently the GOP agent is susceptible to corrupt maneuvering also, as reported in the Daily Beast by Jackie Kucinich, Washington Bureau Chief, Published July 08, 2021. The article ‘Swampiest Swamp Creature’ contains an attached email that is difficult not to react with ire if one has any respect for our Earth. The majority of voters in Ohio want desperately to take measures to quickly adopt long lasting laws and operations that reverse adverse affects created by previous human enterprises that have caused climate chaos in the past one hundred fifty years plus. This becomes a way to drain a swamp to insure materials going into the state and national Capitols will not need to be drained again in the future. American votes led to national and regional public mistakes in 2016 and preceding decades with misguided voting acts, moving away from our long held democratic values to insurrections.
Working is acting, acting is moving, moving is far reaching. A gesture of choosing the appropriate leader is venturesome, challenging and necessary. Move a little.
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In our part of the Midwest, as is the case of much of the country, political movement has been subjugated to intense gerrymandering resulting in very skewed, party specific, ruling control of legislation and governance. Change is appropriate now.
The 60 year old Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines open government as “a culture of governance based on innovative and sustainable public policies and practices inspired by the principles of transparency, accountability, and participation that fosters democracy and inclusive growth.” This statement is taken from the 2016 document Open Government: the global context and the way forward.
Striking in the title of the document are the words ‘the way forward’. All across the political spectrum, and just not in the United States of America, there exists a direction we all can take, to make right on the irreconcilable disunity of public policy.
Are you a pettifogger? The pettifogger is known for acts of dishonesty, cheating, and corruption. Pettifoggery implies moves by people using deceit, deception, and fraud. Have you swindled and double-dealed to game your power? If this is your type of acts it is reprehensible, certainly unacceptable. Redemption is obligatory. It is time to move a lot.
Open government leads to a safer democracy. The non-apathetic citizen, if allowed, can participate in a viable, lively and accountable manner, make a way forward with informed decisions of casting a vote, aided with engagement, answerability, and straightforwardness.
The Allison Russo campaign suggests strongly “…folks agree that we all want our kids and grandkids to have the opportunities they’ll need to put down roots and raise a family…”. The strongest plank we read within the multi-policy Issues centers on Democracy, culminating with the words … “cracking down on the corrupting influence of dark money in campaigns, and restoring voting rights protections to ensure equal access to the ballot for all eligible voters”.
What a use of language to ‘move a little’!
In this particular race as Allison Russo connects through word of mouth, surrogates, written media, parades, handshakes, letters, postcards, radio, cable and TV, and all other forms of reasonable communications, with the mass of available voters she will be able to move the 15th Ohio congressional a lot. As the proverbial quip says, she will prove to Ohioans and the nation to be ‘on the right side of history’.
Although some may prefer the status quo, do not readily embrace change of any sort, do not follow progressive leads when it’s in their own self interest to do so, and do not help make the world and environs about us safer and cleaner, they fail in their ability to use reason as an aid to help another earthling. We should understand Nature’s secret, that beyond our perceptions, our entire expanding universe, which includes the land we walk, she, is always on the move a little. We are wise to mimic Nature.