Tag: history

MAY DAY!

On By Mary KochIn Uncategorized2 Comments

They’re preaching to the choir, I said to myself.The “preachers,” in this instance, were public  television travel guru Rick Steves plus a real life preacher, Steves’ wife, Lutheran Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee. They were sharing a podium — not the pulpit — at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle. Their presentation, “The Traveler and the Bishop” focussed on threats to American democracy and the rise of Christian Nationalism.

Some, perhaps many, church goers view such topics as political and inappropriate in a church. I empathize with their need for sanctuary, an escape from poisoned politics, stress, and disagreement. These are, noted Bishop Shelley (as she prefers to be called), “fraught times.”

If the war we’re waging against Iran upsets you because gas prices are soaring, that’s a political issue. When the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world threatens to annihilate an entire nation, that’s no longer politics. That’s a threat to the very fiber of humanity. It’s a moral issue demanding nonpartisan, nonviolent discussion in churches, synagogues, temples and mosques.

“Across the United States there’s a crescendo of concern,” said Steves. “People are rising up and they’re asking, ‘What the hell is going on?’”

St. Mark’s, which seats well over a thousand, was packed. When an evening presentation was first announced — free, but reservations required — capacity quickly was reached. Steves and Bishop Shelley agreed to a second, afternoon presentation. When I arrived, a half-hour early, the “choir” was gathering. A line spanned the large stone labyrinth in front of the cathedral and half-way down the block.

I thought about the many times singing in a choir motivated and empowered me. Maybe preaching to the choir should not be discounted. Maybe it’s more impactful than the old cliche suggests.

Steves effectively summarized events of the past year-and-a-half, none of it news to this audience. Partway into his forty-minute speech he acknowledged he didn’t like using the “F” word, but . . . and then he paused, meaningfully. I steeled myself, anticipating the profane F-Bomb. But Steves had another “F” word in mind, even more profane: Fascism. 

He’s an authority. Seven years ago he produced a documentary, “The Story of Fascism in Europe.” It is frighteningly omniscient, showing events of the 1920s and 1930s that mirror what’s happening here and now. Steves also compiled what he calls “The Dictator’s Playbook: 20 Points Followed by Mussolini, Hitler…and Every Wannabe Fascist Authoritarian Since.” (Available on Facebook.)

No. 1 on Steves’ checklist is, “Establish a mythic past … and promise a national rebirth to the good old days.” MAGA, anyone? Another is to promise simple solutions to complex problems. DOGE, anyone? A vital component of special concern to me and fellow career journalists: control the information media. 

This choir member left the cathedral both energized and discomforted. It’s my lack of personal inconvenience that worries me. I’m troubled intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. But my day-to-day life is smooth sailing. I’m aware of higher prices in the grocery store, yet I’m not struggling to feed a family. Thousands of my fellow citizens cannot afford skyrocketing health insurance premiums with the loss of supplements. My Medicare Advantage plan is still affordable — while I’m healthy, at least. 

People are dying, in this country and across the globe. Some 600,000 deaths have been attributed to the end of USAID. 

Reader, please be patient while I offer another metaphor. Am I (along with so many like me) the proverbial frog who is dropped into a pot of cool water? The frog swims around as the water heats up — until it’s too late. Wikipedia offers some comfort, if you care about frogs. Experiments have determined that when the water gets hot, the frog jumps out. Are we as intelligent as frogs?

I’m posting this late on May 1. May Day is both a call for help and a traditional day for demanding workers’ rights. And here we are, inhumanely treating and deporting people who are an essential core of our working population. That’s reality, even if the frog metaphor isn’t. How close are we to the boiling point? Can we turn down the heat? Possibly — if the preachers keep preaching, and if we in the choir sing at the top of our lungs.

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To watch the full April 26 event at St. Mark’s Cathedral click here. (Welcome and introductions  start at five minutes in, and Steves’ talk is eight minutes in. Bishop Shelley’s talk is one hour and ten minutes in.)

Get to Know Your Mother With a Walk Through Time

On By Mary KochIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I didn’t think a Sunday afternoon stroll through one of Seattle’s more stately neighborhoods would tire me as much as it did. But traveling through time can be exhausting. Our group of eight walkers made it through 4.6 billion years in a little over two-and-a-half hours. Every step (if you have relatively long legs) represented nearly a million years. 

It was a venture in “Deep Time,” a way of viewing Earth from a sensory perspective. More than a class in geology (although the experience would fit into a science curriculum nicely), “Deep Time” allows us to experience Earth’s story from the ground up, including how and where we humans fit in. 

You can take a “Deep Time” walk on your own with help of a free app. Instead, our small group was led by Richard Hartung, an Earth advocate. We began our walk on the grounds of St. Mark’s Cathedral on Capitol Hill. Our pace leisurely, we stopped every few billion years while covering 4.6 kilometers (a little less than three miles).

Scientists generally agree that Earth began to take shape from a mass of gas and rocks revolving around a faint sun. A billion or so years later, a huge collision threw off enough debris to form the moon, the beginning of our seasons. Not until 3.8 billion years ago did life begin to emerge in the form of single cell organisms. If the thought of humans evolving from monkeys disturbs you, rest assured. It’s those single cells, said Richard, that were “our common ancestors.”

By the time we reached Lowell Elementary School at 11th and Mercer streets, almost an hour had passed, and it was 3.1 billion years ago. That, said Richard, was when those single cells began to come together in “community.” How perfect, I thought. Lowell school is all about community. Its progressive programs serve many children from unhoused families. Students come from families speaking thirty different languages.

Soon we entered Volunteer Park, reaching the halfway point. About 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen was beginning to move into Earth’s atmosphere, for which I was thankful. We’d climbed a slight grade which had me breathing a little more deeply. Things started happening at a faster pace: endosymbiosis, a couple ice ages, earth’s revolutions slowing down and the sun brightening. As we walked past Lake View Cemetery, where Bruce Lee is buried, insects began to emerge some 425 million years ago. The coal that is mined today began forming 360 million years ago.

Millions more years flew by as we strolled: volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs, continental drift, an asteroid hit the earth and killed off the dinosaurs. Two-and-a-half hours from our starting point, the glorious Rocky Mountains and Andes emerged. Twenty-three million years ago, primates arrived, and my knee — the one I fractured earlier in the summer — was beginning to ache, just a little.

To make an unfathomably long story ridiculously short, homo sapiens appeared on Earth at the very end of our walk, just 200,000 years ago, or about eight inches from our finish line.

When we talk about history, we tend to think of it as human history, notes David Abram, one of the developers of “Deep Time.” Our “real history,” he says, is the history of the land itself, Earth, with which we are “embedded, entangled.” 

Throughout the walk, Richard noted the various times when Earth heated and cooled in cycles that lasted for eons, causing devastation. My notes on that are fuzzy because his voice was often drowned out by planes overhead, en route to and from SeaTac International Airport, burning upwards of a dozen tons of fossil fuel per hour.

I recalled a friend who tried to calm my concerns about climate change. “Mary,” he said, “there’ve always been cycles of Earth cooling and warming.” True, Richard would reply. But the change we’re experiencing now is coming one hundred times faster than any in the past. His final question to our group was a challenge: “What do we do?” We sat quietly, mulling various strategies. 

I believe we must begin by caring about our relationship with Earth. When we care, we become more aware, we ponder our daily decisions, practices, and habits that impact Earth. Ancient Greek wisdom understood Earth to be Gaia, the mother of all life. Chief Seattle echoed that insight: “The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.”

We must learn to appreciate Earth as the mother who has generously nurtured us. As babies we are suckled, but now we have sucked our mother dry. She is old and very sick. It’s hard work to care for the old and the sick. It demands personal sacrifice. I’ve been there and learned  that caregiving is also a joy-filled opportunity to love. Now is the time to love Earth and all her inhabitants tenderly and deeply. She is, after all, our mother.