Margotlog: Surviving Trump, Hate, and Rock and Roll

Margotlog: Surviving Trump, Hate, and Rock and Roll

Sometimes when I need a little leavening, I decide that our new president looks a bit like an aging, old-timey rock and roller. Wild hair, upper lip hung over lower, brow furrowed with fury and concentration. Sometimes, when the war he seems intent upon waging on his constituents sends me into an ecstasy of numbness or a spasm of fear, I recall other wars waged on noncombatant populations. I am reading about just such a war, "War in Val d'Orcia" by Iris Origo. An Anglo-American patrician by birth and behavior, the Marchesa Origo became Italian by marriage and sympathy. Buying 2000 acres in a corner of Tuscany, she and her husband turned their skill and fortitute frst to reclaiming wasted land and impoverished Italian tenants in the 1920s and 30s. Then just as they were bringing better management and productivity to these wasted farms, World War II demanded more of them.

Back to Trump: So far, life under Trump has induced numbness, disbelief, ridicule (mostly private), wild hope, and now grief. I am grieving the loss of a leader whose aim is to unite us in hope, who strives to better the lives of our country, while honoring others around the globe, while continuing work to protect and heal a clearly damaged planet. I'm grieving the possibility of a leader who inspires us to better deeds, who urges us to improve the lot of human and natural worlds. I'm grieving the lack of a leader who thinks widely, deeply, quietly, and purposefully. Who does not meet each challenge with an instant Tweet. And now I'm recalling a recent photo of our first Bush president and his wife Barbara, both hospitalized at the same time, now recovering. The photo showed them facing each other in a quiet moment, his chin touching her hair, she smiling up at him, both with inward quietude. I never voted for a Bush, but these people never shocked, dismayed, or terrified me. Partly because theyacted thoughtful, caring, and capable of quiet.

During the intense fighting during World War II, the Origos decided to take in twenty children whose homes near Genoa had been bombed and whose parents either dispersed or killed. It was an exercise in compassion, and a lot of work. The children were traumatized. Some hurt or ill. The Origos hired teachers, established beds and play areas, taught the children to work in small ways on the farm.

What struck me so fully was the contrast between a world gone mad with hate, conflict, destruction and death, and the Origos' daily effort to resist and protect these children, to continue feeding them, supporting their tenant farm families, hiding partisans and other combatants in the woods. Their work was all absorbing, full of incessant demands, challenges, needs. Yet they created sanity. They focused on what they could do and drew others to help them. They did not turn inward in fear or hate. They worked against the worst in humankind by doing the best within the circumstances.

This brings me to one more recognition: the thousands of women who attended the Trump inauguration as protestors were crammed in so close they couldn't march or see much of the ceremony. But as one wrote  in today's StarTribune, being there together in such large numbers was enough. Working together, we can overcome dismay, fear, lethargy. If we can't take fire from a president's words, we must take fire from ourselves.