I only lasted 45 with the democrats last night...

Ok, I confess that I only made it through 45 minutes of last night's Democratic debate. With all due respect, I already know that I will be voting for whomever becomes the nominee. It is a matter of moral magnitude to make 45 a one term disaster. Not that last night's show promised a slam dunk. After all, this regime rode into office harnessing the shadow side of the American dream. In combination with an obscene amount of cash, media manipulation by Russia, misogyny alongside 20+ years of demonizing the Clintons, the despair of Americans long forgotten and trapped in an opioid infested, de-industrialized heartland, the demise of critical thinking in public discourse, the revenge politics of nativism and right-wing populism, and our sordid national obsession with all that glitters: who else but a reality TV con man could ascend to the highest office in our land?  I'll return tonight for another 45 minutes knowing that both the candidates and their interlocutors will drive me crazy. 

Please don't misunderstand: I believe many of the candidates to be wise people of integrity. Perhaps the same can be said for the CNN panel, too. Still, the network created a weird vibe that was part civil religion en regalia, part carnival side show, and part gotcha bickering. I would rather an in-depth conversation about issues and solutions. As both an antidote to the sleaze and a cleansing for my soul, I was grateful to come upon this poem by Tess Gallagher. For me, it evokes a part of the American culture that I cherish, a part that I pray we might reclaim, because it but is slowly evaporating all around us.

What Does It Say

that the only shoe repairman in town
has retired? He who mended suitcases
and purse straps. Who loved to chat
but could turn taciturn. How we laughed
over my fondness for shoes that were
clearly worn out. “Fair-weather
shoes,” he pronounced like a benediction,
trying with seasons to extend

the life of my loafers. A tall man with nimble
fingers on an oversized hand, the gaze
surgeon-like. How I admired your Lazarus
revivals! For it’s feet in failing shoes
that rule the world. Barefooted, we had
the ways of birds, equipped from the womb—splashing
in puddles, running after dark, bearing our troubles
and joys place to place. Addiction to shoes

came later. Whether quietly falling
apart, coming unglued, or
scrubbed down at the heels, they’d still
find a dance floor once in a while and shake
the body around to remind it how, in or out
of shoes, everything depends on the feet.
In your imagination toward repair, you gave
hope and salvage to those without money

for new shoes, or who, like me, had to
eke out their days with unmanageable feet, depending
on a makeshift tangle of sandals—a few cloth straps
stapled to a cork sole— thereby asking you to take up
the world of miracles. Shoes that had worn
themselves to feet until pain
took off its hat and stood on the curb.

You seemed to connect with us through time, cheating
it day after day, with small, momentous
restorations. And what, after all, is a world
that walks around
only in new shoes,

that stops asking for a guy like you, a man true
to this gradually
falling-apart era, alive
to our need to be treated
mercifully, our wish
to be mended and remended?

Someone to companion our fragile hopes
in the form of these emptied-out
unsalvageable steps.

(For more, go to: https://www.slowdownshow.org/ episode /2019/07/17/168-what-does-it-say