Scared for the Children

Be a Good Ancestor

I was talking with my cousin, Jeff Greiner, about the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard from her position on Trump’s cabinet, apparently driven by the rare form of bone cancer that her husband has contracted, but probably also due to the way in which the administration is conducting business. As usual, Jeff and I agree that Tulsi is likely acting as a person of integrity.

We extended our comments to note that it is increasingly rare to detect a person of principle, living up to their responsibilities with integrity in this world. I responded to him with this clip from the late Jeff Beck. I hope more than a few of you will listen to it. I would love it if you’d amplify it through cyberspace with the means that Substack places at our fingertips:

I usually place these buttons toward the end of my articles with the comment, “Click a button. Any button…” but hardly anyone ever does. I’d know it if they did.

For what it is worth, I’m going to keep on writing out my impressions of the passing show and doing the “Live With Hal Gill” segments because, if nothing else, I am leaving a mark:

While Tulsi emerged onto the scene as the Vice Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee in the run-up to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president in 2016, she has taken a very different trajectory to which most people react negatively. She doesn’t appear to care. She holds true to her own inner compass and serves the God of her understanding. Being a Hindu, it’s complicated, I’m sure.

I watched as the first woman of color to earn delegates in a Democratic Presidential Primary since Shirley Chisholm in 1972 was completed ignored and not even invited to the Democratic National Convention in 2020. I watched as the media ignored her messaging and called those of us who supported her “Unusual Americans” - I guess that is apt. We who could see the things that were happening were unusual. After demolishing other candidates on stage in the debates in 2020, the goal posts for her inclusion in future debates were repeatedly moved. Saturday Night Live did the best job of showing us how many came to see her during those times:

It’s not like we didn’t know. As Tulsi exits the stage to assist her husband as he is treated for cancer, we can see how we are as a people, generally. We get the government we deserve, it seems.

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The section above was written yesterday afternoon after I got back from working a 5 hour shift. In getting the government that we have earned through our collective actions (and inactions), I am definitely scared for the children. Therefore, I’m doing what I can while I have breath in the body to be a good ancestor. I talk about this concept often and hope that people out there will pick up what I am laying down.

In the meantime, as I reviewed my memories on Facebook this morning, this surfaced from 2012:

“The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.”

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers

My life is right where I am - monitoring the universe from my vantage point here in the Bunker in the company of my wife and my anima, who I conceptualize as the Goddess, Eris. She is the cause of strife, dischord, and chaos, to be sure, however, it is from just these elements that our history has arisen. From the time in which she was uninvited to the feast of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis and crashed the party with bearing the gift of a golden apple bearing the legend, “To The Fairest,” our history has been unfolding.

The parallels to the Director of National Intelligence’s acronym being said to also mean “Do Not Invite” are obvious. Tulsi stood against regime change wars, but in the desire to serve her nation, took a position on the cabinet of Donald J. Trump when invited to do so. She apparently was not in the loop on the intervention removing Maduro from power in Venezuela. It is unclear to me how much input she had in the actions against Iran. While her husband’s diagnosis is tragic - and all too common in our society - it provides a good reason to get out before things get even worse. I expect they will. Therefore, I’m scared for the children.

For myself, I will keep on trying to be the change I want to see in the world; amplifying the signals that other wish to get through the noise of cyberspace. I’ll be marching next Saturday in my hometown’s Grand Parade for Drummers Call, an annual fife and drum performance. Getting signals through the noise is what fifing and drumming is all about, after all.

When I “fall in” with my fellow alumni/ae of the Colonial Williamsburg Fife and Drum Corps, my individuality will drop away and the entity that is us will inhabit every one of the corps members as we return to the rudiments of rhythm and traditional arrangements of the melodies and harmonies set down by our Musick Masters (as we called our adult leaders in my time). I’m so looking forward to that.

Keeping the dead alive is another thing in which we are proficient. The tunes written or transmitted through time traditionally came from people who lived long ago. Few of us will have our fallen far from our memories either. George Carroll, A. John C. Moon, Herbert Watson, John Evan Barbour, Tommy Williams, Kevin Garland, Dennis Roberts - and those are just a few of those who have gone on before into the eternal ranks of fifers and drummers of yore. We are lucky to have many of us still marching. The tradition is being carried on by the current Corps. Many start at the age of 10 and sometimes younger. I’m grateful to be able to march again with Lance Pedigo who was my generations Sergeant Major and began his formal training at 9 years old.

I could go on, and often do, but suffice it to say that I am doing my best to be a good ancestor and both maintain the foundations of the work of my late father and of all those who were instrumental in establishing my hometown. Here’s how it started:Y

Yesterday’s post was all about “Practice” in its essence. Part of my practice is keeping my late father’s legacy alive. As a research historian, he was very much the detective and this article about the events before the establishment of Williamsburg as the capital city of Virginia stands as a testament to his work:

Dad wrote this 27 years ago this spring for the 300th anniversary of Williamsburg becoming “the chief of these Towns” as John Locke put it. Williamsburg became the test-bed for many of Locke’s ideas and Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all steeped in his thought. Consider this as you go on to participate in the experiment that is the United States of America. We are the carries of this legacy and need to be worthy of that which has been entrusted to us.

As I thought of this, I was reminded of Jimmy Carter’s statement in the 1976 presidential campaign that he believed in an America that was not busy dying but was busy being born. He was riffing off of Bob Dylan at the time. In looking for the video clip, I ran across a more extensive article by Jeff Cochran. The whole thing is worth amplifying:

Bob Dylan and Jimmy Carter in the Summer of '79: A Slow Train, A Nation Off Track

In short, we can (and I’ll hazard, MUST) do better. Our children deserve better than what we have done thus far. We have been shown the way. Now it’s up to us.

Onward!