Sunday, October 16, 2022

Seasons change and so did I....

 

The view outside our living room window in Brunswick, Maine

 
Right next to our downsized apartment there is a hiking trail through the woods

Harpswell, Maine



Potts Point in Harpswell, Maine


 

The colors are ablaze across Maine. All around our house we have glowing trees. 

Tourists are still here - they are called 'leaf peepers' by Mainers.

After 30 years in hot, humid Florida our move to Maine in 2003 was a blessing. My heart has always been amongst the changing seasons.

In addition to the bright leaves my thinking is changing too. After 40 years of calling myself a peace activist,  I now prefer the 'anti-imperialist' identity.

Mark Twain told the New York Herald on October 15, 1900: “I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”
My current observation is that a good number of 'peace seekers' have a dwarfed-sized analysis about contemporary foreign policy. Their sign on a street corner might just read 'Peace' of something like 'Peace is patriotic'. Essentially they are not willing to take a stand in this crucial moment we find ourselves chained to.

I want to see an expression that tells me something. Something that names the US as the 'greatest purveyor of violence in the world' or that 'NATO is Offensive'.  Or 'Leave Ukraine and Russia damn-well alone'. You likely get my drift.

This song below has been spinning in my head all day. 'I got, got, got no time'.

Distant roads are calling me. I found myself some wings.

Bruce

 


1 comment:

Ariel Ky said...

I haven't heard this song since I was a teenager... no time left for wars. I am with you, Bruce, I am an anti-imperialist, too. When I was a teenager, I thought the concept of preventing wars with the threat of nuclear bombs was the most ridiculous idea I'd ever heard. Perhaps that's when my alienation from American culture started, because I was the only one I knew who thought that way. I couldn't believe that everyone else accepted and supported this absurdity.

Thanks for the photos of fall color. I miss it. This Tuesday I'm hiking our closest mountain, Cerra Blanca, with a friend. I know that I'll see cosmos in the fields, but I'm hoping to see some fall color, too, and maybe find some acorns.