A New Direction for a Troubled Nation: Head North … or escape to Bali

A New Direction for a Troubled Nation: Head North … or escape to Bali Horace advised youth to head West to find a new beginning. Perhaps that can be modified to head North, perhaps to Greeley, Colorado … perhaps to escape Hurricane Ida … or perhaps to escape rabbel rousing rebels and trumplicans seeking to resurrect a lost war, a lost election and return to a time of sedition and slavery. Those were the days, my friend. But then the one road we have traveled since 1619 has shattered and split. There are actually some who are advocating for every American adult to own and carry a gun … as if that will reduce gun deaths in the country with one of the worst gun violence records on the planet – the worst among developed nations. Go NRA. Give me an AR-15 or give me death … be sure to include an unhealthy supply of bullets … preferably at least 1000 rounds of 5.56x45mm M193 NATO certified 55 grain bullets. Head North – take your friends and family – a house divided against itself cannot stand. All those from whom I am fleeing are allegedly followers of Abraham Lincoln and give some recognition to the original Abraham as well, who heard “get thee up and go to a far place” and he went. I want to escape the nonsense, the hatred, the racism, the false patriotic venom, but I stumble on as do most – “Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship, My senses have been stripped, My hands can't feel to grip, My toes too numb to step, Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.” A song to pass the time … a dream to avoid the ugliness … but hurricanes come and go at an increasing and intensifying rate … large scale human tragedies continue unabated … no large scale solution seems on the horizon … education for all? A dream .. critical thinking development for youth … another dream … echoes of the choruses from the rock stick in my mind - “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” What can one small and old person do to improve the human condition … the answer is simple – “When you see your neighbor carrying something, help him with his load, and don’t go mistaking paradise for that home across the road.” Or, according to Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, a devout Jew, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” … the wealthy and privileged few … Or, according to Rabbi Hillel, “if one is not for oneself, then who will be, but then if one is only for oneself [like so many wealthy and privileged people I happen to know] then what is one, and if not now, then when?” And, there is the lesson my father, Rabbi Joseph Spector, left me when I decided not to take a rabbinical fellowship and break the long line of rabbis in my family dating back at least to Rabbi Yitshak Elkahan Spektor – my father’s advice “was to be the voice that encourages, the ear that listens, the eye that reflects the hand that guides, the face that does not turn way … be a teacher.” “With one hand waving free” … “a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas” … mike spector