Just a Closer Walk with Thee

It snowed two days ago in the Skagit Valley. The roads are still ice-covered because we have no snowplows or trucks to spread sand on the slippery stretches. It's very cold at night and the snow will not melt until next week. We've been starting the fire in the wood stove first thing in the morning, to keep the frost out. It's not like real winter back in the Midwest, but it's cold enough for me.

BUNKY THE BALD EAGLE. I call him Bunky. He perches at the top of the cottonwood in back of our house on Fir Island. He only recently got kicked out of his mama's nest -- has those mottled juvenile feathers. The adult bald eagles look like they own the country, with a commanding predator's glare. But Bunky looks lost, "Mom?.... Mom?.... Where's the food?....What am I supposed to do?" Bunky is perched up there in the cottonwood, all alone in the world now, looking into a lean winter before he figures out that he has to get his own dinner.

HE'S SERBIAN. Illinois Governor Blagojevitch is neither corrupt nor insane, he's Serbian. Chicago has a large Eastern European contingent -- Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovaks, etc., and they are aware of the ethnic distinctions. Serbia was that country that Pres. Clinton bombed back to Bejesus after they invaded Kosovo. They also started World War I at Sarajevo, in Serbia, and now we have this Governor, the most famous Serbian-American in the country. But his name will be forgotten by next week. As they say, in Chicago, to the rest of the country "What's it to you?... It's not your state and it's not your tax money."

Of course it does reflect a bit on our new President, as the nation slowly realizes that Obama is the brains and the style, but Mayor Dailey is the muscle. It took muscle to kick that cowboy out of the White House -- just being right and asking nicely won't get you anything.


TAKE IT BACK. But another event in Chicago will become an important date in American history, December 5, the day when the workers at the window factory in Chicago decided to take it back. They were laid off with only three days notice, more than 200 workers, many with more than ten years experience -- no severance pay, no accrued vacation pay, just "get out."

But they didn't just clean out their lockers and go home -- they refused to leave the premises until they got paid. They began a six-day occupation of the window factory, until all the politicians, and reporters, and bankers, and owners came by to hear their story. Their calm determination prevailed, and they got their back pay.

And did those workers win because they deserved it? Because they were right? No, they prevailed because they seized the premises -- an illustration of muscle effectively deployed on behalf of labor.

I am just astounded by this act of labor militancy, because it marks a turning point. Labor has been meek and subnmissive since another famous date in American history, August 3, 1981, when President Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers for going on strike. Eleven thousand he fired, with a stroke of his pen, and ever since that date 27 years ago American workers have cowered while Reagan spoke about a city shining on a hill. Reagan's shining city exists, but most of us don't get to live there. Instead we bought his promise, "If we all work for less money, the nation will prosper" .... ? .... Reagan said it with such a nice smile, that many of us believed him, and many of us got confused. "Okay, I get it, I'll get rich if I just work harder for less money" ..... but that doesn't actually make sense.....

UNLESS you live in Alabama. Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, was the leading voice in oppostion to the Detroit bailout. Alabama is the home of cheap labor. Their state motto is "Dirt Poor and Proud of it."

Alabama gave America slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, sharecropping, mule plowing, George Wallace, the Klu Klux Klan, corn pone, fat back, pellagra and tuberculosis, and six different flavors of chewing tobacco.

That's all I need to know about the bailout. Think what you will about Mayor Dailey and the Big Three automakers -- but people got paid well. I don't want to live in Senator Shelby's cheap labor world, do you?

So, I will close with a wonderful, moving song, sung by Mahalia Jackson, often considered the finest gospel singer who ever lived. Her voice, with its infinite power and grace, represents that best of life of Chicago. Even her life story illustrates the story. Mahalia was born and raised in New Orleans, but she came north, as so many other Southerners did, black and white, to escape grinding poverty, because they could get factory jobs in Chicago, and the jobs paid so much better than picking cotton. Mahalia Jackson came north to freedom. Listen to her music. Listen to "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."

They finished harvesting the potatos

They finished harvesting the potatoes across the road from our house on Fir Island. It's a very big field and it took them a week, working dawn to dusk and into the night -- the harvester going slowly down the rows, running potatoes up a moving belt into a heavy truck that follows behind. An empty truck waits idling, at the edge of the field, and then pulls into place behind the harvester for the next load.

The famous tasty Skagit red potatoes get hauled to huge warehouses -- mountains of potatoes, left for storage without being washed, because they keep better that way.

I'll bet they're glad they finished harvesting, because it's raining steady all day now -- a muddy mess for anyone who is not done for the year.

Some fields are planted with young cabbages that winter over and grow into green-yellow bushes next year -- they will be harvested for their seeds next August.

Other fields have winter wheat and barley crops. But the rest of the fields lay bare through the winter, except the farmers run what they call a V-plow at various places -- as a way of digging a trench to get the water off.

Fir Island is at sea level, and surrounded by a dike. So drainage is a continuous year-long task. All property holders on Fir Island pay pretty good money into the the dike and drainage district. Without those dikes and ditches, we would all be standing in about six inches in water.

That's government up close. You have to pay that tax if you live on the island, but you can see the dike, and you can see all the ditches, and you can see the crews working. You can go to the district meetings and put your vote on how it's all being done. It's money well spent -- I am very glad to be living here. But that's as close as I want to get to politics.

The snow geese are back -- out grazing in the barley and wheat fields. Coyotes work the edge of the flocks at night, and eagles fly over the flocks by day. If you see a snow goose limping or hopping on one leg, it won't last long.

I keep walking out to the slough to look at this beaver trail slithering through the cattails, up the bank, and into the raspberry field - but I think I've gone out there too often and left a scent -- so the beaver must be going someplace else.

The farmer who runs that field on the other side of the slough will shoot the beaver if he can find him, because the beaver likes to plug up the drainage pipes in a dam-building effort. I am only an observer in this beaver-farmer war. I should get a blue and white United Species flag.

But I am pro-human, when you get down to it. I love you all the very best.

Now, as far as the election goes, John McCain is in Pennsylvania and that makes me nervous. I want Obama to win. I already voted for him and I have done other things for him. I heard him speak in person when I was in Texas last spring, I also met Michelle Obama at a smaller gathering and shook her hand. I think they will do really well.

Two high points of the campaign for me were: when Senators McCain and Obama met in New York on September 11 to jointly and quietly lay memorial wreaths at Ground Zero. The other high point was Gen. Colin Powell's comprehensive endorsement of Obama on Meet the Press -- Powell said it just right, and that's how I feel about it too.

Have a good weekend.