NOTICINGS: Peek-a-boo Blues
A change in POV delivers more than expected
You think you’ve picked the entire branch, so you move on to the next branch. But when you turn around, you see clusters hidden from one view suddenly present from another POV. Peek-a-boo blues. Covert beyond measure. A morning’s gifts. It’s what one gets July through October when a lawn is replaced by seven plants that ripen in sequence beginning in late spring through mid-summer to fall.
Fifteen years into learning how to plant and grow, I am now having ideas about stuff that has nothing to do with planting and growing but are informed by planting and growing. Like this peek-a-boo experience of clustered blueberries under a leaf. First, you see nothing. Then, from another position—moving to another side of the bush—I see the blues hidden from view. Where I stand seems to make all the difference. Not only the welcomed blueberries, but the most unwelcomed blues resulting from the unmitigated lawlessness the White House slams into us one headline and one congressional vote after the other. Here, the covert, at first out of sight, now constantly explodes into view.
For relief, and for guidance, I turn to Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny; Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Snyder’s 20 lessons suggest another point of view, accompanied by a toolbox honed by decades of tyrannies suffered by other nations. America now needs this toolbox. I need this toolbox.
A few weeks ago, Snyder sent out an email with graphic files for postcards, posters, and a yardsign that anyone can download for free. I downloaded one and got 250 cards printed. I handed them all out at the No Kings protest, guided by Lesson #12: Make eye contact and small talk.
When someone stands on, say, a street corner, handing out cards, I kinda breeze by. Not interested. But now I’m the one on the street corner, and instead of folks giving me the snark eye as I dread, they accept the card, look at it, and when they register a word or two, they look right at me and say, with warmth, Thank you! Like blueberries simply ripening out of sight under a leaf, these brief moments of recognition and appreciation are both unexpected and welcomed. Only one person in the No Kings crowd said, No thanks.
Folks were so pleased by the card that I printed one thousand more. Added to my surprise is that most of the people to whom I’ve given a card have never heard of Timothy Snyder, much less read his books. So much for my assumption that nearly everyone knows about Tim Snyder’s work. I, too, live in a bubble, and my POV improves when it is widened when I read the text instead of skating by saying, Oh, I’ve already read it.
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Eventually, I understood that Snyder’s lesson headings serve to beckon. They are not self-explanatory. Take a look at this excerpt:
“[During tyrannical regimes] when friends, colleagues, and acquaintances looked away or crossed the street to avoid contact, fear grew. You might not be sure, today or tomorrow, who feels threatened in the United States.
But if you affirm everyone, you can be sure that certain people will feel better, in the most dangerous times, those who escape and survive generally know people whom they can trust. Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change.”
A change of perspective is essential to resisting, protesting, and challenging the horrific consequences of, for example, ICE disappearing people. Or watching Paramount cancel Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, which arguably means the beginning of shutting down free speech elsewhere. Everywhere? If I think I've picked all the blueberries, I might also think that I’ve got a handle on politics and how to change them. Oops. There is always another POV. There is always another essential tool for one’s toolbox.
Twenty Lessons postcards are simple. Maybe they could assist with broadening assumptions, understandings, and opinions. Maybe. Postcards I can hand out. I can post yard signs printed from Snyder’s graphic file on the sidewalk. One in front with mallow and a gorgeously scented lily, and another on the corner where there are even more joggers, stroller pushers, skateboarders, dog walkers, and cars pausing at the stop sign.
A woman thanked my neighbor for the corner sign, which is at the front of her house. “It calms me,” she said. A neighbor I don't know strolls by and says, “I like your sign.”In both my life as a gardener who grows blueberries for breakfast and an occasional blueberry pie, and my life as an activist, more and more I notice the interrelationships between my personal life and my life on the public stage. At home, nurturing the blueberry bushes means learning the details of their need for acidic soil, sun, and water. Getting enough sun is particularly tough for my blues because of the towering oak trees adjacent to them. Still, at least for now, while growing taller as they reach for the sun, they sure do make delicious berries.
At the local Good Trouble rally downtown, the dog park, or at the ice cream place where there is always a long line, me, with intense, self-consciousness, offer strangers a card. More and more I notice that what I experience determines the focus of my attention, and the subsequent actions of my attention. “You might not be sure, today or tomorrow, who feels threatened in the United States.” An informed POV matters.
Rereading the details of each of the Twenty Lessons offers the accrued knowledge of millions of people who suffered autocracies. Russian and American journalist, Masha Gessen observes, “Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.” In anguished upheavals, I find informed relief useful. And calming.
“We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to facism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.” -Snyder
It appears that this administration, empowered by the SCOTUS 6’s recent decisions regarding the executive, is in power now. “When you’re a star,” writes Don Moynihan, “the Supreme Court lets you do it.”
Learning the details of Snyder’s hard-earned knowledge encapsulated in Twenty Lessons is like the sun to blueberries. We too long for its light.
“Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change.”
Eye contact. Small talk. A brief connection. And genuine appreciations. It’s enough to keep this reclusive activist going.
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Notes
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Crown, 2017
https://timothysnyder.org/resources/
What won’t you do to stay in power?