What to write?

September 1st

It feels like the beginning of fall, though technically a few weeks away.  There is something unique about the calendar turning to September.  More so than the other seasonal changes, September is announcing a confusing assortment —— the coming of year end,  the start of the holidays, harvest time, and the start of the school year. A time of endings and beginnings. …. a special time. Where I live the weather becomes perfect with warm days and chilly evenings.  For others, it is the end of sweltering hot humid days and a welcome few of tolerable weather, but the beginning of hurricane season.  It is a conflagration of beginnings and endings, of welcoming and foreboding.  Coming back from summer vacation, we are back to work and wrapping things up before the holidays. 

And so, I am hopeful but confused ….

What to write, what to write???

I do not think it is “writer’s block,” although that would be the assumption.  There is plenty to write about.  It is just that most of it seems so negative.  I started thinking about power and wondering why, in 2025 that power is personified by the negative.  Power is now defined as taking things away from someone.  The more you can take, the more powerful you are. When did power become all about denial or limitation?  Historically, our culture has seen governmental power as an opportunity to be additive to society. 

FDR – The New Deal – Roosevelt redefined the role of government in protecting welfare and restoring hope and stability.

Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) Civil Rights Act – Voting Rights Act -Medicare- Medicaid.

Richard Nixon – Marred by the Watergate Scandal, but – He opened relationship with China that changed our economic prospects  -Salt Treaty I – Created the Environmental Protection Agency and The Clean Air Act

Barack Obama – The Affordable Care Act – Consumer Protection – Financial Reform – Economic Recovery and Stabilization

There are many more examples of how governments in the past have sought to be contributors to society. They have given rather than taken away.  These presidents gained power by providing benefits to society as a whole. 

I struggle to write today because our government is in the mode of taking things away from society.  It has cast a negative context on most things.  It is rare if not impossible to find a news item that is adding something to society.  Power is defined as what has been taken away or what can be prevented from being given.  Fabricated crisis that has allow government to take away your freedom of choice.  

There was a time when leadership was about support and caring.  Do we want leaders that can add to society or is the purpose of leadership to take away?

It is a beautiful day here and I feel fortunate to be able to walk to have a coffee and enjoy the brief conversation with the people around me.  But the days move slowly now as word of some tragedy or news of something being taken is announced.  Is that truly how we should be conducting our society? The positives in life are now more narrowly defined.  Finding positives are closer to home as we seek happiness and validation through a limited circle of family and friends. 

Maybe the respite offered by the fall sports agenda – tennis-soccer-college football-NFL- MLB-NHL-NBA-WNBA --- will be seen as a positive addition to our lives of societal and cultural loss??

I have my doubts – after all, they took away the Pac 12 !!!!