Happy Periwinkle Day

If you mix the bold red, white, and blue of the American flag, you get . . . .

.  . . a lovely, soft shade of periwinkle.

(Don’t take the metaphor too far. Red and blue together make a violent purple, like a barely-contained wound - but I would never suggest white is an essential element of the whole. Also, melding everyone together into a single, homogenous color is a terrible idea, no matter how lovely the color. Better get back to my musings on the flag, before I overthink myself right out of a post.)

In honor of Independence Day, there is an American flag on our front porch.

I’d like to say our flag is waving its red, white, and blue proudly, but that wouldn’t be true literally or metaphorically. In reality, it hangs limp and impotent in the morning calm, and flaps violently in the wind that races across the island almost every afternoon.

My feelings about the flag are similarly conflicted: I want to be proud of our country and our flag, the symbol of what it is supposed to represent – freedom and equal opportunity for all; a promise that our government will protect the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; a melting pot of ideas and perspectives that manages to preserve individuality while seeking common ground and working collaboratively for the collective good; a haven for the world’s “tired . . . poor . . . huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

But in America, freedom and opportunity are preserved first and foremost (and increasingly, it seems, only) for the wealthy, white, heterosexual man.

I’ve shared this post every year, and the previous paragraph has always been followed by the rant about what’s wrong with the world. This year, I’ve moved the rant, with 2022 updates, to the postscript at the end. I want to skip over the rant, because the main point of this post remains HOPE.

In 2022, I cling even more stubbornly to hope, because there’s this:

And there’s the fact that I am surrounded by people of good will, decent people who are trying to do the right thing by each other and the earth we all share, in spite of our differences.

I’m not as naïve as I sound. I know there are no easy answers to the enormous problems we have in our country.

But we must try.

Because the status quo is not acceptable.

America has been described as a beacon of hope, a “city upon the hill” (John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama). The image of America as a bastion of indomitable hope is also implicit in Amanda Gorman’s breathtaking poem The Hill We Climb:

. . . our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

(Excerpt of Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb, https://www.theamandagorman.com/)

We have to recommit to being “brave enough to see” the light in each other, to be the light for our future.

Circling back to the flag . . . Outside our house, we have not only an American flag, but also an Earth flag, and a flag that says: “In this house: Love is Love, No Human is Illegal, Black Lives Matter, Science is Real, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, Kindness is Everything.” Last year, the Love is Love flag disappeared.  I assumed it had been torn down, and stolen (there had been a rash of that on our island). On closer inspection, it had simply blown down in the wind. All that was needed was for someone to pick it up, dust it off, and try again.

The incident reminded me that flags are not just a symbol of what is, but also of what can be, a testament to hope that we may yet pick up our nation, dust it off, and try, again, to become a beacon of light to the world.

So today I wave all my flags and celebrate Periwinkle Day. A day that recognizes that if we individual, independent stripes of red, white, and blue (and purple and brown and black and . . . you get the picture) work together toward the common good, we can be strong while also being soft, we can be brave while also being compassionate, we can allow each person to be themselves, wholly unique and yet a valued and integral part of the whole.

Today, July 4, 2022, I’ll wave my American flag and my Earth flag and my Love is Love flag, and wish you all

Happy Periwinkle Day!

Postscript: Feel free to leave it at Happy Periwinkle Day.

But for me, focusing only on hope feels dishonest. We are a nation careening from crisis to crisis, with voting rights increasingly restricted, and civil liberties under siege. Without detracting an iota from my heartfelt message of hope, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the things that weigh on my heart, as I have in past Periwinkle Day posts.

• Immigrants and refugees are regarded with suspicion by many, and turned away more often than welcomed. In one incident alone, 53 migrants are dead because - in their desperate bid for a better, safer life in America - they had no other meaningful option besides hiding in an overheated truck.[1] More than 1,000 families separated from their children under official US policy have still not been reunited, five years after we all heard the audio of “sobbing children packed together, screaming for their parents.”[2])

Our Supreme Court has declared each state can decide whether or not women have autonomy over their own bodies, and many states have already decided: they don’t.  (I’ve been working on a post on this issue. It’s titled, “It’s Complicated - and It’s Not.”)

• While it is a relief to (finally) see a recognition by our federal government that climate change poses an existential threat to all of us, and that we need to take swift, substantial action to mitigate climate change, attempts to take such action have been stymied by rank partisanship, and now by the highest court in the land - almost always in the name of “freedom” and/or protecting the economy. I want to shout from the highest mountain (a mountain denuded of its glaciers by climate change): Don’t you realize the “inalienable rights” enumerated in the constitution you are sworn to uphold are meaningless if the land that produces our food is scorched, our fields and oceans are clogged with plastic waste, and the water we drink and the air we breathe are toxic? What good are constitutional rights to dead people? What’s the point of protecting our economy if humanity is extinct?

And what happened to affirming that Black Lives Matter? A nation weary of crises has already moved on from the mass shooting in Buffalo. Meanwhile, hate crimes against Black people and other people of color are increasing rather than decreasing, [3] and police reform efforts seem mostly to have withered on the vine.

• Speaking of mass shootings, Congress finally passed new regulations on guns.[4] Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of progress, any progress, on that front, but really, these measures are so minor as to be almost insignificant. I’m reminded of this haunting rendition of the song Take Away The Guns”[5] It’s worth your time - moving and haunting and also simply common sense. To summarize the song: while it’s true that gun violence is tied to lack of mental health care and love and healthy support systems for our young people, and economic disenfranchisement, and online radicalization, and maybe even toxins in the food we eat . . . first and foremost, easy access to assault-style weapons is at the heart of all mass shootings.

  As I write these words, another mass shooting occurred at a 4th of July parade . . .

And there’s a growing trend of legislating away reality - Florida’s so-called Don’t-Say-Gay laws are just one example. Another example is the growing trend of banning books and prohibiting classroom discussions of racism, violence against women, Japanese internment camps, oppression of Indigenous people, and anything else we’d rather not think about. How can we hope to raise a generation of kids who refrain from the terrible legacy of the past, if we don’t teach them the truth about that past?

As I’ve said in previous Periwinkle Day posts, I think a big part of the problem is that we’re acting - and legislating - based on fear: fear of the other (those who feel or look or love or believe differently), and fear of not having enough.

The truth is that we are all, in some way, “other”'; and the truth is that we have enough. Enough room, enough jobs, enough money, enough food. We have enough, we are enough. I will continue to pray for the day when love is our guiding principle, rather than fear.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/central-american-death-toll-rises-texan-migrant-truck-mexico-2022-06-29/

[2] https://www.voanews.com/a/five-years-later-work-of-reuniting-families-separated-at-us-mexico-border-remains-unfinished/6610677.html

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/us/hate-crimes-black-african-americans.html

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/politics/gun-control-bill-congress.html

[5] https://vimeo.com/388025124