SAD & BAD

SAD = seasonal affective disorder. BAD = Bush affective disorder. I've got a mild case of the former, heavier as days grow shorter, growing lighter after the winter solstice as daylight pushes back some of the dark. I've got an overwhelming dose of the latter and I see no turning point, no astronomical marker, in the four year shadow looming over us.

I have one friend who has secured sponsorship for residency in Canada. "Not far enough away," most people tell him. This same friend also thinks Bush may not survive the anger, the hatred, he's inspired. This friend says he will not mourn such a loss.

One of my colleagues got an e-mail from his wife on Wednesday. "Come home soon. I'm getting drunk. Call AA in four years."

I have students considering what worlds to apply to rather than what colleges. I have seen outgoing Sarah K., one of the bravest students I've known (hospitalized for life-threatening illnesses more than once), one of the biggest go-getters, reduced to tears, wrestling with despair.

I grope for perspective, for courage in -- where else? -- words, the very medium Karl Rover used so effectively to galvanize fear. One straw to grasp from Terry Tempest Williams' The Open Space of Democracy, a W. H. Auden quotation: "And I know that what is popularly called politics is only part of what causes history to move." (The Prolific and the Devourer. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, reprint edition, 1996, p. 98.) I'm looking for the other causes.

Comments

[Daniel Nester]

Hey Craig -- you've inspired me to re-read Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. In particular the chapter on "The Evangelical Spirit." Good on ya.

[shanna]

Ugh. That textbook news is just plain rotten. Texas buys more books than any other state, meaning the textbook publishers pander to their curricula. This means many school districts outside of Texas will also be using these same books. Home schooling anyone? But Crag, I love your BAD terminology. Permission to adopt?

[Kim Dorman]

Crag, your site a sourse of solice. Read this today in the paper (Austin). So it begins... "Revised sixth-grade health textbooks were adopted by the State Board of Education on Friday after a 10-4 vote. High school textbooks that focus largely on abstinence as a preventative for diseases and as a bith control were adopted, 13-1." Among the changes in the new adopted textbooks: 1. The definition of marriage as "a lifelong union between a husband and a wife." 2. "When two people decide to marry..." changed to "When a man and a woman decide to marry..." 3. "Partners who are commitment-motivated..." changed to "Husbands and wives who are commitment-motivated..." 4. An updated chart describing the failure rates from various forms of birth control. * I'm a man married to a woman (for 25 years) and this offends the hell out of me. I have many gay friends, most of whom are "commitment-motivated" couples, as decent & stable a union as any you could hope to find. I think of what John Berger said in a recent interview: (if memory serves) America has becoem the exact opposite of what Dvorak celebrated in his New World Symphony. PS: You might like Berger's book "The Shape of a Pocket." Kim

Good post, Mate. We'll all stick together and our way, let's! :) Steve