Bellwether July 2021

“But you,” she said, “you were howling your head off because your pants were full, which you hated, and were hungry, mad too I was holding you so tight, and I was bawling like crazy myself, Ted! Ted! And he just stood there blue in the face, that sweet man, couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, or that poor unlucky devil squirming on the greasy floor—you could only see his legs—would’ve got more than some ribs busted, and I didn’t understand any of it…” (22) More than one of us felt during the pandemic the terrible burden of wrench-hoisting the car up for the squirming devil beneath.

Like FDR remaining stoic among State advisors during the midst of WWII, we take everything in, a nation’s heroes, absorbing, until we are sure of a decision. FDR was a true leader of the modern industrial nation, positioning America in critical ways. Perhaps we might use 2021 to drive Route 66, reflecting on the events of 2020, or to follow the American Guide Series from the Federal Writers’ Program. The benefits would travel further than any prayerful plea, burgeoning the economy. Each state guide of the 1930s discussed the honest peoples populating its counties, whether rural or metropolitan, African-American, Bohemian, Dutch, Eastern Orthodox, or White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, whether mechanic, farmer, or mother. The guides connected their seemingly disparate inhabitants, forging an America whose inheritance was its regional qualities as the overarching theme for a stronger statehood.

At times, the burden seems too great. We find ourselves turning to others to make sense of it, just as Gildner’s persona finishes the poem: I waited for the happy ending, which had to do with hugging and thanking their lucky stars. But gazing off at the sun going down, sending out long red wings across the horizon, my mother only sighed, “Look at that, would you?” Then resumed raking her leaves as if no one were around.

Just as our many ancestors have done during the times of yore, the ravens knocking, knocking at their doors, we lean into one another, blazing trails as we continue on. But isn’t that how it is? ά-an Works Cited Beckett, Samuel. How It Is. Grove Press, 1964.

Gildner, Gary. The Bunker in Parsley Fields: Poems by Gary Gildner.

University of Iowa Press, 1997.

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