Where has All the Civility Gone?

 I think I’m living the good life. All my needs are met and most of my wants are, too. I don’t fear becoming homeless, being arrested, getting murdered (except by awful happenstance), or any of the other dire events that dominate the news.

 My country is not likely to be invaded. An armed uprising isn’t likely to happen in what remains of my lifetime. Food insecurity—let alone malnutrition or starvation—isn’t something I face.

 We have enough to live safely and happily, and enough to share with less fortunate people. We’ve even saved enough to celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary with a big trip next fall. (Vienna for a month—I’ll be writing about that before long.)

 So with all this comfort and security, why am I so anxious and apprehensive? Why does the other shoe feel perpetually ready to drop? And why am I cocooning instead of enjoying my family and friends? It feels like I’m stuck in an existential quagmire on par with Everything Everywhere  All at Once.

 Here’s my answer: we are victims of emotional abuse on a gigantic scale.

 Too much is happening in the world and too much of it is terrible, bizarre, and frightening. Question: How many wars or conflicts are raging right now? Answer: According to World Population Review, there are 40.  

 In a world with 193 countries, 20% of them are in some type of armed conflict. Five major wars—including Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine—and 35 smaller conflicts involving terrorist insurgencies, civil wars, and drug wars. The casualties are massive.

 And as if that weren’t enough, the President of the United States is threatening to start several wars of his own. Venezuela, Greenland, and Iran come quickly to mind. I often hear that he’s not serious, he’s just stirring the pot, trying to intimidate people. In my book, that’s emotional abuse on a world scale.

 Then there are the deaths, injuries, and destruction from CBO/ICE abuses of power—not only harming protestors and immigrants, but traumatizing everyone who sees the replays. Those un-uniformed masked men with rifles and guns pointing everywhere, smashing car windows and dragging bystanders out of their cars are terrifying. Terrifying on purpose.

 Even in public speech, civility has evaporated. The President throws the F-bomb around like a toddler who discovers he can make the adults go nuts just by saying it. He calls learned, cultured, and accomplished people names like the worst high-school bully you can remember. He insults other countries and their leaders with apparent relish.

 In my opinion, the man is the definition of vulgar. And his vulgarity has infected what used to be called civil discourse. I see rude behavior and rude language everywhere—from TV talk shows to the local Kroger. I hear about it on the news when reports come in of road-rage assaults and mass shootings at birthday parties and weddings for heaven’s sake. I tell my husband, in all sincerity, not to honk at someone who cut him off because that driver might have a loaded gun on the seat next to him.

 And so yes—I’ve answered my own question. I’m anxious and apprehensive because I’m a victim of nationalistic (in contrast to domestic) emotional violence. We need someone to issue and enforce a restraining order for our own safety and protection.

 I’m looking at you, Congress. And at you, SCOTUS. Do your damn jobs!!

Awe-ful Art

 I had a wonderful time visiting my sister Janet and her husband Dave in Port Aransas this past week with Michael. Such a fun time that I didn’t write my blog on Monday like I normally do, but I’ll try to make up for it today. Janet and Dave are Winter Texans, fleeing North Dakota’s freezing temperatures and snow for several months of benign and even lovely weather on the Gulf Coast. And we usually visit them in mid-February, mainly because that’s when Janet's birthday falls.

 For the last several years, it has been ridiculously cold in Port A during our visits. Winters around here are supposed to be mild, but it’s not guaranteed. We've had terrible timing on these trips weather-wise in the recent past. We were happy to be there during a quite nice period of mostly sunshine and warmth this year. The one day of rain didn’t interfere with our plans a bit.

 On a side trip to Rockport, we visited the Rockport Center for the Arts. It’s a lovely small gallery/museum that features local artists and has quite nice jewelry and artsy tchotchkes for sale. On our visit, we saw an exhibit that mesmerized me by the Austin artist B. Shawn Cox.

 Titled Hanging by a Moment, Cox’s work is, to quote their website, an “exploration of perception, cultural subtext, and the elusive nature of “the moment” … using painting, drawing, installation, and lenticular techniques.”

 His subjects, primarily cowboys and cowgirls, are sometimes rendered in ballpoint pen and other times in very large paintings. But the eye-catching and breathtaking element of many pieces was that the picture changed and followed you as you walked by. This is called, I learned, lenticular art.

 I had never heard of lenticular art, but I discovered that I had a childhood familiarity with it. Remember those little squares with images on them that once upon a time came as prizes in Cracker Jack boxes? When you tilted the square, the image jumped from one view to another. A magician might wink at you or a baseball player might swing the bat as you moved the square around.

 It seemed like magic in grade school and Cox’s paintings seemed even more magical to me at 75. One very large painting featured a cowgirl with bouncy curls and a happy-go-lucky smile rendered in bright, saturated colors. She looked straight at you … until you walked by. Then she turned and followed you, still smiling.

 Startled by this, I turned around, walking back to the center, and she looked forward again. I walked to the left, and she turned left, still smiling. For a few moments, I walked back and forth on a three-foot-wide path just for the delight of seeing my cowgirl friend turn her head this way and that, smiling the whole time.

 Wow, what is this lenticular art? I'd never heard the term, and I'm fairly art savvy. I looked it up and discovered that it's a painstaking process of making small crosshatches on special media called a lenticular lens. It’s too complicated for me to explain, so here’s a description I borrowed from a helpful website, Labyrinth Art.

 “The term ‘lenticular’ comes from ‘lens.’ In this context, it refers to the plastic sheet covered in tiny lenses (lenticules) used in this type of printing. These lenses refract light at different angles, allowing your eyes to see different images as you change your viewing position.”

Seeing behind the curtain on this trick doesn’t change the magic for me because I still don’t have a clue how anyone creates a lenticular image. God bless you if it makes more sense to you. The bottom line is that Cox’s images were awe-inducing and made my visit to an art space in a very small town as wonderful as a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

 Keep your eyes open and you might find something awe-ful in your life this week!

 Ciao

 

 

 

O Canada!

 Sometimes the current state of the nation makes me fantasize about running away. I’ve felt that way under more than one administration, notably Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Admittedly, my views on those fellows have moderated since then. Compared to our current president, they weren’t so bad.

 But whenever I get really upset, the idea of going someplace else pops up. After all, there are lots of lovely places in the world to live and many of them are affordable for Americans like me who have a stable income. Thank you, FDR, for social security. Language is the biggest barrier. Although I studied Spanish, French, and Latin in school, I am sadly not multi-lingual.

 Canada is, of course, the natural place to look when running away from America. Except for Quebec, it is English speaking, which is a big draw for me. And I grew up near the Canadian border, about a two-hour drive south of Winnipeg. I traveled a lot in Canada as a child, camping with my family. Canadians are nice people and, from my North Dakota-nice point of view, regular people just like us.

 Canada has been the shelter for many Americans over the centuries. Enslaved Americans used the Underground Railroad to reach freedom in Canada for over hundred years because Canada offered legal freedom long before the US abolished slavery. And draft resisters famously escaped to Canada to avoid or to protest the war in Vietnam during the 60s and 70s. Those were my high school and college years and the draft resisters were my peers.

 LGBTQ+ Americans found shelter in Canada during the 80s and 90s before the US recognized same-sex marriage or even basic protections. Canada legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, 10 years before the US did. And since the 90s, some Americans have relocated to Canada for healthcare or for economic stability because the country offers universal healthcare, lower medical costs, and a more predictable social safety network.

 Today, people talk about escaping the political climate in America by going to Canada. As the US begins to look more and more like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s prescient dystopian novel that we seem to be leaning into, Canada is certainly inviting.

 Would I really move to Canada? Honestly, it is not that easy to accomplish. You can’t just show up on their doorstep and ask to come in for longer than a visit. You have to qualify under the rules of one of their immigration programs. Those include skilled worker, provincial nominee program, family sponsorship, or an employment sponsorship. But wait! There’s another possibility for lucky people like me.

 My great-great grandparents were Canadians from the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands in Ontario. My great-grandmother Eva was born there as well. Eventually, they moved to Michigan where Eva met my great-grandfather, Wallace Petrie. He happened to be on his way from upstate New York to North Dakota to make his fortune. Love happened in Michigan, marriage happened in North Dakota, then my grandmother, my mother, and I happened. (Along with a bunch of other children in each generation.)

 On December 15, 2025, Canada passed Bill C-3, a significant reform of its citizenship laws. In a nutshell, Bill C-3 made people with Canadian ancestors (considered “lost citizens”) recognized citizens. All you have to do is apply for Proof of Citizenship by Descent, documented with birth certificates or legal records establishing your lineage, and suddenly, with a bit of paperwork, you’re Canadian. You have dual American-Canadian citizenship. And you can get yourself a Canadian passport to go along with your American passport with a minimum of difficulty.

For those of you who didn’t have ancestors smart enough to be born in Canada, I’m sorry, but you will have to do it the hard way. Even if I never move — unless things get REALLY bad — it’s comforting to know that a door is open, one my ancestors walked through long before I ever thought about walking back.

Now to get busy collecting 200-year-old birth records!

 Ciao

 

 

Come Sing a Song With Me

I left my church service Sunday frustrated and unhappy. It wasn’t the sermon—our minister delivered an engaging and thought-provoking talk on the sin of pride. And it wasn’t the choir’s performance that bothered me—they were in good voice. It was the congregational singing that upset me. Let me tell you why.

 I’m a Unitarian Universalist, have been for over 50 years. Our denomination has two main hymnals, the grey hymnal, with 415 hymns, and the blue hymnal, with 75. The grey hymnal is the old standard; the blue hymnal, introduced in 2005, offers fresh music with contemporary themes and modern rhythms.

 In all my varied congregations over the years, there are some songs that have been used more than others. Some songs have different words but share melodies. When the blue hymnals came out, we purposely learned the new music and developed new favorites there. Congregations sang in strong, confident voices because we knew the songs.

 Cut to yesterday, which is only an example of a bigger phenomenon. The two hymns selected for the congregation were entirely unknown to me. They both came from the grey hymnal, which I’ve been singing out of for 50+ years, but I couldn’t remember ever singing either of them. And from the halting, mumbled voices around me, neither had anyone else in the pews.

 People weren’t using hymnals because the words floated above us on a giant screen over the altar, with no musical notation. The hymnals were available, of course, but they’re unwieldy and mostly unused. I’m pretty sure someone picked those hymns to enhance the message of the sermon. They did not pick them to be sing-able.

 I remember loud, vigorous singing in church that could lift your spirit and engage your heart. That only happens if people know, or can read, the words and music. If they know the melody, they can make the words work, the reverse is much harder. Although we do sing familiar hymns at my church, we don’t do it often enough. I miss vigorous, heartfelt church singing. In today’s fraught world, I need vigorous, heartfelt church singing.

 I talked with Michael about it on the ride home and mulled my dissatisfaction for a while. And then I had an epiphany. Why do I expect my congregation to sing with heart when a whole culture has forgotten how? Group singing, community singing, used to be a thing in America. And it isn’t any longer. I don’t just miss raising my voice confidently in song at church; I miss it everywhere.

 Where has all the singing gone? At the beginning of athletic events, at birthday parties, at church, at concerts for those who can afford the tickets. That’s about it. But we used to sing together a lot.

 Now is where the old lady’s remember-when, in-the-olden-days, stuff starts. We used to have shows on television with a lot of music. The Lawrence Welk Show, the Ed Sullivan Show, the Smothers Brothers, Hee Haw, The Andy Williams Show, The Dean Martin Show, Sonny and Cher, and Donny and Marie, to name a few.

 We had folk singers, hootenannies, and sing-alongs. Remember Mitch Miller’s Sing Along with Mitch from the 80s? Okay, just the old people do, but look him up. Americans used to sing together, even if we were in our own living rooms among family. And at marches and protests for Vietnam and civil rights, we sang folk standards and old-timey hymns like We Shall Overcome, Blowin’ in the Wind, Kumbaya, and The Times They Are a-Changin’.

 Schools, especially elementary schools, had music classes where we learned the standards. All Through the Night, Amazing Grace, America the Beautiful, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Blue Tail Fly, Bingo, Buffalo Gals, Camptown Races, Dixie, Down by the Bay, Farmer in the Dell, Frѐre Jacques, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, God Bless America, Home on the Range, The Hokey Pokey, I’ve Been Working on the Railroad… I could literally go on and on.

 We knew these songs and we sang them at Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, around campfires of all kinds, at gatherings of all kinds. And, of course, we sang Christmas carols, in public, with other people. And we knew more words than the first two lines of the songs. We had song sheets or song books when we needed them.

 What happened to singing? What happened to group fun? Why is everyone sitting in front of a computer or cell phone or TV set watching other people do things and not doing anything themselves? Where are our friends besides in text messages?

 Sadly, I have no insightful conclusion today, simply a longing for something missing from life in 2026. If you have any answers, I’d love to hear them. Wouldn’t it feel great to get together and sing your heart out with a bunch of other people?

 What are you doing next weekend?

Ciao

P.S. Here's a rendition of one of my favorite UU hymns from the blue hymnal. It's not rousing, but it is SO heartfelt. Plus, I know the composer. Come Sing a Song With Me