Two Idioms [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

“A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” ~ The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America, Congress, July 4, 1776

Today in the Rotunda, the symbolic center of our nation’s capitol, we bear witness to our nation willingly and publicly soiling itself. Our founding documents rendered little more than toilet tissue by a career-criminal swearing an oath to the Constitution that he has no intention of keeping. The oath administered by a Supreme Court judge who violated his oath to the Constitution by ruling the tyrant was immune from justice and, therefore, a king.

The tyrant did not arrive to the dais unassisted. A corrupted justice system, the complete moral collapse of the once grand old party, a gullible and/or apathetic* citizenry unwilling or incapable of discerning fact from fox-fantasy.

As we soil ourselves, we soil the world.

“Every man for himself!” is an idiom used in two distinct circumstances: 1) the moment when the ship is going down and no hope remains, and 2) when the rot of self-interest corrupts the heart of a community. “Every man for himself!” is the battle cry of giddy robber-barons plundering the public. Today, with the elevation of the tyrant, with the election of the oligarchy, we bear witness to both uses of the idiom. The ship of public service founders in a hog trough of personal gain.

It is no small irony that today we also celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., champion of The Civil Rights Movement, the voice of the nation’s conscience, protesting the racial discrimination written into our laws. An eloquent moral compass. A man with a dream guided by another idiom, “I am my brother’s and sister’s keeper.”

The line of division in our nation is now crystal clear, made symbolic by the two idioms colliding on our public calendar. Today there is no middle ground; we necessarily choose sides.

I believe more of us identify with, follow and uphold the example set by MLK. Today we can choose to celebrate the best of us. Today we can choose to be keepers of the dream.

Or, we can choose to applaud the worst of us. The man is unfit. He knows it. We the people know it. We need not resign ourselves to jump aboard an already stinking ship of thieves declaring loyalty to a character-less man with no greater vision than that of public plunder. Every man for himself. The idiomatic killer of the dream.

Today we can choose to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper. We. The People. Keepers of the dream.

Our sacred documents were written to prevent this moment of public debasement. It is astonishing on this day to see our founding documents, our highest ideals, so easily and with great ceremony flushed by the very people sworn to protect them.

*Approximately 90 million eligible voters did not vote in 2024, 36% of the electorate simply did not show up. Since DJT won the election with 77 million votes, slightly less than 50% of votes cast, he ascends the dais with less than 32% of the electorate. Less people voted for the despot than those who couldn’t be bothered to vote and stayed home. A sad and cautionary tale.

read Kerri’s blogpost about WE THE PEOPLE

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The Medicine We Seek [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

In the story of The Crescent Moon Bear, a young wife endures several trials on a journey to find medicine that might cure her ailing husband. In the end, the trials are the medicine. The trials teach her the path of healing. As we near the day of national disgrace, the inauguration of a despot, the Crescent Moon Bear story has been walking with me. Perhaps the trials we are about to face will be the medicine. Perhaps they will teach us or show us the path to heal what ails this nation.

This is what the story has already taught me: the young wife would not have kept walking, she would not have endured the hardship of her journey, had she not carried in her heart a greater purpose. A reason to endure. The healing of her beloved.

No one endures hardship without a heart-full of service to something greater than comfort, something more potent than personal gain. The red-hat-mob and oligarchs will learn this soon enough. Gluttony is vapid purpose, a flavorless reason for being.

Kerri just read to me a post by John Pavlovitz. The necessity of acknowledging – and being honest – about the dark despair we feel in this moment of national shame. I was struck by the common theme expressed in the many, many comments: people feeling alone, isolated in their disbelief and grief.

It occurred to me that those of us, discouraged by the election of hatred, fearful of what’s coming, will soon need to find one another in order to embark on a journey to discover a cure for the corrosive poison now coursing through the nation’s body. We need not walk this path alone. Our shared grief is a sure sign of our unity, our capacity to meet the coming trials with a greater – shared – sense of purpose.

Our hearts hurt. They should hurt. The despair we feel is natural, necessary, a compass to guide us as we embark together on this odyssey. We will, in our journey, if we come together and walk united, learn that we are the medicine we seek.

read Kerri’s blogpost about JUST KEEP WALKING

smack-dab © 2025 kerrianddavid.com

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The Whole Of It [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Rather than cut back our ornamental grasses in the fall, we opt to leave them untouched until later in the spring. Not only do they provide shelter for the critters through the cold months, they are also visually stunning and, as an artist, to be stunned visually is high on my priority list. Raw sienna and ochre slow-dance against the cold ice blue of the snow. My favorite is the sunset playing through the waving winter plumes, orange, pink and purple.

The chipmunks have a highway that runs behind the grasses on the side of the yard. It stretches from their sanctuary, Barney-the-piano, all the way to Kerri’s potting bench just off the deck. Lately, a tiger striped kitty visits in the night and stays close-in to the grasses. Dogga has surprised it a time or two and it beats a hasty retreat. I know where the kitty has been during the night because Dogga starts his day by tracking the kitty-path, sniffing along the grasses.

Between the birds, squirrels, bunnies, chippies, the kitty and dogga…there is an entire world, a vibrant life story thriving in and among the winter grasses. They are more than ornamental.

I’m reading about initiation rituals. I came upon this sentence and read it a few times: “…we boys realized that every human being’s goal in the village was the eventual admission into the pursuit and maintenance of the sacred.” [Martin Prechtel, Long Life Honey in the Heart] Pursuit of the sacred is eventual. Admission into the pursuit of the sacred comes with living a bit of life, navigating hardship, peeling off layers of self-importance and fully grasping the reality of mortality. Developing eyes that can see the sacred. Nurturing a heart that opens and appreciates the smallest-as-the-grandest of moments. My favorite word in the sentiment is “maintenance” – it suggests participation as well as responsibility. The sacred is connective tissue to the future and the past and disappears without tending. The maintenance of the sacred is a relationship: attend to the sacred and it will attend to you.

Actions with service intention. Living with attention.

In my reading I’ve learned of the fate of the uninitiated, those who know no responsibility to the village. They are destined to be adolescents forever, void of any greater perspective or sense of communal responsibility. Never capable of approaching their responsibility to maintaining the sacred since, to them, nothing is sacred. Self-serving. A life that collapses into dull inattention and usury.

It is one way of understanding the incoming administration and comprehending the sad, sad confirmation hearings: we are captive to the uninitiated. The uninitiated enabling the uninitiated. Thuggery is the inevitable aim and refuge of the perpetually adolescent. In this cadre, clearly, nothing is sacred. Nothing disqualifies.

The eventual admission into the pursuit and maintenance of the sacred. Every human being’s goal – if they mature into well-rounded human beings. It’s not a given. It’s a realization that comes from an orientation: a sense of greater responsibility to the village: the village – not only a place, but a relationship of people to a place, to ancestry, to tradition, to each other, to a dedication for the soul-health of all, now and into the future.

These days I feel grateful to those elders who felt a responsibility toward me, to steward my growth. To those who took time and care to orient me onto a life-path pointing toward the eventual admission and maintenance of the sacred. To those who helped nurture in me eyes capable of seeing beyond the ornament, capable of seeing the vibrant colors in winter grasses, capable of relishing the abundant life taking shelter, playing chase, enjoying safe passage…the whole of it a sanctuary.

GRACE on the album RIGHT NOW © 2010 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about WINTER GRASSES

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Perhaps [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

It snowed last night. The temperatures have plummeted so this morning we are writing from the raft buried deep beneath a warming quilt. Dogga is fast asleep at our feet. These days he groans when he moves. His old bones, like mine, are not fond of the freeze.

Emotionally, this winter seems colder than most.

When I turned out the light on election night, knowing the result, my last thought before sleeping was, “The nation is now officially rend in two.” Even unplugged from the news and most of social media I am daily reminded of the reasons for the rupture. Today, responding to the terrible fires in L.A. someone out there – on the other side of the split – commented that, “They have no one but themselves to blame. They were warned what could happen if they didn’t rake their forests…” Cold heart, vacant mind. Empty soul.

A dear one recently suggested that it is time to focus on healing. She is wise and yet, each day I ask myself where we might begin to bridge the crevasse when a fortress of nonsense voids even the most basic compassion within those standing on the other side of the line.

Breck, our sweet aspen tree, serves as a hope-giver. She came home with us from Colorado and lived comfortably in a pot for the first few years of her life in Wisconsin. After we planted her she almost died. In fact, I thought she was already gone. After a replanting and a wish and a prayer, she pulled a Lazarus and managed to bud on her lower limbs. Now, a few years later, she is healthy and happy and growing like a weed.

We are without doubt moving into and through a national wasteland. As mythology instructs, the more we try to fix it, the worse it will become. It is beyond fixing. Shattering the facade is, in fact, a necessary part of leaving the wasteland behind. I suspect that we are now seeing what has always been there and there is not a bandage big enough or medicine potent enough to deal with the infection. It must burn itself out. It might very well kill the nation-body.

Absent of fixing, what remains is choosing. Each day, faced with yet-another-example of heartless-hogwash, I become more clear on what I value, more certain of what I believe. Perhaps the healing my friend suggests is in the act of choosing. In clarity, we each choose who we want to be.

Here’s what I know: if fire took the home and life possessions of that taunting-someone-out-there, I would reach, I would choose to help them. I would not choose to taunt them or blame them. I would not withhold aid from them. I would not politicize their pain. I would reach. And, I hope, when the hot fire of the incoming malfeasance burns through their fortress of nonsense, when bereft, they will recover their senses and regain their compassion. Perhaps their hearts will start beating again. Perhaps their minds will re-engage. Perhaps.

Perhaps then they will be capable of reaching back and the nation, like Breck, will take root in better soil, pull a Lazarus – and live to see another -healthier – day.

from the archives: Angel?

Visit my gallery site

read Kerri’s blogpost about BRECK

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A Successful Ripple [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

In 1890 Eugene Schieffelin released 60 starlings in Central Park. A year later he released another 40. Starlings are not native to the United States and Schieffelin “…hoped to bring all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to North America…” It is estimated that 100 million flocks descended from his original 100 starlings. One of the 100 million took respite in our neighbors tree and their sheer number stopped us in our tracks. Beautiful individually, beautiful en masse.

That’s quite a successful ripple. It reminded me of Paul who taught me never to underestimate my power to influence the lives of others. We never know the reach of our actions, the power of our words. The ripples we launch.

A lover of metaphor, I am given to researching symbolism, the genesis of every story. I was unusually moved by the starlings, by the unity of their movement in flight, so, imagining that they were messengers, I wondered what might their message be:

“When the Starling Spirit Animal comes into your life, it suggests careful consideration as to with whom you spend time and how much they influence your thoughts and behavior. It’s great being part of a sizable group, but not every single member has a positive impact on you. You need friends. That’s normal. But always take care with whom you let into your inner circle. Stay with folks who support your growth and positive thinking.”

I laughed when I read it. Could there be a more pertinent message for our divisive times? “Take care with whom you let into your inner circle.” We’re in the process of circling our wagons. We’re recently very particular about the information we plug into, the conversations we entertain, and with whom.

And then there was this relative to starlings as symbol:

“Don’t be afraid to put your truth forward. It takes a little practice, but relationships require clarity.”

As I’ve written, these troubled times have provoked quite the ongoing debate within Kerri’s and my Melange. What are the boundaries of what we write? “Put your truth forward…relationships require clarity.”

I was also amused to read this:

“Starling Spirit Animal offers insight on how you can remain assertive, but not overbearing.”

Ask Kerri. I could definitely use some insight in not being overbearing and the starlings are no doubt great masters and a worthy place to start.

And so, 135 years ago, Eugene Schieffelin let fly a starling ripple and his messengers recently landed in my neighbor’s tree which prompted me to ponder these very worthy missives:

“Put your truth forward.

“…remain assertive, but not overbearing.”

“…take care with whom you let into your inner circle.

read Kerri’s blogpost about STARLINGS

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Meet The Expectation [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

In our house they are called “happy lights” because they make us happy. And, because they make us happy, happy lights can be found in almost every room of our house. They wind around the headboard of our bed, they outline the window in the sitting room, they wind around the aspen log in our dining room. They wind around the big branches in our living room.

On particularly dark days, after opening the shades, the first action of the day is to plug in the happy lights. All of them. It’s a task that requires moving room-to-room, intentionally inviting happiness into the space. It’s not a bad way to start the day. It’s not a bad practice to stumble around the house, half awake, and expect happiness to turn on with the lighting of the happy lights. And, not surprisingly, happiness meets the expectation.

At the end of the day the last act of closing-up and tucking-in the house is to unplug the happy lights. It’s become a ritual of gratitude, a thankfulness for the happiness brought by the lights. Our headboard happy light, always the first light of the day, is the last light we turn off before sleeping, the last whisper of appreciation for the day.

In these past few months I have grown more conscious and grateful of our happy light ritual. The intentional invitation and invocation of happiness, the deliberate practice of gratitude, seems more and more necessary amidst the national dedication to maga-animus. If there is nothing to be done about the indecent darkness descending on the country, we can, at the very least, invite light into our home, and perhaps share some small measure of the happiness and kindness that our happy lights inspire.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HAPPY LIGHTS

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A Pendulum With What? [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

“Along the way, we have unlearned how to live wide-eyed with wonder at what Hermann Hesse called “the little joys” — those unpurchasable, unstorable emblems of aliveness that abound the moment we look up from our ledger of lack.” ~ Maria Popova, The Marginalian, January 28, 2025

I am aware that reading my recent posts, my letters to the world, are like riding a wild pendulum.

Side note: instead of using the word “pendulum” I was going to use “Newton’s Cradle” only I couldn’t remember what the device was called. I was having trouble Googling it because I couldn’t figure out how to ask the question necessary to produce the result. Kerri pulled up “Newton’s Cradle” in a nanosecond. “How did you do that?” I asked, “What words did you use to get it so quickly?”

“A pendulum with balls,” she said. I burst out laughing. “What?!” she protested, “That’s what it is!” I’m still laughing.

And so, a pendulum with balls. Newton’s Cradle. Lately, reading what I write is like riding that – whatever that is. One day my post rages at the coming storm. The next day my inner Buddha grabs the keyboard and espouses the virtues of presence. Kerri is also writing like a ride on Newton’s Cradle but she’s a better writer than I am, more conversational and heart-full, so her posts are less whiplashy than my raging.

Riding the pendulum is a hot topic of conversation here at the international headquarters of kerrianddavid.com. It’s relatively new to our experience, this bouncing between awe at the little wonders of the day and utter disgust at the titanic horror of our historical moment. Do we honestly give voice to what we are thinking/seeing all the time or only half the time? How much is too much? Who do we want to be in this Brave New World? What is the purpose of writing anything?

When does an artist become trite?

I am reminded of the many, many, many times in my life that I’ve stood in front of school boards, boards of directors, faculty boards, boards, boards, boards, and reminded them that the arts actually serve a purpose in a society beyond entertainment. In fact, neutering the artists is among the first acts of every dictator. No autocrat wants a mirror of truth held up so society might see their reflection.

And so, as we ride the pendulum with balls, we walk through our days with no answers to our questions. We know our job is to see and reflect the full spectrum of our experience, the little joys and the worst nightmares. The sweet cardinal that came to our window, the message scratched in the snow on the side of the trail, all the while ringing the alarm that an arsonist has the keys to the national house. Both/And. Holding on for dear life riding Newton’s Cradle.

read Kerri’s blogpost on Merely A Thought Monday

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Stay Clear of the Avalanche [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

It’s a strategy. “During a typical Gish gallop, the galloper confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations and outright lies making it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them…” ~Gish Gallop: Wikipedia

We have, of course, unbelievably, elected for the second time, a champion galloper. A liar extraordinaire. The Gishiest of gallopers.

It’s a strategy. Chaos is a distraction. When it’s impossible to cut through the daily avalanche of hooey, be certain that what’s happening behind the crap-curtain is ill-intended, deliberate and self-serving.

As Heather Cox Richardson suggests, the only thing to be done is not get caught in the avalanche. Stand back and look for patterns. In this case, we have a lifetime of pattern available for study, easy to see. A career criminal. A bankrupt soul. A parasite in a baggy blue suit.

And so, we canter the other way, just far enough to stay clear of the avalanche – and do as journalist Mehdi Asan suggests to counter the Gish galloper: Call it out. “…do not be fooled by the flood of nonsense you have just heard.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GISH GALLOP

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No Surprise [David’s blog on KS Friday]

“…the larger story of this moment is the plunder of public land for private gain.” ~ Historian Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American, January 7, 2025

When future historians ask the question, “What the heck happened to the United States of America?” they will need only look to Heather Cox Richardson’s encapsulating phrase: the plunder of the public for private gain. Were I one of the future historians I would title my book, The Nation That Ate Itself.

Our Achilles Heel? We worship business above all things so believe everything should run like a business. Government-by-transaction is no way to run a country. The natural conclusion of a nation that confuses public-service with business is the blatant exploitation of its people. It inevitably divides and feeds on itself. I would conclude my imaginary-future-history book with this: “It was inevitable and calculated. Their demise was no surprise”.

We watched the storm roll across the lake. The clouds were ominous and roiling yet the colors were gorgeous. It’s the reason we stopped. The visual collision of beauty and menace. While Kerri snapped photographs I was awash in metaphor (of course). The coming storm.

Our fall is not so different than the fall of Rome. When wealth is consolidated at the tippy-top and controlled by a gluttonous few, a once powerful nation tips over. It’s simple physics. Feasting on the people, the nation rubs its fat belly and decides to protect the privilege of the few over the health of the many. History repeats itself and, as we’ve written of Rome, our demise like theirs, is not and will not be a surprise. Root rot.

Kerri believes that, as people age, they do not change but become more of who they really are. Life boils them down to their essence. The same might be said of our nation. The plunder of the public for private gain is endemic in our system.

There is no mercy in the god of transaction. There is no morality in a worship made hard by the fundamentals of bottom lines. The church of Dog-Eat-Dog has little use for truth.

When asked the question, “Why did so many of the plundered public vote for their own demise?” the future historians will smile and answer simply, “They were manipulated by their social-media-masters into seeing their neighbors as dogs-to-be-eaten.”

Communal root rot. The mighty tree falls. No surprise.

The Way Home on the album This Part of the Journey © 1998 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE STORM

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We See It [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

It’s rare but it happens. We write a post, read it aloud – and then throw it away. It’s too much, usually a rant, and we realize the point in writing it was to vent – so there’s no need to share. Bellowing rarely helps anyone.

Years ago, completely disgusted by the actions of a school administration, my wise friend suggested I write a letter to the superintendent. After I wrote my angry letter my wise friend read my words of discontent. He smiled and then gently suggested that I put my letter in a file. I was confused. “Sometimes the important point is to write it,” he said. “Beyond that, there’s nothing to be gained.”

He was right and I am grateful to this day that I took his advice. My wise friend taught me to discern between a vent of anger and an effective use of voice.

I fairly raged for weeks following the election. Some of my pals checked in, concerned at the dark turn of my posts. A few told me that they had to stop reading since my words only served to magnify rather than mend their own grief and rage. “It was too much.”

As I learned so long ago, sometimes it is necessary to file it and sometimes it is necessary to say it.

My words were intended to be too much. Our village commons is being torched and outrage is appropriate. Ringing the alarm is necessary. It does no good to turn away from the assault on our rights, to ignore the attack on many of our citizens. It does no good to normalize each successive outrage. There is nothing to be gained in pretending that there is merit to malfeasance. There is not.

In silence there is plenty to be lost. Each voice, demanding from our elected representatives to speak truth amidst an avalanche of lies, seems imperative. Asking our government, our courts, to uphold its values and honor its laws does not seem out of place. To look-the-other-way is too much.

It is not the time to put our letters into the file. There is nothing to be gained in silence.

Sometimes the point is to share it. Sometimes it is necessary to shout into the wind, “I see what is happening here.”

Perhaps, someday, if truth and good-intention reclaim the reins of the nation, there will be a time for mending. It is not now. Now is the time to magnify, to shout together, “We see what is happening here.”

from the archives: Pieta with Paparazzi

read Kerri’s blogpost about PRICKLY

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