I\u2019m writing this on Monday morning.\u00a0 The column I was working on will be tossed on a pile of half-done things.\u00a0 Like everyone else in Minnesota I\u2019m feeling anxious and shook up.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not, maybe you were on a weeklong hike in the Northwoods without a radio or your phone.\u00a0 If so, we\u2019re jealous.<\/p>\n
When you layer a police-killing and protests morphing into riots on top of the strange world of the pandemic we\u2019ve all been living in, it is a lot to hold in your head.\u00a0 I feel compelled to write, knowing full well and with humility that I do not have much to offer being safely ensconced here on our farm place, far from everything.<\/p>\n
But to not write is to pretend that the Earth is not convulsing around me.\u00a0 Writing about the planting season would be like a tree just fell on our house and I write about how great the view is.<\/p>\n
If you are my age or older, you have a comparable time to go back to in memory, although there is not much comfort in that.\u00a0 The late Sixties when I was coming of age were all of this and more.<\/p>\n
The United States was sending thousands of young men to a distant jungle to fight for something vague compared to what their fathers fought for in World War II.\u00a0 Civil rights were finally being addressed a century after slavery ended, only to be replaced by discrimination in every level of society.\u00a0 A notion of women\u2019s rights began drawing attention.\u00a0 Environmental concerns grew from a small group crying out in the desert to alarm bells going off.<\/p>\n
Sometime back then I read this from the British poet W. B. Yeats.\u00a0 It is from the poem \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d that Yeats wrote in 1919 in response to the World War that ravaged Europe.\u00a0 It fit in 1969 and perhaps now:<\/p>\n
\u201cThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
\nAre full of passionate intensity.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a teenager, I found myself taking sides, drawn to the side of equality and fairness as I perceived them.\u00a0 This was colored by Christian faith and what I thought a better and holier world should look like.<\/p>\n
I was young on the same farm place where I observe the world from today.\u00a0 I watched the adults around me try to understand the craziness going on in distant places.\u00a0 I remember tension and conversations that turned into yelling matches where people were talking at and around each other and no one was listening.<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, and people are talking at and around each other and no one is listening.<\/p>\n
I wrote a while ago about the legacy of my generation and what we are leaving our children and grandchildren.\u00a0 I had concerns then about the world we are gifting them.\u00a0 Right now, those concerns have exploded into full blown despair and sadness.\u00a0 That is rare for me.\u00a0 I know there will be a day when protests have ended and the pandemic is a weird memory, and I will rejoice in a beautiful sunset.\u00a0 But not today.<\/p>\n
You can pick your own favorite source of angst and gloom.\u00a0 There are plenty to go around.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to choose this: we have all gathered into camps without any positive interaction with the other side.\u00a0 No matter the topic from the most serious to the most harmless, we are one side or the other, absolutely, thoroughly, and completely.\u00a0 You are either \u201cwith me or agin\u2019 me.\u201d\u00a0 Red, blue, right, left, friend, enemy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always enjoyed a spirited discussion on an issue of the day with someone on the other side.\u00a0 I\u2019ve thought those could be valuable, productive, and even fun.\u00a0 On a personal level, Pam and I have had to talk through a million different things as we\u2019ve steered a home and a marriage.\u00a0 Many of those began with us on opposite sides.\u00a0 I\u2019ve held in my mind the belief that two reasonable people of good will should be able to come to a conclusion, often a compromise, that is best for all.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure anymore.<\/p>\n
A virus attacked our species, and for a while it looked like we could unite around something that is a threat to every country on Earth.\u00a0 There were even places where fighting stopped between entrenched enemies.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re all in this together\u201d seemed to mean we were all in this together.<\/p>\n
Till we weren\u2019t.\u00a0 The virus quickly became politicized.\u00a0 Like everything else.\u00a0 Now you are a mask wearer, or proudly not.\u00a0 You are for a cautious opening-up, or \u201cRestore my rights!\u201d\u00a0 The hope that we could deal with this reasonably and effectively while caring about each other\u2019s well-being has faded.<\/p>\n
Turns out a pandemic was easy compared to the George Floyd killing and its aftermath.\u00a0 Every fault line that existed in America become a seismic quake in a few days.\u00a0 Here are the same issues of race that had people marching in the streets fifty years ago.\u00a0 Perhaps you are one who thinks racism is overblown and problems in minority communities are ones \u201cthey\u201d should deal with.\u00a0 I suppose that is comforting since it asks nothing of you.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have much to do with social media outside of texting friends.\u00a0 But now and then I see things that people say about other human beings.\u00a0 Sometimes when I do, I want to close my eyes and pretend I didn\u2019t see that.\u00a0 Writers and thinkers for centuries have tried to understand \u201cman\u2019s inhumanity to man.\u201d\u00a0 Now you can go on any comment thread online and find examples of well-honed hate.<\/p>\n
While I have been writing this, our president insulted and mocked some people.\u00a0 That\u2019s pretty much a daily occurrence.\u00a0 As you\u2019ve probably discerned, I am not a fan of his and think he has unleashed some awful streams of malevolence from the highest branches of America.\u00a0 But it would be too easy for me to blame him and move on.<\/p>\n
Going back to that world we are leaving our children, it will not do any good to mope and feel depressed and overwhelmed like I do today.\u00a0 I\u2019ll wallow in this a while, but then I need to get to work doing something, anything to make this a better place.\u00a0 We all do.<\/p>\n
Alan Paton was a white South African writer who from his Christianity found it right to oppose apartheid.\u00a0 Paton had days of despair, but he wrote this: \u201cThere is only one way in which one can endure man’s inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one’s own life, to exemplify man’s humanity to man.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m writing this on Monday morning.\u00a0 The column I was working on will be tossed on a pile of half-done things.\u00a0 Like everyone else in Minnesota I\u2019m feeling anxious and shook up.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not, maybe you were on a weeklong hike in the Northwoods without a radio or your phone.\u00a0 If so, we\u2019re jealous. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 11:46:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119100,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119088\/revisions\/119100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}