In the air

Many people associate summer with freedom.  When we were children, summer meant school being out, and being master of one's own time and energy.

I find that spring and fall are the times I feel most free.  Change is in the air.  It feels like something new is on the way.  And that's when I have the sense of unfettered motion, of expansiveness, of being exhilaratingly untethered.

Does that say anything about what freedom means to others, and what it means to me?  Maybe.  I crave security and routine, not adventure.  But security and routine are not the place where I find freedom.  Throughout my life, it's when I've left behind the known and the familiar that I've found that sense of possibility.  They've been frightening moments -- but moments when I could not avoid the realization that I was making my own way.

As the seasons change, the world around us moves toward a new destination.  Summer and winter are stable, the zenith and the nadir of the year.  They linger, and we wonder if we will ever emerge.  It's when the stasis breaks and the seasons are on the move that the future opens me.  I don't know where I'm headed, but I know I'm not standing still.  Something new is coming, and what I do will determine what it is.  That's a risk, but a heady one.  It's what freedom feels like to me.

America the beautiful

We live in a great country. A country where people can spout any nonsense they want, and where -- thank God -- other people can stand up and call it nonsense.

A country where it's not a crime to be a white supremacist -- where you can even run for public office on a platform of the eradication of races other than white. And where I can call that morally repugnant and Satanic.

A country where a man can give a speech claiming that a cabal of Democrats engineered the promotion of slavery in the nineteenth century, and that this means that black people are fools for not voting straight Republican tickets today. Where a newspaper columnist can swallow the speech whole and proffer its content as suspiciously suppressed truth in print. (Even though the judgment of those who give him column inches and order the type set is thereby rendered suspect.) And where a history professor can author a column in that same newspaper politely shining the light of day on the speech's distortions and falsehoods, and calling the columnist to account for endorsing it without question. (Links unfortunately lead behind a paywall; check the July 6 and July 10 opinion pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette if you want the full story.)

As a wise man once said, I will defend to the death the right of these people to believe whatever hateful, self-serving nonsense they prefer -- even to shout it from the rooftops through any mass media they can harness to their cause. And I'll exercise vigorously my right to broadcast why they're horribly, harmfully wrong, and encourage everyone I know to do likewise.

Finishing touches

Today's post, wherein I get to the finish line on a few knitting projects and start a few more, is at Toxophily.

We spent the Fourth celebrating America's freedom to jump on giant inflated pieces of plastic in imaginative shapes. Archer took his camera to chronicle Cady Gray's encounter with inflatable Batman. Remember: If you don't jump, the terrorists win.