Functional/dysfunctional

a trip to DC

In 2024, after the election, family friends took a trip to DC. They wanted to see the museums, archives, and monuments before Trump took over. I thought this was a good idea but couldn’t bear to do it myself—the idea of interacting with a disappearing reality was too painful. I suppose I am not good at goodbyes, even (hopefully) temporary ones.

In the meantime I have tried to immerse myself in as many functional spaces of care and government as I can. There are so many of them, if you look!

In June the girls and I went to Cherokee. Outside our hotel, we saw elk roaming the streets. The next morning, we boarded an electric school bus and rode with our hosts to the Cherokee Mother Town, which we’d learned about in the history play, Unto these Hills. We saw great fields split into acre plots, where families grow corn and vegetables. We saw the Mother Garden, where functional and medicinal herbs and plants useful from pregnancy through infancy are grown in the shape of a mother’s body. We peeked inside a shed where all the garden tools are kept; they are all electric, and charged from a solar battery. On top of the shed, an instrument monitored the air quality.

My car, meanwhile, was charging up in the Cherokee Boys Club bus lot, which is equipped to charge the entire fleet of all-electric school buses. They’re currently being charged on-grid with conventional energy, but will soon be connected through a microgrid fed by a network of solar canopies. We saw, also, where workers were installing a solar canopy to provide a fast-charging, direct current station outside the public school. All of this work was job-producing (community members learn to install and maintain these new systems), air-quality-improving, community-minded. Though the vast majority of the air pollution that enters the Cherokee Land Trust blows in from elsewhere, the folks who work with EBCI’s Center for Native Health, the Mother Garden, and the Boys Club understand that no one else is coming to fix these problems, and that their work to restore balance can even be a model for other communities.

We had an amazing, beautiful time there.

Fast-forward a month, and I boarded a train to DC while the girls stayed with Mamie in Walkerton. I was headed there for the biennial conference of the American Federation of Teachers, where my union, the AAUP, has affiliate membership. The conference was huge—some 3,000 delegates from all over the country, a multigenerational, multiracial group of people in message tees and union tees who committed to spending a week of their summer inside a dim conference center debating and voting on resolutions about how the union will meet this moment.

Outside, it was very hot—101 actual degrees when I arrived on Wednesday. I have been to DC many times and have even lived there, but I’ve never felt a 101 degree July day. I talked to the girls by phone in the evenings as I trudged around, trying to witness what I could. I saw the drained reflecting pool (it’s behind tall fencing, but you can see it from the Lincoln Memorial steps). The White House loomed over by giant cranes draped with flags. I think in the distance I saw the Arc de Trump model that had been installed for the Great American State Fair, but maybe that was a mirage—it was so hot, even at night, and the streets and open spaces were fairly littered with cones and construction/event debris. All the tourists seemed listless.

Then the smoke rolled in from Canadian wildfires, and it was hard to see anything or be outside without a mask. I read that the wildfires defied firefighters’ usual strategy of starving them of fuel at night—the evening temperatures don’t fall enough anymore, and they burn on a 24-hour cycle. I read that Trump, angry and uneducated in climate science or even weather and wind, would impose 50% tariffs on Canada as punishment.

Then I read that Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who is taking other steps to combat the tariffs, said that when we have wildfires, or devastating hurricanes, or other natural disasters, Canada would still be there to help. “That’s what neighbors do,” he said. “You don’t get on and start threatening and criticizing because guess what? One day it’s going to be your turn, and we’re going to be down there without hesitation to support our neighbors.”

Neighbors who want to help out, to build up instead of tear down, are still here. Yes, there is so much to be angry about. There is so much we’re going to have to fight: AI and data centers; hunger and poverty; the new, giant ICE detention center they are building near the North Carolina-Virginia border. This is before hurricane season really kicks up on the East Coast. It’s overwhelming.

So it helps to check with the functional community spaces, whatever that means to you: for me this week that will be the girls’ camp community, Clapping Hands Farm, where I get to help out with aftercare while the older siblings (junior camp counselors) have their afternoon meetings.

I am going to look for a simple project to adapt from this book:

Which I bought at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art! Which is still open, free, and a good place to think about where we’ve come from and where we are going.

Lots of love to you, Frog Troublers! What is giving you a feeling of community these days?

P.S. Please read this wonderful post from Tift, “Dear Bonnie Raitt,” about the inspiration behind a free concert series she is organizing in Durham this September. Can’t wait!