Good Grief, November!

Passing swiftly, time nears another winter. It doesn’t seem possible. Just the other day we were wondering why spring was hanging back from its expected appearance. Now that is behind us and so, too, summer. Fall nears its end as hard as that is to believe.

An adage claims time passes quickly as you age. It is true. Even with time on my hands to read, nap and loll in front of a TV screen, time melts away. Resting after breakfast, it is soon afternoon. Then it is time to make supper decisions. Bedtime arrives soon thereafter.

This does not mean nothing is done or accomplished during the day. No, a lot is read, digested, thought and written about during daytime hours. Meeting with colleagues to advance work for clients takes place as well. There are studies and reports on all this activity and that draws attention. Time speeds through engagement and participation. Those two terms are not the same, but both absorb attention and concentration.

Rummaging about for today’s topic, I did not get farther than saving the opening document with today’s date. November first. Yikes. It doesn’t seem possible. Soon we will prepare for Thanksgiving, soon after Christmas, then New Years, and the many holidays that follow. Guideposts of the calendar, whisk us through another year. The rhythm does not staccato; it thrums, beats, pulses. There is no slowing down or going back.

The other day a reader did not like my use of the term ‘history evolves.’ Like time, I meant that we encounter history as it is being made, afterwards with a look in the rearview mirror, then study and assessment of what happened and what it means – then and now. With little passage of time we witness that same history differently. The context of then and now are different. Tomorrow it will take on new meaning as well. That is the result of knowing more, uncovering more, and realizing the weight of a happening when bumping up against different circumstances.

The reader is right. History does not change; its interpretation changes, it evolves. The facts, however immovable, remain open for analysis and articulated understanding. The issue of immigration is an example; native Americans populated North America long before the European white man arrived on the scene. The immigrants then were seeking a new world and opportunity. The scattered population of Native Americans were an impediment to white man’s objective. So, Indians were demonized as the dangerous enemy; out of defense, they became that very thing although not their intent.

The outcome was removing natives from their property, herding them into inhospitable regions, and ignoring them for centuries. Much of their story has been erased; even they are nearly erased. But that tragedy is not complete. There is still time to learn their story and share it.

It is high time to do just that. the question is how and who. Financial resources should come from the federal purse. Procedural and programmatic details should be accomplished by the native people themselves. Collegial assistance ought to be readily available. Guidance available, however, is not authority of. We have been down that road before and it delivered us to this day’s predicament.

The issues of Native Americans is prologue to our national immigration policy and programs. No wonder immigration has been so colossally mismanaged. We did not understand the basics from the very start.

November 1, 2021