Hope In the Shadows
Some of these Tomgram's were lingering in the backwaters of my backlog of e-mails. Good stuff though that I thought needed to be posted regardless. Some of it is timeless............Scott
Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit on Hope in the Shadows
I want to end 2004, as is seasonally appropriate, on a note of constrained hope and who better to call on to make the case for hope than Rebecca Solnit, the author of Hope in the Dark. Below she updates her book, small in girth but mighty in scope (and recommended at this site many times). Her new piece, "Hope at Midnight," suggests ways in which a widening of the lenses through which we've been taking in our post-election world might free us briefly from the confines of The Last Empire, and remind us that elsewhere on this modest planet people are at work on futures imagined quite differently from the grim ones the Bush administration offers us all.
To add a brief note of my own to hers: If it weren't for one factor, I would, even in the wake of the recent election, be quite optimistic. After all, we are the creation of George Bush. In a mere three years, the flickering of a historical eyelash, he almost single-handedly has given life and vitality to the political Internet, while creating an antiwar and anti-him movement of surprising size, one that nearly lifted a recalcitrant candidate into the presidency. What took the right in America years and years after the Goldwater debacle of 1964, we -- whoever or whatever we are in this strange, new world -- seem to be doing at a double-march pace. It's invigorating to watch. Imagine, then, along with all the expectable destruction and mayhem, what our President might be capable of producing in the four years to come.
One major constraint on my optimism, however, is that I do fear our planet is on a time clock called global warming and species extinction (topics I return to with a certain dogged regularity, even though I know they're not the most popular at Tomdispatch). I fear we don't have the stretches of time that all complex movements need to come into their own, not with an administration so intent on eating the Earth.
With this dispatch, I'm signing off until early in the New Year, and in doing so I want to offer thanks to every reader who took the time to visit this site in the last twelve months, or signed up for the dispatches, or passed one of them on to friends and acquaintances. I thank every writer who wrote for Tomdispatch out of conviction or the goodness of his or her (unpaid) heart. I thank all the political sites -- each fascinating in its own way -- that generously posted material from Tomdispatch. I especially thank all those of you who wrote in to encourage my endeavors, or criticize them, or tell me your thoughts, or something about your lives, or argue with some author, or suggest sites I should be looking at, or writers I shouldn't miss, or books I should read, or pieces to consider, or directions to go. If only I were five or ten or fifteen people…
Your letters are the secret adventure at Tomdispatch, transporting me into realms I couldn't have imagined. All of you, in all of your variety, from all over the United States and the world, give me hope. I try my best to read everything you send my way. I only wish I had time to respond with the sort of care and attention your letters deserve. I offer another year of apologies to those of you who tried to submit pieces to me. As part of my attempt to remain sane at this sideline that ate my life, I don't, sadly enough, take submissions.
A special note to the military families, soldiers, and others who have written in about our Iraqi occupation: Hang in there. My greatest wish is that somehow we can manage to bring our troops in Iraq home to their families in 2005.
A final small prayer to unknown gods for letting me stumble across Nick Turse, who is now -- thanks to the kind support of that wonderful duo Hamilton Fish and Taya Grobow at the Nation Institute -- my part-time research assistant at the site.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit on Hope in the Shadows
I want to end 2004, as is seasonally appropriate, on a note of constrained hope and who better to call on to make the case for hope than Rebecca Solnit, the author of Hope in the Dark. Below she updates her book, small in girth but mighty in scope (and recommended at this site many times). Her new piece, "Hope at Midnight," suggests ways in which a widening of the lenses through which we've been taking in our post-election world might free us briefly from the confines of The Last Empire, and remind us that elsewhere on this modest planet people are at work on futures imagined quite differently from the grim ones the Bush administration offers us all.
To add a brief note of my own to hers: If it weren't for one factor, I would, even in the wake of the recent election, be quite optimistic. After all, we are the creation of George Bush. In a mere three years, the flickering of a historical eyelash, he almost single-handedly has given life and vitality to the political Internet, while creating an antiwar and anti-him movement of surprising size, one that nearly lifted a recalcitrant candidate into the presidency. What took the right in America years and years after the Goldwater debacle of 1964, we -- whoever or whatever we are in this strange, new world -- seem to be doing at a double-march pace. It's invigorating to watch. Imagine, then, along with all the expectable destruction and mayhem, what our President might be capable of producing in the four years to come.
One major constraint on my optimism, however, is that I do fear our planet is on a time clock called global warming and species extinction (topics I return to with a certain dogged regularity, even though I know they're not the most popular at Tomdispatch). I fear we don't have the stretches of time that all complex movements need to come into their own, not with an administration so intent on eating the Earth.
With this dispatch, I'm signing off until early in the New Year, and in doing so I want to offer thanks to every reader who took the time to visit this site in the last twelve months, or signed up for the dispatches, or passed one of them on to friends and acquaintances. I thank every writer who wrote for Tomdispatch out of conviction or the goodness of his or her (unpaid) heart. I thank all the political sites -- each fascinating in its own way -- that generously posted material from Tomdispatch. I especially thank all those of you who wrote in to encourage my endeavors, or criticize them, or tell me your thoughts, or something about your lives, or argue with some author, or suggest sites I should be looking at, or writers I shouldn't miss, or books I should read, or pieces to consider, or directions to go. If only I were five or ten or fifteen people…
Your letters are the secret adventure at Tomdispatch, transporting me into realms I couldn't have imagined. All of you, in all of your variety, from all over the United States and the world, give me hope. I try my best to read everything you send my way. I only wish I had time to respond with the sort of care and attention your letters deserve. I offer another year of apologies to those of you who tried to submit pieces to me. As part of my attempt to remain sane at this sideline that ate my life, I don't, sadly enough, take submissions.
A special note to the military families, soldiers, and others who have written in about our Iraqi occupation: Hang in there. My greatest wish is that somehow we can manage to bring our troops in Iraq home to their families in 2005.
A final small prayer to unknown gods for letting me stumble across Nick Turse, who is now -- thanks to the kind support of that wonderful duo Hamilton Fish and Taya Grobow at the Nation Institute -- my part-time research assistant at the site.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 10:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home