The sun is out and it is spectacular. We’ve had a particularly dreary wet October and now, on its last day, it’s showing off. Most of the leaves have already fallen but every puff of wind is rewarded with a renewed leaf release. The air is full of them. It makes for an interesting position when contemplating ‘home.’

We’ve been wondering if it is time to leave. We should know, by the end of the week. Regardless of warmth and beauty of our chosen home, we wonder if we can stay if the current strains of fascism increase. After all, just how much fascism and racism is too much? Even a little is a lot.

I have a back door advantage. Though born into an American family, I was born in Canada. We could move to Canada. I have friends in Canada and I’m a member of a Facebook group from my home town. I am dismayed that many of the issues that bother me here are just as virulent there. It seems right wing extremism doesn’t have a nationality. The Canadians are a tad more polite, and less armed, though. But names like Stephen Harper and Doug Ford are enough to let you know that Canadians are not immune to the appeal of corporate, right-wingism.

This fuels the argument that you cannot run, you have to stay, and fight. I have been politically active, mostly on environmental issues, for most of my adult life, a tree-hugger since, as a kid, the Cuyahoga River caught fire. I’ve stood on street corners with signs, walked precincts, and protested for decades. And I have to wonder if it’s done any good. Sure, we forced issues into the public consciousness–and had limited legislative success. But mainstream conduct hasn’t changed. It seems they need a crisis to even see a problem–and even then, the attention span is short.

Well, now we have no shortage of crises. Will climate change even get its due, when shoved up against the wall with a pandemic and fascist violence? With a government determined to hand our environment over to corporate interest, is there any hope? That may be all the reason to stand fast and roll up our sleeves and get to work. I don’t know. Just as the biggest issues of our era come into focus, I wonder if I’m too old to contribute.

I bought this property in 1990. I had many criteria for what I wanted. (I should’ve looked closer for better soil, sigh, but what’s done is done.) My parameters were formed in large part by what I saw, then, as looming climate change. In 1990. At the time, I hoped that people would wake up and turn this juggernaut around. If so, I’d get to retire to a beautiful piece of land. If not, I’d have a survivable retreat. At the time I didn’t give a second thought to rightwing extremism. Because…it couldn’t happen here, could it?

One wonders what the good people of Germany did and thought, in the mid-nineteen-thirties, when the handwriting was on the wall. Here in Michigan, we’ve already fielded a  plot to kidnap our governor. Granted, the perpetrators were two-bit idiots–the Laurel & Hardy version of terrorists. And perhaps that’s our salvation, that the extremists are drawn from the ‘arrested-development’ crowd. Not unlike their cult leader, our president. We may be safe, if the Rule of Law prevails. What will the rest of this week bring?

In the meantime, the sun is out. There are chores to be done. I’ve got to harvest the last of the carrots and beets, and put the garden beds to sleep for the winter. For now, this is what home is about.