As we approach another weekend, and also begin our climb out of the doldrums of a long winter, I’m reminded of how generally solitary we are up here.

Now on the one hand, this is a fantastic thing and exactly what we wanted. I mean, a big part of why we came here was to get away from the vapid suburban hamster wheel and to notice time passing as it scrolls by all too fast. And while the day-to-day in the NEK isn’t always a cakewalk, it’s rarely boring. This lends itself to an examined life rather than one that flies by in regurgitated blinks of commute/work/commute.

Also, I’ve only to look at the news for 5 minutes to realize that we’re better off up here than just about anywhere else.

The U.S. appears to be hell-bent on self destruction at the moment and while a younger me would’ve been shouting from city rooftops about it, the nearly 50-year-old special needs dad that I am now mostly just wants to be left alone.
I was reminded of this yesterday as I started to get riled up by the news of the Dept. of Education being shuttered, and became worried (again) about school funding for Daphne’s daily aides, her OT, her speech therapy, etc. All that help that she, and thousands of kids like her, receive every day falls under the heading of “Inclusion” in what’s apparently become a villainous “DEI” label.

And our U.S. Dept. of Education was the organization that enforced proper curriculum and helped fund resources that ensured kids like her got to go to school.
I explain this in case there are folks out there who might not have considered how these policies affect the real people that they know and/or care about, and instead got carried away in the whole “DEI ALL BAD!!” rhetoric.

But last night, long after the girls had gone to bed, I stood in our dining room and looked outside for a while, pondering the best strategy to navigate all this and the chaos still to come. One of my favorite poems, Carl Sandburg’s The People, Yes came to mind.
Here’s a part of it:

The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
…
The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
…
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march:
“Where to? what next?”

And this view of the “nourishing earth” where we’ve taken our roothold calmed me.

We are as far removed as we possibly can be from many of the effects (although obviously not all) of the political insanity these days. That was by design.

And with each passing season we become more and more capable of living independently, incrementally needing less and less from outside our little plot. In fact, all this just confirmed that we’re going to plant apple and nut trees out there this year to help ensure we’ve a supply of sugars and proteins.

We continue to get better at this, and we can get by.

And while my heart breaks for the kids and parents out there who are likely going to lose those services, I can only carry so much. I have to take care of my family.
If only I had the time…

Now, conversely, we don’t have much in the way of interaction with people outside of our house. Daphne obviously goes to school every day, and Jen sees other parents in the school drop-off/pick-up area, but aside from that it’s basically just us three.

We occasionally see our neighbors, and I try to make it to a board gaming group that meets in Derby Line once a month. (Actually I’ve missed the last two of those due to illnesses, but I’m hopeful for March.) Outside of that I don’t have any contact that isn’t through a work video call or part of a scripted interaction in a random store’s check-out line.
And while I’m an introvert by nature, that does tend to make things…weird after a while.

Anyway, on that note I think I’m going to head out and ride with Jen to pick up Daphne from school today. I think work has seen enough of me for this week. (And I know I’ve seen enough of it.)

Have a great weekend.

j.s.