Changes.

"I've had some long nights in stir, alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade. That was the longest night of my life." ~Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman's character) The Shawshank Redemption.

I do travel, occasionally. Last weekend I hired an animal sitter to tend to my dogs and the ferrets and I went up north...first to my Mom's and then to the Upper Peninsula (of Michigan) to attend my Grandma's 90th Birthday party in the Marquette area.

Early Saturday morning (with Memorial Weekend well underway, judging from the previous day's traffic) my Mom and I headed out pretty early. driving up through Cheboygan and then along the lake towards Mackinaw City...and after driving across the Mackinaw Bridge (which had reduced traffic due to joggers being present) we made a quick stop for breakfast and to use the bathroom at MacDonald's in Saint Ignace. When we got our food...we were waited on by this cute little Black girl.

That's a change...and an obvious one,,,here.

Mom got behind the wheel of her Jeep, and we set off down US-2, headed west under a vast, clear blue sky. There is a reason locals often call the Upper Peninsula "God's Country" and days like that one are it.

You notice things...signs for small businesses in houses, tourist traps, changes since the last time you went this way...for me, it's been about five years.

Early on, we passed a small convoy of Army National Guard trucks, shockingly out of place painted in desert tan. Almost certainly, they were from the 107th Engineer Battalion (the Upper Peninsula's resident National Guard unit,) All headed the other way...presumably to Camp Grayling for training. You'd think they'd have the holiday off. I have to say that, thanks to the open side windows on the armored cabs of their Oshkosh M1083 trucks, I observed that this troop included at least a couple of Black and Brown faces...and it, too, is worth noting that though they have Armories in the cities like Marquette and Sault Ste. Marie, many of their companies, detachments and troops are based in outlying communities like Gladstone (near Escanaba) Ishpeming, or Kingsford.

So, diversity in this case is noticeable.

Along US-2 is still kind of a tourist area, so everything is decently well kept. Some of the houses might be a little rough, old cars here and there...and, it being Memorial Weekend...lots of garage sale junk...but things are decently maintained.

Further down the road, I noticed that not only some of the houses...but road signs with blinkers and the common pumping stations and transfer sites for things like natural gas that are pretty ubiquitous in the area had Solar panels to power them. This held all the way through our turn north up through Engadine and driving up to M-28 for the main leg of the trip across the Upper Peninsula...what they call the "Seney stretch." This is the Upper Peninsula that people think of when somebody says the word "Yooper."

Much of the way along M-28 a railroad track follows along the highway, crossing in several places. On sidings here and there sit old railway cars, boxcars and tanker cars mostly...and many have not moved in 30 or 40 years. The route goes through several towns...skirting around Newberry, Seney, Shingleton...and there's more than one collection of abandoned houses or other buildings in each town or in between. Especially given the changes I'd mentioned earlier the disparity can be jarring.

Yet for whatever reason, Federal grants, who knows? Each town had a nice, new, well-maintained park with new-looking playground equipment.

Odd...but not that out of place in the land of rusty old pickup trucks and nice new deer rifles.

In some places...it really does seem almost apocalyptic...abandoned houses, broken-down cars in the yards of shitty shacks, falling-down barns, rusting rail-cars on equally rusted tracks. Hell, add a few abandoned cars on the highway and it would not be hard to imagine a different past in which instead of the last ones flying out to Minot, North Dakota on my birthday in 1994, the BUFF's (Boeing B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers) of the 410th Bomb Wing were all bombed up in response to some crisis, that orders were hastily given and that the sky shook every 12.5 seconds with Minimum Interval Takeoffs, and filled with the ear-splitting sound of screaming TF-33 jet engines and vast trails of black smoke in the face of incoming Soviet (or Russian) missile strikes that would turn the northern night brighter than the light of a thousand suns in an apocalypse of energy and fire, nor to imagine that the area that I knew so well in my younger years...K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, the surrounding communities of Gwinn and Skandia, and probably Marquette itself...would not be so hospitable to human life as it was to be for us later that day. If one imagines the few bike-riders or people out walking that we saw as the living ghosts of shell-shocked survivors...it's not hard to imagine that the Nukes...or perhaps in our more popular modern context, the Zombies...have come and gone and the apocalypse is decades in the past.

But in the real world...we face many less immediate, but in some ways more insidious crises. Climate Change, for one...and election meddling by the Russians that might even cause as much or more damage than the aforementioned nuclear weapons. I heard dumb ass Trump is thinking of pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Change accord?

Dude...the oil and gas companies are already using solar panels.

Try as you might, you can't hold back...nor easily undo...progress. If you try...you're likely going to get squished under the forward motion of the world. It's slow, perhaps, but inexorable if it's gotten to here by now.

Funny thing, too, not a political sign in sight. People have moved on.

We stopped for gas in Munising at the other end of the Stretch before doubling back a bit to take a slightly different route. A Latino family got gas at the same time we did. We got back on the road, a large programmable sign I'd seen earlier advised truck traffic to K.I. Sawyer to take this route also. An hour or so later...and having shooed several mosquitoes out of the Jeep...we turned onto US 41 north, only to find extensive road construction and a decent amount of truck traffic close to the former Air Force Base. So, after a couple of decades of inactivity...the area seemed busy again...or at least busy enough for the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend...perhaps more so than I remembered it.

We went on to have a nice day with my family. When we got there, my cousin was regaling guests with the tale of her Lyft driver...one of the top five in Chicago, she said. An immigrant from Cameroon who works as a scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory who drives Lyft as a second job to pay off his student loans...and she took the opportunity to speak to him in French. Like I said...we NEED people like that Lyft driver in America...that kind of drive, freaking energy and intelligence...if this country is going to meet all the challenges it must in order to survive. But some people don't like that guy, just because he's Black?

Madness, I say.

Even as I write this people I know are arguing with StormTrumpers and dealing with Russian bots on Twitter. Putin has basically admitted that the Russians diddled our Presidential election, and even as Republicans plan budgets that will kill their own constituents I just saw that even FOX News is not saying that Trump is innocent anymore. So the stakes...and increasingly the amount of public mockery and outrage directed towards Republicans and Trump...grow exponentially by the day if not by the hour. Yet people thought this bullshit would be a good idea? Why? Because they thought they wanted to be able to say racist shit in public again?

Son, that shit hasn't been cool...that I know of...for 40 years. The President is not a King, he cannot undo 50 years of social change nor 70+ years of progress by decree. Let alone he can't do it just because you don't want Black People to get any...and THAT has been the way it is for over 150 years according to our Constitution.

We got back on the road after dinner and pictures, Mom was tired so we switched drivers in Munising and this time I drove...and one thing I noticed above some of the trees was prodigious funnel-clouds of bugs. We talked about the day and various issues and among other things...our first remembered encounters with people of different races.

By the time we got close to St. Ignace, Mom was knocked out in the passenger seat. I fished around in the console for the bridge-fare money so I didn't have to wake her up. When I got across the bridge I stopped at the rest area outside of Mackinaw City to take a piss...and there was a Toyota minivan with several people of apparently Indian or South Asian extraction...young men and women, one girl wearing a Hijab with otherwise-Western clothing, including shorts. The van had Missouri plates.

"As Salaam Alaykum" I said. Peace be upon you. "Wa Alaykum Salaam" one of the young men replied, smiling...And upon you, peace. He was young, early to mid-20's, bearded, very dark skin and shiny black hair, very neatly brushed, dark American-hipster type clothes. Each of us...myself and these two young foreign men, the second in shorts, a Chicago Bulls T-shirt and Sandals...set off separately for the bathroom. They got there before me, we each concluded our business and when I went to wash my hands, the first guy was combing his hair in front of the mirror with exacting precision.

"Where you from?" I asked, curious. "St. Louis" he replied, again smiling. The second guy was done, and obviously needed the sink. I stepped back, grabbed my cane and headed for the door. I said my say "You gentlemen have a safe trip...and a blessed day." Both replied "And you as well, sir."

As I drove home under a darkening sky, I noticed an awful lot of anti-oil-pipeline signs in front of permanent residences and vacation homes alike...in an area not necessarily known for being full of environmentalists or liberals.

That was a bit of a surprise, and honestly I was shocked that I'd not noticed the signs in the morning.

Politeness and common decency should never feel revolutionary...but in Trump's America, they do. That one desires to protect one's environment should never be a surprise. It is, but yet there it is. If normal things are so revolutionary in this time of abnormality, sign me up for the revolution. I was taught to use a rifle, once upon a time.

But I was also taught that Soul Force was far stronger than force of arms.

We are faced with a choice, as we face the future:

We can do this their way...and live through the darkness and its fires...

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

~Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God, Jonathan Edwards, 1741

(...And remember, kids, if you're a Republican, and/or sufficiently anti-Liberal, none of this need apply and you can do whatever you want. Damnation, hell, and rules are for other people.)

Or...

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

                Free at last! Free at last!

                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

~Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a Dream." August 28th, 1963.

Change is coming. Make your choice.

As for me 'To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other."

Bonus points if you know who I'm paraphrasing.

Education, experience, knowledge, and an informed and consenting citizenry were considered essential things when I was coming up...and I knew who Johnathan Edwards and Martin Luther King Jr. were, what they had done, and at least some quotes from each of them...by the time I'd made it through the 5th Grade.

Think about that the next time you're dealing with some Trump Supporter that can't get basic pronouns right.

We have to be the change we wish to see in the world.

As Roland Martin put it at the end of his show today. "We'll fight until hell freezes over, and then we'll fight on the ice."