Nation in My Head
Foxy walked boldly up our driveway, its thick tail wafting in the breeze. Within seconds it feasted on a whole flock of immature, free-ranging pullet-hens whose eggs would have provided thrifty protein. To protect our supply, the replacement batch of four hens does not range freely any more except when, for a few hours, a recycled radio near their coop is set loud enough on National Public Radio, one of the few stations we receive, to scare Foxy off. Otherwise, they are penned in their fortified yard, then nightly locked into a coop Foxy cannot break into.
Another hungry fox is also devouring my nation. The facts my nation needs are being consumed, then pooped out unproductively, by self-aggrandizing Information sources of foxy richies, and I refuse to be a citizen of their nation. To protect my mental health, I self-censor news, sometimes even NPR, despite its attempts at fairness by presenting corrupted agendas as worth listening to as honest ones, leaving judgments to listeners. Still, even tainted news can be helpful. Attaching a radio to the coop reminds Foxy a congress of people may be meeting there daily, so hen-snatching won’t work. Our four remaining laying hens, though, seem well informed, and the nation in my head imagines them filtering facts from lies as they hear NPR news and commentary. I pretend they will let me know what I need to know each day when I gather eggs from the fortified coop, with NPR in the background.
The evolutionary tree has landed me on a branch different from the chickens’ one, but I am tired of being labeled “elite” because I took my brain and hands to school to learn how to earn a livable wage as a teacher. The log cabin I live in was built with my own hands along with those of others trying to help. It has taken decades to raise an apparent low standard of living to “modern,” after years of heating with a wood stove, lugging drinking water from a local spring, running a microwave oven on an extension cord from an electric outlet a thousand feet away next to the road. Milk goats, dogs, cats, turkeys, chickens, and children have been raised at this base of operation I would have liked to call a homestead in the northern woods of NH. Chickens, turkeys, and pigs have been slaughtered for household consumption, while vegetables and berries have been grown in an unfriendly environment on the western slopes of Mount Washington, where weather from farther west condenses to clouds for an average of 90 percent of calendar days. A family has been fed on $20 per week with food made from basic ingredients that kept the diet nutritionally sound. This has been no “elite” privilege but modern survival. Amid all this, a unique “elite” graduate program helped teach me how and why too many of my students seemed unable to learn how to read and write, helping me open doors for them I had not known about. I am not a better person than those whose lives followed different pathways. I have been just lucky surviving so far, sometimes failing, like losing a flock of chickens to Foxy. These days when the chicken pen needs fortification because a dog has dug access to the pile of the chickens’ kitchen scraps, I find the hole under the fence and shovel it closed. When a neighbor’s car gets stuck in a snowbank, I use my history of getting stuck myself, apply the shovel to the snow and help push the car out. Yes, many of these things I have done have been stupid, simple-minded, and naïve. But none has been “elite” as the word has come to be used ambiguously and so hurtfully these days. There is plenty pooh around that word to shovel.
I am angry that the time frame of my life story also encompasses the wealth-privileged criminal who got elected to a powerful office using every sleazy trick in the book I tried to teach my students to be wary of. It is tempting to imagine myself moving forty miles north to another country, but I cannot afford it, and I am too tired. This cabin offers simple warmth as the hub of a lifestyle often labeled “crude” but hardly “elite.”
For now, though, I am building a nation in my head where I can survive without consuming more than I need. In the nation of my head facts come through, justice prevails, and the guns of bad guys are destroyed as they end up in jail, where they can no longer harm innocents. In the nation of my head wealth has nothing to do with power, and power belongs to everybody, not just to those with fat wallets. In the nation of my head, there’s room for every constructive—not destructive—human being, regardless of appearance, language, ability, education, and social class. But there is no room for veneered faces, ugly voices, and the violent rhetoric and actions that modern media capitalize on. In the nation of my head men do not stick themselves wherever they can, and women persistently resist subjugation socially, economically, and biologically. In the nation of my head, the consuming nature of modern life is acknowledged and dialed back to help heal the damage we have been doing to the earth. I choose, select, these features for my head-nation because I am a fallible human being given “elite” ability, learning to use my hands to turn ideas into survival.
The definition-guts of the word “elite” apply, but the more modern, fashionable slanging of the word does not. It depends who is calling whom “elite”—and why. The word elite was born in Latin, where it meant to choose, to select. It descended through French meaning pretty much the same, but by the time it oozed into English it had absorbed values that loaded it with the idea of better, best, superior, powerful. If forced without a parachute to jump from an airplane with a jumping partner to hang onto, I would choose an “elite” parachuter, someone who knew what they were doing as gravity hurled us to the ground. But elite isn’t often used this way these days when it is flung hurtfully at those whose backgrounds have challenged them for learning, for example, about parachutes. Not one of us is better, best, superior, or powerful in every way. Every one of us is worse, worst, inferior, or weak in one or many ways. It is possible to be powerful like the greedy fox that ate more than it needed to survive—all my chickens instead of just one that could have been its lunch. Not driven by pride, fame, or fortune, a powerful fox could be labeled “elite” for consuming more chickens than it needed. Compared with chickens, I, too could be labeled ”elite,” benefiting from their egg-laying superiority while protecting them from Foxy. It is not my fault my brain and hands are different from theirs, but it is my choice, my selection, that also, I hope, gives them as good a life as chickens can have—enough to eat and drink, a place to enjoy fresh air and greenery, and a place to roost and sleep without threat. In return, I expect them to range freely and lay nutritious eggs within the sound of NPR’s programming, which includes facts, opinions so labeled, and minimal advertising. This humanistic noise keeps Foxy away without hurting it. I am tired from imagining jumps without parachutes from airplanes I do not know how to fly or fall from, and the factual sound-bites of the voices of brazen, notorious, selfish beings are more than I can tolerate during these final years of my life. I do not want to pass away in this sort of nation. My chickens do not understand the radio-noise, which helps keep them safe. I trust them to let me know by squawking when Foxy appears, turning my attention to the chicken-yard and sending the dog to chase Foxy off.
I trust there are still Americans gathering influence to restore in the world the sort of nation in my head.
In the meantime from the nation in my head I will try to find opportunities to help, not greedily hurt. And I will try to appreciate help offered me as I age. If this makes me “elite” because of an ambiguous definition, then so be it. In the nation of my head, then, every greedy hurtful person is banned, and every person who tries to help is “elite.” Most old ladies probably have little influence in this world, but I have decided to try to become a better person as a result of the evil now overtaking the government. I have gone to work on the "nation in my head," using my hands in gardens and in the chicken coop, where practical investments pay off. This attention-shift helps as I consider person-to-person interactions much like tending a garden that happens to be fertilized by the chickens’ manure in a stable biological cycle. There is no way I can avoid the visceral sickness of these days, but I can try to use it to behave (perhaps out of spite) in such a way as undermining bad things coming out of Washington and focusing attention on local people I haven’t previously met and know nothing about. In just one day three “new” people helped counteract my political nausea. The first was a NH State cop, whom I recognized as the one who had intervened after my car got t-boned by somebody driving out of control. I thanked him, and his face lit up like a full moon as he thanked me for remembering in return. Then I went on to pick up groceries at a local store. The banana display was a three-tiered layout of bananas of all different degrees of ripeness. A lady was unloading more bananas from a box, and I did not want to interfere, so I waited till she was done, explaining I had been looking for a bunch of green bananas that last longer after purchase. We struck up a conversation about bananas, and I learned they are the biggest local fruit market. As I headed for the next department, she was opening a new box of bananas and held up a bunch of six very, very green ones. I swapped out the ones I had chosen and thanked her for the greener ones. Two pleasant conversations that same morning were “elite,” pulling me away from whatever news had gotten to me despite my censure.
Then I continued on to the soda-department to replenish my husband’s Coca Cola supply. There was a buy-two-get-two-free situation, but there were only three Coca Cola boxes left, and they were on the floor inside a four-foot-tall fence of other kinds of soda, any one of which would make the 4th box of the deal. I could have moved some of the surrounding boxes, but I feared I would tip something over, so I asked a butcher-employee standing nearby if he could call somebody to help hand me the Coca Cola boxes. He said he could do it, and he circled the box-fence twice, realizing he couldn't reach those boxes, either. He began to disassemble the box wall, which caved sideways, taking one wall of boxes and another with it. He reached in and handed me the boxes, to which I added another box of sodas, then offered to hand him the fallen boxes so he could stack them back up. He assured me twice it wasn't my fault and wished me a good day. I told him the grocery store was lucky to have a helpful person on their staff, then headed for the checkout. Three local people, whom I met personally for the first time and had no idea about their politics--the pleasantness of conversations has stuck. In the nation of my head they are “elites.”
But that is not the point. I like most of the people I know in person, and I love quite a few of them. But in general I do not like big bunches of people that provide enough anonymity that they can behave as badly as humans are capable. I see the current primary representative of this country as embodiment of the worst of humanity, and that is why current news makes me sick to my stomach. But if I teach myself to notice and acknowledge others' helpful behavior and interactions, I am undermining every evil action taken now by a demented convicted criminal who is playing a greedy game with the world.
So let whosoever wishes, call me “elite” because I chose to go to school. Delivered by someone else these days, that word is an insult. But acknowledging the heads and/or hands of each one of us is capable of betterness, best, superiority, or power in some way also acknowledges every one of us is worser, worst, inferior, or weak in some way. If labeled “elite,” I aim to be better than Foxy, who could have left a few egg-laying chickens, taking only one that day for lunch. Compared with chickens, I can call Foxy “elite” while compared with chickens, I, too, am “elite.” It is not my fault my brain is different from theirs, but it is my choice, my selection, that also, I hope, gives them as good a life as chickens can have—enough to eat and drink, a place to enjoy fresh air and greenery while hearing NPR noise, and a place to roost and sleep without threat, while Foxy stays in the dark woods. If you must call me names for being snotty, privileged, white-skinned, schooled, or anything else that can be read into my life-experiences, helping is the parachute I am trying to learn until I comfortably hit the ground at the end of my life. In the nation of my head, “elite” means sharing resources does not try to hurt. It tries to help.