“Look ahead! Think!
Plan! Dream. And have faith in your dreams, for out of dreams grow empires. Let
imagination be the architect of your future. But do not forget that reason and
good judgment must be the actual builders of it. Without their service your plans
will never be anything more than plans.’ – The Youth’s Companion May 15,
1924
My grandfather used to send me books to “counterbalance the
liberal educational bastion of Williams College” – cloaked facetiously in brown
paper bags such that no liberal passerby would judge my choice to read “Death
of the West” by Pat Buchanan, or “Slander” by Ann Coulter. I now own an entire
conservative propaganda shelf to add to my liberal propaganda shelf. I look at
the two shelves and laugh to recognize that both now start to give me the
willies. My grandfather and I have been verbally sparring since I was 12 years
old. Our tense and jubilant debate has taken different forms at different
times: we argue vehemently over minimum wage laws, teachers’ unions,
educational reform, corporate accountability, the merits of Fox News versus
CNN, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Even though there are times when my lived experience of 31 years seems to contradict what he knows from his lived experience of 93 years, he has made me laugh, made me think, and always challenged me on my ideas. I have a great deal that I need to learn from him.
And yet, we have acknowledged that we agree on three things.
1) Big is Bad. Big unions, big business, big government. Bad. 2) People don’t
know their neighbors anymore; and neighbor and community are not the same
thing. 3) Composting toilets. This is promising.
The fact of the matter is that this moment in our world is
terrifying to me. From where I sit, I witness extreme weather events happening
with increasing frequency. I witness systemic and structural racism, massive
inequality in wealth, an unsustainable and unjust global economic system. I
witness an economy built on cheap fossil fuels, and I witness an isolationism
in communities. I witness an industrialized consumerist society in which
individuals are valued only as producers and consumers. And I witness a great
deal of fear, of scarcity, of censorship, of doubt, of greed, of empire. My
conclusion is that for hope I need to lean into those elements that my
grandfather and I – across generations, genders, and experience in this world -
can agree.
I have spent the decade since my graduation from the liberal
bastion of Williams College in pursuit of some understanding of privilege,
power, and my role in it in the United States and the world. I’ve worked to
understand my relationship to where I come from – my identity as a citizen of
the United States, but also my place – Maine, my place – Cumberland, my place –
this land. I have also worked to understand my relationship to my family – to
my parents, to my siblings, and to my grandparents and ancestors. I seek to
understand them in an effort to understand myself as an individual - my
personality, my habits, my preferences. I also seek to understand the history
that led me to be born into the group and system in which I participate today –
the places where my family has been blessed with historical privilege or
responsibility, and the places in which we have struggled or been challenged in
this world.
And so it is that I find myself in front of a cover of “The
Youth’s Companion” – a “weekly illustrated magazine for all the family”. The
covers of this publication speak words that my grandfather feels his generation
grew up on. If his generation was raised on it, well then, I guess that means
mine inherited it. But what did I inherit? How has it impacted me? And is it
relevant today as my grandfather feels that it was in his time? It was a time
when the Great Depression and World War II hung heavily, perhaps as heavily as
those major issues that I mentioned above hang now.
This particular copy speaks the words on the publishers’
minds on May 15, 1924. Over the next year, my 93 year old grandfather and I
will write from our perspectives on the relevance of these covers in our lives:
what significance do they hold for each of us? And how do our stories and experiences
relate to each other?
What is the relationship between the world of then and the
world of now? How do I honor and learn from the experiences of my grandfather,
while at the same time thinking for myself in relation to my understanding of
the world I live in today?
