The autumn of our discontent

The days are shortening. Plants are withering. And even in human affairs, we seem to be at a point when things are lost, failing, dying.

Viewing the local landscape, we see a county in desperate financial straits, school buildings falling apart and the ugly legacies of the June flood visible at every turn. Our quality of life is threatened by casino development to the east, and the proposal of a high-tension power line marching down the banks of the Delaware aims a blow at our core.

Looking at the nation and world at large brings no relief. Congress has failed to address issues such as affordable health care and declining middle-class incomes, while succeeding in passing legislation that attacks our rights of free speech and due process. The House leadership scrambles to protect a pederast for political reasons. Chaos in Iraq spirals further out of control; North Korea has tested an atomic bomb; genocide continues in Darfur.

It is all too tempting, in such an environment, to decide that there is nothing to do but go into hibernation. There’s only one problem: unlike the animals, who can be confident that when they awake in spring the depredations of winter will be over, those of us who choose to hibernate might find, when we poke our heads out into the wide world again, that things have gotten immeasurably worse. Whatever symptoms of death we see around us, they will not go away unless we make them.

In knowing how to proceed it might be useful to take look at Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which occurred earlier this month. It is a time of assessment, a time to review one’s deeds, recognize where one went wrong and make amends. One doesn’t have to be Jewish, or even believe in God, to recognize the value of that procedure—especially when things aren’t going particularly well. It is, for instance, the type of exercise that lay behind the proposal made in our editorial two weeks ago to change zoning to prevent further development on the flood plains. And it is to be hoped it will form a solid basis for the groups and agencies, from Trout Unlimited to the Delaware River Basin Commission, that are working together to try to create a comprehensive, coordinated solution to this area’s flooding problem.

Related to, but not quite the same as, the exercise of recognizing and inventorying past mistakes is the procedure of facing the truth—not just the truth about our own mistakes, but unpleasant truths about things that are beyond our control. We were heartened in this regard to see Interim Superintendent of Schools Charlotte Gregory of the Eldred Central School system recently stressing the importance of providing town residents with accurate information on the deplorable state of the system’s school buildings. Many of the problems currently experienced by the Sullivan West School District are the legacy of a failure to adequately communicate the facts about the merger (probably combined with some wishful thinking on the part of district residents), and though Eldred’s road will not be easy, they should find their spring all the faster if they can find the grit to face and accept the realities that need to be addressed.

Admitting mistakes, facing and telling the truth are not light and cheery things to think about, or to do. Rather, they are things we can and must do to make our way through the winter. If we fail to do them, we get something that looks like, well, Iraq. Do them and we can live in hope of spring.

As the air grows chill and summer fades into autumn, it’s something to keep in mind.

Dr. Punnybone

Stickhenge