But I’m not complaining. Wet snow is fifty times worse and this was all powder.
So while shoveling and manhandling the snowblower, I was thinking about the imminent end of the Bush years and the soon-to-begin Obama administration. I was also thinking about the Grimm’s Fairy tales.
When I was a kid, we had a thick green copy of the complete Grimm’s Fairly tales. At least I remember it as green. I think it was one of the first books I read. For any of you who might not be familiar with these stories, the main thing to know is that they were pre-Disney. Good and bad were easy to distinguish, and when someone--often a witch, evil step-mother, or rotten queen (some characters were all three at once, very efficient)—was caught out at the end of the story, the punishments were quite graphic and horrible. I believe the creepy queen in Snow White was given red-hot iron shoes in which to dance, and rolling witches downhill in barrels with nails driven through the sides was considered a good way to end a story.
No house arrests back then, Mr. Madoff.
Definitely vivid stuff that kept my attention.
Anyway, the tale that came to mind was Sleeping Beauty (Briar-Rose), and in particular the penultimate paragraph where the prince kisses the sleeping princess and everyone wakes up from their hundred year slumber:
Then they went down together, and the king awoke, and the queen, and the whole court, and looked at each other in great astonishment. And the horses in the courtyard stood up and shook themselves, the hounds jumped up and wagged their tails, the pigeons upon the roof pulled out their heads from under their wings, looked round, and flew into the open country, the flies on the wall crept again, the fire in the kitchen burned up and flickered and cooked the meat, the joint began to turn and sizzle again, and the cook gave the boy such a box on the ear that he screamed, and the maid finished plucking the fowl.
And then the marriage of the king's son with briar-rose was celebrated with all splendor, and they lived contented to the end of their days.
The Bush era passes, and we are awakening from a long national enchantment or bewitching. What do we find? Two unfinished wars, wondrous transfer of wealth from the many to the few, millions of workers shaking off the clinging cobwebs of an evil spell to discover that they have lost homes and jobs, laws bent and broken, and on and on.
Grrrrrr!
But I am optimistic. In times of crisis, Americans can accomplish almost anything. We’re neck-deep in the crisis, and Obama gives me hope for three reasons.
First, he is articulate. Clear speech and clear writing come from clear thinking, and we desperately need clear heads at the helm.
Second, he is not afraid to speak truth. The fact that he is not promising miracles, that he has already made clear that fixing the current mess will take years and a lot of hard work, is a breath of fresh air. This is not a “mission accomplished” President.
Third, the fact that we elected Obama tells me that the spell has been broken. That cracking sound you heard on November 4th was the BushCheneyRove enchantment exploding.
Actually I can think of lots of other reasons, but that’ll do for tonight.
