MountainMornings

Yesterday, Bob and I had a scheduled morning meeting to learn all about cohousing in Nashville. We met lovely people of different ages, and I was schooled in the latest feminist lingo; when I asked if a woman’s husband was babysitting, she said, “Oh no, he’s Daddying.” (smile) I made a note to myself to remember that term!

But my heart wasn’t in that room. I had silenced my cell but wanted to check Twitter every few minutes. I didn’t. But I follow a young newspaper reporter, Lauren Berg @laurenbergk who writes for The Daily Progress in Cville. And I knew she was in the thick of it, the Unite the Right rally was just getting underway and I had no idea what would happen.

Now we all know the deadly consequences of hate speech writ large and accompanied by Nazi symbolism, cloaked in national pride. My friend, Lynne Goldman, owns a unique jewelry store on the Downtown Mall. She and I were Planned Parenthood bus mates over the years, and we traveled to the Women’s March together this year in sisterhood. She and her husband came to our Seder in April.

At the cohousing meeting, people spoke of building community. Of planning this in, by designing a parking lot behind the condos so you are forced to walk into a courtyard and pass your neighbors every day. No more driving into a garage and disappearing. Two families do communal dinners once a week, they pay for everything together (roof repair, utilities, etc), and they manage by “consensus” not by our typical way of voting, when the “Ayes” have it!.

Consensus 

noun, plural consensuses.
1.
majority of opinion:
The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month.
2.
general agreement or concord; harmony.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Lynne. Everyone else I knew back in my adopted hometown was present and accounted for, but I had seen on Twitter that somebody sprayed Lauren with a chemical and that riot police were staging near the Paramount Theatre. And then the unthinkable happened. A home-grown, white supremacist Nazi thug terrorist drove into a crowd of peaceful counter-protestors… right on the corner of Lynne’s store.

It has come to this. Racism only needs an excuse to spread its evil, twisted ideology, like tearing down a monument to General Robert E Lee. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-rally-protest-statue.html

In Emancipation Park, a few steps from the Bride and Groom’s first home. In my serene and peaceful burg, a blue dot that is rapidly turning the state of VA purple; at the seat of democracy itself, Monticello, built by Slaves and saved and refurbished by Jews. http://www.isjl.org/virginia-charlottesville-encyclopedia.html

Lynne and her husband Steve arrived home safe and sound last night. Lauren is busy Tweeting this morning, gathering facts about the day, reminding us that two VA State Troopers are dead as a result of this tragedy. And Mr T has no plans for the day according to his White House Communications Director, standing by his statement against violence on “many sides.”

This extreme Neo-Nazi side is not my side Mr T, in fact my Father-in-Law Hudson fought in a war so that scum of the earth would never rise again. Stop blustering about nuclear war, and study Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This may indeed be a turning point for our country, and it may be time for all of us to pray and #resist.

Here we were at one of our favorite French restaurants on the Downtown Mall for our last Wedding Anniversary in June. You can see the incomplete Tyvek hotel in the background, just as it was for the Bride’s wedding. Our democracy is incomplete, there is much left to do. Reconciliation and forgiveness will take time, but we must start now. We must listen to each other, and build consensus.