America and the Tractor Pull

It’s a cold, rainy spring morning, and in an effort to wake up and get some kind of motivation, I am thinking about the local fair, and the tractor pull. Don’t ask me why…maybe because a tractor rolled by the house here this morning and made it rumble like thunder. Kind of like the tractor pull.

Marian Dolan, 1931

You see, I’m a farm girl at heart. I was raised in the city, but my Grandma was the 4-H Queen of her day, and that’s apparently where my genetics come from. I ran our own little hobby farm for nearly ten years. Had lots of help, but it was getting as close to self-sufficient as you can be if you still have bills to pay.  When my marriage ended, working on a dairy farm that included housing was the best way to deal with raising 8 kids single handedly. By far the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had, working with the animals and the land was as grueling as it was beautiful. Immersed in life and the earth every day – does wonders for your constitution and outlook on life!

But the most impressive part of farming is the machinery! It’s huge, and strong and unyielding and impenetrable. It’s cold and unforgiving. It is raw power. I remember the first time I sat on the fender of a small John Deere tractor pulling a plow. I watched as the teeth sunk into the earth and as we were pulled forward by the power of this machine, the blades turned over the earth like black butter, folding the grass under and making the familiar furrows in the landscape. It was awe inspiring at the time, and over the course of the next few years it never ceased to amaze me, although becoming commonplace in the spring.

And going to the fair became something you did not just for the rides and the midway and funnel cakes. First of all, it was a day off!  It was for the farm machinery on display. It was for the vendors showing off the latest, greatest dairy chemicals. And in the evening, it was for the tractor pull!

Now, if you’ve never been to a tractor pull, think of it as a drag race for transformers weighed down by megaliths. It’s somewhat surreal, the noise, the roar, the smoke, and the visual power pulling a stone boat down the track until its front tires lift into the air, and the gears are whining. And then the front end drops to the ground, the engine slows and the back wheels stop churning up the sandy track. The track hands run out and check the official measure, unhitch the stone boat and the tractor drives away to the cheers of the crowd.

And in the case of the unmodified tractors, after the festivities, they are loaded back up and taken back to the farm where they will once again spread manure, rip up soil, rake it smooth, pull the planters and the harvest equipment…just like always.

For the modifieds, well…these are the spoiled brats of tractors. They will just go back into the shop to be fine-tuned with very expensive parts and be primed for the next competition. They are tractors, all right – but they have never turned a wheel in the earth. They are a caricature of a tractor. The show and tell of all the flattering parts of a tractor: The power, the size, the weight, the roar, the tires…like a body building competition for machines. They don’t really DO anything but look pretty and show off.

Now my morning musings of fairs and tractor pulls is rudely interrupted by the news. Yes – it’s my fault for turning on my computer and reading my e-mail, but I clicked on the news link to read of the Presidents unintended “on-mic harsh words of criticism”  toward his Republican opponents.  If it weren’t so tragic I would have smiled, since in my opinion, I wished they would talk that way all the time, because then we would really know what they think, instead of cloaking everything in bullshit. I’m a writer, and I know how to do that, too.

But the part of me who is not bound by this planet; the part of me that will live on long after my body decides it’s all funned out, looks at this and all of the other world headlines and just  shakes its head. Silly people. What have you done? What are you doing? There are so many of you – and your leaders have made such foolish errors.

You are like a stone boat, being pulled along by the motor and muscle of a machine. Oh, you started out strong! You charged into the American landscape, roaring and growling, racing at speeds that gave that old stone boat quite a thrill ride. It’s not accustomed to going so fast! But the weights are shifting. The hydraulics are tilting, and the weight is getting heavier, and heavier. And instead of realizing we are near the end of the run, you step on the gas, pop the clutch again, stress every moving part in the engine. Ugly sounds emanate from the inside. Smoke begins to pour from crevices that are not supposed to smoke. The American Stone Boat has now hooked itself up to weights that are not ours – pulling the wars of other countries onto our weight stack. Our engine whines and groans, and we proudly sit in the cab and slam back the throttle once again. And the stones look about…have we stopped? There is a lot of noise coming from the front, but we don’t seem to be moving anymore.

What happens next?

You tell me, America.

Nobody’s happy anymore. The money is gone. All we do it bitch and whine at each other, divided into more than two parties politically, there is an animosity that precludes debate, because the problems in this nation have all become personal. And a debate is about issues – not the person defending an issue. We are full up with laws because we live in fear – of EVERYTHING! We fear each other, we fear our government, we fear our food for pete’s sake! I’m not sure why, because any one of the offending parties can be sued now and you could possible reap a tidy sum. We insure our insurance. The only solution we have to anything anymore is money, and we don’t have any.

No one wants to give up any of their comforts, but the hard cold fact is we can’t even afford our comforts anymore. I could go on, but suffice it to say it’s out of control and it cannot be fixed. That’s wishful thinking. It doesn’t matter if we have Republicans or Democrats in any office, it will just be a different way to screw it up some more. Somebody is going to get hurt no matter what. No one will be happy.

At some point, however, the show will be over. It will have to end. Time goes on, the world still turns, the sun will continue to rise and set – on this we can depend. But in another analogy, one could say we have reached terminal velocity. We’ve reached the end of the rainbow, and yes, it’s just a prismatic illusion. How will it end? No…the globe we ride on is plenty stable. Unless cosmic forces start lobbing stones at her, or she implodes from the inside, she’s a lot more stable than the inhabitants who are nobly trying to “save” her. She doesn’t need saving. Doubt that? Ask the residents of Louisiana, Japan or Australia if Mother Nature seems to be fatiguing with age or in need of our nursing services.

I’ve read with interest many different ideas on how the show will conclude, but none of them strike me as “the answer”. As if we could actually know. Hypotheses – that’s all they are. No matter what happens, it’s a death – an ending – and those tend to be painful.  I’ve had to ask myself, “How then shall we live?” 

What are people to do when the world they know disappears from underneath them? A part of Japan is understanding this in what is, globally speaking, a small way. How can I call that much devastation “small”? Because it’s not even in the news daily anymore. It’s been trumped by Libya’s problems and the American political process. It’s old news – yesterday’s newspaper in the bottom of the birdcage. The thrill is gone. The shock and awe is over. We are used to all major issues taking no longer to solve than the two-hour Hollywood version. My goodness, we tackled a global killer asteroid already in under two hours – what’s a little earthquake and Tsunami? Nope. We are like the rubber-neckers at a traffic accident. “Move along, people, there’s nothing to see here…”, as we get our glimpse of twisted metal and maybe even a blood-spattered car or limp body, and shake our head as we face the road again and head home. “Bummer, man.”

I like my denial as much as the next person, though. I sit here at my computer today, taking full advantage of things like weekend relaxing time, electricity, gasoline, the internet, my coffee maker, my cigarettes, the heat pouring out of the vent on my feet while the cold rain pelts the window. I’m looking forward to my warm shower, with store-bought soaps and shampoos and lotions. Warm food will be served when everyone awakens, and we will no doubt enjoy a movie sometime this weekend with our feet up on the ottoman and our butts comfy on the couch. I worked hard all week, and I’m tired, and I’m takin’ it easy today. This is my reality, and I’d certainly rather no one fuck with that.

Normal Rockwell - "Freedom from Fear"

But there is another parallel reality going on all around you. And it’s not nearly as rosy, but it’s just as real. And today I’m thinking about it. What to do? Now, I’m no fear monger – in fact, I would hope that anything that comes out of me would be the polar opposite of fear – because that’s what is killing us as I mentioned earlier. And fear is a global killer if ever there was one. Fear is what holds people hostage. It is freedom that I seek, and not the “American” kind of freedom, but the freedom of empowerment that I would seek to spread. The fact that we have the ability to reframe anything life throws at us in a different light.

Like the more humble – but still powerful –farm tractor, we could unhitch from the boat, and make our way back to the farm, and begin to do that which we were built to do: Cooperate with the land to bring forth that which sustains our families. Back to basics. One day, we may just find ourselves there – stripped of modern convenience, with money devoid of value. It has happened before. What do people do? They turn their eyes toward home. Suddenly, their family is all that matters. Their people. Their companions. Their pets. Their food and water and shelter and clothing. And that’s pretty much it.

But I’m afraid this time around, we are being pulled by a modified tractor. It just doesn’t know when to quit. It’s never spent a day in the hot sun, or the blowing snow, or the driving rain. It actually has no job at all but to look good at show time, and demonstrate for the crowd it’s oodles of useless and rather impractical power. It’s reminiscent of Buzz Lightyear before he realized he was just a toy. The flag has been waved, and the pull is over, but how long will it be before the big rig even notices? Once it realizes the show is over, where does it go? What does it do? It gets put in the shop for some very, very expensive repairs, in hopes of pulling again.

But I remember the first tractor pull I ever attended. It was just a little local affair in our small Wisconsin town, June Dairy Days to be precise. The local farmers each brought in their biggest toy, and hooked them up to a literal stone boat – not some hydraulic contraption. This was just a concrete drag, upon which the men of the town would hop on, one by one, as the tractor dragged it down the street. Pretty soon, there were more men than the Massey could pull. The men would laugh and shake hands and head back to their place lining the street for the neighbors Ford. This was the beginning of the Tractor Pulls.

For you see people, the show is over. Despite the rumblings and smoke coming from the front, we are now standing still. In the true spirit of the tractor pull, the power, though being manifest through the volume and roar of the tractors, actually lies within the men on the boat. Because while the tractor has the power to pull a stone boat just so far – it’s the men that ultimately stop it. And stopped it, we have.

Our lives will soon change, one way or the other; either we will be imprisoned on the stone boat, hostages to the crisis of who wants to fix the tractor here and now, who will pay for it and you “stones” aren’t going anywhere, because we need you for our redemption! Or we will hop off the boat.

Now that we are stopped, it would be a good time to dismount, shake hands and head back home to our families and our neighbors, risking a return to more primitive living conditions, with a chance for a government do-over of some sort. The Goliath in the street will be trailered up and shipped off for an overhaul – if anyone even finds it to be worth it.

I suppose the choice will be ours.

The Facebook Diaries

No doubt, the advent of Facebook has brought many previously unheard of  issues to the forefront. From being just a “Hi, howdy-do” site, to the virtual reality of some people, it has also opened up whole cans of legal worms here and there. Yes, perhaps most of the folks in my age group who frequent Facebook use it as just what it was meant to be: A social network. In worlds that are filled with kids and jobs and the stresses of keeping it together in a faltering world economy, few of us have time for the real deal of friendship and camaraderie unless we work together. And those of us with unique situations have found support groups in the flesh to be too much to include – so we put together Groups on Facebook and get a wealth of friendships, information, advice and support all without having to travel away from our computer screens. Plain and simple, in this capacity…it works.

And then there are those who take social networking to a higher level and utilize it as a place to vent their spleen, to cry the blues, to boast of what their children did in school and to share what they are having for dinner. This is to say nothing of the pictures that are posted! We are treated to everything from our friends’ vacation photos, to their tattoos, to their weddings and funerals, and just plain old silly pictures. We have gamers who want us to play with them, and poets who want to share music and videos. Facebook seems to be  the one place where it's okay to talk about religion and politics, posting and forwarding articles that reflect our opinions on candidates and issues, and join Groups that feel the same way. And while this approach can be a turn-off to those who keep their personal lives personal, for those who are more...well, social in this capacity, it works. 

Or does it? I have seen no less than five articles in the last week or so that have warned – if even briefly – about the “dangers” of Facebook. Identity theft. Cyber stalking. Cyber bullying. Pedophiles on the hunt. Job discrimination and loss as a result of less than flattering things posted on Facebook. Can you be fired from your job for grumbling about it on Facebook – or is it protected speech? What happens if you don’t name names? What happens if you do? Can a prospective employer not hire you based upon the video you posted when you were drunk at your cousins wedding? (Technically, no…but I’m sure they’ll find something about your resume to pan you for.)

I’ve got a whole bunch of kids that introduced me to Facebook, and it’s become something of a friend to me, and I have had to step back and take a good, hard look at what this new dynamic, this “Social Network” has done and is doing to our new and improved human society. 

Like ANY technology today, it is not good or evil in and of itself. It’s kind of like Tofu – not real meat – takes on the flavor of whatever you mix it with. So for me and a host of others, it tastes just like our plain-chicken lives. For the teenagers, however, it’s a smorgasbord of everything from hot and spicy, to exotic, to just plain awful. And for kids in particular, they have not been taught cyber etiquette – if there even is such a thing. 

I was raised in a world where there were things you did and did not talk about, and you found out the difference fairly early in life, when you were soundly scolded for spilling family secrets, exposing dirty laundry, or swearing (at home or in public). The things you could not or did not say out loud, you confined to the pages of your diary. Here, you could cuss out the unfair teacher, rip your enemies to ribbons, say whatever you pleased, and close the cover and put it back between your mattresses, vented and satisfied that you had recorded this colossal event in your diary, to be immortalized forever. No one ever knew how much you hated this or that; no one knew how happy or depressed you were – just your “Dear Diary”. 

Not so much anymore. It has come to my attention in large ways lately how powerful Facebook has become, and how scary many people, especially parents, perceive it to be. If you read the list of done-me-wrongs above, yes – I guess I get that. I’ve been dismayed on more than one occasion when a child of mine has cyber-vomited up some computer phlegm all over their status and wall. More than one post was aimed right at me!! How dare they!

I came to most of my decisions about the use of Facebook in my teenage-dominated home by default, playing it as we go. (Is there any other way to parent??) All of my kids have a Facebook account and all but one use it daily. We have come to some understandings about our family’s personal etiquette. First, if you live at home, I have access to your wall. You block me, I block your computer. Second – I don’t hang out on your page, lurk on your wall or snoop. Fair is fair. If I think you are suicidal, I’m going to come looking at what’s going on there – but I have a real respect for the right to privacy, and for the establishment of trust. So far, so good. Also, you are not required to be friends with your siblings – and in fact, this has become a real barometer of relationships – but you do have to be a part of our personal family page, so notices that go out there are subject only to family, and have become a means of family communication over everything from new babies, to career changes, to clean-the-house day notices. The family page also has served as a place to have that argument without the volume and the knee-jerk hurtful comments that might happen if someone didn’t have the chance to think and write out their ire before hitting the “send” button. 

So over the past year or so that Facebook has risen up the priority list of peoples’ lives, I have heard on so many occasions what has become the official beginning and end of many relationships. “I’ve been deleted as so-and-so’s friend.”  “I’ve blocked him from my wall.”  “I had to delete her, she’s such a pain,” etc. etc. etc.  Statuses of relationship declarations have become the plumb line of all romances: “It’s Facebook Official!” “Oh dear…she’s single again?” “But WHO is he in a relationship with?” Even saw a cute version of Mary and Joseph and their Facebook relationship, premarital pregnancy and all! 

So, in the case of Facebook Appropriate, what’s the deal with all of this? Is it okay for teens and young adults to post anything and everything on their walls and statuses? Should some of it be kept private? What should you be shouting from the Facebook housetop, and what should you just keep confined to the pages of a private diary? 

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no wrong answer to that. It depends on YOU. What do you want the world to know? Or in the case of the teenage angst, do they even care who knows? In the midst of their myopic world, the heat of anger and emotion seems to far outweigh the self-consciousness and apparently prevents them from pressing delete instead of send. But after reading yet another disturbing post from a child that got them deleted from several adult friend lists, I had to wonder about it all. What is okay to post, and what is not? I sat down and talked with the currently offended child, and came to still more conclusions. 

After hashing out the issue, I sat down and perused her wall. And while I was mildly shocked, somewhat dismayed, partially bored, and feeling like I had nothing in common with this giant group of “friends”, I realized that I was, in fact, just reading a great big collective diary. I took a moment to head back to my teen years and visit with some of the shit I went through when I was there. It was a long time ago, and it took some doing to generate the feelings of love, lust, betrayal, loyalty, fun and games, war and peace of that era. Times have changed, but people really have not. Just the frame the picture sits in is now digital. 

I was hardly thrilled with some of the comments that were there – but the fact that they exist at all is not such a bad thing. Diaries and journals have always been therapeutic. The written word is a powerful cathartic for that which ails you. We just used to hide it under the bed and hope our brother didn’t read it. But now we not only want him to read it, we want him to know that he’s the reason we are pissed off! 

I’ve seen that Facebook has a feature that will compile all your statuses for a year, so you can read all that you wrote. In other words, they will publish a copy of your Facebook diary for you to read. Yes – that’s all it really is: A diary of your thoughts and feelings, which you deemed important enough to want to share, even if it’s behind the façade of Facebook. It’s actually a safe place to do so. You are in control of your friend list, and even then, it’s very impersonal. The most you will ever get from a Facebook friend is a {{HUG}}, and the worst you can be punished with is a nasty comment that can easily be deleted, or deleted from someone’s friend list altogether. (Of course I realize that the love of drama keeps even the ugliest of “friendships” alive on here, but that just might be the nature of the beast these days. If I delete you, I won’t know if you spread any more trash talk about me to my other friends!) 

But in the face of all this, what you are getting is reality. When you read some of the posts, you don’t find yourself asking, “Tell me how you REALLY feel…”. No…it’s plain enough! So, I had to ask myself, do I want my kids posting things that curl your hair? What is the alternative? Keep it to themselves? Hide who they are, what they think, what they do? Surely there is the ever-present TMI (too much information), which you certainly won’t find on my page, but if you look back through the journals I kept through that time in my life, it reads much the same. It just wasn’t open to commentary. And I’ve kept these journals for posterity – and I know that when I walk the next world at least some of my kids will be glad to know the childhood version of their mother they never met. 

And I think about my journals of old, and know that my mother never knew a thing about them. She did not know when I was so mad at her I risked the displeasure of God himself by announcing in one entry that I would spit on her grave! (She had our dog put to sleep, for reasons I did not understand at the time.) She did not know when I smoked my first cigarette, started taking drugs, or lost my virginity. She had no idea how much I hated myself, and how much validation I was seeking. She was clueless to my suicidal thoughts. She would never know just how infatuated I was with my first boyfriend, or how devastated I was when we broke up. My quiet sullenness was a mystery, which only my diary had the answers to. And this was hidden in the depths of my room, smoldering between my mattresses – everything that made me tick. And that’s just the way it was. 

But it’s not like that anymore. I want to know why my kids are quiet – why they are crying. Why they slammed the door, why they don’t want to come home, and why they don’t want to leave home. I would much rather know where they were all weekend and what they were doing, and know that they were safe in their choices – poor or otherwise. And if they weren’t – I want to know that, too. I can’t address what I don’t know. And I have decided that I don’t want the sanitized version, either. I don’t want them to have to lie to me. I realize what "the experts" mean when they say you can’t be your childrens friend – but one surely needs to define “friend”. Because looking at my older kids, I’m glad that I am their friend – it’s all we can hope for at the end of the parent/child relationship road; to go from loving, guiding parent to trusted friend and adviser. I will always be able to pull rank, if necessary – but if you have no idea who this person you have raised really is, how will you effectively do that? 

I have found that I can take every “questionable” comment and picture that they post and use it to my parental advantage. Yes, even the proverbial drunk wedding videos. However inappropriate they may seem, there are a few things to remember. Number one is the DELETE option. Oh, I realize the well-meaning-ness of “once on-line, forever viewable” warning – but that’s not necessarily the case. Go ahead and try to find the picture you deleted of yourself with the lampshade on your head at the party. You can’t find the adorable one of your granddaughter that you accidentally deleted, either. You are going to have to REALLY want them to actually find them. And yes – if your boss sees a compromising picture of you on Facebook, your job might be at risk – but the boss might as well know who he hired, too. If he can’t see that Conservative Connie only breaks out of her business suit once a year on Christmas and forgive her – well, here comes the lawsuit. On the other hand, if seeing Harry the Hippie doing bongs every time he boots up his page, he should have the option of letting him go, or at least drug testing him one more time. The beauty of it is that it’s up to Connie and Harry – the individual who “owns” the page – to decide what they choose to share, and what they choose to keep private. 

And what a great opportunity to talk to my kids about relationships – and the drama – and the bad apples – and the keepers. Parenting at the coming-of-age is, in my life, primarily a spectator sport. I sit in the stands and watch – and I cheer, and I grimace, and I wince, and I shout…but it’s not my game anymore. It’s theirs. I get to come out on the field at half-time and mop up the blood, bandage the boo-boo, and replace their mouth guard before I head back to the stands and watch them continue on in their lives. I shout out the potential consequences of that move – flail my arms and shout when they are headed for a wall at full speed, but realize that few things on the field are fatal. The older they get, the less and less I get to be in the huddle as they develop their own team. But I do hope to maintain my position on the sidelines as the special teams coach – and the trust that has been built or destroyed will have everything to do with whether or not they want me as part of their adult team. 

When I look at some of the immaturity on display, I can’t help but re-frame my dismay by realizing that at that age I was doing the same, if not worse – and that in 18 months I had pulled my head out of my ass and become a responsible, married young mother. I’ve come to see that growing up – maturing – does not have to mean we no longer have fun, or do crazy things, or become silent, stoic, and stuffy. I am who I am – I have grown through every experience I’ve ever had to live a crazy, wonderful life. And so will they – if they are allowed. 

So, like the judge in the courtroom, testimony has come up that the prosecution objects to…but in my case, I’ll allow it. It’s part of a world we 40+ aged people did not have. We had our own version of immaturity and growing up – and our children have theirs. We are all just part of the grand anthropological experiment called being human – “The comparative study of human societies and cultures and their development.”  For all its components, the world of Facebook is, in fact, the world they live in – and I’d rather have the full version – not the Cliff notes. 

In our “hurry-up” world, I am choosing to look at Facebook as more of a Reality show, where the players are my own kids, and I am reading their diaries, live on the news feed, rather than waiting for a day where I pine for their presence, and read their diary only to find myself face to face with a child I never knew. I’d much rather talk about the good and bad in life with them now, while there is still a sporting chance to capitalize on the good and evade the consequences of the bad. 

Each kid who plasters all that they are on Facebook today is simply writing their biography – to be read now, in the present, and not saved for a day when there is nothing we can do about it but look back wistfully on what was. In a world where kids are lacking purpose and validation, despite a school system that has leveled the playing field and taught Even-Stevenism for all, they stand with their fists in the air and bodies on display, crying “SEE ME!!” And I want them to know I see them – I acknowledge them – I value them – I love them. They are, indeed, my friends.