I am ancient. When I was born in 1946, electricity hadn’t arrived at many rural farms. Party telephone lines connected outlying families. Visitors arrived in McPherson on trains. Our family was a decade away from buying a used television set. We rented a locker in a downtown warehouse in lieu of having a freezer. As a youngster, I didn’t wear jeans to school except on snow days and those stayed in the cloak room with my coat. I typed my college papers on a non-correcting portable typewriter. My past is now a foreign country—as Ellen Meloy notes on my blog’s opening page. Beyond the ken of my grandchildren. For sure in technology and physical accoutrements. But more importantly—in intention and purpose.
The gifts we gave each other on birthdays and at Christmas were modest and few. Often homemade. Often a version of something we each had longed for or treasured. For me, a single strand of pop beads. A crinoline that Mother had sewed. And by the time I was in my teens, often an Ideals magazine.
Ideals were/are a soft-cover letter-sized magazine (though bound more like a skinny book) full of poems, quotations, drawings, paintings, color photographs. Elaborate artwork on every page. The company issued seasonal, holiday, and an enormous range of thematic issues: Hometowns, Inspiration, Fireside, Liberty, Friendship, Travel, School. The inclusions were—to a fault—nostalgic, wholesome, heartwarming, homespun, neighborly. Uplifting words and images. The magazine celebrated a warm and wonderful past and a future bright with possibilities.
Ideals were first published in 1944—and still are, though only two a year. When Sonja and I sorted our parents’ home, we found significant collections of them. I’ve seen batches in thrift stores here. I’ve kept a couple just to remind me of their potent presence in my young life. In fact, photos provide better impressions than my words!
You see what I mean about the tenor—the tone—the intent of the magazine. To a great extent, the magazine might have been called “idealized.” The past it portrayed was, for sure, scrubbed up and anything but inclusive. There were no photos of slaughter houses in turn-of-the-century Chicago. No portrayal of coal or copper mine disasters. Not even a hint of the Jim Crow South or the Black service workers in a town like Helena, Montana. Or the exclusion of Chinese in Butte.
I’ll confess to not realizing the omissions when my folks gave me an issue of Ideals. Instead I absorbed—to the tips of my toes—the optimism, the clarion calls to be my best self, the beauty of the natural world, the warmth exuded in homes portrayed, the value of work—all work– and the attestation that our world would—if we put our shoulders to the wheel—become better and better.
Damned if I didn’t live in the shelter of all those beliefs. Mother exemplified optimism and caring and a great work ethic and kindness. My dad was less sanguine about life, but certainly put his shoulder to the wheel of employment and responsibility. And everything about my young life nourished and reinforced those convictions. 4-H, our Church of the Brethren, my dad’s fellow Kiwanians, my folks’ adult friends, teachers.
Truth be told, I’ve lived most of my life with a belief in possibility and goodness—straight from my childhood and those Ideals magazines. Even when faced with rough patches and loss and professional threat, I’ve largely held onto my belief in the sweep of human history edging toward justice and good will and mercy and integrity.
Until now, of course.
Even in Trump’s first term, I trusted that his madness–his psychopathy—made him an outlier whose political success came from folks with other wicked axes to grind. I took false comfort from the presence of sane and principled people still in his orbit. My naivete dimmed on January 6 for sure and crashed and burned on November 5, 2024. And I’ve watched with horror every assault on people and democratic principles in the intervening time.
But this week—this week—my heart and hope crumbled all the more. Not because of the Epstein scandal. Of course Trump is a sexual predator.
What sent me running for my armchair and the cats and a book—running for cover and oblivion–is the framework and assumptions and temperaments and behaviors of those in opposition to him.
Opposing Trump and his devotees is not at all easy or altogether safe. In fact, we are often befuddled about what TO DO. About what will be effective. But my heartache comes from watching those of us trying to fight the good fight descending to the ugliness of our opponents. We are a long way, now, from going “high” to his “low.” This week it was the newly, wickedly crafted “South Park” that caught my heart. Yes, that cynicism, that “we’ll screw you too” ingenuity, those intricate, ribald knots of twisted humor appeared to have the desired effect. To catch MAGA’s and Trump’s eyes and elicit screams. I managed to follow that with a quick look into the cruelties and false equivalencies of Jubilee Media. And felt no better—especially if that’s what teenagers are watching. I abhor the likelihood that we—those of us who understand the depth of this administration’s depravity—are taking on Trump-like tactics.
Maybe now, we have no choice. Maybe I now live in a world where sick humor, where “burning” our opponents, where lying ourselves and exaggerating and going for the darkest interpretations is now mainstream. Where there is so little to hope for—that we revert to hoping for nothing. Where we have so little to lose—that we lose ourselves. Where my childhood beliefs are now simply childish, outmoded, futile—now the bent of a mind relinquishing its grip on the world.
I don’t see myself changing. I am fortunate to enjoy the company of friends whose ethics remain sturdy, who join me in seeking hope and goodness and humor. Who spend serious energy helping others—with food and dollars and attention. I live with beauty—with those long views to the Big Belts. With a sky so enormous, so breath-taking in its drama that it demands attention and hope. With a snug home. With the boys—Tiger Tiger and Tuxedo–who trust me with their souls and their warm, furry bodies.
If I am deluded, if I am out-of-touch and naïve, so be it. If I am closer in spirit to the girl who loved the gift of Ideals, I’m OK with that. The universe is too dazzling to bury my days in cynicism. Even if that’s the fashion—now.©
