There are so many things to appreciate and enjoy, to truly love about living in our beautiful Chippewa Valley. The countryside itself, defined as it is by the confluence of rivers, the forests and farmlands. The community of Eau Claire, which is a good and fundamentally caring place, where lives can be lived and families raised free of the more awful intrusions of this benighted age we live in. Education and the arts are valued here. We have community gardens, and a wonderful place, Phoenix Park, that did indeed rise up phoenix-like from the riverbank scrubland and sad old neighborhoods that I remember along that stretch from my time in graduate school, in the mid-1990s. It is, for all intents and purposes, a decent place where civility is generally the norm, and people come together freely and easily. We care about one another, and that is a good thing.
   
    For the last few days, however, my peaceful neighborhood of Dells Park has “enjoyed” the thunderous spectacle of the Navy’s Blue Angels, flying low-level practice runs earlier in the week, rattling windows, freaking out dogs and old women (and one rapidly aging man,) and now the full-fledged Chippewa Valley Air Show itself, replete with breathless and excited commentary booming down the valley into my living room. Midnight blue and of an awful beauty, these F/A 18 Hornets are flown by Navy fliers of unbelievable skill and bravery. Frankly, I admire those who choose to pursue such careers, and I am grateful that they have chosen to do so, in service to our nation. And I do hope those men and women serving in the armed forces know the level of the average citizen’s gratitude for their service.
   
    But these are angels of death flying overhead. There is no other purpose for these monstrosities. Death and destruction, rendered from high overhead, the height of military aviation’s technology. Beautiful and cool, weapons of mass destruction. And there’s the draw, I suppose. Beauty and cool, unimaginable levels of skill, celebrated and on display, right above us. And there too is the fundamental disconnect, and in this disconnect the perfect illustration of our nation’s sadly and obscenely skewed priorities. According to the Boeing website, these beauties come at a unit cost of $60.3 million. I’m not sure, but I believe I’ve seen at least four Hornets above me. I won’t trot out the tired old litany of things such money might be better spent on, and that’s just four planes and the fuel they’ve burned over a few days in the Chippewa Valley. But we all know: hungry children, teachers, bridges that stay put, health care ...

Obscenity. Just as there is but one purpose for these fearsome machines, there is as well but one word to describe them, and the national mind-set that would glorify death and destruction in such a manner. A trillion dollars and untold lives squandered in the abyss of George W. Bush’s imperial wars. Four nations decimated by the military industrial criminals. Men and women, veterans of way too many tours of duty, returned to a broken nation unprepared to care for them, their physical and emotional needs not really given much consideration by the men who sent them off to fight wars of choice, under specious pretenses. An obscenity of heartbreaking and ungodly proportion.
   
    And as my windows rattle, as my house shakes and my poor Sofie runs for cover, images of the Gulf Coast, our beautiful Gulf Coast, where the Mississippi River flows out – our Mississippi River – flood every available media outlet. Death and destruction there, too. Have you ever been to Grand Isle, or been down the bayou, seen those wetlands? It was a wonderment of nature. Was.
   
    All of these catastrophes that crop up, seemingly a new one every day, are interlinked and they are of our own making, wrought of our subservience to the corporate government we allow to suborn us; borne of fear; borne of our own willful ignorance and apathy as citizens. We have been betrayed, and we have betrayed ourselves.
   
    Can we undo any of this? Some of it, if we’re quick. There’s so much to do and we are little people, with voices that whisper and croak, when they sound at all. A solitary frog, singing solo in the swamp, is rarely heard. But a marsh full of singers can be the sweetest chorus imaginable. We come equipped with good hearts and minds. And beautiful voices as well. We can sing and we can dream, and in those songs and dreams we can shape a new reality. We have it here, in one another, in the way we try to live our lives in this community of ours, which is a very good place to be. It all starts by caring, by learning and by sharing. And by singing and dreaming. And doing. Whatever it takes to makes these songs of reparation heard.
   
    Where to start? The late Kurt Vonnegut had a real good idea – and probably summed up the meaning of life, as well. “Just be kind to one another,” said he. “Goddamnit!” It’s a place to begin.
   
    Perhaps next year the Boy Scouts might consider sponsoring a food pantry, rather than another air show. It’d sure be a lot quieter.