LETTERS FROM HOME: STAYING WARM AGAINST THE BIGGEST CHILLS OF ALL

Dec. 14, 1995

Dear Julie,

The mercury is rising again after nose-diving last weekend, burying us in snow, canceling school and Christmas parties, boosting Campbell's soup stock.

It feels right to live according to the seasons once again. Mimicking animals whose fur thickens in the winter, we have moved the heavy wrappings out to the kitchen coat rack and put the light ones away. The hammock is stored and a bag of rock salt sits on the porch at the ready.

These are winter rhythms, slow and steady as the scraping of a snow shovel. We're not hibernating, just settled in. It may not snow again for a month, even longer. Or we may spend the days until spring looking like a plundered baked Alaska.

Either way, the chilled air and naked trees will be with us until then. You get used to them and make friends.

Our friend Melina dropped by for a few days. She was in town to take pictures of local women politicians. For a region no one accuses of being progressive, we have some dandies.

One's a state representative, a long time in office, heads up committees, has written important legislation meant to help families.

I went to a luncheon meeting at her house a few weeks ago. Here's one of the most powerful people in the state discussing a project that could benefit many thousands of people in the area, and one of her primary concerns was keeping everyone's bowl filled with vegetable soup.

As Melina said, she's a server.

The other politician is the secretary of state, who was appointed when her predecessor was impeached for too loosely interpreting the election laws for her son's benefit. This one reminds me of you, Julie -- astute, purposeful and wise in the ways of political animals even though she's never held an elective office before.

I look at you and at them and find assurances that politics is not inherently rotten and mean, all evidence to the contrary. Not that women are particularly suited to govern. Just the ones I know.

Mom for president.

I must be thinking along these lines because the endless presidential political season is soon to begin, a campaign in which we are bound to hear only the worst about the people who are leading us. They will remain calm and charitable through the holidays, but burrowing through the snows of New Hampshire and trying to confound the common sense in Iowa, Mr. humorless will ply us with jokes, those who simply want to be president -- please, please, please, please, please -- will try to assure us that they, too, are only here to serve, and the reactionary screaming meemies will insist that everyone else is out of touch with real American values.

A feeling of dread arrives with this Felliniesque circus. It no longer serves, even as entertainment. To me, the widespread loss of faith in this degraded political system has been one of the Biggest Chills of all.

But maybe we've only lost our belief in hierarchies while regaining faith in ourselves.

In his book "Flat Rock Journal," Ken Carey writes that the clear-cutting of a 10,000-acre forest next to his family's land was stopped when neighbors on a regional scale joined together to buy it. Now the project has become a model of eco-cooperation, of people who would live in nature rather than set it apart or tear it apart.

They took action and responsibility, the twin roads out of just about any kind of depression or dilemma.

The snow has disappeared now, gone soggy underfoot. The weatherman says the temperature may reach 60 today. But as Bob Dylan noticed, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.