If Salmon Can Do It..
We are fast approaching the witching hour. For Halloween I promised granddaughter Minetta that I would be a ghost. I even bought white hair spray for the occasion, but I won’t be needing much help if stress keeps adding white to my already aging mop. The real witching hour feels more like Election Night or the many days and weeks that follow – when all manner of demons are at their most powerful. Increasingly I feel like this world may be heading for ever more turbulent seas and we can’t expect to right the ship with Captain Queeg at the helm. We need a rational mind to steer our nation. I don’t have to remind you to vote, do I? If ever I have felt the weight of history, it is now.
The day after Election Day, I will be making a presentation for Portland’s Senior Studies Institute, complete with over 50 slides to illustrate my family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. I wasn’t thinking when I chose that date, but it seems oddly appropriate. A few days later, we commemorate the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass that awakened the world to the dark intentions of Nazi ideology. In my darkest moments, I wonder if we will have another Night of Broken Glass – and my fellow Jews are not the only people about whom I am concerned.
None of the terror I envision in my worst nightmares need come to pass. At the risk of sounding crazy, I refer you to a recent story about salmon. Yes, salmon. Along the Klamath River, manmade dams have finally been removed. In the past week, officials spotted the first salmon to return to Oregon’s Klamath Basin since 1912. Chinook were also seen spawning in a tributary in Northern California where the Iron Gate Dam is now just a memory. Some said such a rebound was impossible, but the salmon are finding their way. We, too, can collectively find our way back, swimming upstream if necessary, to civility, peaceful co-existence, and a stronger democracy. Here’s hoping.
Please consider In the Wake of Madness: My Family’s Escape from the Nazis when buying meaningful holiday gifts or selecting books for 2025 book clubs. I am happy to attend book groups in person or via Zoom.