He grew up to be president of the United States, but we know him as Gerald R. Ford, Jr.  Mr. Ford’s mother left his father (who was said to be abusive) 16 days after little Leslie’s birth.  Two years later, she married Gerald Ford, Sr. and though the future president was never formally adopted, he changed his name to reflect the shift in family.

I got to thinking about this when I saw a reference to Newton MacPherson, now known as Newt Gingrich.  Mr. Gingrich’s mother wed at 16 just long enough to get pregnant, left her husband and married Robert Gingrich, who adopted Newt, a few years later.

Mr. Gingrich is trying to usher Barack Obama into unemployment.  Mr. Obama, we all know, grew up a black kid in a white family, his African father leaving shortly after Mr. Obama’s birth.  His name, including the middle name Hussain, stayed the same, but he later wrote of the pain and dislocation caused by the absence of Barack senior.

What is it about men abandoned by their fathers being driven to seek higher office?  (Mr. Ford, it should be noted, was never elected to the presidency or vice presidency, but the drive was clearly there.)  Maybe I’m overstating the case.  Mr. Gingrich has not been elected president (nor is he likely to be), but his drive too, is obvious.  The statistical universe is limited to 44, Messrs. Ford and Obama are but two.

Still, Mr. Obama governs in the political shadow of Bill Clinton, born William Blythe III.  Unlike the other birth fathers, William Blyhte, Jr. died in an automobile accident.  Mr. Clinton’s stepfather – Roger Clinton – was an abusive alcoholic.  That father figure is similar to what we know of Jack Reagan, who battled the bottle, had trouble keeping a job and was sire to Ronald Reagan, whose political shadow looms over Mr. Gingrich (and every other American Republican).

So that’s four of 44 and starting to look statistically significant.  Who else in recent memory?  John Kennedy’s father has been compared, with justice, to some of the more gruesome characters from Greek mythology; Richard Nixon’s father was said to be tyrannical skinflint who drove his sons hard.  That’s six for forty-four.  I have no idea what it was like coming up for Millard Fillmore and Rutherford B. Hayes.

They say people get the government they deserve and that government is a reflection of our nation’s psyche at any given moment.  So what does it say about us that so many of the men who are so driven to be the nation’s father figure have fraught histories with fathers – or father figures – of their own?

Clearly, it’s not about politics, since the ideological range runs from Ronald Reagan to Newt (MacPherson) Gingrich to Gerald (King) Ford to Bill (Blythe) Clinton to Barack Obama.  The gamut also runs from Mr. Reagan, who failed to recognize his own children (long before the Alzheimer’s set in) to doting family men like Messrs. Ford and Obama.

I remember reading that one factor bringing together our founding fathers (no pun intended) was that colonial America offered few outlets for people of exceptional ability.  Academia and commerce were embryonic; the military was a vestige of an empire whose locus was elsewhere.  Even the opportunities offered by colonial government were limited, but the concentration of talent in that one realm likely had as much to do with the birth of the nation as any of Britain’s foolish blunders.

Two hundred and thirty-five years on, we seem to be a nation led by men with something to prove to absent fathers.  A sobering thought as we head into the primaries.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

(By the way,  I don’t think “standard” time is standard anymore, as we observe it for only about four months a year, just as a car’s manual transmission is no longer the “standard” equipment it once was.)

The fact that we shift clocks at all is a symptom of industrial society ruled by measured time.  Real farmers rise with the sun, not the clock.  We change from daylight to standard time (and vice versa) in the middle of a weekend to ease the Monday morning transition.  By the light of the flames, we could see ourselves on the cusp of transition from the global, oil soaked era to a new agrarianism.

My neighbor Malgosia said she lit her fire because when she was growing up in Poland, school would let out in the early days of November so children could help with the potato harvest and in the evenings they would burn the dry, desiccated potato plants in the fields, with tubers roasting in the embers.  The failing light and crisp November air reminded her of those days, so a fire seemed appropriate.  We decided to have a backyard potato roast this weekend (weather permitting); if it goes well, maybe another on Thanksgiving eve.

Then we talked about our gardens, what had and hadn’t gone well in the growing season just past.  We’ve started to refer to our block as “the farm” because so many of us have gardens, fruit trees, bees or chickens.  Malgosia from Poland and Margaret, a Vermont native, (they were born one day apart, um… some years ago) are the resident advisors on growing and pruning, canning and preserving.

We agreed that turning our neighborhood into “the farm,” eating locally, learning about foraging and supporting farmers’ markets are the new activism.  Attempts to head off global warming have not worked.  Nor have we stopped overfishing or deforestation, hard as mainstream environmentalists have tried.

Unsuccessful though we may be, we still have to try.  The consequences we face are too severe to stop now.  At the same time, we can’t pretend everything will be all right.  It’s already too far gone for that.  The effects of global warming, overfishing and deforestation are upon us.  This summer’s fires in Texas burned 22 percent of the American cotton crop.  Corn, wheat, peanuts and beef all took hits as well.  The new activism, my neighborhood farm, is going to look smarter every year.

The old activism, my day job, is important too, if for no other reason than it buys time for the new activism to establish itself.  “I must continue by faith or it is too great a burden to bear,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was referring to violence, but I reach for those words when I feel any burden.  “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives,” Dr. King said.

The harvest is in, the days short and the year is winding down.  Our industrial society is failing, so we return to the land in the ways we can and spontaneously find new harvest rituals.  We plan for the next year, the next spring, the next phase of hope.

© Mark Floegel, 2011

This is bad timing for Yankee’s owner, Entergy of Louisiana, because the Vermont legislature is currently considering Entergy’s request to extend the 38-year-old plant’s license to operate for another 20 years. (Vermont is the only state in which the legislature has the power to intervene in a nuclear plant’s license.)

Even Governor Jim Douglas, who has been an unabashed Entergy supporter until now, demanded the firing of Entergy Vice President Jay Thayer. Mr. Thayer swore under oath that Vermont Yankee has no underground pipes. Then it was discovered that the tritium was leaking from – underground pipes. (Still a friend to Entergy, the governor has also called for a “timeout” to allow the corporation to rebuild the people’s shattered trust. After all, you wouldn’t want to decide whether or not to go ahead and get married after you catch your intended in bed with your best friend, you’d want to give it time to rebuild trust.)

It’s unclear at this point who is the dog and who is the pony in this dog-and-pony show, but Entergy did get rid of Mr. Thayer. (Which is not to say he was fired. He was placed on “administrative leave” pending investigation, which means he goes on vacation until this whole thing blows over; when he returns with a tan, he’ll be sent off to tell whoppers about some other Entergy facility.)

The new face of Entergy in Vermont is Curt Hebert, Jr., Entergy’s vice president of external affairs and former head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Mr. Hebert is known as a lifelong opponent of government intervention in energy markets. (Then why was he the federal government’s chief energy regulator, you ask? He was appointed by George W. Bush.)

So up here in Vermont, the public, press and politicians are seriously cheesed off at the out-of-state corporation that has mismanaged the state’s only nuke since it bought it in 2002 and has been caught passing misinformation again and again. What’s Entergy’s response? To send a bitter foe of government intervention to the one state where the government has more power to intervene than any other. It makes one wonder if Entergy’s CEO Wayne Leonard might be spending too much time in the radiation room.

Mr. Hebert’s greatest claim to fame is that he presided over the federal government’s deer-in-the-headlights inaction when the 2000-2001 energy crisis caused rolling blackouts in California. (Heckuva job, Curty!)

According to published accounts, Mr. Hebert – acting on Dick Cheney’s orders – covered up the market manipulation by Enron and others that led to the California and instead encouraged California to cancel its environmental regulations. Now his kind ministrations will be visited on Vermont. Oh boy.

To paraphrase Lord Acton, power corrupts and nuclear power corrupts absolutely.

© Mark Floegel, 2010