We Love Those Who Love Those We Love

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20251 Comment

Dear Will:

A couple of weeks ago Dana and I were in Logan, Utah, seated in a well-appointed lecture hall on the campus of Utah State University, there to hear Bryn defend her Master’s thesis: “Once Our Land Is Gone, It’s Gone”: Farmer Perspectives on Growth, Embeddedness, and the Future of Food in the Great Salt Lake Basin. Scattered about the room were the folks I had expected: fellow students, advisers, various other members of the academic community—even a couple of the farmers who had been featured in her research. 

Dana and I were brought to tears as we heard Bryn’s persuasive narrative about the plight of the local growers who are too often scapegoated for the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake. As Bryn’s research demonstrated, they are passionate men and women whose love of the land and of their craft cannot be doubted, people who—in spite of the forces working against them (climate change, urban sprawl, misplaced political priorities)—continue to find ways to bring food to our tables year after year after year. Had you heard Bryn’s presentation or read her thesis, you too would have come away convinced that the farmers of the Basin deserve our respect and admiration rather than the underappreciation and even vilification that dominates the discourse around Utah’s growing water crisis.

Our emotions that day ran high—and not merely due to Bryn’s moving account. There were others in the hall that day who also moved us to tears. There in the center, about halfway back, was an unexpected quartet, three aunts and an uncle, members of an extensive (and growing) Bryn Fan Club who had driven a couple of hours each way to be there to witness Bryn’s big moment. On the Zoom link were additional members of the BFC, including another aunt, a former teacher, and one of our dearest friends whose avuncular charm has made him one of Bryn’s dear friends now as well. As we watched them watch her, we felt a great outpouring of affection for each of them. None of them are farmers, nor do they have a longstanding interest in the agriculture of the Great Salt Lake Basin. Yet there they were because they love Bryn—and Dana and I felt it deep down. That day we were reminded of something we have noted over and over throughout the years as others have taken interest in our children: We love those who love those we love. 

The week prior, in a totally different place for a totally different reason, we felt similar pangs of tenderness and appreciation. We had gathered in a local park to celebrate our granddaughter’s second birthday. But for a couple of other toddlers, the only other non-grandparents at the party were friends of my son Luke and his wife: delightful, irresistible thirty-somethings who had gathered outside a small zoo on a Saturday afternoon to show love and support to three of the people we love most in the universe. Our granddaughter will remember nothing from that day, but the image of Luke’s friends, doting on my favorite little two-year-old, fills me with wonder and gratitude I cannot fully express.

These emotions were swirling in my breast this past week as I hiked one of our local trails. Along my trek I passed a man who kept calling out: “Kylie girl! Who’s a good girl? Kylie!” He explained that some friends had lost their dog in the area and that he was spending his Saturday trying to reunite them. Immediately I found myself loving both the man and the dog and hoping that by some means I might find Kylie myself.

That’s how this stuff works: Love is infectious in all the right ways. Aunts love nieces; parents love aunts; friends love friends and their dogs, and somehow strangers end up loving them too. So when your daughter loves farmers, there’s only one thing to do: You cut your hike short and give in to her longstanding admonition to support the local farmers’ market. The berries, avocados, carrots, and cucumbers you purchase there will almost be beside the point. You go there to bear witness and give thanks. To acknowledge labor and craft and caring, to honor and respect. And in your own small way to express your love for those she loves as well.

PW

P.S. They found Kylie. Don’t you just love that?

Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash

The Children Are Watching

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20251 Comment

Dear Will:

For as long as I can remember, my dad was a member of the Rotary Club. He went to meetings and on the occasional trip, but mostly I had no idea what it meant to be a Rotarian except for a sign that hung on the wall of his office listing the organization’s Four-Way Test. To this day every Rotary Club around the world recites it like a catechism:

Of the things we think, say or do

  • Is it the TRUTH?
  • Is it FAIR to all concerned?
  • Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
  • Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

You didn’t have to see that sign on his wall to know my dad was an honorable man. It showed up in everything he did and was reflected in the respect he commanded both in business and in his private life. He didn’t talk much about his affiliation with the Rotary Club, but if you knew him and later learned he was a Rotarian, you would not have been surprised.

My dad’s sense of honor showed up all the time. I remember once all nine of us had piled back into the family station wagon following dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Somehow my dad realized that he had not been charged the full amount for our meal or he had received too much change or something like that. Well, he left us all in the car and marched back into the restaurant to settle his account properly. I was amazed. We had already left. No one would ever know. But for my dad, these things mattered. 

Tad R. Callister has said: “Integrity is a purity of mind and heart that knows no deception, no excuses, no rationalization, nor any coloring of the facts. It is an absolute honesty with one’s self, with God, and with our fellowman. Even if God blinked or looked the other way for a moment, it would be choosing the right—not merely because God desires it but because our character demands it.”

Throughout the ages, our most admired leaders have been men and women similarly committed to a life of virtue. George Washington famously walked away from the presidency when fawning admirers were anxious to install him as king. He chose instead (and once again) to put the interests of his country ahead of his own. (No wonder we all found it so easy to believe the apocryphal story of young George and the cherry tree.) Of Washington, Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “His integrity was pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known. . . . He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.”

Nor should we forget that our greatest president of all, Abraham Lincoln, has always been known as Honest Abe—a remarkable honorific, especially considering how little evidence of honesty remains in political circles today. The Lincoln Heritage Museum has called Lincoln “an exemplar and a model of virtue perhaps more than any person in world history other than religious figures.”

It is in no small part due to the character of such men and women that the United States has risen to greatness from its humble beginnings. Like any nation ours has an imperfect past, of course, but if we have ever been great and ever hope to be so again, it has been and will be due to those moments when we have stood tall and done the right thing, even in difficult circumstances. When we have put the broad interests of the many ahead of the selfish interests of the few. When we have made sacrifices for humanity and given of our riches and resources to lift those less fortunate.

This is who we are—or who we were, in any case. And who we should be. So let us not be too casual nor too forgiving as we watch those now in power openly violate their solemn oaths of office; as they act to do away with those appointed to enforce ethical standards and flag conflicts of interest within the government; as they instruct others to ignore laws against bribery. As they disregard commitments, betray friendships and alliances, cozy up to the sorts of strongmen and dictators that for years we have fought to constrain and overcome. Nor should we make excuses for behavior and policies that our forebears found abhorrent and worked so hard to eliminate in the United States of America.

I’m not saying we should elect only Rotarians; but it seems obvious to me that we should not lend our support to those whose lives make it clear that they could never get in the club. In any case, before we drive away, we must all remember that there are children in the backseat watching what we do next.

PW

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

This Is Different

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20251 Comment

Dear Will:

I’ve lived in Southern California since I was seven years old. In those early years, we lived in Redlands, jammed up against the San Bernardino mountains, a place where all of the smog from the LA basin would gather and settle in for a nice, long retirement. During the summertime, we would play outside from morning chores to dinner until our lungs became so inflamed from the toxic air that if we tried to take a deep breath we would cough uncontrollably. Smog-lung remains a recurring, vibrant part of my childhood memories.

But you know what is not part of those memories? (I marvel even as I think of it.) Wildfires. I’m sure they were there since wildfires kind of come with the territory around here. My siblings assure me that I was not paying close enough attention. But if they had been as common as they are now, or as devastating, surely they would have left more of a mark. I would remember the smoke as I do the smog. If I had had to scoop ash out of the swimming pool, or hose down my roof, or flee with my family with only the things we could carry; if I had stood in my driveway and watched as fire raged down the mountain from Big Bear through Barton Flats toward my neighbors’ homes; if my friends had been displaced, their lives turned upside down by a raging inferno, surely I would remember that. But I don’t. This is new. This is different.

Climate scientists have been predicting for years that it would come to this. They warned us that a warmer planet would result in more intense weather phenomena. Perhaps like me you watched An Inconvenient Truth with a healthy dose of skepticism; but at the same time I remember leaving the theater and thinking: “Perhaps he is just a reactionary, but at the same time, the downside of trying to do something about this is negligible compared to the risk of doing nothing. Why wouldn’t we at least try?” Now here we are, almost 20 years later, and Al Gore looks more and more like one of those old-timey prophets who the people ridiculed and ignored. Some still do.

Here in the present, circumstances were ripe for devastation coming into this week: Two years of heavier-than-usual rainfall brought wondrous growth to our hillsides and communities, but this year we’ve had so little rain that all of that new growth has been converted to kindling. When the atmosphere churned up dry, hurricane-force winds (double the intensity of our usual Santa Anas), it was a conflagration just waiting to happen. It’s hardly worth mentioning that 2024 was the warmest year ever recorded, breaking a record that was set . . . just last year. No wonder people keep using terms like “unprecedented” and “once-in-a-lifetime” to describe phenomena that are now occurring every year or so.

We Californians are not alone in our suffering. Around here, drought and fires are our thing. In the Southeast, it’s hurricanes and flooding, which year after year have become more frequent and more intense. Further north, they’re into “bomb cyclones” and the polar vortex. Everywhere it’s something. But what you won’t find is anyone who will claim that things were worse when they were a kid. If you find that guy anywhere other than some cable news rantfest, send him my way because I would like to check his alternative facts.

Meanwhile, this week it’s fires. Hundreds of people from Pacific Palisades to Riverside have lost their houses and probably most all of their possessions. I have friends and co-workers who have been evacuated from their homes and are spending tonight on a friend’s sofa or perhaps curled up on a cot in the local (but not too local) gymnasium. Just a block from my house, my neighbors remain without power going into a third straight day. 

Tonight Dana and I took Nacho for a walk through the streets of that darkened neighborhood. In a few places we could hear the chug-chug-chug of a generator doing its best to keep the cold cuts cold, but mostly it was just eerie and desolate—almost like a ghost town. Later, as we rounded the corner toward home, we saw other neighbors from a couple of streets over, heading into the home across the street to recharge their devices. In difficult times, it’s easy to find someone else who is willing to help out in whatever way they can.

You know what is not helpful, however? Pretending that what we can see with our own eyes is not actually happening—that it has ever been thus. It hasn’t. I know. I live here.

I hope, in spite of all of this, you are well. Please stay safe.

PW

Photo by Caleb Cook on Unsplash