Warm, Foggy Days

The year ended with a series of warm, foggy days around the lake where we live. The unseasonably warm temperatures are not good for anyone except the garden insects who might survive another season.

My spouse and I are sharing our one DVD player while she is with her sister in Des Moines. Sunday I hooked it to the television and began watching five movies by Michael Moore including Roger & Me about his efforts to speak to General Motors CEO Roger Smith after the company announced it was closing plants and shedding tens of thousands of jobs in Flint, Michigan.

I made many trips to Flint after GM plant closures started. Ostensibly, those trips were to recruit truck drivers yet it was more than that. One day I found some hiring information in my papers and counted the number of prospective truck drivers I personally interviewed between 1987 and 1993: more than 10,000. My work was at the cutting edge of American business moves to reduce costs, in the case of the people I interviewed, by laying them off. The experience changed me forever. I haven’t been back to Flint since we moved to Big Grove Township in 1993.

The scenes Moore depicts in his films are too “special.” While the stories are believable, his method of selection and framing are transparently peculiar: made to make his point. It is as if he searched for the right setting and characters to film the way a writer tries out words and phrases from their tool box on a page. In one scene, President George W. Bush advises Moore to “get a real job.” Whatever these films represent, they are in the mainstream of progressive messaging.

It was good to revisit these films over the holidays. I’m ready for 2025. As local writer Paul Street wrote in his recent substack, “Get ready for some serious shit and struggle!”

I look forward to seeing what 2025 brings and have already begun creating things to endure after I’m gone. Let the work of resisting the new regime begin, while making something positive from our lives.