By Edwin Cooney
In retrospect, moving day is rather anticlimactic! The decision is already made and friends and movers are kinetic rather than potential helping hands. Thus, happy anticipation and ongoing gratitude to helping friends prevails in the hearts of the moving. Ah, but world history offers a multiplicity of moving adventures and reactions.
The Bible tells about the Israelites crossing of the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s nasty and wicked army not far behind.
Next, early medieval history tells about the Romans venturing as far west as Britain and Spain thus advancing their power and influence throughout much of Europe. Then there is the story of the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower originally headed for the Virginia colony who were blown by less than gentle Atlantic winds northward to Massachusetts where they established the Mayflower Compact as a code of colonial living and thriving on the North American continent.
Over the next approximately 290 years, colonists and citizens alike moved African slaves to Virginia and the newly established Louisiana territory. Then we moved the peaceful Cherokee Indians not so peaceably via two wars across the Mississippi into less than easily inhabited Oklahoma. This was all part of the new American moving code which John Sullivan famously called “Manifest Destiny.”
Near the close of our war with Mexico, much of which was about perpetuating chattel slavery, big money or, if you prefer, God-granted gold which was discovered in Sutter's Creek, California.
Finally, during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, the American frontier was closed. For decades thereafter, American lore asserted that the American frontiersman was someone who supposedly worked hard and asked Almighty God for nothing except the chance to work. The high price of the frontier men didn't come until the 1930s when dust storms blew away the topsoil exposed by the destruction of God's mighty trees by pioneer axes. (Apparently, God insisted on payment due!)
To most people, moving is generally about economic and socio/professional change for the better. Often the results of moving look different down the road than they appear immediately after the move.
The story of our current immigration crisis, in the minds of some, is about the legitimacy of the law. Traditionally however, immigration has been about the legitimacy of the Catholic and Jewish faiths. Today, our fear of Islam and the predominance of good old American nativism in the wake of 9/11 sadly prevails.
With the world becoming increasingly internationally-oriented, doesn't once “Fortress America” have some obligation to a family of 4, 6, or a dozen to assist rather than discourage their efforts to flee gangsterism in their native lands? I think we do, especially as authors and advocates for the advancement of human rights as drawn up by Eleanor Roosevelt's Universal Declaration of Human Rights back in 1948.
No, moving really is more than just your business, it's ultimately humanity's business and has been since the beginning of humankind. Wars have been declared and peace established in movers’ wakes! (See the modern history of the Middle East!)
Back in the late 1960s, there was a little old lady named Anna in our family who'd been reasonably content in a local nursing home for a number of years. She had made friends with patients around her and visitors were pleased with her contentment. One day, however, the staff was forced to move Anna and her friends to different wings of the facility. The move was too much for Anna and she was gone within the week. As minor and seemingly anecdotal as this story may be, to me it adequately speaks to the reality that:
Every mover's business is ultimately both personal and public.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
No comments:
Post a Comment