Grateful

Three weeks ago, on a cold and dreary day at St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, my husband had his left knee replaced. We were grateful for a successful surgery and struck by the pleasant helpfulness of the hospital staff especially after the huge challenges they have endured through two years of Covid. We arrived home the next evening exhausted. Two days later another winter storm with more snow and we needed to get to the ER at the hospital in Grand Marais. I made a call to our plowing service and within 30 minutes our driveway was plowed and one of the guys was happy to help me shovel our sidewalk (he did most of it!) while relating how he had spent the entire previous day plowing out others followed by 4 hours shoveling out his own place. Our reception and care at North Shore Health were first rate. We are again grateful.

Next day, I am driving to drop off a large garbage bag pondering how to lift the heavy metal dumpster door while hoisting the bag up and over into it at the same time. I arrive at the same time as a man in a white pickup truck who, as I step out, asks if he could help and promptly takes the bag. I have experienced a random act of kindness and am grateful and relieved.

I drive off down a well cleared Highway 61, thanks to MNDOT, thinking about other good things happening in a small community that comes together to do the right thing to help each other: the Cook County Board and staff have passed a climate emergency resolution (the first county in the state) on the urging of two local high school girls; the Empty Bowls program which last year raised last year an amazing amount of $50,000 to help feed neighbors; the work of the YMCA in helping families and older people; a new Housing and Redevelopment Authority to create housing; and other positive things. I think of the work of MN State Representative Rob Ecklund who works to provide legislation to benefit both the environment and small businesses in his State District 3A, without disparaging the other side, but rather as a public servant providing health, welfare and safety for his constituents.

I am grateful for the experienced leadership efforts by President Biden and his administration to unite and ignite the extraordinary cooperation of NATO member countries, a community of nations, governments, large and small businesses, the arts, and individuals around the world to exert global economic pressure and stand together against an illegal attack by a deranged authoritarian dictator on a democratic country inhabited by many people of his own Russian heritage.

I am grateful for and inspired by the fearless and courageous Ukrainians who value their freedom and democracy enough to stand in front of a Russian tank and risk their lives. They have awakened the world and “ignited a moral flame for universal ideals, like democracy, liberalism and freedom.” *

Democracy is on the ballot in 2022. Educate yourself on the candidates, on the true meanings and intentions behind their sound bites, how they are financed, what they truly care about and which programs they will work for to help you, your families, your community, and the planet vs promoting themselves and dividing us. And then vote.

*The Week That Awoke the World, David Brooks, The New York Times, March 3, 2022

Barbara Lund Gabler, Lutsen, Minnesota