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You are here: Home / My Family / Hillary, and Torrential Rain

Hillary, and Torrential Rain

August 7th, 2016 by Sallie Bingham in My Family, Politics, New Mexico 12 Comments

Nance's Garden Torrential RainSome of my faithful readers will remember earlier photos of the volunteer flower garden that has brightened the beginning of the Dale Ball here for months.

Well, it’s gone.

The torrential rains of the past few days that broke our dreadful heat caused water from the adjacent parking lot to rush across the garden and carry away most of the plants an unnamed benefactress planted there a year ago.

Rains, so sorely needed in this parched desert, came too late and too roughly, eroding trails, washing out dirt roads, rolling huge boulders down the mountain sides and devastating croplands and gardens.

Torrential rains are pouring across our political landscape these days, and sometimes seem about to erode all vision.

The garden will probably be planted again, if our benefactress, and the rest of us, have the courage and energy to start all over. But torrential rains are likely to wipe it out again.

Torrential rains are pouring across our political landscape these days, and sometimes seem about to erode all vision. I must admit that I, like many others, have a secret attraction to downpours, to displays of rage, even to the tantrums that are now appearing, regularly in the Tantrum Personified we see on television.

This is a dangerous attraction. It means I may discount serenity and call it too considered, too rational, and, inevitably, not dramatic, while the Tantrum Personified continues to claim my horrified attention.

Nance's Garden Torrential RainI have to admit that I have always been attracted to the displays of temper I have seldom permitted myself to indulge in. The impulse, though, is always there, no matter how deeply buried, popping up now and then when I hear myself cursing at a driver for honking because I haven’t accelerated fast enough through a green light, or when I look with fascination and compassion at an ancient snapshot of my little brother, at seven or so, a whirlwind of shrieking rage.

I also remember the odd fascination of my three infant sons’ raging, so hard to soothe, at times, because what they wanted was not immediately available or, even worse, I didn’t know what they wanted, since I had not taught them to communicate, pre-verbally, with sign language, as one of my grandsons learned to do. There was something so ruthless, so truthful, in those screams—perhaps echoing long suppressed screams of my own.

Tantrums, though, like the rough tearing surges of violent rain storms, destroy the terrain of the human soul. Water, the most essential of elements, can’t nourish when it is delivered with such force. And the energy that propels displays of temper, and the failure of the dikes built to contain it, can only erode and wash away human consciousness and connection. In a country tormented by nearly daily displays of lethal violence, I must learn—we all must learn—to value and admire the discipline that comes only after, and through, long years of service, through learning, painfully, to deal with frustrations calmly and to accept compromise as an absolutely essential tool of good government. Faced with working with an intemperate Congress, only a nearly superhuman calm can prevail.

But I, and perhaps many others, are not much attracted by calm. Perhaps having never achieved it myself, I don’t really know what it is—not passivity, not neutrality, but an imagination developed enough to understand, and accept, all the terrifying shades of human behavior, and to find ways to work with them. For they won’t go away. We are in an intemperate time and, like the world-wide drought, floods and pestilence that also assail us, this intemperance may not go away any time soon, and may even find fuel in the desperate conditions we are going to have to learn to survive: “Apres moi, le deluge.”

ManicureTo cultivate my appreciation of temperance, I study the beautiful photo my sister Eleanor sent me recently of a manicurist taking care of her nails. This is a woman, we may be sure, who can’t afford to engage in tantrums; she is dependent for her income on pleasing her customers, some of whom may be rude, off-hand or patronizing. Eleanor apologized for not remembering this manicurist’s name, a problem we all share when dealing with those we may assume to be different. After all, the photo was taken some years ago,

I am also cultivating my appreciation of the hard work in extreme heat of the Flying X team that is working at Apache Mesa—my wild; this entails driving more than an hour every morning from Santa Fe and working for ten hour days in extreme heat on a high mesa where there is little shade, cutting trails, building a jeep road, continuing to rehabilitate the little house and its bathhouse, and now laying the floor of the 10′ x 12′ rock hut that will be our combined studio and tack room.

What if Bernie, who built my rough work table, threw his tools down in a fit of rebellion against the heat, the labor, the sweat?

Probably he would not do that, not because he doesn’t feel the frustration, the fatigue and the endlessness of hard hand labor, but because he has learned control, and because he is devoted to El Jefe, his boss.

Our next leader—our El Jefe—has learned control by navigating the rough terrain of a complicated and difficult life devoted to service. This has always required calm, balance, detachment, the virtues of an arduously claimed adulthood, not the virtues of the wild man, or the wild woman, who commands our attention.

The next time you hear someone—and it may well be a woman—say something belittling about Hilary Clinton, I hope you will remember what it takes to forgo the terrible pleasure of throwing a tantrum.

Hillary Clinton - unattributed

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In My Family, Politics, New Mexico Hillary Clinton

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. James Voyles on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 7:15 am

    Wonderful!

    Reply
  2. Lynda Rodolitz says

    August 7th, 2016 at 8:17 am

    Sallie-
    I’m so enjoying your posts and your thoughts. It’s a pleasure to feel still in contact with you across the miles.
    With best regards,
    Lynda

    Reply
  3. Marilyn McLaughlin on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 8:22 am

    I think we can seel through the Trump trickle down.

    Reply
  4. Carol McClure on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 9:47 am

    Thank you.

    Reply
  5. Pamela Sue Epple on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 10:04 am

    Well stated!

    Reply
  6. Larry Baker on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 10:08 am

    Sallie, eight years ago, my wife and I were very enthusiastic Hillary supporters. This time around, it feels like voting for the lesser of two evils.

    Reply
  7. Roger Fristoe on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 10:23 am

    Sallie: Very beautifully and gracefully put. Best wishes from your old friend and admirer — Roger

    Reply
  8. Kenneth M. Kornheiser on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    Sounds like Chauncey Gardiner from “Being There”.

    Reply
  9. Carolyn C. Lewis says

    August 7th, 2016 at 1:00 pm

    Sallie, I always enjoy your posts, but I have watched Hillary like so many others and can’t warm up to her point of view. I believe a woman that is qualified to be our president will come, but just not sure she is the one. Actress Salma Hayek posted advice for Donald Trump recently and stated MEN were too passionate and their egos too stubborn to lead ?? And also stated Hillary is sooooo kind, etc., etc. The statement regarding men is a low blow to our forefathers.

    Reply
  10. Carol M. Johnson says

    August 7th, 2016 at 1:14 pm

    Thank you Sallie, for your thoughts. I still crave civility….with those whom I associate daily, and with those I must endure on the evening news. I cannot respect those who cannot control their tongue. I fear for the tumbling rocks that are befalling us all.

    Reply
  11. Nancy Belle Fuller says

    August 7th, 2016 at 2:23 pm

    Hilary will win…and after the house lights are turned on and the curtain is taken down, we will still go on improvising.
    I liked this piece. Know you made me reminisce about my once spectacular garden in Northern California which I still miss a lot. Thank you.

    Reply
  12. Richard Gatz on Facebook says

    August 7th, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    Thanks for your thoughts!

    Reply

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