Read Local

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The poet, Mary Oliver, has long sung to me with her elegant and spare use of words. Regarding attention, Mary Oliver wrote "To pay attention is our endless and proper work." Endless and proper work - in my experience, those few words contain multitudes.

Other than what I pay attention to, there's not a heck of a lot I can really control in this life. I may set an intention with the conviction that I am in charge of my trajectory, though causes and conditions usually determine outcomes more than any hardheaded or steely resolve on my part. Witness the ongoing fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic! While much of life may well be beyond any of our individual control, the ability to volitionally direct attention remains not only under our control, but is our endless and proper work.

As part of this endless and proper work, I recently deleted the most time and energy sucking apps from my various devices. It was easy to bid adieu to Facebook and Instagram, though much harder to part with the New York Times app (though I'm still "on social," albeit briefly checking via my desktop computer on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays). As I mentioned in my last blog posting, I worried that I'd lose touch with the comings and goings of our world. In the pursuit of paying attention, I did not want to sacrifice being an informed citizen.

My local paper reminds me that much of "the work"
occurs at the community level.

To partially address that concern, I renewed my commitment to "keeping it local." Beyond shopping locally and supporting nearby farmers, I recently subscribed to the local paper, the Mt. Horeb Mail. Each week I learn about the many positive things going on in my community, free from the attention-grabbing headlines that make it seem like the world is on an inescapable collision course with disaster.

In each week's paper I learn about local students who are giving back. I am introduced to local people who are going out on a limb to pursue their dreams of literally opening businesses on Main Street. I read about local people who have formed organizations that directly improve lives, the environment and our community. In short, whenever I read the local paper, my confidence in humanity is at least somewhat buoyed by connecting to the community I'm embedded within and emergent from. As a complement to the weekly news magazine I read, subscribing to the local paper has been a welcome support in pursuing the endless and proper work of paying attention.


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