bill mckibben the flag the cross and the station wagon

The “cross” and “station wagons” are motifs McKibben uses to address the shaping of the national psyche by religion and a secular phenomenon of perhaps greater weight, the suburbanization of America. McKibben addresses many of these themes in the aptly named “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.” In this quasi-memoir, he examines in blunt, often self-critical fashion his own life as a young resident who literally donned a tricorn hat to give tours of his history-rich hometown of Lexington, and how the nation he started out loving pulled the ground from beneath him over the course of 50 years. But with that nerve now exposed, it seems worthwhile to hit up some of the brighter lights in the night sky of common sense and pick their brains about dealing with the same questions. As I told those folks, I loathe writing columns with despair as a theme.

“I hate to say it,” the emails began, “but I feel the same way about having trouble keeping hope.” Quite a few readers responded in a way that was surprising. Two weeks ago in this space, I offered some uncomfortable thoughts on the meaning of patriotism - on a surface level, the display of Old Glory, but deeper, on managing one’s own psyche. And it was from that upside-down position that I reached out to him. In my mental card catalog, he has long been one of the Sane Voices worth turning to when things start to go upside down. Massachusetts native McKibben is the author of multiple books about environmentalism, politics, and most recently, a stark reassessment of our very national being in an age of surging authoritarianism and a racial reckoning based on a slow shedding of the mythology of our national founding. “I can see,” he said by email this week, “the hills I’d like to be hiking.”įull-time public-policy advocacy and teaching can take the man out of the hills, but … Bill McKibben, activist and environmental warrior from back before it seemed a desperate act, was at home in Vermont, on the front porch, recovering from surgery on his leg.

Bill mckibben the flag the cross and the station wagon