Category: poetry

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July 4, 2026: Credit Unions and America’s 250th-Ideals and Contradictions

America’s Declaration of Independence opens with words that  inspired a new era of world-wide democratic political revolutions.  No more rule based on divine right, inherited position or pure force.  The words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Centuries later America strives to achieve these ideals,  Even with our imperfections and unfinished  dreams, individuals  and countries around the world are still  inspired by America’s past and its future hopes.

Democracy Is Not Easy

,Democracy and its embrace of individual freedom is an ongoing challenge. One of the contributing factors is that the very freedom that encourages debate, dissent and speaking truth to power is used by all points of view.  The irony is that some of those view oppose the very values in the opening words of the Declaration.

Changing the status quo, let alone prior error,  politically, culturally or economically for America has never been an easy or quick task.  Necessary reforms are opposed as threats to existing structures of power and privilege.

This has always been the case.  Some divisions can take decades, or generations,  to heal or overcome.

Righting the nation’s or an institution’s misdirections is never an easy task.  But it is also an opportunity for new voices and new generations of leaders.

Credit Union’s American Context

The shortcomings between our cooperative ideals and our daily realities are part of the credit union story.   This challenge was recognized by the founders of the movement.

In Filene’s Speaking of Change, a collection of his speeches and articles published in 1939,  there is a  chapter, George Washington and Financial Liberty.
 Filene’s view was that one of Washington’s greatest achievements wasn’t winning the war for Independence, it was having Hamilton and Jefferson in one cabinet and getting results from both.
He uses that as the model for the credit union movement saying “temperamental conservatives” and “temperamental radicals” can work together because they’re dealing with facts, not philosophies.
Several of his observations are especially relevant this July 4th, 2026 in the movements 117th year:
  • “What is needed is that the American masses shall learn the art of constructive self-government in this machine age — in this age in which life is no longer organized on a small community pattern but in which all Americans are more or less dependent upon what all other Americans are doing.”
  • “For unless we can achieve economic democracy, our political democracy must be a sham.”  (Source: Sarah McNeil CEO, United Trades FCU)

The challenge of member-owner rights and democratic governance is even more critical in today’s $2.5 trillion cooperative financial sector.   Credit union leadership is increasingly exercised as a privilege for the few not a responsibiliy  shared with the many member-owners.

The rich and diverse legacy built by generations of loyal members is being swooped up in a merger frenzy driven by personal greed and ambition.  Whereas many other leaders  have remained dedicated to the unfinished work that still exists in their communities.

Cooperative history is about more than the thousands of volunteer founding stories and their earlier efforts to build a new financial system of worker and community groups.  It is also about those with courage to call attention to our moral and economic challenges that could be the focus for cooperative solutions.

Those voices are present today.   But is their call to rediscover who we are and who we can be  being heard? Especially in the present circumstances of coop business dynamics, social and political turmoil.   Will the ever-present siren appeals of market opportunity drown out our unique founding goal of public purpose?

On this national holiday, the country is again having a critical conversation about our past and future greatness.  So too are credit union leaders.

My  hope for how we will respond to the present challenges as a movement and as a country is based on two factors:  our moral conscience and our history of doing the right thing in time. Our individual duty as citizens and as cooperative adherents is to be a witness to what we believe in our daily acts.

The Call for Grace in Times of Need-A Musical Reminder

Nowhere is this combination of America’s lofty aspirations and human reality more evident than in one of the most well know song based on the poem, America the Beautiful.

The author, Katherine Lee Bates; (1859-1929) was inspired by a trip to Pikes Peak in 1893, Her poem first appeared in print on July 4, 1895 in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal.

All eight stanzas open with praise for America’s glories (purple mountain majesty)  and accomplishments  (pilgrim feet).  But each verse then closes with a prayer, a call for grace or a plea.  America’s beauty is both her past and the promise of a better future.

Here are he versus edited to show first the real glory of America and then the ongoing needs:

O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain,. . . God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern impassioned stress, A thoroughfare for freedom beat. . . God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, . . .May God thy gold refine Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years, . . . God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

Oh beautiful for halcyon skies For amber waves of grain . . . God shed His grace on thee, Till souls wax fair as earth and air And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern impassioned stress. . . God shed His grace on thee, Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought By pilgrims foot and knee!

Oh beautiful for glory-tale Of liberating strife, . . Till selfish gain no longer strain The banner of the free!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years, . . . God shed His grace on thee, Till nobler men keep once again Thy whiter jubilee!

.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEDv5xG3rxE&t=26s)

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A Reflection for the Weekend

This poem is based on a shared cultural experience, the 1950’sTV show, You Asked For It.

Only one episode is recalled which sparks a question on life and meaning:

Is your slingshot useless in this new world? A gift forgotten?

You Asked For It

by George Bilgere

There was a show on TV called
You Asked For It. Viewers would write in
and ask to see unusual things, such as
the world’s greatest slingshot expert.
I watched it every week
on our humble Motorola, although
the only episode I can remember now
is the one about the slingshot expert.

He was a grown man, as I recall,
and he lived in an ordinary place like New Jersey.
At a distance of ten or twenty paces
he could pulverize one marble with another.
He could hit a silver dollar
tossed into the air. He was the kind
of father I wanted to have,
an expert shot, never missing.

And I think of him now, perhaps long dead,
or frail and gray, his gift forgotten.
Just another old guy on a park bench
in Fort Lauderdale, fretting about Medicare,
grateful for the sun on his back, his slingshot
useless in this new world.

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Churchill and Jesse Welles on War

“On this day in 1940  Winston Churchill gave his first speech as prime minister to the House of Commons. Three days earlier, he had taken over the job from Neville Chamberlain, who resigned. . .

“So although the 65-year-old Churchill had been a politician for more than 30 years and delivered plenty of speeches to the House of Commons, this was his first as prime minister. . . the speech Churchill gave is considered one of his greatest. He said: “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.’ We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.” (Source: Garrison Keillor, The Writer’s Almanac for May 13)

War Today

The folk singer Jesse Welles is a contemporary version of Woody Gutherie and Bob Dylan.   He writes and posts an average of a new ballad each week.

Here is his latest, Call Me When You Win the War.  Just over 2 minutes.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntbj-kB3Ooc)

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Sunday’s Honoring the Source of LIfe

Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories and poems reflect a surreal and tragic life.  His father and mother died before the poet was three years old. He was raised by John and Frances Allan as a foster child in Richmond, VA.

In 1836 he married Virginia, a teenager, who would die of tuberculosis ten years later.  This poem, a meditation on a mother “who died early” but still knowing that unconditional, infinite love, his “heart of hearts,” via his wife.

To My Mother

                                     Edgar Allan :Poe  1809-1849

The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother—my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.
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April is from the Latin word aperire,”to open”

An unusual poetic sensibility.

April Prayer

by Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.

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William Wordworth’s Salute to Artemis II’s Voyage

The flight of Artemis II has captured the attention of the world. The thunderous launch, the flight around the moon’s unseen surface and the pictures of earth floating alone in space.

The voyage is both a technical triumph and a remarkable achievement of human spirit and courage.

Over two centuries earlier, radical technology was being introduced at the beginning of England’s industrial revolution.  Wordsworth’s  romantic style celebrated the beauty of nature; but he  was similarly awed by the potential of these new technical creations.

He wrote of the future hope promised by human inventions. His poetic  sensitivity elebrating these innovations could easily portray our spirit as we track the Artemis II voyage.  His final stanza seems almost prescient of this deed, especially the use of the word space.

Steamboats, Viaducts and Railways

by William Wordsworth  (1770-1850)

Motion and Means, on land and sea at war
With old poetic feeling, not for this,
Shall ye, by Poets even, be judged amiss!

Nor shall your presence, howsoe’ er it mar
The loveliness of Nature, prove a bar
To the Mind’s gaining that prophetic sense
Of future change, that point of vision, whence
May be discovered what in soul ye are.

In spite of all that beauty may disown
In your harsh features, Nature doth embrace
Her lawful offspring in Man’s art; and Time,
Pleased with your triumphs o’er his brother Space,
Accepts from your bold hands the proffered crown
Of hope, and smiles on you with cheer sublime.

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Friday’s Hope

From Endymion
Book I

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases, it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made of our searching; yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

Excerpt from “Endymion” Book I by John Keats.

Or the beauty of song from Ukrainian Easter service.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZwLwyDqFTs)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Post-GAC Thought

The Day Nothing Happened

by Jeffrey Harrison

 

On that day in history, history
took a day off. Current events
were uneventful. Breaking news
never broke. Nobody
of any import was born, or died.
(If you were born that day,
bask in the inverted glory
of your unimportance.)
No milestones, no disasters.
The most significant thing going on
was a golf tournament (the Masters).

It was a Sunday. In Washington,
President Eisenhower
(whose very name induces sleep)
practiced his putt
on the carpet of the Oval Office,
a little white ball crossing
and recrossing the presidential seal
like one of Jupiter’s moons
or a hypnotist’s watch.
On the radio, Perry Como
was putting everyone into a coma.

But the very next day,
in New York City,
Bill Haley & His Comets
recorded “Rock Around the Clock;”
and a few young people
began to regain consciousness …
while history, like Polyphemus
waking from a one-day slumber,
stumbled out of his cave,
blinked his giant eye, and peered around
for something to destroy.

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Saving Miracles on Christmas Eve 2025

After reading this news story in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning (Credit Union Members Vote Against Merger), Billy Collins’ poem came to mind about this unusual event.  Both are stories of life renewed, once threatened, and  now free again.

Christmas Sparrow

By Billy Collins

The first thing I heard this morning
was a soft, insistent rustle,
the rapid flapping of wings
against glass as it turned out,

a small bird rioting
in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of transparency into the spacious light.

A noise in the throat of the cat
hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap in a basement door,
and later released from the soft clench of teeth.

Up on a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a small towel and carried it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth.

But outside, it burst
from my uncupped hands into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
and disappearing over a tall row of hemlocks.

Still, for the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms whenever I thought
about the hours the bird must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,

its eyes open, like mine as I lie here tonight
picturing this rare, lucky sparrow
tucked into a holly bush now,
a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.

 

 

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Two Seasonal Reflections-Political and Natural

Will Rogers:  There is no credit to being a comedian when you have the whole government working for you.

The Maple Leaf-A Metaphor for Life

by Rondalyn Whitney

I hope my death is like a maple leaf,
a final, radiant show.
Not a storm of sudden, brutal grief,
but a gentle, amber glow.

To fade as autumn comes to call,
to loosen its grip with grace.
Not cling to the branch, but simply fall,
and find a new resting place.

A flash of crimson, orange, and gold,
a final, vibrant hue.
Then, a slow drift, stories untold,
a journey forever new.

To spin and twirl on the final breeze,
a dance upon the air.
Rustle softly through the autumn trees,
a beauty beyond compare.

And when it lands, a soft, hushed sound,
upon the forest floor.
A new beauty on the cold ground,
until it’s seen no more.