From Bruce Lindgren (Son of Obed and Verona Lindgren)
Greetings to all.
Thank you for taking a few minutes to click links and read some of the newsletter copy that has been embedded in our family website. While the Roots & Shoots newsletter is an attempt to find a new direction for family communications after our legacy of 90 years of the Round Robin, it is my hope that we will also forge new directions. It may be too much to hope or too ambitions to find a path forward that engages new generations, but here are a few thoughts that take a different tack.
Our World is HOT! Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker about the IPCC Report that was issued earlier this month. She lamented that this report comes after 30 years of inadequate attention to recognize and do enough about the problem of our changing planetary climate. The International Panel on Climate Change report required sign-off from most of the 162 member countries of the IPCC. This report, unlike its predecessors, is not optimistic about human intervention preventing regionally dangerous and economically devastating weather events that will cause tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes and other storm events. Rising ocean levels are already wreaking havoc with coastal regions. Replacements for fossil fuels have been so slow in coming, the report says, that it is no longer possible to prevent more damage including losses of life and further impoverishment.
Minneapolis after George Floyd … is still struggling with the appropriate response for the Minneapolis Police Department. Proposals to “defund police” are too far beyond the pale but there is no decent clarity as to what should be done to reform a department that has relied too much on violence in dealing with situations that too easily get out of control. Defusing tensions … too many guns on the street and police can’t take chances guessing who may or may not have one. Black people do have a legitimate complaint about profiling, but their protests are too often lacking in details of the specific changes and action that need not be implemented. Solutions will require a joint effort. Perhaps a neighborhood-based initiative to begin removing guns from people displaying belligerent and irresponsible behaviors would be a step forward. But we are not about to see instant solutions that are satisfying. A world without police is not likely to be a world in which we want to live.
COVID-19 and the Delta variant. Hope you are all vaccinated and doing your part to testify on behalf of vaccination. The new Delta variant is causing a new round of concern and need for caution. This pandemic is still far from over, even though we have a little better chance of avoiding hospitalization and death from the virus. But we are all in this together and for a long stretch of time. Your influence is important to those you love and find your self involved with contacts where you are able to influence someone on getting vaccinated. A third booster shot will be in the offing soon.
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