Here on Mackinac Island, where I spend part of the summer, we have music in the park on Thursday nights. The other night I was sitting on a quilt in the goose-pooped grass with family and friends, enjoying a lively Minneapolis-based band.
At the end of the concert, I struck up a conversation with some people sitting nearby who seemed to have a connection to the band. Indeed, one of them was married to the drummer and, as it turned out, lives in Bryn Mawr.
“She looked at me as if she’d just unmasked the devil. And told me her name.”
Not many Minnesotans find their way to the fudge mecca of the Midwest, and so we engaged in the usual back and forth about what-are-the-chances and island life.
This being two nights after the primary election, the woman from Bryn Mawr asked me how I felt about the results. I answered that I had been trying to write about it, adding, “Do you ever see the Hill & Lake Press?”
“I sure do,” she said, and not in a tone I wanted to hear.
“You, um, don’t like it?”
She searched for words to describe just how much she did not like it.
“The writers are so biased!” she finally sputtered.
“I’m Susan Lenfestey,” I said.
She looked at me as if she’d just unmasked the devil. And told me her name.
We have never met in the flesh, but we have butted heads hard on Nextdoor, especially during the Cashman-Shaffer City Council campaign in which I supported Shaffer, and Mayor Frey. In the eyes of some, including hers, that was a vile betrayal of any lefty credentials I might have once had.
Not only is she no fan of my views, she is also no fan of this little volunteer-based newspaper. I know she’s not alone, but it’s always a surprise to hear that when our intent is to build community, not divide it.
I’d like to tell you that we quickly put aside our differences because we had been having such a pleasant conversation prior to that reveal, but it was not to be.
The Exchange, Abbreviated
(This account is abbreviated; some nuance may be lost!)
Why did you write that parking spots on Lyndale will be lost? Not one spot will be lost!
Because 25% of on-street parking will be lost.
I’ve always admired your politics. Why have you changed?
My politics are the same. My party has changed.
You’d better stop worrying about whether Peggy can win and get to work.
Stating the obvious, I support Peggy 100%.
You need to sit down with the young members of the Democratic Socialists of America and hear their point of view.
I get their point of view: housing is beyond their reach, the wealth gap is obscene, the country is in the tiny hands of a despot and the planet is burning up. But they aren’t eager to hear the point of view of a boomer whom they blame for getting us here.
And so it went.
Darkness was setting in, my family had left and her friends were leaving, so we drifted off into the night, she to join her husband in town, me to pedal my bike up the steep hill to home.
“If there’s a takeaway from this, it’s that I liked her. It’s important to see the person behind the views.”
What I Took Away
It’s not often that you come face-to-face with someone with whom you’ve exchanged brickbats from the safe distance of social media, and rarer still to do it in a park on Mackinac Island, where rarely is heard a political word, debating the number of parking places to be lost on Lyndale Avenue on an island that bans cars.
If there’s a takeaway from this, it’s that I liked her. It’s important to see the person behind the views. We disagree on how to correct the disastrous state of our nation, and on who is best suited to do that, but we are both passionate politicos who state our views, um, freely.
I admit that I’m not eager to sit down with the young DSA members who in the past have shouted me down. But I know that we need to put our differences aside and pull together in the fall if we’re going to stop this president and his Republican enablers from continuing to destroy lives, democracy and our planet with the mindless greed of a comic book villain.
Susan Lenfestey writes for the Hill & Lake Press. She lives in Lowry Hill.
