Passing Note on the California Republic

On this day in 1846 various malcontents started the Bear Flag Revolt, an opportunistic action in the middle of the Mexican American war, creating the California Republic. The next day William B. Ide
declared himself president, a reign which would last a mere twenty-five days before he and the rest of the Bear Flagers would join John Freemont’s American forces. With that California’s future was settled.

Other than as a footnote, and the origin of the state’s flag, there isn’t much to the revolt beyond these facts. Larger forces were at play, obviously.

But as a native Californian, if now an immigrant to old New England, I feel my own emotions rising and understand in a somewhat attenuated way the emotions of flag and nation and it makes me pause a bit before I condemn the various nationalisms that inform so many…

Our affections are mysterious things, a blending of circumstances and affinities over which we have little control.

I love California, or at least my imagined California, it has been twenty years since I’ve lived there.

And I think there’s nothing wrong with loving one’s native country.

Actually, I think we should.

The problems arise when we ascribe too much meaning to the dirt upon which we stand. Not unlike the problems which arise when we ascribe too much meaning to our sense of self, to our egos.

If we move the mystery into some grand cosmology, mischief begins…

If we hold it lightly, or perhaps, stand lightly,

then something lovely can appear.

Care.

Attention.

The many varieties of love…