At this moment, we have seventy-one signed supporters of the Eclipse Escapade.
“God presents us with cabbages; it is up to you to decide if you make coleslaw or sauerkraut.”
If you have not heard this cabbage-adage before now, it is because I authored it, and I am not a bloke that gets quoted a lot. Yes, a number of decades ago my psyche spontaneously produced this statement, this sentence, this saying simultaneously summoning both spirit and salads. I admit; I have been sitting on the cabbage-adage. But now, in this update to the Eclipse Escapade supporters, it seems we have the perfect moment for the cabbage-adage to emerge into our culture’s mentality. Thus, this update to the seventy-one or more supporters constitutes the debut of the cabbage-adage for the general public. I know the cabbage-adage is peculiar, but we live in a peculiar moment, a moment betwixt-and-between two great American solar eclipses.
(Disclaimer: subsequent to my psyche’s aforementioned first speaking, I have supped on kimchee, and would thus be remiss to miss the fact that the Korean salad is derivative from cabbage as well. Nevertheless, for the sake of simplicity, let us keep this relatively newfangled cabbage-adage a dichotomy, and semantically limit our options for cabbage-based salads to coleslaw or sauerkraut.)
“God presents us with cabbages; it is up to you to decide if you make coleslaw or sauerkraut.”
I should acknowledge in this debut of the cabbage-adage that I mean no disrespect toward those supporters who don’t believe in God; please, Eclipse-Escapaders, feel free to substitute some mundane entity for the divine one the cabbage-adage contains. So long as the mundane entity of your choice is capable of delivering cabbages to respondents of differing attitudes, it should serve just fine. Furthermore, I mean no disrespect for those who prefer the Dutch salad coleslaw to the German salad sauerkraut, or vice-versa. After all, a total solar eclipse, while it does happen in very specific locations every three-to-four centuries, it is a phenomenon for everyone, regardless of your race, religion, or dietary preferences. The physics of our solar system have no consideration of whether you are Dutch, German, or whatever. Whether you eat coleslaw, or sauerkraut, or some other cabbage derivative, the eclipse will be a feast for your senses. Whether you follow Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, or none-of-the-above; the total solar eclipse will be a holy encounter for you. Whether you are red, brown, yellow, black, or white, the total solar eclipse will be a wonder to your sight. Regardless of your political persuasion, the total solar eclipse is for you. In fact, let’s forget about every single categorization of humanity ever contrived by whoever contrives these categories, so long as you are willing to look up, in the right place, and the right time, and the clouds allow it, the eclipse is for you.
“God presents us with cabbages; it is up to you decide if you make coleslaw or sauerkraut.”
Let’s forget about cabbages, their origins, and their destinies, and just ponder the import of the newfangled adage. As is the case in every adage, the cabbage-adage requires more words to state the import than the sentence itself contains. Nevertheless, I will certainly endeavor to be as efficiently terse as I can effectively be in expounding on the import of what I dearly desire to become a new American proverb. The import of the newfangled cabbage-adage is that every big-brained biped on Planet Earth is surrounded by sundry circumstances, and sundry circumstances bring forth sundry incidents, and these incidents will prod upon our minds and hearts in sundry ways. Always, everywhere, occurrences transpire in our surroundings, and when they transpire, we have options for actions: ignore, react, or respond, somehow. To be specific, each and every Eclipse Escapader who has signed this petition did so from a certain surrounding, and all our surroundings exude various events, and each set of circumstances produces certain factualities. Thus, the seventy-one of us will each have seventy-one distinct and equally multiplicitous sets of circumstances, and will be contending with diverse factualities. And, thus, surrounded by all our sets of circumstances, and on account of the factualities our respective circumstances exude, we each have options for actions: ignore, react, or respond, somehow. What a motley crew of Eclipse Escapaders we are! But in spite of our multiplicity, we all have one, astronomical fact in common. We are all anticipating an eclipse. Moreover, we all have one attitude in common, an attitude of hope. We are all expressing a hope that Western New York might prove hospitable to every kind of human being who ever walked this planet.
I don’t know, can’t know, and won’t ever know much about each of your personal surrounding or about your respective circumstances. But I do know this; a total solar eclipse is coming to my surroundings, and each of you has responded in a certain way; you have signed a petition calling for housing renewal in Buffalo, New York. In doing so, you have perceived that the eclipse is for all, and hospitality should be extended to all. I am fond of saying that to respond to a set of circumstances means to perceive the promise the circumstances present. Obviously, my supporters, you are not ignoring what will happen. Obviously, you are not reacting; that is, you are not fleeing, fighting, or fixing. You are responding; you are perceiving the promise the circumstances present.
God presents us with cabbages, and it is up to you to decide if you want to make coleslaw or sauerkraut.
The coming complete eclipse over Western New York is one incredible cabbage, and, at last count; there are seventy-one of you who have signed this petition. Much gratitude to each of you, regardless of your surroundings and circumstances. Wherever and whoever you are, by my reckoning, each of you is a king, or a queen, or a monarch, or a sovereign, or whatever title you prefer to designate one who takes on the great responsibility and bears it proudly.
Please share the petition and song “Eclipsecstatic” with others. When we reach 100 supporters, it will go to politicians and the media.