A sign for our times, and a call to action

What a birthday present from an artist friend said to me

The gift that sparked this rumination. Take it whatever way you want — the message is vital. (RS photo)

Time marches on and time stands still. Time flies, is short, fleeting, immutable and, according to Pericles, “is the most valuable thing a man can spend, and the wisest counselor of all.” You could write volumes compiling all the maxims and proverbs people have constructed about time — people have done just that, of course — not to mention studies and analyses of the abstract theories involving time. One of the greatest advances in modern thought, Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, proposed the notion that time isn’t just a concept that humans impose to order our lives, but is interwoven with space and matter, which later theoreticians hypothesized creates a flexible, four-dimensional fabric called spacetime.

If you have more thoughts on the latter topic, I’m pleased for you, but I can only absorb so much: My left-brain functioning, where our capacity to understand science and logic is supposed to reside, seems to lag when it is pushed to grasp much beyond punctuation. As to right-brain work, where spatial and visual processing mostly reside, I am grateful for friends who create art in its many forms, all of which help me to more fully appreciate the world as it is and as we may wish it to be.

On my birthday this month, an artist friend dropped by with a gift that has put me in mind of all this stuff about time. It’s a piece of reclaimed wood — molding from a 19^th-century home, I believe he said — with an enamel painted message: “It’s about time.”¹

What’s about time? Well, you could take that to mean that the time is now to do something, which is what is usually meant by that well-worn phrase (which is itself, incidentally, a well-worn phrase). Or you could think just a bit more broadly, and say that whatever you’re thinking or doing is really about time. Because everything we do is related to time: We are constantly exchanging our unknown but certainly limited inventory of time for the experiences of the moment, and in the same instant planning for what comes next in time based upon what we know from time already passed.

Because I write about public affairs — delving mostly into politics, culture and history in this column — I often find myself pushing a sense that whatever time lies ahead needs to draw our attention right now. That is, there’s no time like the present (well-worn phrase alert!) to undertake the tasks that we know are next, based on what has gone before.

And that’s exactly why I have placed the sign my artist friend gave me in a prominent spot where I will look at it many times every day. As much as someone with more than seven decades of experience doing things might welcome doing nothing, I can’t recommend it. There is too much to do.

If a lot is going on, people usually feel that time speeds up. But for people fearful about what Donald Trump is doing to America, time in this 47^th presidency can’t go fast enough — making the passage of time just one more norm being disrupted by this president. Trump’s administration is doing so much so fast that it seems likely he will have more impact than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who spent 12 years in the White House.

News organizations can’t keep up with the big stories, forcing editors and producers to shift onto back burners stories that would ordinarily be hot enough to propel days of top-of-show or front-page coverage. How many times have you thought that a story out of Washington deserved bigger play? I feel that way every day, as big stories pile up.

In recent days, for example, Trump ordered an eighth boat blown out of the waters off South America, defying the Constitution’s requirement that only Congress can authorize such acts of war, and said that officials of his administration should agree to let the government to pay him $230 million to cover his costs from past federal investigations into his actions; he freed the thieving, lying former member of Congress George Santos just three months into a seven-year prison sentence for fraud; he demanded that Ukraine cede territory to end Russia’s invasion and then imposed economic sanctions on Russia; he threatened Spain, a reliable NATO ally, for not meeting his military spending demands in its budget; and he shifted money without Congressional authorization to pay some federal employees during a government shutdown while giving cold shoulder to others — a shutdown that continues, of course, despite his party’s control of government, and as he refuses to negotiate with the Democratic minority.

That incomplete list reveals the difficulty of covering the boundary-shattering Trump administration, and suggests why we sometimes can’t believe we are still facing four-fifths of Trump’s second term. Who knows what will be left by the time he leaves office?

Which is worth considering in light of the news that drew so much attention this week: Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to make way for a massive $300 million ballroom that will dwarf the existing White House. As The New York Times noted, the action “is in many ways symbolic of how he has conducted his presidency… blow(ing) past norms and traditions, often moving so quickly that it can be too late for courts, Congress and the public to catch up.”²

Because the demolition is so visual, though, it’s an easier story to grasp than, say, a Republican decision to let healthcare premiums for millions of Americans rise by 20 percent in 2026. So Trump may wish to reach back in his memory to a significant event in his hometown when he was a teenager: the destruction of New York’s Pennsylvania Station.

Penn Station was a Beaux Arts masterpiece, with soaring marble and granite columns, huge waiting rooms and natural light streaming through its glass ceilings. But the financially-stressed Pennsylvania Railroad sold the air rights, leading in 1963 to the unexpected and shocking leveling of the historic building. Grandeur and elegance were soon replaced by a new Penn Station: a squat and cramped mall beneath Madison Square Garden, that still today features low ceilings, fluorescent lights and fast-food vendors.³

The loss of the elegant station spoke to New Yorkers of a decline in values — of a vulgarity seizing not just land-use decisions, but politics more generally, some said — and it galvanized outrage. A nationwide backlash ensued, which proved to be the launchpad of the modern historic preservation movement. Legislation passed at the city, state and federal level to protect historic landmarks from similar fate, including the Historic Preservation Act of 1966.

Significantly, the White House is exempt from that law — as are the Capitol and the Supreme Court building. For any other historic structure, public and professional review of architectural plans would have been required before even minor revision. Trump has no time for such deference to public will or expertise; it’s clear that he wants to use the fancy ballroom soon.

But the sight of a wrecking ball tearing into an iconic building could prove to be a powerful metaphor, as it was when Penn Station fell. “This is one of the most important buildings in the nation… one of the symbols of who we are as a people,” Bryan Green, a former commissioner of the National Capital Planning Commission, told Fast Company this week. “It’s hard to look and see a wrecking ball hitting it.”⁴

On a social media post showing the teardown, Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote, “This is Trump’s presidency in a single photo: Illegal, destructive and not helping you.”⁵

It’s too much to hope that Trump’s impatience for a showy ballroom might be his undoing, the point at which a massive movement might begin to push back on his destructive tendencies that are devastating so many realms of government and bringing turmoil to American society. But it might motivate those who are already committed to turning around Trumpism to understand that there is no time to waste when confronting the challenges to America’s norms that this administration presents. It might prompt some to move more quickly and fight more directly at this time.

Arguably the most famous reference to time in all of literature is in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born and a time to die…” and on it continues, through pairs of contrasting events, suggesting that both beginnings and endings are natural, even part of a divine plan.⁶

But it is in human hands, surely, that priorities are set so that events are speeded or slowed. And it is our work to do to bring about any plan, or to realize any hope. In that light, we cannot delay in joining the best efforts to deter the ruinous impact of Trump across our society.

We can imagine that the remaining 80 percent of Trump’s term will seem to go more quickly and impose less harm, but that is at the moment unlikely, and wishful thinking, at best. It brings to mind the effort Winston Churchill felt was essential in the depths of World War II. In late 1942, as Germany was winning the war, he told a luncheon crowd in London that idealistic talk was, in fact, counterproductive.

“This is no time to speak of the hopes of the future, or the broader world which lies beyond our struggles and our victory,” Churchill said. “We have to win that world for our children. We have to win it by our sacrifices. We have not won it yet. The crisis is upon us.”

Churchill spoke to the urgency of his nation’s situation, which many of us feel is our place today. There are no bombs raining from our skies, certainly, but there are surely attacks on our cherished values and norms that are making America a place we soon might not recognize. The crisis is, indeed, upon us.

So, yes, at this moment, as my artist friend asserted: It’s about time.

1. The artist is Steve Rein, of Troy, N.Y., and you can find similar examples of his work for sale on Etsy. He calls them ReinSigns. They’re one-of-a-kind, and you can’t have this one.

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/us/politics/east-wing-white-house-demolition-trump.html

3. https://rothcocpa.com/trend/from-rubble-to-revival-how-penn-stations-demolition-changed-the-way-landmarks-are-valued/#:~:text=The%20modern%20historic%20preservation%20movement,Garden)%20and%20an%20office%20complex.

4. https://www.fastcompany.com/91426331/trump-demolish-white-house-for-ballroom

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/us/politics/trump-white-house-demolition.html

6. Ecclesiastes 3:2

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The writer, the artist and the sign on the birthday. (MRS photo)

ENDNOTE

THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. As we together navigate these challenging times, I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send me a message with ideas you’d like to see us address. I love to hear from readers.

-REX SMITH