Category Archives: Politics

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Health, Judaism, Memories, Politics, Third Phase, US History, World History

A Jew

Leave a comment

Spring and the Passover Full Moon (Corona Luna)

Friday gratefuls: For the lupron injection I’m about to receive today, I thank you. For an appointment with Dr. Eigner today, rather than April 17. For a memorable passover with Seoah, Kate, and 53 virtual guests. For Rabbi Jamie, whose soul shines. For the passover meal from Zaidy’s Deli in Denver. For that time, mythic and therefore real, when Hebrew slaves left bondage, crossed the Red Sea, and began 40 years of wandering in the desert.

If you find the passover the central story in your life, then you’re a Jew. Art Green. I’m a Jew. May as well claim it if this is the criteria.

Throughout my life liberation from oppression has been core to what I’ve done. Whether that oppression was modest as in the case of Juniors at Alexandria High School who couldn’t go to prom unless invited (we created a junior prom) or deep and pervasive in the case of women, the poor, sexual preference outliers, my instinct is to oppose it and if possible end it. Lots of Red Seas to cross.

Climate change is different, you say. Who’s oppressed by climate change? Living things, especially humans. And, as with the coronavirus, the catastrophe will fall often and heaviest on those too poor to adapt and with too little power to affect change.

This opposition of mine to oppression seems instinctual. Doesn’t seem to have an origin story in my psyche. I was neither abused nor oppressed as a child. I grew up with white privilege, white male privilege as my inheritance. The passover story, a universal one like Easter, puts liberation at the center of life. Until all are free, none are fully free.

Today I am a Jew, a pagan whose identity, whose soul, shares much with the tribes of Israel, their collective story and journey. Enough that I’ve become part of them, though not converted. I’m a close friend of the tribe, maybe, by Art Green’s definition, an actual member.

On a related but different topic, inspired again by Art Green, it occurred to me how Judaism and Christianity are complementary, very much so. Judaism differs, he says, from its close relatives Christianity and Islam in its communitarian essence. The message of god, of the one, listened to through Jewish tradition, is one which creates a people, a community. This is true at CBE and is a strength of Judaism invisible to me until I became part of this community.

Christianity and Islam, he says, deliver their message to the individual. God’s love heard through those traditions focuses on healing the soul.

Judaism puts the inflection on community, on liberation, while Christianity and Islam put the inflection mark on the soul; its need for wholeness, for realizing the one is that of which each of us is a part, while, paradoxically, being wholly within each one of us. These two inflections are not a reason for differentiation, but for mutuality. The world needs to know how to live in just communities; individuals need to find their way back to the one, to realize the oneness within them. These are not differences, they are parts of a whole.

I’m on a third path, but I’m coming slowly to recognize how it intersects with other paths.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

We Are At Home

Leave a comment

Spring and the full Corona Luna

Tuesday gratefuls: A good workout. All the delivery people: USPS, UPS, Fedex. Again, and still, all the service workers, warehouse workers, truck drivers, doctors, nurses, governors and mayors who’ve chosen to confront life under the pandemic. And, again, the coronavirus for unveiling the lies we tell ourselves to preserve our status, our pollution, our failed economic systems. Seoah, who cleans and cooks and smiles and laughs and orders from Lululemon.

The snow is melting. We’ve had bright sun shiny days. Jeffco put the entire county on stage 1 fire restrictions indefinitely. It’s unusual for that restriction to come this early, with much snow still to come. Not good news.

What would happen right now if we had a major disaster, like a wildfire? It would up end our life here and create a turmoil wherever we had to go. Or, an earthquake in California. A hurricane hitting Florida or New Orleans. Tornadoes in the south. Disasters during an ongoing disaster. Are we ready for these? They will happen.

We’ve flagged off our housecleaner for the second time. We’ve continued to pay her though, as we will pay our hair stylist. These are one woman businesses. They are our contract employees so we’re supporting them. How long? Don’t know.

Seoah cleans so we’re ok. And the hair? Somebody said a couple of weeks ago that we were only three weeks from knowing everybody’s true hair color. Shaggy’s been my look most of my life. Another couple of months is NBD.

Another zoom time this morning with Clan Keaton. Linking the far flung Ellises and our first cousin, Diane. Mark sent me a clip from the Arab News announcing a 24 hour curfew in Riyadh. Residents can only go out between 6am and 3pm for food and medicine. Today begins a month long lockdown in Singapore with somewhat looser restrictions. San Francisco’s been shelter in place for longer than most.

All this physical distancing and social distancing has begun to work. How much it will flatten the curve and what happens when it ends are still uncertain. Like our lives.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Health, Myth and Story, News of the Strange, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Ättestupa

Leave a comment

Spring and the Corona Luna

Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage collectors, workers at power plants, cleaners in all places, showing us how important “menial” labor can be. Kate in her sewing room!! Yeah. Sewed on some buttons, made some mug rugs. Seoah doing grocery shopping for us. Brenton and his many pictures, videos, obvious joy being with Murdoch. Concerned friends. Upcoming PSA blood draw, Lupron, visit with Eigner.

Another, grimmer topic. Wanna sacrifice yourself for the economy, grandpa? Any of my readers of a certain age going with Dan Patrick? “‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?…If that is the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said.” Patrick is Lt. Gov. of Texas, Dan Patrick. The quote is from a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson.

Patrick made his senicidic comment after Trump declared he wanted to get the economy going by Easter, “This country’s not made to be shut down.” Only after being told that if he did, deaths would be in the hundreds of thousands, and his lackey Lindsey Graham said, “You would own those deaths.” did he pull back. OK, we’ll open it up on April 30th, he decided. Why April 30? Who knows?

Last year when Kate had a period of feeling better we went to see, first, “The Kitchen”, a women take over the mob movie with Elizabeth Moss and Melissa McCarthy, in return Kate agreed to go see Midsommar. “It’s Scandinavian,” I said.

Hmm, yeah. Sorta. I’m a fan of horror movies (not slasher flicks. Ugh.). Hammer Films. The Thing. The Fly. Rosemary’s Baby. The Exorcist. The Shining. The Omen. Creature of the Black Lagoon. Not many get made that are thoughtful, even beautiful. The Horror of Dracula, a 1958 Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee movie in the Hammer Film series, was beautiful. So was Polanski’s 1967 The Fearless Vampire Killers.

There are now two that are both beautiful and thoughtful: The Wickerman (1973) and Midsommar (2019). The Wickerman has a Celtic folklore background while Midsommar uses Swedish themes. I’ve learned in doing some research that these are folk horror movies. A new genre to me by name, but not by preference.

Anyhow, in Midsomar, Ari Aster, director and writer, draws on Swedish folklore. Some of the ideas there are familiar to you like the Maypole, the colorful Swedish garments, white trimmed in flowers and runes, all that blond hair, and festive bonfires outdoors. And, yes, naked Swedes can be seen dancing around midsommar bonfires. Look it up on your interweb.

Aster also draws on one aspect of Swedish folklore embedded enough in the culture to give a name to certain high cliffs and promontories: Ättestupa. In prehistoric times, Swedes believe, elders threw themselves from the attestupa when they were no longer able to care for themselves or assist around the camp. Senicide. Though attestupa may have been challenged among folklorists, senicide is/was real. Elders wandering away from the village to starve, active euthanasia of the elderly, or, as Lt. Patrick suggests, economic senicide.

The most disturbing scenes in Midsomar come during the attestupa. The Harga collective using seasonal language for life’s stages: Spring: 1-18, Summer: 19-36, Fall: 37-54, and Winter: 55-72. This last season, Winter, is the mentoring season. At 72 Winter ends, and so do you. That, for the Harga, was when you headed for the attestupa.

Midsomar is on Prime Video right now, free. If these kind of movies fit into your cinema way, I’d encourage you to watch it. It’s a very good example of the folk horror genre. If you watch it, let me know what you think of the last scene.

Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Health, Judaism, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Woolly Mammoths

Let It Be

Leave a comment

Spring and the Corona Luna

Sunday gratefuls: Technology, not our savior, but a friend. Brenton and his 3,500 steps. Bob Dylan and his new song, Murder Most Foul. The Weight, by the Band. Pictures of Murdoch coming from Loveland. Zoom. Over the wires, over the air, over the ocean and across the desert. Wow. Each one of you, readers. Whoever you are. I love you.

Zoomed. Again. The new hang out, like the ol’ Kid Canteen on Harrison Street. Mark in Riyadh. Mary in Singapore. Diane in San Francisco. Kate. Me. On Shadow Mountain. Bombs over Riyadh, Mark said. Have you heard? Singapore’s like normal, almost, Mary said.

Diane was cold, doing a Mark Twain version of the coldest night he ever spent. We talked, decades of back story, going back even into the 19th century. All of us linked by genetics, by fate, by Indiana. Kate looked good.

Paul in Maine. Tom, Bill, Mark in the cold place. On Shadow Mountain. Cranes flying up, up, weighted and buoyed. The mystery of flight. Caretaking, its weight. Wondering how we can survive. Can we keep it up?

All of us gone viral. Lives infected. The future uncertain. How can we survive?

We’re all monastics, huddled in our apartments, our camps, our homes. Rattlin round in them like ol dry bones. Is it life without others? I would say yes. I would say no. I would say, well, I just don’t know.

Fear the moronic plague the most. He and his will kill us all if it might lift the Dow. Plenty of money for some, for most, none at all.

Hear, oh, world. The one is the lord god, the lord. Can you follow an ancientrail created by slaves, crossing seas, and wandering? I thought so for a moment last week. Put Kate in a prayer, held her there. Tears came to my eyes, I wanted it.

But, no. No longer me. No way back into Easter, either. Following the bird, the rock, the sky, the lake, the trout, the love of one for another, all the spirit in all the things all the one. Must be enough.

Coronavirus, Politics

Evil Bastard

Leave a comment

Mammon’s dumbest disciple wants to become Moloch’s agent, too. Today’s Washington Post: “Trump says he may soon push businesses to reopen, defying the advice of coronavirus experts” Since infants and the elderly die most, he’s trying to feed infants to the Dow Jones average. I don’t know any gods that wanted elderly sacrifices, though there must have been one.

Commentary on the news, Great Wheel, Health, Politics, US History, World History

AC/DC

Leave a comment

Spring and the Leap Year Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Snow pellets hitting me as I walked out for the newspaper. Blue gray sky as the sun rises behind clouds. Corned beef and cabbage. The equinox, today. Brother Mark, learning new skills. Seoah taking Murdoch for a walk. Kate, a strong woman as friend Debra said. Our world, changing.

First. Welcome Spring! Welcome. We have never needed your message of renewal, growth, emergence more. Even after fallow times, even after the cold and the dark of winter, even after the longest night, you come. You come in the midst of what will be a long darkness, perhaps a long fallow time. You mean, you are, the direct, the tactile hand of mother nature reaching out to each one of us sheltered at home. You will bring us flowers and green leaves and birds singing and fields being planted. Thank you.

More crucial. You will demonstrate for the us the cycle of life. Again. Still. Always. We are uncertain. We don’t know what this afternoon will bring. Tomorrow? Even murkier. But we do know that light follows the dark. That even the longest of winters give way to the gentle spring. So it will be with this virus.

Renewal can take many forms, however, and what the renewal after the coronavirus will look like may surprise us all. Here are two articles that I found useful. Our New Historical Divide B.C. and A.C. by Thomas Friedman in the NYT, and, We’re Not Going Back to Normal by Gordon Lichfield of MIT’s Technology Review.

Friedman, of the St. Louis Park Friedmans, places some hope in advanced biotechnology, but admits it’s not yet ready for a rapid enough response to make a big difference. He quotes a friend, University of Maryland professor, Michele Gelfand on the difference between tight and loose cultures. Tight cultures, with many rules and punishments already in place, think Singapore, Austria, Korea, China, can lock in a broad response quickly and expect that it will be heeded. (She does not mention the bureaucratic paralysis of China.) No parties in the Asian equivalent of Bourbon Street. Loose cultures like the U.S., Italy, Brazil have a tougher time putting responses together and a tougher time enforcing them. She and Friedman believe our political culture may have to change.

Lichfield is clearer on the dilemma. Even though mitigation can help, it’s severe restrictions on movement that will do the most. There are problems. Severe measures are hard to enforce and get harder over time. ICU admissions, a rough metric, can give us a sense of the effectiveness of mitigation or restriction. As admissions trend downward, some loosening of the restrictions can happen. But. New cases will emerge and the spike in hospital admissions will start up again. Until it starts to go down again thanks to reimposed restrictions. According to the study he cites from London’s Imperial College response team, this will happen again and again in waves for 18 months!

It is both the length of time to resolve this, as much as 18 months, and the economic shocks inevitable over that time (and already red light flashing visible now) that will forge a new way of being together. Will you choose to help guide that new world order or resist it?

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, US History

The Cowboy Way

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

When we moved here, I imagined a lot more cowboy boots, stetsons, and cowboy themed places. There are cowboy boots, our hair stylist Jackie says she wears nothing else, and in any restaurant (back when we could go to restaurants) a certain percentage of folks will have on a pair. Same with Stetsons and western shirts with the pleat in the back and pearl faced buttons. The Buckhorn, Denver’s restaurant holding the first liquor license the city issued, has a definite cowboy feel. Buffalo Bill and Wyatt Earp ate there. So they say.

Rather than clothing and decor, the cowboy way is evident here in a love affair with guns, the second amendment, and libertarianism. Let me alone so my cattle can roam. Out where you can’t hear nothing all day. Unless it’s me, a good guy with a gun, taking out a varmint tryin’ to steal ma stuff. Then you might hear me exercising my second amendment rights. (No, not me, as in me, but, you know.)

A gun shop owner, the Denver Post reports, said he’s seen a huge uptick in business. Part of, he said, is because “folks went to King Sooper, trying to track down some toilet paper and saw grown men and women fist fighting to see who gets the last pack of tissues.” Later in the article he tagged panic as the reason for the sales, not the virus. “You can’t shoot a virus,” he said.

Another guy, owner of Devils Head Choppers in Castle Rock, a joint gun and motorcycle shop, ran out of ammo. He said such a run responds to unusual events or even elections, particularly ones that favor Democrats. sbradbury@denverpost.com 3/18/2020

Up here in the mountains a lot of folks say their security company is Smith and Wesson. Isolated property, long driveways, uncertain response times from the Jeffco sheriff’s office reinforce these attitudes. These postures ride along with government can’t do it right, ever, thinking.

Darwin is having a partisan political moment. Look at this from Slate: “…in the United States, poll after poll shows the virus has found a population that’s particularly likely, through nonchalance and neglect, to help it spread. That population is Republicans.” Slate The whole article is interesting if you have time.

If a number of the red state folks, Trump fans, go out to scoot boots, bowl, eat chili, then there might be fewer of’em to line up in the voting booth. Damn science.

Fun times the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Health, Politics, US History, World History

Why are we so vulnerable?

Leave a comment


“When this current pandemic subsides, and we can catch our breath, we need to ask: Why are we so vulnerable?’’ said Michael T. Osterholm, who is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. wapo

Osterholm was the state epidemiologist in Minnesota for a long time, now he’s quoted often on the pandemic. He’s a trustworthy guide in this time of frustration and mild panic. We must answer his question since one facet of climate change involves new disease vectors and new diseases.



Family, Health, Politics, Third Phase, US History, World History

Changing World

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the waning sliver Shadow Mountain Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate’s stitches out. Her toughness. Seoah cleaning. Rigel, grieving. Chinooks (snow eater winds). Gabe, who comes at 10. Jon and Ruth skiing at A-basin today. My Aeron chair. The split key-board I use. This Dell computer. The engineers and laborers who designed and built all three. The pretzel factory. Lodgepole evolution that allows them to withstand heavy snow and high winds.

Took Kate in for hand therapy. It’s a burn and reconstruction clinic, directed by Benson Pulikkottil. I thought at first he might be Finnish, given the last name. When I saw his burnt umber skin, however, I was pretty sure that was a wrong guess. Looked him up. Kerala. A state in India with 100% literacy.

He looked at Kate’s fingers, said they were doing well. Take the stitches out. A nurse came in and removed them. Kate winced and teared up. Unusual. She’s stoic, so the pain must have been exquisite. Made me wince, too.

Quieter here on Shadow Mountain. A good thing, but also strange. Both of us have the sense that we have too few dogs. Two. Just not enough. Unsure whether we’ll do anything about that, though a puppy or two would enliven the house.

Rigel has been subdued since Gertie died. When we’re not around, she’s also regressed to grabbing things off the table and moving them to her spot near the fire place. Kep’s tail is down more than up. The pack has changed and they don’t know why. Murdoch disappeared, too. Dogs don’t like change.

Speaking of change. The Munich security conference, a gathering of world diplomats had as its theme, Westlessness. A play, I suppose, on restlessness since organizers meant attendees to consider a world without the West as a dominant force. China’s rise spurred the conversation though Trump’s abdication of global leadership made it bite. The concern lies in diffuse centers of influence both in Asia and in the Middle East. The article points to Russia, Iran, and Turkey as core figures in Middle East politics now.

Wow. If dispersed centers of power become the norm, the post-WWII world will vanish like human space travel did. A wondrous achievement winking out. Not sure how I feel about this.

The US led West has dominated world politics since the end of World War II. Over 70 years. My entire lifetime. History though is the record of these tectonic changes, some taking hundreds of years, think the rise and fall of Rome or the changing dynasties of China, India, some taking much shorter times. The end of the cold war. The invasion of Turtle Island. Indian independence.

A world shaped by the U.S. and its odd brand of imperialism: We’re invading you to make you free. Oh, and here’s a ticket to an American capitalist economy, too.

My fellow leftists and I have been and are critical of these policies. Election interference, for example. Take a ride down south to Latin America. We’ve been engaged there for years. Meddling in the politics of others has been a hallmark of our “soft” control.

In that sense I’m happy to see other centers of power emerge, grow strong. We will have neither the responsibility nor the burden of global hegemony. It would, however, be a dramatic and drastic change. It is though a direct result of an America First policy, a policy wedded to xenophobia and white supremacy.

A world in which we are a valued member, one among many, not America First, but America With, would be my preference. Perhaps we need to go through Westlessness to reach this place. But. It can’t happen as a denial of a world already connected in so many ways. It needs to happen as a result of our humility, not our arrogance.

Denver, Dogs, Family, Health, Politics

The Big City

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon (ok. just noticed this moon doesn’t encompass February 29th. So, I’m gonna change it.) from now until Feb. 22nd-the Shadow Mountain Moon.

Saturday gratefuls: Jon, who seems to be righting his inner ship. Rigel, who gave me a black eye. Geez, gal. The U.S. Senate. Yes, I mean it. At least their horror show is public. The House of Representatives and Nancy. Stood on their hind legs. Two legs good. The moon and its apparent journeys across our sky. The stuff of romance. SeoAh, who comes tomorrow.

The wounds from my second bite have finally begun to heal up. Still a good ways to go, but less tender. Kate took my stitches out at the kitchen table yesterday. Nice to have an urgent care clinic just behind our stove. The second bite was a week ago yesterday. Antonio was Monday.

Into Denver to GOZO, a restaurant on my favorite Denver street, Broadway. Jon and I talked. A bit hard because the room was very live and my hearing aid seemed waxy. Those of you with hearing aids will understand.

Jon’s wrestling with his life, as he has as long as I’ve known him, but this time I think he’s learned a new move. His self awareness has grown markedly over the last year. He knows what he needs to do. He’s clear about it. Now if the depression will stay at bay. We’re meeting every couple of weeks for dinner.

Got a table right next to the multi-paned garage door. Outside Denver city life walked by. That woman with the calf high leather boots, big heels. The woman on her phone, her baby scanning the sidewalk. A man and a woman kissing while the man walked backwards and the woman held his head close. The homeless guy I greeted on the way in, later wrapped in what appeared to be a homemade quilt.

Picked up Kate’s new iPad at the Apple Repair place. Nice folks. Willing to help. Not pricey at all.

Often when I go into Denver I find the drive stressful. Too many cars, streets too tight, lots of lights. Lots. Last night I drove down Broadway after leaving Jon and found it soothing. I know this street now. Where certain landmarks are. I like it’s funky, changeable nature. At one point it could called the Green Mile due to the number of dispensaries. Art galleries, interior design studios. Boarded up storefronts. Used car lots.

It was still good to leave the city behind and drive through the hogback at Co. 470 and 285, climbing again. Cars thin out, the lights dim, and the clear sky begins to show more stars. Five years plus now. Five years.