Category Archives: Health

Family, Friends, Health, Kabbalah, Mussar, Weather +Climate

World. Changed.

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Spring and the Leap Year Moon

Friday gratefuls: Ted of All Trades for two pushes yesterday. A beautiful snowday. Mussar on Zoom. Kate on camera. Rigel, hip deep in the snow. Leftover cabbage and corned beef. Each of you. Isolation. A changing world. Internet. DSL. Black Mountain, Shadow Mountain.

And on we go together, separate. Sister Mary had planned to come for a conference this weekend. Canceled. Brother Mark has had two hours of instruction on Blackboard, an online instructional tool, and will start teaching with it soon. Good luck, Marko. We had over 10 inches of snow yesterday, snow all day. I cleaned the back deck seven times. Ted came and plowed us out twice.

Our Thursday mussar class was on Zoom. A good medium, fourteen signed on. Some technical glitches, to be expected. We were able to do our class, an hour and a half, read Rabbi Jamie’s clear, new translation of the Orchot Tzaddikim, and do our usual back and forth. I’m not sure this would have worked as well if I didn’t already know the others online. Or, maybe it would have been a different, but also rich experience. A self-quarantine positive note was Debra Cope’s presence from her new home in Maryland. Online the distance was not a barrier. Good to see her and hear her.

I have a new class with Rabbi Jamie starting in April, but this time I imagine we’ll all be on Zoom. Friend Tom Crane poked those of us who gather by zoom once a month. We’ll be meeting on Sunday morning to talk about what we’ll do during the present crisis. All of us are well past the at-risk age of 60. Leaning on this generation of online conferencing tools will help at least some of us.

The world has changed. But we don’t yet know how, or how much. I remember men on the moon. Yes, I’m that old. Even the first off-earth landing for a human doesn’t compare. We don’t where we’re headed. We’re not even sure where we’ve been. Ride it out. Wu wei for all.

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

AC/DC

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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

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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?

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“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.



Colorado, Commentary on the news, Family, Friends, Health, Science, Third Phase

Still Absorbing

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Chill air. Blue sky. A light covering of snow. Seoah’s meal last night, her version of scalloped potatoes. The coronavirus and its ability to make us reevaluate what’s important. Gov. Polis and his response here in Colorado. Health care workers: cleaners, docs, nurses, p.a.’s, receptionists, all of them. The literal front line for all of us. Gertie, our sweet girl.

Introverts lead the fight for social distancing! Winner, winner, chicken dinner. This is our time. We could go to the mall, an NBA game, that big religious service. Unless too many take the opportunity. Then, back home to the hygge. This is an hygge and introverts’ moment. We are all introverts during the virus crisis.

Like you, probably, I’m tired of hearing about the coronavirus, yet I can’t turn away. It’s a slow motion tsunami. We have time to reach the safe places before it crests, but it seems weird. All this waiting. This hiding.

Right now it has a pre-holiday, pre-big storm feel. Something big’s coming and we’re getting ready. I hope you are neither sick yourself nor anyone close to you.

I’m heading off to the post office and to King Sooper. Picking up groceries is a perfect way to social distance the act of grocery shopping. The post office is not, but taxes. You know the saying, nothing’s certain but the coronavirus and taxes.

Aging, Family, Health, Holidays, Jefferson County, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

In the Time of the Crown

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Thursday gratefuls: the warm reception for my presentation yesterday. Alan and the Bread Lounge. Being the doorman last night for Purim. Seoah greeting me when I got home. Kep, who stayed up waiting on me. The melting of the snow. The coming snow. The drive back from the Kabbalah Experience.

An all CBE all the time day yesterday. Left the house at 7:45 for the Kabbalah Experience. Not a fun drive into morning rush hour in Denver. If I do this again, I’ll do most of them by Zoom. It’s an unsatisfying technology in this context, perhaps because it’s not well integrated into the classroom at Kabbalah Experience.

Yesterday the sun had a corona as it sat behind a veil of cirrocumulus clouds. There was a streaky rainbow smeared across underneath it. Last night the moon, too, had a corona, a faint golden hue with a red tinged outer circle.

Seemed appropriate for life in the time of coronavirus. It’s spreading no rainbows. On the New York Times page I counted 46 stories that were virus related. That’s two-thirds.

Last night at the Purim event at Beth Evergreen I filled in for Kate who had a Sjogren’s flare. She was to be the board member on duty. The bmod greets people at the door. That’s the primary task. I also had to shoo folks into the sanctuary so the Purim spiel (a musical written by CBE’r Ron Solomon) could begin.

There was elbow bumping, some shoe greetings, and the purloined Cohen blessing, live long and prosper with fingers spread to create the shin letter in the Hebrew alphabet. There was bravado. I’m living my life as usual. I’m not afraid. There was cautious laughter with each improvised non-handshake. Even so, more folks showed up than I had imagined. The sanctuary was well-over half full, many of them older, like me.

As I opened the locked door for each congregant or visitor, I greeted them with a welcome, a smile, an occasional elbow bump. Yes, two contagions affected my work. Antisemitism keeps CBE’s doors locked at all times. We’ve had visits from the Jeffco sheriff, the FBI, and letters from politicians expressing support. It’s a virus of the heart, infectious hatred cultured in a stewpot of fear, white supremacy, Trumpian permission.

We had the whole megillah. No, really. The whole thing. On Purim the book of Esther, the megillah, is read in its entirety. It’s the story of Ruth, who saves all the Jews from the evil vizier, Haman. I want to write a bit about Purim, maybe tomorrow, but for today I’ll just add that as Haman’s name comes up in the reading everyone cranks their grogger and shouts boo! Sort of like watching a silent movie when the villain twirls his mustache.

The groggers, the boos, the whole megillah work against both contagions: antisemitism and the coronavirus. Next time you see the word coronavirus whip out your grogger (no, not that. look at the link on grogger above) and shout boo. Might catch on.

Asia, Dogs, Family, Health, Third Phase

Volunteers. Dog bless them.

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Friday gratefuls: Corinne in Boulder for her graciousness. Murdoch, for being such a good boy at her house. Seoah, navigating a difficult parting in a still strange language, a still new culture. Kate, living with her ornery body. Dr. Gidday, strong woman, good doc. The melting snow, mostly gone down the hill, lingering in the shadows. This moment of spring time. Corinne’s neighborhood had iris and daffodils pushing up, green eager for warmth and sun. A blooming yellow crocus.

Yesterday and today are visit potential foster homes for Murdoch days. Corinne was kind, thoughtful. Her ranch house in south Boulder is big. Unlike most of us in the mountains it has a basement and one that matches the upstairs footprint in size. A fenced backyard, big enough for Murdoch. Corinne wants to age in place, so she chose a location near shopping, a house with a level floor plan.

When we got there, she invited us for a walk, “He’s been in the car for an hour. He could stretch his legs.” We wandered the neighborhood a bit, learning a new part of Murdoch’s training. He sits at each intersection until you’re ready to cross the street. Very cute.

He sniffed around Corinne’s house, looking here and there, licking the floor as Kep does, too. Then, he settled in and waited. I don’t know what we’re doing, but my people are here, so it’s ok.

Today we’re driving much further, up to Loveland, which I always confuse with Loveland Pass, when I see it mentioned in the news. We’ll see Brenton. He knows and likes Akitas, has two foster dogs for DoD right now. He runs his own business out of his house, too.

You have to be a giving person to volunteer in this way.

My physical yesterday. Nothing notable so far. But, the lab tests aren’t back yet. Well, almost nothing. When she asked me how often I check my blood pressure, I said three/four times a week. Funny thing, it’s often higher at night. “What could cause that?” she wondered. Oh, salt. “You need to watch your salt.” Oh, boy. A moment I’ve dreaded. Not sure I can watch my salt. But, I’ll try to cut back. He said unwillingly.

Aging, Anoka County, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Other Nations

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Thursday gratefuls: That we haven’t switched to DST yet. Love me that standard time. Dr. Gidday, whom I see today. Corinne in Boulder. Murdoch, who’s getting a bath for his time with her. Kate, my Kate. The Democratic primary, calming down. Hope for the fall. My class with Rabbi Jamie, the way it’s provoking me. That I feel in excellent health on the day of my annual physical. (I know. Prostate cancer. COPD. Kidney disease. Even so, that’s how I feel.)

As the years grow greater in number, now 73 for me, the annual physical has a certain hold your breath feel. Will she find anything new, anything unwanted? It’s already happened to me a couple of times, so I know I can absorb the hits. Yet, I’d prefer not to. Life is still engaging, fun, demanding, exciting. I’m ready for a better year.

Kate’s had a recent setback with some bleeding. Not at the September, 2018 level, thank God, but there nonetheless. She’s going with me to my physical this morning, will talk to Dr. Gidday. Her recovery has been like this, a step ahead, a step back. She’s in so much better shape now that each problem now feels like a betrayal of those gains. Give her a break.

After my physical at nine-thirty, Kate and I will take care of a couple of errands, pick up Seaoh, and drive to Bergen Bark Inn. Murdoch will have had a bath and be ready for a visit to Boulder. We’re pretty damned lucky to have two potential foster parents and to be able to visit them both this week. Loveland, tomorrow, will be the second visit.

Kep got his teeth cleaned yesterday. Not our best part of doggy world. Gonna get better at this. Ordered some dog dental supplies. Will keep up with them now. He was a bit loopy from the anesthesia, his rear paws turning out at odd angles, his butt hanging lower when he walked. Took him until late in the evening to shake it off.

A friend wondered about our dogs, said he didn’t understand that part of my life. He wasn’t being critical, just a bit bewildered. “The dogs are a huge part of your life, I don’t understand all of that, three big dogs was overwhelming when…I visited you, there must be some ancient canine story flowing through your blood.” 

Dogs make it harder to travel. Pricey to board them. Dogs are expensive with food and vet bills. Dogs make messes, chew up stuff you’d rather have intact. Vega, for example, loved to eat shoes. Dogs get into fights, injure each other and us. They crowd into bed and won’t move, so we adjust. They sneak up under your arm at the table, seeking food or comfort. So, yes, hard to understand.

However. Gertie, in her last days, licked my face at 3 a.m. Emma stood on the downed cottonwood, a lioness looking over her domain. Hilo snuggled in under my armpit for a nap. Celt accepted all attention graciously, like a monarch. Sorsha took down a deer, tried to get two squirrels at once. Tor was one-hundred and ninety pounds of pure love. Orion, too. I pulled Tira, bleeding and in shock, off a gate in our garage. Morgana and Scot, siblings, were sweet, kind. Buck and Iris. Bridgit. Tully.

They are memories for us, like travel, I suppose. Moments Kate and I shared, often years of moments.

Mostly though, it’s about love. Given and received. Unreserved, unconditional. Greetings at the door. A friend for a nap. Their quirks. Their distinct and different personalities. Their willingness to share themselves completely.

They also offer a strange and privileged opportunity; they grant us a chance to live with and know what Henry Beston identified as: “…other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” Here’s the full, important quote.*

* “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

Denver, Dogs, Family, Great Wheel, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Family Time

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Imbolc and the new Leap Year Moon

Monday gratefuls: Gabe, who wants to be an actor. Seoah leafing through a furniture catalog. Lunch with Ruth, Gabe, Jon, and Seoah at the Yak and Yeti. Seeing the Highlands neighborhood in Denver. Discovering University Ave. in Denver. Coffee. Coffee growers. The coffee plant. Laborers who grow, roast, and grind coffee.

Took Seoah and Gabe into Denver yesterday. Seoah wanted to exercise her military discount at Lululemon, a chic athleisure clothier. And, she did. Seoah is in great shape. She regularly runs 20 minutes at 6.5 or 7.0 mph, does 300 squats, yoga. Her fashion sense is also highly developed from 20 years in the upscale Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul. Lululemon is a natural for her.

Three things that make Seoah happy: a discount, pho, and Indian food. After the visit to Lululemon, we drove south through Denver. I’ve gotten my sea legs in the Denver street system now, I can navigate. Chose University Avenue to take us south to Hampden. Had not driven on it before. It runs by the University of Denver, Iliff Seminary (Methodist, as is UD), and past blocks of college type retail. Around UD the streets have names like Harvard, Yale, Bates, Cornell.

Hampden is the main east-west street for the southern part of Denver, which has no ring road that makes it easy to traverse the city. Hampden is also Hwy. 285, a Federal highway that runs out of Denver to the west, into the mountains, then south all the way to Santa Fe. It’s also the primary road we take when we need to go down the hill. I know it very well since it runs close to Swedish Hospital and is on the route to Jon’s house much further east in Aurora.

We met Jon and Ruth at the Yak and Yeti, an Indian, Nepalese, Tibetan restaurant. Wanted to eat at India’s Restaurant, the oldest Indian restaurant in Denver, on Hampden like Yak and Yeti, but on Sundays they don’t open until 5:30 pm. Yak and Yeti’s food is undistinguished, but plentiful. Attracts folks who want to eat cheap, the buffet is $12.95, and who want to eat a lot. A lot of family time this weekend.

Today Kep goes in for his physical and his rabies shot. His vaccination, good for three years, expires on the 27th of this month. Given our recent history we don’t want a dog with an out of date rabies vaccination. We’ll also pick up Gertie’s ashes.

No new word on Murdoch. We’ll visit him a couple of times this week. He’s having a great time there so far. Always happy and wiggly to see us. No idea he’s in exile.

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

Changing World

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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.