Category Archives: US History

Cancer, Health, Politics, US History

Riders in the Storm

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth. Sugar cream pie. Driving me to radiation today. Luke and Leo. Anne. Waxing crescent Moon. Christmas lights. Jackie and Rhonda. Shadow the mystery. Dog Poems. Billy Collins. Cold night. Darkness growing. Alise and Jenna. Skiing at A-Basin. Jon and my son. Brothers. Gabe, accepted to Montana. Black Bears. Mountain Lions. Wolves. Canada Lynx. Bobcats. Fox.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Linear accelerators

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: With Hannukah presents, Christmas presents, a kitchen stool, a ceiling fan, sheets for my bed all delivered, most still in their boxes, my living room looks like a receiving dock, a few opened, those Silence Please mugs for Gabe and Ruth, the Tuskegee Airmen hoodie and baseball cap plus the crystal ball with the planets suspended in it for my son, jigsaw puzzles, a color chart for the wall for Ruth, the kitchen stool, the ceiling fan, the sheets, mechanical puzzles of the most difficult category still taped and sealed shut. Holiseason

 

Alise and Jenna pull me a bit this way and that, put the plastic mesh on, and get me a warm blanket to cover my bare chest. Then they leave the room, closing the foot and a half thick lead and concrete door, and I am alone, offering my cancer as a sacrifice to the gods of radiation with my hands gripping metal rods behind me, keeping my arms out of the way.

A flashing red light signals danger, stay out, yet I remain. The Clinac iX whirs and buzzes, its looming bulkiness hidden from me, rotating, bringing the beam to bear on just. the. right. spot.

And. Over. Alise of the cold hands helps me get up while Jenna strips off the sheet, wipes down the hand rests and the neck rest, readying the sliding bed for another sacrifice already in waiting.

From reading yesterday I learned that a Clinac costs $1.5 million dollars and requires between three and five hundred thousand dollars in maintenance per year. The clinic or hospital also builds a concrete room with thick walls and doors to house it.

 

Just a moment: Comey and James cases dismissed. Presidential fatigue an issue. Red tie guy wants a bigger ballroom. Nobody seems to know whose page they’re reading from in Ukraine peace negotiations. Whatever happened to Gaza?

This clown car administration honks its horns, spins in circles, confuses themselves while the rest of us gasp open mouthed at matters never associated with the Presidency. Like his press secretary assuring us that the President does NOT want to execute members of Congress. Relieved to hear it. Like wanting to build a yet bigger gilded ballroom, one out of proportion with the White House.

Riders in the storm. Into his world we’re thrown.

 

 

Cooking, Dogs, Politics, US History

Never Waste a Crisis

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Samain and the Radiation Moon (#1)

Monday gratefuls: Meds. Orgovyx and Erleada. Radiation. Dr. Carter. Our current mess. Shadow, the regressor. Never waste a crisis. Cold weather. A Mountain morning. Sheet pan cooking. The Ancient Brothers. My electric blanket. Ukraine. Gaza. All the people. Imagine. Peace. Cold war. My son. His neighborhood: South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, the Philippines.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Learning, again, from Shadow

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The Chinese cleaver, now my favorite knife, sliced through the peeled Red Onion, halving it, and then cut 1/2 inch wedges, after the Onion, halving each Cherry Tomato as easily as the Onion, finally cutting the salami into 1/2 inch strips and placing all of them in the big mixing bowl with the Pepperoncini, the vinagrette, the Chickpeas, the quartered Radicchio, mix with the wooden spoon till coated, then spread out evenly on a sheet pan and roast at 450 for twenty minutes. Four meals. Slick.

 

Dog journal: Diane noted the other day that I’d stopped writing about Shadow as our relationship had begun to normalize. Well… Right now we are, once again, at Shadow outside, her breakfast ready an hour and a half ago;  her outside Water frozen, and yet she. will. not. come inside. Why? I have no idea.

Unless. Was it my erratic, drug addled behavior on Friday afternoon and part of Saturday. She’s used to me behaving one way and I slept the day away, fed her an hour late in the evening. Whatever it was, she has returned to her skittish, threshold shy persona of months ago and bolts, flees instead of coming in to eat and drink. Primal needs. A puzzle.

 

Just a moment: Though I can see his decompensation, though his erratic behavior, both in foreign affairs and domestic matters long ago became self-evident, though he has no moral compass and plummeting poll numbers, yet his wrecking ball of an administration continues to level much more than the east wing of the Whitehouse.

USAID. Gone. Department of Education. Almost Gone. Trust in the CDC. Weakened, maybe beyond fast repair. Trust in economic data produced by the U.S. government, the basis of sound decision making. Shattered. Misuse of the military, illegal orders. State murder in the Caribbean. Firing military leaders of color. Firing female Admirals and Generals. Diminishing trust in our Universities and Colleges. Ruining our reputation as a staunch ally. Aiding former enemies and punishing friends.

I’ve been thinking about the political axiom, never waste a crisis. Why? Because change has to happen then, the only choice is how, if possible, to direct it. If we can use this random, crazed attack on our republic as an opportunity to build it back better, more responsive to the needs of Now-think climate change, an open hearted country, defender of the weak, health care, affordable housing, education relevant to all student’s needs-then perhaps this immoral agent of flagrant corruption will have served a purpose.

Back Pain, Health, Politics, US History

25th Amendment?

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow of the morning. Artemis in late fall. The bare Aspens. The duller green of the Lodgepoles. Gray, cloudy Skies. Recovering from the ablation drugs. Still no pain except for one area over the right hip. Remembering this man, the one before the pain. Ruth coming up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. With a sugar cream pie. Winter Solstice less than a month away. Holiseason well underway.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son’s sophisticated ethical reasoning

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining:   With the still new sensation of a largely pain free lower back, all manner of things withheld came flooding back: that trip to Korea, maybe by way of Taipei to see the National Museum, even Melbourne in far away Australia, back to Mussar and Bagel Table in person, local travel in Colorado, New Mexico, yet I have to wait, wait until weeks go by and the relief from the ablation and the steroid prove durable not ephemeral. May it be so.

 

A little giddy. A little, not skeptical, but aware things could change. Right now. Yesterday. This morning. No pain bending over, getting out of bed, going upstairs. Not quite true. There is a spot above my right hip that still flares, but I’m sure a lidocaine patch would calm it down. I’m reluctant to feel as good as I want to feel. Protection against disappointment.

And yet. I feel pretty damned good! Since Korea in September of 2023 I’ve lived with chronic pain that seemed only to get worse. With the hip injection and the ablation I can be hopeful of at the very least a much lessened pain experience.

I’m still weak from months of favoring my back, working out, yes, but not at full strength. I can get some strength back though I’m not sure how much.

The fourth leg of medical treatment starts tomorrow.

 

Just a moment: Let me count the ways. Favoring a larger, stronger state in its war against a smaller one. Misogynism with no shame, even bruited as a sign of honesty. Huh? Making millions from deals involving foreign allies. Even ordering the Justice Department to repay hundreds of millions of dollars in doubtfully earned restitution. Pardoning citizens investigated and convicted of insurrection. Directing the department of Justice (note that word) to go after rivals, persons seen as enemies. Having close ties with a man whose ability to tempt and seduce made him a human simulacrum for the devil. Denying food, medicine, and birth control to citizens of poor nations. Blowing up real boats, with real people and calling it an act of war when no war has been declared. Using the military to occupy American cities.

None of this is invisible or in question. Yet it’s wrong on its face, blatant, egregious. All from the President, our President. Why hasn’t the 25th amendment been invoked?

Memories, US History

My Inner Kid Chose to Speak.

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. The Hummingbird, Josh and Sarah’s new restaurant. The gathering darkness of late Fall. The journey of all men with prostate cancer. Dr. Carter and the medical physicist, developing a plan. The MRI. The PET scan. Tom, his journey. Walking each other home. Bishop Berkley. Leibniz. Hume. All who wonder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Science Fiction

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Chesed.  Loving Kindness.        “Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind see.”  Mark Twain

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The Stars above, the Samain Moon, constellations created in the mind, Galaxies, local clusters, the Cosmic vastness, a void filled with the stuff of dreams and wishes, stuff of very stuff, no less part of the one than your big toe or mine. And, no more.

 

When Dad became the editor of the Times-Tribune, Alexandria’s daily newspaper (in a town of 5,000. Can you imagine?), Bob Feemster, who bought the paper and hired Dad, believed he needed a television to keep up with national news, especially elections.

That meant our family was among the first in Alexandria to have a staticky, rabbit-eared box of vacuum tubes and a black and white cathode ray tube that somehow captured something out of the sky, turning it into pictures, moving and talking pictures. Wow.

And so. Saturday morning television. The children’s time with cartoons like Woody the Woodpecker, Donald Duck, Yosemite Sam, and Tom and Jerry. Also, dramas. Roy Rogers, Captain Midnight, Sky King. Captain Renfrew of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his dog, Lightening, Tarzan, and the Cisco Kid.

That all seems quaint today with streaming services that have pushed broadcast TV into near extinction. No Saturday morning kid’s time because cartoons can be found all day and night, every day of the week. As well, of course, so many dramas, comedies, movies. Just head over to the Disney Channel. Or, if the fare there smacks too much of patronizing adulthood, go to Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu.

I know it’s naive to say that my 1950’s childhood was innocent. Those TV shows I listed above were often explicitly racist and certainly sexist, reinforcing the worst of what kids learned in the home and from their friends. Me Tarzan, you Jane. Hey, Cisco. Hey Pancho.

Yet it was simpler, at least in the amount of information we had regular access to. No internet or smartphones or Google, their equivalent in my hometown was the Carnegie Library. Even that had a children’s collection and an adult collection.

Most kids did not have a mother who had been to Europe and Africa though many fathers had fought in France, Italy, Germany, some in northern Africa. So there were those connections, in all their horrifying reality, to somewhere far away.

Then, too, the Cold War. Sputnik. Nuclear weapons and mushroom clouds. No, hardly innocent.

And here I sit, on Shadow Mountain, over seventy years later from the time Bob Feemster brought that little black box into our home. Those days seem so far away, both in time and in the content of daily life. Yet. They shaped much of what I believed was true, much of which I’ve had to unlearn.

We all carry those young kids with us. For life. Mine chose to speak to me this morning.

 

Family, US History, World History

A Military Family

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Patel. MVP. Cabbage and Butter Beans. Shadow and her dreaming. Paul. The Maine Coast. The St. Croix. The Bay of Fundy where the Tides sometimes reach a height of eighty feet. New Brunswick. Champlain Bubbles. The Camp. The Farmhouse. Findlay. Toby. Lobster pots. Lobster rolls.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: MVP

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Chesed.  Loving Kindness.  “Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind see.”  Mark Twain

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Feeling the stirrings of another novel, or novel revision, perhaps both, rereading my work featuring the Edmund Fitzgerald, learning about Wolf 21 and unzipping Superior Wolf to focus on Lycaon and his descendants, then adding the Rockies and the Denver metro, anyhow it feels good to have something bubbling, rising.

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Veterans Day:  The first Ellis in the New World, Richard, who came here in 1707, (no, I can’t explain the birth date on this headstone) fought and attained the rank of Captain in the Revolutionary War. His father was a Captain in the occupying army of William and Mary in Ireland. His mother sent him to an uncle in Virginia from Dublin, but the ship captain, in a practice apparently common at the time, kept his fare and sold him into indentured servitude in Massachusetts. As you can see from his headstone, he founded the town of Ashfield, Ma.

The first Spitlers (my Dad’s mom’s maiden name) fought on the side of the British as Hessian mercenaries. They never went home and became respected woodworkers in Virginia. And owned slaves.

I have relatives whose names I don’t recall who fought in the Civil War. Don’t know about WWI.

Both of my parents and my Uncle Riley (cousin Diane’s Dad) were veterans of WWII. Joseph, when he retires, will be a veteran. Neither Mark (my brother) or I served, so we’re outliers in this family history.

My mom served as a W.A.C. in the Signal (intelligence) Corps. She spent time in Algiers, Capris, Rome, and, I think England. My sister Mary found her name on a veteran’s memorial wall at her alma mater, and mine and Mary’s, Ball State University.

Dad flew liaison planes, spending his whole time in the U.S. He dropped bags of flour on troops in training to simulate bombs and ferried from place to place many of the key players in the Manhattan Project. He never flew afterward.

A military family. Patriots. Who served their country at critical moments in their young lives.

When I and so many others opposed the Vietnam War, we mistakenly and wrongly put the blame on those men and women now veterans of that war. Our opposition should have focused solely on the old white men in Washington sending among others, poor Black men to die for their sins. I regret that error.

My son’s military career has given me a chance to be on many Air Force Bases from Georgia to Korea. On those bases I’ve met his fellow officers who have been, to a person, thoughtful, kind, and devoted to the U.S. They have humanized the military for me in a way even Mom and Dad did not.

So this day I honor all those who served, who fought, who gave portions or all of the lives to defending this county.

Back Pain, Cancer, Cooking, Coronavirus, Politics, Post Polio, Sport, US History

How Great an America is This?

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Dodgers win the World Series! Rabbi Jamie’s hug. Joe. Alan. Jim. Corey. Irv. Matt. Torah study led by Luke. Bagels and schmear. Joanne in rehab. Back to real time, standard time. Dark Winds. Everwood.  Heather. Tramadol. The boiler. The mini-splits. My breath. Sight. Touch. Taste. Hearing. Smell. YHWH.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Home

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Histapkot.  Contentment. Acceptance.                       I’m comfortable with who I am and with what I have.

Tarot: Being a metaphysician

One brief shining: Sitting in regular chairs, my head unsupported by a back rest, fasciculations begin, muscles straining and flexing, moving under the skin, distracting me from the words of Hagar and the Angel, from El-Roi, the God who sees, I don’t notice it, the wobbling, at first, until my shoulders get sore and I’m no longer able to concentrate, be sharp, as my head tilts right, polio wreaking one last not so subtle blow.

 

So. I’m taking notice. Part of my fatigue, maybe a big part, follows from my increasing inability to hold up my own head. Dr. Eunberg diagnosed it, post-polio syndrome. I’ve been to an orthotists’ office and been told my situation has no other instances. They’re going to modify soft collars for me. We’ll see.

Beginning to feel like my body’s falling apart literally from the neck down. A tumor on T4 needing radiation. Arthritic L1-L5 nerves needing ablation. A right torn labrum possibly needing surgery. I mean, geez.

I’m so far ahead of my insurance company with expensive cancer drugs, pet scans, mri’s, and radiation. That makes me feel somewhat good. Even so…

 

Food: Had the last of the sheet pan meal with my Cherry Tomatoes and Beets. So. Good. Planning more sheet plan cooking, easy, quick, lots of Veggies. Of all the health maintenance matters, cooking for myself has proved the most challenging. Just hard to pull off.

CookUnity has been ok, but just ok. Pricey and with time constraints that make it difficult to use. Some of the meals are tasty, many of them edible, but only edible.

May not be getting enough calories, protein.

 

Sport: What a world series! Game 7, extra innings, Dodgers behind with two outs in the ninth…and Rojas hits a home run! Tie game. In the 11th, the 11th inning of Game 7 of a world series with a historically long game 3, 18 innings, a double play ended the Canadian’s dreams. Dodger’s repeat. Not since the Yankees 1998-2000 run has a world series champion repeated.

Meanwhile, back in forlorn football country, JJ McCarthy returns from injury absence. Will he play like a future franchise quarterback? Or, will he rip out the hearts of a Twin City’s fan base already inured to the breaks never falling their way. If the Vikings didn’t have bad luck, they’d had have no luck at all.

 

Just a moment: SNAP. Medicaid. Obamacare. Taking money literally from the mouths of the poor, taking away their final recourse for medical care, raising health care premiums to the    sky for even middle class Americans. Funneling the money “saved” into the pockets of oligarchs. How great is this America?

Colorado, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Park County, Plants, The West, US History

A Westerner

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Friday gratefuls: Shadow and Tom’s nylabone. Morning darkness. Hawai’i. Hickam. Honolulu. Diamond Head. Pearl Harbor. Big Island. Kona. Hilo. Volcanoes National Park. Mauna Loa. Kilauea. The Mauna Kea. Waimea. Kauai. Kalalau Trail. Hanalei Bay. Maui. Mama’s Fish House. Haleakala. Lahaina. The Weston. The Pacific. Surfing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hawai’i with Kate

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Yesod.  Groundedness.

Tarot: paused

One brief shining: Funny how peace can soothe us, make us dance in the streets, as if that long long period of death and destruction existed only to show us how much peace means to us, how much stability and order provide the framework for a rich, calm life. Why can we not remember this before we start a war?

The West:  Woke up this morning to find my back door open! Geez. Must have been high winds over night and a not quite closed door. Glad no hyperphagic Bear discovered it. Or, a hungry Mountain Lion. Will make me more vigilant. Shadow Mountain at night. Not a place for open doors.

Been thinking about The West. About becoming a Coloradan. Which happened a few years ago. Not sure I could pinpoint a moment, more like a gradual realization that turning toward the Mountains meant turning towards home.

Becoming a Westerner is different. It has not only a specific and important geographical connotation, but also a mind set, a way of seeing what’s important from a spot that begins, at least for me, at the Front Range where the High Plains fall away and the Rockies begin.

In Indiana and later in Minnesota my attention turned toward the East Coast. To its prominence in U.S. history, its storied Universities, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. The birthplace of our nation.

When I went to college, I chose Wabash, which styled itself as the Harvard of the Midwest. I wanted, for a long time, to live in New York City or D.C. The ocean I thought about was the Atlantic. Somehow destiny and greatness could only be found by going East.

No longer. While in Minnesota, as Mary, Mark, and eventually my son took up residence in Asia, my gaze began to turn West, toward the Pacific. Toward Asia.

As a result, when Kate and I moved to Colorado, I had already begun to redirect my gaze toward the West, toward that region of the country long associated with escape from the fuss budgets and robber baron capitalists, even from the often ossified social status of the Ivy Leagues. Go West, young man!

It has however only been of late that my inner world has fully shifted from those long years of focus on the East Coast as the region of primary importance for our country. Of course, Harvard and Yale. Still there. D.C. Still the center of U.S. political power. New York City. Still the financial center and the locus of the old world’s art and culture.

But. For me. They are all far away. A distant land of strivers, over achievers. Of people who put success before family, even before the nation. I no longer yearn to find my place in the world of their values.

Today my U.S. has Fourteeners. Mountain Streams. Huge amounts of unsettled land. Mule Deer and Elk. Mountain Lions. It is a U.S. defined more by its topography than its ability to shape the wide world. I wonder why I was ever drawn to the kinds of achievement typified by Ph.D.’s, fat bank accounts, ruling the world.

No, I’ve not replaced my suit with a Stetson, blue jeans, and a Western shirt. Although I might some day. Instead I watch Fog cover Black Mountain. I brake for the Elk Cows and their Calves crossing the highway. I live up high, not only distant from the East in miles, but also in altitude. In attitude.

I’ve abandoned the historic early U.S. for the ages long journey of Rocky Mountains, of their Hills and Valleys. For Wild Neighbors. Want to make policy? Consider them. Support and encourage a melding of humans and their natural environment rather than making the world safe for Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Business, Big Egos.

Come out here to learn the human place in the world. Then write your dissertations, create IPO’s, pass laws.

Health, Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

A Half-Teaspoon of Yellow Liquid

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Mabon and the oh so bright Harvest Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Laurie, PET scan tech. The rickety metal stairs. PET scan on wheels. Handicap placard. Shadow, my sweet girl. Kate, always Kate. Farmers. Gardeners. Horticulturists. Bee Keepers. Arborists. Seed Savers. Heirloom Seeds. Vegetables. Flowers. Fruit. Nuts. Herbs. Artemis. Fungi. Light Eaters. Peace.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Moonlight

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Yesod. Groundedness.

Tarot: paused

One brief shining: Shadow lifts the miniature tire high in the air, firmly gripped in her sharp teeth, shakes it as she holds tight, then on the ground, rolls over on her back and the tire does not yield, she presses harder, rolls again, shaking, shaking, until she decides to go for another toy.

 

Peace: Don’t know much about it yet. Headlines. Pictures of Israelis dancing. Trump’s great bulk swelling with dreams of Noble Prizes. Gazans, I imagine, collapsing with some relief though wary, caught still between Hamas and Jewish fears.

Still reeling. Trying to imagine this as the truth, bring it into my reality. Hoping. That other shoe not far off the floor. Time, tincture of time as my Kate would say.

The Middle East has changed in fundamental ways though we don’t what they are just yet. My hope is for a return to the Saudi/Israel/Emirates peace deal. A new axis of the self-interested, Sunnis and Jews together against Shia terrorism.

Another hope: Netanyahu prosecuted and jailed. War as a crime. Lengthening it for his own selfish, evil needs.

A Palestinian state. May it be so.

Until more becomes evident I finish this.

 

Just a moment: The Burger King as peacemaker? Hell, let him have the credit if the peace holds. Yet. What about peace at home? What about his war on the poor, the Brown, the non-Christian? Give peace afar and take it away here? Not the mark of a sane man.

We cannot let any adulation he receives paper over cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, to burning food and medicine already allocated for 3rd world peoples, to pressuring the courts with threats and bad lawyering, to stressing the strongest and best functioning economy in the world, to his destruction of our reputation abroad.

Still. A. Scumbag.

 

PET Scan: I rolled onto Dry Creek Road at 11:50 am, forty-five minutes from home, drove a short distance past Pulmonary Intensivists who treated Kate now long ago, and into the parking lot of Rocky Mountain Cancer Care. All medicine all the time.

Checked in, paid my $250 copay for imaging, and sat down to wait. A young man sat nearby, a strained worried look on his face. He did not invite conversation and I followed my usual siloing by pulling out Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, my readers, finding my place, and continuing to follow Lily Bart’s journey through the Gilded Age with nothing but beauty to sustain her.

“Buckman.”

“Sort of,” I said under my breath. Jaggedness from the drive and the scan leaking out. Laurie guided me through the halls of this older facility, out a door to the outside, and up metal stairs to the mobile PET Scan unit. The same one I had my initial scan in so many years ago when it sat in faraway Aurora.

Laurie covered my legs with a warm blanket as she readied me for the injection of the isotope attached PSMA. First, a butterfly needle for an IV.  A push of saline. Opening a lead cabinet with the same radiation hazard emblem on it I had on my red t-shirt from Los Alamos. A syringe with no more than half a teaspoon of a yellow liquid. In through the IV. Another push of saline.

As the radioactive yellow liquid moved into my bloodstream, it takes about fifty minutes for it to find and link up with the prostate cancer cells metastasized in various parts of my body, I tilted the chair back, closed my eyes, said my mantra-Stream flowing, White Pine rooting-and took a rest somewhere between sleeping and dreaming.

Laurie came back to see if I wanted to use the men’s room before the scan. Always a good idea. Back inside. When we returned, Laurie positioned me on the metal sled that glides in and out of the scanner. Again I closed my eyes, still a bit drowsy from my nap. Twenty minutes later, scan finished, I got back in Ruby and drove home.

 

Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

This Damned War

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Cool nights. Tomatoes. Beets. Carrots. CBE men’s group. Irv. Jim. Joe. Jamie. Lawyer. Jamie’s sabbatical. Football. Soccer. Basketball. Baseball. F1. Boiler. Mini-splits. Dog food. Dog treats. New York Times. Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Talmud. Torah. Alan. Cheri. Francesca. Tom.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Conversation

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Yesod. Foundation. Groundedness. Tenth sefirot. The link between this world and the world of sacred becoming.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Her curled up softness on the bed, sleeping like a young child, breathing slowly, I reach over and touch her lightly, not enough to wake her, but enough to say I love you to her dream world. My Shadow.

 

Israel: Talk about complicated. I mean, geez. This beacon of hope for a post-holocaust diaspora. The Nakba. A thriving techno state filled with agriculture, the ancient sites of Christianity and Islam as well as their mother, Judaism. A military powerhouse, who doesn’t know about the IDF: the Israeli Defense Force. A land of Jews surrounded by Arabs who would like to push them out: from the river to the sea.

Beloved of American Jewry. A strong, very strong lobby in D.C. A place where aliyah makes real the promise of escape to a safe space. A wonder considering years of pogroms, inquisitions, ghettoes, anti-Semitism.

Then, bam! October 7th. Hamas. Murderous. Rapist. Hostages. Embarrassing for this mighty mite with Mossad, IDF stationed nearby. The world onside. Terrorists. Shooting up a music festival. Go after them! You have the right to strike back.

Then. Bombs. Bombs. Bombs. Homes, hospitals, places of business. Trying to kill Hamas, a well-tunneled enemy, hiding in Mother Earth and, shamefully, within the wretched of the Earth, the Palestinian citizens of Gaza.

OK. Surely that’s enough. How many thousands dead? Non-combatants. Civilians. Mothers and children. You’ve made your point. But Israel didn’t, hasn’t stopped. Kill Hamas. Total destruction of an enemy. The war aim. When the war itself ensures more and more recruits for the enemy. Which will never die because it’s an idea, a no to the dreams of 1949. A no to Jewish safety. A no to the perceived oppressor. One man’s revolutionary is another man’s terrorist.

How will it end? IDK. Maybe the Burger King will pull off a win. I hope so. Yes, even though… Hell, give him the damned prize. If only he can stop the slaughter and start the inner journey of a post-war Israel. A journey that must reckon with blood lust, with the responsibility of great power, with the irony of becoming the Cossack, the Nazi. Killing without remorse. Most difficult. With the reality that Netanyahu extended the war, the death and destruction, to avoid criminal prosecution. And nobody stopped him.

Yet. I still want to visit Israel. Which the war prevented. To see the Wailing Wall. The old city. The Arab quarter. Restaurants catering to meat and not dairy or dairy not meat. To have an Israeli breakfast. See Masada. The Sea of Galilee. Bethlehem. Gethsemane. The kibbutz. Megiddo.

Oh Israel. So much sorrow.

 

Far Right, Health, Holidays, Judaism, New Apostolic Reformation, Politics, Shabbat, US History

Kinetic, Joyful, Earth and Human Focused

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shabbat. Israel. Gaza. Palestinians. A Palestinian state. Hafar. Osan. Melbourne. Conifer. Longmont. Denver. Family. Cold frames. Artemis. Almost finished. Shadow. Kate, always Kate. Travel. Maybe possible. Neck brace. Lidocaine. Dr. Vu. Mountain View Pain Center. Kylie. Evergreen Orthotics. Handicap placard. Alan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Nathan

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Yesod. Foundation. Groundedness. Tenth sefirot. The link between this world and the world of sacred becoming.

Tarot: paused

One brief shining: Two days out from my last lidocaine injections and still feeling some relief, really, a lot of relief, relief that has made a certain part of me awaken, the active ready-to-go person who can get things done without wincing, wakes up without caution, who might even dance if he ever had.

 

Sukkot*: Begins on Monday. The Jewish Mabon and Samain. A festival of ingathering, of the harvest. The sukkahs represent not only the temporary dwellings in the wilderness, but also the temporary dwellings farmers would erect so they could work in the fields until the harvest was complete.

The lulav:** The lulav (with three species) is held in the right hand and the ertrog in the left. A blessing for the harvest and for rain is implied as the lulav gets waved through all four directions plus up and down.

Sukkot is a joyous holiday with meals in the Sukkah. At CBE we often study in the Sukkah.

My delight with Judaism begins on Sukkot, an ancient harvest holiday of celebration for Mother Earth’s bounty, of family and friends, of farming.

After Sukkot comes Simchat Torah, dancing with the Torah as one year’s reading ends with the burial of Moses and the next year’s begins with Bereshit, or Beginnings: Genesis. Both of these holidays are kinetic, joyful, earth and human focused. And old. I love the fact that these traditions have been observed for thousands of years.

See you in the sukkah.

 

Just a moment: From joy and delight to anger and disgust. I can feel the moment. The moment, now, when enough of us say enough of this miserable son-of-a-bitch who lies, seeks vengeance, grabs wealth for himself and his oligarchic posse, destroys our nation by ignoring democratic norms, blessing white supremacy and a militant far right, including Christians of the New Apostolic Reformation, all while displaying the moral sensibilities of a rutting boar(bore).

Can you tell I don’t like him?

Still no reply to my e-mail to the President of Ball State. Connecting with David Letterman has proven a challenge-a well-guarded celebrity-but I’m still on it.

When we have any personal linkage to the Burger King’s awful choices, we need to use that leverage to oppose him. Today and until 2028. God. That’s a long, long time.

  • *Agricultural: It is an autumn harvest festival, also called Chag HaAsif (“Festival of the Ingathering”). It is a time for expressing gratitude for the bounty of the earth and the final crops gathered before winter. 
  •  Historical: The holiday commemorates the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt, living in temporary shelters. Building and dwelling in a sukkah recalls the miraculous protection that God provided during that time.

**Lulav ([lu’lav]; Hebrew: לוּלָב‎) is a closed frond of the date palm tree. It is one of the Four Species used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The other Species are the hadass (myrtle), aravah (willow), and etrog (citron). When bound together, the lulav, hadass, and aravah are commonly referred to as “the lulav”.