Category Archives: US History

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Politics, US History

Defy Tradition and Religion

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Winter and the Cold Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Cold. 3 degrees this morning. MLK. The Civil War. The new Civil War.  Heather Cox Richardson. Writing. Iowa. GOP primaries.  Wild Neighbors in the cold. Lodgepoles and Aspen, too. Built for it. A warm house. The mini-splits. Snow. Brother Mark’s ideas for warm places. Miami. New Orleans. Los Angeles. Upset stomach. Coffee. Water.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Gastrointestinal System

One brief shining: Look up and Snow falls driven by a western Wind coating the Lodgepole Needles, raising the lev to  Snowy memories of Winters past, a smile and a gratefulness for all memories settle in for a beautiful January day.

 

Wonder how the Texas grid is doing? It be cold outside almost everywhere in these disunited states. Even, especially, in Iowa. Brother Mark sent me a link to a video based on an old Paul Harvey story called And God Made a Farmer.  In this one it’s And God Made Donald Trump. I wrote back to my brother, as one of His former employees I call bullshit. Sure even 45 was made in God’s image but like any well-made product venality and hubris will invalidate the warranty. (OK. OK. Not really invalidate. I mean. You know. Teshuva. The return. Sort of the Jewish equivalent of redemption. Always possible.) But he whispered, highly unlikely.

 

MLK. Malcolm X. So glad we have this holiday and now Juneteenth, too. Even in these benighted political times they shine a spotlight on where we still could go as a people, as a nation. Reading Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening. She makes a strong case that today is a direct extension of yesterday. Both in terms of the populist racist anti-semitic tone of our era and in terms of the liberal consensus that lies just beneath the surface, one that agrees government needs to regulate business and support the commonweal.

The most telling part of her book for me has been her recounting of the through line from William Buckley to Trump.  Buckley pushed tradition and religion rather than fact based decision making. I had not made that connection and it’s pretty damned obvious when you read her.

His creation, Movement Conservatism, gained momentum after Kennedy through the machinations of a storied cast of characters including Roger Stone, Lee Atwater, Pat Buchanan, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and other political operatives. With their strategic help Newt Gingrich, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, especially Reagan, took Movement Conservatism into the realm of government policy. George W. Bush pushed the ball forward too.

We are now reaping the whirlwind of Buckley’s insistence that tradition (think white, wealthy, and racist) and religion (think evangelical Christian and rightwing Roman Catholicism) are the only anchors for a stable society. Ironic, isn’t it, that those very forces have created the most unstable and chaotic society I’ve known in my lifetime.

It remains on us to join hands with MLK and Brother Malcolm. To defy the tradition and religion held close to the heart by those who would gut our democracy.

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, US History, World History

A Life Full and Rich

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Winter and the Cold Moon

Friday gratefuls: Irv. Tom. Marilyn. Susan. Driving. Hearing. Tested today. Lodgepole Home. Black Mountain. Genocide trial at the U.N. For Israel. America and allies strike the Houthis. WWIII? U.S. Nato. Ukraine. Israel. V. Iran. China. Russia. A post hegemon world. Lev. Metaphor. Rock. Water. Fire. Sound. Clouds. Mountains. Flowers. Death seeds. Those two Mule Deer Does.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cooking

One brief shining: Drew my knife through the salt pork dicing it into quarter inch cubes; it was almost all fat realized I knew nothing about salt pork, regretted that since I had committed myself to making Hoppin’ John with this as a major ingredient rendering the fat and making the salt pork crisp did not make it more edible, next time I’m using bacon.

 

As if the world had insufficient chaos. Now the U.S. has bombed Yemen. Houthis say they will retaliate. What a mess. Ukraine at the northern pole, Israel/Hamas at the southern. This has all the potential of blowing up into a two front war for the U.S. Why wouldn’t China take advantage of a U.S. mired in the Middle East and Ukraine to invade Taiwan? What would the world do then?

Oh by the way. One of, if not the, most fateful elections in the U.S. begins its primaries next week. Other nations too have important elections this year. 45 went off on the judge and the prosecutor at his fraud trial. Claims and cases piling up at the Supreme Court around him. The specter of his “base” rising up if he loses. The worse specter of his base rising up if he wins. OMG.

How bout that Covid wave underway right now? The cold slumping down from the Arctic? Saw it will test the Texas power grid. Again. Geez, c’mon guys!

All this distraction. We need a world united in the struggle to limit climate change. To adapt to the way it will ravage human civilization. Nope. We want to kill each other over religion and power. We know how to do that. We’re good at it.

Then we can throw in the worst surge of anti-semitism in the U.S. since the ADL started tracking attacks in the 1970’s. Which parallels the rise of racist incidents occasioned by legitimization of white supremacy by the very man who apparently has a lock on the Republican party nomination for President.

Oh the ways in which our country, our world has taken giant steps backward. Just in the past few years. It makes me sad. Angry? Yes, but I no longer know what to do with my anger.

 

Shoot. I was gonna talk about visiting with Irv and having a dorm room conversation about the afterlife. Or, how I made Hoppin’ John. Or, how happy I was with Tom’s cardiology visit results.

Well. I will say this. Got my new CD player. The one Odie recommended. Works great. Especially given that I’m deaf in one ear and can’t hear out of the other one. Listening to Mozart. Ah. Put in another CD. Pablo Casals. Playing Bach’s six suites for cello. Many of them for solo cello. Remembered my love affair with cello music. Went into it as I once did at the Ordway. Letting the music run up and down my body, triggering emotions, sensations. This is art I can experience at home.

That excited me. Music. Friends. Study. Reading. Cooking. Family. That all suddenly felt enough. Like my life didn’t need more. Was complete. I still feel that way. A life with a smaller ambit. Yet one full and rich. Yes. Also, why I don’t know what to do with my anger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Garden, Memories, Minnesota, Politics, US History

Neither Trump nor Biden

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Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon

Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Lila and Liks. Ryder. 12 degrees this morning. A good Snow overnight. Spelling Bee. Black Mountain not visible. Still Snowing. The Ancient Brothers. Aleph. Lamech. Bet. Tav. Mem. Nun. My torah portion. Unboxing my cd player. The Brothers Sun. El Ninõ. Furball Cleaning. Ana and Lita. Music. Black-eyed peas. Soup. Crackers. Sardines and Salmon, Tuna.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The waning crescent Winter Solstice Moon

One brief shining: If Kate and I were still in Andover, we would be sitting at our long kitchen table, pages opened in many Seed catalogues, discussing planting for the upcoming year should we try Leeks again, what was that Iris you saw, pages riffle, oh, that’s a beauty, look at this Garlic, these heirloom Tomatoes, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, and wondering if the Bees survived the winter so Artemis Honey could fill up more jars and bottles.

 

I ordered a couple of Seed catalogues this year. Maybe Harris and Seed Savers. They came. I looked at them briefly, but without the promise of planting, tending to the plants, harvest. I put them away. No regret. It was time to let the Gardens and the Orchard pass to other younger hands. And they did.

The memories and photographs of those times though. Rich and lush like the early May Flower beds, the late August Garden beds, a Tree weighted down with Honeycrisp Apples. Like a hive humming with Bees, flying in and out, making honey and propolis and wax. Like an Irish Wolfhound at play. Tor gently reaching through the Garden fence in September to pluck golden Raspberries straight from the Cane.

Cool fall evenings around the firepit with Kate, hot chocolate, some Oak or Ironwood crackling with orange and blue. A good life.

 

Yesterday the Ancient Brothers made four predictions each. Perhaps unsurprising in one instance. We all predicted Trump would lose. Two of us predicted unrest and chaos. I hadn’t thought of that but, yes, I imagine so. 45 has dominated and shaped an ugly era of American politics and civic life. You know that. Yet my final prediction was that, even if the worst happens, ordinary life will go on. People will get up in the morning. Go to work. Raise children. Buy assault rifles. Probably at Walmart.

Will those predictions about the election come true? Hell if I know. Our poor political system has had the stuffin’ kicked out of it. The primaries hold little suspense. The choices already seem self-evident. Old and older. Though of course that can change. I hope it changes. I would prefer neither Trump nor Biden on the ticket in the fall.

I say that because I want Trump gone and I can see several different scenarios where he gets knocked aside by a health issue or legal peril. I say that because Biden, who has performed way above expectations, guiding the ship through turbulence of all sorts, does not have what we need. Youth. Energy. Vision. A statesperson who can lift us all up, remind us of the ideals that have made this flawed nation a great nation. TBD.

Memories, Politics, US History

Oh, what fun it will be

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Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon

Sunday gratefuls: the Dark. 2023. 2024. Years. Months. Days. Calendars. Mayan. Gregorian. Julian. Lunar. Jewish. Chinese. Rice cakes in Korea. Our need to carve up the invisible, time, into smaller and smaller bits. Nanoseconds. Then, for contrast: Eons. Epochs. Ages. Time obsession. Time zones. A 24 hour day. Standard time. Daylight Savings Time. Dawn. Dusk. Midday. The Noonday Devil. What if we just let it all be?

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Watches and Clocks

One brief shining: New Year’s eve that special time with the ball in New York City with that never empty shot glass at that dingy bar on some lonely street or with friends in silly hats and noise makers, boo 2023, 2024 making promises it cannot keep, protection from the ravages experienced at the hands of 2023 an Et tu Brutus of a year for sure with me here at home, listening to classical music, eating steak Diane, reading poetry.

 

2023. Let’s look back. Or, maybe not. Cheer up. Things could be worse. So I cheered up and sure enough 2024 came along with the most under anticipated, unwanted, yet most consequential election in our nation’s short history. Can you imagine the backrooms of the dark money folks getting ready to spend big on neuroscience approved ads? Or, the gleeful hackers in the crumbling 19th century mansion near some Russian backwater army post wringing their hands, ready to hit those keys and change American hearts and minds with lies and false facts. Perhaps you prefer to create a vision of young Chinese men and women fitted out with the latest and fastest in screaming cybermachines, driven by software and algorithms unthinkable only months ago. All of them aimed at your heart. Your mind. Our democracy.

Yes, our elections are not just for us to steal anymore. Sure, we’ve still got the operatives like Karl Rove or Lee Atwater or most damaging, the guy or woman you’ve never heard of who does things you’ll never hear about, quietly and with small knives. All that crashes toward us, but the storm surge, made outsized by those far away, now contains literally our worst enemies, too.

Oh, what fun it will be.

 

Anyhow let’s look backwards for a moment. Highlights of 2023. Colorado made psilocybin and other hallucinogens legal. Wolves got reintroduced here. Our Supreme Court and a district court both said out loud and officially that 45 fomented insurrection. And our Supreme Court banned him from the ballot because of it. Our snowpack was far above average. I went under three times and came out Israel. Mary made it back to Malaysia. Mark has found joy in teaching. Diane went to the Redwoods, Gold Rush country, and Taiwan. I went to Korea. My son and his wife moved to Songtan from Hawai’i. Murdoch, too. I saw that magnificent bull Elk in the rain. At night. Our economy avoided recession. A23a broke loose from its moorings and took off on an adventure. Earth herself ran a fever. A lot of people fell in love, got married, had babies. Did good deeds. Mitzvahs. Lived their ordinary lives in ordinary ways.

Final thought about 2023. All sacred.

Colorado, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Fungi, Health, Hermitage, Holidays, Myth and Story, Park County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, The West, Travel, US History

Surrender Charlie

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Heidi. The Dragonfly Sign. Colorado Supreme Court. Psilocybin. Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics. Surrender. Irv. Rider. Mt. Logan. Crooked Top Mountain. The Grandfather Tree. Park County 43. Buggy Whip Road. Hangman’s Road. Washington County Maine. Climate change. Shadow Mountain. The Rockies. The Front Range. Alan. Bastien’s Steak House. The Winter Solstice. Holimonth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Colorado Supreme Court

One brief shining: A cloth with Native American colors marking the four directions, circular, laid on it cut white Roses, small Pine Tree Branches, red Roses, Cinnamon, Coffee beans, Star Anise, Aspen Leaves arranged for a Peruvian gratitude ceremony in which I picked up a small Branch of Pine Needles, inhaled its essence three times and exhaled my love and gratitude before placing the needles gently in the center.

 

OK, nation! See Colorado go. I loved living in Minnesota and in the Twin Cities for forty years. The North Woods. Wolves. Lake Superior. So many Lakes. Liberal to radical politics. Not perfect, no. Witness George Floyd. But no place is. And Minnesota seemed as close as they come while I lived there. Then Kate and I moved to Shadow Mountain.

As the Dead said: What a long, strange trip it’s been. Many of you know my story over the now 9 years exactly since my buddy Tom and I drove straight through from the Twin Cities with Kepler, Vega, and Rigel in the back. And, yes, that story has its definite peaks and valleys. But that’s not my reference here.

No where else in the country, this divided and often pitiful land of ours, could I have had a legal psychedelic journey on Crooked Top Mountain then come home to Shadow Mountain and read the wonderful news that the Colorado Supreme Court had called a crook a crook, an insurrectionist an insurrectionist and kicked Trump off our ballot. I mean, whoa! What a day.

I shifted my inner identification a few years back from Minnesotan to Coloradan, my Mountain home become just that. Home. Yes, we elected a gay Governor. How bout that. And of course the wild Neighbors and the Mountain Streams and the Black Bears. The Snow and the spectacular Autumns with gold and green. Over the time I’ve lived here Colorado has shifted from red to blue. Not without some Western weirdness along the way, but that makes it interesting. All that’s true.

But in one day to take a psilocybin journey with a good friend on property so evocative of a sixties commune and then learn we Coloradans had taken a firm stand, saying what all clear eyed non Trump bedazzled folks already know but somehow cannot communicate, that insurrectionists should not, in fact,cannot hold office. Well, I’m busting with state pride right now. Colorado is the California of the new Millennia. OK. Enough local chauvinism. Still, pretty damned cool. Gives this aging radical a boost.

 

Short note on the psilocybin journey about which more later. Ate the mushroom after the gratitude ceremony. Mixed with a little lemon juice supposed to make it come on quicker and go sooner. Sat outside in the glass enclosed shelter where we held the gratitude ceremony, the others going inside. Watched the curved Snowy Bowl of Mt. Logan as my inner weather shifted under the power of the mushroom.

Went inside and lay down on a heated pad. Soon Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics began to move across the ceiling. Sometimes two dimensional sometimes three almost down to my face. I love hallucinations. So fun. I told my guide I might be under utilizing the experience; it was so entertaining.

Turned out no. I hadn’t. I had two intentions going in, the one I wrote about yesterday, how to live fully, and the second to continue my exploration of the sacred.

During some brief conversation after being asked if we had any insights I said, yes, I had one. In living more fully I’ve pushed, thought about things to do, about acting in my life to live more fully. Answering Shakespeare, I have always chosen to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Now I need to learn surrender.

To live fully I need to open up, accept what’s coming. Greet the new year with arms spread wide for what it brings rather than what I can make happen. Well, not rather than. I mean, I’ll still take up arms, of course I will, but I learned yesterday that I have another option. To embrace, to wait, to listen, to let the world and its wonders come to me. As the Wicked Witch of the West might say, “Surrender, Charlie!”

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, US History

Religion and Its Cultured Despisers

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Tara. The Mikvah. Shema Yisrael. Adonai eloheynu. Adonai echad. Prayerful humility. Being a new Jew. The Sabbath. Jacob wrestling at the Jabbok Ford. Zornberg. Great Sol lighting up the Snow on the Lodgepole Branches. A crisp, clear and blue Sky. The Iliad. The Jacob cycle in Genesis. Israel. Me. Soon anyhow. In shallah. All the Dogs. And their human companions. Wild Neighbors.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Books

One brief shining: Read an article yesterday about increasing nones, yes nones not nuns, in particular among Millennials and younger, which prodded me to remember Friedrich Schleiermacher and his book, Religion and Its Cultured Despisers, then to wonder why I, a man almost as far away generationally as possible from the new nones, chose to embrace a religion while others flee them.

 

No. This is not a question of doubt about my choice. It’s firm and almost ritualized. Tuesday. It’s about those cycles of history when certain institutions get shunned, disbelieved, set aside as archaic, over with. It’s about me and my choices over a lifetime and why I’ve made them. Mostly though its about religion and those who would be nones. Not relevant to those who would be nuns.

Three times I have rejected institutional religion. The first. After studying philosophy and finding Christianity’s arguments dissolved in the acids of logic. The second. After finding Christianity’s claims dissolved through love of my son. The third. After finding liberal religion, Unitarian-Universalism, had no there there for me. At that point I turned to the Soil, to the Bees, to heirloom Tomatoes, to Rhizomes and Bulbs, to Kate, to Dogs, to Great Sol and the Great Wheel. Became a pagan.

On Tuesday I’ll make my fourth teshuva, return, to an organized old religious tradition. You could look at this and say why can’t he make up his mind? I mean, geez. Really? Fair enough. Although as I look at this pattern, I see something different. I see a man who could not let go of a search for the sacred, the holy. Who was not satisfied. But also one who kept his heart and mind and soul open, willing to learn, to see what he was looking at.

Could I have gone on to my death as a pagan, devoted to the Soil and my Wild Neighbors, to the Great Mother who birthed us all and to whom we return? Yes. I could have. That’s why my pagan heart will still guide much of my search for the sacred and the holy. I will not stop listening to the Mule Deer, the Elk Bull, the crashing Waters of a Spring Maxwell Creek. I will not stop seeing the holiness in Black Mountain or in the wide Pacific or in Great Sol.

Yet my heart, which guides me now more than my mind, could not escape this. I find the sacred, the holy, the divine, in other humans too. And so many of those humans: Alan, Tara, Susan, Joan, Jamie, Ellen, Dick, Ron, Rich, Cheri, Marilyn, Irv, Veronica, Mark, Lauren, Karen, Sally, Nancy, Ruth, Gabe, Kate of blessed memory, Leslie, Rebecca, Anne, Luke, Tal, Iris, Jamie Bernstein, Stephen, yes all of these and more I know but not well, are all Jewish. When I walk into the sanctuary for a service, it is my friends who make it holy. And my heart, this insistent and stubborn heart/mind-my lev said follow them further.

Not only that. But, thanks to Kate, eight years of holidays, learnings, immersion in the Jewish world. Of seeing how dogma simply does not exist in a Reconstructionist Jewish frame. That these folks are seekers, searchers too. And willing to investigate, rethink, reimagine. Everything. Yet to still celebrate that search in a three-thousand year old vessel which carries great wisdom about how to be human. In other words, how to be sacred.

I know. I admit I’m drawn to the prayers, to the rituals, to the careful and unusual hermeneutic of Torah study. That I find comfort and even solace in them. That’s the monk in me. Yet the pagan, the pilgrim still on the path finds food here, too. I am not alone in my insistence on finding the sacred and the holy in the Mountains, the Streams, the Black Bears and Mountains Lions. I am also not alone in finding the wisdom of the Rabbi’s, of the authors whoever they were of the Torah, of the whole Tanakh, a living stream, one way of seeing not only what I’m looking at but what I’m looking for.

Holidays, Judaism, Politics, US History

Thanksgiving

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Thanksgiving gratefuls: Ruth and her Thanksgiving meal. Gabe, as, well, Gabe. Mia, my granddaughter from another mother. Jen. The shema. The mezuzahs. Darkness. An early morning/nighttime conversation across the Pacific with my son and Seoah. My son in Hawai’i next week. Murdoch. Gratitude. Thanksgiving. Alan. Marilyn and Irv. Tara. Rich. Jamie. Ron. Holimonth. Thanksgiving itself. Native American Heritage day. Native/First Nation Americans. The West. Shadow Mountain. Snow on the way.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Thanksgiving

One brief shining: The kitchen island had sprouted small oasis’s of food the Mushroom Wild Rice stuffing, the Persimmon and Pomegranate salad, cut Vegetables, Turkey breast, Corn bread stuffing, a spiral cut ham, so we grabbed our plates from the table and moved like folks in a cake walk making sure our plates got the good stuff.

 

Columbus Day. Native American genocide. America’s embrace of slavery. The too casual churning of history to invest a wonderful holiday with faux roots. Yes. All true and all bad. Sins for which we will and must atone. Not yesterday, but right now. The United States did not invent coloring its history and holidays with imperial swagger and false memories. But we have done it, too. Here is a New Yorker article that details this effect for Thanksgiving.

Yet. I choose this morning to return to Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving for the entire nation. Its last paragraph is below.* Here is a link to the whole which is worth reading. This man knew how to write, but had his Secretary of Defense, William Seward, pen this one.

Sarah Hale

This came before the linkage with Plymouth Rock and the Wampanoag visitation to the Pilgrims, apparently as part of a mutual defense pact. See the New Yorker article.

It came after a long campaign by Sara Josepha Hale, a woman of many talents, including being among the first female American novelists and the forty year editor of the most widely circulated magazine prior to the Civil War, Godey’s Lady’s Book.

In her spirit. This holiday, a secular one celebrated throughout the country and in other places where the American diaspora resides, unites us in gratitude. It does this in spite of the mess made of our history and later added to its celebration. Gratitude, taken in acknowledgement of our need for “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience”, has the effect of dissolving bad feelings, opening hearts, and reminding us of what is good in our life. No matter the life.

I see it as a holiday that has two great impulses. The first, echoed by the what are we thankful for question heard at many Thanksgiving tables, turns our attention to gratitude. My first spiritual director, a Jesuit nun, had me keep a gratitude journal, saying that all of spirituality can be found in gratitude. I believe that to this day. The second impulse, to bring friends and family around a common table, is a necessary counter to the atomized meal times of our current lives and reinforces the truth of family, together whether MAGA or not. As it did for me yesterday when I celebrated with Ruth, Gabe, Mia, and Jen.

One last note. If you have ever been puzzled by my gratefuls, let me explain. In the Jewish tradition a unitary metaphysic was once denominated through the notion of monotheism. God is God of all and all is of God. Though many Jews, like me, have passed into a secular reality, the notion of a unitary metaphysic remains. And it has troublesome implications.

That is. We must be grateful for the yetzer hara, the selfish inclination, as well as the yetzer hatov or the good inclination, for example. We must be grateful for Hamas as well as Israel, Palestinians as well as Israelis. For the spectrum of human hues in our nation and for the life they all lead. For the criminal as well as the law abiding citizen. This does not go down well or obviously from a usual perspective, yet a unitary metaphysic demands it. And I happen to think it makes sense. Jarring as it may be. More on this at a later point.

 

 

*”…And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, (my emphasis) commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.”

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, US History

All Green

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: All green on my protein panel. Cardiology Now! Next week. Also, labs for Eigner. The great wheel of medicine keeps turning. Never an unmedicated moment. 28 this morning. Good sleeping. Moving on. Tinned Fish. Kimchi. Brown Rice. Working on that diet. Dazzle with Ruth next week. Winter weather advisory. Democratic wins.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: All that green

One brief shining: A slight rise in my anxiety titer (Kate’s phrase) as I clicked through the sign in gateways for Quest Diagnostics, opened the results page knowing that finally my protein panel findings were there, scrolling down to get them, fist pump, all green, all findings in the normal range, all of them, even the gammaglobulin which was low last time, and my anxiety quieted, relief.

 

Still not sure what took the Quest folks until yesterday to complete those tests. My doc’s nurse called them and they said oh that test can take 7-10 days. Then the results were available later in the afternoon. Only five days after they got my blood. ? Anyhow all’s well that ends. And this did. At least for now. Still doesn’t explain my anemia so I imagine we’ll have to track that down. Echocardiogram on Tuesday will look at my aorta, apparently enlarged, and the thickened walls of my heart muscle. Who knows what that will show? That same week I draw labs for my last visit to Dr. Eigner, my oncologist, who retires this January. This will be my first PSA since stopping chemo in August.

I’m grateful to have a team that looks after me, sees to these matters. Yes, I’ll grouse about the tests and the appointments but that’s just noise. I’m an old man but not a dead man. They help me stay that way. What’s not to like? I mean, really.

 

Politics. Good news on the Democratic front. Looks like abortion has women and their allies fired up. Three elections in a row now look good for the Democratic party. And look good for 2024. With the exception of Joe Biden. Whom I think is getting a raw deal from the electorate. His economic policies and his foreign policy have been masterful. I admire his finesse and nuance. Sure, he’s a center right guy and not at all representative of my deepest political values, but as a President he has far outperformed expectations. Far.

Yet as a politician he’s responsible for seeing that his political wins, and they have been many, translate into electability. He’s failed there. Not sure why. Trump to some extent, yes. His age. Probably.

I hate to say it, but I’d like to see him replaced. We need a candidate who can stiff arm Trump, gather up the working class wins of the Biden administration and turn them into a renewal of a working class constituency. Not to mention fence mending with the Black community.

 

I would still have been in Israel today. Flying back on the 11th of November. Odd to contemplate it now.

 

 

Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Science, US History, Wild Neighbors, World History

Consider Oneness

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Fall and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: Fat Bear Week. See this link. Rebecca in India. Mary in K.L. Mark in Hafir, Saudi Arabia. Me on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah and Murdoch in Songtan. Israel. Gaza. West Bank. Korea. Divided nations. Night Sky. Stars above and around the Lodgepoles. The coming darkness. A Mountain Morning. Aspen Torches, Trees of Ohr. The Tree of Life. Malkut to Keter. The Wildwood Tarot. Luke. Ginny. Jimmy. Murdoch, the silly. My son, the silly. Kate, who was also silly. Jon, who was not. Ruth. Gabe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fat Bear Week

One brief shining: A bear stands on a rock facing downstream, salmon climb the ladder of flowing water headed to their clan home to spawn, one tight powerful snap and the journey ends.

 

War. A son whose life lies in preparation and readiness for war. A nation, Korea, divided and still at war. Israel, my coreligionists fighting a war of their own creation. Oppression has a heavy price, paid too often, most often, in blood. Consider the violence of a nation that still relegates its native peoples to lands not wanted, depriving them of the lands that once sustained them. Consider the violence of a nation that systematically denies the vote, a decent education, good housing, well-paying jobs to persons descended from the enslaved. Consider a nation that denies an entire people, the Uighurs, even the crumbs of citizenship. Consider a nation, any nation, that allows its majority to wreck havoc on its minorities without conscience or care. Most nations.

Consider all these things. We are human after all, all too human. Jealous of what we already have, greedy for what we might get. Israel did not invent oppression. Nor did China. Neither did the U.S.A., even when slavery was legal. No. We humans find love, justice, and compassion often beyond our grasp even if in our individual hearts we might feel it. Collectively we protect our families, our clans, our regions, our skin color fellows, our nations. And in protecting, a noble and worthy action, deny others what they need, a base and evil result. This is the original sin of our species. To love those we prefer and exclude those who fall outside of our love’s sphere. A sad, pitiful narrowness to our vision.

Then consider the human body. Consider what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The often unfortunate result of a reductionist science that separates the heart as a consideration of medical care from the liver, from the gut, from grief and joy and stress and despair. That separates the teeth from the pancreas. The blood from the lungs. The thyroid from the feet. Treats each one as a thing sui generis when no. Cortisol bathes each organ, blood moves through and into and out of the lungs, the gut, the feet, the brain and into the kidneys. We are one.

Of course we can learn and know about the heart when we dissect it, image it, palpitate it, treat its actions with chemicals of our own devising. Of course. But how did the heart come to have that blocked vessel? That flapping valve? That enlarged chamber? How does the heart function as part of the oneness that is homeostasis? How is that homeostasis affected by the smile of a child? The sound of a jackhammer? The death of a loved one? The denial at every turn of opportunity?

More. Yes. My body is one. Yes, it is. But. It is one within a community, within an atmosphere. My body so individual and precious to me can last no more than a few breaths without the oxygen exhaled by plants nearby and faraway. My body so individual and precious to me cannot live more than a few days without food grown by farmers, caught by fisherman, sustained by healthy soil and oceans and skies. My body so individual and precious to me cannot last without the touch, the warmth, the smile, the greeting of others.

Our original sin. To misplace the apparent concreteness of our skin color, our tribe, our class, our nation as worthy of dominance over others. No. We are one. The Eternal One only knows unity. Only sees togetherness. Insists in its nature on love, justice, and compassion. It has ever been so, and has ever been denied. Our fault, our most grievous fault.

Asia, Family, Feelings, Korea, US History

Day 2 Korea

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Saturday gratefuls: That disappeared Thursday. A good shower. Electronics charged up and ready. Mastered the Korea two pin outlets. Got a new sim card. $49 for a month. Unlimited data. Verizon’s plan? $10 a day. Korean barbecue with my son and Seoah after. Learning building codes, apartment code. Necessary numbers. Murdoch the tail wagger. Slowly entering Asia culture.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Credit Cards

One brief shining: A shiny tin pipe about the width of a large coffee cup drew smoke away from the barbecue set in the middle of the table, Seoah had the tongs and the scissors, her show, placing plates of beef one slice at a time on the metal sheet over the fire below while the waitress brought rice, pickled cucumber, kimchi, glass noodles, tofu, then boiling miso soup.

 

All this in a restaurant a block or two away from the imposing gate of the Osan AFB. My son got me to a sim card shop and the owner recommended the place to eat. This is in cluster of streets and businesses all lined up to catch money flowing from the pockets of Uncle Sam via the military personnel working and living across the street. One more robust American stood outside a souvenir shop flapping his shirt bottom and staring vacantly at the goods on display. Where Korean commerce and US customers meet.

Seoah and I got there from their apartment building via taxi. Joe had just gotten off work and we found him sitting on a couch at the realtors who helped them find a place to live. Joe makes friends easily and had done so with the realtor.

The sim card shop was shallow, maybe 8 feet in depth and twenty wide. A display case with faux phones advertising real ones to purchase. The owner behind the counter and a small area for customers between the display case and the window wall to the street.

Seoah talked with him and Joe pulled out 5000 won notes to pay. No credit cards. I bought dinner. About the same.

 

Today we head to Gwangju and Seoah’s parent’s village. It’s her mom’s 70th and we’re staying all night at their new house. Built courtesy of her brother. My son and Seoah bought the appliances.

My understanding at the moment is that her birthday party will be at a fancy Gwangju steak place, the Outback. Yep. An American chain with an Australian theme in one of the most radical cities of all Korea. Go figure.

Gwangju is about three hours south of Osan and her parent’s village maybe a half hour further. I’ve been to the village once before when Kate and I came for my son and Seoah’s wedding. Her father was headman of the village for many years. As I get it, sort of Mayor and clan chieftain.

We had a wonderful neighbor produced meal with many Korean women chattering and putzing around in the kitchen while we sat at the very low table chatting. Sister Mary was along, too.