• Category Archives Writing
  • The Crunch

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Tara. Irv. Marilyn. Ginny. Janice. Alan. Cold, cold weather. Snow. A Mountain Winter. The Ancient Brothers. Cernunnos. Hashem. Adonai. Echad. Judaism. Reading. 2024 election. Football lurching toward yet another Superbowl. Mini-splits grabbing heat from below zero Air. Diane returned from Taiwan. Science. Hebrew. First Watch in Wheat Ridge. Iowa. -45.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resilience in my Wild Neighbors, in our country, in myself

    One brief shining: The weather station readout said -10 when I went to bed, up five degrees from the mid-morning low of -15, a layer of cold air hung around mid-calf, leaking through the two pane windows, the northern wall of my house, and challenging the technomagic of the heat pump finding (no, I don’t know how.) active warm air somewhere in between the quieter molecules of this bitter Mountain night.

     

    Forgot the crunch. That crisp sound Snow makes when the temperature goes below zero. As I made my way to the garage yesterday, memories of Minnesota Winters flooded back. Earlier I had found and put on my down vest. This weather I understand. It requires attention. It was soon after I moved to Wisconsin when I learned the weather in the upper Midwest could kill you. Layers protected against the worst of it, but stopping, being still in below zero weather? Not recommended.

    Several Andover (Mn.) Winters I strapped on Tubbs snowshoes, put on hiking boots, gaiters and a balaclava. There was a trail through some Woods behind the Anoka County Library near us and I would fast walk it even in -20 weather. Back then I had a meditation ritual I used, one I’d created, that moved through the four directions, the center, up and down. Each point had a person like Jesus or Lao Tze or a god like Shiva or Cernunnnos. When I moved to their point, starting in the east, I would consider how that person or god’s energy, truth, wisdom informed me on that particular day. Just enough time in two or three circuits of the trail to go all the way through the orientation points. Crunching the whole time as my snowshoe’s metal grips kept me steady. I loved to exercise outside and did so as often as I could in whatever weather, even rain.

    Don’t meditate now. Don’t exercise outside. I miss both of them. Not enough, however, to reengage. At least not right now.

     

    45 won. We all lost.

     

    So glad to have this morning ritual. I get up, do my nerve glides (though I didn’t this morning), hit the head, grab my phone, my hearing aid, and that help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up device. Up five steps to the kitchen for coffee and mineral water. Another seven steps takes me to the home office. Sit down, roll the ball on my mouse to wake up my desktop computer, curve my fingers onto this split keyboard which both of my grandkids hate, and get to work. Usually an hour and a half, sometimes two. About 500 words. Then breakfast.

     

     

     


  • Intention

    Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon

    January 1 gratefuls: 2024. A new year fresh and out of the box. Great Sol. Luna the magnificent. Orion. The Great Bear. Polaris, the true North Star. Each and every Lodgepole, Aspen, Ponderosa. 2023. With all its troubles. Climate change. Gabriella. Axolotls. Regenerative farming. Soil. Microbes. Roots. Rhizomes. Bulbs. Corms. Potatoes. Heirloom Tomatoes like Cherokee Purple. Steak Diane. Cooking.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: 2024

    One brief shining: Without a sound at least here on Shadow Mountain a new year slipped across Black Mountain without notice to my wild neighbors or even to me as I went to bed at 9 o’clock having eaten my steak Diane, mashed Potatoes, and a Corn/Bacon/Red Peppers side washed down with my favorite beverage, water, and slept through the transition from midnight 2023 to an election year.

     

    No resolutions this year. A few intentions. Kavanah.

    Listening to music more. Something I let slide as computers and Alexa pretended to fill that void in my life. They don’t. Buying a good cd player, amplifier, speakers. I so love chamber music and Renaissance music. Both of them move through my body with gentle and nuanced vibrations, drawing me into and up from my inner world to another world filled with sound, changing sound.

    Each Friday night, at least most Friday nights, of the concert series for the year, I went first to the auditorium at St. Catherine’s when Dennis Russel-Davies was the conductor and after to Rice Park in St. Paul, to the Ordway, found my subscription seat, sat down, and let myself open to the music of the evening. For over 20 years. I met Kate there.  Like many of us as we got older, the drive in from Andover made each Friday night turn in to the occasional night, then the very occasional night until we failed to buy a series. After that those wonderful nights faded away.

     

    Turning my political energies toward the not so distant future. With papers like the Washington Post declaring 2023 as the year climate change arrived, adaptive strategies that can feed the World, restore Animals and Plants to their original habitats or help them move, and heal the devastation of our petroleum addicted economy must come on line. In my way I will discover and promote organizations and individuals working to those ends. I’ve already mentioned some like perennial crops, regenerative farming, and ecosystem restoration. But I’ve only just begun.

    This is a shift for me away from front line justice work or the work of laws and politicians, and even away from work on climate change itself. Though I’ve done little of any of that of late. I’m leaning into Thomas Berry’s Great Work for our generation, creating a sustainable human presence on Mother Earth, not by working against carbon emissions or anything immediate, rather by focusing on the sustainability of future human life.

     

    Painting and sumi-e. Grief. The idea of a move to Hawai’i. Desuetude. Faded on this one. Clearing and cleaning my loft this month will get me ready to return. Not because I’m good, but because I love color and shape and creating.

     


  • Two to get ready

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Paul’s ok. And the rest of us, well… Hard to say. Luke. Leo. Vince. Almost ready to go. A bit of packing. Some last minute details. Ruth. Seeing her today. Still feeling the afterwash from the play. A solid, satisfied feeling. Reminds me how much I love to write. And perform. A blue Colorado Sky. A Shadow Mountain Morning. The penultimate I’ll see for over a month. So ready to be on the road. Vince and Luke and Leo will take care of my house.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

    One brief shining: Head buzzing a bit from sleeping in after the three late nights last week body atingle the after effects of hard work and a lot of loving given and received hugs and well wishes bon voyages applause quiet moments with Ruth a dinner with Alan and Joan nighttime drives up Brook Forest and Black Mountain Drives waiting for another flash view into the call of the natural world.

     

    Tomorrow night well after midnight I’ll head out to the Parking Spot, a long term guarded lot near DIA. From there a shuttle bus to the American Airlines terminal and after that to the security checkpoint. My flight is at 5am and I’ll be there early, but I want to have no hiccups. I’ll sacrifice sleep for made connections. Sleep and I are going to have a rocky relationship for the next few days anyhow. Why not start at the beginning?

    But, like most trips there are still some here and now matters to attend to. Have to go the Conifer post office and see if they’ll extend keeping my mail past what appears to be a hard limit of 30 days. I’ll be gone 36. I don’t imagine it’ll be a problem, but I do have to have the conversation with them. Then over to Evergreen and CBE to take the check for my dues. Without getting into the saga it’s a journey every year due to mailing foul ups and Mountain post offices. After that down the hill to see Ruth one last time before I leave.

    Will complete my packing, essentially done, later on today or early tomorrow. Check in for my flight. Go over my packing list a final time. Excited. Ready. Would go right now if I could.

     

    I do have a new idea for a novel. It’s banging around, making itself felt. Imagining this and that. How this might look, where this thread might lead. I love this time with a new work. Where all the ideas are fresh, seen in their fanciest clothes before the hard work of writing begins to wear them down to real thoughts and words. Where all the possibilities expand out from a simple idea, roads leading to this plot or that one. Characters emerging, sinking away. Writing winnows all those roads until there are only the essential ones, all those characters down to the ones needed to tell the story, all those places to the ones most evocative of the storyline.


  • Go now, the play has ended

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: The Trail to Cold Mountain. Performed to applause. Released. Packing started. Radical light this time. The company of actors. Acting. Alan and Joan at dinner last night. Cold Mountain. His poetry. The improv class’s Armando. Ginnie. Rebecca. Marilyn and Irv. Ruth. Jen. Gabe. Joan’s piece on the dybbuk. Alan’s on aging. Tal, a master teacher at 26. A chilly Mountain Night. Luke and Leo. Vince. The Parking Spot. TSA open at 4 am for precheck security. Korea. Israel. Taipei.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Live a Great Story (decal on a Jeep back window)

    One brief shining: This time there was a crowd when I walked out, confident in my piece, carrying the drinking Gourd and my parchment poems, dropped into Herme and Han Shan’s story, Great Sol gone unseen as Berrigan Mountain rotated west with the rest of us, a light breeze blowing.

     

    Go now, the play has ended. My first play has found an audience. What a rush. I finished saying, “Take the Trail to Cold Mountain.” And we all had. My performance was over. The work of the summer over. Ups and downs culminating in a work I was proud of and a performance I was proud of. Felt wonderful. Stretched in a healthy way past my comfort zone.

    Only will know later if my goal for the piece spreading the word about the Rivers and Mountains poetry tradition of China found its way into anyone’s heart. If I had written an artist’s statement for The Trail to Cold Mountain it would have been something like this:

    I want to introduce to a Mountain audience the Rivers and Mountains poetry tradition of China through the Tarot archetype of the Hermit. I believe most Mountain folks have a strong component of this archetype that led them here. We like the curvy roads, the cool Mountain mornings, living with Wild Neighbors on Forested Land. No, more. We need to live away from the World, to clear the heat and dust from our minds and be where the Wind sings through the Pines. So, too, in China. In the Andes. In all the great Mountains and Forests of the World. We are one people.

    Poetry and archetype, myth and legend. Religion. This has long been my realm. From one novel to the next, from one job to the next, even the motor behind the justice work. Now it speaks to where and how and with whom I live. In the Mountains, with other Hermits yet also linked in loving ways to a community, caring for them and being cared for by them. Still linked in deep heart connection with Minnesota made friends, with family far away and nearby, living my own life with them all, yet apart from them, too.

    Deepening the love. Burning away the dross.

     

    Coming home, late. Drove up Brook Forest and Black Mountain Drives. Realized a powerful raison d’être for experiencing the sacred. As I drive along the familiar ranks of Lodgepoles and Aspens, I look now for another glimpse, a brief appearance of the natural world calling to me. (Art Green, Radical Judaism, p. 120) I know that the opportunity, the chance to again see through a portal like the Rainy Night Watcher exists. Thus, I’m more aware of the sacred all along the drive.

    This is, I imagine, the reason others over the course of history have written down their experiences, collected the stories of others, and collected them in what we call sacred writings. Not to freeze those moment and make them rules against which to measure our lives, but as clues, as prompts to the possible moments when the natural world will reach out to us, to help us be ready to see what we’re looking at.

     


  • The Ancientrails of Politics, Theater, and Health

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: A week from today I’ll be in Osan. If all goes well. Ruth. Gabe. Acting. Tom. Diane. The Ancient Brothers on being 24. Asian Art. Shin Long-Lin. The tea ceremony. Ichi-go, ichi-e. Tsundoku. Forest bathing. In my back yard. The Asian pivot of my family. Magic the Gathering. Formula One. Baseball. Chinese bronzes. Ukiyo-e prints. The Kano period in Japanese screen painting. Song dynasty ceramics. Korean celadon. Song dynasty painting. Asia. So much history. So little known here.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Asia

    One brief shining: Put on a new ring this morning Gold with a setting of Emeralds Kate purchased in Cartagena because the jewelers had air conditioning; I had the Emeralds set in the ring when Kate had a breast cancer scare over 25 years ago, now it soothes me with her memory and as a talisman against cancer.

     

    Yesterday I loaded my pill containers with blood pressure meds, cholesterol meds, psych meds, but no cancer meds. Everybody I mention it to is happy for me. It felt liberating, for sure. Yet than niggling hangover. I’m not treating it now, as I have been for nine years. What will it do? Guess I got used to having a dike against it. Surgery. Radiation. Drugs. Trust your doctors, she said. And, zip up. Yes, dear.

     

    Tonight is dress rehearsal. My parchment copies of the Cold Mountain poems, done in calligraphy by Ann, get delivered today at 12:30. Perhaps a white banner with the Chinese ideograms for Han Shan. I’ll put on my linen pullover shirt, my linen medieval pants, and if it’s cool enough for the rehearsal, the hooded poncho. I have my water gourd, too. The sort used by Chinese recluses and martial artists to carry wine. It’s my visual signal that Herme and Han Shan may be the same person. I’m going to run through the whole thing again. I know it, but I fell out of character at a certain point Tuesday. Don’t want that to happen on Saturday night.

    Just realized I don’t feel the same sort of vulnerability with The Trail to Cold Mountain that I’ve felt with my novels. Odd since Joan’s in the class. A successful novelist. Tal helped me understand the collaborative nature of playwriting. Maybe that’s it. The first written work I’ve done that was collaborative. Maybe a clue there?

     

    Been feeling Kate this week. Her 79th birthday tomorrow. A full post for her then.

     

    How bout those Georgia indictments? No Federal pardons allowed and no pardons at all allowed until 5 years of a sentence has been served. Sounds fair to me. The Orange One is the most indicted Presidential candidate ever! What an honor.

    I hope for a few things for the next election. That the indictments convince independents to vote Democrat. That the abortion issue catalyzes women, including moderate Republican women to not only vote, but to get out the vote. That the fall off [to death] of four million older white males and the large number of newly voting aged Gen Z’ers give Democrats a boost.

    Also, I’ve been amazed at Biden’s successes with the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan Infrastructure bill, the Covid Relief bill, and the CHIPS act (building semi-conductors at home). This is not to mention his deft handling of the war in the Ukraine, supporting that nation without getting us directly involved. Also not to mention (bar Hunter’s problems) the scandal free term. No dogwhistling. gaslighting, or outright incitement to riot. Which shouldn’t have to be noted as a success except over against 45’s awful, treasonous behavior.

    We have to sell Biden’s work.

     

     


  • A significant day

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Off all cancer meds. Got rid of last medical bill I didn’t owe. Performed The Trail to Cold Mountain in class. To applause. 2 hour workout. Yesterday. A good day. Ticking off pre-trip have to’s. Vince coming today. Seeing Ruth at noon. Joan’s poncho with hood. Abby performing without the words. Chocolate chip cookies. The Church of Hera. That Squirrel at my window.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Trail to Cold Mountain

    One brief shining: A ritual of abandonment I take the compacted trash to the yellow trash bin and the recycling to the green bin throughout the week then on every other Wednesday the bins tilted and rolling like thunder across my asphalt driveway, I deposit them lids forward to Black Mountain Drive as other’s drive by on their way down the hill to jobs in Denver or Littleton or Lakewood.

     

    Some days. Have more in them than others. Tuesday was such a day for me. Wrote a post about conversion, ate some breakfast. While waiting for breakfast to settle before my work out, I called New West Physicians.  After a year of back and forth convinced them that no, I did not owe them $429 for that echocardiogram from April of 2021. Raised both arms after the call. Victory! Worked out. A good one. Took a long nap.

     

    Telehealth call with Kristie. Stop the Erleada and the Orgovyx right now. Today. Should start feeling better in a month. While in Korea. Could be off the meds for weeks, months, years. I choose years. But of course my cancer has all the agency in the matter. Still blood draws every 3 months. I imagine if the PSA continues undetectable for a certain length of time they might stretch that out a bit. If the PSA starts rising? A PET scan. Probably radiation again, though maybe new meds. Part of the plan is to live long enough for new and better treatments to be on the table. I’m ok with that plan. Now well into my ninth year with cancer. Still alive! Would not have been so in my instance as recently as 20 maybe even 10 years ago. Grateful.

    My oncologist, Dr. Eigner, is retiring. His wife died a while back and he wants something different. I get it. I’ll see him for a last visit when I get back from Israel. He wants that. And so do I. He’s guided both me and Kristie over the ups and downs since my diagnosis in May of 2015. That’s a long time. I’m grateful to both of them for the kind and compassionate care they’ve given me. Healers in truth.

     

    Over to the synagogue for the last class of the character study. Wore a short sleeve shirt and shorts. Beep! Wrong again. We performed outside at the synagogue’s amphitheater and after the sun went down it was chilly. Joan thank god had brought me a poncho with a hood for my costume. Wool. Saved me from shivering through The Trail to Cold Mountain.

    Three folks said, “Brilliant!” Not sure what that means though it’s positive. Felt good. Screwed up a bit. Will practice more, but I know it. Just jitters, I think.

     

     


  • Love

    Lughnasa and the Waning Crescent of the Herme Moon

    Sunday and Monday gratefuls: The Trail to Cold Mountain. Off book. Kristie. Off meds? Sunday’s Ancientrails, forgotten. Unusual. The Ancient Brothers on love. A morning with Rich and Ron. Also about love. Burn away everything but love. Study today. Jewish identity. Cool and Foggy morning. Good sleeping. Ready for packing. Cable organizer. Reinforcing off book for the Trail to Cold Mountain. So many wonderful people in my life. Korea and Israel. Same continent. 5027 miles apart. [Osan to Jerusalem]

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Good friends

    One brief shining: A bowl filled with strawberries, blueberries, black berries, and slices of mango sat by a wooden cutting board with lox heaped upon it next to a lazy susan with cream cheese, capers, cut onions, almonds warm cut bagels on my plate as Ron and Rich and I sat together talking mussar, parenting sons, writing, such a good morning.

     

    I have now a surfeit of riches. Wealthier than I could have dreamed possible. And, yes, in terms of money, too. More important than money though friends and family who love me. Whom I also love. Who will open themselves to me and I to them. A wonderful morning yesterday as an example.

    The Ancient Brothers gathered on zoom to talk about love. Ode talked about Robert Bly’s connected universe, all atoms linked to each other in a grand chain of becoming. As are the atoms in each of us. Bill added Buckminster-Fuller’s Cosmic Plurality:

    “Cosmic Plurality”

    Environment to each must be

    All there is, that isn’t me

    Universe in turn must be

    All that isn’t me AND ME

     

    Since I only see inside of me

    What brain imagines outside me

    It seems to be you may be me

    If that is so, there’s only we

    Me & we, too

    Which love makes three

    Universe

    Perme — embracing

    It-them-you-and we

     

    Paul offered Rilke:

    Widening Circles

    I live my life in widening circles
    that reach out across the world.
    I may not complete this last one
    but I give myself to it.

    I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
    I’ve been circling for thousands of years
    and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
    a storm, or a great song?

     

    Tom reminded us of the love we learn from the dogs in our lives, the angels of our youth and of our old age. Of kindness. Of the sweetness of vulnerability.

     

    I spoke again of the gift given to me between Mile High Hearing and Dave’s Chuckwagon Diner: The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love. If we perfected a just society, we could live only in love with each other. So to burn away everything but love, seek justice. If we could see the ohr [the shard of sacredness, divine light] in each other, in all Trees and Rocks and Roads and Flowers that love Great Sol and Mule Deer and Elk and Mountain Lions and Bears and all Mountain Streams and all Rivers and Oceans and in the Air we breathe, we would cry out in revelation like Mohammed, like the writers of the Torah and like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there, the sacred, it’s right there! And we could/would love it all.

     


  • Fusion energy

    Lughnasa and the Herme Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: A great workout yesterday. Murdoch, the hooman. 15 days till Korea. Whoa. 11 days till the showcase. Whoa! Memorizing. Acting. Writing. My new idea for a novel. Desiderata day. Great Sol, our energy, our life. The Wild Neighbors. Han Shan. Chinese poetry. Chan Buddhism. Asian history. K-dramas. Korean literature. China. Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Monkey’s Journey to the West. The Dream of the Red Chamber. Outlaws of the Marsh.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Asia

    One brief shining: Murdoch sat hind legs crouched, front legs straight on the leather bench next to my son, gazing across the table at another man in a blue US Airforce t-shirt as if ready to join the conversation and I got three pictures in quick succession from Seoah across the 9,000 miles that separate us something families do.

     

    Closing in on being off book for The Trail to Cold Mountain. Maybe today, certainly this week. Good thing since the showcase is a week from Saturday. Remembered I have logs in the back already cut. Will try to lift one this evening. Still no cloak or boots. I’ve gone from being frustrated and tired of the whole thing back to energized.

    When I work on things like this, I have them in my head as a priority task. All the time. You know, that nagging thing you need to finish. But can’t quite seem to get to. At least not enough to close it out. At some point with each of my novels I’ve reached that point. The energy drains out of them. The story is stale. It’ll never be any good. I want to chuck it, start over, or start something new.

    Got there with the Trail to Cold Mountain last week. I had to perform last during the class. It was well past 8 and I was tired, my body beginning to wind down for sleep. I gave an unspirited, clunky version of my piece. Fell right into the writer/actor abyss. Why have I bothered with this? I’ll never act anyway. Maybe I’ll say I can’t make the showcase. Won’t matter. I’ve done what I wanted.

    Except. I didn’t. I kept memorizing even though it felt like a waste. Then, a breakthrough. As I got close to having it all down, my excitement about Han Shan and even the work I’d written returned. I can do this. I’ll introduce Chinese Rivers and Mountains poetry to a new audience, blending my words and his. Donning the costume, using the gourd water bottle and the logs, the parchment paper filled with Cold Mountain’s poetry. Herme will have his night to shine.

    And, it just occurred to me, that threshold will be crossed. In the months after Kate died I felt and lived like a hermit with benefits. Friends, that is. The notion of the Hooded Man from the Tarot Deck, so strong an archetype for me. I had him created in neon. Herme.

    Now I’m bringing that archetype to life, blending it with the Asian pivot my whole family, save for me, has made. A fusion of life with family Mary, Mark, Seoah, my son, Murdoch, the Jangs, life with friends Tal, Alan, Joan, Deb, Rebecca, and life with CBE-classes held there, performance at the synagogue’s amphitheater, Tal my teacher, the Rabbi’s son.

    To be clear. This does not constitute all I wanted to do with the threshold ceremony. I still want to do the mezuzah hanging ritual and a celebration of male aging. Pushing it off to next year, maybe my birthday. 77.


  • Unforgivable

    Lughnasa and the Herme Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Acting class. Abby. Joan. Rebecca. Tal. Deb. Voices. Haunting voices. Dreams. Hail. Rain. Thunder. Lightning. Acting. The Trail to Cold Mountain. Almost finished as a script. Cool mornings. Good sleeping. A drive back in a Rain soaked Night. Again.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Feelings

    One brief shining: Last night a cool breeze came off Berrigan Mountain making the synagogue’s social hall comfortable while I shuffled my pages of The Trail to Cold Mountain and raised the music stand a bit.

     

    Most scripts are collaborative, Tal said. The playwright gives them to a director and a group of actors. Everybody has their say. I like that. I enjoyed writing this script. It felt natural to me. Might try a different idea. As well as a new novel.

    I know there is a certain amount of avoidance involved in starting a new novel while I have others at important stages of revision or with a few thousand words left to complete a first draft. Well, maybe more than a certain amount.

    However, it’s the act of writing (like I’m doing right now) that excites me, turns me on, and the rush of a new idea, or a new form? Wow. And since, for some reason, I don’t care about readers, or at least not enough to become skilled at marketing my work, why not go with the journey?

     

    Going to see Oppenheimer in about 45 minutes with Gabe. I found my copy of Oppenheimer: American Prometheus yesterday and brought it downstairs. I want to read it. Probably later in the fall. This is the book underlying the movie.

    Can you imagine having Nagasaki and Hiroshima on your heart? I can’t.

    Been reading in the Korean histories about the nuclear frisson there. How South Korea wanted the bomb but the U.S. walked them back from it. And, how an unfortunate series of preventable events led North Korea to pursue it. The whole rogue state thing was unnecessary. Could have been different.

     

    The big one has landed. Trump’s indictment in January 6th. Here’s a line from a fascinating Atlantic piece about it: “Enough of all this; we can love our friends and our family and our neighbors without accepting their terms of debate. To support Trump is to support sedition and violence, and we must be willing to speak this truth not only to power but to our fellow citizens.”  This is it.

    All else pales before a President who commits high crimes and misdemeanors. I agree. The rest is awful and unforgivable. Classified documents. Financial and sexual abuse of one sort and another. Yes, a despicable person. Sure. But for a President to act against the nation which elected him? A firing offense. Of course. But also a disqualifying one for future office.

    Of course. Innocent until proven guilty. Yet. We all know. Even, perhaps especially his followers and sycophants know. This man wanted to upend the peaceful transfer of power after a national election. That’s as far away from ok as a defrocked pedophilic priest saying the mass.


  • Chesed and The Emotive Presidency

    Lughnasa and the Herme Full Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Gabe coming up today. We’ll see Oppenheimer together tomorrow. (He said he was going to wear a suit.) Prolia. Bone density. Resistance work. 2 hour workout yesterday. Ann. Her good work on The Trail to Cold Mountain. Zoom. Skype. Pixels. Computer GPUs. CPUs. Screens. Keyboards. ChabotGPT4. AI. Skynet. The Internet. Laptop. Desktop. Tablet. Smartphones. Our world of small miracles. The James Webb. Starlink. The Book. The Chair. Vision.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Internet

    One brief shining: “Charlie,” the woman in the blue coat called through a cracked door so I got up and went to her; she had her left leg wrapped in blue with an orthopedic black boot up to the calf  and resting on one of those little scooters you see every once in a while now; her name was Carol it said on her blue coat, “Sit here,” I did and she placed a small tray with a syringe near me, had me turn to face the wall since the Prolia shot goes in the back of the arm, she stuck me, I said thank you, and left.

     

    I mention Carol because her demeanor was so calming and warm. An instant connection. This woman cares. I could feel it. Kindness came off her in waves. Due to my delicate condition I see lots of medical professionals over the weeks and months. Few of them are robotic or uncaring, but many, most of them are hurried. And I know why. The era of corporate medicine times “patient encounters” and the ability to upcode. A patient’s feelings or the end result of a visit are not part of the metrics. In spite of those cute little surveys sent out after each encounter. Be ye not fooled. They are not striving to improve their service though they may be trying to improve how you evaluated your visit. Not. The. Same. Thing.

     

    Fell back asleep this morning. Happens some times. Up at 8:30! Oh, my. I chuckled at myself. Today is Trail to Cold Mountain day. Editing the script, refreshing memory, going one page deeper into memorization. Acting class tonight.

    Gabe’s visit will include Oppenheimer tomorrow. Looking forward to having him here. I need to see these kids more often. Not sure how to do that. Their lives are busy now and I can no longer hop in the car to go see them without losing a day after to recovery from the drive. A conundrum.

     

    Let the silly season be seen as well underway. A NYT article reports Trump and Biden tied in a hypothetical rematch. Not sure I can stomach much more of this. Already. And we’re a year plus away from the voting. How he wrote wonderingly can this be? A man with indictments already in two investigations and other indictments likely in two others against a man whose performance in office has not been flashy, but has been much, much better than I anticipated. And in the midst of genuine crisis after crisis. Covid. The Ukraine. Inflation. The economy post Covid. We are well and truly divided.

    Read this George Will column for a cogent explanation as to why this upcoming election may be so painful. Here’s a quote from it: “In a National Affairs essay with that title [The Emotive Presidency], Mikael Good, a Georgetown University political theory student, and Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argue that “Trump’s masterstroke” was to realize that, for his core supporters, his governing is of secondary importance.”