Category Archives: World History

Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

Greenland

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom recovering. Dick Arnold. Ellen. Jamie. MVP group. Death. Kate, always Kate. Jon. Regina. Pronoia. Shadow and her treat ball, her bones. Mussar. The Dog run. Our Snowless Winter. Christopher and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Hafar from afar. Mary down under with animals that attack. Murdoch. Annie and Luna. Eleanor.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Greenland

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Daat.    The Bridge Between Mind and Heart

“If Chokhmah (Wisdom/Inspiration) is a seed and Binah (Understanding/Analysis)  is the soil that develops that seed into a plant, Da’at is the nervous system that carries the vital life force from the brain to the rest of the body. It is the point of transition from “thinking” to “being.””

Tarot: Ten of Arrows, Instruction

  • Focus on the “Why”: Connect your current hard work or training to a larger guiding principle or long-term goal, much like following a “Pole Star”.

One brief shining: Thresholds, liminal spaces, liminal moments like dusk and dawn, a babies first breath, that moment when liking turns to loving, when a thought passes into understanding and action, like death on a cold Evergreen night when it came for Dick Arnold.

 

Rabbi Jamie’s dad died Monday night. He went to sleep around eight p.m. and when Ellen, his wife, went to check on him he was cold. Dick’s death has hit the congregation hard.

Dick, as Tara noted, lived in the back ground. A master carpenter, a licensed consulting psychologist, and an accomplished golfer, Dick specialized in showing up. When shelving needed putting up. When Tara needed help working with drywall. When LGBTQ+ youth needed a psychologist.

Had we gone to Israel on our ill-fated 2023 trip Dick and I would have been roommates. His funeral takes place Thursday at 11:00. Shiva minyan Thursday night.

Just a moment: Our President, denied the “Noble” prize, admitted in a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister that he could now think about things other than peace, like seizing Greenland.

I can’t improve on this Robert Reich piece sent to me by his Substack:

“Friends,

It could be a Monty Python skit from forty years ago: A demented U.S. president demands the Nobel Peace Prize (which he initially spells “Noble”), after converting the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and abducting the president of a Latin American country by force.

When he doesn’t get the Prize, he says he’s no longer in favor of peace and decides to invade Greenland. When Greenland refuses him and Denmark and the rest of Europe make a fuss, he goes into a rage, raises tariffs on Europe (which are really import taxes that cost Americans dearly) and threatens war on NATO. The president of Russia is delighted.”

A five-year old playground bully who will brook no dismissal of even his most outlandish wishes and wants, red tie guy had better retake that cognitive test followed by one gauging e.q.

 

Dogs, Family, Travel, US History, World History

I mean, really?

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow of the morning. Snow at last! Cold. 10 degrees. Winter. Vince. Joe coming this week.  Ruth and her wrist. Dean’s list again. Gabe. Starting his last semester of high school. Ginny and Janice. Luke and Leo. Minnesota. Colorado. Blue state resisters. My homes.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Minnesota

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, butten-bows-wildwood-tarot it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Wholeness. Shleimut.                                                “The concept of shleimut extends beyond the individual, applying to relationships (finding a life partner with whom one feels complete) and the community (mending societal cracks to achieve collective creativity and flourishing).”

Tarot: Ten of Bows, responsibility.

  • The central meaning of the card is shouldering a significant weight of duties, obligations, or stress, either for yourself or others. Although the burden is heavy, the card also suggests that you are close to the finish line of a major project or life cycle. The end goal is in sight, and persistence is needed to reach it.

One brief shining: Shleimut and the ten of bows resonate with each other since another meaning of shleimut involves tikkun olam, or repair of the world; the joining of these two ideas in these, the years of devastation and degradation of a once great nation, remind us that though the path winds ever upward and our burden can seem unbearable, our journey toward wholeness, restoration demands much of us, perhaps all of us.

 

Dog journal: Shadow now trots inside as if the threshold, what threshold, dad?, were no longer a vampire-like barrier which she had not been invited to cross. Oh, happy day! Well, most of the time. Sometimes she needs a bit of encouragement. But only very occasionally. Thank you, Natalie, Dr. Josy, prozac, and those pheromones. Oh, and Nathan, too.

Her life and mine. Again, together.

 

Family: Set up a zoom call with my sister, Mary, in Melbourne, and my brother, Mark, in Hafar, Saudi Arabia. Not many time slots when we’re all awake. To make it work, I agreed to start the call at 9 pm, MST. Well past my bedtime. 3 pm for Mary and 7 am for Mark.

If you draw a triangle using Shadow Mountain, Melbourne, and Hafar as its points, it would almost be an equilateral with 8,000 miles on each side. That’s sibling dispersion. Little bits of Alexandria, Indiana spread apart from Alexandria and each other.

After looking up those distances, I decided to look for Shadow Mountain’s antipode. According to this website, antipodes map, tunneling straight through Mother Earth from here would land me under the waters of the Pacific, somewhere east of the main island of New Zealand. So, I won’t do that cause I’d drown.

 

Just a moment: So the only limits on red tie guy’s foreign policy is, in his own words during an NYT interview, “My own morality.” Oh, my.

Yeah. This from the guy who’s said he would “accept” the Nobel Peace Prize if Venezuela’s winner of this year’s prize, María Corina Machado, offers it to him. Managing to combine ignorance (of who gives the prize) with narcissism, greed, envy, and lust. I mean, really?

 

Dogs, Friends, Judaism, White Supremacy, World History

Time to Leave?

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Thursday gratefuls: Tramadol. Snowblower away. Eleanor playing with Shadow. Shadow, “What threshold?” Tara and Sinterklaas. Puerto Rico dreaming. Vincent and the politics of youth. Veronica. Francesca. CBE’ers in NYC. Mamdani. Democratic Socialism. Greenland. Cuba. Colombia. Mexico. Can Canada be far behind?

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Arjean’s bread

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Patience.  Savlanut.  “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tarot: Back at it soon

One brief shining: Opened the Dog run door to let Eleanor and Shadow out into the larger backyard, Shadow’s first time out there since her return, each chasing the other, around and around, Shadow leading, Eleanor behind, then some wrestling, going their separate ways for a bit, coming back together,  jumping on the Dog run fence, wanting back in and after being let in, needing to go back out. Kids, eh?

 

Tara and Arjean may move to Puerto Rico. Arjean, a dual Dutch/naturalized U.S. citizen, has had it with being associated, even by residence, with Trump, et al. The nature of his work requires him to stay within the U.S. and Puerto Rico feels as far away culturally from the mainland U.S. as he can get. Tara loves beaches, so…

Makes me wonder how many others have fled or are considering it. I know the conversation has happened among many Jews across the U.S. To be clear Arjean is not Jewish. Friends at CBE have looked at property in Costa Rica. Many others wonder when the tilt toward sanctioned bigotry becomes dangerous enough to force a move.

Jews have had to have these conversations often throughout the centuries. In Russia. In Spain. In Germany. Austria. Hungary. Poland. Even France. A CBE friend’s great-grandfather, a rabbi in Warsaw, had three sons. In the 1930’s he sent one son to South Africa, one to Brazil, one to the U.S. Over time he dispersed his congregants to the places where his sons had gone. Prescient.

This long history of forced removal, whether by governments or fear for personal safety, remains a key, a defining part of the Jewish experience. My older friends here have decided, as have I, that we’re too old to flee, start over. We’ll remain and do our part in resisting.

What about Ruth and Gabe though? Their generation. Their Jewish life has been upended by something else, the Israel/Hamas war. Many of them have taken the side of the Palestinians against at least the IDF and the Israeli government. Some have gone further, declaring themselves anti-Zionists, some even questioning Israel’s right to exist.

Here though is the always paradox. When the anti-Semites come, they don’t care if you’re Orthodox, Reform, or secular. They don’t care you’re anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian. All they care about is Jewishness. Very like ICE and people who look somehow Mexican. This is the old, old story.

 

Politics, Seed Keepers, US History, World History

Seed-Keepers

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Wednesday gratefuls: Tara and Eleanor. Vince and Arjean. The snowblower finds a new home. Dangerous Fire weather. The Dog run. Shadow, the snuggle bunny. Ruth learning a new job. Gabe finished his jigsaw puzzle. My boy comes on the 14th. MVP.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shrimp and White Bean Soup

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Patience.  Savlanut.  “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tarot: Back at it soon

One brief shining: In the first week of January-January!-we have no Snow, down the hill Denver temperatures have been in the seventies, as the onrush of a changing climate washes over us even in the mid-continent and high up in the Mountains while sea level cities and nations watch salt Water fill municipal Water systems, subways flood, and the center will not hold.

Hard to sort out the emotions. Despair as the World burns, Carbon emissions continue to hit record highs. Anger and deep sadness at the politicians spinning the clock backwards, disorienting even the most optimistic. Frustration and rage at matters like economic injustice, bigotry, infrastructure side lined while science and medicine lose momentum due to budget cuts. Melancholy over a life’s work shunted into a back alley of history. No need for doom scrolling when reading the front page of any newspaper accomplishes the same task.

Yet. Shadow returned home a more snuggly, biddable Dog. Our relationship strengthened. I made a White Bean and Shrimp soup yesterday. My son has a short visit planned this month. Paul and Tom have a visit planned for my birthday. Pain is gone from left hip, lower back, and leg. Shadow Mountain home is warm and book filled.

Yet. My sister Mary has a chance to return to her first love, library science, in a special project for the University of Melbourne. She’s settling into a diverse neighborhood along Sydney Road. My brother Mark has worked his first full calendar year in the sands of Araby.

Yet. The Lodgepoles grow. The Aspens clone. Mule Deer and Elk Cows carry the next generation of their species. Maxwell Creek rests, frozen for now, waiting for Spring. The Mountains hold us all in their valleys, slopes, and peaks.

Yet. Democratic socialists have won Mayoral races in Boston, NYC, Seattle. The No King’s movement has grown. Approval ratings for Red Tie Guy’s command of the economy, his gunboat diplomacy, even his immigration policy have tanked. His own Presidential ratings as well.

While those of us who embrace economic fairness, ethnic and  gender and religious pluralism, globalism, a sustainable human presence on Mother Earth have neither given up nor backed away from the hard work of readying ourselves for the next era.

If you’re one of us, a Seed-Keeper, I hope you can live your best life right now. And. That part of it be sustaining the vision of a world ruled by love, justice, and compassion rather than greed, lust, and the will to power.

Far Right, Politics, US History, World History

Shriveled

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadow, crosser of thresholds. Ginny and Janice, Annie and Luna. Colder. Red Flag Day. The rise of neocolonialism. Gunboat diplomacy. The ravaging of our nation. Never waste a crisis. A dusting of Snow. Notebooklm. The Great Work. Thomas Berry. The Nature rights movement. Crooked media. The Bulwark.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Furious Minds by Laura K. Field

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Patience.  Savlanut.  “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tarot: Back at it soon

One brief shining: More snuggle and cuddles, this less reactive Shadow wants more hugs, more together time; she also takes the threshold as a much less absolute barrier, sometimes prancing in, most often coming with a bit of cajoling, less often I have to go out and she follows me in, Natalie having done the difficult work at her home and the Dog run limiting Shadow’s options. All good.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Stephen Miller to reporter Jake Tapper of CNN, NYT, 1/6/2025

Oh, Stevie. Go back home and embrace those guys who bullied you. Don’t imitate them. Not very evolved. This naked claim about history, from everybody’s favorite xenophobe, lays bare, like a copper wire exposed under a far too thin insulation  of civilization, the motive force for Trump’s reign. Power begets might. Might begets right.

Want Greenland? We’ll just take it Miller said in the same article, who’s gonna stop us. Here is the rationale for changing the name of the Defense Department to the War Department. For changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. For scooping up human beings striving for a better life and depositing them in countries, any country, that will take them. For ignoring Federal Judges, how many divisions does the Pope have. For ignoring norms, allies, decency.

Let Trump be Trump. Let Miller be Miller. Let RFK by RFK. Let Vought be Vought. No guiding mission or vision necessary. The only question, can we make it happen? If we can, that makes it the right choice.

It is not lost on me, or on you, I imagine, that this brazen claim by a Jew who ignores the reality of the holocaust, gets front page placement on this, the fifth anniversary of January 6th’s insurrection. Remember that word? And, treason? And, the convictions, in our courts, following legal investigations and trials with juries and judges? The pardons proof Miller’s claim. The big guy understands.

I’m sorry Miller and his kin missed out  on love, justice, and compassion as guiding forces in their lives. How shriveled and withered they must be inside.

Cancer, Dogs, Far Right, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, US History, White Supremacy, World History

Link Arms Against This Sea of Troubles

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Samain and the Shadow Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Rising PSA. Shadow, seen. Natalie and Dr. Josy. Winter is coming. (next week) Hanukah. Ruth and Gabe. Joe. Seoah. Murdoch. What I want. Death. Other life punctuation points. Hawai’i. Nathan and the Dog run. Venezuela. Latin America. Central America. North America. The Gulf of Mexico.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Joe

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Shadow cast her presence toward me, casually, too absorbed in other nearby dogs and her trazadone pall to greet her Dad when others of her kind, so many of them, were nearby, crossing behind Natalie’s FJ Cruiser with its DOGS4LIFE license plate, in the Flying J parking lot human companions holding leashes, some pulling toward Shadow to say hi, I’m here, too.

 

Dog journal: First I’d seen Shadow since a week ago Friday. She greeted me, but with little enthusiasm. A little bit of my heart broke. My hope for an enthusiastic smile, a jump, kisses set aside. I noticed, in a bit, that she moved a little slowly, that spark in her personality tamped down.

I’d forgotten the trazadone/gabapentin she was on while the prozac reaches therapeutic levels. Didn’t like it, but I understood the rationale. Reduce her reactivity and help her learn new behaviors. Like letting a leash on. Like easily crossing thresholds. Temporary. Similar to chemical constraints for humans in an agitated state. Shadow exists in an agitated state most of the time.

Natalie said Shadow acted the same at her place as she does at mine, vis a vis thresholds. Made me feel good. Not me. Some psychic gremlin gripping Ms. Shadow when faced with crossing from the outside to the inside.

Natalie, an empathetic and kind person, said she’d come pick up Shadow if I had appointments, keep her for the day and return her. How blessed am I. So many loving folks in my orbit.

We parted after about twenty minutes, Shadow with Natalie.

Good-bye.

 

Health: Yes. My labs showed my PSA jumped, in spite of the radiation, from 0.3 to 2.7. At first I saw the 2.7 and thought, yes! Only later wondering, opening the lab report again. Oh. Not 0.27.

Probably means new drugs. New side effects. Still many options between me and ordinary chemotherapy. Erleada is technically chemotherapy, says so on the pill container, but its side effects have been slight.

There again, blessed. A cancer with many treatments, slow progression. And, for me so far, no symptoms. Happy Holiseason to me!

 

Just a moment: Make Western civilization white again. A sad dream, a dream of the desperate, of the frightened and deluded.

Even the Asian civilizations with which I have some familiarity exhibit strong evidence of liberal ideals. Look at the young women of Korea on a virtual Lysistratan sex strike, wanting their autonomy. Or, young women and men in China. Many of the women rejecting traditional Chinese female roles, many men disillusioned by them and the job market, pushing back against their heritage of centralized control. Taiwan, too.

And here’s the paradox, the irony. Those of us strong with the force of liberal/enlightenment/renaissance ideas of no kings, individualism, small d democracy, individual freedoms and rights as human beings are the ones that recognize most the need to link arms against this tide of civilizational troubles and by opposing end them.

Yes, the liberal journey is not toward a fractious libertarianism, but toward a democratic socialism where the commonweal balances as best as possible with liberty and freedom for all. Not an easy project as our imperfect America has shown since its birth, but an inevitable one pushed forward by the creative tension between individuals and the collective. That’s what I see, what I have lived for.

 

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.

Judaism, Politics, World History

May It Be So

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon (for me and my gal, Shadow)

Tuesday gratefuls: Everwood. Treat Williams. The Morning Show. Reese Witherspoon. Jennifer Aniston. Steve Carrel. Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Coming today. Cool morning. Tramadol plus acetaminophen. Nerve ablations. Coming soon. Shadow of the morning. Showers. Fresh Tomatoes. Garlic. Artemis. Simcha.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seeing Ginny and Janice

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei and my trainer, Shadow

Week Kavannah: Simcha. Joy. Shadow of the morning.

Tarot: paused

One brief shining: Bought a small crystal ball with a stand that illuminates it, the Milky Way Galaxy embedded, so when I turn it on with a press of my finger, the awe and wonder of the universe pops immediately in front of me; I look for a moment at the small (oh, so relative) Orion Arm about half way from the galactic center and imagine that I see us, twirling around the center of the Milky Way at 500,000 miles per hour, this orbit finishing up in another 200 to 250 million years.

Just a moment: All the living hostages have come home. Israel sighs. At a celebration in Hostage Square on Saturday night the crowd booed at the first mention of Netanyahu’s name. (reported by Noa Limone, Haaretz, 10/13/25.) Of course Israel has to heal. Of course. So do the remaining inhabitants of Gaza. Healing in Israel can come only  if a full reckoning of Netanyahu’s lack of leadership and his collusion with far right Orthodoxy occurs.

This might be hard. Calls for unity, for looking across differences may suggest a soft approach to what needs to be a searing look at the immorality of Israeli leaders at every step in this war, including how the IDF could have allowed such an attack as October 7th. That is no small element for had the vigilance of the IDF on the Gaza been what it should have been this war could have been avoided.

But. It was not avoided. In its wake the limits of violence as a political solution got laid bare over weeks that turned into months, months into two full years of bombing and killing civilians. Enough. We need, Israel needs, the Palestinians deserve a two-state solution. If this can happen, then this tragedy may not have been in vain.

Yes, if you’re an Israeli, the thought of an independent Palestinian state may loom as a breeding ground for future attacks. And it may. Yet the pressure will be on all parties, Arab and Israeli, American and European, to create a lasting peace. None of the parties want everlasting war. Only the river to the sea militants and they will not get their way.

Israel, this strong, vibrant economic power house and refuge of last resort for a minority too often treated as the other, will remain. As will all the Arab states. Only peace can create a dynamic and flourishing Middle East. The time to build that reality starts now.

May it be so.

Health, Judaism, Politics, World History

The Knight Errant of Peace

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: Shadow and her lobster. Made of heavy duty stuff for aggressive chewers. Frost. 32 degrees. Cold frames at work. Tomatoes still yielding. Beets and Spinach and Kale ready for the final harvest before the Garlic comes. Carrots still growing. The Ancient Brothers on war. Hostages released. Trump does good. Cease fire holding.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hostages released

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Simcha. Joy.   Cease fire.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: First average frost up here comes in early September; but, not this year-October 13th-after I pulled down the cold frame covers over Artemis’ outside raised beds, forty-eight degrees in the greenhouse itself, trying to extend an already extended growing season and succeeding, more vegetables to harvest.

 

Just a moment: Props, red tie guy. Donald J. Trump has brought the hostages home. I hereby dub thee Knight of Peace Errant and beloved of all Israel. Of course this should have not needed to happen, or should have happened months ago, but I will praise him for being instrumental in making it happen now.

So much suffering. Hamas won this war. Yes, quite a while ago. They calculated Israel would over react if they were horrible in every way on October 7th. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition with segments of Israeli society who never fight for it ensured a long, brutal campaign to totally eliminate an idea.

That idea, Palestinian release from their long captivity to Jewish constrictions, cannot be eliminated. Should not be eliminated. Hamas reasoned that Israel’s reaction would raise the plight of Palestinians to world attention once again. And, if Israel over reacted, they could achieve a secondary aim of damaging Israel’s reputation among the world’s nations. Accomplished.

Israel, specifically Netanyahu and his ruling coalition, driven by a toxic mix of xenophobia and religious triumphalism wedded to the need of a corrupt leader to avoid prosecution, kept killing Palestinians long after their point had been made. Turning away aid from starving Gazans, bombing their hospitals, driving deeper and deeper into the constricted space which gave civilians no room to flee. Oh, Israel.

Like so many of my fellow Jews I support the existence of Israel, of a safe haven for Jews who need it. I do not and have not since early in the war supported the war aims of its blinkered and racist ruling coalition. Can we help a broken and self-terrorized country find a way toward peaceful coexistence? I see that as the major role for the diaspora now. Use our influence, our wealth and power, to help Israelis and Palestinians build a common, abundant life as neighbors. May it be so.

 

This week: Nerve ablations. Oddly this, the week when I might get relief from the pain I’ve experienced every day since September of 2023, my hip has chosen to worsen.

When I got back from seeing Gabe in Lakewood, my hip nearly drove me to the ground on the return home. Pain at 11 on the Richter scale. I see an orthopedist on November 11th. Might be difficult decisions ahead.

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.