• Category Archives Feelings
  • Health

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Monday grateful: Traveler’s Insurance. Car and House. I’m grateful I still have it. Deaf old guy t-shirts. The Ancient Brothers on healers and healing. Sue Bradshaw. Annual Physical this morning. Great Sol lightening the morning Sky. The shema. Hashem in letters of fire. Getting laundry done. Groceries in the house. Self care. Agency. Independence. Cognitive awareness. Physical mobility. Healthy.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, Gabe, Mia

    One brief, shining: These days I often peel back the metal lid of a can of Wild Caught Sardines, put them on a plate, open up my current package of #34 crackers, this week they’re Rosemary, reach in the fruit compartment of the refrigerator to select a cold Pear or maybe a Tangerine, prepare the fruit by slicing or peeling, add it to the plate, pour myself a cup of coffee, place it all on the table and start to read my breakfast book, right now Democracy Awakening by Heather Richardson, while enjoying a protein rich morning meal.

     

    Annual physical today. My PCP, Kristen Gonzalez, retires next month for medical reasons. Apparently very bad headaches. As a result, I’m seeing a nurse practitioner, Sue Bradshaw, who has worked with Kristen for over twenty years.

    Kristen may have been the best doctor I’ve ever had. She and Charlie, whose last name I can’t recall, were about the same, but she’s older and wiser. Which I imagine he is at this point, too. She’s kind, empathetic, put me first always in our encounters. And she’s medically humble. Says when she doesn’t know. I trust her, trusted her, completely.

    Her retirement makes me sad on two levels. First, that such a competent physician and decent person has something so wrong that she must leave her work. Which she clearly loves. Second, I’ll miss having her in my corner, the backstop for my health.

    As I scan myself at almost 77, I don’t have anything that jumps out, says Tell Your Doctor About Me. Yes, prostate cancer. But it’s being managed. New labs next month. Yes, altitude and funky diaphragm induced shortness of breath. Yes, slacker thyroid gland. All part of the world for me, nothing that causes me worry. Well, maybe one thing. This damned back. It’s been flaring. Yet I do my exercises, take some acetaminophen and it behaves. Sort of.

    It bothers me not so much because of the pain itself, which most of the time I don’t notice, but because of the limits it puts on exercise and travel. Exercise I need to maintain my overall health. And travel. Well. I want to travel.

    I think.

    I say I think because I’m not getting out and doing it. I have nothing planned and don’t know what I could do if I did. Which is partly why I have nothing planned. A combination of physical discomfort and inertia. Some days I imagine this is my life. Here on Shadow Mountain. Out some during the day, reading, meals with friends and family. Staying in at night. Sometimes I push against that idea; sometimes it feels like what I want.

     

     


  • Sweet. And frustrating.

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Gabe. Ruth. Mia. Domo. Luke. My son and Seoah. The Roger. Learning to navigate Denver on my own, sans GPS. Kristen Gonzalez. Sue Bradshaw. Annual physical. Evergreen Medical. Israel. Hamas. The rules of war. Palestinians. The Ancient Brothers. Tal. Spicy Tuna Sushi bowl. Shabbat. Surrender. Irv and Marilyn. Hebrew. My bar mitzvah portion. The shema.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: A new, resurrected life this day

    One brief shining: Domo has reopened and since it has a special place in Ruth’s heart for the many birthday meals she’s had there she and Gabe and Mia, my granddaughter from another mother, drove over there and met me; we sat down at the stone table on the logs topped with leather held on by rope underneath lamps made from fish skins for our rural Japanese meal.

     

    A sweet and frustrating evening. Drove down the hill for my rendezvous with Ruth, Gabe, and Mia. Coming into the city at 5:15 on a Saturday night. Not so much fun. However. I made up for that by navigating by feel to within a block of Domo, avoiding I-25. The west side of Denver now makes sense to my inner compass. Somewhat anyhow. It’s taken a while to get there since I don’t drive in Denver all that much.

    Parked in a narrow spot between two other diners, squeezed out of the door, and went inside. A text from Gabe told me they were finding parking. Inside in the waiting area were three families of Asians, probably Japanese. I put my name on a waiting list, first in cursive then in block letters so the hostess could read it.

    Domo shut down during the pandemic and only reopened not long ago. The menu has fewer items, by a lot. The owner said he wants to rebuild it slowly. He’s an interesting guy who uses profits from the restaurant to feed people around the world. He’s also an akido sensei and part of Domo’s building houses his dojo. He said he didn’t want to reopen until his staff would be safe from Covid.

    Mia and Ruth are good friends, both artists. Mia and I bonded for good on Kep’s last day. She was so helpful and kind. As was Ruth. Since then Mia’s been in my family. Gabe likes to hang with them and they’re good with him. Last night they tried to teach him how to use chopsticks. He ended up eating with a fork.

    Conversation around the table was, as usual for me these days, the frustrating part. Too much ambient noise. Amy, my audiologist suggested I use my Roger more. She’s right. I used it at mussar last week and it helped a lot. It would have helped last night. Without it, in the midst of plates and bowls clinking, happy conversations blending together, doors opening and closing, waiters taking orders and delivering food, I understood very little. Which made me feel as if I wasn’t in the room at all. Distanced. Apart from. Aggravating. Especially when I have at least a partial solution. At home.

    When we finished, I paid the bill and we got up to leave. Ruth held her arms out and we hugged. Gabe joined in, then Mia. All four of us in a huddle. Right in the hallway going out. A sweet, sweet moment. Reminded me of the night of Jon’s death when Ruth and Gab ran to me, hugged me in the same way. We belong together.

     


  • The Most Precious Treasure

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: How do I feel? A mood changer. Thanks, Tal. Joan, such a bright lady. Alan in his tie dyed t-shirt for the Beatles shabbat. Luke’s dvar torah. His playing and singing in the service. A testament to his courage and growth. Breakfast at Dandelions, reopened under new ownership. Ackerman’s pick up of the couch. Reupholstering. Fixing Rigel’s deep hole. My son and Seoah.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Breakfast with friends

    One brief shining: Got the new menu for Dandelions, three of them, one for Alan and Joan and me, went back to the table and took my time with it since I was still alone, noticed corned beef hash as an entree, two eggs, found a side of berries, and I had made my decision so I slid my menu away from me, picked up the cream and added it to the coffee, waiting.

     

    A quote from the Zen calendar gifted me by Tom. From the Upanishads:

    “God made the senses turn outwards, man (sic) therefore looks outward, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.”

    Don’t know the context of this quote but by itself it tells a truth and a half-truth. The truth is this. Our physicality forces our attention out and away from ourselves. Oh, look! See that! Wow. Did you hear what she said? Hey, can you smell that? OMG. This is the best avocado toast ever. Yes, again. Right there.

    The half-truth is only occasionally is there a daring soul who turns to the inner cathedral, that alembic of memory and thought powered by the fiery heat of the emotions. And that when they do they seek immortality. Some may, of course, search for the secret to life beyond life. But most of us stumble through the doors of our inner cathedral when a shock like grief, major illness, addiction, rejection, or several days in a row of gloomy inner weather force us down the steps into our vast private universe. We all go there from time to time over the course of a life. And look back, in rather than out. Unknown how many find themselves.

    How can we learn from the experience? Socrates. The unexamined life is not worth living. I believed that the first time I encountered it and believe it now. That examen as the Jesuits call it is not for the timid; as any cartographer can tell you, here there be monsters. Yet it is those shadowy winged creatures of our soul who guard the real treasure.

    Which suggests to me that Gandalf might well be our guide. I think of him in his encounter with the Balrog in the mines of Moira. Gandalf could have turned and run or at least not advanced toward the menacing creature. Instead he walks onto the narrow bridge that will carry him straight into the Balrog’s path.

    Gandalf walked toward the bomb, toward the fight, toward the pillar of smoke and in so doing earned the opportunity to face a great obstacle rather than force it back down and away from consciousness. In the ensuing battle Gandalf the Grey dies but only after killing the Balrog. Later, he reemerges as Gandalf the White.

    Whether Gandalf or Virgil or Moses or Tiresias or even Ignatius of Loyola, we need a guide, a companion as we wander the labyrinths of our heart/mind. I found John Desteian who walked with me through the tunnels and traps of my 28 years. I’ve found Ira Progroff and his journal workshops. Now Moses and the Torah. I’ve found Gandalf and Virgil, too. But the key companion all along has been the then existing version of myself.

    I invite you to find the entrance to your mines of Moira. I invite you to take a deep breath and set your foot on the steps that lead down and in to your inner cathedral. Yes, there be monsters there, but they’re your monsters and they guard the most precious treasure of all: self-knowledge.

     

     

     


  • Choose

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Friday gratefuls: TGIF. Ha. No hump day, no Friday as the last day of work. Just life. Sleeping in. Perfect sleeping weather. A good and difficult day yesterday. Luke. Leo. Anne. Gracie. My Roger. Mindy. Rabbi Jamie. The classical texts of Judaism. Including the rabbinic codes. Those two Does in the road. Driving Mountain roads. Alan and Joan. Dandelion. My son and Seoah. Sick. Murdoch’s ok.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Korea

    One brief shining: There is an exquisite pain knowing your child has run a fever over a hundred for three days in a row yet lives 9000 miles from your front door, a squeezing of the lev that makes the body want to find cold wash clothes, advil, blankets, maybe even stuffed toys though you know he is long now a man, it is the pain of belonging and longing, one for which there is no pill, just that moment when you send your body, by astral projection, to his sickbed.

     

    Now Seoah, too. We miss and love you they write, explaining symptoms. My son’s fever has broken and he took Murdoch out for some fresh air. I asked Seoah to give him a hug for me. He wrote that he got it. Now I’ll have to send the same request to him for her. Family, close close family. Joy. Concern. Love.

     

    Meanwhile I’m over reading signals. Coloring my soul a pastel purple. Do those crossed arms mean he’s annoyed with me? Why does he want to wait until he sees how his next two month’s money does? I didn’t want to leave the house yesterday. Felt like ducking mussar and the Rabbi Jamie time.

    Two reasons. Monday was so cold that I chose not to go upstairs and workout before a one p.m. doctor’s appointment. That meant I had to workout on Wednesday and Thursday and Saturday to get my 150 minutes in. I felt bad about that choice. So I already had a one down feeling about myself. Not terrible, knew I could have chosen differently and I didn’t.

    Then on Thursday morning I pushed myself to get my workout in. Can’t miss because of Monday. I wanted to do thirty minutes. As I wrote yesterday though, my back nixed that plan. That meant I was not only behind on my minutes for the week, but that I had a possible barrier to my next workout in my back pain. It also meant that my back was not going to go gentle into that good night but would rage, rage, rage against the moving of the feet. Which in turn meant that my vain hope for a less restrictive travel barrier was that, a vain hope.

    The two together made me want to stay home and favor my psychic and physical upset. I chose not to. However, when I first got to the synagogue I carried that bruised, purple sense of self with me. I sought out and found further evidence that I was somehow doing it wrong. I spoke over someone. My comment landed flat. I felt distanced from the group like the Jews distanced themselves from the pillar of smoke. That was the day’s topic.

    Then I realized I was no longer concerned about my back. It was quiet. And, I had chosen to exercise. And, to come to mussar. The tint in my sense of self faded from purple to a dull yellow not far from the vibrant yellow of joy. Choices. Eh?


  • Asia

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Diane home from Taiwan. Fan Kuan. Travelers Among Mountains and Streams. Japan and Taiwan. The Dutch and Taiwan. How little we Americans know about Asia. Bo Yi and Ginny. Taipei. Songtan. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Seoah’s family. Gwanju, Osan, and Okgwa. A personal stake in the fortunes of South Korea. Great Sol and Cloudy and blue Colorado Sky.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Diane

    One brief shining: Hoo boy that 24th minute on the treadmill this morning my legs were moving, not very fast, a brisk walk and my back began to say hey up there, I’m here and I don’t feel good, really wanted to hit 30 minutes but those narrowed spinal processes said, no I don’t think so, not today anyhow, so I turned off the treadmill, did some apres workout stretches and went back downstairs.

     

    Yeah. Facing front. I can manage the stenosis, but it will kick up much sooner than I want. A definite factor in traveling from this point forward. Not much to be done about it either. My p.t. exercises are the best treatment. I don’t want to go to the next two levels: cortisone shots into the vertebrae or spinal fusion surgery. Saw that with Kate and it did not look good. Plus. My experience with cortisone shots in my knee? No help. Spinal fusion? Nope. Sets up other problems and I’ve seen them. Leaves me with p.t. and avoiding the long walks while traveling that do what I just did on the treadmill. I can do that. Takes a different sort of planning.

     

    I have folks I love and folks they love in South Korea. So these two articles upset me this morning: As if We Didn’t Have Enough to Frighten Us … and the one its author, Nicholas Kristof references in his January 17th article, Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War?   Not to mention that my son works at and lives near a spot most likely already programmed in to a North Korean nuclear missile. Made his dad wince to read this.

     

    Talked with Diane this morning about her trip to Taiwan to see her niece and my first cousin once removed, Ginny, get married to Bo Yi, a Taiwanese national. Actually this was the Chinese version. They got married two years ago in Ohio where they live. Culturally appropriate in two cultures now. Along with a nine month old son. I have pictures and when I get them downloaded I’ll post a few.

    Diane, the lucky duck, has achieved my one item in my bucket list. She’s been to the National Museum of China. I’m gonna get there on my next trip to Korea. If the North stays quiet, that is. She did me a favor and got a museum gift for me of Fan Kuan’s famous work, Travelers Among Mountains and Streams.

     

    Conversion session with Rabbi Jamie today. Focused on Judaism’s classic texts. Torah. Nevi’im. (prophets) Ketuvim (writings). Mishnah (writing down of the Oral Law). Talmud (mostly rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah. Midrash. (rabbinic commentary on the Torah)

     


  • Friends

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Those plastic trash bins. Alan. First Watch, a breakfast chain. Pretty good. Wheatridge. Still learning the contours of Denver and its suburbs. Clear roads after a good Snow over the weekend. Colorado. The Rockies. The solar Snow shovel. My torah portion. Hebrew software. Boker tov to all of you out there. Good morning. With a happy lev. And, a smile.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning Hebrew

    One brief shining: Made coffee, fussed in the kitchen, threw some trash out through my window trash portal, not wanting to go outside and drag the garbage bin and the recycling bin through the snow covering the driveway, or be outside in the cold, yet as a homeowner my gloves slid over my fingers, scarf around my neck, watch cap over the ears, and I became a mule.

     

    Second session with Tara. Read through my whole torah portion. All three verses. Did pretty well. In this case the Hebrew has vowels which aid pronunciation and breaking words into syllables. So I have to learn to recognize and pronounce the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as well as its vowel markers. Tara calls this decoding. I’m not translating, instead I’m learning how to say out loud Hebrew words. And not just any Hebrew words, but the particular words in the three sentences I have to read aloud on the day of my bar mitzvah.

    There are two other parts to the process that increase the level of difficulty. First, the torah scroll itself has no vowel markers. Never has, never will. That means I have to know my verses well enough that I can recall the vowel markers and syllable breaks on my own. I’m not to that stage of my learning at all. Second, the torah portion has a melody, or trope. There are many melodies. And markers called cantillations to guide the reader/singer/chanter. I’m not to that point in my learning. Not at all. As Alan pointed out yesterday, twelve and thirteen year old boys whose voices have begun to change do this. So…

    June 12th may be almost five months from now but there are parts of this, like the cantillations, that will require more of me.

     

    Alan’s new electric BMW has navigated the Panama Canal and is on its way to the Port of L.A. and a BMW vehicle distribution center, V.D.C. In the importing company’s V.D.C. cars get tricked out to meet US pollution standards, have any shipping damage repaired, and otherwise get ready for their over land delivery. Should arrive sometime in February.

    It was good to see Alan yesterday. It had been awhile. Holidays and missed dates and all. We’re going to have breakfast again on Friday, this time we hope with Joan whom I haven’t seen since last year. On the Ancient Brothers Monday I recounted how glad I was to see each of them. Same reason.

    I don’t need a lot of human interaction, but I do need more than I had over the last couple of weeks.

     

     


  • Feeling Dry

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Cold, dark nights. Quiet ones, too. Hoppin’ John. Even better a day or so later. Cholesterol. Va-era. The second parsha in Exodus. Plagues and boils. Hardened heart. Lev. Irv. Marilyn. Susan. The Mitzvah Committee. Rich. Doncye. The Law. The Supreme Court. The number of cases involving 45, the orange menace. Equal before the law. The American Dream and Ideal.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Judges

    One brief shining: Odd this Sunday morning, no Ancient Brothers, we moved church to Monday morning to accommodate Paul who saw a play in Portland last night and is on his way home to Robbitson; the morning feels empty, empty enough to note it here in this slot for longer, more gymnastic sentences.

     

    Reading about Jewish classical texts in prep for meeting with Rabbi Jamie this Thursday. Rabbi Telushkin’s Jewish Literacy. Learned an interest factoid about animal sacrifices and Christianity. The institution of animal sacrifices in the Temple replaced, the rabbis say, human sacrifice that was common in other nearby cultures. The crucifixion of Jesus they saw as a backward return to human sacrifice. Never thought of the crucifixion like that before. Seems like a reasonable conclusion to me.

     

    For some reason I’m feeling a little dry these last few days. Might be the days without leaving home. Not sure. Unusual, even rare for me. Don’t want to write about politics. Election 2024 seems too widely commented on, too fraught, too opaque. The weather too uniform. My inner life too calm.

    Here’s something though. I started looking at warm places for a vacation. Right in the middle of writing this. Focused on Mexico. Not sure why. Just did. Feeling like a week or two somewhere else, somewhere warm might rejuvenate me. Maybe knock me out of the doldrums. I’m not depressed. Not melancholy. Just blah. Seems weather related in that isolation, indoors only time takes its toll.

    Mexico. Good times with Kate in Mexico back in the mid-90’s. We stayed in Mexico City for a week while she attended a conference. Saw Xochimilco where I’ve now adopted an Axolotl. Saw the zocalo, the great empty space in the heart of the city. Templo Mayor. Went to Plaza Garibaldi billed as the world capital of mariachi music. Left Mexico City for Oaxaca where I had fried grasshoppers. Onto Merida and the Mayan sites of the Yucatan. Stayed at Casa de Balma, the house of the Leopard. Have never returned.

    Guess I’ve got the travel itch. Mexico City seems like a good place to go. Relatively inexpensive. Not too far away. Lots of different sorts of experiences from Xochimilco to the Plaza del Torres. The Zocalo. The Templo Mayor. Mexican food. Plaza Garibaldi. Art museums and districts. The Zona Rosa.

    We’ll see where, if anywhere, all this fantasizing takes me.

     

     

     

     

     

     


  • A Life Full and Rich

    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.

     

     

     

     

     

     


  • The American Day of Atonement

    Winter and the Cold Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Rabbi Jamie and the American Day of Atonement. Black-eyed Peas. Hoppin’ John. A cold snap. The Winter Carnival. St. Paul. Irvine Park. The Aurora. Great Sol. Journeys around Great Sol. Birthdays. 77 for me next month. Minnesota. Up North. Lake Superior. Duluth. Ely. The Boundary Waters. Andover and its time in Kate and mine’s life. Kate, my sweet Kate.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Long journeys (77 x 584 million = 44 968 000 000 miles around the sun by age 77)

    One brief shining: About ten days late I have the ingredients for Hoppin’ John Black-Eyed Peas, Salt Pork, Hot Peppers, Garlic, Onion, Black Pepper, Chicken Stock, Ham, Kosher Salt and when I get back from seeing Irv I’m going to make it in the Dutch Oven now clean of hard Water scales and shiny like the day I bought it so Happy New Year!

    Looking forward to cooking up the Hoppin’ John. I also got Corn bread mix. Famous Dave’s. Gonna cook up some frozen Collard Greens, make Corn bread. Have myself a Southern Happy New Year’s meal tonight.

     

    Going over to see Irv in rehab. He’s been there since he left St. Joe’s after his surgery. An odd fact. His rehab place requires a left turn on Lone Tree’s Lincoln Avenue. When I went to have my prostate removed and for all my radiation sessions, I turned right on Lincoln. Old folks pathway I guess.

     

    Got my beard trimmed yesterday at Jackie’s. It never got bushy, just scraggly. Decided to give up on it. I think she was relieved.

     

    Attended by zoom the American Day of Atonement at CBE. Luke worked on it along with Rabbi Jamie. The concept comes from Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Doing it on the 10th of January puts it close to Martin Luther King Day while duplicating the ten days after the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah. Wanted to be there in person but I find going out at night something I don’t want to do. Especially in Winter. I feel bad about not showing up yet I also honor my reluctance.

    So. Zoom. Which has its difficulties. Last night speakers who zoomed in were loud and clear. Bishop Robert Martin talked about working together to give each other the internal strength to face racism and anti-semitism. Rabbi Jamie invoked Abraham Lincoln. Attorney General Phil Weiser gave what I considered the best speech of the evening calling on us to embrace the American Dream of a diverse nation of citizens equal before the law. We can and we will, he said, overcome our divisions. May it happen soon.

    If the American Day of Atonement could catch on in other cities, focused on at least bringing together African-American and Jewish activists, it could have a major impact. This is the third one. The weather timing is against it. Not many folks showed up at CBE. Not sure how to overcome that. I appreciate all the energy Luke and Rabbi Jamie have put into it so far.

     

     


  • Neither Trump nor Biden

    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.