Category Archives: Family

Family, Friends, Holidays

I hope you hear I love you often

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Napping. Tom’s wonderful pictures. Happy birthday Roxann. The Great Lake Superior. Knife River. Duluth. Two Rivers. Tofte. Gooseberry Falls. Tettegouche. Silver Bay. Lutsen. Cascade Lodge. Grand Marais. Painter’s Point. The Gunflint Trail. Naniboujou Lodge. Isle Royale. So many memories. The Arrowhead. Ely. The Boundary Waters.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth’s Sugar Cream Pie

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  SERENITY   Menucha     Serene, carefree, literally “at rest/comfortable”    “In Jewish tradition, ‘menucha’ (מְנוּחָה) signifies a profound state of spiritual and physical rest, tranquility, peace, and fulfillment, going far beyond merely ceasing work. It is a core concept tied to the Sabbath (Shabbat) and the ultimate spiritual destiny of the soul.” Gemini

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: A bit of Snow, a surge of cold Air as if the weather here knew Thanksgiving had passed and the graver part of the fallow time had come; with the change those Christmas lights and Hanukah decor make sense as Advent starts tomorrow; in the past folks gathered around fires in smoky rooms to tell stories and legends of Raven, of Yggdrasil, of Krampus, of Spider Woman, of children lost in the forest, of Great Bears and Hunters cast into the sky.

 

Black Friday. A day I associate with greed and the exposed dark heart of capitalism. Children clamoring in their innocence for TV ad driven next best things. Toys. Dolls. Video games. Tech. And their parents driven by love into long lines hoping to find the wanted thing at a price they can actually afford.

This represents the nadir of our economy, exploiting parental love by manipulating our children, turning them into agents/influencers working for Mattel, Nintendo, American Beauty and inflicting on those same children as they grow the somehow heart connected thought that the oh so perfect thing can express their affection, or, satisfy their own. Bah, humbug.

No. Not a Scrooge about gifts. I love gifts and gift giving. What I do not love, what I hate is the casual cynicism of marketing that turns gifts into faux transactions, creating false desires, and forcing people into debt. I’m with Tiny Tim and the Christmas Turkey.

The times for gathering with friends and family around food, song, on an icy pond, trekking on snowshoes, those moments I love about holiseason and its many highlights like Samain, Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, the Winter Solstice, Yule, New Years.

We humans need others of our kind and holiseason offers ample opportunities to draw close. Lord knows we need them all year, yet in the cold and dark of the fallow time, we need them even more.

So I wish for you, as we cross the boundary of Creepy Friday, a season of love and eggnog. Of dreidels and Christmas Trees. Moments of true warmth where the glow of one heart touching another provides comfort and solace.

I hope you hear the words I love you as often as possible, from as many people as possible. And from as many dogs, in their own way, too.

Back Pain, Dogs, Family, Health, Holidays, Politics

Black Friday

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Friday gratefuls: Chart House. Thanksgiving. Ruth. Shadow, the rascal. Hip pain. The National Guard. Our weakened nation. Colorado. The Rockies. Wyoming. The Wind River Range. Yellowstone. The Druid Pack. Wolf 21. The West. Bison. Elk. Mule Deer. Lodgepole and Bristlecone Pine. The Krummholz line. 14’ers. Skiing. A-Basin. Aspen. Vail. Steamboat. Telluride. Crested Butte. Breckenridge. Copper Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Waxing Moon

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

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

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The Chart House sat me at a four top, the last in a full house, where Great Sol’s presence came through a window wall; Mackenzie from Florida, my server, was cheerful and kind asking me if I was ready to order: Caesar Salad, Filet Mignon rare with Garlic mashed Potatoes, and Key Lime Pie which I quit halfway through the Filet, got a box for the rest, and trudged up hill to Ruby, my hip no longer quieted. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Just a moment: Trump calls out the National Guard. Of West Virginia. To D.C. Where a judge rules their presence illegal. Ignored. Meanwhile a former CIA trained counter terrorism Afghani who lives in the state of Washington decides to drive cross country. Adding tragedy to tragedy. A living remnant of our failed war intersects violently with the idiocy of saving our cities by occupying them.

What does our rotund Dear Leader conclude from this? We need to tighten immigration. No, Donald. You need to stop using military force as a tool of repression and suppression. Instead of following the judge’s order red tie guy wants 500 more troops.

You need to, oh hell, I’ll just say it, resign and take Vance and Hegseth and Noemi and Kennedy with you. You can all live happily in MAHA/MAGA world at Mar-a-Lago while the adults get back to the serious business of governance.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Dog journal: Shadow has me looking at animal behavorists. Her behavior baffles me. She continues to hold back from coming inside. No treats, no cajoling, no sweet talk works. She does come inside, on her own time. Where she enjoys her meals, treats, toys, time with me. As if the back and forth of only moments before never happened.

She also, in spite of trying several different methods, will not let me put a leash on her. When I have, rarely, succeeded, she doesn’t seem to mind walking with the leash.

Other than those two behavioral quirks-major ones, I admit-she remains a sweet, loving girl who sleeps curled next to my pillow, enjoys treat play, toys, visitors both canine and human.

 

Health: The hip steroid injection does not seem to be holding. Disappointing since I had it just last week. The ablation, on the other hand, has relieved my pain on the left side. Wearing the neck brace when I drive helps fight fatigue. Too early to tell on the radiation with seven more sessions to go.

Family, Politics

Mad King Donald

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Samain and the Radiation Moon (3 sessions)

Thanksgiving gratefuls: Jackie. Ruth. Shadow. Todd and Alise. Rocky Mountain Cancer Care. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Mary. Mark. Diane. Gabe. The Ancient Brothers. Alan. Joanne. Marilyn and Irv. Tara. Luke. Ginny and Janice. Leo. Eleanor. Annie and Luna. Derek. My Wild Neighbors. The Night Sky. Orion. Polaris.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

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

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Ruth, my beloved granddaughter, who drove up here from Longmont and in turn drove me to my radiation session in Littleton, came back and put together the new kitchen stool for cooking, finished her chemistry homework with Luke’s assistance, and, for a final flourish made a sugar cream pie.

 

This morning she leaves for A-Basin to ski. Where she and her Dad skied every winter from when she was three or four. Fewer skiers on Thanksgiving day.

Ruth works two jobs. As a Starbucks’ barista and a cleaner in the CU library. She also has a full class load in the pre-med curriculum that includes biology, chemistry, statistics, and sociology. I’m so proud of her.

Gabe won a writing prize in a story contest that included 13,000 entries. 700 winners. Go, Gabe. He also got accepted into the University of Montana’s writing program with a $5,000 scholarship. Both of them had incredibly difficult childhoods, then their Dad died.

I admire their resilience.

 

Just a moment:  Here’s an important article in this month’s Atlantic:  The Conservative Movements Intellectual Collapse. Here are two sentences that give you the flavor.

“Trump’s most outrageous innovation was dispensing with the pretense that he needed to provide reasons for his positions…His greatest apostasy was not his rejection of any particular set of ideas, but his categorical rejection of the whole notion of ideas.”   And there you have it. Rule by whim and fancy. Our very own Mad King Donald.

The author, Jonathan Chait, one of my favorite Atlantic writers, shows how first gradually, then in toto, even previously independent think tanks like the Heritage Foundation fell under the Trumpist spell, explaining, for example, the strategic importance of Greenland and the Panama Canal, then, when nothing happened regarding them, stayed silent.

In the vacuum of ideas that is the Trumpian black hole it is not surprising that such entities as the New Apostolic Reformation, Christian Nationalism, and White Supremacists now led by Nick Fuentes who blithely owns his anti-Semitism with no cover at all, have taken the place of thought.

This may, as his term moves closer to its event horizon, leave a real opening for those of us with, well, ideas. There are now, for example, three mayors of major U.S. cities: Seattle, Boston, and New York City who are democratic socialists. Even the faded remnant of the Democratic Party may come up with an idea or two. (he said hopefully.)  May it be so.

 

 

Family, Judaism, Mountains, Paganism, Plants, Reimaging revelation, Wild Neighbors

All Sacred, All One, For All Time

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Alan. Ablations scheduled. Radiation approved, but not scheduled. Hip injection scheduled. Soft collar orthotics in. My medical October has bled far into November. Tom and his telehealth today. Shadow. Her vitality. Sheet pan meals. Cooking again. Canceling Cook Unity. Tara. Aurora Borealis in Colorado. The Edmund Fitzgerald. Lake Superior. Wolf 21.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: a day of rest

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

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

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The Aurora, shining shimmering curtains of green and red that dance, flow, shift, grow and fade, took them for granted in Andover where for most of the twenty years, I could go out on our front porch and watch them, that placed against the wonder of Coloradans seeing them, many for the first time after these latest, massive coronal ejections.

 

Mother Earth, Great Sol. Yin and yang. Visible when the protective magnetic field of our Mother receives bursts of highly charged particles released during a coronal mass ejection.

Awe. Wonder. Desire. That is, desire to remain here, by this Pond, clothed in the majesty of existence by all that’s holy and sacred.

Another moment, in looking back, when the sacred oneness revealed itself, said look here, can you not understand that the Largemouth Bass, the Goats on the farm, the Trees in the wood lot, Judy, yourself also dance, whirling like dervishes endowed with the holy, connected and interdependent for all time?

Each time I drive home from Evergreen, I drive by Kate’s Valley and her Stream, and further on, past the Upper Maxwell Falls trailhead, the spot where the Elk Bull appeared to me drenched in the Rainy Night, standing on the Forest’s edge. In both places I nod, see them in their apparently mundane clothing, the light of Day suggesting nothing special to see here. A small Mountain Valley, a stand of Aspens along Black Mountain Drive.

Yet. I know. These places revealed their sacred nature to me when I turned over the Bresnahan urn with its flame signatures glazed in earthy, russet colors and spilled into the clear Mountain Stream the final remains of my love, my wife, my soulmate. As that Bull Elk did on a Rainy May night.

They have taught me, in their every day appearance, that no the sacred is not only there in moments of heightened emotion or sudden clarity. Rather, her Stream runs sacred in the light of a November morning, no more and no less sacred than the White Pines and Lodgepoles that line its banks along with the holy Wild Strawberries, the sacred Raspberry. The Water. The Rocks. And the Sky above them. All sacred, all one, for all time.

 

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.

Ancient Brothers, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends

Loved Ones

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Mabon and the Samain Moon

Monday gratefuls: Luke and Leo. Shadow. My dying fan. Vince, who has returned. Artemis, who wants her late fall makeover in her western bed. Old friends and new. Joanne. Her call. Her stroke. Alan and Cheri, visiting her. Ode in his place, his studio. Naked Aspens. Smoky the Bear at high Wildfire risk. Big O Tires, Ruby’s Snow shoes. This morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Professor Luke

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Hochmah.  Wisdom.   “Who is wise? The one who learns from every person.”  Perkei Avot: 4:1   Making medical decisions this week.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Luke came up with his laundry and Leo, who lumbers along, a big old Dog with arthritis yet his same calm loving presence, Shadow circling him like a quick small bird, wanting to play, not understanding age, yet in her not knowing quickening memories for him of a younger Leo so he moves a bit faster, plays.

 

Loved ones: A weekend filled with friends and family. Rich bringing me Kim’s wonderful soup on Saturday. Our conversation.

After he left, my regular call to faraway Korea, my son on his couch, me in my chair. This now forty-four year long relationship as vibrant and loving as ever. A sweet and kind and compassionate man.

Sunday morning, my four Ancient Brothers, all well past the three quarters of a century mark, gathering around our cyber camp fire to speak of our week, keeping each other up to date on our lives. Then each of us taking a turn reflecting on place and what it means in our world.

A phone call. Sorry I stood you up. Well, Joanne, a stroke counts as a pretty good excuse. We talked, as we do, of matters of the heart, her Albert, my Kate. Life alone. Her path after the stroke that landed her in Lutheran hospital’s ICU. Damned insurance companies. She said men her age peers, early 90’s, suffered from testosteronitis. My age not as much. I felt flattered.

While I talked to her, Leo came down the stairs, his happy face familiar with my place and turning, as is his wont, to the silver bucket in which I keep Shadow’s toys, his collar and his rabies tag getting tangled in the bucket’s handle, surprising him, but in his gentle way, he handled it.

Professor Luke followed, his duffel bag of laundry over his shoulder. Leo went outside to see Shadow. We sat here, in the two leather chairs, friends and coreligionists. I told him I would help him in any way he needed when he took over the bagel table Torah study next week. Filling in for Rabbi Jamie who starts his sabbatical November 1st.

He’s excited about his work, teaching Chemistry at Colorado Community College. I’m so happy to see him finally in a work setting that nourishes him. He’s needed that for as long as I’ve known him, going on four years now.

After he left, Vince showed up straight up from his work with an architectural restoration firm at the Colorado State Capitol. He solved the motion sensor light problem, found an arcing extension cord, and will come back to fix that. I could tell he’s once again my property manager. He’s always been my friend.

Family

My Son

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Mabon and the Samain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Shadow and her love. Joanne in the hospital. Dark Night Skies. Crescent Moons. Orion. Vega. Rigel. Betelgeuse. Andromeda Galaxy. Three laws of robotics. Isaac Asimov. Robert Heinlein. Dune. Ring World. The Mysterious Stranger. Mark Twain. Heart of Darkness. The Shadow Line. Joseph Conrad. The Genius. The Titan. The Financier. Theodore Dreiser.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Paul in prison

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Ometz Lev.  Courage of the heart.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: When I moved to Wisconsin in 1969 with Judy and Israfel, the angel of music who escaped from our car at a rest stop in Illinois, my heart turned north for over forty years, following my Jack London, Call of the Wild, inspired fantasy of tall pine trees, cold lakes, and brutal winters. I was not disappointed.

 

Friends: This week I had brunch scheduled with Joe Greenberg, but he called to say he wasn’t feeling well. Then breakfast with Marilyn and Irv got canceled due to Marilyn’s need to give grandkid rides. Both rescheduled. Got a text on Wednesday from Joanne: I won’t be able to come Friday. I’m in the hospital and I don’t know for how long. (from Joanne’s daughter-in-law). Still don’t know what happened to Joanne. Life in the olden days. Things happen, plans change, lives get altered in a flash.

A friend of my cousin Diane’s, Randy, says, “I don’t know if I have 20 minutes or 20 years.” Just so.

 

Family: My son’s forty-fourth birthday. Remembering the four pound, four ounce tiny baby in the wicker basket carried by the blue and white garbed nuns off the plane from Kolkata. The bitter cold of that Minnesota midnight and the Angel who towed me home after the orange V.W.’s fuel line froze up.

Those t-ball games later where all the kids, all of them on both sides, who would run toward the ball. Later, at age 6 the Minnesota Twins, whose games we had attended, won the World Series.

When we went to Lake Winnibigoshish, where he caught the Lake record Blue Gill and a golden eagle swooped down at us while we drove back roads to another fishing hole.

The kid who restored the downhill ski racing team at St. Paul Central would later move to Breckenridge for three years after graduating with his double major in Physics and Astrophysics.

Even later he moved to Alabama, then Georgia, Florida, back to Georgia, Korea, Singapore, Hawai’i, and back to Korea. A married man with a sweetheart of a wife.

I had a t-shirt made for both of us that showed the alignment of the planets on December 15th, the day Raeone and I took him home from the airport, beginning his U.S.A adventure. An immigrant now proudly serving his beloved country.

We often say, we parents, how proud we are of our kids. All grown up and out in the world. I am proud of my son, all grown up and out in the world.

 

Dogs, Family, Health, Holidays, Travel

Ometz Lev

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Mabon and the Samhain Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth, two years sober. Paul, hearing Yo-Yo Ma. Tom and his PET scan. Dr. Bupathi. Metastases. Radiation. The maze at Swedish. Shadow, the good girl. Kate, always Kate. Driving down the hill and back again. Frost, the third. Sleep. Ruby and her snowshoes. On next Monday. Winter is coming.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sobriety

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Ometz Lev.  Courage of the heart.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: As I drove around and around, trying to find valet parking, hidden in a frustrating maze of blocked roads and Kafkaesque detours, I knew the results of my PET scan awaited me, if only I could find a parking spot, each circuit seeming to put me further and further away from information I needed, needed, not wanted.

 

Health: I finally found a spot, a handicap spot in a parking garage I could have used much earlier, if I hadn’t been trapped in my ruminations. What will the new PET scan show?

The mystery of the slow rise in my PSA solved. One metastases enlarged from 8.8 to 52. A big jump. It’s on my T-4 vertebrae. Not a great spot. Dr. Bupathi has referred me back to Dr. Leonard, my radiation oncologist, to kill it. But. Need an MRI of my back first to be sure there is no nerve involvement. This time I’ll need anesthesia for the imaging.

My cancer has begun to push against the Erleada and the Orgovyx. Slipping toward the hormone resistant stage though if the radiation can kill this one, I might stave it off a while longer. On the other hand my other mets were stable to improved. That is good.

I had planned to stop at Noodles and pick up some comfort Mac and Cheese, but after my maze runner hunt I wanted to get home, see Shadow, consider all this.

Now an in-between before the MRI, then another before the radiation, and another until l know the results of the radiation. These will test my resolve to live in between. So many high stakes moments in such a short space of time.

Meanwhile, the back pain story continues on, a slow rolling melodrama with a potential finish in early November. And, just for completeness I’ve tried to adapt to a foam collar for my neck. Haven’t found the right one. Feels, well, weird. A journey  just begun.

 

A look back: In 2004 I took an early November trip to Southeast Asia, starting in my sister Mary’s Singapore. My week there happened to coincide with the second election of George Bush, Ramadan, and Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. It’s underway this year in late October.

We went to Little India and saw the place lit up for this joyous, light filled holiday. That was fun for this Midwestern guy, but the peak came in the wee hours of the morning. At Sri Mariamman Temple. The oldest Hindu Temple in Singapore, it features, during Diwali, firewalking.

Mary and I walked the empty streets of China Town, which had closed around this temple built in 1893, and found a long line of people waiting for their chance to walk on hot coals, immerse their feet in a milk bath, then be caught by volunteers.

Of most interest to me were the folks at the end of the line, all women. We talked with some of them and found that their inclusion in the ceremony had come only recently, feminism changing even this thousands of years old ritual. Gave me hope for the world.

 

Family, Far Right, Politics, White Supremacy

Gabe

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Gabe. His “Twenty-Five Years of Ink”. The Crawling Crab. RTD. Back Pain. Hip Pain. Tramadol. Acetaminophen. Nerve ablation. Rides. Tara. Jamie. Kate, always Kate. Frost tonight. Rain. Israel. Palestinians. Ross Douthat. Ezra Klein. Hard Fork. The New York Times. The Washington Post.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Grandkids

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Simcha.  Joy.     Aspen Gold against Lodgepole Green.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Lunch came in plastic bags, one to Gabe filled with Snow Crab in a hot sauce, one to me with peeled Shrimp and, for some reason, Mussels, boiled Corn on the Cob, two servings of Garlic toast, which we upended onto the white waxed paper our waiter had put down. Yum. The Crawling Crab.

 

Gabe: Gabe took the RTD to the Lakewood-Wadsworth stop where I waited inside the parking structure, using my handicap  placard for the very first time. When he came down the stairs, I flashed my lights. In his hand he carried stapled pages which contain his expanded version of a short story he wrote earlier this year.

We had lunch plans at the Crawling Crab. See above. He has, he said, sent off four college applications, and would finish a fifth yesterday. These were all instate including CSU Boulder. Out of state come next. University of Iowa and its well known creative writing program is his first choice. Hamline University in St. Paul his second.

A high school senior Gabe has English, Civics (borrring), Ceramics, Stagecraft, and something else I’m not remembering. He has found many classes boring over his high school years, although he loves Religious Studies, which is his second idea for a major after creative writing.

“Then I might have a crisis like Ruthie, and change my major anyway.” You just never know.

Always good to see the grandkids.

Big wreck had traffic on 285 moving forward soo slowly, both lanes filled as far as I could see ahead. Not much fun when the hip has taken over for the left leg as a primary purveyor of pain. I wanted to get home.

 

Just a Moment: Saw a Swastika on Nextdoor Shadow Mountain. A big one. Placed on a hill visible to traffic on I-70. Read the comments, all of them. With the exception of a couple of “free speech” advocates-who don’t understand that hate speech is not protected-I felt gratified to see condemnation.

An extra charge of emotion seeing this. More than an abstract repulsion, something more personal. Over breakfast on Friday with Alan and Joanne the holocaust came up, as it often will when talking to children of survivors. This generation of Jews, my generation, often have parents or grandparents who fled Europe or were in the camps at the end of the war.

On occasion we have the conversation, often stimulated by events like the big swastika. Is it time to go? Where would we go? Costa Rica. Canada. Latin America. Because those who lived through late 1930’s Germany feel the same bad moon rising.

Most of my friends say they’re too old to move. Me, too.

 

 

 

Asia, Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Korea, Travel

Constraints

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow of the morning. Out in the darkness. Mary in Oz. Mark on the Arabian Desert. My son and Seoah on the Korean Peninsula touching the Sea of Japan. Me in the Arapaho National Forest among the Rocky Mountains. Ruth and Gabe on the High Plains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Simcha. Joy.        Simcha Torah. Sukkot. Artemis. Shadow. Ablations.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Amazon boxes pile up on my living room floor, two new wastebaskets, terracotta pots for Artemis, a bottle of Calcium plus vitamin D3, healthy snacks like Edamame and popcorn and protein bars, no longer shopping in the physical world (IRL) I have become instead a receiving clerk, checking goods against their invoices, having to dispose of the packaging.

Shut Down: Talked with my son last night. How about those Yankees? He’s a baseball fan, reading the stats, watching games, caring about the playoffs. I’m a fan of him so I pay some attention, enough to know when something of note has happened, like the Yankee’s hyper symbolic loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. Oh, Canada! Tariffs can’t win the game.

We had father and son scans this week. My PET scan. His CT and MRI. He gets semi-annual scans for hepatitis B as I said earlier and this time an MRI for his back. Geez. And we don’t even share DNA. Surveillance, which, oddly is his primary work in Korea.

“I might need some cash, Dad.”

Oh, some financial crisis in his and Seoah’s life? Nope. He’s not getting paid. Because of the government shut down. Oh. Well. His opinion of Congress has hit an all time low. As he points out, they still get paid.

Not to mention all those young men and women he’s responsible for. Many in their late teens. Living off base with kids and rent and refrigerators. And no money.

Grrr.

It’s one thing when the politics of stall and wait are on the front page. News about stuff happening somewhere else. Yankee’s lose! Federal worker’s furloughed. May get back pay. May lose their jobs entirely.

Another thing when your son has car payments, groceries, dog food to buy. When he’s doing that in service to his nation. Then, it’s personal.

Government matters. And ours, especially Congress, has been asleep at the switch for so long. So damned long.

Wake up, America!

Health: My medical October continues this week with a visit to my ophthalmologist. Glaucoma. Then, two trips to Lone Tree for nerve ablations. Doesn’t end until a week from Monday when I visit my oncologist to discuss results of my PET scan. Big fun.

Cousin Diane, who leaves this month for a trip to Peru to see Machu Pichu, had planned to spend time in the Peruvian segment of the Amazon. But. When she saw the travel medicine doc: Nope. She, like almost everybody in the U.S., had not gotten a yellow fever vaccine before age 60. And, for some reason, they no longer work at our advanced ages. No Amazon for Diane.