Category Archives: Family

Family, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Well. All right!

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Thursday gratefuls: A.I. Drugs. Ruth in her grief. Rain. 44 degrees. Fall. Slowly recovering from Monday. New kicks, colorful Hoka’s. A new chair, a Morris chair. Asset Framing. Stickley furniture. Celebrex. I think. Old age. The Fourth Phase. Tom and Joy. Bellingham. The railroad tracks. Irv. Paul. Tom. Zoom. Travel. Feeling safe, secure. Kristie.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Arts and Crafts movement

Kavanah: WISDOM חָכְמָה Chochma   Wisdom, learning, scholarship    Second Sefirah = intuitive/revelatory ideas; creative flow state; right brain (opposite Understanding/Binah)  antonyms [הֶדיוּט Hedyut: Blank, undifferentiated state]

One brief shining: Found parking behind the Modern Bungalow, entered a rear door, and immersed myself in the Arts and Crafts movement yet again, this time searching for a chair, one with a back that will support me in a more upright position than the recliner we bought for Kate, since my spinal stenosis makes me slump at an angle, found one, bought it, and left. Like this one, but with straight arms.

 

I mentioned the primal in relation to Luke’s snake, Sacha. It got primal up here on Shadow Mountain. Cracks of Thunder rattled the windows. Flashes of Lightning bright enough to read by. Rain. Easy to see a God or Goddess behind them. A clash of divine swords in sacred battle, thunderbolts heaved into the fray. Tears for the fallen. An angry deity might throw a bolt of Lightning and split a tree by mistake, start a fire. Where’s that sacrificial lamb?

Did make me consider that in the immediate area, here on top of Shadow Mountain, my house could be the highest point from some directions. That Starlink antenna’s sitting out there. Never had an issue. Still. Storms of this power are rarer here in the Arid West, so when they come they get our attention. Reminders that we exist at the sufferance of Mother Nature, not the other way around.

 

Talked to Ruth twice yesterday. Jon’s yahrzeit, being away from home for the first time. Tough. I had the same experience in my first year at Wabash. Mom had not even been dead a year. The loneliness that moving in with a whole new group of people can occasion only intensifies the feelings. And this is only her second week on campus. She had good strategies. Call people that knew and remembered Jon. Eat. Don’t be alone. Tough, but manageable. Kudos to her.

Jon’s yahrzeit candle burned out.

 

Just a moment: Well all right! Allan Lichtman and his 13 keys. You can find a fun graphic article about this professor and his keys that have correctly predicted almost all Presidential elections since 1984. He predicts Kamala Harris will win. Worth viewing the article to understand how the keys work and the way he uses them.

Glad to hear this. This has been such a-oh, gosh, what words are right?-unpredictable, strange, bizarre, unprecedented, historic, confusing, off putting, gut wrenching, sad, joyful election season. Definitely historic. The specter of fascism and bigotry and stupidity again lifted high. The drama of Biden’s difficult decision. Kamala and Tim swooping in to, I hope, save the day!

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories

Repost from Sept. 4, 2022: Jon has died.

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The Harvest Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Jon. Kate, always Kate. Death. Life. The passage of Time. The Great Wheel, turning. Lugnasa. Fall. Samain. Then the fallow time. The fourth phase. After childhood and education, after family and career, after early retirement and young old age. A time of life’s harvest gathered in for the final years. Knowing that, yes, spring will come for the young ones, summer, too. And we will rely on their memory to keep us here in the physical world.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grief

Kavanah: COMPASSION   רַחֲמִים Rachamim    Compassion, empathy; related to רֶחֶם womb; cognitive function = personal feeling

One brief shining: A shock in the late evening, the call from Ruth I can still hear today-“Dad is dead.”-disbelief, sadness for the kids, a rush in my heart to get to them, the long forty-five minute drive through traffic and street lights, past stores and filling stations, others going about their life while one we knew would never again find his way in this material world.

The Repost:

Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Meme. Death. Again. Arapahoe county medical investigator. Police. Family gathering. Again. Sarah. BJ. Joe. Seoah. Kep. Aurora. Jon’s house. Plan. Change plan. That gurney.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the cycle of life and death

 

A phone call. About 6:45 pm. One ring on the cell phone. Off. Then the landline. Hard to understand. Someone in distress. Crying. Dad’s dead. It was Ruth. She had gone down in the basement of their house to ask him a question and found him. He was cold.

Yes, of course I’ll be there. Threw on my jeans. Grabbed my keys and my phone. Headed down the hill for the 45 minute plus drive in to Aurora.

Joe called. He had plans underway. Be here tomorrow or Wednesday with Seoah. I called Sarah. No luck. All the way down thinking. Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Meme, their cat. What happens now?

Jon. A tortured soul. Buffeted too much by life, never found that life preserver that could have kept him afloat. He would have been 54 this year. Not suicide. Except in a post-divorce slow motion lack of self-care way.

By the time I got there the EMTs had come and gone. Pronounced him dead. An Aurora police car sat near the house. Jen was there.

Ruthie ran up to my car as I drove by. I stopped. She leaned in and sobbed.

Once I parked both Gabe and Ruth ran to me and we formed a tight circle, hugging each other, a defense against this mystery, so ordinary, yet so harsh, so final. Crying. Crying.

Both of them surprised me by asking me how I got through the death of my mother. They knew I was young and that it was sudden. I was numb for a long time. In shock, I said.

Gabe went with me to get some water. Are you really leaving in February? I really wish you’d stay longer. Oh. Arrow found my heart. Focus on the now.

Back at the house on Florence Avenue a vigil of sorts set up. Waiting on the medical investigator for Araphahoe County and the coroner’s van. I had to take my Mountain appropriate sweatshirt off in deference to the 83 degrees of an Aurora late evening.

Jon’s house is in a working class neighborhood. Small brick homes placed close to each other. A mixed community of Latino and poorer whites. The light from the police cruiser painted the house across from Jon’s in a thin layer of bluish white. Hushed conversations.

Jen and I. Thought we might get along but her animosity and cruel treatment of both Jon and Kate was too close to the surface. We had different sectors and the kids came to each of us at different points.

The coroner’s van came. Ruth gave Jon’s quilt wrapped body a final hug and the gurney took him on his last exit from his house.

I left shortly after, driving back up the hill. Ruth and Gabe headed to their mom’s. Sarah and BJ are on their way. Joe and Seoah.

Many things unclear. How will I communicate with Ruth and Gabe now that they will be with their mom full time? What kind of service? Where? Ruth said Jon wanted to be cremated.

The coroner will have his body at least until Tuesday late afternoon. They have to determine cause of death, rule out suicide, other possibilities. Sarah, as his closest blood relative, has legal authority since Ruth is under 18.

Jon had no will. What happens to the house, the cars? All of the stuff in the house. The house itself.

Lots of details ahead. For which I have little energy. Feeling like Colorado has been about too much disease and death. Conflicted about Gabe’s comment. Wanting so much to start a new chapter far from here. Hearing him. And, Ruth.

Boulder, Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Earth Waves

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The Harvest Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Boulder. Ruby. Celebrex. Tramadol. THC. Gettin’ old. The gradual arrival of Fall. Great Sol. The Flatirons. The High Plains as they wash up against the Laramide Oregeny’s Rocky Mountains. Mountains as Earth Waves. Second looks at my prostate cancer facts. Kristie. Steve. Dr. Leonard. Mr. In Between. Whippets. My son.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Staying the course with Ruth and Gabe

Kavanah: STABILITY יְסוֹד Yesod    Stable, rooted, grounded; literally “foundation”  Ninth Sefirah = Connection & communication; covenant relationship; regenerative organ  [נְתִיקָה Netika: Disconnected, detached, rootless, neurotic]

One brief shining: We gathered, the three of us, the last of Jon’s close family, sitting outside at the Hapa Sushi Grill and Sake Bar, Jon’s complicated impact on each of us lifted to the surface as we ordered the Multiple Orgasm Roll, the Hapa Special Roll, and a sashimi sampler with Daikon fries while Labor Day freed Boulderites and UC students wandered up and down the Pearl Street Mall.

 

At ten am Gabe and I took off for Boulder, an hour drive from Shadow Mountain. Once on 470 we headed east always driving along the Hogbacks that mark the earlier Oregeny (Mountain Building) phase that preceded the Laramide. Thrust up on angles toward the west, these ancient Rock formations mark the end of the High Plains, or their beginning. Heading east from the Hogbacks the High Plains move toward their lower, yet contiguous sisters that make up the Plains States, running as far east as western Minnesota.

Though technically the west begins around the 105th parallel in Nebraska, where Rainfall dips below 20 inches a year, the feeling of being in the West, the Mountain West, only begins when you see the Rockies in the distance and their older brethren, the Hogbacks. Coming from the east, of course, as I mostly have.

I have a marked sense of awe, in Hebrew yirah, wherever I drive in the Mountains. This path from Shadow Mountain to Boulder thrills me, as it follows the evidence of plate tectonics active 75 through 35 million years ago, evidence inescapable to the eye and to the internal combustion engine. The hand of Gaia splashing the ocean of land and creating waves in her outermost layer, easy to see even now so long after she finished. Earth waves.

 

Just a moment: Even with the Celebrex on board, the drive from home to Boulder, then to Denver to drop Gabe off on Galena Street and finally back west through Denver and up 285, left me in pain. And long before I finally got home.

When I got back, I hurt so bad I tossed in a tramadol and an edible. Big mistake. My stomach said no, I do not like this, not at all. Please go to bed. So I did. At 4:30 pm. Got back up a couple of hours later.

Worth it though. Gabe and Ruth need time together and time with me. Especially yesterday, two days from the second anniversary of Jon’s death. I gave both of them yahrzeit candles, candles that burn the full 24 hours of a yahrzeit. Had to take Ruth’s back because: no candles at all ever in the dorms. Oh. Yeah.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mountains, Politics

Dried Up

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The Harvest Moon

Labor Day gratefuls: Gabe up here. 47 degrees this morning. Seeing my son with Gabe yesterday evening. Zoom. The Ancient Brothers on poetry. Weakness. Sarcopenia. Coffee. Mac and Cheese with flayed, grilled Shrimp and Japanese mayo. Ode in Glacier Park.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Scrolling through pictures with Gabe

Kavanah: Love Ahava

One brief shining: Ruby pulled over to the side of Brook Forest Drive, Gabe got out, I did too, locked her, and we began a familiar hike up Kate’s Valley to its outlet at the Pond where I distributed Kate’s ashes; it took us a minute, we were so used to it being there, the Creek, Kate’s Creek, had dried up.

 

This bummed us out. Both of us. The Creek filled the Valley with the gentle sound of Water rushing over Rocks. It carried Kate’s ashes quickly away from the Pond, heading toward the Gulf of Mexico and the World Ocean. Plants thrived along its banks and it made Rocks slippery where we needed to cross. The Valley felt empty, deprived of its soul.

Partly because I’m not as strong as I used to be, mostly because we both felt it wasn’t worth the effort without the Creek, we turned back well before the Pond. A treasured friend had gone missing, a friend who gave music, the laughter of Water spilling over Rocks, a sense of vitality with its rapid flow.

The Creek’s Bed laid bare, the Rocks in it seemed ordinary, no longer mysterious beneath its surface. Further up we did find trickles of water, as if the Creek wanted to return, wanted to offer itself as it once had, but that Water died out, too.

I’ve gone up and down Kate’s Valley, along Kate’s Creek for five or six years. Never once was it dry. Until yesterday. Denver Parks has done Fire mitigation along its sides. Did something they did plug up its source? We didn’t get far enough back to hazard a guess.

Hard to describe how distressing this was. Left both of us sad. We’ve had Rain this summer, we’re not in drought conditions. A puzzle.

After, back at Shadow Mountain, I heated up the Mac and Cheese, divided the remains of the Shrimp entree from my visit to Luke’s. Gabe and I ate together.

 

Just a moment: How bout those former East Germans voting in a far right bloc? Talk about irony. They’ve gone from fascism to communism to democracy back to fascism.

Though I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the election here, a chance exists, a good chance, I believe, that we’ll turn away from far right populism and its odors of fascism, a movement giving off the stench of bigotry, hatred, and outright stupidity. The festering wounds of our Trump infected years.

I know. Even if we elect Kamala and Tim, there will still be stores selling red hats eager to promote a lost America that never was. There will still be people to purchase them. The flags won’t come off the pickup trucks. There’ll be one more shot at overturning the election. I hope the last.

But maybe, maybe we’ll turn the corner and drive like hell away from Mar-a-Lago.

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

Coiled Around It In a Flash

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The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Seoah. My son. Dawn. A milky gray blue Sky. 47 degrees. Leo and Luke. Lakewood. Autism. Cash on hand. The Beatles. Mary and Mark, their ex-pat lives. Mary between K.L. and Melbourne; Mark between humid, libertine Bangkok and arid, rule bound Saudi Arabia. Ode in Glacier, seeing, then drawing. Travel. Taipei. Seoul. Songtan. Taos. Santa Fe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Celebrex

Kavanah:  KINDNESS חֶסֶד Chesed   Kindness, sharing, helpfulness  Fourth Sefirah = expansion & unboundedness; love & mercy; right hand pulling closer (opposite Gevurah/Strength) (טוּב-לֵב Tuv Lev: Good-heartedness, benevolence, charitableness)

One brief shining: At Luke’s in Lakewood yesterday I watched Sacha, his Ball Python, move around her aquarium home, forked tongue piercing the air as her sinuous moves carried over a Tree branch, dipped her nose into the water, then slipped around and behind a large rock, always the tongue out, sniffing the air; she’s hungry, Luke said, looking for the live rats I give her.

 

Sacha, named after Sacha Mama, a Peruvian forest guardian deity, gets fed in a plastic bucket. Luke quickly throws in a live rat, about every two weeks. She’s coiled around it in a flash, he said. Sometimes the rat’s eyes bulge until it quit thrashing. Sacha releases the rat and feels it with her head until she determines where the head is and proceeds to consume it head first, moving it through her body as she goes into S-shaped constrictions to crush all of its bones. Takes her about two days to digest her meal. Gentle Luke. Primal Sacha. Nature red in tooth and scale.

 

Gabe’s coming up today. We’ll go searching for wild Raspberries along Kate’s Creek. Hope we find some since he loves eating wild fruit. Tomorrow we head over to UC-Boulder and pick up Ruth. We plan a sushi meal on the Pearl Street Mall in honor of Jon, who died two years ago on September 4th. It’s important that I celebrate with them since we’re Jon’s surviving family.

Afterward, I’ll take Gabe home to Galena Street in northeast Denver and hopefully drive home against returning Labor Day traffic. The Celebrex makes all of this possible with much less stress on my body. Which I very much appreciate.

 

Just a moment: Another surprising word about chronic pain. First, my shortness of breath has diminished. Not sure why though it might be that the fatigue caused by pain led my respiratory muscles to tire, too. Second, it’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be. I still feel little jolts and tweaks in my hip. What’s different is that my back and core aren’t struggling to contain the pain, tightening and holding in awkward positions.

I’m still amazed at how much pain relief has done to help my quality of life. Only beginning to appreciate what it might mean if I can continue to use the Celebrex. We’ll check kidney and liver functions in a month and if they’re ok, every three months after. I may have to buy Cheryl, my phlebotomist, a cake. She says she’s gonna retire in January, but I hope not. She’s smooth as buttah.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Heirs

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The Off to College Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Diane. Brother Mark’s Bangkok walks. Water Monitors. Cattle Egrets. Wild Neighbors in urban areas. Rebecca leaving for India and the Buddhist nunnery. Joanne. Her new book with two Buddhist therapists. Pain. Cranking it down without addiction. Whippets. Sight Hounds. And those who love and breed them. Dogs. Oh, OK. Dogs again.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sight Hounds

Kavannah:  Friendship  אַחֲוָה Achava (חֲבֵרוּת Chaverut: Partnership, camaraderie) (אַחְדוּת Achdut: Unity, solidarity, togetherness)

One brief shining: A few decades ago, maybe 4, a group of middle-aged men who knew each other somewhat well ate dinner together in an Indian restaurant in Minneapolis, joined by two other men who did not know each other, but had slight acquaintance with one or two of the others; might have been a poker night or a get together to watch the Vikings lose another big game, instead it was the beginning of 40 year plus bonds of friendship among the Woolly Mammoths, who surprisingly still live up to their motto: We’re not extinct yet.

Wegman’s

Keep forgetting to post this. If you wanted to mail drugs worth $800 for a thirty day supply, how would you package them? Wegman’s is a compounding specialty pharmacy. Inside this colorful wrap sat my first doses of this round of Erleada. Clever, eh? And it gives the healthy message Ms. Thurston gave me in the first grade: Charles Paul, eat your vegetables. A twofer. Fun with cancer!

 

Had a session with my folks at Bond and Devick, financial advisors, RJ now for over thirty five years. They keep Kate’s IRA rollover steady. When the market goes up, you go up a little; when the market goes down, you go down a little. We’ve been with them since Penny Bond formed her firm, then hired RJ later on as her first employee. RJ just stepped down as owner/President, but keeps client contact and portfolio work. The IRA churns out what a 19th century British novel would refer to as a stipend and a nice one at that. With my Presbyterian pension and Social Security, I have more than adequate monthly cash. And. I will leave a tidy sum to my heirs: Ruth and Gabe, Seoah and my son. My heirs? That’s a weird phrase to write out loud.

The corpus has indeed gone up a little, down a little, always growing a bit but staying in the same basic range. Kate, always Kate, left me better off than she found me in so many ways, not the least financially. A shame that she didn’t get to enjoy the money she earned for longer. Thankfully, we had long ago passed the mark of mine and hers. We were together in all ways, no barriers between us. When she died, so did a part of me. A part now, in the way of the Soil, fertile ground for my new life after her death.

I suppose, come to consider it, that is the point of having heirs.

 

 

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Politics

Eternal True Love

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The Off to College Moon

Monday gratefuls: UC Boulder. Willville. Dushanbe Teahouse. The Flatirons. Starting out on her own, Ruth. The liberal arts. Studio arts. Philosophy. Political science. 50 degrees. Good sleeping. Dogs. Whippets. Home. The temperature differential of altitude. 31 degrees yesterday! 84-51. College. Learning. For its own sake. Hillel. The sweetness of seeing a girl grow into a young woman.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Boulder

Kavanah: BEAUTY  תִפאֶרֶת Tiferet  Beauty, harmony, balance. Sixth Sefirah: Reconciliation, synthesis, integration; the Heart (between Chesed & Gevurah)

One brief shining: Ruth sat across the small metal table from me, eagerness and doubt flowing through her like Boulder Creek which ran beside us, advice from her uncle, struggling with her mom, excited for a U.S. political history class and her first class in her major studio arts the next day, and ordered genmaicha, a tea approved by the Tokugawa Shogun, its history recounted to her by me, showing that first burst of undergraduate sophistication. She hoped. Oh, the places she’ll go.

Took the first step to get a Whippet. Well, first two steps. I applied to adopt a Whippet/Australian Cattledog mix and sent an e-mail to Horsetooth Whippets. Sent this with slight modifications to both of them:

“My wife died three years ago. Over the years we had 6 Whippets and 9 Irish Wolfhounds plus two IW/Coyote Hound mixes. Sighthounds appealed to us with their independent, yet loving manner.

Rigel, my last hound, died a year ago. I’m 77 and not strong enough to care for another big dog. But I have plenty of energy and love for a Whippet sized dog, plus obvious long familiarity with dogs. I speak dog.

You may wonder about my age. I do, too, sometimes. I have two friends who are willing to sign a document as a friendly home if I die or become incapable of caring for a dog. I also have a codicil in my will gifting $10,000 to whomever takes over care of any animal living with me when I die.

I miss the warmth and love that comes from having a canine companion.

My wife and I always acquired litter mates. 3 x 2. For companionship. We found that made for a better doggy world for them. I’m open to purchasing two.”
Partly a recognition of my more limited mobility. I won’t be traveling as much. And my related but different homebodiness. Mostly though. I miss having a dog. I am alone, but not lonely. That’s true as far as it goes and describes a state of becoming that satisfies me. Especially with all of my friends. Yet having a dog to care for, a dog that would care for me back, to have again eternal true love as is normal between a dog and their human companion would enrich my life. And, hey, I’m all for enrichment.
Just a moment: Soon, maybe this week, the grind toward November begins. Harris still with momentum. 45 still off the front page or below the fold. (below the first screen?) His campaign has staggered away from Biden’s abdication, flummoxed it seems. Won’t last. However he can pull it off the orange one will, like the bad penny, turn up again. It’s still a close, close race. No certainty to either side.
Sure, Kamala is ahead in national polls. But we’ve learned to our frustration that winning the so-called popular vote is too often insufficient. The electoral college is, as we used to say in the 60’s, where it’s at. That’s why her leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin matter more. Go, blue.
Family, Feelings

A Dog? & UC

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The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Ginny. Janice. Flannel. Cool mornings with a hint of the wheat harvest in Nebraska, the Aspen leaves beginning to consider gold to celebrate the season, Wild Neighbors readying themselves for mating. Heat no longer dominate. At least for now. That .4 PSA, may it go lower and yet lower, ye unto undetectable. Laughter. Joy.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ginny and Janice

Kavanah: LOVE אַהֲבָה Ahava   Love, affection, intimacy; from אהב to bring/give to another

One brief shining: Joanne and Alan both came forward, smiled a smile of relief after our breakfast when I got the news of my lowering PSA, asked for hugs and got them there in front of the Parkside as Debbie watched with her kind Whippet eyes, her graceful black and white body alert but comfortable with her human companion nearby, tender times in fractions of minutes.

 

Kona

Have a hankering, maybe even a yearning for a Whippet now. After I met Debbie, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, her human said, Buck and Iris, Emma and Bridget, Hilo and Kona each came to mind. Their muscled, athletic bodies. Their love of the chase. Of running for the sheer joy of it. Of introverted Emma walking out to the end of the fallen Cottonwood, surveying our yard from its height. Of fleet Hilo looking back at me as she took off away from the fence she’d just mastered. Of Buck with a squirrel in his mouth, confused. What do I do with this? Delicate Iris. Strong Bridget and Kona.

Little Hilo, the smallest of them all, nestled under my armpit each afternoon for our naps. Sweet, kind dogs. No meanness in them. Small enough that I could manage them. So torn about getting a Dog or Dogs. Yes. No. Yes. No. Could I even be granted Dogs? At 77.

Leaning into the idea right now.

 

Just a moment:  On Baseline Road, across a heavily protected bicycle lane, I turned into the neighborhood known as Willville. In one of its newest towers, 700 students, sits Ruth’s first floor room with three freshmen residents: Ruth, Rayne, and Atoshoka. Ruth has a loft bed while the other two sleep on floor level beds. The room, from a picture Ruth showed me, is narrow, barely big enough for one imho. There several other towers. Willville houses thousands of UC Boulder students. It requires a bike or bus ride or walk to get to the main campus.

I took her to the Dushanbe Tearoom, a gift to Boulder from its sister city of the same name as the Teahouse, the capital of Tajikistan. She ordered genmaicha and I had a white silver needle tea. We sat outside near a branch of Boulder Creek, very narrow, up which Catherine, our waitress, said a scuba diver swam a week or so ago. Odd, even for a college town.

Ruth’s eager to get to work. She sees herself as academically inclined and I agree. She’s at the university for knowledge and training in studio arts. Not an MBA. Not an engineering or science degree, but a BFA.

Oh, the first days of college life when the world and life opens wider and wider. Of course there’ll be bumps and scrapes, why wouldn’t there be? But they’re part of the broader education.

So exciting for her. And for me.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Myth and Story, Politics

An Unserious Man

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The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Laurie and her Chicago stories. And her chili cheese hotdogs. The Pearl. Ruby. Ruth on campus. Kepler, my sweet boy. Kate, always Kate. The blue Sky above, Shadow Mountain Home beneath. Kamala. Her tagging of 45 as an unserious man. Joanne and Alan at the Parkside. Labcorps. Marilyn and Irv.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kamala and Coach Walz

Kavanah: Serenity  Menucha

One brief shining: A lesson in patience has come my way, the comparatively (to Quest) slow pace of getting my still not available PSA and testosterone numbers sent me down on Wednesday, forced to adjust my attitude, to open my heart to waiting, which has taught me to consider my desire for knowing, for knowing now, for knowing what comes next, for knowing estimates of my life span, that desire changes neither my PSA, what comes next, or my life span. Oh.

 

The story of the Pearl resonates with all who hear it. Though. Realized after recounting this at mussar yesterday Oysters are not kosher. No fins or scales. I’m not observing kosher, perhaps obviously, yet I did have to stop and consider this. If I were to observe kosher, and I have no plan to right now, it would be along the lines of ethical eating. Which is the function of kosher observance in traditional Jewish life. I do eat far less red meat than in the past, partly health and partly to eat lower on the food chain. Use less resources.

Still working on finding a jeweler or silversmith. Harder than I thought it would be. Evergreen Goldsmiths could have done what I wanted, but they closed. Going to the Silver Arrow gallery to see if they have recommendations.

 

No results from Labcorp. Not sure what’s going on. Practicing the midot of serenity. Does it make me serene to get agitated about not having these numbers? No. Will asking my docs to look into it help with my serenity? Yes. So I did that just now. Inner calm. Yes.

 

Just a moment: Listened to the opening twenty minutes or so of Kamala’s speech. Trump as an unserious man. Oh, yes. An epithet so true and so weakening. I hope it gains viral currency. I found her speech fine, but not exceptional. Not a barn burner as we might say in our suddenly spotlighted Midwest. So I stopped listening. Don’t need a barn burner. Need steady, stable, democratic small d. A return to normalcy. Never thought I’d write or believe those words.

She seems to have captured the zeitgeist perfectly. Hyperbolic promises and overheated rhetoric play into the bombast and chest-thumping of the MAGA style. We do not need more of that. We need to take this narrow window Kamala recognizes and keep the orange one in his billionaire fantasy world, his tasteless Trump Tower and gauche Mar-a-Lago. There to await the consequences of his criminal activity as his various trials come to fruition and his debts to his victims come due.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Kabbalah, Mussar

Learning. Still. Always.

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The Off to College Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Irv and Marilyn. Tara. Labcorps. Medicine. Medicines. Healing. Suffering. Pain. Puppies. Toddlers. Rainbows. Ponies. The periodic table of the elements. Starliner. Oh, my. Polaris. Betelgeuse. Vega. Rigel. Arcturus. Andromeda. The Milky Way. That far away, older than old Galaxy. The vastness of space. The particularity of you. Ruth’s first full day on campus.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Pearl

Kavanah: COMPASSION  Rachamim

One brief shining: A pearl means a parasite or some other irritant has caused an Oyster to encapsulate it in layers of nacre, hiding it safely away from the living animal within its shell; Kate loved pearls and had earrings, necklaces, so it is not a stretch at all to believe that she would surprise me with one on her eightieth birthday, perhaps telling me that death is just such an irritant to the living, that grief creates a pearl of compassion and wisdom to compensate for its insult to life.

 

Ruth’s first day. At college. Rather, at university. The University of Colorado, Boulder. Go, Buffaloes. Coach Prime. Funny at these big universities that basketball and football often define their public perception while their true work starts on days like these. Young minds, fresh from public education for the most part, begin to use the tools they acquired there to begin thinking on their own. Learning from, delighting in the deep deposit of human knowledge and culture, of skills and techniques created by others who preceded them. For higher education is not about building with the tools of others but wielding them on your own. If it’s not that, then it’s vocational education. Which is important, wonderful, and necessary. But. It. Is. Not. The. Same. Thing.

I’m so excited for and with Ruth. Opening the mind to new ideas, new information, new ways of thinking and understanding. What a rush. A rush that has never dimmed nor diminished for me in the 59 years since I walked on to the campus at Wabash College. We are many things, we human beings, but most of all we are creatures who learn and who use what we learn to make our lives richer, deeper, more just, healthier, more robust.

 

A note on pursuing da’at, knowledge. Which I have done and will continue to do all my life. I trapped myself yesterday, obsessively pressing the button for Labcorps results. Nothing so far. Quest always got my results up the next day after my blood draw. Had to switch to Labcorps because Evergreen Medical did. A different pace, a different system. Won’t change the results, but I’ve been frustrated, wanting to KNOW. When I know will not change the results. In that sense it really doesn’t matter.

Pushed myself down, down yesterday waiting, clicking, checking my e-mail. Forgot in the pursuit of knowledge the a priori middot of serenity. Shattered it for the day. A lesson. One I find very difficult to learn. The folly of desiring knowledge. Too much.