Winter and the Moon of the New Year (and, Christmas Eve)
Thursday gratefuls: Alan. CBE. Jamie. Marilyn. Tara. Kate. Rigel’s clean bowl this morning. Christmas Eve. Our best present only 27 days away! Nordic Advent Calendar. Santa Claus. Magic and wonder. Young children. Another big present only 7 days away. 2021.
Kate’s had a long Sjogren’s flare. Started on Monday or so. Low grade temp. Fatigue. Little nausea, which is good. Drains away energy, leaves the slows. Unusual for it to last this long, often gone in a day.
We had a tough, sad, necessary talk on Tuesday. It came after a scam call about our Amazon account, after Rigel’s refusal to eat, after Kep threw up, after Option Care failed again to deliver the bags Kate uses for her tube feedings.
Pierced my calm. Frustration leaked out. Not angry. Momentarily overwhelmed. Got us to talking about this new normal. What we can reasonably expect of each other.
The tough and sad part. I’m not getting better. It’s taken me months to accept that, to accept this. She put her hand up, indicated a long, slow decline.
I know. I just… I know, too. Wu wei. We flow with this. But, it makes me sad.
Me, too. I used to wonder which of us would die first. Now, I know.
Maybe not. Heart attack. Stroke. Car accident.
Maybe not. But, probably.
There it was. On the table. The dining room table, where, I imagine, most of these conversations happen. Laying things out, saying what’s been unsaid. Right where the plates and the knives and spoons and forks go.
Acceptance, though. Has its own power. Increases intimacy. Clears the haze away. No one is dead. No one is dying quickly. And, we’re all dying anyhow, every day closer.
OK. Not a cheery Christmas message. Maybe not. But the divine with us came out and walked the room while we talked. Reminded us of evanescence. Of the joy of being together. Of the time we have, rather than the time we don’t have.
Brought us together, appreciating each other even more. A gift of a long ancientrail, marriage and love and steadfastness.
It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious night of old.
Samain and the Moon of the New Year (and the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter)
Saturday gratefuls: 32 days. 32! Nearly finished with the cds. A snowy, snow globe day. Rigel and Kep, our bed warmers. Kate. A wise woman. Smart, too. Vaccines. Coming to an arm near you. Soon. That light in the tunnel went up a bit in brightness. The star over Bethlehem explained? The Winter Solstice. Soon. Staycation.
Complex feelings. Friend Tom Crane talked a couple of days ago about the feelings that come up when considering climate change. Made me think about all of us right now. I’ve been labile this week, up and down. Unusual for me. If I get melancholy, I stay there a while. Up and bright? Ditto. But. Covid. Trump. Kate’s long illness. Climate change plus the long road ahead for our nation. Isolation from friends and loved ones.
Bet I’m not the only one experiencing complex emotions. Up. Vaccines. Down. 377,000 deaths. 250,000 + new cases a day. Up. 32 days! Down. Still 32 days left. Up. Renewable energy. Back into the Paris Accords. Down. Baked in heat. Record carbon emissions this year. Up. Jon and Ruth and Gabe on Google Meet. Down. Having to see them on Google Meet. Up. Many good days in a row for Kate. Down. Sudden fatigue yesterday. Up. Good days mean no nausea, no fatigue beyond the usual. Down. Stamina poor.
And these are the big drivers. Every day has mood changes. That unexpected money from the oil well! That crabby e-mail from a relative. Work or relationship stress. Kids. Dogs. Weather. Feelings of self-worth or self-worthlessness. Whatever triggers you. And we all have triggers.
Point. A complex web of stressors has us all dangling in our silken cocoons and each shake of the web warns us that the spider might be coming for her next meal. This is not normal. Where do we go? Out to eat? To a movie? Have friends over? A sabbath service? Take a vacation? Not for most of us. What’s the right metaphor? See-saw. Spider web. Thin ice with cracks. Fingernails on chalkboards. Whatever it is, this is a fraught time. An interesting time.
I’m giving myself permission to feel these movements, up and down, and to react to them. To not be hard on myself for not maintaining an up feeling in down times. Perhaps you need this permission, too.
Samain and the Moon of the New Year (with the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter)
Friday gratefuls: 1:00 am this morning. Time to think about things. Mark and Riyadh. The Winter Solstice. The Green Knight. The evergreen Trees with lights. That big log that burns this year and next. Presents. Holiday cheer. Diane and her Easy Entrees gift. Yum. CD’s. Music. Especially Chamber Music. And, jazz. And, Janis Joplin. Vaccines. 33 days. His moving van. His moving carcass. Climate Change. Covid. And all of its many blessings.
A few years ago, copying Charlie Haislet, I bought a cd carousel. We put as many in it of ours that would fit. It took a long time and we created an elaborate system for knowing where each cd was in the system. Never used it. Moved it out here. It’s big and clunky. Why did I do that, I wondered? We decided to take them out, replace them in their clamshells. Underway, maybe fifty percent done. As we’ve sorted them, I’ve begun to yearn for more music in my life. Again.
Kate and I met at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, as you probably know. I went for seventeen years, Kate even longer. When we moved to Andover, driving in became less and less attractive. We would want to go. Mean to go. And sit at home anyhow. I love Mozart, Haydn, Faure, Chopin, Ives, Barber. I love hearing them live. Chamber music, after all. Without the big, to me often overwhelming sound, of a full orchestra. So many memorable evenings at the Ordway in Rice Park. In particular, of course, the one where I finally found the courage to ask Kate out for coffee.
Next. Figuring out a way to connect cd player to the inhouse speakers. Folks before had an elaborate sound system, but we’ve never made it work. Chicken soup? I can do. Wiring? Oy vey. I’m gonna give it the old college try, then hire geek squad or somebody like them if I can’t get it.
It has given Kate and me something to do together twice. putting them in and taking them out. Oh, well. Best laid plans…
Awake last night. Spent a few minutes wondering why I eat so much red meat. Result: I like it. An addictive personality I guess, but I can’t quit. Moved on as anyone pondering matters at 1 am is wont to do. Imaging the ending of Jennie’s Dead. The twilight of the gods. A deomachy. Want to write it. Covid. Vaccines.
Glad for Covid. Got trump on his way. Making us consider our nation and democracy at their core levels of meaning. Sad about the deaths, the isolation from friends and family. Yes. But nothing is only one thing.
Very glad Biden picked Deb Haaland to run the Interior Department. A Native American in charge of the Cabinet department most implicated in crimes against them. Should make for a very interesting four years. “ … I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.” WP And Michael Reagan as head of the EPA. Brenda Mallory will head the White Office of Environmental Quality. Both Black. The Sierra Club has had environmental justice at the forefront of its work for years because communities of color are disproportionately affected by dirty water, polluted air, and toxic waste. So, bout time.
Now we have to win those two Senate races in Georgia. If I were younger and Kate healthier, I’d go to Georgia to work on the campaigns. So, so important.
Samain and the 2021 Moon (yes, this moon will be full on December 30th and still big on the 31st. It will light our way out of this god forsaken chunk of chronology.)
Monday gratefuls: Cribbage. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Snow on the ground. Blue Sky overhead. Hanukkah with the grandkids on Wednesday over zoom. Rigel’s visit today to the docs who cured her endocarditis. 37 days. When will he ever leave? The electoral college votes today. The Supreme Court ruled against the Texas lawsuit. Pushing us toward a new gratitude for our system. And, how it needs to change. BLM. Yes. Police radical reform. Yes. A broken medical system reform. Yes. Inclusion of all Americans. Yes. Better education and financial support for working class folks. Yes. Vaccines. That light at the end of the tunnel. Faint, but growing brighter.
Sometimes I wish I was more poetic. Less choppy, more graceful in my prose. More metaphorical. More allusive. But. I’m not. I’m a meat and potatoes writer. You can see all the ingredients. Shorter sentences. Phrases. Using those ands, buts, and ors as headers. It’s not so much choice as it is feel. The way things come out, especially when I write Ancientrails. My way. Not a High way. A side road. Might be scenic, though.
Next March Ancientrails will begin its sixteenth year. The longest project I’ve ever engaged. And, I still don’t know it’s purpose. A sort of heads up to my friends and family about life. Sure. It replaced years of handwritten journals. Probably those were more revealing about certain matters, less about others. Ancientrails has turned into a running commentary on my life, Kate’s, dogs, kids, grandkids. Politics. Religion. Art sometimes. If you’re a reader, thanks for following this inner dialogue.
Another staycation starting this week. No exercise. Learning new games we’ve purchased. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Seven Wonders Duel. Twilight Struggle. Doing this and that around the house. Maybe some painting and writing. I’m trying to resolve a persistent inner conflict between caregiving and creative work.
Why is this so hard? Something about my schedule. About when I exercise. Cook. Eat. Nap. Watch TV. I could do things in a different way, but I don’t.
Yes. Even as I write this and read back over it, I can see the dark angel of doubt, of melancholy hovering over it all. Not a place I wanna be. But. Here I am. Again.
My hope. Some downtime will help a new way of organizing my time emerge. Or, an inner assent to this is the way things are now. That my creative work also involves shopping, cooking, caring. Could be. Navel gazing. Yeah.
Let’s hear it for the finality of the electoral college voting today. I don’t like the electoral college for reasons you already know, but I’m happy about its finish line role right now. Start renting the U-Hauls, Don, you’re moving house soon.
How will we move forward? The important question now. In choppy, contentious ways, I imagine. But without the fact confounder. Without the ethical midget. Without the orange hair and funny skin. Without the Dunning-Kruger mind at the helm. Without his cronies. Without his kids. Without him.
We could sink, relieved, into a blinkered return to “normal.” We must not. For, if the Donald has done nothing else, he has made us turn huge spotlights on the cracks in our nation. The Grand Canyons of racial oppression, violent policing, fenced medical care, and a chaotic foreign policy. We see them now. All of us. Time for radical change. Let’s get it going.
Friday gratefuls: Radiation injury to my sigmoid. Dr. Evans. Becki and Pam, nurses at Arapahoe Endoscopy. Freddy’s hamburgers. Seat heaters. Money, more money, from oil. So strange. Mary’s efforts in this regard. Mark getting oil money from the U.S. in the sands of Araby. Kate. Cribbage. Bicycle playing cards. I know, but I’m putting it here anyhow, Amazon. Tony’s. Safeway pickup. Snow. Cold. Christmas and Hanukkah. And, Winter Solstice and Yule. 40 days!! Easy entrees.
And, the inner truth I sought is: radiation injury to my sigmoid colon. Sigh. The odds have not been in my favor. Even though they were low in both cases I ended up with urgency incontinence and radiation proctopathy. This last diagnosed yesterday via sigmoidoscopy. In my case, bleeding is the primary symptom. And not too bad. Mild. May disappear. May come and go for the rest of my life. These two are preferable to death. Not pleasant, but not life changing either. I can deal.
I did stop taking the incontinence med, mirabegron. It raised my heart rate during exercise and increased my resting heart rate. Affecting my overall fitness negatively. Not ok with me. We’re in a period of time when many cancers have a less threatening prognosis, prostate cancer among them. Yeah. The treatments that can cure them or turn them into chronic conditions though. Sometimes. Boo. Not in their direct results, holding the cancer at bay or killing it. But in the unintended effects like I’m experiencing.
Even so. Terminal illness versus manageable condition? No contest which I choose. Because of this, and because I know the source of these symptoms, I’d choose the treatments again. Every time. Even knowing.
Snow today. Colder. Looking more like December. May it continue.
Anti-maskers. Anti-vaxxers. You’re the bad ones, Mr. Grinch. Anti-election results lawyers. Anti-election states. You’re the bad ones, Mr. Grinch. Say it out loud. You’re the bad ones. We may have to navigate around you, but we will pass you by, leaving the Covid wards, the measles epidemics, authoritarianism in its all too many forms to your blinkered selves. Hope you decide to catch up, reform, revisit your thoughtless, seditious views. But, if not. Hey, hell’s better with company, right?
A busier than I like it week. A bit odd since this is the time of Covid and Kate doesn’t go out except for a doctor. Oh. Well.
Looking from the Mountaintop. Black Mountain lost in a white haze, a light Snow falling. The Lodgepoles and the Aspens welcoming the moisture. Me, too.
Saturday gratefuls: A full week of workouts. Garlic steak bits, Shrimp, Broccoli, Rice. The Cow that died for our meal. The Shrimp, too. 46 days. K=shaped recovery. Essential Workers. Hanukkah. Yule. Winter Solstice. Christmas. Lights. Decorations. Music. Good cheer. Remembering the Maccabees. The menorah. The prayers. Solar Snow shovel. Cod. Drug holiday for mirabegron. Cribbage. 7 Wonders Duel. Deepening intimacy. Covid. Its horrors and its wonders. The election. A new year coming.
Did some decorating yesterday. Will finish today. Up here in the loft? Pagan mysteries time. Lights. Santa Claus. Ornaments. Christmas quilt. Christmas pillow. Katy did them. Bill’s gift Christmas tie and Santa hat on my Woolly Mammoth. Snow globes with Christmas scenes. Grandma’s holiday music on Pandora. Grandpop’s, too. A tree, too, possibly today.
I’m reclaiming childhood memories and welding them onto the thinking I’ve done. Long since childhood passed. This house is Hanukkah house and I’m glad. This loft is a Christmas without the birth loft and I’m glad. Oh, the weather outside is not as frightful as I’d like, but up here it’s delightful. Down below it’s all dreidels and gelt and candles. Also delightful. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
What are you gettin’ for Hanukkah? For many Jewish kids Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas. A time for gift giving and receiving. No Santa Claus, but, hey. Many, including those who do give gifts, light the menorah, one candle a night for 8 nights, say the prayers, then it’s done. You can’t blow out the candles and you can’t use them, i.e. read by them, use them to light your way to bed, hunt for a fallen coin. At certain points dreidels come out, gelt-now mostly gold foil wrapped chocolates, singing.
Back of all this. A more interesting story.
Alexander the Great divided up his empire among his favorite generals. Seleucus I Nicator got Western Asia, a large chunk of land that ran from present day Turkey in the west to parts of present day Uzbekistan and Pakistan in the east. They pushed the Ptolemy’s out of Palestine around 200 b.c.e. Hellenization, in which many upper class Jews dropped their religion and adopted Greek lifeways, was already well underway when Antiochus IV Epiphanes took over the Seleucid Empire in 175 b.c.e.
Thus, there was a conflict not only between Jews and the Seleucid empire, but between Hellenizing Jews and those determined to maintain their faith and practice. Antiochus came into the latter conflict by declaring traditional Jewish practice forbidden.* This led to the Maccabean revolt, a guerilla war fought by traditional Jews against the Seleucids. They won.
And, now. Hanukkah. The Seleucids, perhaps Antiochus himself, had profaned the second temple. (see the wiki entry below) When the Maccabees got the temple back, they found all the oil in the temple desecrated save for one amphora that still had its priestly seal intact. Then, a miracle occurs.
No new oil could be obtained for 8 days and the amphora contained only enough for one day. Still, the temple menorah had to be lit. During the night all seven lights were lit. Always. When the temple menorah, which was huge, received oil from the one still blessed amphora, it stayed lit for 8 days until fresh sanctified oil could be had. The miracle.
Though the temple menorah only had seven lights, the Hanukkah menorah has nine. 8 of them commemorate the miracle and the 9th, the shamash, (helper, servant) is lit first and lights the other candles. In the tradition that we follow, on the first night there is one candle, on the second two, on the third three and so on until 8. Kate lights the candles and reads the prayers. I recite them with her. If the kids are here, gifts get distributed. Much like Christmas.
The first level of meaning is the miracle of the oil. That’s the one most recall. The second level of meaning lifts up the willingness of traditional Jews to take up the fight against the mighty Seleucid empire. And win! A third level of meaning is that the traditional Jews fought for the right to be different from their imperial power. Although. The traditional Jews may have also been fighting to reclaim Judaism from the upper classes who had assimilated.
It is a minor holiday compared to the High Holidays, Pesach, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, but it is the holiday most visible to the goyim. And, it has been made to fit into the whole Christmas holiday dither.
Ruth at Beth Evergreen, new year’s 2017, end of Hanukkah
*According to 1 Maccabees, Antiochus banned many traditional Jewish and Samaritan[14] religious practices: he made possession of the Torah a capital offense and burned the copies he could find;[24] sabbaths and feasts were banned; circumcision was outlawed, and mothers who circumcised their babies were killed along with their families;[25] and traditional Jewish ritual sacrifice was forbidden. It was said that an idol of Olympian Zeus was placed on the altar of the Temple and that Israelites set up altars to Greek gods and sacrificed “unclean” animals on them. Wiki
Friday gratefuls: Sleep. Cribbage. Kate, always Kate. Rigel, who kept me warm last night. Kep, just because. Nordic Advent calendar by Jacquie Lawson. Advent. The days of our lives. Covid. 46 days. Ruth. Gabe. Jon. Jon’s birthday on the 10th. 52. Hanukkah begins the same day. Santa Claus. Yule logs. Christmas trees. Lights. Ornaments. Holly and ivy. Christmas music. Corny and classical. This wonder-full time.
Bloomberg. The magazine. Peak Oil is Suddenly Upon Us. Yet another reason Covid is a blessing. If climate change matters to you, this article is a bit of good news. It features the conclusion that peak oil is behind us by British Petroleum, BP. May it be so. And may we push it along.
Feeling glum has passed. Still ready for that holiday spirit though. That pagan holiday spirit. After all: Evergreen tree, lights, drinking and feasting and gifting, mistletoe, holly and ivy, being with family and friends. None of that in the New Testament. Well, ok. Gifts. The three wise guys. Otherwise it’s Saturnalia and Northern European traditions. Gotta get those decorations.
Cribbage. Playing more of it now. Something Kate and I enjoy. Will try rummikub, too. Just got two two player games: The Twilight Struggle and the Duel. Two more in the mail. Expecting a good while still until the all clear, go breathe on your neighbors without killing them. Keep changing things up a bit.
Kakun thoughts. In conversation with Kate. Trust first. Two leggeds all equal. Life precious. Stay at it. Learn. Serve. Protect. Educate. Create. Work as part of nature, not on it or in spite of it. See. See. Hear. Hear. Clunky so far, but maybe it’ll get smoothed out. I do have a family crest, somewhere. Not sure if it has a motto or not. I’ll try to track it down.
No election fraud. Ballots cast included President and down ballot races. Republicans did ok on down ballot, but the Presidential race is suspect? Come on, guys and gals. Geez.
Wednesday gratefuls: Kakun, family precepts. This article. Ikigai. Ichi-go, Ichi-e. Cribbage. Card decks. Playing as the snow came down yesterday. Other cultures. Repositories of wisdom about how to be human. Ours, too. The snow on Black Mountain. The beauty here. Politics. Covid. Going, Going.
Japan. An old, sometimes conservative, sometimes radically modern place. So much to learn from them. The article I link to above: This Japanese Shop is 1,020 Years Old has three ideas that resonate (thanks, Tom, for reminding me of this idea). Kakun, family precepts. Many Japanese families have a motto, or a family saying that guides them. Like those quotes at the bottom of European heraldry, I suppose. “Live long, live healthy, die suddenly.” “As long as you strive to be popular, you will remain unpopular.” “Boys must help with the housework.” Quotes from this website, SoraNews. It’s masthead reads: Bringing you yesterday’s news today.
Shinise. This term connotes a business that has been in business for a really long time. 19 for over a thousand years. 140 over 500 years. 3100 over two hundred years and 33,000 with over a hundred years. In this last group are Nintendo and Kikkoman. These businesses, especially the older ones, have opted out, really probably never participated in, the notion of maximizing profit, expand all you can. Seems like an idea that might be important in late stage capitalism. The more shinise, the more stable the economy.
Kakun + shinise = Ichiwa. Family precepts, or values, married to a shinise approach to business, can yield stability and security that lasts. Makes me wonder about our individualistic, upwardly striving, materialistic culture. But, as a counter point. A useful reminder that there are many ways to be human.
As I age, I find myself more interested in family, about what mine means, about the message, the kakun, that is implicit in ours. Not sure what it is, but I think there is one. One thing that’s a part of our kakun is service as a calling. Teachers. Warrior. Doctor. Organizer. Writer. Journalist. Maybe you can think of others? Pass them along if you do. Perhaps another is: Learn. Lottsa graduate level education. Travel? Read?
In a mixed economy shinise might play a disproportionate role. While the necessary matters like housing, medical care, and sufficient income for food and education would be governmental responsibilities, there are plenty of opportunities for businesses that have kakun and shinise at their core. In Bangkok, 2004, I visited a small community of folks whose only product was Buddhist begging bowls. The bowls required several different steps, all done by hand, and the steps got distributed among families. Bought one and it sits nearby.
We’re so binary. Liberal? Conservative? Which are you? Well, on this, I’m liberal. On this, conservative. On this, maybe, neither one. Are you an individualist or a communitarian? Are you gay, straight, trans, bi? Life requires nuance. Ideology is good for critiquing, but not so good for planning.
It might be that a conversation around these values is what we, the USA, needs.
Tuesday gratefuls: The Clan. Gathering in an hour. Tom and his gift book. His thinking of Ruth. The morning darkness lit by the Thanksgiving Moon. Orion and his great Dog pursuing the hunt toward Mt. Evans. 50 days until Trump leaves. Vaccines. The holidays of light. Needed to dispel the four years of ethical darkness. The gas heater here in the loft/studio. Emerson. Lao Tze. Camus. Hesse. Aldo Leopold. Wendell Berry. Wes Jackson. Thomas Berry. Rilke. Saints in my short, very short, tradition.
And your world, it’s rapidly changin’. Wow. Trump defeated. Vaccines looking good. Kate with almost a month of good days. Add your own spectacular news here.
However. Even rapid change is sometimes not enough. This month, this December, will require all the good feeling we can muster. For ourselves, those we love, those in our neighborhoods and communities. It will require all the festivals of lights we celebrate: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year’s. It will require an extra effort to avoid a, “I’ll be dead by Christmas.” holiday season. Going home for Christmas may take on a new meaning unless we stay. at. home. wear. masks. distance ourselves from others. worship virtually. Flu. Covid. Cold. Holiday celebrations. = Potential disaster.
Why? Because the surge, that one where the Covid infections became a hockey stick graph like climate change? Is about to surge. According to the NYT this morning, all of California’s intensive care beds could be overwhelmed by mid-month. We’ve not seen the uptick from Thanksgiving travel. It’s coming. The same article says that we hit four million infections in November, more than double the previous record. 1.9 million. When? October. Both before the Thanksgiving holiday visits.
We’re in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We can cross the bridge of death to a vaccine and Biden future but first we have to say just how fast the unladen swallow can fly. Or, Come up with capital of Assyria. If we’re wrong, well… I’ll give you a hint. Tell the gatekeeper that he needs to stay socially distanced, get his vaccine, cheer Biden at his inauguration (virtually), and, close the bridge, go home, and stay there.
Rereading some Camus. I’m mostly with him. His notion of the absurd. The universe rolls on with or without us. There is no meaning to life. In other words the universe does not have an Easter egg for us that, if only we look in unlikely places, will reveal itself, as in a computer game.
I part company with him on the notion that we cannot give meaning to our life. I believe we can give meaning to our own lives. We can choose, a critical idea in existentialism, to live for others, with others in spite of that ultimate absurdity of our situation.
Thanks to Tom for sending out this poem, Wendell Berry’s XI.
We can choose, as Wendell Berry asks us, to:
“Come,
willing to learn what this place,
like no other, will ask of you
and your children, if you mean
to stay. “This land responds
to good treatment…”” Wendell Berry, XI
He addresses this plea to these persons:
“The need comes on me now
to speak across the years
to those who finally will live here
after the present ruin…”
This is crossing another bridge of death, the one after Covid, the burning of our planet. I agree with Berry that there will be a life after we’ve ruined this one. It will be. So different. Not recognizable to us. Our grandchildren will know. And their children will know nothing else. Not that far away in human terms.
Go to a new tab, quick. Look up how fast an unladen swallow can fly. It just might save your life.
Thursday gratefuls: A good visit with a potential new doc. Our since we moved here doc, Lisa Gidday, retires January 1. 2020 was too much for her. Also a good visit for Kep with his dermatologist/allergist. Yes, even dogs. He has hot spots (allergies, I think) in addition to the infection he got from grooming. Orion headed for the evening sky, in the early morning now partly behind Black Mountain. Ruby. Snowshoes today. Oil change. Rear door diagnosis.
Happy to report that Kate’s had several good days in a row now. A crummy two day stretch, a Sjogren flare?, or it would be two weeks plus. When mama’s happy, everybody’s happy. Makes me smile.
Found this wonderful tribute to a brave dog and his friend on Next Door Shadow Mountain. A local story and a beautiful one. Hope you have a friend like Winston.
He’s flopping like a fish pulled untimely from his Whitehouse pond. Throwin’ shade. Dissing the election process which his own head of cybersecurity said was as good as it’s ever been. Which every election official in every state has certified as sound. The votes of which elected more Republicans than anticipated yet somehow screwed up the Presidential vote. On the same damn ballot? Call Rudy!
So. Tired. Of. His. Bullshit. Go away, bad President. Go away.
Rigel slept last night with her head on my pillow, her back snugged up against Kate. Believe she’s beaten the endocarditis. Worth it.
When I took Kep in for his vet appointment yesterday, it was 75 in Englewood. 75! November 18th. Thanksgiving next week. And, 75. The world feels off kilter for us old folks who really do remember snowy Thanksgivings, white Christmases. I did see in the Washington Post this morning that our carbon emissions will be at their lowest for three decades. Covid dropped them, of course. And, the orange excrescence. If people weren’t dying, I’d say it’s worth it. Over a quarter of a million now. That’s Winston-Salem or Norfolk disappeared from the map.
Lock yourself down. This Atlantic article tells the truth about what we should be doing right now. But, we won’t. I get it, too. The Christmas retail season for a consumer based economy. Gonna trash that and still survive politically? I wouldn’t wanna be a governor right now. But. The other shoe will drop when kids come home from college for Thanksgiving and/or the Christmas holiday period. And. Of course. Families will still put aside common sense to embrace relatives, loved ones. I read the other day that this surge, 170,000 new cases a day, has been driven by small gatherings in homes and bars. We’re ramping up the number of infected just in time for the most volatile and problematic time in the whole year so far. Think about that. In all of 2020 we’ve got the worst time ahead of us.
Here’s the double/triple irony. The vaccines look good. Doctors are much better at treating Covid. But, so many will die and get sick simply because Trump will still be in office over this time of increasing vulnerability for so, so many. Cursed year. Cursed year.
Ta for now. Gotta get the snowshoes in Ruby so Stevinson can mount them.
can’t quit. Moved on as anyone pondering matters at 1 am is wont to do. Imaging the ending of Jennie’s Dead. The twilight of the gods. A deomachy. Want to write it. Covid. Vaccines.
Let’s hear it for the finality of the electoral college voting today. I don’t like the electoral college for reasons you already know, but I’m happy about its finish line role right now. Start renting the U-Hauls, Don, you’re moving house soon.
