Samain Bare Aspen Moon
My phone camera didn’t do it justice, but Thanksgiving came in over Black Mountain with a gorgeous pink cloud, a penumbra of gold light on Black Mountain itself and a glow over our home. May the rest of the day, and especially the capon, be as beautiful.
Finished the pancetta and fig stuffing by celebrity felon, Martha Stewart, last night. It smells like it will be as good as I imagined. The capon-yes, we have it-thawed out and will go in the oven around 11:00 a.m. Kate made a pumpkin pie and got the caramelized yams ready. Ruthie’s pecan pie is covered in foil. She’s also bringing deviled eggs. They’re planning on coming up around noon or so.
Last night, for some strange reason, the neighbor had his sledge hammer out, using it to pound on a plastic garbage container. For quite a while. Don’t know if his mother or his mother-in-law or both are coming today.
We will be saying our gratefuls around 2 p.m. I’m grateful for you if you’re reading this. I’m also grateful for all the love here: dogs, Kate, Jon, Ruth, Gabe, Annie. I’m also grateful for the lodgepole pine that spent millions of years acclimating themselves to this particular altitude. And for the clouds and the mountains, which have such great altitude, and the streams and the mule deer. The elk, the red and gray fox, the moose, the mountain lions, the bears, the marmots and pikas. The rattlesnakes. The available oxygen in the atmosphere and the amazing organs we have that convert it to our use. So many things. Endless really. Thankful for all of them, now and forever.
On the #metoo phenomenon kicked off by the now thoroughly besmirched Harvey Weinstein. What has happened, I hope, is that the tacit cover for sexual harassers has become at least translucent, maybe on its way to transparency. It’s that cover, consisting of male privilege and the fear of retribution in ways large and small that go with it, which has given especially men in power, but also men in all walks of life, the sense that they can treat women as objects rather than persons.
Apologies are important. As an academic who teaches a course on apologies noted, they affirm, confirm and reinforce social norms. We need to establish as the real norm that unwanted sexual advances of any kind are not funny, playful, teasing, victimless. One way to do that is for each of those harassers to acknowledge what they did, who they did it to, and why their behavior is abhorrent and inexcusable. Then, they should be allowed to move on with their lives, but not in whatever position they currently hold.