Monthly Archives: July 2020

Beyond the Boundaries, Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Health, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel, US History, Weather +Climate

America’s Id

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Amber and Lisa. Hummingbirds. Simple joys. Lisa. Her obvious concern and help. Derek, who offered to complete our fire mitigation work. A day of sunshine yesterday. Drove 150 miles yesterday to medical appointments. In air conditioned comfort. Tisha B’av. A day of mourning for the loss of the first and second temples. And, later, for all the trials of the Jews, including pogroms and the holocaust. A somber day. Yesterday.

A video maker held his Black Lives Matter sign in what he called the “most racist town in the U.S.,” Harrison, Arkansas. Here’s an edited version of that experience.

This video could be titled, America’s Id.

Also in America’s south, NASA successfully launched its Perseverance spacecraft. Headed to Mars with a helicopter and water seeking instruments, Perseverance continues the human fascination with life not of Earth. It will land in the middle of February, 2021 in Jezero Crater. An excellent explainer about why NASA chose Jezero is this July 28th article in the NYT.

Though Earthbound and isolated on Shadow Mountain Perseverance gives me a thrill. And, not just a thrill, but a scientific extension of my own interests. It pleases me in a deep way that we’ve not abandoned space exploration. Humans need to know, to explore, to test ideas and equipment. And, Mars! Speculations abound. I’m glad we Americans can still pull together for such an event. Looking forward to next February.

America’s Id and its shiniest example of hope. We are both, all. This time calls for Perseverance.

Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Writing

Let The World Be New

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. Garbage truck drivers. Mail folk. Snow plow drivers. All risk their lives on curvy mountain roads with limited sight lines. Summer and winter. Everyday bravery. Kate’s better day. Lisa, seeing Lisa today. Get some next steps with Kate’s shortness of breath and nausea.

I named the Lughnasa Moon as a reminder that the Great Wheel underlies most of what I believe these days, as a way to get back to the Celtic, the mythic, as a way to remind myself of the wonders floating in my imagination. Easy to lose sight of in Covid days and feeding tube nights.

George Will. An honest man. Writes superbly. His column today in the Washington Post, Biden’s election will end national nightmare 2.0, references Gerald Ford’s comment at his inauguration that “our long, national nightmare is at an end.” In conclusion Will writes: “Forty-six years later, an exhausted nation is again eager for manifestations of presidential normality.” I hadn’t considered this, but it would take one huge source of angst off the domestic table.

I’m looking for brightness, for the upbeat, for the comforting. Will provided some. Grateful for it.

I’m also looking for fairies, for Gods and Goddesses. Ready to get back to Jennie’s Dead. A place of refuge. A place where the world can become new with my fingers on the keyboard.

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Dealing With A Rough Patch

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Almost reorganized living room. Kate’s hands. Dreams. Rains. Cool. The life we live. Nyquil. Pollen. Tramadol. THC. End of the staycation tomorrow. Perry Mason on HBO. Wet earth. Petichor. The tragedies and joys of our days.

Dreams. Trying to find third gear in a GTO going up a snowy hill. A new phone, different design, metal plate beside the screen. Meeting folks in a coffee shop. Choppy memories.

Kate’s going through a rough (rougher) patch. Breathing more difficult. Feeling weak. Not eating much. Scares me. Good thing we see the doc tomorrow. Hard to know how to be. Honest? This scares me. Me, too, she says. Or, should I try to remain upbeat, better tomorrow, some new drug?

Not wanting to send her down, but not wanting to be dishonest either. I find it hard since my default is to go with the clearest, most real. Not sure what helps her. Me.

It’s been a cool week plus here, nice sleeping. That’s helped both of us. On the other hand the cooler, cloudier weather also dampens the inner weather.

Derek works hard, moving logs first on a dolly, then with his jeep over to his house and his wood pile.

Good seeing Mary and Mark this morning. Things are still in between for them both. He’s awaiting the late August, early September startup of his school in Riyadh. She’s waiting for Malaysia’s borders to open so she can go there into 14 days of quarantine. After she’ll be with Guru until the next academic year in Kobe, Japan. Retired. Sorta.

Family, Garden, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Mop floors, Clean bathrooms

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Monday gratefuls: Clean floors, bathrooms. Good wonton soup. A Kate good day. Rigel’s eating well. Kep’s eagerness in the morning. Brother Mark in his old haunt, Hail, Saudi Arabia. Ragweed misery. Rain, more rain. Keep it coming. Bacon. Eggs. Covid. The revelations about us it is revealing. The USA, humbled. The vasty deeps and the airy heights.

Ruth sent us a video of the garden at her Dad’s. It’s growing. Lots of rain recently has helped. Jon’s got so many skills to share with Ruth and Gabe. He’s an artist, first. And, a good one. He has remodeling skills which he’s using to renovate his house. Ruth and Gabe are learning along the way. He’s a good cook. A maker of skis. A skier. A teacher. A gardener. A man filled with love, too. They both need it.

Kate had a better day yesterday. Her stoma site looks good, healing. She sees Lisa this week for a cortisone injection-bursitis-and a DEXA scan for osteoporosis. They’ll also discuss a focus on nausea. If we can get the nausea under control, then she can gain more weight. She’s hanging on to what she has, but to gain weight she needs to be able to eat at least some during the day. Tough for her with this recurrent nausea.

She’s moving through my fiction library. Her goal, she says, is to read it all. She just might at the rate she’s going. Yesterday, she read Recursion, a sci fi novel. Yesterday! Science nerd turns liberal arts major.

The weather has turned monsoonal. Although Weather 5280, my best source for weather in the mountains, says we’ve not made into the monsoons. The monsoons, typically July and August, feature a flow of moisture north from the Baja that gives Colorado afternoon rains. That flow is not set up. The monsoons used to mark an end to the high stress part of the wildfire season. Not so much now, though they help when they come.

Considering what to do with my mini-sabbatical, as Paul called it. I may extend it another week. I’ve gotten a lot of different sorts of things done. Finished the final touches on the loft, cleaned out the living room, coordinated several trades people for electrical work, tree felling, mowing, window washing, got rid of the pallets, supported Derek.

Chop wood, carry water. The Zen adage. Realized that first comes the fireplace, the pots for the water. The house is my fireplace, my pots for water. Mop floors, clean bathrooms. Daily life, as the Zen masters knew, is daily life. We are in it and of it. If we treat it as a burden, then it burdens us. If we treat it as a spiritual exercise, then we receive nurture.

Choosing nurture.

Coronavirus, Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Save Baron

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Wolf’s Trail. A gift from a close friend. Thanks, Tom. Amazon. (I know. But, still.) Pick-up. Yet more rain. 49 degrees this morning. Sushi Win. Spring rolls. Wonton soup. Sushi Win special role. Rigel, head out the window, ears back, facial fur streaming back. Ivory. Old reliable. 120,000 miles. Still fine except for air con and a couple of dings. Black Mountain Drive. Brook Forest. Evergreen.

When I last saw granddaughter Ruth, she told me about a movement among her peers, 14 years old or so, called Save Baron. I love this. His age peers taking either an ironic or a genuine interest in his welfare. Not exclusive notions. What would it be like, they think, to be Baron? With Melania the naked first lady and the orange topped donald as a father? Who better to underline his predicament than those entering high school this year? I hope they succeed. The world does not need another person with the donald’s politics or, even worse, his aesthetics.

Doom scrolling is impossible to dodge unless you never look at the news, online or on the tube or at your breakfast table. Headlines. Numbers with arrows. Graphs. Maps with red states, orange states, brownish states. A vaccine comment here. A why did they wait so long to lock down article there? An article on the economy here.

And it’s not like we don’t care. We do. But everyday. All the time. The slow drip, the fast drip. Hard.

Kate’s had more bad days than good ones recently. Shortness of breath, nausea, general ickiness. Episodic. A bad stretch right now. A lot of it down to Sjogren’s. The rest? Don’t know. Makes things darker here on Shadow Mountain.

I’ve had another round of allergies. New this year. Not sure what’s up with that, but it’s unpleasant. Stuffy. Runny. Headache. Colors the days here, too.

Wanted this to be more upbeat, but…

Coronavirus, Health, US History

Wondering

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Brooks Tavern’s chicken fried steak. The organized state of the loft. Putting the new laundry hamper together with Kate. This Covid life. The abundant rain yesterday afternoon and last night. Woollies, old and new. The long reach of Jewish history. Celtic myth. Nordic myth. Greek myth. Christian myth. Fairy tales.

Difficult, isn’t it, to avoid Covid? Yes, sure, in public. Where, I hope, you and yours have a mask at least. Perhaps even at home where our continuing presence makes us aware of what we’re not able to do. And, I read, that home is still the most likely place for you to get infected. Like all those auto accidents that happen close to home, I guess.

However what I’m focused on here is your mind. It’s difficult to avoid Covid there, too. Normal aches and pains of aging. Oh, wait? Is that? No, it can’t be. Can it? Got there yesterday afternoon. Nose a bit stuffy then sneezing. Aches. Was that fever? Or, a hot flash? What am I dealing with? Covid or Lupron or being 73? Wait and see. As Seoah often said. Wait and see.

This morning. Aches still there, but sneezing, stuffiness gone. Fever turned out to be a lingering hot flash. When will they ever end? As many menopausal women have wondered. Doesn’t feel like I got it this time.

Even the thought of Covid, without the virus itself, can make us sick. Doubtful. Wary. Denialistic. Has to be happening a lot these days.

Anxiety. Depression. Enhanced fear of the other, of an invisible foe. I wonder how much under the surface mental illness has become apparent? How much existing mental illness has gotten worse? We’re still not too good about admitting to our own psychic troubles or at recognizing them in others.

The longer this goes on, and the numbers of our runaway pandemic suggest it will be quite a while, even with a vaccine, the more mental illness will become problematic, not only for thousands, but for millions. What will they do?

Is anybody working on this? Is it on anybody’s radar? Wondering.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Third Phase, Writing

Living

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Friday gratefuls: The Norsemen, a funny sendup of the Vikings. (which I also liked.) Derek’s continuing to cut up and cart away our felled trees. Children of Time, a sci fi book about terraforming, genetic manipulation, and the end of earth’s history. Spiders and ants and humans, oh my. Peter Praski who fixed our fan and our lights. Alan’s commitment to the political process. Sally’s thaw. The Mussar crowd.

Still on vacation. Enjoying my focus on domestic chores like putting up smoke detectors (10-year batteries. Thanks, Tom.), laundry, getting the fan fixed, the stumps ground down, windows washed, and gutters cleaned. Cooked a bit, not up to my pre-Seoah standards. Out of practice. Will improve.

Pleased with the healing of the angry skin around Kate’s stoma site. Gradually. Gradually. Next up we have to knock down the nausea that ruins her days. Not sure how to do that, but we’re gonna focus on it. Help her have more strings of better days. So dispiriting when she has to leave the breakfast table to lie down.

Still feeling that limbo Kate talked about. In between. Not at a threshold, not in a liminal space, though I’ll appreciate that when it comes.

Getting things cleaned up and reorganized has been good. Feels good. My mind has fewer anchors like, oh, when will I get around to that? That being those books and papers on the bookshelf in the living room. That being getting the final trees down for fire mitigation. That being the gutters that need cleaning. That being the disorganized state of the loft.

As I pull up the anchors, I can feel the engine beginning to rumble below decks. No idea of the destination when I can finally slip away.

A friend recently talked about all the volunteer work he’s been doing since retirement seven years ago. Do I still need to feel productive, he asked? Maybe there’s something deeper going on here?

Has made me think about our American obsession with work. A Calvinist slant to our hearts. If we work, we’re good. If we don’t work, we’re lazy. Or, bad. Makes retirement a conundrum. Work is over with. Let’s get to it, then. Get to what?

Work. In my imagination a post-neolithic revolution idea. Tend the field. Care for the animals. Fix the house. Govern the village. I’m sure the hunter-gatherers had their obsessions, too, but I don’t think it was work. In the third phase we try to leave work behind us only to reinstate it covertly. Or sometimes vertly.

My suspicion is that we all need something that gratifies us, satisfies us, gives us a chance to be who we are. I cast off the mantle of work for those things and name them living.

Politics, US History

We Can’t Waste This Crisis

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Buddies Alan, Tom, Bill. Sally, too. Kate’s openness. The meal I made yesterday, which wasn’t so good. Derek. Who will continue transporting the fallen from our yard to his wood stove. Peter Praski who fixed our ceiling lights in the living room and comes today to work on the fan. Jude and his shipping container. Eduardo and Holly with Holly’s brother there in an Airstream. This mountaintop neighborhood. Diverse politically and economically.

Oh, John. Teddy. Harvey. Woody. Bill. Margaret Sanger. Sexual predators, racists, eugenicists. Harvey and Bill, definitely bad men. But Bill was funny. Harvey produced good movies. Woody makes real art. Margaret Sanger championed birth control. John and Teddy, good men, I think, who chose not to think critically about their views on race.

Luther: hate sin and love the sinner. Not my theological world anymore, but the sentiment is true. None of us are all this or all that. Judaism teaches that we have a yetzer hara, or an inclination to serve only ourselves, and a yetzer hatov, an inclination to bear the burden of the other. Mussar as a spiritual discipline teaches how to balance these two and how to use even our yetzer hara in non-harmful ways.

Yes, a difficult idea. Yes, one that could be used to whitewash (pun intended) the most awful of people, but true nonetheless, I believe. Hitler was a painter. Not a good one. But, still. Does his apparent love of dogs forgive him for his anti-semitism and rancid cruelty? No. But it can be a point of connection between his humanity and our own.

At its best this idea allows us to see our own flaws, to imagine ourselves as a complex person, to not get trapped in the oh, I’m no good at all, or the I’ll never amount to anything psychic swamps. And, to not view one-dimensionally the others in our lives, in our history.

No more than we should forgive the Nazis for their atrocities should we forgive racist, sexist actions, policies, religious beliefs. We must stand against all actions inspired by claims of superiority or inferiority based on secondary characteristics. Must. Always.

MLK said we cannot legislate what is in peoples hearts. But we can make sure their thoughts do not become actions. That’s what the Civil Rights Act, the Affirmative Action legislation, the Voter’s Rights acts were about.

What will we need now? I don’t know. I’m waiting for Black and Latino communities, First Nations to define that. We could pass the E.R.A. That would help women.

Trump has to go. The sycophants of his in the Senate and House, too. That’s the sine qua non to grab this moment for the significant change that can happen. After that, it will take a lot of sausage making. But we cannot waste this crisis. It offers too much.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Here We Go

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Trash pickup. Significant rain yesterday and last night. Coolness. Kate’s reading. Right now, All the King’s Men. Her honesty. The deepening of our time together. Mutuality. More of that. Turbination. Money. CBE. Zoom. Lights. Electricity. Solar panels. My keyboard. The third phase.

Week I, vacation. Missing my workouts but staying true to my vacation. Putting up ten-year smoke detectors. Cleaning the oven. Going to the bank. Putting together a new laundry hamper with Kate. Cleaning the living room, the garage. Focused on domestic tasks.

But. There’s a flaw in the ointment. Kate reports feeling erased as I reorganize the kitchen, pick up more of the chores. That’s a strong word, I said. Well, we can’t do this if I’m not honest. I agree.

Mutuality is the key. She feels like she’s lost her partner role. I don’t. I see her pay the bills, fold the clothes, make masks, deal with her multiple medical issues. When I can’t figure out how to put up the smoke detector, she knows. When I need to know how to clean the oven, she knows. Her brilliant mind is intact and needed. By both of us.

Her grasp of medicine, which she wears lightly, makes our life so much less fraught. She can discern the serious from the don’t worry about it. Her honesty, which is a core quality for her, means no guessing.

Part of what’s happening is that the Lupron is gradually losing its grip on my hormones. That means I have more energy. Combine that with Kate’s big improvements: leakage fixed, stoma site healing, lung disease stable, stent in place. Relief and joy come more often.

As I feel better, I want to do more around the house. But that gives rise the being erased feelings in Kate. You can see the dilemma. Communication and thoughtfulness on both of our parts is necessary. Mutuality being the key.

Marriage. A pilgrimage. An ancientrail with ecstasy. And despair. Joy and fear. Anger and reconciliation. A pilgrimage toward the true holy grail, humanness. Still on the trail, backpack secure, walking stick in hand, cape wrapped round my shoulders. Here we go.

Commentary on the news, Health, Humor, Politics, US History

A Trumpburger

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: The clan. Riyadh. Singapore. San Francisco. Shadow Mountain. Cool mountain mornings. Beau Jo’s pizza. Kep walking on my back this morning. Rigel sniffing her way into breakfast. The new perspective aborning. Gettin’ ‘er done. That new drill. Those ten-year battery smoke detectors.

Let’s start with cows for relaxation.* Or, cow cuddling. Yes, it’s a trend. Before that steak dinner get up close. Might let some of those dairy farmers on the brink achieve a new revenue stream. Other than milk in a bucket. Why not? Cows are big. They’re warm. They’re ungulates.

Also prey animals. That’s the steak part. Probably something folks in India knew long ago. Sacred cows.

That was the sweet part. Let’s turn to jackbooted thugs wandering the streets of Portland grabbing U.S. citizens off the street. Homeland Security. Put in a picture here of my hat that reads: Let’s make Orwell fiction again. Where are all the second amendment freedom-loving Boogaloo bros? This is the kind of government overreach that they prattle on about. Could be a come to Jesus moment for the far right and the far left. Finally, an enemy we can agree on. Not holding my breath.

Then there’s cutting money for covid testing, contact tracing, and the CDC in the new Trumpian budget. More money for storm-troopers, a lot less money for the storm. Not forgetting the obvious move right now of the Administration lawsuit to zero out Obamacare. In the middle of a pandemic. Or consider. Who speaks for the W.H.O.? Not the plague flea in the Oval Office.

One positive for Biden’s campaign is Trump’s promise to restart the daily Coronavirus briefings that served him so well before. Let’s play another round of What Will He Say Next?

One thing he said next is that he will send Federal troops into other big cities. This is not the start of a dictatorship. It’s the realization of one. I’d like a black and white photoshopped image of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Trump. I will hang it on my wall as a precautionary tale for my grandkids.

Kate asked me the other day about the Trump Presidential Library. Always fun to speculate. Maybe big golden arches with an L.E.D. counter for lies. Let’s say it will start at 45,000. Inside will be screens of tweeted screed, a backroom full of unread briefing books and intelligence updates. Food, you ask? Of course, included in the $45 a person admission will be a large chocolate shake, a Trumpburger, and an order of Freedom Fries. That American Flag napkin is take-home souvenir.

What else can we do? We have to laugh at him. If we take him seriously, all is lost. He’s an unserious man, a man of no depth but infinite in his cruelty and his greed.

Vote. Please. Get your neighbor to vote. Get your family to vote. (No, not red hat Uncle Harry) but everybody else. Please. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Did I mention vote?

* “A farm in upstate New York is offering self-care seekers the chance to spend 90 minutes cosying up to cows. The Mountain Horse Farm explains that cows are “sensitive, intuitive animals” who will “pick up on what’s going on inside and sense if you are happy, sad, feel lost, anxious or are excited, and they will respond to that without judgement.”” Guardian