Monthly Archives: March 2021

Family, Health

Huh

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Swedish hospital. Kate. Those who care for her. Her sisters. CBE. Rabbi Jamie. Mortality. Rigel, up and down the stairs to the loft. Kep and Rigel who slept next to me last night. Snow coming, maybe big snow.

Sparks of joy: Vaccine appointment. Dr. Emrie, pulmonologist. Polio.

 

 

OK. I didn’t see that coming. I visited a pulmonologist today at the advice of my new PCP Leigh Thompson. She didn’t think my diagnosis of COPD sounded right based on the test results she saw. Boy, was she right.

Either none or very little COPD, said Emrie. Lisa, Dr. Emrie’s nurse, whom I liked a lot, had me inhale through plastic tube connected to meter. Three times. 30. 30. 28. Dr. Emrie said normal negative inspiratory force, which this simple test measures, is 60. Oh.

Polio. He explained that my bout of polio had killed motor neurons on the left side of my body. But, as I recovered, others stepped up to take their place. They get pumped up, beefed up, he said, because they’re doing their own work and the work of those dead neurons. As we age, they get tired. Mine are slowly wimping out.

Probably don’t need the Flovent. Gonna try without it starting tonight.

He did say that living up here absolutely will not work at some point and it would be better for me now to be lower. Kate, too, for that matter. Not sure where we’ll go with that. This is a great time to sell a house, but not so great a time to buy one. For the same reasons, a hot market with little inventory.

Weird, huh? Polio coming back to bite me in the, well, lung.

Kate remains at Swedish and will be there at least another day. Still don’t know what’s going on. Frustrating and maddening.

Commentary on the news, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Politics, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Dead Would Feel Better

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Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Monday gratefuls: Rigel and Kep, here with me. Kate and her struggle. Swedish E.R. Lea, Kate’s nurse yesterday. Ruby, dutifully moving me up and down the mountains. Roads. Vaccines. The stimulus bill passing the Senate. My ancient friends and a soulful Sunday morning yesterday. Kate’s sisters.

Sparks of Joy: Thor, Jude’s (next door neighbor) Australian shepherd puppy. In fact, I’ll give Thor two sparks. A Dalmatian puppy I saw sticking its head out of a pickup on the way home. My own sanity.

When I saw Kate yesterday, she was still in pain, a headache adding to the mix. Unusual for her. At one point she thought she might be in Andover or Conifer. I was to sleep on Rigel’s couch, which was right there, she said. That got me concerned so I called the nurse.

A CT scan of Kate’s brain showed no clots, bleeds. No stroke. Conclusion was that an anti-nausea med, stronger than her usual one, caused temporary confusion. Good to know. She is, the nurse said later in the evening, oriented, normal now.

When I last communicated with the hospital, the scan for a possible clot in her lungs had not been done, though scheduled later in the night. Sometime around 11 am MST, there should be word on what the plan is. I’ll let you know

I’ve gotten good sleep the last two nights, feeling better rested. Though tired anyhow.

This hospital visit has me concerned. Not that the others didn’t, but this feels different. The ambulance and the paramedics. The confusion in the hospital. The inability of the docs to find a cause for her distress on Saturday. She said while in the E.R., “Dead would feel better.”

I intend to keep putting one foot down, then the other. Not to get lost in maybes and what ifs, stay in the present as much as possible. Do what needs doing. Come up with some more cliches to describe keeping on with keeping on.

 

Stimulus plan passed the Senate. That’s a win for Biden, for Dems, for the U.S. I wish Democrats could wield the sort of party discipline McConnell achieves for the GOP. In a 50-50 Senate the whip is the most important figure. Dick Durbin is important.

The Chauvin trial is imminent. That should give a boost to the voting bill, the police reform legislation. What will it be like in Minneapolis? Don’t know. My old home metro. 40 years. Feels weird to be gone during such an important moment in its history.

Meanwhile, SpaceX landed a Starship. It exploded afterward, but the landing was enough to declare a success. Perseverance has begun to roll across Mars, sending back spectacular photographs.

Life continues, no matter personal circumstances. Though jarring, this fact is also reassuring.

Colorado, Family, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Post Interrupted

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate. Her doggedness. Rigel’s, too. That stimulus bill. Biden at work. Spring and Winter playing with each other. Now it’s my turn! Spring this weekend. Winter next week. Writing poetry again. Going with life as it streams through 9358 Black Mountain Drive. Elk Creek Fire paramedics. Swedish E.R. Dylan.

Sparks of Joy: Vaccines. Ode’s prints. Ruth.

This post got interrupted yesterday:

Elk Creek Paramedics came to our house yesterday. Kate was in extreme distress, trouble breathing, pain, nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. They took her out of the house and down the hill to Swedish E.R.

She’s still in the hospital this morning (Sunday, March 7) though I expect she’ll be released today. No obvious reason for the incident in x-rays or blood work. Scary, but looks like it will resolve.  Kate’s Caring Bridge site

It started here.

Colorado on my mind. There’s a fascinating thread on Pinecam.com about whether it makes sense to live up here. Here’s the key section from the post that started it:

“My wife and I own property in an unnamed Foothills community served by a community well system. I’ve got reason to believe there are issues with water supply, long term, and so we may be looking at selling soon. We’ve also experienced difficulty finding property insurers willing to write policies in our area due to wildfire risk – it’s not impossible, just expensive.”

I finished reading it all, and the responses reflect concerns in the minds of most who live in the mountains, especially in the more developed areas like Conifer and Evergreen.

When I lived at sea level in the Midwest, I often wondered how people could live in flood plains. I mean, they’re flood plains, right? Well, I understand now. Many of us live where the land calls us. Kate and I do.

This is the WUI, wooee! Wildland/Urban Interface. Sociologically we’re an extension of the Denver Metro area, an exurb, much like Andover is in Minnesota. About the same distance out, too. Different geology though.

In Andover we lived on the Great Anoka Sand Plain, a shore line area of the ancient glacial river Warren. Lots of rain, a deciduous forest, oak savanna, and fields that grew whatever crops folks wanted. We grew perennial flowers, vegetables, fruits and nuts, kept bees.

In Conifer we live on a mountain top at 8,800 feet. This is the arid West. Drought often, as it is now. Folks grow what they can and some do well, but it’s tough with the more intense sun, elk and mule deer, rocky infertile soil. Unlike Andover, we live here on the sufferance of the wild fire cycle.

On our property water availability depends on precipitation and older water stored in cracks in the bedrock. Our well has been refractured, meaning the rock got opened up some by water under pressure or drilling.

Family, Friends, Health, Myth and Story, Politics, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Enough

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Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Kate. Rigel. Kepler. Fresh snow. Vaccines. Sleep. Books. This computer. Dexterity. Psalms. Rabbi Jamie. His buddy, Justin. 45 gone. 46 at work. Lisa Murkowski’s vote in the Senate energy and natural resources committee for Haaland.

Sparks of Joy: Bright Sun on white Snow. The letter A. The Mountains.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. The Dead’s second compilation album and the title for life over the last four plus years. How I love the stable, unexciting presidency of Joe Biden. He’s pushing a stimulus for a wounded nation. He has police reform and a voting rights bill moving through the House on their way to the Senate. And, he’s putting together an infrastructure bill. Go, Joe.

Taking 45’s chaos off the table, reducing the news to policy analysis, political odds, the normal functioning of our democracy has lifted that everyday burden. Even a golden calf simulacrum of 45 can be laughed at, an oh my god moment. Head shaking, yes, but the burn of such a statue aloed by electoral defeat.

I’ve never been proud to be a Democrat because my politics fall on the left side of its consensus. But I’m close to pride now. Working on the pandemic, unemployment, protecting the vote, changing the field for policing, building a national policy to refit our nation. Put a minimum wage, a wealth and a carbon tax. Put teeth behind our rejoining of the Paris Accord and I’m gonna fly a blue flag over the blue lights we already have.

Who is this Ron Johnson anyhow? Send him back to Wausau or Shiocton or Baraboo. This last Wisconsin town has a circus museum. He could be an exhibit there, with the other clowns. Or, maybe he could go to the cranberry bogs around Tomah. Get a wooden paddle and earn his living as a harvester. Anything but an obstructionist asshole asking for the whole bill to be read, 628 pages.

I’m 74. The days of youth long gone. I no longer expect a fair world, but I hope for a just one. I no longer expect a peaceful world, but I hope for a stable one. I no longer believe in a three-story universe, but I love this actual one, even more mysterious.

Give me my Tolkien, my Psalms, my Oxford English Dictionary. And, faeries. Give me my family, my ancient friends, this amazing life. Give me the Mountains and the Snow and the bright Sun and blue Sky. This is enough. Always has been.

Commentary on Religion, Judaism, Kabbalah, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

O Sullen God

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Late Wednesday. My Psalm of healing. For Friday’s class

 

A Psalm. A Prayer. A Theology.

 

O sullen divinity of my youth

You took away my legs

O silent god you made me lie down,

Unable to walk. You imprisoned me.

Lord of theft you stole my mother,

Left us without her. Crying without hope.

The abyss swallowed me.

 

And you let me disappear, fade away.

A blanket held in the depth’s chill.

I shuddered, unable to throw it off.

No joy. No walking with others. I stood alone

Trickster god, wielder of sacred bewilderment.

You had me. Oh. You had me.

 

And, I knew you not.

 

After the fallow time had drained the world.

That spring rhizomes, corms, bulbs and tubers awoke.

Shook off winter cold and threw green up, up, up.

Up toward the sky. Crowned it in colors so bright.

Purple crocus, yellow crocus, Grape hyacinth.

Stories of joy. Time to play!

 

The bees flew in and the bees flew out,

Out to the flowers, into the hive. Out to the flowers.

That ground hog high in the tree. The turtle on pilgrimage.

The dogs. Always. Barking, running, bowing, chasing.

 

On the garden bed: purpled beets, white onions, green leeks.

Curved beans, firm tomatoes, potatoes, carrots.

Soil clinging to them. The womb.

How could I not hear the sacred music? Take part.

Twirling as a dervish, ecstasy and freedom. Dance.

 

And you, silent god, still I knew you not.

 

But the one crowned with flowery garlands,

Tasting of sweet food made in the honeycomb,

This god, fried in my skillet and served with eggs,

Not silent. Not dark. But sacred, yes. Divine.

Family, Health, Literature, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Writing

The Other World. My True Home.

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Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Easy Entrees. Kate on the vaccine hunt. Vaccines. Covid. Diane. Mary. Mark. Changing Kate’s bandage. Psalms. Poetry. Writing. Leaning into Kate’s changes. The Sun. The Blue. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. The road. The Creeks.

Sparks of Joy: Kep eager to eat. Rigel throwing herself on the bed, back next to mine. Vaccines and the vaccinated.

 

Forgot this. So back at it today, Wednesday. Gratefuls and joys will stand.

Kate had a better day yesterday.

I told her I don’t know what to say when folks ask me how she’s doing. “She’s holding her own,” she replied. There you have it. True.

We spent a long time talking about death. It’s our turn, soon enough. What do we want? How will we live if the other dies first? What do we need in that case? We’re not finished with the conversation. Perhaps we never will be.

Next to me right now I have a stack of books. No surprise. On the bottom of the stack is my yellow Westminster commentary on the Psalms. A gift from Bethlehem-Stewart Presbyterian church where I interned for a year. Above it is Emerson’s Etudes by Cavill. Above Cavill is the Murmuring Deep by Avivah Zornberg, a brilliant Jewish commentator on the Torah. Above that, the Tanakh. On the Tanakh, the Viking Spirit, a new book on Norse Mythology, and a very good one.

I mention them to illustrate what keeps pulling me back in, what is never far from my consciousness. The Other World. That place where the human mind goes when it tires, grieves, no longer knows any answers. Or, when it feels buoyant and joyful. A place that can seem hidden and faraway. At other times so close.

Next to these books are two small collections I purchased recently. Both of JRR Tolkien’s work. One is familiar: The Hobbit. The Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers. The Return of the King. The other less so: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wooton Manor, and Roverandom.

See what I mean? My heart swings toward the fantastic, the religious, stories of the sacred, of gods and men and women and boys and kings and faeries. Where I live when not doing other things like cooking and taking the trash out.

Guess I’m not gonna get on with adulthood. Too late. Somehow though. I’m glad.

These places are not escape for me. That Other World gives us all, has given me, so much. What justice is and why it’s important. What love and loyalty and duty are and why they matter. What adventure and risk and danger offer. How humans transform into creatures and creatures into angels.

They even explain 45 and all his bullshit. Why he’s so unimportant, yet so damned troublesome. Think Sauron. The one ring. There will always be a Bilbo and a Gandalf, a Frodo and a Samson. A Joshua and Jesus. A Thor and an Odin. So much more than the darkness that always threatens to engulf us.

In my own way I write about and inhabit that Other World as much as possible. Not because of its metaphysics, not because of its promise about what we cannot see. No, not that. But because of its impact on the heart, my heart and yours.

Family, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Politics, US History, World History

Half the Sky

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Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Friends: Paul, Tom, Mark, Bill. Women. Diane, Mary, Kate. Marilyn. Tara. Eve. Sarah. Anne. BJ. Women’s History Month. Chili. The writers for Billions. And, Vincenzo Cassano, Sisyphus. The golden age of television. Covid. Covid relief bill.

Sparks of Joy: Dr. Thompson. Rigel snuggling. Vaccines.

Women’s History Month. Starts today. Women hold up half the sky. Mao. Without women there would be no humans to hold up any portion of the heavens. At all. Glad to know this month exists. A lot we don’t know. Read The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner. 1986, but still explosive.

Hard to imagine today, but a central issue of the student revolution of the early 1960’s involved the doctrine of in loco parentis. A college or university would act in the place of parents. But, only for women students. Sexually segregated dorms, curfews, clothing restrictions. Got rid of that one at Ball State.

So much. Women expected to take all the responsibility for the consequences of sexual activity. Whether it was a reasonable decision or not, I took this seriously at the age of 26 and had a vasectomy. It did not seem then, nor does it now, that only one partner bore responsibility for reproduction.

As a direct result of that decision, Joseph entered my life, so for me it was a resounding success. I did try to have the vasectomy reversed, my first time ever in the hospital after polio. And, it worked. Sort of. My little guys were not very energetic. It had been 7 years of r&r and I guess they didn’t see any point in going back to the hard work of swimming all the way to the goal.

So many fronts. Child rearing. Domestic chores. Glass ceilings. Internalization of the oppressor. Domestic violence. STD’s. Unwanted pregnancy. Ratio of men to women in so many professions, workplaces. Or, in lower paid jobs, women to men.

The work far from done. The U.S. still has not had a female President. The Denver Post reported yesterday that the number of women on corporate boards in Colorado has moved toward the national average. Not far enough.

I see hope in our granddaughter, Ruth. Smart, politically aware, no bullshit. Yet, knows how to sew, cook. Women have come much further than men in this ongoing revolution. We males have so much work to do.

Generation Z, Ruth’s generation, has come of age in 45’s despicable term in office. They’ve seen the patriarchy in its unapologetic form. At its ugliest. Will they remember? I believe so. The country almost took a turn, may still, toward a crude reversion to male dominance. Reactionary politics, MAGA, always include returning to an era of privilege. For men. For white men in the U.S. For those who believe only a special minority can rule, should rule.

Every male heart needs close examination, by men. Especially those of us lucky enough to be born white. We need to peer into the dark recesses of our assumptions about women, about people of color, and put them aside, forcefully. I do not believe we can purge them, that is become pure feminists or anti-racists, but we can know them and choose not to act on them. We can do that.