Yearly Archives: 2024

GeekWorld, Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

Elegiac

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Imbolc and the waning Ancient Moon

Friday gratefuls: Evergreen Medical Center. Snow. Hoar Frost and Snow on the Lodgepoles. Diane. Marilyn and Irv. Dreams. Frustrated early lives. Mom. Dad. Mary and Mark. My son and his Korean life, Korean wife, Japanese Dog. Mussar. Tire Rotation. Finding a friendly place for Ruby. Low tire pressure sensors. Luke. Leo. Janice and Ginny.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Big O

One brief shining: That moment when, after getting up, I turn to my bedroom window to see how much Snow came down while I slept, even today at 77 a bit of a young boy’s Christmas eagerness rises. Happened again just this morning.

 

Some Snow. Colder. Not the big, Tourney Snow. Not yet. White and fresh outside. These late Winter Snows have an elegiac feel, their wetness, their heaviness speak of a warming fallow time, one willing, reluctantly willing, to give way to Spring. Even though I love Winter and don’t like the heat of Summer I find myself urging Spring on. When the days warm between Snows, a fresh odor of sanctity arises from the Mountain Soil. Visions of Flowers, running Streams, Fawns and Calves, soft breezes dance in my head. Oh. Achoo. That too.

Not sure why but this Winter has felt long to me. As if it’s beginning to overstay. Even so the moisture of these last rounds of Snow are so important for us. Filling our tiny Aquifers that feed Water into our wells. Protecting us from Fire. Reminding us that beauty in the Mountains comes in so many different forms.

 

Read about rotating tires. A good thing. Winter tires, expensive tires. Want them to last as long as possible. Used to get them rotated at every 5,000 mile oil change but since I got Ruby the synthetic oil goes 10,000 miles. Thought rotating the tires was just Toyota trying to get me back as often as they used to. Wrong about that. Took me a while to tumble to this.

Anyhow yesterday I had it done at Big O in Evergreen. No charge. Yay. Friendly people, close by. Stevinson Toyota is down the hill. Gonna have these folks handle my tires and oil changes.

Oh, and another thing. These new fangled cars with all their computers and sensors. My low pressure light had been on for a couple of months. I knew it was faulty because it would go off for a day or two, then come back on. May have them all disabled. Somehow I survived over 50+ years of driving without them and I find them annoying.

 

Just a moment: Going to Globeville on Monday to talk with the owners of the Rocky Mountain Land Library. They previously owned Denver’s most loved bookstore, Tattered Covers. Don’t know where this conversation will lead, but I hope I can find a niche at the Land Library for my earth-centered, human focused passion for creating a sustainable presence for humans on this planet.

Yesterday at breakfast with Marilyn and Irv I said again, out loud, that I’m in a nothing to prove phase of life. That I want to read, learn. Revisit and befriend the young scholar I once was. Let him guide me and my time. Yet. I also have another me that wants to act in some way, have an oar in the Waters of change.

 

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase

The Cave of Fear

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Great Sol. Illumination. Energy. A distant nuclear Fire. Space. Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. The Moon. Near Earth Asteroids. SpaceX. NASA. ISS. James Webb. Pioneer. Humanity. Curiosity. Planets. Exoplanets. Astrophysics. My son. Kepler, of blessed memory. Kate, always. Rigel. Shadow Mountain. Conifer and Evergreen.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

One brief shining: Used to be I’d walk out on the asphalt, see the early morning Sky, pick up the Denver Post, and return it to Kate who waited at the breakfast table to start the crossword.

 

So many used to be’s in any life at any point. Living in Indiana. Going to Wabash. Going to Elementary School. Going to Wisconsin, Minnesota. Married to Judy. Married to Raeone. Married to Kate. Able to Garden, take care of big Dogs, organize a movement. Able to believe in Jesus. Living on flat land. Used to be. Though. The experiences of those used to be’s remain. Not only remain. They shape. Me. My current experience even 70 years removed. From, say, first grade. Or my paper routes. Or having a living mother. Father.

Faulkner, so true: The past is never dead. It’s not even past. Only the future has a blankness, an unshapedness. Even in the Zen so treasured moment we are never only in the moment. We are vessels and agents of memory, unable to escape our past, unable to know our future, yet always moored to the moment.

Another quote that fits in here:  Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.   Joseph Campbell.   On the Zen Calendar for March 6.

When Kate died, BJ came to get me and we drove through midnight down highway 285. I pushed the elevator buttons for my last time to see Kate. Walked in the room. Her corpse lay in the distance. My heart seized. I could not go to her. I was afraid. This is the past, the used to be that surfaced when I read the Campbell quote this morning.

Oh. My precious. My sweet. I feared. When I thought I would not. I was ashamed, struck down by fear. I could not, would not, go to her. Surely the very cave I was afraid to enter lay open then. And. I. Did. Not. Go. In.

This morning, this March 6th, 2024 morning, almost three years after that moment, I’m ready to go into that cave. Dark in here. So dark. The dark of oblivion. The dark of will never find my way back. The dark of she will never find her way back. The darkness of being alone. For both of us. Separated now by that ultimate mystery. The dark of oh my god I do not know what to do next. The dark of life without. Her. My Rock. My partner. My love. My one true love. Oh.

Human. Only human. Both of us. Her now dead. Me a frightened old man of 74. So fucking hard.

 

Commentary on the news, Mountains, Wild Neighbors

Flaco, liberated

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Imbolc and the waning Ancient Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Rocky Mountain Land Library. Colorado Humanities Council. Flaco. Wild neighbors. Arapaho National Forest. Black Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Bergen Mountain. Evergreen Meadow. Maxwell Creek. Kate’s Creek. North Turkey Creek. Shadow Mountain. Shadow Mountain Meadow. The Moon and its phases. Lunar calendars.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mario and Babette on the road

One brief shining: My high altitude coffee maker has a reservoir with always hot, coffee pot sized amounts of water ready to go when I pour in more water and close the lid; so I have a routine, turn on the coffee bean grinder, empty the old coffee filter, fill the coffee pot with filtered water, take the ground coffee basket and the now full pot back to the coffee maker, turn off the grinder, measure the ground coffee, put a new filter in the basket, the basket in the coffee maker, pour the water, close the lid, and in less than five minutes I have fresh coffee.

 

photo by BJ before Flaco’s escape

 

Flaco. In case you missed the story of Flaco, here’s a recent NYT article. Sister-in-law BJ wrote this:

“Flaco was a magnificent Eurasian Eagle Owl that found a free life after someone cut open a hole in his Central Park zoo cage last year. He could have stayed put but his innate curiosity made him venture out. He somehow wandered to the busy sidewalk on 5th Ave and 58th street. People gawked and police stood guard over the animal carrier that the zoo brought to recapture him. In one amazing moment you saw Flaco the owl look at the people and the cage, turn his head and then take flight going into Central Park.”

He lived on his own for a year in spite of having been in captivity his whole life. Flaco died crashing into a window on the Upper Westside. New Yorker’s loved him, seeing in him a symbol of freedom. But I think the truth of their love lies deeper than that.

Yes, freedom. Of course. Why won’t the caged bird sing? Whether vandal or liberator the person who slit the screen holding Flaco created a story of escape, of choice, of survival in spite of the odds, and of tragic death. A compelling narrative. Let freedom ring.

From my vantage point in the Rocky Mountains I wonder if at least part of the freedom story is about urban life itself. Wonderful and stimulating as it can be, city dwelling comes with the price of distance from Forests, Lakes, and Mountains, Oceans. Sure, they can be near by, as the Atlantic is to NYC, but to visit the Atlantic where it abuts a major city or where it is carved up into ports and docks, is to visit Ocean used as a tool for human commerce, not the wild Atlantic of Washington County, Maine for example.

In Songtan, Korea as in many Korean cities, there are Mountains inside the city limits. In fact one rises behind Seoah and my son’s apartment building. Crisscrossed with trails, small parks, and outdoor exercise equipment it long ago gave way to domesticity.

Flaco, I think, gave New Yorkers a taste of Wild Neighbor life. His escape, his refusal to return to his cage, his survival meant he made the rare transition from captivity to wild life. How many New Yorkers carry in their briefcases and quick strides a desire to make just such a transition themselves?

One last note. Wild Animals live shorter lives than their captive specie’s mates. So Flaco’s death, while tragic, was in fact typical of an Owl’s in the wild. Not in its manner, no, but in its suddenness.

Great Work, Sport

Rights of Nature

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers. Mario in Nice. Paul in Maine. Bill and Tom in Minnesota, land of the forgotten winter. Me on Shadow Mountain. Video of tumbleweeds invading towns in Utah and Nevada. Living their best life. Mark and sunrise in Hafar. AI. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Seoah’s sisters and Kai, the writer. Korea. Mary in K.L. Diane in S.F.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Rights of Nature revolution

One brief shining: This time Zoom picked up a feed from Globeville, a largely Latino neighborhood just off I-70 that houses the expanding campus of the National Western Stockshow, which today featured folks around a plank wood table with those of us in Vail, in the San Juans, on Shadow Mountain, in Leadville gathered to talk book, this Rights of Nature book which may be pointing the way forward for the Great Work.

 

Quite a while ago Mario read in the New York Times an article about the Rocky Mountain Land Library. This would be great for you, Charlie, he wrote. I’d read the article, too, and agreed. I got in touch, but it was too early for volunteers. Then Kate got sick and though I followed its growth some, I couldn’t get involved.

Yesterday I had my first real interaction with them on the Rights of Nature book club. An hour and half. There were 17 people in all, 10 at the Land Library’s Globeville office and five of us on Zoom. An eclectic group that included college professors, a Southwest Colorado Federal Conservation official, a microbiologist with a graduate degree in theology in Vail, a Leadville participant engaged in a statewide Responsible Tourism plan, animal rights activists, attorneys, and two folks from the Land Library.

The conversation inspired me, stoked the fires. Even in this weighted sample of folks already interested, the rights of nature idea often felt like a bridge too far. The Conservation woman wanted achievable goals that built community support. Personhood for a river? Way too far.

The woman from Vail with the theology degree asked me to comment on Thomas Berry’s book, the Great Work. So I did. “I consider it a core work. In it he says it is the Great Work of our generation to create a sustainable presence for human beings on this earth. He moved me to turn aside from economic justice work to focus on climate change.”

Surprised me but I then had the group’s attention. At the close one of the leaders of the Land Library asked me if I thought the Great Work would be good for another book club. Yes. It’s short and easy to read. Unlike, btw, The Rights of Nature which is a good book, too, but neither short nor easy.

All of this dovetails with the work I’m doing in fits and starts on Charlie’s List. It occurred to me that I may have an opening now to reconsider work with the Land Library. Believe I’m gonna take it. Bound to be a mitzvah.

 

Just a moment: Caitlin Clark passed Pistol Pete Maravich’s tier 1 NCAA scoring record yesterday. Wish I could have been there. Women’s b-ball is having a long minute. Bout time.

 

Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, Science

Biden needs to step away

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Myself. Mark. His student, Shayim. Hafar. Alan, still recovering. Luke in Grandby for shabbat. Working on his art. Leo there, too. Floaters. Dusting of Snow. A Mountain Morning. The Mule Deer Yearling and her friend. The Ancient Brothers. On folks that made a difference. My son. Kate, of blessed memory. All the Dogs we loved. Becoming.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Healing

One brief shining: My fingers move and words spit out on the screen where before only white space existed, giving evidence to some electrical activity in my skull, not guided, not followed, not sure how it happens or why, a real mystery, a miracle that suggests intention more than demonstrates it, something I do not grasp.

 

What I mean is this. I’ll have a general idea, right now this mystery of words formed by my fingers on a keyboard. Yet as I write I don’t think before I write: Oh, now I should write I don’t think before I write. If I did, I’d never get anything on the page. See that just came out. No forethought. Imagine yourself in a conversation. Do you consider the words you’re about to say? Sure, sometimes, but I mean in casual, ordinary situations. Just chatting. Oh. Now I should say, I’m not thinking about what I say. The point is that if we stopped to consciously choose each word we write or say, then we’d never write or talk. Not sure why this is a big deal to me. But it is.

Yes, and a further mystery. The words usually cohere. Thoughts form. We understand each other as if we had carefully crafted what we said. That’s the point, btw, not that you don’t think-hardly-rather that the expression of your thinking comes fluidly and quickly. Not confident I’m saying this well.

Now I am forming each word as I write. Ha. Became self-conscious. Oh, damn it!

 

Just a Moment: Biden’s age. A majority of those who voted for Biden in the last election now thinks he’s too old to be effective.  63% either strongly or somewhat agreed in a recent NYT poll. At 77, the orange one’s age, and closer to 81 than 70, I have mixed feelings about this.

In spite of my prostate cancer I feel that my health is very good to excellent. No, I can’t run a mile anymore or walk as far as I could without pain, but can my mind function clearly and decisively? Of course. At least I think so. You, reader, may be a better judge. Even so my stamina is not what it once was. Not even what it was ten years ago. Age does matter, but it matters differently for each person.

So I resist the ageist impulse behind Biden’s detractors. In spite of his many critics, he’s passed major legislation, kept the country engaged but not embroiled in two potentially explosive conflicts in the Ukraine and Israel, been a steady hand on the tiller. And don’t downplay the value of that last piece. Compare him to 45. I’ve seen no evidence that his mind is not up to the task. (He’s a stutterer and makes the occasional gaffe. So what?)

On the other hand perception is nine tenths of the law in politics. For whatever reasons, ageism one of them, even those who support him have not only begun to doubt but gone full throated about his inability to do the job. I think he needs to step aside. Not sure how that happens, but this election is too important. We have to win it. And I don’t think he can do it.

 

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Surf’s Up!

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Imbolc and the waning half Ancient Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: The second soul. Calm. A peaceful, easy feeling. Lighting the shabbat candles and saying the blessing. Shavuot. June 12. My torah portion. My conversion parsha. Tara. A gentle teacher. Joanne’s tangerine jelly. United Health Care. Sue Bradshaw. Alan, feeling better, but not well. His new electric Beamer. Bread Lounge.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Calm

One brief shining: Great Sol has reappeared, Black Mountain glows, my Lodgepole companion sways with its grovemates as wind gusts from the West, my fingers, of long use, press first this key then that and out pops a word, then two, then three, then more.

 

Yesterday I began saying my torah portion with the torah text. No vowels and a different, more florid style for the Hebrew characters. No punctuation either. I have a ways to go. Tara guides me toward my best work. June is less far away now. I can feel it. Bar mitzvah boy at work.

 

Been thinking about God as the creative advance into novelty. Some ways of thinking about how to act within this metaphor for how things are. Got the image of everchanging reality as an ocean wave. Instead of hiking, pressing forward in a direction I choose, perhaps surfing captures it better. Paddling out into the water, standing up for a better view, and riding with the wave’s energy. Requires balance, courage, caution, and the Taoist virtue of wu wei. Going with the flow of change.

Or. Guiding.  Not seeing ourselves as shapers of the future but as guides, even for ourselves. Folks who know some of the terrain, can offer information about it, yet depend on others to draw their own lessons, to find their own way. As we all must do anyhow for ourselves. Helping each other get comfortable with the inevitability and hopefulness in change.

Maybe a better metaphor is the organizer. The organizer identifies with the people a goal, say affordable housing, or jobs in a situation of high unemployment, then draws from them their own solutions to how to reach their goal. The organizer may be a member of the group or not. The key is that both people and organizer recognize the power inherent in acting together, following the pace and direction of change identified by those who need a new reality.

These thoughts have thrust me back to the good old days when America was great. During the 50’s and 60’s when the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement were organizing. Give America Ganga Again. GAGA. A green hat with bright red initials. When my guides were Paolo Freire and his learner center pedagogy of the oppressed. Paul Goodman. Summerhill. The psychology of Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Abraham Maslow. And, Alfred North Whitehead. Guess they still are.

Anyhow. Sparks. Fire yet to be lit.

 

In Shabbat. A week ago tonight, my lousy night. No sign of more to come. But, that time came with no warning. Health insurance has helpfully denied my meds for proctitis. Which help. Sigh. Forward and backward.

 

*Freire proposes a reciprocal relationship between the teacher and the students in a democratic environment that allows everyone to learn from each other. The banking method of education is characterized as a vertical relationship:

teacher
↓
student

The relationship developed through the banking method between the teacher and the students is characterized by insecurity, suspicion of one another, the teacher’s need to maintain control, and power dynamics within a hierarchy that are oppressive. The critical pedagogy that Freire proposes allows for a horizontal type of relationship:

teacher ↔ student

This relationship is democratic insofar as both the teacher and the student are willing and open to the possibility of learning from each other. With this type of relationship, no one is above anyone, and there is mutual respect. Both the teacher and the student acknowledge that they each have different experiences and expertise to offer to each other so that both can benefit from the other to learn and grow as human beings.   ICP

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Shadow Mountain

Not Taco Tuesday but Peopled Thursdays

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Friday gratefuls: Quiet in my body. Beauty out my window. Calmness in my soul. Great Sol brightening a Shadow Mountain Morning. A day filled with friends and family. First, Diane and all the news from San Francisco. Then Tara and her happiness in Costa Rica. Mussar. Then, Luke and Leo. Finally, Joanne. Home as Great Sol disappeared behind this spinning World.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Conversation and its power to heal, inspire, deepen

One brief shining: Drove past the Alpine Rescue Team and its museum, over I-70 and past the County garage until the hand made sign warning of a hidden driveway, turned right onto a one lane dirt road with shoulders eroded from its steep incline, went on to a left turn, drove a bit more but not all the way up the driveway to avoid having to back down any further than I had to, got out, walked up to Joanne’s door and knocked.

 

Thursdays have morphed into my busiest day of the week. I start the day with one of my longest relationships, Diane, my first cousin, who lives on Lucky Street. Always a good way to start the day. She’s well informed about the world and our family. A good source of practical information, too. I learned a couple of weeks ago that she makes a mean lasagna.

For lunch I met my Hebrew teacher and friend, Tara, at the Marshdale Burger joint. We had lunch and discovered that my audiologist, Amy, has been her friend since she and Arjean moved up here over 25 years ago. Tara and Arjean came back a week or so ago from Costa Rica. She had pictures. Riding horses on the beach. Sunsets. A gated ex-pat community.

From Marshdale I drove to CBE for mussar. We’re beginning to wrassle with the strange, yet obvious to me idea that nothing is static, everything always becomes something new. The book we’re reading challenged us with Alfred North Whitehead’s idea of God as the creative advance into novelty. Not omnipotent. Not omnipresent. Not even necessarily sentient. Rather God as the impulse toward novelty in all things, always making all things new, always and everywhere. A God who must by definition change as the creation changes, becoming new, different in each moment with each “drop of experience.” His phrase.

Yet. Still a God in whom we can place our faith. We can hold in our lev confidence that this, too, will change and that if we work with it, we can help guide that change, maybe call it the moral arc of the universe, leading us toward justice, love, and, yes, Downtown Council of Minneapolis, compassion.

Think of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. Before they could leave Egypt, they had to have faith that their situation could change. If they did not have that faith, Pharaoh did not need to use power to keep them to stay. They were unable to imagine, to dream, to feel a possible future free of Egypt’s oppression.

When this conversation finished up, Luke and Leo and I sat for an hour and caught up. Luke had planned to come up last Sunday but I had to say no after my lousy Saturday night. Luke was on his way up to Granby for a weekend at Rabbi Jamie’s place there. He had all of his art materials with him. Gonna be creative.

At 4 I went to Joanne’s and we had the usual far-ranging, deep conversation about the world and Judaism and liberalism and the slave trade and molluscs that spit out purple in the Aegean Sea, blue in Israel, and green in South America. She’s making me a tallit, a prayer shawl, and its fringes, called tzitzit, will be of blue yarn dyed with the recently rediscovered haustellum, a species of snail (actually a different species than the Indo-Pacific murex. New data.) that created the Tyrian purple of Roman and Greek fame and tehkelet in the waters off Israel, a sky blue. The murex of South America produces a green dye. It takes 120 pounds of snails to produce one gram of dye. So, precious.

As the sun disappeared and the always present night returned to visibility, I drove home, back up Brook Forest to Shadow Mountain.

 

 

Cinema and Television, Great Work, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History, World History

The Rights of Nature

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Joanne. Jamie. Ginny. Janice. Scott. Wild Mountain Ranch tenderloin. The Rights of Nature. New Zealand. Maori persistence. The Whanganui River. Its legal rights. Constitutions that protect the rights of nature. My Lodgepole companion. Tree huggers. Regenerative farming. Land as itself, not property. Shadow Mountain. Its rights.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Rights of Nature legal revolution

One brief shining: So I tried the Pomodoro method yesterday, work intensely for 25 minutes, 5 minute break, do that three times, take a 30 minute break, and found it helped me keep reading and not get distracted by oh, an e-mail, wait I’d like something to eat, maybe I should put that new light for zoom together; it’s for working on a longer project requires focus.

 

No. I’m not going back to the work world. I like to increase my productivity if I can though and will try different methods from time to time. Right now I’m trying to get this book, The Rights of Nature, read by Saturday for the Rights of Nature bookclub. Sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Land Library it’s in the sweet spot of my passion: our world and how we humans can live within it. Over time.

If you want to feel better about our species, you might find this book worth a read. It summarizes the theoretical (jurisprudential?) movement of the same name. This legal movement is active in many nations around the world including the United States and Canada. It tends to gain ground through individual lawyers and certain types of NGO’s like the Community Environmental Defense Fund and GARN, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, though in some places like Ecuador mass political movements have played a role, too.

New Zealand has made important advances in their legal system by giving personhood to the Whanganui River and a former National Park with the unusual name of Te Urewera. It means burnt penis in Maori. Apparently a chief rolled over onto a fire and died there. Both the Whanganui and Te Urewera now own themselves and have human advocates who can file lawsuits and speak on their behalf to the New Zealand government. Imagine if the Mississippi had the same rights as a corporation Which is also a legal person in the U.S. Or, Shadow Mountain. Or, Lake Minnetonka. Or, Lake Superior.

You might recognize that this movement has roots in the lifeway of indigenous people. It does. The Maori played a key role in changing New Zealand’s laws. A Maoriiwi,tribe, championed the Whanganui river personhood because the river is central to the iwi’s identity.

Gonna add certain of these NGO’s to Charlie’s List. I’m beginning to see a web of interrelated ideas, actions, and groups that are already at work building a sustainable human presence here on Earth. For the future of humans as a species this is work that has to be done and done now.

 

Just a moment: On Netflix. The anime series Blue-Eyed Samurai. This is a story of Shogunate Japan when Japan had closed itself off from the world. The plot follows a blue-eyed Japanese child, a pariah because of the child’s Portuguese father, one of four white men in Japan at the time. He raped the child’s mother. Revenge drives the story.

For anyone familiar with the Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the same era in Japan, you will see the careful attention the animators have paid to them as they created this series. Japanese puppet theater also gets a central moment.

This is adult fare and a complicated, compelling story rendered in the most beautiful anime.

Cinema and Television, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics

Rustin

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Cold night. 10 degrees this am. Canceling online subscriptions. Black Mountain, still 10,000 feet. Altitude. And, attitude at altitude. Dan. His gifts. Life. While it lasts. The Rights of Nature. Youtube. The Law. To whom it applies and to what. Rocky Mountain Land Library. Rustin. MLK. Civil Rights Movement. The March on Washington.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fighting for what you believe in

One brief shining: Watched Rustin last night, the story of Bayard Rustin’s role-he conceived and organized it-in the 250,000 person March on Washington at which Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, while navigating not only internecine warfare in the Movement and the myriad challenges of organizing an unprecedented, and still unmatched, gathering of African-Americans and their allies, but his own life as a gay man in an unforgiving time.

 

Movies that move me. Rustin tapped me in a deep place. My heart responds to people who choose to fight. Rustin fought for his sexuality, against war, for socialism, and against racism. This movie accurately displays the toll of a life devoted to justice no matter where or when. My admiration for the depth of Rustin’s commitment couldn’t be greater.

Some of you know the story of the Leadership Minneapolis moment in which I participated. Here’s the short version. Leadership Minneapolis was (is?) a program of the Downtown Council, a Chamber of Commerce for downtown Minneapolis. Somewhat like Rotary each year’s class picked young leaders from specific fields: the police, religion, banking, medicine, corporate life, the arts, education, civil rights. Not sure I’m remembering this exactly right but I think we met monthly with an expert in some field of leadership. The idea was both to hone our skills and create a network of folks we could tap as we continued our careers.

My then close friend, Gary Stern, and I headed up a committee, a committee devoted to the vision for us. With consultant and now long time friend, Lonnie Helgeson, we created a definition of leadership. Leadership we said was love, justice, and compassion. Not sure at this remove, this was the mid-1980’s if I recall correctly, how we differentiated love and compassion.

This effort and its full acceptance by those of us who created it led to the firing of the entire Leadership Minneapolis board. Goes to show you. A nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, Neal R. Pierce, wrote a column on our effort, a positive one. So there Downtown Council.

OK. He said a bit chagrined. Enough about me.

My point? Rustin epitomized leadership as love, justice, and compassion. So did King. Watching this movie reignited my passion, at least for a moment, made me cry. At what? At the power of the powerless gathering themselves and pushing for change. At the power and working without a net nature of political organizing. At my memories of those times, of the times that came later. At the slow but certain bending of the arc of the moral universe. So slow. Too slow.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Politics

Loneliness

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dan. Alan. Joanne. Snow. My companion Lodgepole greeting the Snow. Much as they greet Great Sol. Home. Sue Bradshaw. Josh. Proctitis. Feeling vulnerable. Alone. A white Snow Cloud filling the Sky. Electricity. Fitbit. My desktop and laptop. The internet. What a joy. A.I. Senate Navy Bean Soup. Corn bread muffins. Health

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Waking up

One brief shining: We need the windows in our homes like we need our eyes, so we can see outside, right now my eyes turn to this computer screen, but every so often they turn up and look toward Black Mountain, see only the Clouds bringing the Snow, of course, too, my hands typing and the file cabinet and the wall, like the window view we see only a portion of the World around us, yet it is enough for the moment.

 

With my visceral world calmed down, as it has been since Sunday morning after that no good, horrible night, I want to revisit my feelings of loneliness. They stemmed not from the bleed itself, but from the feeling of vulnerability it sent cascading through my soul. Looked at from today’s perspective that makes sense to me. What else is loneliness than a feeling of vulnerability in a world populated by over ten billion other humans? And none available when life gets scary, hard.

I feel fortunate that for me the feeling was temporary, exacerbated by the depth of the night and the severity of my situation. Several folks have reached out since then, confirming what I knew-once that shock passed: there are many who would take my call, even come. I’ve returned, strengthened by those responses, to my usual alone, but not lonely. Visiting loneliness for an hour or so was a brusque shock; however, it gave me a window, see one brief shining today, into that narrowed and insecure experience.

I’ll see Sue Bradshaw on March 12th and I’ve sent a note to Kristie, my oncology P.A. I want to be aware and ready if this happens again.

Mentioning Kristie reminds me I’ve not remarked about my latest lab results. My PSA rose slightly, as did my testosterone. That may mean my cancer has begun to wake up from its chemically induced slumber. May not. Another round of labs-I’m a phlebotomy regular!-in six weeks rather than three months. If it’s rising again, we’ll wait until it hits .3 and then I’ll have another PET scan. That will determine a new course of treatment.

Kristie tells me that even since I went on the Erleada and Orgovyx, now some two and a half years ago, other treatment protocols have been found. The ever pushing forward of prostate cancer research produces results helpful to me in real time. As a result, I’m not worried, more curious about what happens next.

 

Just a moment: A friend from CBE recently returned from her months long stay in a Buddhist nunnery in India sent me a note. Since I was officially a Jew now, she said when I replied to her I had to kvetch about at least one thing. Kvetch=complain in Yiddish. I sent her a note with this.  My kvetch: Election year 2024. That one should be good for some months.