Aging, Asia, Dogs, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Supernova Era

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Winter and the Future Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kassi at Petsmart, who groomed Kepler so well. All the kids from Collegiate Academy who came into the Starbucks while I waited for Kep. Growers of coffee. Dairy farmers. Cappuccino. The checkout clerk at Petsmart so proud of her dog. Passing the emissions test. Emissions testing. Friend Debra who we’ll see for dinner tonight.

A confluence of literature and place yesterday. Started reading Supernova Era by the brilliant contemporary Chinese science fiction writer, Cixin Liu. A star goes supernova close to earth. His astronomical knowledge is profound, the explanation for this event detailed and lengthy.

The resulting energy burst damages the DNA of everyone on earth. Those above middle school age no longer have the capacity to recover from such an insult. Over the course of a year all the adults will die, leaving about one billion children under school age all across the globe.

While I waited for Kep at the Kipling Avenue Starbucks, I read chapters about the transition from an adult run world to a child run world. Parents taught their children the occupations they were in as the most efficient way to transfer knowledge quickly. Cixin focuses on the case of China.

As I read this, kids from the Collegiate Academy about two blocks away began to stream into the Starbucks. One tall senior high youth had a fade and a topknot grown from the crown of his head. A girl with whom he would later play fight had piercings, black lipstick and a friendly demeanor. She asked politely if she could have the chair at my table.

A younger, perhaps middle school girl, had on an orange athleisure top and carried, of course, her phone. She seemed serious until her friend came in, then they laughed and shared pictures off their phones.

The Starbucks lit up with the energy of young folks performing the person they thought they wanted to be or should be or could be.

At one point a college aged woman walked through them. Pant suit, blouse, briefcase. Not that far away in age, but so distant in sense of self and composure. At least outwardly. Her mask was adult.

My mask was that of the elder amused at the antics of the young, serious in his reading, but willing to laugh with the kids, too. Kabbalah teaches that we all wear masks, all the time. That everything is a mask for the ohr, the divine light of creation shattered after the tzimtzum, the sacred’s self contraction to allow space for other.

Saw all this through the lens of Cixin Liu’s middle schoolers taking over the adult world. Three children from the same middle school class in suburban Beijing were chosen to become the President, Prime Minister, and head of the military. No time for elections.

As I read, I looked up and saw the kids around me, released from the strict parameters of schooling, letting their still forming selves out to play. And tried to imagine this group here designated to run Colorado.

She’s the governor. He’s the head of the Highway Patrol. That one the Mayor of Littleton. Topknot guy following his mother as a bulldozer operator.

A fun collision of reading and immediate reality.

Dogs, Family, Friends, Memories, Poetry

Through our life together

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Winter and the Full Future Moon

Saturday gratefuls: the full future moon lighting up Black Mountain Drive when I went for the Denver Post at 6 am. The crunch of the snow. The starry sky. The groomers at Petsmart for spiffing up Gertie, Rigel, and Murdoch. Kep’s on Monday. Kate’s weight at 101. Her increased energy and good spirits. Stefan and Lonnie in Vail. Stefan’s new hip.

Buddy Tom Crane, a cognoscenti of contemporary poets, found a book, A Dog Runs Through It, by Linda Pastan, former poet laureate of Maryland. Thanks for the gift, Tom.

Here’s a stanza from her poem, Envoi:

“We’re signing up for heartbreak

We know one day we’ll rue it.

But oh the way our life lights up

The years a dog runs through it.”

Those years have been, for Kate and me, thirty plus. And not just a dog running through them, but an ever renewing pack, sometimes as large as seven, now down to three plus a guest.

My first dog, Diamond, a puppy with brown and white fur, a misshapen diamond mark on his forehead, I barely got to know before someone fed him hamburger with ground glass. It still makes me sad, 64 years later.

The second dog, whose name I can’t recall right now, a black and white bouncy one, went after a five year old girl who leaned into the stroller to pet my infant brother, Mark. Dad told me he went to a “farm in Tennessee.” Uh huh. One of the reasons I lost trust in my father.

Steppenwolf, a German Shepherd. Dundee, a Sheltie. Both went to better homes than I could provide. Steppenwolf due to divorce and Dundee to my ignorance about how to care for dogs.

Kate was a long time dog owner when I met her. She had Buck and Iris, Whippets, and Bemish, who was old and died before I could get to know him. I learned from her how to be with dogs, how to love them, how to accept their love, how to care for them.

Since then, we’ve had Irish Wolfhounds, many, more Whippets, two IW/Coyote Hound mixes (Vega and Rigel), and two family rescue dogs, Gertie, a German Shorthair pointer, and Kepler, an Akita. Murdoch, also an Akita, is here for eleven months, then he’ll return to his mom and dad.

My heart is full with dog. Licks, kisses, wiggles, jump ups, digging, running, hunting, killing, barking, growling, fighting. Joy over their happiness and grief over their pain and their deaths. So many memories, so many deaths. So much joy. So much sorrow. Life. Life. Life.

When we consider our life situation, it’s not only about us, but also about the dogs. Part of our reason for staying on the mountain is our fenced in yard. Easy for the dogs. Good for them. No heart worm. No fleas. No ticks as long as they stay in the yard.

Hilo who would crawl up into my armpit for a nap. Gertie who lies with her head on my pillow at night. Celt stepping on my snowshoes. Sorsha with a squirrel in her mouth and another in sight, frozen in place. Emma standing on the big downed cottonwood surveying her realm. Vega and Rigel digging holes in Andover. And so many, so many more.

Dogs run through our lives, Kate’s and mine. Sharp teeth, four legs, wagging tails, floppy ears and alert ears, noses, always noses, taking in a world we humans cannot access. Asleep in our lap or near our chair. Eating. Getting treats, heads turned up, expectant.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Great Wheel, Kabbalah, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Torah

Rocking my inner boat

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Winter and the Full Future Moon (98%)

Thursday gratefuls: for the Geek Squad guy who came to install our microwave. for his calling out an electrical problem. for Altitude Electric for coming next Monday. for the Geek Squad coming back next Saturday. for the first session in the Human Narrative, the Kabbalah class using Art Green’s book, Radical Judaism. for Zoom which allowed me to both here and there. Bi-location!

Kate and I have been doing sixty second hugs. As Paul Strickland mentioned in his review of a conference he and Sarah attended. What a great idea! We hug anyway, but often short ones. Sixty seconds encourages intimacy. More intimacy is welcome.

Also, we’re dancing with zero negativity. Same conference’s idea. For us, a real challenge. Not so much because we’re negative toward each other, but because both of us have minds that veer easily toward the critical, the analytical. And, we both know a lot so challenging each other’s conclusions comes with breathing. Still. I know where this concept heads and I would like to get there. So…

I describe myself as a neo-pagan by which I mean that my faith is located in this reality, not in some other, supernatural place. And that my faith reads revelation first from the ur sacred text, the book of Nature. This does not exclude other sacred texts as sources of wisdom, inspiration, even revelation, it places them second to seeing what you’re looking at. (Casey Reams) Or, being mindful. Or, deep listening. Or, respectful touching.

It also means that I’ve backed myself into an interesting corner, or, maybe, an interesting geodesic dome. If the cosmos itself reveals the sacred to those who see, the sacred underlies the whole cosmos. If the sacred underlies, is within, permeates the cosmos, then the Kabbalistic notion of divine light, ohr, waiting for us in everything begins to make sense to me.

If that makes sense to me, then the notion of an underlying unity also can come into focus. Is that unity the shekinah? That is, the feminine aspect of the divine said by the Kabbalists to constitute this material world? Not ready to go there yet, not sure I want to put a label on it. But, the idea of the shekinah does work for me at the level of analogy, metaphor.

Challenging. Rocking my inner boat. Yes.

Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Park County, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Mountain Strong

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Winter and the Future Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: For Paul’s idea of the 60 second hug and zero negativity. For Bill’s call yesterday. For Rabbi Jamie and Art Green, the class at Kabbalah Experience by Zoom. For Sandy, who cleans with energy and whose tumor has begun to shrink. For all the good dogs everywhere. All dogs are good dogs. For Mountain Waste who takes away the stuff we can’t use, don’t need.

Mountain strong. See that a lot up here. Bailey’s town motto is Mountain Strong. Has a sort of defiant, libertarian meaning to most. Clues: lots of comments about guns as a primary home defense system. About citiots. (city idiots) Griping about service up here when we know the difficulties involved.

Also, though. We can handle it our own. We’re neighbors, let’s help each other. Respect the wildlife. Keep the night dark.

I like it. Mountain strong. That’s how Kate and I feel. We’re mountain strong. Can it be difficult up here? Oh, yes. The thin air has caused both of us problems most of the time we’ve been here. On certain days the snow is so good we can’t go anywhere. IREA, the local electrical company, has miles of lines in difficult to reach, yet sensitive to weather places. Like up and down whole mountains. Outages are not uncommon and Kate needs O2 24/7. Generator. Delivery is episodic rather than consistent though we have an exceptional (for the mountains) mail carrier. Not to mention that it’s far away to all the services we need.

All true. What I call the Mountain Way. Just more molasses to crawl through for certain aspects of daily life.

However. The bare rock, the lodgepole pines, the aspen groves, the cold rushing creeks, the deep valleys and tall mountain peaks, the moose, the elk, the muledeer, the fox, the lynx, the bobcat, the mountains lions, the bears, the magpies and the Canada Jays, the crows and the ravens, the curvy roads, the changing seasons. And the clear, dark nights with the Milky Way and Orion and Ursa Major, Gemini and the whole zodiac. The clouds, the lenticular clouds and the clouds with a long straight front coming over Mt. Evans. When they’re lit by the rising or setting sun.

And for me, the two visits from the mountain spirits. The three mule deer bucks who greeted me when I came to close on the house on Samain of 2014. The two Elk bucks who stayed in our yard for a day eating dandelions. The day before I started radiation treatment.

Mountain strong. They promised that, welcomed me on the close of the Celtic year. They promised that, assured me on the day before the Cyber Knife visits. We are neighbors, mountain spirits and humans. We need mutuality to survive. The mountains themselves have greeted me and come to me as companions. Our mountain journey is now five years old and only just begun.

Mountain strong.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Judaism, Talmud

Seven years, five months, 26 days to go

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Winter and the Future Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kate removing my sutures. Shelly for a quick and relatively painless shot of Lupron. Ali Baba for great gyros, hummus. Those who built the mountain roads. Those who built and maintain the mountain power lines. Golden Solar for installing our solar panels.

Fourth day of Daf Yomi. Only seven years, 5 months and 26 days to go. I’ve always liked long books, long movies, long tv series. Daf Yomi has a similar resonance though its length puts it in a class all by itself. Well, wait. Not quite. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the great Chinese classic novel, is well over 2,000 pages, too. It’s not, however, as dense and clever as the Talmud. It took a long while to read, but not years. Months.

Reading the Talmud, as a first-timer, is a challenging and intriguing experience. It swerves from topic to topic, sometimes in apparently unrelated ways, but seems to come back to a particular issue.

Let me give you an example. The major question since the first page has been when to recite the Shema: Hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (longer, but this is the essential verse.) The affirmation of monotheism is bedrock for Jewish faith and practice.

Reciting the Shema during the night, when to do it, has taken up the first four Talmudic pages. The questions are many. When is it night? When is it midnight? When is it morning? How do we know the three (or, maybe four) watches of the night? In a time before precise clocks these were urgent questions if reciting these prayers was critically important. And, their recitation was critically important.

In the discussion about how we know when it’s midnight, one rabbi answers that David got up at midnight to pray and study Torah. How did he know it was midnight? He hung his lyre by his bed and when the north wind blew on the lyre its sounds marked midnight. On the question.

But then the question becomes one of David’s piety. Raised, I suppose, by the fact that he got up at midnight to pray and study. Several paragraphs go back and forth on the question of his piety, then we return to the central issue, how do know when to recite the night time Shema?

This may sound dry, even Jesuitical (eh, Bill?), but it’s actually lively, full of stories and a certain kind of logic chopping that I’m familiar with from philosophy. In short, I’m liking it.

Better than a Lupron shot in the butt. Which I also got yesterday.

But wait. I can hear one of the Rabbi’s say, the Lupron shot was to save your life, how is reading the Talmud better than saving your life? Because its significance goes beyond life to matters of the soul.

This is tricky for me since my belief system shuttles away from particular traditions, but I recognize the questions and love the playfulness with which they are addressed. Reading Talmud for me, like reading Torah or the New Testament is a lesson in metaphor, analogy, not in prescriptions. More on this later, too.

Talmud

Daf Yomi

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Winter and the Future Moon

later Monday gratefuls: The Talmud, the extraordinary reach of Jewish history, CBE, Rabbi Jamie, Alan. Mussar. Kabbalah.

Because the time seemed propitious I’ve embarked on a seven and a half year journey called Daf Yomi. A Daf is both sides of a page, A and B, in the Talmud. Daf Yomi means “daily page.” It’s an old, old discipline of reading through the entire 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud at the pace of Daf Yomi, a page a day.

A cycle begins every seven and a half years. Jews and other interested folks all over the world follow the Daf Yomi schedule. It’s easy in that Sefaria, an online library of Jewish traditional texts, has the entire Babylonian Talmud (there’s a Jerusalem Talmud, too) online. MyJewishLearning has a set of brief e-mails, one a day, that provide a link to the text on Sefaria, and a short commentary.

Not sure what this will bring, but it’s another way of learning about the tribe among whom I live.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Cancer on my mind

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Winter and the Future Moon

Monday gratefuls: Those who discovered and manufacture lupron. The makers of the Cyberknife and those involved in radiation therapy. Dr. Gilroy, Pattie, Camela, Nicky, all those who took care of me then. Dr. Eigner. Anna Willis. Shelley, the lupron lady from Georgia. And a second time on the clear PSA.

Yes, cancer is on my mind this morning. At eleven I have my third lupron injection. Not sure about half-lives, but this will kick me back up into therapeutic range. Which means, a chance of mood swings and scattered hot flashes followed by continuing sarcopenia. Inner weather influenced by true chemtrails.

With the recent PSA I’m more sanguine, that much more willing to put up with the side effects. If I have another clear one in March, that will be my last lupron injection, setting me up for the critical PSA in June. It should tell the tale of the radiation. Did it burn out the fire that had kindled?

No, cancer is not all consuming. Most of the time I don’t think about it though it’s always lurking in the background, skulking like a thug in a dark alley.

In other medical news my bandages are off and Kate takes out my stitches today. A week ago this evening. We have become that much more vigilant. Doors closed, intercom calls to check on Kep’s location before moving Murdoch.

Kate felt good enough last night that she wanted to go out to eat. She felt cooped up in the house. A good sign. She has the psychic reserve to realize a need to get out. We went to Brook’s Tavern. Sort of tired of it, but it’s close.

There was some poignancy, realizing how little we get out together now. Also a realization that eating out has lost a lot of its luster. Too much of a production and the food’s not as good as I can make at home. IMHO. At least at Brook’s.

Resurrection: Ertugrul. Wow. This is a really long commitment. I’m on episode 84 of season 4. There is a season 5, too. Which I’ll watch. I’m a completist here. Why would I do this?

Fascination. Religion is so much at the core of this show: Islam, the good religion of the Turks. Christianity, a bad religion when it consists of Crusaders and Knights Templar, tolerable when its villagers, merchants, craftspeople. Paganism for the Mongols, portrayed as crude, barbaric, bloody, mystical. Definitely bad. Representing the polytheists who assaulted Mohamed in Mecca, I think.

I find it very interesting to watch the writer’s portrayal of Islam, how it effects daily life, political life, inner life. I don’t have much experience of Muslims living their lives. A bit, but nothing like the insight available in these shows. The history may be somewhat fanciful, the characters sometimes stereotypical (though there’s a lesson in stereotypes, too), but Islam is treated respectfully and fully.

More on all this when I read Season 5, the end. Sometime in the not too distant future. In shallah.

Dogs, Family, Health

?

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Winter and the Future Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Jackie, our hair stylist. Kate’s ability to get into Jackie’s place without the rollator. Ruth’s text yesterday. No more bandages. Pickup at King Sooper. The long nap. Good fitness. Makers of Blizzak snow tires.

Wow. Funday Monday wore me out. That plus the fatigue from the Lupron. And, not getting the fitness boost while waiting for my stitches to come out. This Monday Kate will take them out and I can get back to it. I need the psychic charge from working out. Not to mention that I’m grateful to those workouts for my ability to be in the mix with Kep and Murdoch.

On intervening in dog fights. Conventional wisdom, don’t. If it was a random dog fight, I probably wouldn’t. Unless. It looked like a smaller dog was going to get killed. Then, I might. Haven’t encountered this. I have encountered fights among our dogs many times over the past thirty years.

I’ve intervened in every one of them. Tully, a sweet IW girl otherwise, tried to kill our whippets. Often. Before we figured out a good management plan, I had to pull her off. Vega and Rigel had Gertie between them. I pulled them off of her. Got a small scar. Kep has attacked Gertie a half dozen times. Again, I intervene.

Kep and Murdoch. I intervened. I said why before, so I won’t belabor it. Their situation was different than the others however. Murdoch did not have a collar. On me. I hadn’t put it on. When I grabbed Kep to pull him away from Murdoch, his collar came off over his head.

They were roiling, snarling, tumbling, biting and I had no handles, just what purchase I could get with my hands on their fur. Finally Kep grabbed Murdoch by the lower jaw and hung on. That gave me a chance to get the scarf wrapped around their mouths. Still twisting and bucking. It was hard to keep Kep’s head between my legs. I sat on Murdoch’s head.

I got up, accepting that I couldn’t do anymore; they split, backed off, and I was able to get Murdoch in the house. Until. Snarling, biting again. Upstairs. Oh, Kep had come in through the open back door and Murdoch had found him again. This time I got them apart right away with a full voice bellow, NO!

With Kep back in the sewing room with the door shut and Murdoch up in his room, the incident was over. Kate was out of breath. Adrenaline pushed through me, warding off pain and fatigue.

Slowly an awareness of my arm, not pain, wetness. Removing my shirt, I saw into my left arm. It was a triangular gash that would take 10 stitches to close, 5 inside, 5 out. The wound didn’t bleed much. It would have been a different incident if the ripping tooth had nicked the blood vessel that showed through the subcutaneous fat and skin. Lucky, in that regard.

Darkness had fallen. Urgent care was ahead.

Since then. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking. I acted. Later, it was over and I had driven out to Highlands Ranch and back. The dogs remained separated and we got ready for New Year’s Eve. Had to flag off Sandy, our housekeeper, from coming that day because our doggy population was still jumpy. Not a good time for a relative stranger to be in the house.

Was it worth it? Yes. I did what I could, neither dog sustained serious injury. My bite was much, much worse than anything on either of them. Saving them from seriously injuring each other was the point and I succeeded. Can’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t stopped it, but I know one of them would have been mauled. Probably Kep.

Still reverberating all the way into the next decade after it happened.

Dogs, Family, Health

Ouch

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Winter and the Future Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: the folks at OnPoint Urgent care, especially Leah and Trevor. Jon, for coming a long ways. Adrenaline. Murdoch and Kepler, that they didn’t kill each other. The replacement of Kate’s feeding tube. That 2019, not a great year for us, will soon be in the rearview.

Life odder than fiction. Here’s a story. A while ago a dog came to visit for a year. His name is Murdoch. He’s young, bouncy, a genuine joy. On Sunday he bounced his way down the stairs and got tangled up in Kate’s feeding tube while she was walking on the lower level stairs.

Pop. The feeding tube came out. Not out of the feeding bag, which hung suspended from her shoulder, but from her body. Geez. It’s the second time a feeding tube has come out, so it wasn’t quite the shock it might have been, yet it’s still her primary source of nourishment.

Call the oncall doc. Go visit your primary care doc on Monday. We did. They found a place to have a new feeding tube put in, but I only heard Adventist hospital and took us to the one closest to the doctor’s office. Wrong one.

Found the right one about a half hour late, but the doc had been working on someone else anyhow. Kate went in and came back out in twenty, thirty minutes, new tube in place, able to take nourishment again. Not a pleasant process, but not a huge deal either.

By the time we got home we’d been out of the house since 10 am and the clock had ticked over 6 hours plus. It was close to 4:30 pm. We were tired. It was a long day already.

I asked Kate to let Gertie and Rigel out while I put the Rav4 in the garage and let out Murdoch who had spent the time in the loft. He was bouncy and happy and at the door when I got up here, so I let him out. Meanwhile, unknown to me, Kepler had squirted out the door with Rigel and Gertie. Uh oh.

When I came out of the loft door after putting Radical Judaism and my notebook on the table next to the computer, I heard squeals. There, in the snow, in 20 degree weather, a brown, black, brown, black furry action movie was underway. Kep and Murdoch, finally in the same space, had done what we feared, gone for each other.

I ran down the stairs, deposited my book, Automatic Eve, and my phone on the cement landing at the bottom, and rushed over to the two fighting dogs. Never intervene in a dogfight. Well, sure. Unless the dogs look like they’re going to kill each other. And, these were two Akitas, bred to guard. When they bite, they’re serious about it.

Besides, who would want to call their son in Singapore and say, sorry about Murdoch? Not this guy, for sure. So, I intervened. It was red in tooth and claw. Kepler and Murdoch had already wounded each other and were snarling, way past growling, as they grappled. Collars came off in my hand. No handle.

I sat on their heads. Kepler had Murdoch’s lower jaw in his mouth. My scarf was all I had. Taking it off I tied it around their jaws, limiting their movement. Kate couldn’t help. Too far out in the yard for her oxygen. Besides, the feeding tube.

It went on about 10 minutes. Not sure I helped at all because I finally had to give up and stand up. They sort of quit on their own.

In the melee however I sustained a bite. The worst bite the p.a. who sewed me up said she had ever seen. Oh, good. It was a triangular gash, opened to the fatty tissue underneath and with a fortunately intact, but visible blood vessel right in the middle.

Jon came to the emergency room and helped me. I drove myself there and back. Got home about 9:30 pm, ten or eleven stitches later. Leah, the p.a., sewed my inside skin together first, then closed the gash. Lidocaine kept it from being impossible for me.

Not sure about doggy injuries though I know Kep’s rear left leg is hurt and Murdoch has a slash on his cheek. I left for Urgent Care after we got the dogs situated and when I got back everybody was asleep.

Come to me, 2020. 2019 be gone.

Art and Culture, Family, Health, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Artistes

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Winter and the Future Moon

Monday gratefuls: (I like this practice, so I’m going to continue it for awhile. Maybe keep it here.) Being with Ruth yesterday. Going to Meininger’s Art Supply with her. The stuff in Meininger’s. Stanley Market Place. Maria’s Empanadas. Coming home to the mountains after driving in the city. The bare rock on Berrian Mountain. The flocked trees.

Took Ruth to Red Herring Art Supply. Again. Seoah was with us the last time. Like last time, it was closed. The holidays. We drove along Colfax, “the longest street in the U.S. that doesn’t turn into a highway,” she said. Makes me think of Lake Street. Colfax runs through several ethnically diverse neighborhoods and changes its character as it does. Near its ends, west and east, are old tourist motels now the cheaper equivalent of SRO’s.

We took it into downtown Denver, turned right at the State Capitol Building, and followed Broadway to Meininger’s, Colorado’s primary art supply store. Ruth educated me again. Explaining the use of mediums for oil paints, why she likes synthetic brushes, and a type of paper on which you can do oil painting.

We bought some of that paper, a small bottle of medium, and some brushes. The next time she comes we’ll cut up some of the paper into sizes she would like to use.

The ancientrail of art is not only for the gifted. Making things with our hands is a primary human act, from houses to Space Shuttles, quilts to sculptures. When creating objects that reflect our inner life, make the world beautiful, show and enhance our ability to see, we expand our own life.

We got Gabe a Chromebook for Hanukah, a very low end, yet still useful laptop. Jon predicted he would be, “very happy.” After he opened it up, Gabe said, “I’m so happy.” Sometimes grandparents are the wish genie.

We both have concerns about Jon. Still. He inherited depressive genes from the Johnson line, maybe the Olsons, too. Very bright, creatively gifted, incredibly self sabotaging. And, 51. I hope in this next decade he can find the traction he needs.

His art is wonderful, colorful and conceptual, using old smashed metal pieces he finds along the road as objects to print. His grasp of politics, of the workings of his school, of home renovation is keen. When he’s not down, he’s a lot of fun. He skis and makes his own skis.

Tough, very tough, situation.