• Seeing what you’re looking at

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Space invaders headset. The future is now. As is, btw, eternity. Diane and San Francisco. Amtrak. BEI Wyndham. Asian Art Museum. Tallit. Joanne. Ruth in adulthood. Gabe reaching toward 16. Kate, of blessed memory. Jon. Rigel. Kep. Gertie. Vega. My Colorado dead. Travel. The World as the Sacred World. Oneness. Metaphors.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Toba Spitzer, her book God is Here: Reimagining the Divine

    One brief shining: Went to Toni’s, my favorite market, parked near the shell of a Bed, Bath, and now gone to the Beyond store which crossed the Bankruptcy Bridge to business hell not long ago, got a cart and moved past some of my favorite things to the deli counter where I ordered an Italian sub and a large tub of tomato and pasta salad for MVP later, moving past the cheeses, and into the pastries, cookies, and candy aisle in which we wait for a cash register to open.

     

    No retinal nerve photos on Wednesday, visual field instead. You may have played this ophthalmologists game. Put your chin on the rest. Cover one eye with a patch. Focus on the light in the center. Hold a clicker and press it as lights flicker off and on in various parts of your peripheral vision. Not any more. At least not at Colorado Eye Consultants. Now a virtual reality headset with a pleasant female A.I. getting you ready, guiding you. Very futuristic.

    Dr. Repine also placed a small glass object she held on a metal rod up against my eyeball. Unpleasant. This to look into my eyeball and gauge the spots where vitreous fluids drain out. Narrow angle glaucoma, my kind, rare, features a blockage of the drains. Dr. Repine pronounced them good. As well as my pressures. Not going blind. Not yet.

    And, in other health news, my PSA doubled since six weeks ago. Back to treatment soon, I imagine.

     

    Here’s looking at you, Christianity. My vision clearer from the base of Mt. Sinai. Wanting to take on a new task, reviewing and reinterpreting my former faith. Not sure I should, but I know I could. Not in a critical way, but in a let’s look at this from a new perspective way.

    For example. Incarnation. Here’s a wikipedia definition: Incarnation literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. It refers to the conception and the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form or an anthropomorphic form of a god. That manger. The three Magi. The Star in the East. God made flesh. Christmas!

    A new perspective. Each birth, each hatched Egg, each Cellular mitosis. Incarnation. Each drop of water or snowflake, each Tree sprouting from a seed, each Grass and Seaweed and Corn plant, each sunbeam. Incarnation. The divine, the sacred embodied in flesh or other form. Creating the World and being Created in it.

    No longer an exclusionary principle but an inclusionary one. Bringing us all and all things, too, both into and as the body. So many Christmases.


    📂This entry was posted in Health Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • Alembics

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Diane. San Francisco. Bechira points. MVP. A family. Rich, powerful conversation last night. Blintzes. Joanne. Marilyn. Irv. That wide open Spring feeling. Anything is possible. Blood draw today. PSA and testosterone. Blood pressure. The Iliad translated by Emily Wilson. Formula 1. Baseball’s opening day. Feeling significant.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Deep friendships

    One brief shining: We gather once a month, driving from our Mountain homes beside Streams and through Forests, to the synagogue, arriving as the Hebrew School ends, kids bouncing off walls, sliding on handrails, put down what food we’ve brought, perhaps as I did last night, the material for the discussion, too, and slowly ease ourselves into the presence of the others.

     

                                          Alembic

    Not sure the activity matters. What matters is persistence. Showing up. Listening. Speaking your own story. Even if only between songs, or whacks at the golf ball, or over the sound of crochet needles thwacking. Over and over. As years go by the stories become familiar. Even our own story. The polished versions, the ones we use when unsure of the crowd, fall away and the tarnished ones slowly reveal themselves.

    This is the way of kehillah. Of sacred community. Of friendship. The Woolly Mammoths, for example. Not knowing what we were doing. Well over 35 years in now. No longer needing to know what we’re doing, embracing the becoming, the deepening. All really because of persistence. We showed up. Two nights a month for years and years.

    Could have been a poker game, I suppose. Maybe a print-making co-op. Instead it was a bunch of guys who Velveteen Rabbited themselves into real men, often exposed and dangling from another of life’s precipices, yet still welcome, still seen whole. Gathered in.

    Memories of time together. At Villa Marie. At various spots on the North Shore. In each others homes. In restaurants. At the Nicollet Island Inn in that one room decorated for Christmas. You might call it a form of group marriage, within this meeting I pronounce you man and men. As long as you all shall live. What sacred time has joined together, let no man pull asunder.

    An alembic. That’s what these community choirs are. These sheepshead games. These exercise mornings. These rummy cube games. These gatherings on the first Wednesdays at CBE. Alembics for the soul. A place of transformation, of transmutation, of lasting change.

    I’ve been privileged to be part of several. Where the heat of vulnerability softens and opens a soul. Allows it to see itself anew, or, better, as it truly is. That’s where we’re going in these alembics. Running not away from ourselves but to ourselves. Feeling and getting support for who we most truly are. After the polish wears off. After the achievements drop away as inconsequential. As we do, the journey becomes easier. Lighter. Less burdened with expectations.

    If you’re part of an alembic right now, cherish it. Persist. By staying in you achieve the alchemist’s dream. You can turn lead into gold.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Woolly Mammoths

  • Back to Travel

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Alan. Lucille’s New Orleans cafe. Down the hill. Visiting Spring. The Three Body Problem. Reading and forgetting. MVP. Colorado Eye Consultants. Talmud Torah with Gary. Working through Bereshit, the first parsha. Slowly. Clean house and loft. Snow in the back still high. Travel. Amtrak. BEI Wyndham. Asian art. Art.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Railroads

    One brief shining: Feels like I have lifted myself up from my inertia, almost done with first phase of planning, booking Amtrak and San Francisco hotel, Diane suggesting other things to do, including Muir Woods, looking forward to challenging myself, seeing how this physical therapied, accupunctured, physiatrist scrutinized back holds up with lidocaine patches ready for the times when everything else fails.

     

    Yeah. Finally. Money from my IRA plumping up my travel fund. And my fund for Ruth’s 18th birthday, graduation. Grease for the rails.

    Frustration with myself, my reluctance fading. A long winter? Sure. Back issues? Yes. Homebodiness? Of course. Reasons to stay stuck? No.

    As my friend Ode observed after his trip to Nice with Elizabeth, “Travel is hard work.” Yes, it is. Especially when stamina and various ailments intrude on the journey. Yet. We know hard work. And we know it’s worth the  end result. At least some of the time. In this case the hard work lies in lifting and walking and hurrying. In being on your feet more than in a normal day at home. In confronting challenges with food, sleeping, lodging in unfamiliar places. You know what they are. All amplified in magnitude by a weaker body.

    The hard work of travel has always been worth it for me. I’ve faced times since Korea when I doubted whether it was still worth it. I’m not sure. If my back seizes up on me after a day out and I can’t sleep. If its pain brings me up short during a day like it did in Korea. If the exercises and the lidocaine patches don’t calm it down. Well. Then I’ll know and have to readjust. Reconsider. But if, as I imagine, I now know how to handle my back, not let it get away from me, then I’ll start looking at flights to Taipei and Incheon.

     

    My taxes are done. That feels good.

    I have MVP tonight. I’m presenting on bechira, choice points, and kehilla, community. What in your world creates a choice between this appetite and that virtue? How do those choices affect the people with whom you live?

    Eye doc today. Glaucoma. Photos of my retinal nerve. Seeing Dr. Repine. Thorough. Quick. With cataracts and glaucoma I could have gone blind twice. Thanks for modern eye care Jane West and Dr. Repine. Easy to forget the things that haven’t happened as a result of good medical care. I’m not functionally deaf either. Nor am I dead from prostate cancer.

     

    Just a moment: Israel. Digging itself deeper and deeper into everyone’s bad graces. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Still pro-Palestinian. Still pro-Israel. Anti militarism as the only solution to Israel’s security. Sad beyond measure. So conflicted. Angry. Worn down. A troubled place.

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Health Judaism Politics Travel

  • No Loyalty

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: My Lodgepole companion, Needles again covered with Snow. A cold Mountain morning. Remembering Andover (see header image). Being where you are. Wendel Berry. Regenerative Farming. Loving the place. Knowing the place. Where the Mule Deer come. Where the Creek blasts down the Mountain in Spring. Where the Dogwood blooms. Where Fawns and Calves move up and down the Mountains on wobbly legs.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Moisture on the Mountain and the Forest

    One brief shining: You know I looked out at the Snow yesterday, falling sometimes gently, sometimes vigorously, and I thought beautiful, then when I saw the same Snow coming down on my driveway I screamed enough, no more, we’ve had plenty thank you very much, however; I did not mean it, I meant bring as much moisture as long as you can and I will be grateful.

     

    Yes. Cabin fever time. That moment when what looked serene and beautiful a few short months ago now scrapes across the seasonal blackboard like bad chalk. Up here it produces a split personality. One tired of the cold, the Snow, driving on Ice, huddling up all about hygge. Wanting to run outside in a t-shirt, arms spread wide, soaking in Great Sol. The other remembering summers past when the Smokey the Bear sign pegged Extreme Fire Danger. Snow as far into April, hell, even May as you want. In fact, Snow until the Monsoons return. Please.

    I’m cutting a middle ground between these two. Gonna take off for San Francisco at the end of the month. See a lot of art, maybe a Redwood or two, visit my cousin in her native habitat. Eat. Sleep. Test my back in a safe environment.

    Of course. I would for sure wear Flowers in my hair if I had enough left. Gonna ride the Amtrak route between Denver and SFC. Really, Oakland, then a bus. Or, Diane. With a roomette. See the Rockies and the intermountain West without having to drive.

    A way to discover if I can travel, probably back to Korea again. Maybe to Israel if this war ever ends. Perhaps this year for both.

     

    Just a Moment: Caitlin Clark. Wow. 41 points. Final Four. Iowa! Once more, with feeling: Go, Hawkeyes! Iowa feels like Minnesota’s younger sister. Which would make Caitlin our niece? Always nice to see family doing well.

    45. His $175 million dollar bond. His legal peril. Or, from the MAGA perspective, the persecutions not prosecutions.

    Brother Mark asked if Trump won how would I be the loyal opposition?

    I wouldn’t. Be loyal. Though I would be in opposition. Loyal opposition as an idea implies mutuality, a framework in which political opponents serve as testers of ideas, as citizens of a shared form of government. A form of government which all sides agree has the best interests of a nation as its true purpose.

    Trump is not a politician in that sense. He is a politician though, one of the oldest kinds. A brute seeking total power. Power with which he can punish his enemies and reward his sycophants. Kings, Queen, Pharaohs, and Emperors, autocrats and dictators all are this sort of politician.

    Loyalty has as its sister virtue respect. No respect for pussy grabbers, for those who provide safe harbor for white supremacists, misogynists, anti-Semites. No respect for insurrectionists, for anti-constitutionalists. No respect for frauds, for payers of hush money, for election deniers. Therefore. Q.E.D. No loyalty.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Mountains Politics Shadow Mountain Sport The West Travel US History Weather +Climate

  • The Day After

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Monday gratefuls: And yet more Snow today. Sigh. Yay! The day after Easter. Incarnation. Another big religious idea. April Fool’s day. The Fool in the Tarot deck. April. The cruelest month. Dawn. Spring. Choice points. Choice points that build community. Talking Story. Clan Keaton. San Francisco. Amtrak. Defeating inertia. Lucille’s New Orleans cafe. Alan.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth turning 18

    One brief shining: The day after Easter has a dawn, too, can you imagine that day when the disciples and others gathered around the resurrected Jesus, wanting to touch him, to deny, to embrace, to wonder, to laugh, you’re back, and we thought, well, we thought…

     

    No. Again. Does not have to be a historical event anymore than the story of Persephone and Hades, or the Bremen Town Musicians, or Hansel and Gretel. We can still lean into the story, imagine what it might have been like. Use that imagining to flesh out our own response to the idea, in this case, of resurrection.

    Wouldn’t you want to test resurrection? Kick a tire? Look under the hood? See if the idea could unwrap dead selves, dead gifts, dead hopes? I would. I did. Many years of Jungian analysis found me sifting through dreams, through active moments of my imagination, reexperiencing the traumas of Mom’s death. Of the strained and then withered relationship with Dad. Of that moment when I dropped German for fear of a low grade. Of fear itself trapping me in its silk web, bound and trussed, waiting only for the spider to finish its work.

    Then there came that dream, a big dream, as Jung called them. In front of a large crowd I held a sword, lifted it with both hands above my head. He has the power they whispered. He has the power. And I knew I did.

    Yet this use of resurrection is not one and done. No. Throughout our lives we continue to let fear or regret or guilt or shame wrap key moments in a soft protective shell, imagining it’s better that way. There, there. You don’t have to worry about that. We’ll just put a bow on it and place on the shelf here.

    The Easter story says, hey! Unwrap that box. Roll that stone. Take your shears and cut that web, let it drop away. Though your fear sought to protect you it’s time now to say its work is over.

    This is the work of the day after Easter. Work that can only be done in the light of a day when resurrection has become a settled reality for us.

     

    Just a moment: My Midwestern heart loves basketball of all sorts including the reigning NBA champs the Denver Nuggets and the plucky women of Iowa, especially Caitlin Clark, and it beats strong today as Iowa faces LSU, replaying the NCAAW championship game from last year. Go, Hawkeyes!

    My American heart grieves for the people of Baltimore, an already difficult urban area hit with a one hundred thousand ton body blow.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Dreams Feelings Fourth Phase Holidays Humanities Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Sport

  • Wakin’ up mornin’

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Spirited Away, my biopic for the Ancient Brothers. Dawn and the longer days. Spring in an adagio, playing slowly toward its late April, early May crescendo. A short season in the Mountains. Each living thing up here, the Wild Neighbors, the Humans, all the Plant life, the Fungi and Lichen, the Soil Microbes, Streams and Rock Faces, Boulders and Talus has begun to respond, to anticipate the changing temperatures, to give birth, to run a little fuller, to find more light and the increased warmth of Great Sol each day.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: That great wakin’ up mornin’

    One brief shining: What in my inner Shadow Mountain needs to have the stone rolled away from its tomb, what dark and hidden fear or regret or failure has lain too long on the stone slab of its occultation, waiting for an Easter morning of the nefesh, a push toward consciousness of that shard of my past buried because its edginess could not be accommodated in a forgotten moment of psychic pain?

     

    Yes, it’s Easter morning. The most famous Jew in the world has his special day. Resurrection. What a splendid piece of mythology, one we need, have always needed. Will always need. It is not blasphemy to recognize that resurrection need not be a historical event for it to be a profound reality. Its mirroring of the vegetative cycle, of course. But also its blatant affirmation of the human journey from inner darkness to enlightenment.

    What do you fear about the course your life has taken? Did you shame your parents? Push down your gifts in service of the material God, Mammon? Hurt the one you loved? Loved the one you never had the courage to talk to? Which death bed in your life shook your inner world, perhaps opened a crack into the abyss? Steal or commit fraud or murder? Sure, it could be that tenebrous.

    All of these and so much more we tuck away, morticians for our own pain, placing rock after rock over the fearful and shameful. Like Jews even when we visit the grave we put yet more rocks on. Can’t let that get out. Gotta keep that crucified part of our past away from the living parts of ourselves. Because it could ruin everything. Couldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it?

    That Shadow Mountain of yours, how many sites does it have? Perhaps a mausoleum? Two? The ashes of your past still preserved in small urns of repressed memory.

    Here’s the Easter sunrise service promise. Humanness is glorious, all of it. Even the moments of pain and shame. I left my dreamed of college, Wabash, for a state school. Ball State. A teacher’s college. I drank myself through my early twenties. I had two marriages and a sort of third. Judy. Tina. Raeone. I went to seminary because I needed a trade, a place away from the papermill. I couldn’t bear the sight of Kate’s corpse, of Vega’s pleading look. And so much more. All put away in the mountain that is my Shadow. Yet as I have called these and many others to the light, as I have put my shoulder to the stone once rolled across their tombs, I have become more not less human.

    We are not only good. We are not only the worst things we have done. We are now the result of all those moments pushing against each other, shaping and forcing our growth. All of my previous marriages prepared me for the ancientrail of intimacy I found with Kate. And ensured that I know how fortunate I was. At Ball State I majored in two disciplines, philosophy and anthropology, which had few majors. The result? A close and careful journey through two departments with full professors. Both Kate’s corpse and Vega’s pleading reminded me of the limits of my own ability. An oh so important learning about aging. And death.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Shadow Mountain

  • Tradition

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: My son and Seoah and Murdoch. Kathy. Cancer. Morning darkness. Taxes done. Ruth and Gabe. Barb. Alan. Joanne. Tallit. 77. Blood pressure low. Ruth’s graduation on May 18. Surrender. Dreams. Irene. Mountain melting. Slow. Snow. Graupeling.* Yesterday. Spring. The scent of Soil, the odor of sanctity. Mountain Streams ready for their big show.

    *A precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water condense on a snowflake.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Taxes

    One brief shining: Heated up the simple Pinto Beans, got out some crackers and a mineral Water, peeled a Tangerine, carried them downstairs, and sat down weary from a day of writing, working out, dreams, and rituals. Ah.

     

    The days of our lives. Three days with Ruth and Gabe. They come, deposit their various shoes at the door. Gabe purple Converse tennies. Ruth oxblood boots. Go to their respective rooms, designated by long habit. Gabe in the mural painted “children’s” room. Ruth in the guest room.

    Ruth drove them up in her Subaru, the official car of Colorado. They stopped at King Sooper’s to buy groceries. I thought they’d buy food for meals. Forgot they’re teenagers. Mostly snacks. In addition vegetarian corndogs, a box of mac and cheese.

    Gabe is an early riser; Ruth a night owl like her dad. We talk. Laugh. Go out to eat.

    At the 202, a Thai spot in Aspen Park, I ordered a spiciness level of 1. They both went with 4. Jon would have, too. Ruth remembered and wanted the Sticky Rice Custard. Oh, so good.

    The two of them have been coming up here since Kate and I moved here in late 2014. Ruth was eight and Gabe six. Jon brought them up here frequently, often to avail himself of our washer and dryer, but we got to see the kids.

    When Jon and Ruth went skiing at A-Basin, many times Jon would drop Gabe off with us and pick him up later that night after a full day of skiing. Ruth told me she finished her first Harry Potter on those trips.

    Skiing bonded Jon and Ruth. As did art.

     

    Just a moment: Timber framing. Traditional carpentry. The route of an American Jew to the restoration of one of Roman Catholicism’s most well-known cathedrals, Notre Dame. Found this article fascinating. Timber framing is a traditional form of carpentry that any one familiar with Japanese or Chinese woodworkers would recognize. It uses mortise and tenon joints, wooden pegs to hold joints together. It was also the most advanced form of construction available when Notre Dame was built. The restoration of this Paris landmark has focused on original materials and methods, meaning work for timber framers, stone masons, stained glass artisans, sculptors, and metal workers focused on techniques of the high middle ages.

    Hank Silver’s story fits in with Charlie’s List. These pre-modern building technologies could reduce the currently heavy carbon footprint of contemporary construction. Let’s build homes from stone and timber framed roofs. Stores and office buildings, too. Let’s employ, at a living wage, those folks for whom college holds no interest, but working with their hands does.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on the news Family Feelings Fourth Phase Great Work Humanities Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. World History

  • A Great Wheel look at Easter

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Friday gratefuls: That white Water Buffalo in Bangkok. The museums of San Francisco. Amtrak. Ruth and Gabe. Mussar. Ginny and Janice. A week of meals with friends. Upcoming. Warmer weather. Still plenty of Snow on Shadow Mountain. Korea. Birth rates. Climate change. Dawn. Bechira and Kehillah. Jesus. Good Friday. Easter. Pesach.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resurrection

    One brief shining: Mussar yesterday with Ruth on my left and Gabe on my right both participating, Gabe read, Ruth said you had to choose among your expectations of yourself and the expectations of others, not let either one have authority over the other, out of the mouths of teenagers.

     

    Brother Mark asked if I had any reflections on Good Friday.* Made me wonder what was good about it. See below. Not sure why I didn’t know that already, but I didn’t. The crucifixion. No thoughts on the crucifixion make sense without consideration of the resurrection. Related by blood.

    Let me put this out there, then go on. Good Friday and the New Testament account of it has led to most of the anti-semitism experienced in history. Jews in these accounts, the High Priest in particular, not only participated in the crucifixion but caused it. The crowds want Barabbas. Jewish authorities ask Pilate to crucify Jesus for blasphemy. These stories have shaken Jewish communities throughout Europe and the West. Deicides. God killers. Unfortunately the history of Jews in the West has taken place in parallel with the history of Christianity, so Jews have always been considered over against the Christian story. Wonder what the cultural reception of Jews could have been without this.

    OK. Bracketing those thoughts. It’s a profound and important religious mythology, the story of the dying and rising God. Osiris. Inanna. Dionysus. Jesus. The vegetative cycle writ in mythological tales. The death of the fallow time. The rising to new life of Spring. The growing season and its devolution toward harvest and the next fallow time.

    In other words all those good Friday services with the sorrow, the black cloth over the crosses, the recollection of the crucifixion itself, can be read as a ritual reenactment of plant death as winter approaches. Then, like Persephone Jesus descends into the fallow time, into death, into the soil, only to have a glorious waking up morning in late March or early April just as Spring arrives in the temperate latitudes.

    I find it interesting to see these holy days for Christians through this lens. Why? Because it underscores the powerful hold the cycle of vegetative life has on both our bodily life and on our mythic imagination. This is “real” religion, of course, not the pagan Great Wheel. Right? But what if it is the same story told with different actors?

     

     

    *’Good Friday’ comes from the sense ‘pious, holy’ of the word “good”.[10] Less common examples of expressions based on this obsolete sense of “good” include “the good book” for the Bible, “good tide” for “Christmas”… wiki


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Feelings Fourth Phase Great Wheel Holidays Judaism Memories Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • Species survival

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Fire in the fireplace last night. Talking and laughing with Ruth and Gabe. Mac Nation. Indian Hills. Mountain town funky. The drive back through Kittridge, Evergreen, up Brook Forest and Black Mountain Drive. All the years of visits and sleepovers with these two. Ruth’s college plans. Kate and Jon also present. Family.

     

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Generations

     

    One brief shining: Mac Nation has an upstairs reached by outside wood stairs, crossing a balcony, and entering through a blue door which opens into two rooms one with large industrial tables on wheels and a smaller one with two wooden tables, one overlooking the curve outside which is the one Ruth, Gabe, and I chose for our macaroni and cheese midday meal.

     

    Easy to forget the biological imperative involved in families. What with all the drama, the highs and lows, the tears and laughter. But there is one and from an evolutionary perspective it’s their raison d’etre. Human beings as a species must reproduce and that’s what families are for at their most basic reality.

    Yes, Ruth and Gabe will place some parts of Jon and Kate, genetic parts, into the future, but what they are at the biological level is the next generation of humankind. The species needs them to find partners and reproduce as well. And so on until that Great Sol red giant moment which will end all evolution on this planet.

    You may think this an obvious point, unnecessary to note, yet it isn’t. Ask policy makers in South Korean, Japan, and China. South Korea, at its current birth rate, will cease to exist at all, it’s population halved by 2100 and accelerating toward national extinction.

    South Korea’s birth rate is .72. The replacement rate for any generation of humans is 2.1 births per woman. China is at 1.09 and Japan 1.26. The U.S.? 1.6.

    Much handwringing has ensued. Who will care for the elders? Who will work in the factories and businesses? But most chillingly, who will ensure the survival of the species.

    An odd problem to emerge as past generations of humanity fuel a rocket sled ride to a much warmer future, one with higher sea levels, and more extreme weather.

    Also odd. One of the main factors in the decline of birth rates lies in women’s empowerment. An educated and workplace integrated status for women serves much better than birth control or even government policy to restrict birth rates.

    What we may be seeing is a transition to a world that will be forced to embrace a totally new paradigm for child rearing and family structures, one that takes full advantage of the gifts and talents of women while encouraging more births.

    What would this look like? Not sure, but some sort of communal child care, education and health care and housing provided by the government would probably be required. It just might be that a population crisis finally forces humans to take care of each other.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase

  • Grandkids

    Posted on by Charles Comment

     

    Spring? And the Purim Moon

     

    Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth and Gabe. Thai 202. Sticky Rice custard. Long talks with Ruth. Gabe’s chair in the Snow. 14 degrees. Mark’s colleague Dale recovering. The Monsoons. Alan. Ruth going to mussar with me tomorrow. Memories of Jon. Of Kate, of blessed memory.

     

    One brief shining: The young Thai man brought out a platter with a bowl of sticky Rice on one end, a smaller metal bowl of sweetened thick milk, and a portion of green, slightly salty custard at the other; Ruth and I ate it, slowly, as it deserved.

     

    Gabe shoveled a path for me from the back door to the garage. Sweet of him. He also carried in some groceries yesterday afternoon. Ruth and I have had several long conversations, something I’d missed with her. She’s doing so well though vibrating about college admissions.

    She applied to CU-Boulder and got into their studio arts program. She also applied to the Rhode Island School of Design. A no there. Tomorrow she hears from NYU. After that, she’ll make her decision. Financial aid matters, too. I hope she chooses Boulder so I can see her while she’s in school.

    The last semester of her senior year. Wow. And on April 4th. 18! The changes come fast and hard at this age. Big decisions, all on her. Where to go to school. Major. How to live life away from home, without the structure of public education. Transitioning to young adulthood. Exciting. And, terrifying.

    Gabe’s got a couple of years before he hits this point. Not sure how he’ll handle it. He’s less focused, less ambitious than Ruth. A different person for sure. We’ll see.

    Of course they’re both making these changes without Jon, without their Dad. That impacts them in ways not easy to discern. I imagine part of Ruth’s decision to major in studio arts reflects her desire to please him. Again, how his absence affects Gabe is less obvious. May be a while until we know.

    We plan a trip to Mac Nation today, an Indian Hills restaurant that has many different variations on the American college student’s favorite food. One of mine still.

    Tomorrow Ruth will attend mussar with me. My conversion to Judaism has reinforced an already strong Jewish identity for her. She’s looking forward to my bar mitzvah. It’s on her calendar.

    All of this underscores the reason Kate and I moved to Colorado over nine years ago. We wanted to be part of their growing up. And we have been, still are. They know that two adults of my generation love and care about them. Kate’s death has done nothing to affect that.

     

    Just a moment: The bridge collapse. The Francis Scott Key bridge. Brought back memories of the day the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi collapsed in the Twin Cities. Shocking has too faint a meaning for either one.

    The good news in Maryland is that there was just enough warning to prevent traffic from falling into the waters of the Patapsco River.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Family Feelings Fourth Phase