Archive for the ‘Social Commentary’ Category

Mixed Signals

February 17, 2023

Sitting on my couch, looking out at dense snow whitening everything except the hyacinth tips which are peaking out of soil in their pots on my enclosed porch. 

Wondering if the flowers are as confused as my hens, as to what the daily shifts in weather mean. Two days ago it was sunny and warming spring, yesterday there was high wind, today it is full winter snow all day and nighttime temperature predicted to hit zero.

Will egg laying, which had begun after the hens’ short-winter-day hiatus, continue or will the ladies decide to keep their potential progeny to themselves until more favorable temperatures become continuous?

I do welcome the snow and its much needed moisture in our arid climate, and I appreciate that its timing means I only have to cancel one appointment today, instead of three yesterday. I am grateful that my days, overall, can be flexible enough to accommodate disruptive weather. What I am not yet at ease with is the seemingly permanent state of uncertainty about everything, from weather to egg production to mass shootings, local water shortage concerns and world tragedies, mental health crises and trophy winners. Big and small, meaningful and insignificant, all of it blasted at us repeatedly over multiple internet channels.

Yes it is very true that the only certainty in life is that things change. And yes, it is a frustrating aspect of human nature that we seem compelled to seek to impose stability and structure on that ceaseless change. I, and my flowers and hens, will do as we must if it is winter, and also if it is spring. What none of us manage well is the uncertainty of what we will face each new day.

Take my intention to write about trees, my personal relationship to them, the way that they are presented as vitally engaged with Native tribal life in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and the mystique surrounding some of the most ancient of individuals or their seeming ability to communicate via underground links. My thoughts were taking form, ready to be presented here – when in my morning news feed I encountered a new study that denies that there is any contact from tree to tree, the linking fungal networks discounted as providing a means of communication. Do I continue to believe the spiritual yet scientific vision in Kimmerer’s work, and the delightful concept of trees talking to one another via underground networks, or must I accept a conceptual shift due to this new, challenging research study? 

Many years ago in a modern dance class, we were  assigned to compose a dance that would render an “inanimate object” through motion, leaving the work untitled, and the class members to name the object once they had seen the performance. I chose trees, and presented a pine, a willow and a maple. My classmates did “see” the subjects and named my choreography “A Walk in the Woods”. As I composed the dance, I felt the essence of those three entities and had no doubt that they were both animate and friendly. 

I still feel akin to trees, and to many other plants, especially those living in my home. We have history. One ivy, now over 40 years old, was a new spring in my office in the New Mexico Penitentiary when I taught there. Together we survived the 1980 prison riot. A poinsettia gifted to me more than 25 years ago put out two blooms this past holiday season. A petunia given me this past summer, supposedly an annual, died back to just one small sprig due to both onset of winter and a bug infestation. Sprayed, watered and talked to, it now has new growth and multiple flowers. 
So I will continue to hold beliefs compatible with those in Braiding Sweetgrass, enjoying the sense of spiritual connection to the world around me, and accepting responsibility for an interaction that appreciates gifts given and requires a return of respect and care. Oh, and I thank the hens for their willingness to give me eggs despite the bitter cold.

In Passing

January 19, 2023

Yesterday I was informed by a dear friend, Jay, that she had rather suddenly lost one of her close friends to death. That friend had apparently been relatively healthy, but in only a matter of a few weeks went from active and engaged to departed.  Jay stated that mentally she understood what had just happened but emotionally she was not coping well because of the suddenness of the loss. 

A few hours later I received a packet of writing from a dear friend of mine who has been living with a progressively deteriorating health condition for many years. He has soldiered through the  steady decline with an amazing adaptability and retention of positive attitude. What was evident, however, in what he sent me was the fact that the core elements that he has retained as his sense of identity are now under attack. He is experiencing difficulties with all forms of communication and becoming an unwillingly isolated shut-in.

In my initial response to Jay, I spoke about the difference between losing someone suddenly and watching a steady decline, the latter situation giving one an opportunity to adjust emotionally as well as mentally to what is coming. However, that latter situation also implies or imposes awareness that the friend suffering the decline is indeed suffering over an extended period of time. What I mentioned to Jay in my initial response was the ambiguity that I have lived with for many years over the “better” way for a life to end. It seems that for the person who is departing this life it must be easier if the departure is relatively sudden. No living with pain, no agonizing over things undone, not really any time to guilt trip oneself, which I realize may or may not be the case, there being no means to ask after the departure whether the person did in fact experience regrets, or depart in peace.

For those of us left behind after a quick death, similar questions can nag at us. By contrast, when there is a lingering illness and progressive decline, the person experiencing the challenges may or may not value the time provided and the advance notice that whatever activities or communications have been neglected can be put right before death. The friend or family member standing beside or watching the decline also has time to sort things out if they choose to do so. Working in home care for many years, I watched all sorts of variations of the slower passing and saw family member caregivers who treasured every moment of their connection to the dying individual. I also saw family members impatient for the end to come, feeling overwhelmed or angry or just immeasurably sad that their loved one was suffering and in pain. 

For myself, I have tried to live by guidance received from my grandfather when he was near the end of his life. He said then that he had only two regrets, one being that it would have been better for my mother, his daughter, if he had remarried but he never found a woman he wanted to commit to. His other regret was that he never learned to play the mandolin. At that time, when I was in my late twenties, I undertook to try to live in such a way that whenever my end came I would have no more regrets than he did. 

I’m comfortable in saying that at this moment I have achieved that goal. I recognize that the goal is a moving target and that I need to be mindful to stay in this space of no more than two regrets. Doing so helps keep me honest in my interactions, respectful of others, and sufficiently self aware to keep myself motivated in pursuing my own next steps.

I cannot speak for those who care for me with regard to what they would prefer, my rapid and unexpected passing versus an anticipated steady decline. That choice seems to be a very individual one for each of them. I do think that living by the mantra of minimizing regrets (making prompt restitution when we err) can benefit us all, so that however an end comes, whether our own or a loved one’s, the transition can be smoother and less emotionally painful for all who are involved in the passing.

May it be so.

Asinine and Insulting

May 14, 2021

I have not been motivated to write lately. I have instead been enjoying my artistic pursuits, balanced with part time work for the NM Caregivers Coalition. But the untenable position I have been placed in – experienced in spades today – by the latest CDC pronouncement cannot go without response.

Setting aside the broad guidelines in place in New Mexico according to county by county statistics that put us in color categories, none of which as of yet allow unrestricted or undistanced indoor dining or shopping, and acknowledging that the CDC indicated local level decisions must still be recognized and adhered to, it remains beyond stupid to issue a statement that “vaccinated people can go unmasked indoors” when there is absolutely NO WAY to know if the unmasked person standing just behind my shoulder and breathing into my face is vaccinated, or one of the far too many individuals who refuses vaccines and denies that there is a pandemic infection still active here.

I am vaccinated.

Wearing a mask to protect myself from the deniers and anti-vaxxers and mask resistors, I become subject to ugly accusations from others that I am a coward, that I don’t care about my neighbors or I would get a vaccine, that at my age (I qualified for and got my vaccine in the first tier) I should know better than to refuse a life saving treatment.

Is the CDC going to hand out masks imprinted with I AM VACCINATED, ARE YOU? for those of us who feel the need to continue to protect ourselves from the heedless, thoughtless, careless multitudes?

REALLY!

Who Knows? I Don’t!

November 25, 2020

Why is it so hard to do nothing?

And equally hard to use mandated “do nothing but rest” time for tediously aggravating projects like emptying Dropbox or deleting old email?

Shouldn’t the latter give some focus and purpose and sense of accomplishment to the former?

Sadly, I am not finding it so.

Doing nothing has come to mean relaxing on the couch either reading books or playing solitaire and word games on my phone. I did label and file some emails that I will want to reference in future. And I thought about scrolling through Coursera for any classes that might interest me – but didn’t even do that.

Is my current lack of energy so pervasive that sedentary mental activities are beyond me? Or does it take a particular type of motivation to tackle those ever-on-the ‘to do’ list organizing chores that so many of us keep postponing? I don’t know.

I do know that I don’t have the motivation to find out why I don’t know.

Enough of tangled sentences. 

What I do know is that I just read an essay by Bruno Maceas of the New York Times (How Trump Almost Broke the Bounds of Reality) that delightfully answers the tormenting question of how so many decent people can continue to support – and just now to vote for – our current president. It has given me much to think about and the realization that implementing any bridges over the deep divides in our country will require both sides to develop a common language, something we do not appear to possess at this time.

The essay explicates Trumpism as a cult, and to my mind effectively supports this hypothesis. Sadly, what immediately came to mind was 900 people committing suicide with poisoned Kool Aid, at the behest of their cult leader. It seems now that too many elected leaders in both houses of Congress are drinking political Kool Aid at the behest of a man who does not deserve that devotion. What cult leader ever does?

If people can continue – as they have done – to lie dying of Covid in ICUs while insisting the virus is a falsehood promulgated by left wing media, how can we possibly succeed in freeing their compatriots from the illusory cult world to which they have committed themselves.

Again, I don’t know.

Reading in the NYTimes about women who have made new opportunities of the pause Covid has imposed on their lives, the consistent message is to accept the need to slow down, recognize an opportunity to reset, refocus, redirect the course of one’s life and draw on historical strengths to find motivation to move forward. For some those strengths were the voices of older family members, or of cultural traditions. For others the strengths came more immediately from their own prior achievements. In all cases, the main thrust of their new efforts was toward some form of engagement with others. Isn’t that what women do? Nurture and care for others in whatever manner they are able to?

Filing or deleting old emails does not support caring for anyone at all, not even myself. No wonder I consider it an unnecessary chore. The emails, mostly newsletters from various groups in which I have some interest, have accumulated because somewhere in each is an item or two that, at first reading, I thought would be relevant to a future writing project. Only in that sense can they be conceived of as having anything to do with concern for others. Does that slanted view of the value of organizing them help motivate me?

I don’t know.

It looks as though 2020 will be recorded in my personal history as the Year of I Don’t Know. 

So be it.

RANT

November 19, 2020

For the first time in all my years of writing posts, I am not reviewing, editing or striving for a reflective balance in this essay. It is purely, as the title states, an expression of my fury at the thoughtless, selfishly ugly hordes of people who are collectively responsible for the new Covid surge. As one of those who has followed health safety practices consistently since last February, mostly staying home, avoiding indoor groups, minimizing my social interactions with close friends and doing all I can to protect both myself and my neighbors/community, I am now forced once more to do without acupuncture and massage which have been essential to maintaining my health over years, and are even more important to my well being in these times of severe stress and risk.

Because of you ugly, vicious, lying deniers I have less energy, a recurrence of bronchitis that had not troubled me for decades, increased frequency of headaches, and once again curtailed access to the treatments I have relied on to keep active and employed into my late seventies.

I blame you – and I do not think I will be forgiving you any time soon. With your blind cult devotion to the idiot who has misled you for four painfully long years, you are destroying my quality of life, you are dying in high numbers and still you are denying simple truth.

SHAME ON YOU ALL. (That is the mildest thing I can say without resort to “improper” * words.)

The Power of Words

November 6, 2020

Back in high school, I started a project of comparing adages in French and English, which later expanded to include contrasts between British and American English. I remember that the first saying I analyzed was “Every man for himself and devil take the hindmost” or in French “Chaque’un pour soi et Dieu pour tous” which replaces the devil coming behind you to God helping us all. That profound difference in attitude seems to me now to not only show a cultural difference between the French and we Americans, but also to be particularly apt to the deep divisions that have been exposed within our society, and which the present election seems only to be worsening.

People I do not know, but who expressed themselves on an engaged Buddhism election night gathering, said what I was feeling – deep disappointment that the vote was not demonstrating a rejection of the ugly, toadying, violent, racist, often viciously retaliatory rhetoric and behavior we have been immersed in these past four years. People also expressed their commitment to continuing to pursue a loving, compassionate outflow in whatever ways their lives make possible. Being one of over 600 participants in the Upaya election night Zoom gathering helped me feel less overwhelmed, despondent and alone. The periods of silent contemplation interspersed through the evening gave me space to re-attend to the directives of my own Inner Master and to find the means to live beside, rather than be tossed about within, the vortex of social/political upheaval.

As horrific as is the loss of life from the pandemic, I suspect that the greater long term damage to all of us is the seeming loss of connection, of compassion, of respect, of willingness to try to understand and accept differences between families, cultures, religions, neighbors. The pandemic’s safety restrictions only seem to separate us. There have been enough inventive ways people have found to still show love and care on an individual basis, to demonstrate that the absence of these qualities is not a necessary byproduct of Covid-19. Other countries have suffered great loss of life and limitations of interactions without the citizens turning so virulently against one another.

Words have power. Interpreting the meaning of specific words and how those interpretations can affect communication has been a lifelong interest of mine. Just recently I engaged in a discussion that almost escalated into an argument about the word courage. I took strong exception to the other person’s statement that though there was much he disliked about our president, he admired the man’s courage. It was not easy to hold on to my temper long enough to find out that we two had very different interpretations of the word courage. Once I understood that the quality admired is the focused drive to be in charge and to achieve personal goals, I could accept that quality as one to be respected. It also allowed me to point out that courage usually means knowing the risks but taking an action despite them, which in turn means being aware of other viewpoints than one’s own. Narcissists (and we agreed this president is a narcissist) do not have the capacity to see or care outside their own viewpoint – therefore they cannot have courage. 

Because I was discussing with someone close to me, and we were both intent on not harming our relationship, we sought a way to reduce the divisiveness that a difference in terminology might have created. Because of the shortage of such cooperative intent in our larger society, words have become weapons further dividing and hurting us, and all sorts of neutral items or actions have become symbols of that division and thereby lost their neutrality.

I was struck this morning by an essay in one of the news roundups to which I subscribe, that laid out the conundrum facing many news organizations now – that our social environment has become so distorted that journalists can no longer simply state facts without that action being seen as taking a non-neutral, political position. 

If I repeat the fact that states where health safety practices are given priority have lower infection and death rates than those which do not, my “ought-to-be-seen-as-neutral” statement is taken as a political attack on individual freedom. If I report that New Mexico is the first state in the nation ever to have elected all women of color as its Representatives to Congress (all three – two Native American and one Latina, one of the three a Republican) my factual statement will be read as judgmental, or prideful, or proof I am a despised liberal, when it is simply a fact.

And to wear a mask – which I do always, everywhere out of my home, all the time, primarily to protect myself but also showing respect for those around me – that action is not a political statement but simply the implementation of a health standard that existed long before there was a pandemic. My former employer required that we use masks during flu season, for our own and our clients’ safety. No politics, just common sense.

(Now – referring back to my statement about New Mexico’s representatives to Congress, how did you attribute the political affiliations? Two Democrats and one Republican, in tandem with the Native/Latina division I specified? You would be wrong.)

I have long since stopped counting the times that I remind myself that to assume is to make an ass of u and me. It is also to abandon respect, patience, compassion, discernment, listening and caring as values to live by.  

Could the bridge to repairing our ruptured society be as simple as making a national mantra of “Never Assume”? Sadly, I do not believe something so straightforward would go uncorrupted.

Which will not stop me from doing my best to implement the qualities of respect and attention implicit in assuring neither I nor my interlocutors become asses.

Brooding

July 19, 2020

When a hen goes broody, sitting on eggs, she spends 99% of her time in one place, only getting off the eggs for a few minutes to peck up some food and take a few sips of water. She sits for several weeks and – if she is my grey “Easter egg” hen, she does more. She has chosen to sit in a trough that runs about four feet along the top of a feed manger now used only for storage of miscellany. My other hens have, until now, taken it in turns to lay their eggs along that trough, often in much the same position, such that I envision them lining up to take it in turns leaving their daily deposits to collect to a total of 4-6 that I pick up in the evenings.

Only two of the hens have the habit of announcing their laying prowess with repetitive loud crowing. I have heard those two regularly over the past couple weeks, but have generally only found one egg when I make my nightly checks. I recently mentioned to a friend that perhaps instead of two hens laying, only one was doing so and announcing herself twice – or that two hens were crowing their accomplishments but one was lying.

Instead, apparently both are laying and the gray hen is shoving their eggs beneath herself along with her own that she is trying to hatch. Otherwise there would not be, after just a week, more than ten eggs beneath her as my spouse ascertained to be the case yesterday. Grey hen gets ‘fatter’ looking each day, as she spreads herself more an more trying to cover and maintain warmth in so large  clutch.

I initially picked four eggs from her brooding spot when, just a couple days after she settled in, she was out to eat. I decided then to let her sit on eggs laid subsequently, since it is warm enough and enough summer still remains, for her to actually hatch and raise them. I did not anticipate that she would collect everyone else’s eggs to add to her own. Now I’m just curious to see the outcome. Will we in fact get babies? Of several different colors and breeds (my hens are a mixed bunch)?

It also has struck me that, in the midst of the ugly “everyone for him/herself” dynamic being perpetuated in our societal life these days, it is heartening to observe an example of self sacrifice for the collective good in a creature too often maligned as stupid.

Would that more of us purportedly intelligent bipeds were equally concerned for the well being and perpetuation of our young, particularly when it comes to finding the means to balance their health with their education and their impact on their families.

World Enough and Time

May 25, 2020

The wear and tear of time, plus assorted horse and motor vehicle accidents and a couple slip and falls have collectively resulted in a task of aging. More of my time than I wish had been needed over the past 18 months has been spent sorting out the causes of a variety of body pains, the triggers that set them off, and what treatments can reduce the pain to livable without creating new and different health problems. Along the way I verified the now-scientifically-proven hypothesis that ups and downs of the barometer are felt in the joints in advance of the visible weather changes they herald. I succeeded in identifying a sluggish gallbladder that the tests my doctor ordered merely confirmed. I’ve adopted some preventive herbals treatments and now have a few that have proven effective when different types of pain become too strong to ignore.

So I’m about as settled into effective symptom management as I expect is possible. And trying at the same time to settle into accepting that I can only respond to, not control, the variables, so will always have to be flexible in facing what each day presents.

All of which activity I now find may have had a different ultimate purpose than the obvious one of helping me become more comfortable in my daily activities. The detecting involved is now being called upon for quite another challenge. I want to sort out what underlies the so far inexplicable fluctuation in egg production from my small flock of hens.

Some of the variables – weather in particular – are probably the same as those that affect my pain levels. Cold and damp are not helpful. High wind is also probably as disturbing to the ladies as it is to my joints. But other potential factors are unique to the flock and as yet unidentified by me. I’m considering their amount of food (type also) and access to water in the small bowl they prefer (the bigger one that assures they do not go without is consistently shunned). I try to note whether our protective dog has been barking more – or less – at the variety of four legged visitors who pass nearby. Is she engaged with running off stray dogs who can be considered a threat by the hens , or merely alerting that the neighbor’s cows are in an adjacent pasture? Might there be a snake or a passing skunk disturbing them? Are some of them, like me, just feeling the aches and fatigue of age? I know there is one that must be recovering from the exquisite pain of laying the largest double yolk egg I have ever seen!

Two of the hens have gone broody, despite not having a rooster around to impregnate them. They will, I trust, resume laying when they fail in their attempts to hatch sterile eggs. Will they be challenged into more consistent production by the presence of 5 new flock members, including a young rooster? Or will they instead divert their energy to the establishment of a new pecking order with the youngsters put in their bottom-of-the-pole place?

Without access to comprehensible feedback, such as my own body gave me, I question whether I will ever have answers that enable me to reliably collect eggs from everyone each day. No matter – puzzling my way through the variables is a good distraction from equally unanswerable questions about what lies ahead for us all as we move on into the changing world we are glimpsing. As often as I have heard, and have quoted to myself, that the only certainty is change, my mind continues to try to find answers – certainty – in complex situations which defy resolution. Undoubtedly that is why I relax at night with crossword puzzles and Free Cell. Solvable challenges, with set answers.

That same mind that likes order and seeks connections recently made me aware of a list of seemingly unconnected situations. Green ice in the Antarctic, shrinking of the polar caps, bark beetle devastation of forests in the southern Rockies, insect destruction of olive groves in France and Italy, more frequent and more fierce storms of all types all around the globe, non-seasonal temperature extremes setting ever new records, spread of hostile insects like the killer bees into environments where they have not previously been known, and of course now the worldwide spread of virulent new virus-based illnesses. A quick and easy answer is “climate change” if the question is “what is the cause of all these negatives?” 

But when the question is “what is the solution?” no such single simple answer presents itself. 

Nor is there a single simple answer to my questions about how I will adapt to a recently changed pattern in my personal life, a change that is still evolving, with key decisions yet to be made. In past years my life circumstances enforced the learning of patience – waiting for the time to be right for significant alteration in employment, companionship and other facets of daily life. Now I seem to be facing the opposite lesson. Or maybe just a different facet of patience – learning to step back and observe fast moving changes without feeling I have to act or “figure it all out.”

Just as I am unlikely to sort out all the influences on my chickens’ egg laying propensities, and I know I don’t have many answers to the multitude of manifestations of change in the environment; just as I know my scope of action in our tormented civil (uncivil) society is limited to what I can do in my immediate surroundings; so too I need to remind myself daily that my mind is not in charge of finding answers to my personal challenges. Those require detachment, patience, observation and tolerance of uncertainty.

The way forward for me personally, and for the larger society as well, will show itself in due time.

Who knows, maybe I’ll also be gifted with an insight that turns my poultry yard into the most prolific egg production unit in the region. Wouldn’t that be fun!

End of Apolitical – Pt.2

May 3, 2020

Further thoughts on how challenging it has become to be apolitical, and still express anything meaningful – the simple act of being consistent in what one states as true has become a political act. Saying one thing one day, denying that one said it the next, reversing yet again and asserting that one spoke the truth “based on facts known at the time” whether or not those were the known facts is a behavioral practice commonly seen now.

To me, it stands in stark contrast to the behavior exhibited, for example, by New Mexico’s governor Michelle Lujan-Grisham as she directs the response to Covid-19. She states “what we know now” and “what the projections and science indicate is most likely to happen going forward”, followed by her assessment of how to best mitigate both medical and economic harm in the best interests of the citizens of the state as a whole. If the situation changes, as it recently has done with a spike in infections in the corner of NM that overlaps the Navajo Nation, Ms. Lujan-Grisham factually states that changed conditions now dictate a different way forward.

Consistent, responsible, believable, reliable conduct. Much needed in uncertain times.

Would that more of us all could find within ourselves the fortitude to be consistent and factual – accepting that in so doing we are of necessity also being political.

The End of Apolitical

May 2, 2020

One aspect of Quaker belief has historically been an engagement in social action, whether in support of emancipation of slaves in the mid 1800’s, as pacifists opposed to war as a solution to political conflicts from the U.S Civil War through the World Wars, to Korea, Vietnam, and the “police actions” in multiple sites around the world, or more currently in testimony against the abuse of peaceful immigrants to the U.S. This activity is often expressed as “speaking Truth to power.”

I respect the decision of a local Jewish Community entity to “keep politics out of” the monthly newsletter which informs of social and cultural events and, most recently, of how to access worship and support online. Reading of that decision I did wonder, however, whether it can be meaningfully implemented?

Avoiding outright expression of political preferences is achievable. But has not the simple statement of proven facts, whether scientific or cultural, historical or ecological, now become a form of political expression?

I admire the small individually owned fueling station/store in Santa Rosa where I purchased diesel for the exceptional price of $2.14 per gallon, not so much for the price I paid but for the fact that the store had signs announcing – and implemented the precautions – of everyone who entered wearing a mask and no more than three customers inside at one time. I am stating simple facts but am I not also expressing a political position? If I drop the first two words (my opinion) and rearrange the sentence structure, have I eliminated politics from the statement?

 Probably. 

Have I communicated anything meaningful to my reader or listener?

Probably not. 

Oh, I’ve saved someone who doesn’t have a mask the waste of time involved in driving around Santa Rosa looking for that cheap-fuel gas station. Not a gesture very high on my scale of caring activities, though perhaps important to a now-out-of-work individual trying to save their limited cash by getting cheaper gas.

Driving around myself, with VoteSmart (Facts Matter) and Science Supporter bumper stickers, I am making simple statements of fact. In today’s toxic public sphere I am also unavoidably making a political statement.

The personal has become political. Not to my liking, not the world I wish to see re-emerge from the present upheaval. But most likely the world as it will continue to be, at least in the U.S. for some time yet.

Too bad.

So sad.

Would that it were not so.

So


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