In winter bare-branched deciduous trees stand lace-like against constellations, winter storms and indigo skies.
The shimmer began a week or two ago. Tree crowns seem to tremble with the energy of rising sap, a first hint of buds swelling. Tree tops dance sparkles of light.
Am far away south and west from Maine now, but it gladdens my heart to remember sap rising in the sugar maple trees, the quiet woodlands still deep in snow. Aboriginal forest peoples taught Brits and Europeans to boil down the sap for delectable maple syrup centuries ago.
Nightfall snows are melting here in the mountains by next afternoon, lovely walks in shimmering twilight and first light, footsteps muffled in the swirling white. Yesterday I all but leapt with joy to find spring bulbs emerging, fragrant narcissus, daffodils and tulips.
The snow peaks will send snow-melt waters to gardens and pastures this year, fuller acequias than last.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Tyranny Close to Home
When I was fifteen and in a foreign school--rote-learning by petty tyrants--I ground out daily hours of homework, enraged at being mind-numbed and browbeaten.
My father proposed a day's outing, an Adventure. Hoorah, thought I, as we had climbed mountains and paddled canoes together. Out of this madness, yes, but to what wilderness?
First trained as a Navy Seal in Florida's Okefenokee Swamp, Father appeared for our adventure in full military regalia, dripping gold braid. What?! He eyed my dismay and offered, "Dress warmly."
We ventured off into northern European winter, low damp cloud, a palette of dun, grays, dirty snow. I slumped in the passenger seat doing glum adolescent ennui.
We "arrived." I lurched into full-bore panic as the topography lay sepia, a nightmare scene of WWII newsreel footage.
"Stand by me," he said, looking formidable, and glaring pointedly at the machine gun guard in the watch tower.
Father asked me to note the no-man's-land, mined and plowed, in front of barbed and razor wire, as we spoke together by the East German border--East Germany, land of crushing tyranny, from Kaiser to Hitler to Stalin.
"Remember this," he said, "and remember the courage of the American Revolution." He spoke to me about the outrage of the Founding Fathers who defied egregious overreach-governance by Great Britain, the superpower of the era. "Study that history."
I did. In the Alps, another foreign school. Our teacher of American History, a fiery black Irishman, spoke passionately about Sam Adams and pre-revolutionary pamphleteering, about Patrick Henry in the House of Burgesses, about George Washington, rawly aware of the carnage of the French and Indian Wars, who yet emerged as a figure of gravitas amongst the hot-bloods.
My father is long dead, but I do remember.
What have we now?---a former professor of Constitutional Law jives with the Declaration of Independence, quill-penned by Thomas Jefferson. His wife, Moochelle does Marie Antoinette impersonations.
And FEMA camps are prepared for impudent citizenry--with prison guard towers, barbed and razor wire.
My father proposed a day's outing, an Adventure. Hoorah, thought I, as we had climbed mountains and paddled canoes together. Out of this madness, yes, but to what wilderness?
First trained as a Navy Seal in Florida's Okefenokee Swamp, Father appeared for our adventure in full military regalia, dripping gold braid. What?! He eyed my dismay and offered, "Dress warmly."
We ventured off into northern European winter, low damp cloud, a palette of dun, grays, dirty snow. I slumped in the passenger seat doing glum adolescent ennui.
We "arrived." I lurched into full-bore panic as the topography lay sepia, a nightmare scene of WWII newsreel footage.
"Stand by me," he said, looking formidable, and glaring pointedly at the machine gun guard in the watch tower.
Father asked me to note the no-man's-land, mined and plowed, in front of barbed and razor wire, as we spoke together by the East German border--East Germany, land of crushing tyranny, from Kaiser to Hitler to Stalin.
"Remember this," he said, "and remember the courage of the American Revolution." He spoke to me about the outrage of the Founding Fathers who defied egregious overreach-governance by Great Britain, the superpower of the era. "Study that history."
I did. In the Alps, another foreign school. Our teacher of American History, a fiery black Irishman, spoke passionately about Sam Adams and pre-revolutionary pamphleteering, about Patrick Henry in the House of Burgesses, about George Washington, rawly aware of the carnage of the French and Indian Wars, who yet emerged as a figure of gravitas amongst the hot-bloods.
My father is long dead, but I do remember.
What have we now?---a former professor of Constitutional Law jives with the Declaration of Independence, quill-penned by Thomas Jefferson. His wife, Moochelle does Marie Antoinette impersonations.
And FEMA camps are prepared for impudent citizenry--with prison guard towers, barbed and razor wire.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
News Follows Nosebleeds
Sudden nosebleeds started up again, two weeks ago, a phenom since Fukushima began spewing radiation into planetary sky and sea. A fuku-belch, unreported by complicit media, and I run from the choir room or wherever to deal with a gush of blood.
Jet Stream whooshing over the Rocky Mts., falling as "hot rain" in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest. Europe is long since weary of government lies and cover-up. They're still dealing with Chernobyl, 1986.
Areas of Eastern Europe are still too radioactive for living or eating from the land, mushrooms and berries, wild game, or radioactive lamb meat in parts of Scotland.
I was struck by berries, provender of foragers. Am reading a book sent by a friend, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, about sustenance from land held sacred. The Lakota named summer months for their bounty of wild fruits:
May: Strawberry month
June: Serviceberry month
July: Chokecherry month
August: Red plum month
But what if we dare not eat the berries? Friends in Washington State are growing food under grow-domes, now being recommended by concerned health pros--to shield produce from Fukushima-fallout.
Many of us are washing/soaking produce in bentonite, a white clay used by the nuke industry to cover up its spills and mishaps.
The Japanese power company, TEPCO, responsible for Fukushima and much self-serving obfuscation, now "admits" to 20 % increase in radiation. Can we count on the truth of that figure?
A whistleblower states the containment vessels have undergone meltdown, with rad-horrors dropping out the bottom.
Where are the US Dept. of Public Health and the Environmental Protection Agency?
In bed with GE, which designed the Fukushima reactors. And incestuously entwined with the Nuclear Industry, protected from scrutiny or imprisonment.
What'll it be? CorpGov greedsters, or community and Commons?
I do have abiding hope in the ingenuity of our global peoples, "unto the seventh generation."
Jet Stream whooshing over the Rocky Mts., falling as "hot rain" in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest. Europe is long since weary of government lies and cover-up. They're still dealing with Chernobyl, 1986.
Areas of Eastern Europe are still too radioactive for living or eating from the land, mushrooms and berries, wild game, or radioactive lamb meat in parts of Scotland.
I was struck by berries, provender of foragers. Am reading a book sent by a friend, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, about sustenance from land held sacred. The Lakota named summer months for their bounty of wild fruits:
May: Strawberry month
June: Serviceberry month
July: Chokecherry month
August: Red plum month
But what if we dare not eat the berries? Friends in Washington State are growing food under grow-domes, now being recommended by concerned health pros--to shield produce from Fukushima-fallout.
Many of us are washing/soaking produce in bentonite, a white clay used by the nuke industry to cover up its spills and mishaps.
The Japanese power company, TEPCO, responsible for Fukushima and much self-serving obfuscation, now "admits" to 20 % increase in radiation. Can we count on the truth of that figure?
A whistleblower states the containment vessels have undergone meltdown, with rad-horrors dropping out the bottom.
Where are the US Dept. of Public Health and the Environmental Protection Agency?
In bed with GE, which designed the Fukushima reactors. And incestuously entwined with the Nuclear Industry, protected from scrutiny or imprisonment.
What'll it be? CorpGov greedsters, or community and Commons?
I do have abiding hope in the ingenuity of our global peoples, "unto the seventh generation."
Note to Readers: Do any of you have contacts in Japan? Please network updated "NEW Radiation Remedies" of Jan 26, 2012. Thanks to all for getting the word out. www.feastandfamine.blogspot.com/2011/03/radiation-remedies.html
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Faux Cirrus Chemtrails
An early riser, I enjoy last stars, clear dawn. Meanwhile--Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain--strange planes with no known flight pattern go to work--parallel striations, grand crosses, X's.
Good thing I hauled out the solar oven yesterday, under clear mountain skies. Today we have L.A..
The spew-patterns persist--unlike normal jets toodling across the sky. Patterns blur, and by mid-morning resemble smoggy cloud, in an earth arc above a rural population.
People out and about may start coughing; may mutter about allergies or flu. Asthmatics and the elderly may land in the ER. "Chemtrail cough" can persist for months.
What's going on? Hypochondria?
Or Rep. Kucinich's 2001 descriptor?--"an exotic weapons system"--when he introduced a bill trying to stop the op.
If hypochondria, odd co-inkydink that unmarked spew-planes, weird skies and health concerns seem to be a new world feature of the US, Canada and NATO countries.
America, the punch-drunk-bankrupt, is still funding resource wars, and appears to fancy aggression toward its own citizens. Citizens now re-configured as precariously angry and therefore threatening to any greedfest free-for-all.
Citizens the problem? Congress the solution--Draconian laws extrude onto the body politic.
Thinking about life here on the ground, with families bankrupted, homes lost to foreclosure, I wonder about US footprint at home and abroad. I wonder about consensual harm.
Will we foreclose on malfeasance by public servants?
Will government come to its senses regarding public service, public health? Or gut social programs to shore up wars, black ops, and rampaging banksters?
Good thing I hauled out the solar oven yesterday, under clear mountain skies. Today we have L.A..
The spew-patterns persist--unlike normal jets toodling across the sky. Patterns blur, and by mid-morning resemble smoggy cloud, in an earth arc above a rural population.
People out and about may start coughing; may mutter about allergies or flu. Asthmatics and the elderly may land in the ER. "Chemtrail cough" can persist for months.
What's going on? Hypochondria?
Or Rep. Kucinich's 2001 descriptor?--"an exotic weapons system"--when he introduced a bill trying to stop the op.
If hypochondria, odd co-inkydink that unmarked spew-planes, weird skies and health concerns seem to be a new world feature of the US, Canada and NATO countries.
America, the punch-drunk-bankrupt, is still funding resource wars, and appears to fancy aggression toward its own citizens. Citizens now re-configured as precariously angry and therefore threatening to any greedfest free-for-all.
Citizens the problem? Congress the solution--Draconian laws extrude onto the body politic.
Thinking about life here on the ground, with families bankrupted, homes lost to foreclosure, I wonder about US footprint at home and abroad. I wonder about consensual harm.
Will we foreclose on malfeasance by public servants?
Will government come to its senses regarding public service, public health? Or gut social programs to shore up wars, black ops, and rampaging banksters?
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Celebrations in Old Age
"What is most difficult, in reaching great old age?" I'd asked.
She rocked steadily, my ninety-four year old landlady, pondering sea fog beyond her Maine coast cottage. A grande dame, she still remembered prima ballerina, Pavlova, the liquidly-exquisite, and the Heldentenor voice and heart of Enrico Caruso.
She herself, of the flowing silver hair in artistic swirl, had danced in the corps de ballet at the old Met, worn stays, long kid gloves, and outlived a vigorous young America.
Though generations my elder, she walked daily no matter the weather, when I might wuss-out. She strode through the snow upright, long-legged and formidable, leaning on ski poles.
She had attended to my question, and turned from the sea to look at me, her middle aged renter--but to her, a youngling.
"What has been most difficult in my growing old?... Everyone who knew me as a girl, is dead."
I was to remember the stark loneliness of her words, especially at holiday times.
That first winter in Maine, I created an opulent Christmas for visiting friends, for I'd had a Southern Mother, a Lady Bountiful of celebrations.
I'd also had a Yankee father, who grew up with servants, rather than the generous warmth of hearth and home. Subsequently, father's upbringing prepared me for the cold of the North Atlantic.
By American standards--that brash, infant nation--the island on which I lived had been settled for centuries. It takes several generations of living there, before "newcomers" are fully integrated and no longer regarded as "from away."
The winters can be brutal, nights long, days icy and uninviting. After the Autumn Equinox, friends on the island burrowed into their winter layers and into a sort of hibernation, becoming laconic and insular.
Being from away, I went caroling, made generous-merry and discovered myself isolated in a drafty house, spending Christmas alone. Friends had en-caved. No cup of tea offered, nor chat by the fire. No malice intended, just New England inward.
It made me think about those left beyond the jollity-pale, alone on holidays.
After a pity-party interlude, I decided to make winter-lemonade out of what had seemed a bitter lemon. I snapped out of funk, and accepted that Christmas was private for families that had family. Instead, I made Christmas feast, mi casa es su casa, for those who had none.
Then waited, till the twelfth day of Christmas, when the Wise Men come--or so we hope--as my bleak-of-the-year extravaganza, creating a few "Epiphany Parties." I remember the ambient fragrance of mulled cider, gingerbread and balsam fir, and the joy on children's faces, and one year such music as two of them played violin and piano for us.
A decade older now, and no longer in Maine, am nearer my ending than my beginning, and I recall the grande dame, who outlived her generation and its memories. She felt isolated by old age, her ashes finally strewn at sea.
She had family; many do not. Do we find small ways to celebrate, bring quiet joy? Or pass one another on separate ice flows?
We do seem to be charting new paths of global and local community, as a planetary people weary of divide-and-conquer, and old fart profiteering wars. Frightening times in many ways, as greed implodes on its own ravening, and known structures fail.
Yet good hearts are at work all over the world--Not long before I left Maine, mothers of home-schooled children began a Winter Solstice tradition, which included all traditions within the island community. The kids decorated a Solstice tree, and the large oak-floored room was centered with a walkable spiral of beeswax candles. Music and potluck, on the darkest night of the year.
She rocked steadily, my ninety-four year old landlady, pondering sea fog beyond her Maine coast cottage. A grande dame, she still remembered prima ballerina, Pavlova, the liquidly-exquisite, and the Heldentenor voice and heart of Enrico Caruso.
She herself, of the flowing silver hair in artistic swirl, had danced in the corps de ballet at the old Met, worn stays, long kid gloves, and outlived a vigorous young America.
Though generations my elder, she walked daily no matter the weather, when I might wuss-out. She strode through the snow upright, long-legged and formidable, leaning on ski poles.
She had attended to my question, and turned from the sea to look at me, her middle aged renter--but to her, a youngling.
"What has been most difficult in my growing old?... Everyone who knew me as a girl, is dead."
I was to remember the stark loneliness of her words, especially at holiday times.
That first winter in Maine, I created an opulent Christmas for visiting friends, for I'd had a Southern Mother, a Lady Bountiful of celebrations.
I'd also had a Yankee father, who grew up with servants, rather than the generous warmth of hearth and home. Subsequently, father's upbringing prepared me for the cold of the North Atlantic.
By American standards--that brash, infant nation--the island on which I lived had been settled for centuries. It takes several generations of living there, before "newcomers" are fully integrated and no longer regarded as "from away."
The winters can be brutal, nights long, days icy and uninviting. After the Autumn Equinox, friends on the island burrowed into their winter layers and into a sort of hibernation, becoming laconic and insular.
Being from away, I went caroling, made generous-merry and discovered myself isolated in a drafty house, spending Christmas alone. Friends had en-caved. No cup of tea offered, nor chat by the fire. No malice intended, just New England inward.
It made me think about those left beyond the jollity-pale, alone on holidays.
After a pity-party interlude, I decided to make winter-lemonade out of what had seemed a bitter lemon. I snapped out of funk, and accepted that Christmas was private for families that had family. Instead, I made Christmas feast, mi casa es su casa, for those who had none.
Then waited, till the twelfth day of Christmas, when the Wise Men come--or so we hope--as my bleak-of-the-year extravaganza, creating a few "Epiphany Parties." I remember the ambient fragrance of mulled cider, gingerbread and balsam fir, and the joy on children's faces, and one year such music as two of them played violin and piano for us.
A decade older now, and no longer in Maine, am nearer my ending than my beginning, and I recall the grande dame, who outlived her generation and its memories. She felt isolated by old age, her ashes finally strewn at sea.
She had family; many do not. Do we find small ways to celebrate, bring quiet joy? Or pass one another on separate ice flows?
We do seem to be charting new paths of global and local community, as a planetary people weary of divide-and-conquer, and old fart profiteering wars. Frightening times in many ways, as greed implodes on its own ravening, and known structures fail.
Yet good hearts are at work all over the world--Not long before I left Maine, mothers of home-schooled children began a Winter Solstice tradition, which included all traditions within the island community. The kids decorated a Solstice tree, and the large oak-floored room was centered with a walkable spiral of beeswax candles. Music and potluck, on the darkest night of the year.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Homeless Republic: Election Fraud
My friends lived off-grid--an island in New Zealand's Marlborough Sound--reached by ferry, battered Land Rover, rowed dory, then backpack trek across jagged rock ledges.
I lay on a cot in the garden shed through the night, solar radio against my ear, listening to the BBC reporting on Bush-Gore exit polls, 2004.
My absentee ballot had not offered the category, "none of the above." Hoping for an uncorrupted adult as president, I'd done a Ron Paul write-in.
I could smell rank penguin pee from their waddle to a burrow beyond the house, and orange blossom from the garden. From the exit polls in my own country, I could smell chicanery.
Electronic voting machines reportedly mangling input. Paper ballots going walkabout.
Frat-boy forever-war Bush, not the last embarrassment from Texas, has segued to the Great Dark Hope.
BO, Mr. Hope and Change, has just gutted the Bill of Rights. Domestic terrorists-R-Us. Can we count on honest elections in 2012?
I smell pig-poop.
I lay on a cot in the garden shed through the night, solar radio against my ear, listening to the BBC reporting on Bush-Gore exit polls, 2004.
My absentee ballot had not offered the category, "none of the above." Hoping for an uncorrupted adult as president, I'd done a Ron Paul write-in.
I could smell rank penguin pee from their waddle to a burrow beyond the house, and orange blossom from the garden. From the exit polls in my own country, I could smell chicanery.
Electronic voting machines reportedly mangling input. Paper ballots going walkabout.
Frat-boy forever-war Bush, not the last embarrassment from Texas, has segued to the Great Dark Hope.
BO, Mr. Hope and Change, has just gutted the Bill of Rights. Domestic terrorists-R-Us. Can we count on honest elections in 2012?
I smell pig-poop.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Solstice Daughters of Eve
Women carry memory, womb-deep, of being offed by the millions as "Daughters of Eve"--in the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, or by stoning to death--by zealots of all putrefactions.
In absolute-truth centuries past, black robes and clerical collars crushed midwives and herb women for easing the pains of childbirth!
Birthing women were meant to suffer. Said so in Scripture, black and white. The ancestress, Eve, had hearkened to the serpent. It is she who tempted Adam in the Garden.
Midwives intervening to help women, put their lives at risk. Healers condemned to death
A midwife--administering raspberry leaf tea to relieve panic and child birth rigidity against pain, or quickly giving yarrow to stop postpartum hemorrhage--faced torture on the rack and burning at the stake.
It boggles the mind, yet the pathology happened, and was embraced as dogma.
The kill-them-all and let-God-sort-it-out thought form also writhed into suspicion of any unusual woman, eccentric, non-conformist, impudent, or God-forbid, psychic.
Misanthropes among early church fathers fastened on blame of womanhood as a twist to crushing Goddess worship. Interesting powerplay, potent, deadly.
Yet woman as nurturer, as creative force, as fact of biology lives on. Eventually, cosmology follows.
It's the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the Northern Hemisphere year. Solstice and Yule fires are kindling in snowy lands, the night sky alive with Aurora Borealis.
Knitting in the evening, I've been squinting by 4PM with twilight suddenly, thunk, upon us. Have thought warmly of women round the world, the nest-makers, the many warmths of hearth and home.
Bless the midwives now living, as earth power structures undergo seizure, and new life is somehow a-borning. Full circles and spirals of history, the cosmic-snake biting its tail.
At Advent Lessons & Carols this last weekend, we, the choir, were rehearsing the old haunting melodics to intersperse among scriptural evocations of darkness, birth and redemption--the prophesied coming of Messiah, the avatar presence of light. Genesis onward.
The Music Director, not mincing words, reminded us to have our various song books and scores open and ready BEFORE the conclusion of each reading. Our segues, he warned us, text to music selection, would be Kings-College-Cambridge-brisk.
A Texas tenor drawled, "Yeah, we already know the story about the talking snake."
In absolute-truth centuries past, black robes and clerical collars crushed midwives and herb women for easing the pains of childbirth!
Birthing women were meant to suffer. Said so in Scripture, black and white. The ancestress, Eve, had hearkened to the serpent. It is she who tempted Adam in the Garden.
Midwives intervening to help women, put their lives at risk. Healers condemned to death
A midwife--administering raspberry leaf tea to relieve panic and child birth rigidity against pain, or quickly giving yarrow to stop postpartum hemorrhage--faced torture on the rack and burning at the stake.
It boggles the mind, yet the pathology happened, and was embraced as dogma.
The kill-them-all and let-God-sort-it-out thought form also writhed into suspicion of any unusual woman, eccentric, non-conformist, impudent, or God-forbid, psychic.
Misanthropes among early church fathers fastened on blame of womanhood as a twist to crushing Goddess worship. Interesting powerplay, potent, deadly.
Yet woman as nurturer, as creative force, as fact of biology lives on. Eventually, cosmology follows.
It's the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the Northern Hemisphere year. Solstice and Yule fires are kindling in snowy lands, the night sky alive with Aurora Borealis.
Knitting in the evening, I've been squinting by 4PM with twilight suddenly, thunk, upon us. Have thought warmly of women round the world, the nest-makers, the many warmths of hearth and home.
Bless the midwives now living, as earth power structures undergo seizure, and new life is somehow a-borning. Full circles and spirals of history, the cosmic-snake biting its tail.
At Advent Lessons & Carols this last weekend, we, the choir, were rehearsing the old haunting melodics to intersperse among scriptural evocations of darkness, birth and redemption--the prophesied coming of Messiah, the avatar presence of light. Genesis onward.
The Music Director, not mincing words, reminded us to have our various song books and scores open and ready BEFORE the conclusion of each reading. Our segues, he warned us, text to music selection, would be Kings-College-Cambridge-brisk.
A Texas tenor drawled, "Yeah, we already know the story about the talking snake."
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Sanity and Endings
"How's it going?"
"Am still sane. You?"
It's Christmas madness time--I've brought my homeless-tent to a thrift shop, letting all that go, to gift another's need. The can-do man who builds and organizes the shop grins and nods.
A strange time altogether. I attended a Messiah performance in the midst of "Mercury retrograde"--think: dyslexia, confusion and Murphy's Law--and as topping to that disarray, a total lunar eclipse!
An awkward timing to perform anything, including coherent conversation, let alone Baroque entanglements--sopranos fainting, wild frisbee-polyphony, and many fine musicians skidding and careening, as though partner-skating on ice.
In the interest of life steady and predictable, we tend to discount being affected or thrown off balance, if it involves energy we may not fully understand.
We've got all that under control, right?--satellites on the prowl; military locked and loaded.
We're beyond paying attention to heavenly bodies. Other than those offered up by sex-sells-Madison Ave. and Hollywood.
Nonetheless, we are creatures electrical; our bodies shimmer. Quantum physics explores cosmology of light, of waves, of ancient understanding. An amazing time to be alive.
A friend and I rallied to watch the December total lunar eclipse at oh-dark-thirty, and freezing cold. It being cold, we decided against struggling with ice on windshield, and warming the car engine for a jaunt to greater wilderness.
We threw the porch swing cushion up onto the chest-high adobe wall and clambered up, straddling the wall, bundled up like Eskimos.
We watched the celestial show as more sensible neighbors lay snugged in bed. And snow lay all around.
Over an hour the moon darkly occluded, nibbles deepening from above. For a wee while, the usual, the vibratory status quo, simply shut down. As though a rebooting were to occur.
Endings of unknown consideration at year's end. Sun and moon and mountains dark below the flowing Milky Way.
"Am still sane. You?"
It's Christmas madness time--I've brought my homeless-tent to a thrift shop, letting all that go, to gift another's need. The can-do man who builds and organizes the shop grins and nods.
A strange time altogether. I attended a Messiah performance in the midst of "Mercury retrograde"--think: dyslexia, confusion and Murphy's Law--and as topping to that disarray, a total lunar eclipse!
An awkward timing to perform anything, including coherent conversation, let alone Baroque entanglements--sopranos fainting, wild frisbee-polyphony, and many fine musicians skidding and careening, as though partner-skating on ice.
In the interest of life steady and predictable, we tend to discount being affected or thrown off balance, if it involves energy we may not fully understand.
We've got all that under control, right?--satellites on the prowl; military locked and loaded.
We're beyond paying attention to heavenly bodies. Other than those offered up by sex-sells-Madison Ave. and Hollywood.
Nonetheless, we are creatures electrical; our bodies shimmer. Quantum physics explores cosmology of light, of waves, of ancient understanding. An amazing time to be alive.
A friend and I rallied to watch the December total lunar eclipse at oh-dark-thirty, and freezing cold. It being cold, we decided against struggling with ice on windshield, and warming the car engine for a jaunt to greater wilderness.
We threw the porch swing cushion up onto the chest-high adobe wall and clambered up, straddling the wall, bundled up like Eskimos.
We watched the celestial show as more sensible neighbors lay snugged in bed. And snow lay all around.
Over an hour the moon darkly occluded, nibbles deepening from above. For a wee while, the usual, the vibratory status quo, simply shut down. As though a rebooting were to occur.
Endings of unknown consideration at year's end. Sun and moon and mountains dark below the flowing Milky Way.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
You Believe the News?
"The weather report?--humph--I well remember shoveling thirty-eight inches, of partly cloudy."
The old Mainer, librarian in a small harbor town on the island once my home, looked like a 19th century Father Christmas or a sea captain--mane of white hair, thick Santa beard, rosy cheeks. Nobody's fool. I had asked if he'd heard the weather report?
"Do you believe what you hear on the news?" was his next question to me.
Do I? News touting signs of "recovery" in the midst of pensions being robbed, economies going splat, and perps celebrating the "greatest wealth transfer in history?"
Do I believe blow-dried and botoxed smiley-faces, in the midst of a newly-crafted, boom & bust, Great Depression?
Charities are trying to take up the slack as services are cut to slosh funds into more compelling Potomac Swamp priorities: bailouts, wars, re-election.
Locally, Food Pantry contributions are not as robust as last year. The Pastor at the church where I sing has explained that poverty is increasing while even the generous do belt-tightening.
His Discretionary Fund to help those in sudden need, needs deeper capacity. Strangers come for help. Sixty dollars or so used to tide folks over. Now, winter, people out of work come in, who've had their heat and power cut off, and it takes $180 or $230 or some such figure, to get power back on or firewood delivered.
Food Pantry distribution is once a week, and it's by no means lavish--two cups each of beans, rice, oatmeal per family, a small can of tuna fish, and a portion of whatever fresh foodstuffs have been donated. The lines to get in stretch far out into the cold.
The Pastor had asked for help for hunger emergencies between Food Pantries--for canned goods of protein. I piled some tins of beef stew, ham, salmon, Vienna sausages, hot and spicy, etc. into the back of the church office closet, as per the request.
I had shopped for these at a cheap goods sort of store, foods which would taste hearty to those hungry and were appalling processed-food to me. But get real, it met need and accustomed food choices.
As I crawled into the closet to stack the emergency foods stash, I thought about Wall Street pooh-bahs who had stretched a big sign across the NY Stock Exchange windows: "WE Are the 1%." They toasted one another with fine wines, looking down on the protest-of-excess rabble.
Some wit also suggested, that the great unwashed, "the 99%," could be improved with a shower of champagne.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
A Small Wager
A clear day, I think I can smell snow. I announce this to a friend from the Upper Midwest, who laughs:
"You want to place a small bet on that?"
"What?"
"I'll make it easy on you, 10:1 odds. If it snows, I pay you ten dollars. If it doesn't snow," he looks at me meaningfully, "you owe me a buck."
Sufficiently annoyed out of pneumonia-coughing, I rally with, "You want to make a wager with a woman--who sometimes has non-linear ah-hah's?"
Eyebrows raised, he gives me a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is look.
I sniff. "You're on."
By nightfall, it's clouded up. By morning, big fat snowflakes are coming down, thick and lovely.
It's unseemly to gloat; I do grin.
Turns out he's strolling my way through winter wonderland with a ten-er to pay his wager, and a deck of cards to further entertain me. He teaches me to play five-card poker, and includes the jokers in the deck, appropriately, as I'm clueless about playing cards.
He empties out his pocket and starts me off with a stash nickles, dimes and quarters. A nickle opens the game.
Pretty interesting actually, deciding what to let go, if anything, to make room for a stronger hand.
After a bit, I'm dealt a jumble of five cards including the two jokers. Am not quite sure what I've got, but I push out a quarter, declining further cards.
"A quarter?!" he croaks, this being big bucks. He folds.
I fan out my hand, "What's this called?"
"Uh, a royal flush."
So, a good friend with robust good health distracts me from feeling awful. I've stopped coughing.
"You whooped my ass," he says. I grin.
"You want to place a small bet on that?"
"What?"
"I'll make it easy on you, 10:1 odds. If it snows, I pay you ten dollars. If it doesn't snow," he looks at me meaningfully, "you owe me a buck."
Sufficiently annoyed out of pneumonia-coughing, I rally with, "You want to make a wager with a woman--who sometimes has non-linear ah-hah's?"
Eyebrows raised, he gives me a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is look.
I sniff. "You're on."
By nightfall, it's clouded up. By morning, big fat snowflakes are coming down, thick and lovely.
It's unseemly to gloat; I do grin.
Turns out he's strolling my way through winter wonderland with a ten-er to pay his wager, and a deck of cards to further entertain me. He teaches me to play five-card poker, and includes the jokers in the deck, appropriately, as I'm clueless about playing cards.
He empties out his pocket and starts me off with a stash nickles, dimes and quarters. A nickle opens the game.
Pretty interesting actually, deciding what to let go, if anything, to make room for a stronger hand.
After a bit, I'm dealt a jumble of five cards including the two jokers. Am not quite sure what I've got, but I push out a quarter, declining further cards.
"A quarter?!" he croaks, this being big bucks. He folds.
I fan out my hand, "What's this called?"
"Uh, a royal flush."
So, a good friend with robust good health distracts me from feeling awful. I've stopped coughing.
"You whooped my ass," he says. I grin.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
