May 31, 2007

Sometimes a poem magically captures what you are feeling, not in the details but in its essence. Every day, Jim Culleny of No Utopia sends out a poem -- sometimes his, usually others'.

Today's poem:

May 30, 2007

I have been a avid reader as long as I can remember. I've been an avid writer as long as I can remember. I could spend my life reading and writing.

But that's not my life these days, although I have finished my college friend's book Gatekeeper (see sidebar). Actually, my responses to the book were very much like those in the review published in the Miami Herlad -- except for my taking bureaucratic acronyms for granted. I worked for twenty years in a state bureaucracy, and I was as guilty as anyone of making frequent use those short-cuts names.

From that review:

Sullivan's interesting account of the agency's early years also reflects the country's post-World War II atmosphere in the wake of the anti-Communist, anti-gay witch hunt by the late Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. At that time, he writes, ``the CIA's polygraph program focused on detecting Communists and homosexuals. Early tests had more questions dealing with Communism than any other issue, but the homosexuality issue was pursued equally vigorously.''

Among the turf wars within the CIA in which Sullivan became entangled was one battle with the Cuban Operations Group, due ''in large part because none of its [Cuban] agents could pass their polygraph tests.'' The group's chief complained to the examiners that not all ''our agents can be bad'' and ''you are doing bad tests.'' Unfortunately, writes Sullivan, the ``Cuban [exile] assets, with rare exceptions, were all bad.''

But in another widely shared opinion among U.S. officials, Sullivan writes that ``of all the intelligence services against whom I worked, I found the DGI [Cuban intelligence] one of the best, second only to the East German Stasi. The only reason I put the DGI second is because the Stasi had much more manpower and was better funded. With limited resources, the DGI was very effective in neutralizing our efforts to penetrate them and identifying our agents.''

Sullivan concedes there are ''many questions about the validity and reliability of polygraph'' and concludes that ``polygraph is much more effective in determining that a person is being deceptive than it is in verifying that a person has been or is being honest.''

John Sullivan considers a successful polygraph examiner's skill to result from being able to approach the process as both art and science. His moral and ethical foundations come through clearly as he chronicles his struggles to pursue the truth in an agency characterized by escalating politicization, internal and external turf wars and a steadily growing bureaucracy, all of which diminished the Agency's capacity to carry out its mission

Of course, the book held an added interest for me, since I knew John Sullivan in college, although he was one of those who was a serious student and became one of our class leaders. But I would have never thought he would wind up in the CIA. Then, again, I never would have thought I'd end up taking care of my mother.

I have been trying to get out of here for a few days to visit my daughter, but thanks to my sibling, I have had to postpone it twice. I intend to get away on Friday if I have to sneak out while the other two are asleep.

My spending just about every waking minute with my mother is just not a fair burden on me. We need help, and my mom's gerontologist has suggested that we contact Hospice and go that route. She also suggested that I might want to move out and let my sibling take over, since he end-runs every effort I make to lighten my load. Compromise is something my family or origin never figured out how to do.

Meanwhile, I'm still writing here, and I want to let all of you know who emailed me or left encouraging comments that I much appreciate your reminders that writers, write; that inspiration ebbs and flows; that so many other bloggers continue to go through the same cycles. And my stats show that people are finding this blog -- most because I came up on a search engine for some topic they were looking for, but enough return visitors to reassure me that my writing is being read.

Here it is, after midnight, again, and I'm still at the keyboard. Yes. Writers write.

May 29, 2007

OMG! Oh my god!!

Everybody uses it -- Internet acronym or full-blown verbal exclamation. Everyone knows what it means and no one thinks twice about it.

Ya' think?

Uh. Uh.

My almost-five grandson, who tends to get verbosely excited by the damnedest things, came out with an enthusiastic Oh my god! the other day and was chastised by one of his peers (who is the son of a minister).

Now, to my grandson, whose parents are pretty much agnostic if not atheist, "god" has no meaning except as part of an expression of surprise -- as it does for many of us.

But for another many (e.g. religious and fundamentalist) "God" means something specific. Not "god" but "God." I suppose it has something to do with the commandment to not take the name of the lord in vain. However, "God" is not his name; rather it's just a designation. "God" might have the name of Apollo, or Zeus, or Allah, or Yahweh. "God" is a generic term, not a name.

But in this era of either/or, black/white, believer/heathen, saved/damned, there is almost no tolerance of the part of religious people for the beliefs (or non-beliefs) of the rest of us.

Are they going to teach their kids to correct anyone who says "god-awful" or "god, that hurts?" I suppose we can always replace the "god" with "goddess." But that extra syllable sort of lessens the impact of a spondee like "god damn!"

I guess the battle to teach Creationism as something other than a widespread cultural myth was just the beginning. Now they're going to "clean up" our language to their specifications. OMG! Just let them try!!

What will they try to "clean up" next? Let this poem by Billy Collins serve as a warning.

As coincidence would have it, I am in the middle of reading a book I somehow missed back in the 70s: Good News by Edward Abbey.

On the back cover is this statement:

With this boldly satirical imaginary world, Edward Abbey asks us to look around and take stock of what we value before it's too late.

Good advice for these times as well.

May 28, 2007

I'm starting a new tradition here, MYRLN Mondays. I have, on occasion, quoted emails from him that I wish I had written. He has agreed, when he's got something to say, to let me post it here. Always on a Monday.

I have known him for more almost 50 years. He is a friend. He is part of my family. I appreciate his being willing to let me use his thoughts, his words, his passions, to give some variety to this weblog.

So, heeeerre's MYRLN's first Monday:

CAN YOU SAY NUCLEAR?

The greatest real danger to our country is not terrorism, as our current lords and masters would have us believe. The greatest danger is stupidity: the stupidity rampant among those in power and the current and future stupidity promised by the gross failure of our schooling systems.

Why do schools fail so miserably at getting the best out of our kids? Aside from the idiocies imposed from above the actual teaching level, it's because schools are preoccupied with stuffing things into our kids. And that makes all the difference in the world. The heart of educating someone is not a matter of how much you can stuff in but of how much you can draw out. That's the root meaning of education: "educe: to draw out." Getting kids to open up, to find out what their interests and passions are, to learn what angle to use to get them individually excited about learning -- those need to be the first steps to education, to "drawing out." Get there first, and then teaching the subject matter -- the reading, writing, 'rithmetic, and sciences -- can begin because you will have learned how best to offer them to each student. And will we then get the nice, uniform results we seem to so passionately crave? Sorry, no. Uniformity isn't the goal, either.

Each student we open up to their own capabilities, interests, passions, dreams will take their learning in their self-determined direction. They will live their lives in their own manner, using what they've learned to achieve that. That's the ultimate goal of education.

Oh...too hard? Too idealistic? Tough. That's our job. Learning is the goal, not indoctrination. And unfortunately, the latter is the real objective of the testing-based methodology that forms the basis for what's called education today. Indoctrination. Let's make our kids good, subservient cogs in our economic machines. To hell with what interests them, what revs their engines and generates a real thirst for learning, That's not what we're after. We need machine parts. And truly-educated people make lousy machine parts. They can think and judge and act independently.

And they can pronounce nuclear.

May 26, 2007

This is a place of wild things.

In the three acres of woods in which I live these days, I am delighted when some of these wild things find me. It was racoons, the other night. Last week some kind of raptor careened past my window and landed in a tree too far away for me to see. Deer, of course, come by regularly. I have hung sacks of dried coyote urine on the trees near my plantings (blueberry bushes, tomato plants) in hopes that they will not void my harvests. The skink, who lives somewhere between the concrete walkway and the 2 X 4 that edges it, is back. Or maybe it's last year's offspring. Even wild things have families and homes.

Today, as I sat on the screened breezeway contemplating the wildness of things everywhere but inside me, I thought I saw a rock move in my rock garden. Yes, it was moving, ignoring the nearby squirrels and chipmunks and various bird species who were so busy gorging themselves on fallen seeds that they never noticed their pseudo-rock intruder.

This was the first turtle I've ever seen on our property. Maybe it was on its way to the lake, but, if so, it still had a long way to go. Maybe it had wandered over here from the little pond over on the next road. If so, it had come a long way already.

I have no idea what turtles eat. Bugs, I supposed; but I brought some shredded lettuce out anyway. And a dish full of water. It had stopped in a pile of dead leaves, to rest perhaps. I got down on the ground and looked into its tiny eyes, watched is miniscule mouth for some sign, thinking about that old 40s romantic drama, The Voice of the Turtle:

...The Voice of the Turtle (1943) charmingly reminds us, spring time stills brings flowers and the romantic notions of young lovers who engage in the rituals of courtship. And a simple love story can still resonate and provide entertainment and uplift for our distracted time. As the well-read romantic lead states, in quoting from the rhapsodic Song of Solomon in the Bible, "The voice of the turtle (as in turtledove) is heard in our land." Spring, romance and a sort of spiritual rebirth all arrive for the two lonely protagonists during the course of this play.

If I kiss the turtle, will he turn into a prince who will rescue me? Or at least a snazzy male senior citizen who loves to dance? Ummm. I didn't have the nerve to try.

Since seeing the turtle, I've done some googling to try to find out what kind of turtle it is, with it's black skin etched with red lines and spots. No luck.

I did, however, find reminders of the power of the turtle as a totem animal:

Turtle is the keeper of doors

Turtle teaches tenacity. They have walked on the earth for millions of years. While other species have come and gone in that time, Turtles are still here, alive, well, and going about their lives.

Turtle is our Earth Mother, and through this energy we learn to be caring and nurturing.

Turtle shows up in our lives when we need to go into shell and wait until our thoughts & ideas are ready to be expressed. He also teaches us to be adaptable to our environment so we can find the harmony within it.

When I finally crawl into bed tonight, I will focus my thoughts on the turtle who stopped by for a visit today. I will dream the ancient voice of the Turtle.

May 25, 2007

Once upon a time there were things called seasons. One of them was spring when the temps would hover in the 60s and 70s and the air was fresh and touched with the smell of new growth (tho' pollen-laden as well). It was a time of release between the hard cold of winter and the smothering heat of summer. It was a nice time. Too bad we don't have it any more.

Today we're under a 15 county air stagnation alert (it's MAY!) for ozone, with temps going to near if not to 90-92. (It's MAY!)

Spring was nice when we had seasons.

(from an email by non-blogger myrln)

There was a time when I couldn't even imagine not being a blogger. My identity as such has been both something that distinguishes me in the eyes of real world friends and family and also something that has given me friends and family whom I've never met in person.

But all things have life cycles, and it's possible that this blog is nearing its own end.

Life goes on for billions of people who have never bothered with a blog.

A blog should end when you have nothing more to say.

The essentials of life continue here on the mountain, blog or no blog. Everything changes. Nothing changes.

Maybe I just need a vacation. From blogging. From the essentials.

Or maybe I need to remember how to be a poet in the real world.

May 24, 2007

We thought it was the bear who is rumored to come through these woods every once in a while.

The bird feeder we hung from a tree was ripped down, clawed, and thrown several yards away. The pole on which the other two bird feeders hang was pushed to lean precariously to the left. Some of my potted plants were turned over or pawed through. After two mornings of waking up to the devastation, we positioned a light to shine on the area at night, removed the bird feeders, and waited for some telltale noises.

No bear. But three racoons -- large, middle sized, and small. They circled the spots where the feeders should have been, snuffling the ground for some leftover seeds. I didn't know that racoons eat birdseed. Within a few minutes, they gave up and plodded away, probably over to our neighbor's who had reported the other day that his garbage bin was toppled over and the contents strewn all over his yard.

So we bungee corded the garbage bin we left out for collection.

Now, we take the feeders in at night and put them out in the morning. I don't mind the squirrels and the chipmunks vying with the birds for the fallen seeds. At least they don't wreak havoc in the process.

That's what we get for excitement here on the mountain. Except, of course, for my mother's "episodes," which leave us frustrated and exhausted as she moans unconsolably, overwhelmed by the aches of her body and spirit.

"I'm dying," she whispers, licking her dry lips, panting and reaching out. Within a half-hour, she's up and wandering around yelling "You're trying to kill me," as we do try to get her to take her prescribed meds. "Shit," she says. "Go to hell!" she says, this woman who never used any kind of profanity in all of her life -- until now.

"This IS hell," I think to myself.

I would trade lives with those racoons in a minute.

May 20, 2007

The trip to my daughter's is off. Mom's a mess. Got to rethink her meds.

Meanwhile, Jim Culleny of No Utopia has been emailing a poem a day, and I am delighted with his selections, including this one of his:

May 17, 2007

There's a tag team of "eight random things about me" going on, and Camilo at Mercurial tagged me. These are the rules:

-- Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
-- People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their 8 things and post these rules.
-- At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
-- Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

With both my spirit as well as my flesh feeling pretty weak at this point, I'm not going to tag anyone. But if you're reading this blog and would like to contribute eight random things about yourself, please leave a comment here or at Camilo's.

Neverthess, here are eight random things about me:

1. I didn't learn to drive a car until I was in college, and my driving teacher was my roommate, who was taking the course on how to teach driver ed.
2. my parents bought me my first car. And my second one too.
3. I bought my daughter her first car.
4. I used to have a recurring nightmare about parking my car and then never again finding it.
5. I am as untidy with the inside of my car as I am with my living space.
6. my car continues to go stone dead at variable intervals, and my brother installed some gadget that shuts the battery down with enough juice left to start up once I press a secret button. No mechanic has yet to figure out why it goes dead.
7. I think my next car will be a Rav4.
8. my car has always been both a conscious and unconscious symbol of my access to freedom.

I am getting in my car on Saturday and going to visit my daugher and family for two nights, even though my mom is not doing well at all. My battery needs recharging badly!

May 15, 2007

For her, the past only has two dimensions; there is no depth of remembrance. The only television that has any meaning for her are the old black and white movies -- Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers, Merle Oberon, David Niven... We listen to the "Easy Listening" channel on cable television. She likes to watch the changing mountain and meadow scenes that they show as the music goes on and on. Two dimensions are so much easier to understand than the complexities of the three dimensional world. Too many ways to look at the same thing. She says "I don't understand," a lot.

The Easy LIstening channel plays a lot of the old songs that trigger my own black and white memories: lying in bed with asthma playing with my Deanna Durbin paper dolls while the radio plays "It's a good day for singing a song...". I design, draw, and color and cut out all kinds of additional outfits for Deanna and the radio plays "the bells are ringing for me and my gal." In my box of "cut-outs" (which is what we called those "paper dolls," )I had some other favorites: Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, along with clothes I created for them as well.

The arrival of those three-dimensional Barbie dolls meant the end of the glamorous paper replicas of real live pin-up girls. It also meant the end of little girls being able to create their own clothing designs for those two-dimensional cut-outs to wear. You had to buy clothes for Barbie and her friends. Unless, of course, your mother could sew or knit. Which I could, so my daughter's Barbie had quite a wardrobe. It just was so much more complicated, having that thrid dimension to deal with.

"When the red, red robin comes bob bob bobbin along, along. There's be no more sobbin...."

My memories are triggered more and more by smells. I planted lilies of the valley, which have come up in scented white splendor. I hold the belled sprig under my nose and suddenly I am 11 years old and wearing that pale green long taffeta dress and carrying a bouquet of lilies of the valley in the May Day procession: "Oh Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today...."

Simple melodies. Simple lyrics. Simple times. Whole lives ahead of us.

I often make up simple songs for my mother -- improvise on the spot idiotic arias that I sing in in a falsetto voice because it makes her smile. "Get up, get up. It's time to eat. Move your butt and land on your feet. The coffee's ready; it's way past dawn. Get up, get up before the day's gone." I dance her to the breakfast table.

"You're my mother, she says."

Forget your troubles c'mon get happy,
you better chase all your cares away.
Shout hallejulah c'mon get happy
get ready for the judgement day.

shout hallelujah c'mon get happy,
ya better chase all your cares away.
shout hallejulah c'mon get happy,
get ready-get ready-get ready,
for the judgment day.

May 14, 2007

"Where am I? When can I go home?

For more than an hour this morning, that was all she could say. And all I could do was reassure her that she IS home, that we all live together and this is our home now. "Look how pretty it is outside. There's the red bird you like so much. Look, he's here with his wife." As she sits at the kitchen table and looks out the window at the three bird feeders, she is always delighted by the cardinal and his painted lady.

Everything hurts, she says. Her head, her legs, her neck, her shoulders, her back, her feet. I give her the pill she takes for nerve pain and a Tylenol as well.

She sits next to me on the couch, cries, mutters "I'm so afraid." When I ask her why she's afraid she says, "I don't know."

"Where are you going?" she keeps asking at least once an hour every day. Even if I'm planning to go somewhere -- to the dentist or grocery shopping or to pick up a prescription -- I tell her that I'm not going anywhere.

In her mind I'm often a friend that she had when, before the Depression hit, her mother took her and her four siblings to live on the family farm in Poland. Those are the times she remembers most, now. She keeps checking to see if the painting of the thatched-roof cottage in which they lived is still hanging on the wall. "That's my grandfather's house," she says. I ask her if she remembers who did the painting. She doesn't.

She wants to walk, gets tired of just sitting. But she's not very steady on her feet, so I put on some "easy listening" music and put my arms around her and she follows as I lead small steps in time with the music. She holds me tight, and I can feel her relax into me. I lead her into her bedroom, help her climb into bed to take a nap.

My sibling's way of keeping her company is to sit her down in front of the television while he taps on his laptop. She doesn't like to watch television. She doesn't get the plots or the jokes or the point.

"I want someone to talk to," she says. "Talk to me, Ma, I say." Tell me about when you were a little girl in Tuszyma."

May 12, 2007

She got up early this morning, appearing , already dressed, at the side of my bed, saying that she would just stand there and I should go back to sleep. Right.

So, I got up made her a cup of coffee, which she drank and then went back to sleep.

Ah. Found time. My rare chance to revel in the healing hush of the now-lush landscape.

I took a cup of Earl Gray tea and a Portuguese sweet roll embedded with Muenster cheese and went out to the rocking chair on the screened-in breezeway. Calli, my cat, glad to follow me into the dappled morning, scooted out the door to hassle the chattering jays who have learned to keep their distance fom the chittering cat.

I sit and sip in the peace of some needed minutes without demands. Hummingbirds come and go at the red and white plastic flower. An indigo bunting perches on a tree branch, uncertain about approaching its favorite feeder. Calli has her eye on it. A pair of mourning doves bill and coo on a fallen tree trunk. Somewhere behind the thick screen of leaves, the lake glistens at the clear blue sky. I wish I had a hammock.

We took her to a geriatric specialist last week, hoping that the doctor might have some advice on how to deal with where mom is at -- which is a moderate to severe dementia. My sibling, who has been in denial about the severity of her condition, finally, I think, got it: it's only going to get worse. His handling of her situation, and his attitude toward me, makes my work here much harder than it has to be. If I leave, it will be because of him, not her.

She is 91, but she still dances with me almost every night before she goes to bed. We are both still good dancers. It's about the only thing we've ever had in common. Dancing calms her down.

Calm. It's what we all need here.

And lot more than only 100 minutes of solitude.

May 10, 2007

I'm stuck.

I don't want to stay where I am and I can't bring myself to leave. And so the brain idles in neutral, consuming energy but going nowhere.

Outside, such startling energy. Wind, rain, lightening. As yet unearthed life, ripening steadily under it all. Where there's hope, there's life.

No hope here. No more words, either.

May 04, 2007

There's a new Americans United for Change TV ad out, which is scheduled to air on national cable networks now that President Bush has vetoed the Iraq withdrawal bill: "Mr. President, you can veto a bill. But you can't veto the truth."

You can go here to watch it on YouTube.

May 01, 2007

Below is a reprise of my post on May 1, 2003.

So, here it is, four years later and another May Day, and Dumbya is still doing his best to undo whatever strengths this country has left.