March 26, 2008

Three acres of dead leaves, withered twigs, and one lone purple crocus.

March 25, 2008

I got linked to this from a newsletter I get, and I'm sharing it here because it is a description, by a brain scientist, of the kind of experience she had that others might attribute to sensing "god."

Still others, back in the days of "dropping acid," often described something similar.

And others, yet, tried to achieve it through Transcendental Meditation.

It's not in the mind; it's in the brain.

Listen in as brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor tells of the spiritual experience she had during her own stroke. This euphoric experience transcends all formal religions and has been pointed to by quantum physics for years. Watch the video.

from here:

....she was conscious as she lost the left half of her brain. She remembers the day clearly, when she eventually curled up into a ball and expected to die. "I was shocked when I awoke later," said Taylor,... [snip] "I couldn't talk. I couldn't understand language. I lost all recollection of my life and lost all perception of my physical presence -- I was at one with the universe.

March 24, 2008

My mom and I eat in front of the television set in her little sitting room. She sits in her soft recliner in front of a tray table. I balance it all on my lap.

The kitchen table is littered with boxes of her favorite cookies, her can of fake coffee, glasses half-filled with water, a water jug (we have a really stinky well), her container of pills for the day, a sugar bowl, salt and pepper shakers, and other assorted objects, including a pair of my reading glasses.

For the more than a quarter of a century during which I lived alone before this, I rarely sat and ate at my table unless I was reading while I was eating. I don't think we are very different from many people these days. For the most part, we've tabled the table.

Oh there are exceptions, even for me. I have a chance to sit with a family and have dinner when I'm visiting my daughter. We even have conversations -- this is when we can get a word in among the energetic chatter of my 5 year old grandson.

And one of my greatest pleasures these days is getting together around a table with my women friends, which I can't do very often because they live too far away. But when we meet, it's always around a table where we spend hours eating and laughing, talking politics and movies, and men.

And so when the following poem from Jim Culleny appeared in my in-box, I couldn't help but be moved by it.

Soon enough, I will have time again at the table.

March 22, 2008

A very fruitful Spring season
from Grammy the Great,

defender of all things
gray and growing,
familal and funky.

Deborah Harry (that's Debbie Harry of Blondie), now 62 years old, proudly sports a swath of gray hair.

And, according to Ronni at Time Goes By, a bunch of gray-haireds who are my kind of people are rocking Northampton Massachusetts:

YouTube has the movie trailer and a whole lot more music video clips. These will get you up and moving, and reminded that you’re never too old to rock ‘n’ roll.

Just watch them offer their rendition of Donna Summer's "I Will Survive."

March 21, 2008

Is that the way it was done before nursing homes and hospices, before miracle drugs and transplants, when old folks died slowly at home, their sons and daughters and grandchildren and cousins all taking turns taking care? The frail old ones, dying only from the final stresses of age and gravity, moved slowly and silently, sleeping through most of those last months, last weeks, last days. Relatives came and went, stayed and shared, while the old ones slept and dreamed and waited, and that was the way it was finally done.

But there are only two of us here to keep watch, to take care. Each day she is more tired, asks to sleep more and more often. Awake, she sits sad and silent, eating slowly in front of the television that she can barely hear anyway. I sometimes still hold her and dance with her late at night, when she's afraid and won't sleep. Sometimes I sleep with her to make her feel safe. Sometimes, no matter what we do, she's up and down all night, wants to eat, wants to go home. "Please, please," she mutters, unable to tell me what exactly would please her.

Someone cracked my rear passenger side bumper, and I have to go and get an estimate so that I can get it fixed. But then what. My brother would have to get my mother in his car and come with me to drop off (and then pick up) my car from the body shop. It is hard to believe that we know no one around here who can help with that chore so that we wouldn't have to put my mother through that. I don't even think that there are taxis in this little town. At least I've never seen any. I think I'd better start checking that out.

This is not the way it's supposed to be done -- without friends, without extended family, without a support system. But this is the way my brother insists, and I am too tired to argue any more.

I'd better check the phone book for taxi services.

And I'm still purging and packing and planning. While I cook, and feed, and clean, and sit, and hold, and hope.

ADDENDUM:
Whaddya know. There IS a taxi service right in town! Family or friends would be better, but I'll settle for a taxi when it comes to getting my car fixed.

March 18, 2008

So nearly ends a beautifully written memoir by b!X about the death of Arthur C. Clarke and the influence that the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey had on his childhood aspirations and imagination. You should click here and read the whole Star Child post.

Like my son (and, actually, the whole of our family -- my daughter's wedding cake was topped with Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia), I, too, am a lover of the kind of science fiction that not only opens up possible new worlds, but also explores the kind of human spirit that will be necessary to make the best of those worlds.

My first exposure to sci fi was C.S. Lewis' Perelandra, upon which I stumbled by accident in my Catholic high school's library. As far as I was ever able to tell, it was the only sci-fi book on the library shelves.

I don't remember the sequence of my growing love of sci-fi, but I do remember watching Clarke's movie when it first came out -- a night out with my then-husband and another sci-fi fan couple. Our daughter would have been about 5 at that time; I don't remember her being with us.

But I do still remember the sounds, the visuals, the bone flung into the air that became a space ship, the appearance of the megalith, that last breath-stopping image of the Star Child.

Categories: creativity, family, nostalgia

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March 14, 2008

Soon after every birthday, I take a photo of myself. My 68th birthday was last Tuesday, and here I am, way past the time when I would normally touch up my hair color. I've begun to go gray:

I took this photo with a new webcam that I just hooked up so that I can video conference with my grandson, who will soon get, from me, one of those indestructible XO laptops that are no longer available for private purchase. It comes equipped with a webcam. In order to buy one for him, I had to buy one for a child in a 3rd world country.

I went to visit my kindergartener grandson and family last Sunday, and I'm sure that, as a result, I have a few more gray hairs. By the time I left on Tuesday, both my daughter and grandson were seriously sick with sinus infections and the construction of a second floor had begun on their home. After I left, the workers had accidentally put two sizable holes in their first floor ceiling, letting the cold in and further endangering their health. You can read about the fiasco on my daughter's blog.

I wish I could have stayed to help out. My son-in-law has his hands full. He even had to take time off from work because my daughter now has laryngitis and can't talk at all. Just imagine how that works out with a chatty 5-year old.

Ah, if only there were such a thing as a Star Trek Transporter.

March 13, 2008

I think that Hillary Clinton would be damned by public opinion no matter how she ran her campaign. If she had Barack's eloquence, charm, and public persona, she would have been damned for being to theatrical, too smooth, not tough enough etc. etc. Oh yes, she's made too many mistakes in her campaign, but I don't think that's the reason there's so much animosity toward her.

Many American's love the idea of good vs. evil, the bad vs. the good, and they've been handed a perfect opportunity to set up a METAPHORICAL (not racial) black vs. white battle. No grays here (except creeping in on Hillary's battered head.)

And, despite all of the backlash against Ferraro, I believe that if a white male with Barack's change agenda AND LACK OF EXPERIENCE were running, he wouldn't have made it this far.

Oh, wait a minute. A white male with Barack's change agenda AND CONSIDERABLE EXPERIENCE was running and didn't make it.

Perhaps what it all just means is the time is right for someone like Barack -- a moving, persuasive orator, a symbol of radical change from the status quo (symbolized by his bi-racial ethnicity), someone from a new generation who appeals to the new generation. If he could be canonized by us liberals, he would be called Saint Barack, patron saint of idealists.

So often, timing is everything. And, as we saw on Ellen, Barack's got the timing down pat.

And late middle-aged, thick waisted, experienced, tough broad Hillary be damned.

But not by me.

I repost this poem from Jim Culleny's entry here at 3 quarks daily.

Meanwhile, all around the rest of us, politicians spin us into oblivion.

March 12, 2008

By now, everyone knows about Spitzer's fall from grace.

I have found it very interesting that his government colleagues of both parties have not said anything about the the morality of the actions that precipitated his downfall. Instead, the all simply express their concern for Sptizer and his family.

Why are they being so "compassionate" you might wonder.

Duh. It's because most of them have active extra-marital lives themselves. I found that out decades ago when I worked at my state's legislature. Hell, everyone there knew what Nelson Rockefeller was involved in long before he died so memorably..

To be a politician, you have to have a strong ego. If you are a successful politician, you will have amassed considerable power that will bolster your ego even further. Ego combined with power generates a sense of entitlement to dispensation from the obligations of ordinary people. Throw in a good dose of testosterone, and, well, just check this out.

In my 30s and pretty enough, I wasn't working at the legislature more than two months when one legislator, who chatted with me as we waited for an elevator, asked if I would like to accompany him to the Bahamas. Maybe he was kidding; maybe not. (No, I didn't take him up on it.)

After a while, I became friends with a female on the staff of a still-prominent legislator, who, I found out, had kept a mistress for as long as he'd been there. Having worked for him for many years, she knew all the dirt about him and many other legislators as well. And there was a lot of it. And everyone seemed to obey an unwritten rule to keep it all secret.

And that's what so puzzling about Spitzer's actions.

On my way out to my birthday visit with my daughter and family, I was listening to WAMC, where well-known local defense attorney Terry Kindlon began a list of all the things Spitzer did that would guarantee that he would be caught. It's as though he wanted to be caught.

One radio station listener called in to comment that perhaps Spitzer was going through a mid-life crisis. Whatever it was/is, it sure is a crisis. For such a smart man, he he made really dumb decisions.

Ego, power, entitlement, and politics can be the perfect recipe for hubris (iin it's modern definition.)

I wonder if all of those other politicians who have their mistresses stashed away in nearby condos are feeling just a little more vulnerable. Yeah. Right.

Ego, power, entitlement, and politics -- can't beat 'em, until they beat you.

March 09, 2008

This is for you, my offspring, both of whom have the gift of insightful sight.

Thanks to Jim Culleny's daily poetry emails for the above poem.

I wrote a poem long ago about a photograph. And I posted it, along with the image.

And because of that post, I've been translated into Chinese by Yan, who left a comment to let me know.

I just love the Web.

March 08, 2008

It's a long article, but you really need to go here and read it. Excerpts follow:

Evidence of a covert campaign to undermine the presidential primaries is rife, so it's curious that the Democractic Party and even some within the G.O.P. have ignored the actual elephant in the room this year. That would be Karl Rove. Long accused of rigging the two previous presidential elections, this master of deceit would have us believe that he's gone off to sit in a corner and write op-eds.

If, on the other hand, Obama wins the nomination (or even the VP spot), Rove's prospects brighten considerably.

AND

Obama himself recites Rove's "high negatives" comment in press interviews whenever discussing Clinton. His often bitter criticism of the former First Lady and other "Washington insiders", who he says want to "boil and stew all the hope out of him", represents a staple of his core political message. His campaign slogan to the effect of "I'm a uniter, not a divider" is also reminiscent of the Bush 2000 campaign, which Rove managed. Perhaps that's not suprising when you discover that one of Obama's speechwriters is Ben Rhodes, the brother of Fox News VP David Rhodes. (Marisa Guthrie, of BC Beat, reported this connection recently.) The latter Rhodes has been with the network since its inception in 1996. You may recall that on election night in November 2000, it was Fox that called Florida for Bush, even though the other networks declared Gore the winner, citing the exit polls. How Fox knew the polls were wrong in advance of the vote tabulation has never been explained.

I, who have not necessarily been a supporter of Hillary Clinton, am changing my mind.

March 07, 2008

When she flutters her hands in front of her nose, I know that she needs a Kleenex (well, we use Puffs because they're softer on her nose). When she taps her teeth, I know that she wants her flosser. When she reaches out with her right hand and opens and closes her fist, I know that she wants her cane.

She doesn't always use her self-devised sign language, but she's tending to do it more often -- especially when she's tired. And she seems to be tired more and more. The signs are often there. The words are often not.

On a sunny day last week, when I got into my car to go to the drug store, I flipped down the visor mirror to check for any stray chin hairs that my Tweeze might have missed. No chin hair -- but what's that??? Long white hairs in my eyebrows??? Now there's a sign. Definitely a sign.

I'm not sleeping well, my reflux is acting up, and that contact dermatitis I get on my elbow every once in a while is itching like crazy. I can't ignore the signs.

Signs that I need a break. I need a couple of days away from here. And so I'm going to my daughter's from Sunday to Tuesday. It's my birthday present to myself.

In two years I'll be 70. It just doesn't seem real to me.

Maybe it will seem real when my natural hair color finally grows in. Then I will see the most obvious of all signs -- the gray signs of being where I am in life.

Each year, on my birthday, I take a photo of myself. Each year, the signs are more obvious -- the drooping jaw, the sagging chin. There won't be much of the gray hair visible when I take this year's photo. But next year, there will be no denying that sign of this life fading to pale.

If I were able to live my life at the age I am today in the way I would prefer, I wouldn't be obsessing so much on my age and what I am losing with each day that passes.

But here I am, watching for signs and missing those times when the only sign I looked for was the one that said "dancing until 2 a.m."

March 05, 2008

Sometimes, if my mother naps in the afternoon, I try to get outside a walk a bit. Only I can't go out of earshot, because if she wakes up and can't find me, she'll spiral down into one of her dementia episodes.

So, like a prisoner let out into the prison yard, I walk in circles around the open area outside the front of the house. I go out in between snowstorms, when most of the snow has melted. I leave my footprints in the mud of now, rather than in the sands of time.

I find that I prefer to walk "widdershins," which is, in the rituals of myth and magic, counter clockwise. And which, if done while chanting an incantation, is supposed to generate productive energy.

What should I chant, I think, as I pace around my imprisoned yard. "Freedom!" If only.

Meanwhile, it's March and there's still a good deal of snow on the ground. Inside, the seeds I planted have already sprouted. I thought it would take a month. Now I have to transplant them all into pots and figure out where to put them. The windowsill is not an option. The cold radiating in would wipe out the whole crop. Sometimes my timing really sucks.

March 03, 2008

(Monday is myrln's day to blog here at Kalilily Time.)

1) ??? 2) ???

There are two items that could use some attention since both involve our tax dollars and in some ways, they point out just how ignorant we may be about the use of OUR money by the feds.

First off, for the past how long, we've been endlessly bombarded about the primary contests being waged to help find our candidates for the next president. We can't escape the news about them -- which in truth is good. It reminds us that our government is our choice and ultimately our responsibility. So far, what we've been seeing is a number of senators and congressmen mostly out campaigning, trying to whip up votes. Day after day they're out "on the stump," working hard to make their points to the potential voters.

Only, when you look a little harder or just sit and think about it, you come to realize something they don't mention very much. Consider: for months they're out there somewhere in the country and moving from one locale to another, days on end. What they are not doing during this time and in those activities is their job. Remember, they were elected to go to Washington as representatives of their state or district. Yet here they are anywhere but D.C. -- while still getting paid, still getting health care (the best in the nation), and still piling up credits toward their pensions. All of it paid for with OUR tax dollars.

Doesn't bother you? No big deal? It's the process? Oh yeah? Try getting the same deal from your boss.

***

Item 2 is different. It's this: why do we have an FDA, a Food and Drug Administration? At least as far as concerns new drugs coming into the marketplace? Without FDA's approval, no new drug makes it out for sale here. Good idea, a watchdog for our protection against the release of dangerous substances. Oh yeah? Then why in this flood of TV commercials for new and existing drugs does every one of them finish off with someone sounding like a shady used-car dealer talking a mile-a-minute and warning us, almost unintelligibly he's talking so fast, about all the potential dangers of the product?

If it's so dangerous, why was it approved by the FDA for sale in the first place? Hm-m. Good question. Our tax dollars going to approve drugs that in normal use could harm us, even kill us.

A great service, huh?