Author Archives: Elaine

Another one bites the dust.

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The other day I was thinking about some of the fun adventures I had in my younger days and the partners with whom I shared them.

An exceptional one was a three-day camping trip in the Adirondacks when I was 40 years old. A born and bred city girl, I had never been camping in my life, and this trip included portaging among three lakes and camping out under the stars. It was in June, and the mayflies were out in abundance.

There were six of us — three couples — the guys all Adirondack guides, expert in managing the challenges of such a camping trip. It was their tradition to each bring a date to their annual excursion, and it was their ritual to have one night when the guys wore ties and the females wore skirts, and we drank wine while the guys cooked the fish they caught.

While canoeing across the last lake, a storm began to brew, and by the time we made it to shore and a primitive lean-to, we were baragged with hailstones. We all hunkered down, built a fire, drank some more wine, sang some songs, and made the best of our last night. Except for a mayfly bite or too, the adventure was a rousing success.

As I enjoyed the memory, I remembered the name of the guy with whom I camped, and I decided to google him. I turns out he passed away in February.

I decided to check out some of my other romantic (and also dance) partners from over those early years, and all but one have passed away.

In memory of Jerry Passer, who introduced me to the magic of the Adirondacks, I share this poem I wrote back then.

Adirondack Rite

The mountain man lies beside me,
shadow and stone
in this moonlit grove.

Silently we listen for coyotes
howling in the wilderness,
the echo hoots of bears
searching for mates.

He promises to take me where
dark marsh grasses beckon
at the water’s sheltered edge,
where wind-washed scents
of wood smoke and rain breathe
ancient magic into the air,
where a pair of knife-winged hawks
inscribe the clouds with holy forms
and then ignite the sky,

He is silver in the starlight,
in the firelight, a whisper
like the oar’s wake in water.
He turns to give me a name, rooting
my spirit to this sacred place
and buries my sleep under dreams
as potent as the wilderness wind.

ponderings on a typical April day

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NERO FIDDLED; TRUMP GOLFS

History says that the fall of Rome was caused by a number of factors, including internal corruption, trade issues, wars over expanding territories, and incompetent leadership. Legend says that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. History will report that Trump golfed while American democracy collapsed for those very same reasons as Rome’s demise.

BOREDOM
“A desire for desires.” That’s how boredom is referred to in Chapter 8 of Anna Karenina. I can identify with that these days. I wish that there were something that excites and motivates me, that fills me with a desire to create, to imagine, to become involved with. I desire to have a desire. Instead I watch a lot of tv and sleep. And play brain games on my Amazon Fire Tablet, Word Chums with a friend, and Words With Friends with one of my former college profs. But I have no energy. Even getting out for my African Drumming class has become a chore. I keep doing it because it’s the last thing I have that gets me out of the house, despite the lower back pain that makes it hard to carry my drum. I have no more interest in knitting or sewing or any of the crafts in which I engaged for decades. I need an adventure, but I have no idea what that might be. I am bored to the extreme.

ENTROPY
It looks as though this will be the year that parts of my body start falling apart. I just had a thyroid biopsy and will get the results this Friday. My sacroiliitis has flared up again, and so I’m off to the Pain clinic later this month to get re-evaluated so I can get another series of injections. I broke a clasp on my partial denture and have to get a new one, although it never is going to fit perfectly because of the location of my missing teeth. I need new glasses, unless I get my cataracts removed, but I’m not sure I’m up for one more medical procedure. I guess I’ll wait and see what the results of the biopsy are.

ADOLESCENT ANGST
I found this old poem I wrote when I was about fifteen. I guess I was depressed even back then.

I hear the dreary, mournful refrain
Of the steadily falling downpour of rain.
Not the rain of a wild and stormy night,
With furious streaks and flashes of light,
With tormenting winds of passionate force
And eerie outcries from an unknown source.
Not the kind of rain that rises from hell
And holds all the world in its magical spell.
Not the kind of rain that’s so torrid and splendid —
That you still stand in wonder even after its ended.
And still not the rain that’s mellow and mild
As sweet and refreshing as the smile of a child.
Not the shower that calls all of nature to waken
With gentle caresses that leaves all unshaken.
Not the rain that makes every creature feel new.
Not the rain that leaves the world sparkling with dew.
But a gloomy depressing curtain of gray
That covers and hides all the brightness of day —
A shroud of depression, a mist of despair,
A cloak of discouragement, everywhere.

“plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”

Two April Poems

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It is foolish to think you can fool April
with bright balloons and colorful plans,
gatherings of eager hearts.
April still knows snow, disdains
the hopeful smiles of children
who wait in vain for sunny play.
Rain is April’s message, prolonging
the held breath of May, promising
only a fool’s failure to remember.

OTHER APRILS
Tank tops and shorts
on the first warm day of April,
sprawled on the dorm lawn
in adolescent abandon,
air smelling of
baby oil, iodine,
and sweet spring sweat.

Boy child and ball
on the first warm day of April,
laughter on a learning curve
stumbling in wet grass,
air smelling of
new mud, wet pine,
sweet sun after rain.

The Eiffel Tower
on the first warm day of April,
arm locked with arm
among the winds of Paris,
air smelling of
wine, tulips
and a lover’s sweet caress.

Contemplating the dappled shade
on the first warm day of April,
glider swing creaking
its soft lullaby,
air smelling of
lavender, memories,
and sweet seasoned dreams.

Self-Expression at 85

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I’m posting this to submit to this month’s IndieWeb Carnival, which, this month, focuses on “self-expression.”

For the past 24 years, I have been posting on my blog at kalilily.net. These days, at age 85, I am “just an old lady talking to herself” because “when I talk to myself, I tell the truth.” And when I blog, I assert my small existence in the context of an increasingly complex and expanding world.

I began blogging in 2001, when the parameters of my life shrunk to encompass my life as a live-in-caregiver for my mother, who had severe dementia. As my social life diminished in response to her needs, I followed the lead of my son, now blogging at bix.blog, whose presence on the internet introduced me to the leading personal bloggers of the time.

I am a published poet, and my blog gave me the opportunity to share my poetry, as well as to comment on whatever personal or larger issues motivated me to want express my perspectives.

My blog became my online journal, as I chronicled my explorations in using medical marijuana and documented the five days at my mother’s bedside waiting for her to take her last breath.

My blog is the one place I am free to express my opinions, share my experiences, and document major episodes in my life’s journey. Now, at age 85, my outlets for self expression are severely limited. I no longer ballroom dance, which, at one point in my younger years was my main outlet for self expression — along with occasional public readings of my poetry.

Because I was one of the early personal bloggers, I was invited, and I attended, the first Blog Conference at Harvard. Subsequently, I was interviewed by several major newspapers that were chronicling the emergence of blogging communities. All of this helped to reassure me that expressing myself publicly was a worthwhile pursuit.

While my physical world has shrunk, my need to write and assert my existence in this fragile world has not. And so I continue blogging, even if I am only talking to myself.

three poems about things

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I am unpacking some older poems and sprucing them up.

ODE TO OPAL
The opal, they say,
is partly water,
softer than crystal
(though not as clear),
smoother than pearl
(though not as soft),
as fragile as a heart
nearly mended.
Break it and it bleeds —
scattering light
like dreams at dawn.

The opal, the say,
attracts joy, love,
creative spirits
that fire the heart,
sends from its center
the magic of all other stones,
– an irresistible call
to iridescence.

ARTIFACT
There once was a point
to this old lantern
that now only reflects
what light slips through
somber drawn drapes
Once it had a purpose in
repelling night’s dark hand.
Its flickerings lit dim stairwells,
dispelled the haunts of nightmares,
revealed vague truths locked
within shadowy eyes.
Useless in lonely oblivion,
it waits for storms
that devour the sky
and send the world
into frightful corners
of unexpected night.

STILL LIFE WITH LUNCH
I indulge my tongue with baguette and brie
and contemplate a miniature collection
of my life’s best metaphors,
captured in small wooden squares
framed, off-center, in an expanse of
off-white kitchen wall–
spiny shells and chunks of stone
bought or stolen from gritty beaches
and hallowed hillsides;
two miniature totem poles,
stacks of toothy masks eternally
divining and defying;
a ceramic face of serene Kwan Yin,
graceful hands open in eternal
maternal blessing;
a pious, pewter St. Anthony,
haloed, holding the sad Child, and
on the lookout for misplaced keys;
a feather, probably a duck’s
because the wild turkey’s didn’t fit,
and every altar needs a feather;
a brass double dorje, the mate
to the Tibetan bell I ring
in moments of turning
toward thoughts of a frameless future;
and, finally, a crumbling wine bottle cork
on which is printed,
in balky blue ballpoint:
CONUNDRUM.

The Last of the 60s Singer/Songwriters

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Having just seen the Bob Dylan move, A Complete Unknown, I am thinking about all of the great singer/songwriters that came out of the 60s and 70s. Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Baez, Donovan, Judy Collins… I can go on and on.

Their lyrics were poetry, and they sang them so that we could clearly hear and understand the passion and authenticity behind the words.

I get it that Rap can also be poetry, but it is delivered in a cadence and speed that too often blurs the meaning of some very powerful words and emotions.

Taylor Swift is just about the best contemporary singer/songwriter, and I get why she is so popular. But, again, her lyrics often take second place to the sounds of the instrumentalization, the beat of this generation.

My favorite contemporary singer/songwriter is Don McClean. His song, “Vincent” is pure poetry in both words and delivery.

But my favorite work by a singer/songwriter of 60s, who is still alive, is this one written by Joni Mitchell and sung by Judy Collins.

Both Sides Now
Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way that you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way
But now it’s just another show
And you leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away
I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions that I recall
I really don’t know love
I really don’t know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say, “I love you, ” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way
Oh, but now old friends, they’re acting strange
And they shake their heads and say I’ve changed
Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
It’s life’s illusions that I recall
I really don’t know life
I really don’t know life at all

The Downside of Antidepressants

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I have been on and off antidepressants all of my adult life. They do what they are supposed to do. They keep me from feeling the lows. And they also keep me from feeling the highs. The problem is that my creative writing is fueled by those lows and highs.

My late former husband, who also suffered from depression and was a writer, refused to take antidepressants because, he said, “I’m afraid that if my demons leave, my angels will as well.”

And that’s what often happens.

William Wordsworth said, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”.

Antidepressants tend to neutralize those powerful feelings. I miss those feelings, and my writing has suffered, especially my poetry.

This was inspired, more than twenty years ago, by “..they paved paradise and put in a parking lot..” from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi.

Revenant

Under a dark moon,
she hunts the land for what
she cannot leave behind:

the scent of marigold
crushed on skin;
the fragile grace
of seedling maples;
the soft acceptance
of lambs ear leaves —

all lost to the dark,
to a place too ruined
for digging.

Tirelessly, she wrestles
the ghosts she has come
to free from the hold
of reluctant stone,

from the evil spell
binding the earth once
worked with the patient
need of her hands.

Held by the moment,
I breathe deeply
the sharp-scented air,
search for signs
of moon in the sky,

pray to find
what has been lost
from her night
and from my own.

Lies vs Facts

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Here are some interesting facts I gleaned from the February 15th issue of “Letters From An American.”

— Americans think the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid because they think it spends about 25% of the federal budget on such aid while they say it should only spend about 10%. In fact, it spends only about 1% on foreign aid

— …while right-wing leaders insist that the government is bloated, in fact, as Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution noted last month, the U.S. population has grown by about 68% in the last 50 years while the size of the federal government’s workforce has actually shrunk.

— ..federal spending has expanded by five times as the U.S. has turned both to technology and to federal contractors, who outnumber federal workers by more than two to one.

— …only about 29% of Americans wanted to see the elimination of a large number of federal jobs, with 40% opposed (29% had no opinion). Instead, 67% of adults believed the U.S. is spending too little on Social Security, 65% thought it was spending too little on education, 62% thought there is too little aid for the poor, 61% thought there is too little spending on Medicare, and 55% thought there is too little spending on Medicaid. Fifty-one percent thought the U.S. should spend more on border security.

— Now MAGA voters are now discovering that much of what billionaire Elon Musk is cutting as “waste, fraud, and corruption” is programs that benefit them, often more than they benefit Democratic-dominated states.

–[the Education] Department provides grants for schools in low-income communities as well as money for educating students with special needs: eight of the ten states receiving the most federal money for their K–12 schools are dominated by Republicans.

— …the Republican-dominated House Budget Committee presented its budget proposal to the House. It calls for adding $4.5 trillion to the budget deficit in order to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. It also calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and supplemental nutrition programs.

— A January AP/NORC poll found that only 12% of U.S. adults thought it would be good for billionaires to advise presidents, while 60% thought it would be bad.

Low Empathy: the root of all evil

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(REPUBLISHED FROM MAY 28, 2014)

LOW EMPATHY

I am obsessed with the conviction that our human race is devolving because we are losing our capacity for empathy. And I am not alone in believing that is the root of all of the evil in this world.

On the other hand, there is increasing research that is proving how other mammalian species are actually evolving in their capacity to feel and demonstrate empathy. All you have to do is do an online search for “animal empathy,” and you can spend the rest of the day being amazed and gratified at the increasingly widespread “humane” behaviors of our non-human brothers and sisters. (Do an online search for any of the areas of human violence in the world today – shootings, rapes, war zones…. — and you will spend the rest of the day, perhaps, starting to believe as I do.)

The tendency for humans seems to be violent. An online search for “human violence” will provide support for that assertion.

But it’s really more complicated – and overwhelming – than most folks are willing to admit.

Individual research projects are showing that there are complex connections among the healthy functioning of the brain’s “empathy spot,” the levels of the aggression hormone testosterone, the harmful psychological (and, perhaps neural) effects of violent sports/games/language, and this crisis of morality that is plaguing our species.

After spending the past few days searching online for perspectives on this issue, the best piece I have been able to find (although there are others) is “Why a Lack of Empathy is the Root of All Evil,” by psychologist Simon Baron Cohen, who offers this general definition:

Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion,” writes Baron-Cohen. People who lack empathy see others as mere objects.

And so we have rampant misogyny, bigotry, border disputes, extreme nationalism, racism,war, violence of all kinds.

What is fascinating to me is that the home of “empathy” seems to be in the brain itself. Scientific research has identified an area of the brain associated with empathy – the anterior insular cortex.

In other words, patients with anterior insular lesions had a hard time evaluating the emotional state of people in pain and feeling empathy for them, compared to the controls and the patients with anterior cingulate cortex lesions,” said the researchers.

This area of the brain that has been proven to be affected by a variety of variables, including testosterone levels and exposure to violent media.

One of Baron-Cohen’s longitudinal studies – which began 10 years ago – found that the more testosterone a foetus generates in the womb, the less empathy the child will have post- natally. In other words, there is a negative correlation between testosterone and empathy. It would appear the sex hormone is somehow involved in shaping the “empathy circuits” of the developing brain.

Given that testosterone is found in higher quantities in men than women, it may come as no surprise that men score lower on empathy than women. So there is a clear hormonal link to empathy. Another biological factor is genetics. Recent research by Baron-Cohen and colleagues found four genes associated with empathy – one sex steroid gene, one gene related to social-emotional behaviour and two associated with neural growth.

Contrary to what gamer developers would like us to believe, ongoing research is tending to prove that areas of the brain associated with empathy are being affected by constant exposure to violent video and other games.

New preliminary findings suggest that brain activation is altered in normal youths with significant past violent media exposure while viewing violent video games.

The reasons for our devolution are obviously complicated and involve some combination of nature and nurture and the opposite of nurture. As a culture and society, we seem to be intent on denying how we actually are encouraging a diminishment of empathy in favor of greed, selfish amorality, and vested interests — whether they be political, religious, economic, or national.

Of course, it’s easier to deny – from climate change to chemical food contamination, to promoting and glorifying violence – than it is to tackle the daunting job of trying to undo what we have done. But if we don’t, we will be a dead species before long. We will destroy ourselves from the simple lack of empathy.

I am hoping that some less corporate-manipulated and more holistic researchers will be able to bring together all of the factors that are pushing our species over the precipice of widespread violence and come up with a convincing argument for the necessity to put the brakes on across the board. Coming up with a plan after that is maybe more than government is capable of now. But if we don’t….

Having been a fan of speculative fiction my whole life and witnessing the manifestations of many of those “fictional” speculations, I don’t hold much hope.

The Courage of Real Journalism: It is Not Entertainment

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From cleantechnica.com:

Courage has a way of empowering others to also stand up and say “Enough!” This week, two other long-time Washington Post journalism professionals — Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen — also resigned from the Post to form their own independent journalism channel, The Contrarian. The irony here is that Rubin is known as a conservative voice. If she is horrified by what conservatism has become under the influence of MAGAlomaniacs, perhaps the rest of us should be concerned as well.

In her introductory post, Rubin wrote,

Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy — Donald Trump — at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.

The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation. Which is why I am so thrilled to simultaneously announce this new outlet, The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody.

Also, Ann Telnaes, who was a political cartoonist for the Washington Post for 16 years, had one of her cartoons rejected recently; she decided enough was enough. She quit to pursue her own idea of what journalism should look like by creating her own media channel on Substack. As she explained in her first post:

The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.

MSNBC is stepping up to the plate, as well, putting Rachel Maddow back on with a daily show for the first 100 days of the Trump tenure.