Chew on That

Working the jaw is tied to memory and thought. So said a New York Times article reporting recent scientific research.

If that's the case, why do I get my best ideas while showering, or while driving, rather than when eating? Maybe I chew at more times than I know. One of Mom's aunts worked her jaw constantly, with a small smile. And then she would say something. And then return to silently working her jaw around. Mom spoke ill of this aunt, calling her the family conniver, the trouble-maker. I guess to create her schemes she had a lot of extra thinking to do.

I hope I'm not like her. Mom doesn't seem to think so, thank goodness,

The young are alright with me

Today, stopped at a busy intersection, I had a front row seat to this scene: On the opposite side of the intersection from me, two young men pushed a stalled car around the corner, headed for the nearest driveway that would get it off this road that would soon be buzzing with traffic when the light changed. To the corner the slope had been slightly downhill, but after the corner, it was clearly getting tougher as the slope shifted uphill. I watched to see what would happen—my light was still red—and I must have blinked, because I missed where she came from, but a young woman who had not been anywhere on the scene came running up, smiling, and joined in to push without anyone missing a beat. Slowly they succeeded in getting the car, an indistinct model with faded paint, to the driveway of the shopping center. My light turned green and I followed and saw them push the car up the driveway and safely to rest. Then I was past and they were gone from my sight. Must have been one grateful driver in that car.


    Earlier, in the morning radio broadcast of Weekend Edition, indie-rock singer-songwriter
Mitski Miyawaki was interviewed. Should I confess at this point that I don’t have a high opinion of current music? What I’ve heard are tuneless wails inexplicably fascinating to young pedestrians. So much so, that, earbuds in, they stride through intersections without so much as a glance at traffic.

    But I was hooked upon hearing the description of Mitski’s music and stayed by the radio. Her  definition of happiness has been “skewed more towards ecstasy rather than contentment.” But clearly she is thinking and feeling deeply in her art. “I've been learning that I can use many different things to try to chase that feeling, but the most unhealthy thing is the chasing itself.” Sounds like wisdom to me. Not that I have anything against ecstatic moments and trying to make them last. She was asked about the track called “Happy.”  She said, “When I was writing this song, I just wanted none of it. I didn't want the happiness and I didn't want the sadness that comes after it. That's kind of what the song is about: not wanting to go up or down anymore.” She described the kind of happiness she feels now with her career, and it’s contentment. Not the end of the story, but she is clear-eyed, and is writing music that sounds like something very cool. And it has tunes!

    There is a koan that speaks of many eyes and hands and seems to be talking about great  compassion in the universe. I saw happiness today, easy fellow-feeling, and the gifts in musical arts. All in the young. And it makes me content.

Blow it up? Are you sure?

When I was a college freshman, and that’s going way back, WWU students elected a pig, yes, an oinker, as homecoming royalty. It was the 1960s. We were in the midst of a youth-led cultural revolution fueled by, among other things, Vietnam war protests, by the seeming blindness of “the establishment” to what we feared we were heading into on a number of fronts.

That was a “blow it up” moment; in that instance, blowing up the old beauty-popularity contests traditionally offered to us young people.  At first glance, it might seem to provide a parallel with the Trump and Sanders followers’ passions for upheaval.

But along the way, in the decades since in 1960s, cultural currents in the U. S. have reflected a complacency that has morphed into a blindness of its own, a blindness that believes that all of the good stuff of our society and country is safe from change, like it stands on its own steel and concrete foundation, and all we have to do is demand, from whichever leaders happen to be in office, selected revolutionary leaps forward. When we are not making demands, are we even voting, let alone organizing for change? I fear we have treated our citizenship as an antiquated sentiment, and have settled instead for being consumers and entertainment junkies.

Did the blow-it-up zeitgeist begin in the business world? We’ve all seen the new thing in business, “disruptive” change. If all the basics are assumed safe, including basic transaction trust, we can applaud those who can selectively take a company or product and blow it up. Or start a new thing, like bitcoins, and ride on our shared trust. It’s just the way the game is played now. Business as a game, right?

Who knew that a game approach to everything, business and life, would one day bite us? Evidently it is starting to. In a New York Times Saturday story, (page A11) one Bernie supporter was very insightful. He’s in the camp of “Bernie, Or else blow up the Democratic Party.” Victor Vizcarra of Los Angeles, is 48, is old enough to have some perspective. Yet he plans to vote for Trump if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, not because he agrees with Trump’s positions, but like a gambling man, and having watched “The Apprentice,” he feels a Trump presidency would be more exciting, a Clinton presidency more “boring.”

Now here’s where his insight really comes in. Mr. Vizcarra says, “A dark side of me want to see what happens if Trump is in. There is going to be some kind of change, and even it it’s like a Nazi-type change, people are so drama-filled. They want to see stuff like that happen. It’s like reality TV. You don’t want to just see everybody to be happy with each other. You want to see someone fighting somebody.”

Tremendous insight. He’s not particularly proud of his insight. He’s not driven by desire to improve Flint’s water, or halt the ocean’s rise, nor does he even appear passionate about Bernie’s signature issue, reversing giant corporate power and rising economic inequality. But he clearly assumes that it’s all a show we can enjoy. That it doesn’t matter beyond the show. That, for instance, presidential appointees to the Supreme court don’t matter.

How many are like him, either openly, or fooling themselves that they have no role as citizens to set right what goes wrong in our messy society?—beyond blowing something up, that is. In a sense, he is right. If we sit back as consumers to a great big show, we’ll get drama, alright. But why would we want to gamble that the upheavel will be confined safely to our TVs and little back-lit screens?  Why would we want to assume that the consumer will control the outcome, rather than the already powerful?

first two weeks in a sling

ahead of shoulder joint surgery, you bustle about, secure in your project planning moxie. going to have the use of just one arm for six weeks? okay you think, get ahead on some things—start with short fingernails and toenails, check. sweep the floors, check. get laundry all caught up, check. select a roomy cardigan to go over an arm in a sling, set up an easy chair as a temporary sleeping spot, as everyone says you’ll want. elastic pajama bottoms—drawstring isn’t going to work, requiring, as it does, two hands.  lay in supplies, from dry shampoo to meals into the freezer. and most important of all, be nice to the fella who is going to get your shirt and shoes on, cut up your supper, and get you in and out of your sling for your few passive exercises. oh, and go for what wasn’t anticipated, like one- handed dental floss gizmos.

then, like a sign that all will not be controllable, a couple of days before the surgery, the special-size cabinet microwave goes out. kaput. Dear husband handles it. the surgery goes well, and you come home the second day, doped with codeine for the pain of all the grinding, cutting, and sewing.

within days you have stumbled on the stairs, ouch, and touched a scalding water kettle to your slung hand, not once but twice. no way would your hand normally be in front of your belly while you hoist a kettle, but there it is, tied into place.

you get hip to the danger of carrying anything up or down stairs, because of course the hand you have for carrying needs to be on the handrail instead.

just as you graduate from nights in the downstairs recliner to your upstairs bed, the downstairs sitting room loses its useability anyway—the ceiling can lights go dark. Turns out you did this to yourself when in another of your green initiatives, you replaced the lamps with LED.  the existing dimmer worked for months, then chose this time to decide it really wasn’t compatible.

while you and the fella step through an electrical lesson at Hardware Sales in installing a compatible dimmer, other problems await. the almost new weed whackery wand quits, and requires a trip to burlington.  the circulating ice water device likewise doesn’t serve the shoulder (seemed a poor imitation of the kind we heard recommended). other glitches shall remain nameless in the interests of  preserving dignity.

but you find you are going for lovely forest walks, including a first-ever sighting of a ring-necked duck on Geneva pond. seemingly mis-named, but with striking white markings ringing its bill, and high-crowned iridescent black head, it was captivating.

no longer in need of anything stronger than acetaminophen, you are now a third of the way with the sling, and ready for the next two weeks.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

Through all the election season noise--jolts and umbrage, hopes for a candidate to lead us out of this mess--we are finally getting somewhere. Somewhere, where we can see we need to lead the leaders.

We are finally getting beyond parsing the words of the candidates to get a close look at big groups of their supporters. And as Eduardo Porter pointed out in his column in Wednesday's New York Times, "Reviving the Working class Without Building Walls," our current economic system has left in the dust our once-proud-to-contribute blue collar white men.

It hasn't hurt only them, to be sure, but they perhaps have been the most ignored in recent years. Now that we're finally getting serious in examining our drift away from equality, we're being reminded how many of us are stuck, mired in low incomes with no economic mobility in sight. It wasn't always that way, and doesn't have to be that way now.

Yet the political right has succeeded so well in demonizing the poor and the struggling, that now we see too many of the poor ready to vote against themselves if instead they are offered the bone of pride, and the chance to stick it to others.

But columnist Eduardo Porter, though he lists some steps that could begin to relieve and improve the economic lives of the working class, is himself mired in an economic meme that goes unexamined at the national level:  early in his column he speaks of the "global economy" as if it is a good thing to put all our eggs in one basket.  Have we learned nothing from "too big to fail?" If trade deals put us all in the same boat, in a bath tub subject to tsunami waves and dislocations, how can tweaking things help us?

The answers are being found at local and regional levels, in such structures as worker-owned cooperatives. The big global corporations do not have to own us. We can still choose to put some of our eggs in a safer basket, nearer home.

Through the Floor (Excerpt)

A once in a lifetime experience--a dangerous accident on a mountain in 2014--left an indelible mark on me and made me question some of my fundamental underpinnings. And I wanted to write about it, explore it. Now the story is in the new edition of Cirque Journal.

Here is an excerpt, from "Through the Floor" telling what happened a few seconds after I decided to give up on snowshoeing in a blizzard:

. . . A few more steps down the east side of the knoll and I reached the firmer snowpack of the trail. I turned right and lengthened my stride, keeping track of thin reddish trail markers jutting up every so often through the whiteness. I wished they were closer together, but I was pretty sure I could stay on the trail. My thoughts shifted indoors—maybe I’d get out my sketch pad, fix a cup of tea.
     Then without warning, I felt a funny yielding. Not just different, wrong. My stomach thought faster than my mind, clenching in alarm. A second later, my left foot was standing on . . . nothing. In disbelieving horror I watched the path in front of me come apart—all slow motion and soft sounds, the surface ripping zigzag, inch by inch ahead. Like the very earth opening to swallow me. Further shocked that I could watch this instead of being overtaken by the blind chaos of a tumbling fall, I thought I must be dreaming. But no, my right foot was still on the ripped edge of the trail even as the snow under my left foot slid outward from under me. Like the moment a person with one foot on the dock and the other on the moving boat realizes she can no longer jump to one or the other. My arms flung out, still clutching poles. Helpless to make any other response I sank, all but my right leg, in exquisite slow motion, remaining surreally upright. Rising into my view was the old trail surface, my right foot still attached to it, while below a crevasse-like cleft appeared, all newness creating itself in perfect pace and tandem with my descent.




For more, Cirque Journal is at http://www.cirquejournal.com/index.php.

Rotten tomatoes?

     I could scarcely believe what Bill was willing to pay for a box of tomatoes that were, by Joe’s Garden’s own labeling, “scratch and dent,” and looked near to being compost. But they made GREAT tomato sauce. We made four batches of Italian simple tomato sauce from them.

Here's how they looked. But when I cut away the bad—there was actual blue mold where a few had cracked open, their think skin unable to contain their ripeness—I sniffed and rarely had to discard, or cut deeper.

 We made some batches chunky, and some we put through the food processor. Some with a somewhat more elaborate Italian recipe, and some with just garlic, salt, basil.


The sauces went into Tupperware or ziplock bags and into the freezer, until we needed a simple spaghetti supper for family from out of town.

That's when we found out just what a success we had. Delicious! Not judging a book by its cover, maybe that goes for tomatoes, too.