i tried to find an adjective to describe the things people are saying and doing ‘these days’. the current political climate has seemingly swung open a door to the undeniably crass, the vulgar, the rude, the shocking lie, the exaggeration, the pontificating of extremism, crudeness and base-ness beyond any description. i gave up on adjectives. because the descriptors confounding, perplexing, astonishing ….. don’t even touch it.
every single day i utter the words, “why.on.earth???!!!!” i am shocked at the things people are saying and i can’t understand why they are saying the things they are saying. i am shocked at the things people are doing and i can’t understand why – on earth – they are doing the things they are doing. so, yes, perplexed, confounded, astonished. but also stunned, disappointed, dumbfounded, bewildered, sickened.
where have manners gone? what about respect? courtesy? decorum??
prior to going up-north i had only been on a pontoon boat once – in the carolina mountains with a black lab who loved to swim and a tiny little life-vested girl who equally loved the water and who spent time rafting alongside. our little boy had not yet even joined us, so it was a long time ago and the memory, although faded in detail, is clearly peaceful and beautiful. gloriously great fun.
the pontoon of up-north means laughter and snacks, old-fashioneds and slow cruising around the connecting lakes. it means conversation and story-telling, the search for loons, and the art of spontaneous plan-making.
we haven’t solved all of earth’s mysteries onboard, nor have we come up with a design for world peace, but we have found solutions to less pressing problems, offered and heard advice, dreamed a bit.
there is nothing quite like a pontoon boat to remind you of the power of community. and, more than once on that pontoon boat a few weeks ago, i looked around and gave abundant thanks for the others on the boat. snugged into comfy seats, sun on our faces, a summer breeze blowing, we are in a cove of deep friendship, people who can count on us and upon whom we can depend.
moments like these lend themselves to carrying a kind of a pontoon boat philosophy of life everywhere…a place of inclusion, of generosity, of comfort, a place of openness and caring. a place to share some time, to float ideas, to listen, to feel heard, to have raucous fun, to be quiet. a gentler ride through life, with people around you who will be there when the seas are rougher, when you need a little help with forward momentum, when their support is like oars in a rowboat.
we are fortunate – when we can give over to the pontoon boat. we are fortunate – life presents us with people with whom we can ride along together. we are fortunate – we are reminded of the sheer gift of community. we are fortunate – and we take time to be grateful.
the loons watched us and then, after a few seconds of study, they determined we were simply co-existing with them. they paddled away, riding our rippling wake.
i scoured the streets of san francisco looking for it. i had somehow lost the peace pendant my daughter gifted me – it fell off from around my neck and, as we moseyed away from the san fran moma and shopped, i suddenly realized it was gone. i immediately backtracked my steps, even knowing it was not likely i would find it. we all walked with our eyes peeled to the city streets.
as i stepped up onto a curb while crossing a busy street, i saw it. there, in the gutter of the road, lay the pewter peace sign and its chain. i felt a surge of relief finding it, for I truly do treasure the gifts my children have given me and, of course, you know how thready i am.
years ago, the kiddos made a shopping trip to target. together they picked out a tall bamboo vessel with golden and deep red-dyed dried reeds and gave it to me – a gift. it has – since then – continued to have a place in our home. now it stands in the bedroom, between the red and white gingham-checked recliner wing-chair and the jewelry armoire i purchased on marketplace, right in front of the window. in the morning, the sun streams in and sets the reeds aglow. and i think of my beloved children every single time.
i suppose i could be less thready, a tad bit less sentimental. it’s not likely, though.
i could take you on a walk through our house and yard. the stories would not be about the value of objects we have displayed or the name-brand of things we own. the stories would be narratives, tales of experiences we’ve had, of times with others, of things we’ve been gifted, of workarounds, of love delivered in a plant, a candle, a wine holder, hearts, peace signs, a rag-rugged love sculpture, a quilt, of history in a branch, an old table, a window frame, vintage suitcases.
when littlebabyscion had trouble last week – and we had a conversation – me and littlebabyscion – i asked it to hang around longer. and i fully expected it to listen, because i have basically personified that little vehicle since i purchased it. friends from all over wrote to ask how littlebabyscion was, because, well, they know. yeah, less thready is not likely.
this morning was intensely beautiful. with the sun starting to pour in the open windows and all the fans off for the moment – so no white noise – we could hear the birds, the gurgling pond, the airplane flying above. we sipped coffee and dogdog laid on the foot of the bed. there was nothing you could have done to have made it any better. feet tucked under the blankets – for it was still a little cool in the early morning – we were silent.
i memorized it and tucked it away.
that way, another day – when it’s cloudy outside or inside – i could pull it all back and remember, i could let that moment wrap around me once again.
fall has cracked the door open. and, though it may tiptoe around a bit in this teeter-totter season, it will not backtrack. it is on its way.
and nature – in its wisdom – is doing the work, prepping for cold to arrive, stoking up, storing up, guarding its ability to survive, seed heads readying to spread far and wide.
she asked me if i would be recording again. I wasn’t sure how to answer. i don’t know. it has been some time since my last project. recording is expensive and – because of today’s world of streaming – not particularly financially rewarded, making it a kind of skewed investment…heavy on the cost, extraordinarily light on the payoff.
yet, every independent artist knows recording is not solely about the financial reward. it is the expression of what’s inside, just waiting to hit air. it’s doing the work, prepping, stoking, storing, guarding – all for the seed heads to fly.
she asked me other questions as well – how i compose, if i hear music inside. her questions cracked open the door to a conversation I haven’t had in a long time, a real conversation about my music. i felt grateful – not only for her inquisitiveness, but for her obvious support of what i have already produced. it was a sort of balm on a wound that was just lingering, lingering.
I don’t know when – or if – i will produce another album. i’ve teetered-tottered just like the waning of summer and the rising of fall, just like daisies struggling to stay vibrant, open, to stave off utter fallow. i’ve wondered through these last few years if, after fifteen albums, i was “done”, wondered if, at 65, i was no longer relevant, wondered if i still had the necessary chutzpah.
i miss the stage, a piano and a boom vocal mic, a wood apron beneath my boots. i’ve missed telling the stories of songs and the gestures of instrumental piano. i’ve missed eye contact with an audience, finding resonant bits, making people laugh or reminisce, the moment you know they are right there with you.
the daisy seed heads are getting ready. it’s pretty certain they will proliferate gardens again in the spring after their fallow through fall and winter.
maybe – somewhere in here – i am getting ready too. i guess we’ll see.
the glow of the setting sun teased through the grasses out front. autumn is rising.
my old hiking boots are waiting by the back door. soon – and very soon – it will be time to change out of our hiking sandals and back to these boots, worn from many, many miles of trails. we need to replace them. the podiatrist informed us we should purchase new ones every six months or so if we are wearing our boots regularly. since we are artists, this is not quite possible. and so, these circa 2016 boots have graced our feet for the last eight years of hikes. every bit of worn leather, every creak, has a story to tell. someday it will be a tad bit hard to retire them. they have served us well.
today is the first day of school here. i am completely out of sync with these touchstones of time. the trip to target – with school supplies galore – helped place me in time. but with grown children and no direct connection to the school system, we had to look up the district calendar.
a certain wistfulness comes on the breeze with the return of the fall sun. it happens every year. it’s hard to identify, but it is palpable.
i wonder if it is a kind of homesickness – for growing-up times back on long island and for my own days with a backpack – stuffed with textbooks, spirals and new pencils – slung over my shoulder.
i wonder if it is a kind of nostalgia – a yearning – for the times when my children were little, when they picked out new backpacks and pencil cases, gathered their wide-ruled notebooks and glue sticks, colored highlighters and crayons, those days when packing lunches and snacks and waiting for the bus were the defining times of the day.
i wonder if it is the bank of memories i carry – taking my children to college, unpacking into dorm rooms, apartments, toting stuff back and forth, my heart holding dearly to the threads of their childhood while, at the same time, supporting their gossamer winging wings, watching their contrails.
i wonder if it is a kind of longing – a pining for things undone to be done, for things not accomplished to be accomplished, for summer dreams to extend beyond the setting summer sun.
autumn rises and i feel invigorated. these are new times. there is new possibility. i have no idea what is coming but this rising autumnal sun is full of golden light.
golden. light. and my old boots are waiting by the back door.
“the sun shines not on us, but in us.” (john muir)
“all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small. all things wise and wonderful, ’twas god that made them all.” (cecil francis alexander/edwin george monk/george mcbeth mcphee)
the striking thing about this song – a hymn in the united methodist hymnal i played from for many years as a minister of music – is the use of the word all.
whatever deity you may subscribe to, whatever you call a greater power, whatever your heart-faith attaches to, all things count, all creatures great and small.
i glanced up while at the sink washing a few dishes. and there, on the white trim next to the window, was this katydid. she didn’t seem to feel in peril – and she wasn’t. my first reaction was surprise. my second reaction was wondering how to safely remove her and place her out in the garden, where she might find leaves or flowers to munch, maybe drink from a fallen raindrop.
“each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings. he made their glowing colors and. made their tiny wings.”
it is not our first inclination to eliminate that which is different, that – because of size difference – which is helpless. we try – in most cases – to help the tiniest find its way. this katydid was lost in our house and likely would not have survived if we hadn’t found it and if we weren’t helping it along. it somehow feels like the same story as us – here in the universe. we are but tiny specks of dust, floating, floating, in a galaxy of stars and planets, lost and found, lost and found.
“the purple headed mountains, the rivers running by, the sunset and the morning that brightens up the sky.”
it is up to us to take notice, to care for – across our land, around our world – the extraordinarily large and the astonishingly tiny.
we are all here together.
and i hope that if someday we are lost, someone will gently pick us up and carry us to the garden so that we, too, might munch on flowers, drink raindrops and breathe fresh air available to all creatures great and small.
we planted in the spirit of ‘you will always harvest what you plant’. we trusted that – with water, weeding, solicitous care – we might harvest peppers. even without ever growing peppers before. even in our ignorance of the task at hand. the thing we leaned into was just that – that we would harvest what we planted.
if you plant joy, you will harvest joyful. if you plant despair, you will harvest the despairing. if you plant aid, you will harvest the empowered. if you plant lack, you will harvest the suffering. if you plant the embrace of the ideals of goodness and kindness, humankind will join hands. if you plant retribution and rage-filled revenge, you will stoke the fear and anger of vengeful enemies. it seems an easy equation, an easy conditional statement.
we are in a time of planting. what we plant now will have ramifications for all time to come. regardless of whether we will be here or not to witness the-time-to-come, it would seem our responsibility to plant virtue. for out of virtue, a future will flourish. out of virtue, a future will provide the opportunity of growth for all who follow. out of virtue, integrity will be cherished, valued, expected.
we have had three jalapeño peppers so far. i’ve saved two to make ann’s popper recipe. we have had a dozen red snack peppers. we’ve munched on them and included them in our salad. we have about two dozen red chili peppers on that plant so far. i’m not sure what we’ll do with those yet, though making red chili pepper flakes seems obvious. we’ve noted that we need take care and wear protective gloves when working with these peppers.
it’s interesting that we didn’t think about these red chilis ahead of time. we merely liked the look of the plant and bought it, bringing it home to transplant into a clay pot and place on our potting stand. but you harvest what you plant and they are wildly successful, these tiny hot peppers.
next year we will plant peppers again. but we will choose differently and with more forethought. we will plant more jalapeños, more snack peppers, maybe some bells, maybe some banana peppers. we likely won’t plant more red chilis – this harvest will be the last of that.
i would think that, for each of the things we plant, we have some due consideration, that we think of the application or wastefulness of the harvest, that we seriously mull over the heat of the fruit.
time to speak up. time to own what you have pondered, researched, debated, lost sleep over. time to honestly consider the choice and its true ramifications. time to think beyond yourself and reflect upon the legacy you are choosing. time to weigh in on the qualifications, the integrity, the character of the candidates. time to deliberate good and evil. time.
we have not remained silent. we have spoken and written and cartooned. we will continue to do so. because it is – indeed – time to take action.
our precious votes will not be squandered on a candidate whose sole focus is himself. they will not be spent on a man who lacks basic humanness, whose criminal and monstrous behaviors demonstrate his ambitions. they will not support a party that has eaten itself alive, that has become pistol-focused on autocracy, on mean-spiritedness, that would have the audacity to use name-calling and underhanded bitter tirades to represent itself. they will not be cast for a ticket that quashes the freedom of women and LGBTQ, that deliberately builds up the rich and ignores those in need, that slashes equality for race, gender, religion, orientation, that has intentional plans for undermining the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of all in this country, all entering this country. these precious and important votes of ours will not buy into the repugnance of maga and its hideous scheme for the future. no.
instead, our votes – this opportunity, this responsibility, to participate in the future of the united states of america – will be cast with the honor and respect and diligence due them. they will be educated, considered, based on researched fact, leaning into joy and hope for future generations, looking toward light instead of bleak darkness.
there is no choice here. there is only one worthy candidate.
and though i would – with absolute certainty in my mind and heart – vote AGAINST maga, i, instead, will vote FOR the democratic ticket. i will vote FOR kamala harris and tim walz . i will vote for kindness and the community of this country. i will vote for democracy.
and i will take action each day to help the future of this country for us, for our daughter and son and their partners, for our friends and extended family regardless of their votes, for our town, our state, this nation and the world.
the choice is obvious. i am not going back to the stifling, suffocating, unconscionable ugliness of what we have seen – what we see – from maga.
“i go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” (john burroughs)
to draw a paddle through silky water, to listen to the call and response of the loons, to feel the breeze off the lake and to catch the first and last glimmers of sun rising and dropping through the trees…it is completely unremarkable to say this is soothing, that these moments are healing. it is unremarkable because it is obvious, because these are so remarkable – each – and because our senses rise to these offers of peacefulness, to these opportunities for rejuvenation…every time.
we have viewed each night of the democratic national convention. the joy, the energy, the hope – they are palpable. to say that our nation needs all this is an unremarkable statement, because – of course – it is obvious. we need joy. we need energy. we need hope. we need this kind of light. we need to be soothed and healed. and we need our sense put in order.
it should be unremarkable to have – to own – this kind of hope and light and joy in this country. it should be a given. this is supposed to be the fruitful land of opportunity, a place of freedoms, a nation where – with goodness our north star – we may be who we are. and, when our senses are put in order, we remember this…each and every one of us.
when we are in chaos, when there are those wreaking ugly havoc, when division and mean-spiritedness are being stoked, when soothing and healing is far from the minds of those who wish to be leaders, it is a time we must rejuvenate our country. we must move forward, not back. we must seek the best in each other, aspire for unity, clutch onto fervent hope with all we’ve got, put our faces to the sun and get sensical.
because it should be obvious in these united states of america that democracy and freedom are the only choice, that kindness and loving one another is the way of life, that equality and acceptance and inclusion are undeterred, that sense – real sense – is in order. and that – in all its brilliant remarkableness – pointing out that those are fundamental to these united states of america is completely unremarkable. because it is obvious. because it is the way.
we drew the paddles of the canoe through the glassy water, exploring the crannies and coves of the lake. to say we were soothed, healed – even momentarily – from worries pummeling our minds, that we were able to return to our senses would be an unremarkable statement. obviously we were.
living in this country – as a place where peace and freedom and forward movement and opportunity and goodness toward each other abounds – should be as obvious.
please vote with your senses and sense in order. let us promise a soothing, healing, joyful, intelligent, abundant future to all who come behind us.
we drove home with the heat blasting and the windows open. all 263 miles.
we drove slower than usual – cruise control on – smiling at everyone who passed us as we toodled along in the right lane.
we stopped every hour.
each time, we raised the hood, set a timer, stretched our legs. we readied the old beach towel and the funnel, got out the big jug of coolant and waited till it was safe to open the radiator cap.
and littlebabyscion – with whom i had had a few conversations prior to getting on the road – hung in there.
each time we opened the radiator cap to reveal that the coolant level had not changed. the red coolant light – which had intermittently flashed at us numerous times on the way up north – causing great distress – never flashed at us on the the way home.
when we got off the interstate for the last eleven miles or so, i turned off the heat. and LBS dutifully and safely got us home. no flashing lights on the dashboard. no drop in the level of coolant in the radiator.
so it’s all a bit of a mystery – this curious and first-time problem – the flashing light, the seriously depleted coolant on our way up. i have a few theories and, frankly, i’m hoping they are correct, that our brilliant mechanic will concur. that would mean that nothing is really horribly wrong with LBS. and that would mean we can continue our journey together. 276,000 miles and beyond.
we – david and i – were seriously serious about staying in the calm-zone as we dealt with this car issue while on a little time away and, mostly, while driving home. though i, initially, was pretty upset about the potential problem that this could represent, my conversations with LBS were fervent and d and i were determined to stay in the zen-zone all the way home. taking the over-the-phone advice of our mechanic, knowing that our dear friends were not-too-far behind us and that 20 was waiting at home with dinner and ready to help in any way were all sources of infinite reassurance. that kind of support gives one confidence to keep going, to not immerse in worry, to just trust it all.
it’s been a long, long time since i have driven on an interstate with the windows wide open. it’s a noisy place. and yet, the kwik-trip, the fox river park, the giant truck stop all provided us with quieter places to stop, places to wait it out, places to be celebratory each time we opened LBS’ radiator cap and then packed it all back up and drove on for the next hour.
this was an in-the-lull lesson for us. any moments of upset were not helpful. instead, staying focused on the things we could do, the help we had been offered, the steadiness of this little xb – these all gave us the ability to stay in the moment and not lose the lull.
i’m not positive we would have passed the lull-test alone. we are infinitely grateful to have not felt alone. that is the power of community for each of us – this abundance of support. when we wouldn’t have normally asked for help, it was there anyway. we just need to remember it’s right there. for the little things and the big things.
reverse threading 