Must be a new year...I just got back to make a new posting on July 8, 2017...
Always time for a rant and never more than now, four days after the Fourth of this year:
360x241years=87,765 days. The 87,765th day of the republic, +/-, and it seems too small a number to encompass all of the 241 years since the signing of the Declaration. "A republic, madam, if we can keep it," Benj. Franklin is reported to have replied to a woman's question re: the government of the new country. So. how are we doing? Ben, would you say? What would you think of our government's direction? What's your prognosis? Will we survive--should we survive?--Trump and his depredations? What about the trajectory of the nation, besotted now by wealth, money-grabbing, overweening influence of special interests, "corporations regarded as citizens" by US Supreme Court ruling, incivility, disdain for learning, experience and scientific evidence, such that we voted in such a one as our president? And, what of the electoral college and its legal precedence over the popular vote? Wasn't it designed as a last measure against demagoguery? a safeguard against rabble vote?
We're in a mess, Ben, and this one citizen, at least, though I know of many who are equally worried, sees no path ahead.
The one possibility for future sanity may be that Trump's inept shenanigans may bring us down a peg internationally--we've gotten way off track there, arming the world, meddling and messing with others' affairs; maybe this period will knock some sense into us? Maybe strengthen the hand of those who've been warning against our near-mindless policy in the middle east, et al.)Maybe, but I don't count on history's rewarding the stupid, not for long. We have, via our election, destabilized international affairs. Is China really the nation the world wants to look to for leadership?
(Ours has been an imperium that has nearly bankrupted us, not so say made a mockery of our ideals of self-government, democracy, liberty et al.) Trump has been let loose on us--our bad--and on the world--our bad, their bad luck. His vanity, desperate personal insecurity--his insecurity of person--his coarse language, simplistic and vindictive language, deliberate ignorance--or maybe he really doesn't know anything much--his lack of learning, his vulgarity, to say nothing of his appalling behavior toward women--is all of this a mirror of who we are? Is this caricature our nation? Is my ideal so far removed from what the whole body of this nation wants?
Mass pop culture spawned Donald Trump--TV, reality (!) shows, glitz, five minutes of fame, low voter education, little interest in history--he is this culture's baby, and he plays out its baseness. There is nothing that such a world finds too base, apparently. Even our quite a few "educated young people" our new writers, seem to fear sincerity, clarity, deeply held beliefs in their writing, favoring instead an adolescent preference for a shrug, a joking sneer, an ironic pose. Even if they don't express Trump's views, like Trump they have no shame. None that they are willing to claim out of fear of derision by their peers. And, by saying all of this, I do not support the right's so-called values of a blind belief in the bible, its distortion of science, and its insistence upon the subjugation of women, however couched in laudatory platitudes about motherhood, femininity.
No doubt, we are in crisis--so many people without work; so many who have no skills for the work there is; so much poverty; children without proper care and parenting; parents without any help when in difficulty. And what about health care?--you legislators in Congress who have your own superb health care, good salaries, and generous pensions, and offer no hope for those less fortunate?--Why do we keep voting in these jokers? Watch them in an interview. When I listen to their words--blah blah words that bear no resemblance to anyone's truth, I'm almost, almost, inclined to take up Trump's complaint of fake news! Almost. For nearly seventy years the specter of a nuclear holocaust has hung over us and the nations, ours, in particular, have been playing with that fire. We have within our power to create the sixth mass extinction of the species on the planet. Plus, we go on, like drunken sailors, drilling, fracking, despoiling the planet, kowtowing to big business' bottom line rather than doing something about climate despoiling. With all of this on our shoulders it is lunacy to have given the nuclear codes to such a one as Trump. With Trump at the top, the tool of powerful business leaders, our nation is now securely a triumph of the uninformed, the ignorant, the uneducated--money rules, making money rules. The frosting on this poisonous cake is that looking-powerful trumps (I can't help it!) being powerful and embraces ignorance of facts and rules: Alice's Wonderland is here.
Each morning, I get up happy to be alive, to be here, and think that we'll get over this. Somehow. Then, as the day progresses, I see this is wishful thinking. I read more, see more, remember more and I despair. Annie Dillard, in her book For The Time Being, writes of the wrong-headedness of thinking ourselves exceptional, of regarding our time as the most valuable, as being the most vulnerable ever, the dangers as the most extreme. She reminds us that we are in no way exceptional! The world has been ever thus, different, but ever in peril. She reminds us that there already have been at least 5 mass extinctions! And, further, she writes that reputable scientists assure us that within 400 years nearly all of today's mammals and birds will have been made extinct: The Earth really is bigger than our species, however smart and however stupid we are, and I suppose this is consolatory news.
Really? When it breaks your heart to see how beautiful the planet is, as it is, as it has evolved. Consolation? To be a human being and not kill oneself, finally, seems to involve a great act of hopeful prestidigitation--the sure act of annihilation balanced with Emily Dickinson's small bird of hope against hope. This is our profoundest tragedy: We are NOT gods, at all. There is not a god who will come to our aid and undo what we have done. We are not powerful. We are bits of dust. Dust. Is this consolation? Neither Annie Dillard nor Emily Dickinson try to paint it as such. This is my cry, not theirs. How does one face the inevitability of our stupidity, our incompetence, our fallibility and not despair? Christianity seems to say, lead a life of belief in Jesus and you will be rewarded in the next life. Really, a next life? Where's the evidence for that? Other religions have their answers to this conundrum. The American answer seems to have been: human kind is perfectible, get involved in your community, help lift your fellow-citizens, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And all around me I see this answer in shreds. The exceptions (and they most magnificently exist) are lone tattered islands in a vastness, struggling against the disintegration of the continent. Wake up. We are not exceptions. We die. Versus. Wake up. Get back up on the horse. We live. Then we die.
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Garden update: Up here in the country every green thing has re-appeared. Every year is its own magic in spring. Finally, the oaks are leafing out from their original pink! toward green greener and dark green. At the moment, toward a light green. Even the 275 year old Resident Spirit oak never looked younger.
Because there's been over 70 inches of rain as well as days of over 90 degree weather, roses are coming on fast. In fact, the Cecile Brunner in the fir tree has come and gone, bloom-wise. The Souvenir de Malmaison has fat buds and they will very probably not last long because of the extremes of temperature, especially the hot days. This is one rose intended for a temperate clime. That's not here, I've learned. Snow and hard frosts are not unheard of in late April. Heat waves are common in early May. The sun's higher now and we should be starting with vegetable planting but we dare not before the end of May. Still I persist in treasuring the one in ten years when everything comes right and all the early roses bloom together, the plants we foolishly plant too early survive.
The apple trees have bloomed and set fruit, all of them, except for the Jonagold. It's an every other year producer. Even the Santa Rosa plum which usually gets caught by frost has little fruits on it. The quince trees, the two older ones and the two younger ones, the hardiest fruit trees anywhere, I contend, are covered with astonishingly porcelain-like flowers. The fig's doing well though it really shouldn't here in this sink of ours at the bottom of Cahto Peak. We'll have a crop. Maybe enough for a real dessert, maybe enough for scarfing down as we stand there looking at the tree, one evening.Then there are the crabapples so excellent in bloom so much work later. I'm not looking forward to the way the labor takes over whole days with making crabapple jelly--the two trees went crazy earlier with blooms every inch. Still crabapple jelly on a breakfast biscuit is pretty special.
Don's busy getting the vegetable beds ready--these are round beds! old wine barrels. This year they need to have gopher-stopping material put in the bottoms. Lots of hard work removing the dirt, fortifying it, then putting it back in over the new wire cloth. Last year the critters broke through the wood bottoms. Down the road, Cindy and Eric have put in huge numbers of strawberry plants--the rows of them are doing fine. Last year it was several rows of strawberries and quantities of kale. This year they have reversed the order. I don't know how they deal with the gophers. Maybe they don't have them. Maybe the gophers haven't made over there. Yet. We tried berries for a couple of years, raspberries, ollalieberries: what the scarlet tanagers didn't get, the robins did. We'd think we had closed up every gap of the net and still the birds, clever guys, found ways in. --I'll never understand why people use the term bird-brain as an insult. We're too greedy for berries for ourselves and too lazy to beat off the birds with complicated netting systems.
We gave up with berries though we persist with a few grape vines along a fence. When the grapes are ready we scramble around finding the ripe bunches. Meanwhile, the pileated woodpeckers scream at us akk-akk-akk-akk, hammer d-d-d-d-d-d on the fence wood, and stare us down--we want those grapes/they REALLY WANT those grapes. It's hard to stare down a woodpecker's unstaring eye. Actually, we grab some bunches anyway and leave the rest to them. Then somehow or other tanagers hear about the crop and they arrive--they come by stealth rather than by woodpecker noise--and flock into the vines saying nothing. Unlike the woodpeckers who eat one grape by one grape, the tanagers strip the stalk--no idea how they manage so many grapes in one gulp. Some old-timers contend that the grape berries can ferment in birds' stomachs, making the birds drunk--? Who knew getting drunk could be so simple--all that smashing and stomping and crushing and straining, refining and bottling is completely unnecessary.
It's overwhelming to go out in the garden right now: everything is healthy and growing fine and this is a good thing, and you feel right too. Then you look at all the jobs that need doing in the next two months, the weeding, the planting, the water system, the mowing, the hauling, and creaking about on old knees, and you don't feel right. Every year I forget the garden's rule: one thing at a time. I eat too fast.
Because there's been over 70 inches of rain as well as days of over 90 degree weather, roses are coming on fast. In fact, the Cecile Brunner in the fir tree has come and gone, bloom-wise. The Souvenir de Malmaison has fat buds and they will very probably not last long because of the extremes of temperature, especially the hot days. This is one rose intended for a temperate clime. That's not here, I've learned. Snow and hard frosts are not unheard of in late April. Heat waves are common in early May. The sun's higher now and we should be starting with vegetable planting but we dare not before the end of May. Still I persist in treasuring the one in ten years when everything comes right and all the early roses bloom together, the plants we foolishly plant too early survive.
The apple trees have bloomed and set fruit, all of them, except for the Jonagold. It's an every other year producer. Even the Santa Rosa plum which usually gets caught by frost has little fruits on it. The quince trees, the two older ones and the two younger ones, the hardiest fruit trees anywhere, I contend, are covered with astonishingly porcelain-like flowers. The fig's doing well though it really shouldn't here in this sink of ours at the bottom of Cahto Peak. We'll have a crop. Maybe enough for a real dessert, maybe enough for scarfing down as we stand there looking at the tree, one evening.Then there are the crabapples so excellent in bloom so much work later. I'm not looking forward to the way the labor takes over whole days with making crabapple jelly--the two trees went crazy earlier with blooms every inch. Still crabapple jelly on a breakfast biscuit is pretty special.
Don's busy getting the vegetable beds ready--these are round beds! old wine barrels. This year they need to have gopher-stopping material put in the bottoms. Lots of hard work removing the dirt, fortifying it, then putting it back in over the new wire cloth. Last year the critters broke through the wood bottoms. Down the road, Cindy and Eric have put in huge numbers of strawberry plants--the rows of them are doing fine. Last year it was several rows of strawberries and quantities of kale. This year they have reversed the order. I don't know how they deal with the gophers. Maybe they don't have them. Maybe the gophers haven't made over there. Yet. We tried berries for a couple of years, raspberries, ollalieberries: what the scarlet tanagers didn't get, the robins did. We'd think we had closed up every gap of the net and still the birds, clever guys, found ways in. --I'll never understand why people use the term bird-brain as an insult. We're too greedy for berries for ourselves and too lazy to beat off the birds with complicated netting systems.
We gave up with berries though we persist with a few grape vines along a fence. When the grapes are ready we scramble around finding the ripe bunches. Meanwhile, the pileated woodpeckers scream at us akk-akk-akk-akk, hammer d-d-d-d-d-d on the fence wood, and stare us down--we want those grapes/they REALLY WANT those grapes. It's hard to stare down a woodpecker's unstaring eye. Actually, we grab some bunches anyway and leave the rest to them. Then somehow or other tanagers hear about the crop and they arrive--they come by stealth rather than by woodpecker noise--and flock into the vines saying nothing. Unlike the woodpeckers who eat one grape by one grape, the tanagers strip the stalk--no idea how they manage so many grapes in one gulp. Some old-timers contend that the grape berries can ferment in birds' stomachs, making the birds drunk--? Who knew getting drunk could be so simple--all that smashing and stomping and crushing and straining, refining and bottling is completely unnecessary.
It's overwhelming to go out in the garden right now: everything is healthy and growing fine and this is a good thing, and you feel right too. Then you look at all the jobs that need doing in the next two months, the weeding, the planting, the water system, the mowing, the hauling, and creaking about on old knees, and you don't feel right. Every year I forget the garden's rule: one thing at a time. I eat too fast.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
A photo of a woman with wrinkles!
OK. The New York Times Style magazine is not
my go-to section. But this last past Sunday, August 25, I thought that maybe I
should take a look. One more time, take a look, see if anything had changed,
see if the models still looked...well... miserable. I did find a very
happy looking guy, on page 169, selling Andrew Fezza ware. That was a nice
change of pace. And there was Andrew O'Hagan's article, Laws of
Attraction. "No one can deny the glory of youth, but when a woman's
experiences can be read on her face...it is then, and only then, that her true
beauty appears," I read this and was hooked.
"There has probably never been a period so
youth-obsessed as ours: we speak of unlined faces as we once spoke of noble
minds..." I liked that, too. By the end of the article, I got the
part about the beauty of youth and the loveliness of aging with confidence and
intelligence and the part about women nowadays maybe doing a better job of
combining looks and intelligence, feeling better about themselves.
But I was puzzled, too. Very puzzled, and I wondered a lot about the
photos accompanying the article. Were they really Mr. O'Hagan's choice, and if
so, what was he thinking? Weren't there any available photos at all of
beautifully grown women?--They exist. I know they do. But rarely, if ever, in
this part of the newspaper. How odd. If the choice was not Mr. O'Hagan's then
who was it at the magazine who could have been so laughably (and rather
pathetically) out of touch with what's out here in the world, as well as, so
wrong about the gist of Mr. O'Hagan's article? Who was it who thought
that photos of young women would make a good match for an article about the
beauty of old (older) women? Is the fashion world really that afraid? A photo
of a woman with wrinkles or a woman with a figure? O shock, o horror. Can
someone there at the magazine or newspaper explain this to me? What century is
this?
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Back Again
No entries here in 2012. Hm-m. I'm still not sure that my venture into blogdom isn't delusional. Still. There are some more of my poems at Yourdailypoem.com (look in the Archives drop-down) and at Haiku.com. Thanks for having a look. Contact me if you'd like to see more. GHC
Thursday, April 28, 2011
To one particular mocking bird on the last day of March, 2011:
There you are, you sit on the limb of a sycamore and you run through your repertory; it’s long and I recognize only bits of gull song, Brewer’s blackbird, hummingbird, sparrow. You sit on that bough, under the same sun as I, same blue sky, a blueness, which the New York Times today explained calmly for its readers. You sing. I sit at my desk. Your song sounds urgent, pretty but urgent, because it is spring and finally it’s warm, the rain has moved on, for now, and you want to get on with business--dreary to work in the damp and wet of rain. I think this for myself and for you. I don’t want to envy you. After all, you are “only a bird,” and what does a bird know, compared to me? Do you know what I know? Do you know what’s happening while you and I are busy? Do you know about us making electricity in a very special way? in nuclear power plants, all so that we can have more things? and that these plants have fuel rods that are extremely dangerous while they’re producing electricity and even more dangerous after they aren’t making electricity? Do you know that, right now, as you sit in the sycamore and I at my desk, right near us, we have a lot of these spent fuel rods? even more than in Japan?--It’s a dream of ours to always have more than anyone else of any one thing. But, and here is the best part: neither they nor we, nor anyone anywhere knows what to do with all of these rods except keep them cool forever? Forever. Do you even know about forever? Used to be, forever was God’s purview. What am I going to do with forever? Cooling fuel rods forever. Live forever so that I can keep something cool forever, keep something covered with water forever, not hobnob with angels before God’s throne forever, as I’d been promised. No angels, no sherbet fed to me by beautiful maidens, no return for my descendents, generation after generation, until we get it right. No, forever I’ll be guarding spent fuel rods. Forever. You don’t even know this, you poor bird, you. You get to come and go, find food, defecate every once and a while, defend your nest, sing until it’s time to turn over the keys to the next tenants.
GHC
There you are, you sit on the limb of a sycamore and you run through your repertory; it’s long and I recognize only bits of gull song, Brewer’s blackbird, hummingbird, sparrow. You sit on that bough, under the same sun as I, same blue sky, a blueness, which the New York Times today explained calmly for its readers. You sing. I sit at my desk. Your song sounds urgent, pretty but urgent, because it is spring and finally it’s warm, the rain has moved on, for now, and you want to get on with business--dreary to work in the damp and wet of rain. I think this for myself and for you. I don’t want to envy you. After all, you are “only a bird,” and what does a bird know, compared to me? Do you know what I know? Do you know what’s happening while you and I are busy? Do you know about us making electricity in a very special way? in nuclear power plants, all so that we can have more things? and that these plants have fuel rods that are extremely dangerous while they’re producing electricity and even more dangerous after they aren’t making electricity? Do you know that, right now, as you sit in the sycamore and I at my desk, right near us, we have a lot of these spent fuel rods? even more than in Japan?--It’s a dream of ours to always have more than anyone else of any one thing. But, and here is the best part: neither they nor we, nor anyone anywhere knows what to do with all of these rods except keep them cool forever? Forever. Do you even know about forever? Used to be, forever was God’s purview. What am I going to do with forever? Cooling fuel rods forever. Live forever so that I can keep something cool forever, keep something covered with water forever, not hobnob with angels before God’s throne forever, as I’d been promised. No angels, no sherbet fed to me by beautiful maidens, no return for my descendents, generation after generation, until we get it right. No, forever I’ll be guarding spent fuel rods. Forever. You don’t even know this, you poor bird, you. You get to come and go, find food, defecate every once and a while, defend your nest, sing until it’s time to turn over the keys to the next tenants.
GHC
Thursday, February 4, 2010
At the start
In the beginning is the word and, o you youth who wants to know, this is the beginning, thanks to you.
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