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EMTALA

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on January 9, 2024| 5 Comments »

Happy New Year to you! We’ve been getting off to a good start this year. There are no resolutions to feel guilty about – “I am enough” may be my next best mantra. The Bride and Groom have returned unscathed and refreshed from a trip to New Zealand and Australia with the Grands. And the Rocker and Aunt Cait returned from the East Coast, totally missing that rogue wave in Cali. And if you’re wondering what book is on my 2024 nightstand, it’s a nonfictional look back at the Golden Age of abortion.

I’m not talking about the 60s. I’m currently reading “MADAME RESTELL: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist,” by Jennifer Wright. Madame Restell, who lived and worked in the mid-1800s, would advertise her services in all the New York newspapers. She had learned to compound a pill to regulate the menses with a mixture of essential oils and paint thinner. And if that didn’t work, for $100 she could terminate the pregnancy with a whalebone. Surprisingly, her patients lived! But male doctors at the time, who were still using leeches, were threatened by her success and fame.

Madame Restell was not a surgeon, in fact she wasn’t even French. She was an immigrant, a widowed mother from Britain who didn’t want to go into service for a wealthy family (and thereby have to give or sell her child away) or become a prostitute, often the only two choices of the day for women alone. She was an entrepreneur who wasn’t afraid to flaunt her wealth with a carriage decked out in the finest livery. The moral crusaders of the day found such arrogance and lack of shame intolerable. And so Restell found herself in court often, even serving a year in Blackwell Island’s notorious prison.

Ah, the good old days of a medical procedure that is as old as the oldest profession. And since SCOTUS overturned Roe, physicians in some cases are having to reevaluate their care of pregnant women. In other words, The Bride, who is practicing Emergency Medicine in a red state, may have to choose between saving a woman’s life and being exposed to liability, including criminal charges and loss of license. How could that be true? Enter “EMTALA;” a federal law that was passed in 1986 and is the bedrock for Emergency Medicine physicians everywhere. Surely this law would save my daughter from criminal prosecution?

EMTALA is short for the “Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.” Think about it, most doctors in their offices require insurance or payment up front before your appointment; this law requires ER doctors to treat everyone and anyone who walks through their doors – or rides through on a stretcher – regardless of their ability to pay. Ever since the Bride was a young girl, EMTALA has been the law of the land, just like Roe v Wade. ER docs are quick thinking, fast acting specialists who are not willing to wait for a team of lawyers or administrators to decide if a patient is worth saving because she happens to be pregnant!

SCOTUS is scheduled to rule on this “contradiction” in April… I refuse to hold my breath. Texas has already taken the lead in banning emergency abortions, so sorry, if you find yourself carrying an ectopic pregnancy in TX. Your state has sentenced you to a death penalty already if something should go wrong.

“In the early years of Madame Restell’s business, abortion was classed only as a misdemeanor if performed before quickening, around 20 weeks. Over time, the punishments grew, along with the risks. Madame Restell advertised not just her services but her belief in their necessity. Lifting passages from the social reformer Robert Dale Owen, she likened abortion and contraception to a lightning rod — an invention that was “unnatural,” perhaps, but sensible and lifesaving. She published letters from grateful clients, who proclaimed, “God bless you dear madam, you have taken off the primal curse denounced upon Mother Eve in Eden.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/books/review/madame-restell-by-jennifer-wright.html

Lightening rod indeed, from the 19th to the 21st Century and women are still left dying by the hands of red legislators. Today, a third of our country, religious zealots for the most part, because of certain SCOTUS selections, may get their way. It’s not enough for them to ban abortions and outlaw morning after pills as if it were the early 20th Century, now the GOP wants to prosecute the physicians. It’s not just the Ob-Gyns, it’s the ER doctors who are being asked to violate their Hippocratic Oath, and EMTALA.

Here is a throwback to the 80s with my little Bride in her Daddy’s ER.

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How to be a Star

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on November 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“Funny Girl” opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1964. It closed the summer of 1967, after my Freshman year in college. Barbra Streisand was my ‘shero,’ playing Fanny Brice in a feminist Horatio Alger tale. I met Barbra one cold night, after her brilliant performance at the stage door; she graciously signed my Playbill.

I had just played Adelaide in my high school’s production of “Guys and Dolls.” The drama club was an all encompassing home for me; I could easily lose myself in a ditzy, loyal and yes, funny character. On opening night, the laughter and applause was addictive. My friend Bess, the editor of our senior yearbook, wrote something like, “…destined for Broadway” under my name.

After all, I grew up listening to show tunes and studying ballet. The Flapper loved Ethel Merman almost as much as I idolize Barbra. I would sing and dance in our front parlor like everyone was watching. But the sixties had other plans for Bess and me. We both went to Boston after graduating from Dover Senior High School, where our young dreams were derailed by a war, political assassinations, an illegal abortion and even a cult.

Although I never became a Broadway star, I followed Barbra’s meteoric rise to EGOT status. She had always dreamed of becoming famous, while my dreams were limited to summer camp. I remember feeling flummoxed to learn of her stage fright. How could she not love the limelight? Streisand’s iconic profile is currently on the cover of Vanity Fair, and she was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday because she wrote her autobiography – “My Name is Barbra,” which will be released tomorrow. I just pre-ordered it!

Barbra wanted to set the record straight, and I want to find out what made her so ever-loving badass.

When I opened my BBC news tab this morning with coffee, one headline jumped out at me – “I haven’t had much fun in my life.” That Egyptian Queen profile wore a sardonic smile. And so I found out that a ME TOO moment onstage in her breakout hit “Funny Girl,” at the age of 22, was responsible for more than two decades of stage fright. Charlie Chaplin’s son Sydney, her leading man and almost 20 years her senior, had his sexual advances assaults rebuffed. He publicly became emotionally abusive, and tried to sabotage her performance every single night.

But like many women of our generation, she softened the story:

It’s just a person who had a crush on me – which was unusual – and when I said to him, ‘I don’t want to be involved with you’, he turned on me in such a way that was very cruel. He started muttering under his breath while I was talking on stage. Terrible words. Curse words. And he wouldn’t look into my eyes anymore. And you know, when you’re acting, it’s really important to look at the other person, and react to them.“

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67283909

Maybe Chaplin did us a huge favor by propelling Streisand to Hollywood, where she now lives in Oprahland, among the lapsed Royalty of Harry and Meghan. Live theatre’s loss became the silver screen’s gain. She insisted on being in control of her life, on having creative control of her contracts. She gained a reputation as a difficult diva, but I never bought it. If she wanted to change a scene, she was probably right. Barbra became a director in order to maintain her control over a project. She wrote the script for 1983’s “Yentl” and wasn’t paid for it; she directed the movie and was paid minimum wage; and her acting fee was cut in half!

Mama can you hear me? I love Barbra even more now for not “fixing” her nose and rejecting Chaplin… for becoming one of my first feminist icons. But I’m not sure what to make of her Malibu basement stuffed with antiques and vintage dolls. Yes, dolls – Ibsen much? Still, she possessed a spark from a very young age, a need to become famous. And in her words, it was partially due to losing her father when she was a baby. “If you don’t have a source of unconditional love as a child, you will probably try to attain that for the rest of your life,” Barbra told the BBC.

I’d like to thank the Academy, and my foster parents for giving me the capacity to love unconditionally. Fame is fleeting, but stars can last for an eternity. Happy Birthday to the Pumpkin, our stellar 3rd grader!

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Quilting Pumpkins

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on October 23, 2023| 1 Comment »

It’s true, I’m just an old arts and crafts counselor at heart, who was masquerading as a boating and canoeing counselor at Camp St Joseph for Girls. Teaching water skiing by day, and knitting at night. Over the years I’ve tackled: crocheting Irish flowers; needlepointing fancy footstools; Celtic cable knitting; sewing pandemic masks; and quilting elephant crib toys. Those tiny grey elephants of differing shades and textures, suspended over a new baby’s crib, gave me the most pleasure. That is, until now.

The arts festival we bumped into on our glamping getaway is the reason my kitchen is doubling as a sewing room, again. The owner of a little shop had the cutest small, handsewn pumpkins I’d ever seen. If you’d rather have a real pumpkin slowly dying on your front porch read no further. Bob and I are finished carving pumpkins and roasting seeds. But if I were to decorate, and that’s always a big IF, for Halloween, I’d want something sustainable that can do double duty on Thanksgiving. So I paid attention when instructions were given on how to quilt patchwork pumpkins, and then I heard,

“You can always look it up on Pinterest, DIY Fat Quarter Pumpkins!”

What the heck are fat quarters? Well a fat quarter is a piece of fabric cut crosswise from a 1⁄2-yard piece of fabric – ie an 18×44″ rectangle cut in half to yield an 18×22″ “fat” 1⁄4-yard piece. And it just so happens the store had bunches of ‘fat quarters’ already cut in lots of fall colors and patterns ready to sell. Surprise. My next grandparenting craft activity, after mosaic birdbaths, was set! I hauled out the ironing board and iron and started cutting out cardboard ellipses as pumpkin templates.

It just so happens that the war in Israel and Gaza has been escalating in tandem with my pumpkin project. The Grands finished their pumpkins in a day last weekend, but then I couldn’t stop. In the middle of a brutal conflict half a world away, I’ve found some comfort in keeping my hands busy, in making something beautiful despite growing despair. Bob reminds me that I have no control over the Mideast; I remind myself that I do have control over needle and thread.

I walk through the Fall garden, still trying valiantly to hang on. The sage and rosemary are bountiful while the tarragon begins to wither. This is my favorite time of year – a time to think about new beginnings, for harvesting, a birthday season for my family. The unbearable heat of a southern summer is gone. This is the time of year to witness squirrels collecting nuts and cardinals standing out like sentries in trees.

Thankfully my Parnassus book arrived in the mail – “The Comfort of Crows: a Backyard Year,” by Margaret Renkl. Her words about nature, about the flora and fauna in her own backyard, are a balm. Her stories soothe me into sleep.

As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief. Joy at the ongoing pleasures of the natural world: “Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will always find a reason to love the world.” And grief at a shifting climate, at winters that end too soon, at songbirds growing fewer and fewer.” 

https://www.parnassusbooks.net/comfortofcrows

And the universal grief of war. I have to believe, to hope that peace is attainable. So I’ll continue to quilt as a meditation.

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Two Legs

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on August 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I’m standing on both feet now and trying to walk normally. After nearly a month of favoring one side over the other, the pain has shifted to my better half. Why does this happen? It’s called compensation.

It’s as if every other part of your body has been on hold for a month, and now, just now that you’re throwing away the crutches, the rest of your body gets to complain:

“You think swinging one leg around all scrunched up with your weight on your hands and your back all twisted felt fine? Now we’ll show you!”

It’s like the letdown headache. We suffer through whatever stressful thing we have going on, and afterwards the ball drops. At least it feels like a heavy ball dropped on your head. Even the common cold can somehow be set on the back burner until we finish our exams at school. This sort of thing happened a lot with me, which is why the whole “body/mind” connection always made sense. The dancer in me never lost touch with my own proprioception. Until now.

That is – our ability to sense where we are in space. Unlike other senses, proprioception is difficult to measure. We know when we need reading glasses, or if our hearing is diminished, but nobody actually thinks about how we move from A to B. The Cambridge Dictionary defines proprioception as :”the process in which nerve endings in the muscles and joints are stimulated (= made to operate) when the body moves, so that a person is aware of their body’s position.”

This sense becomes abundantly clear if God forbid you’ve had a stroke. Like Bob’s cerebellar incident during his spine surgery years ago. Today he’s better climbing ladders than I am. But unless you’ve tried rappelling down from the ceiling in an adventure movie while lasers are flashing all around at odd angles, you’re probably blissfully unaware of proprioception.

In fact, I’m reading an excellent book on perception in animals – “An Immense World, How Animal Senses Reveal the World Around Us,” by Ed Yong. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in science. If you need to rotate some nonfiction into your bedside stack of books, I highly recommend this brilliant read.

“Thinking expansively would help us realize that nature’s true wonders aren’t limited to a remote wilderness or other sublime landscape — what Yong calls “otherworldly magnificence.” There is as much grandeur in the soil of a backyard garden as there is in the canyons of Zion. Recognizing the breadth of this immense world should spur in us a sense of humility. We just need to get over ourselves first.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/books/review-immense-world-animal-senses-ed-yong.html

His book begins with an elephant in a room… an actual elephant… along with some other animals and bugs.

The truth is, we all walk around, or limp or roll around, in our very own sensory bubble. We may not be attuned to the earth’s magnetic fields like some turtles, and we may insist on lighting up the planet at night, despite sending the wrong visual cues to nocturnal animals. But after my little bunk bed mishap, my other senses have been over-compensating. In slowing down, in sitting with my emotions and my broken pelvis my bubble has expanded; from the luxurious feel of cashmere yarn through my fingers while knitting, to the sound of a cardinal right outside my snug’s window.

I’ve become humbled by the kindness of strangers. People have been willing to hold doors, or reach for something when they see me struggle. After meeting with my wonderful Physical Therapist Jen yesterday, I realized I’d forgotten how to walk properly. And so I’m working on my own proprioception, trying not to think about walking so much… because when I think about tightening my core, and shoulders down, and heel down, and head up I tend to walk like a robot.

Now I just need to get out of my own way!

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Static Cling

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2022| Leave a Comment »

There aren’t too many streaming shows that Bob and I can agree to watch together.

The one exception is After Life on Netflix with Ricky Gervais. Funny while also being poignant, Gervais’ character tries to get on with his work as a small town newspaper reporter after his wife’s untimely death from cancer. I guess all deaths might be considered “untimely,” still he tries therapy to help him dig out of his depression. The only problem here is with the therapist.

Played by Paul Kaye, he is a self-involved, pathetic, know-it-all. While glancing at his cell to keep track of some Twitter feed, the therapist tells Gervais to “… just stop being sad.” Future psychologists take note – watch this show only to find out how not be a therapist.

While Zooming with Dr Jim, my psychologist brother, we laughed about the show. Of course, not all therapists are bumbling idiots. Jim told me he’s reading a book by a psychotherapist who has combined his Buddhist beliefs with his approach to analysis – it’s called The Zen of Therapy, Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life.

“…freedom lies ultimately not in understanding what happened to us, but in loosening our grip on it all, so that “things that feel fixed, set, permanent and unchanging” can start to shift. The goal, in a refreshing counterpoint to the excesses of a certain way of thinking about therapy, isn’t to reach the state of feeling glowingly positive about yourself and your life. It’s to become less entangled with that whole question, so that you get to spend your time on more meaningful things instead.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/books/review/zen-of-therapy-mark-epstein.html

In other words, let down your hair and get untangled.

Our Mother the Flapper was very Zen in her old age. She surrounded herself with Buddhas the way Grandma Ada (who was a practicing marriage therapist into her 90s) did with glass bluebirds. The Bride is also Zen-centric in her approach to life, becoming a Yoga teacher a few years back. I’m pretty sure her Yoga practice helped save her during the worst of this pandemic.

“What are you clinging to?” Jim asked me.

One might assume it is my grandchildren, but that is not true. I hope they find me interesting for awhile, and I love them immensely. But I’m not clinging to that love. When I look back at my life, my fundamental issue was not that I didn’t feel loved, if anything I felt an abundance of unconditional love.

Because of our Year of Living Dangerously, I would often suffer from a feeling of not belonging – I was shuttled between two mothers, two states, two entirely different worlds for the first 12 years. Today, I am a Jersey Girl in a Southern state; but over the years, I’ve made my peace with not belonging. In fact, I’ve come to accept it as a way of life moving forward. Besides, I married a gypsy who liked my pink hair.

That reminds me of Bob teaching a third year medical student how to suture a wound last week. I made vegetable soup for lunch, and with masks up, they started practicing their stitches on the kitchen island. The first stitch must realign the skin and not be too tight, Bob said. I continued knitting my scarf since I was practicing the cable stitch and thinking about tension on my needles.

And wondering if the postman will marry the sex worker.

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Look Up!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 3, 2022| Leave a Comment »

When I bought a chunk of land in Virginia, before Bob even got a chance to see it, friends thought I was crazy. But we’d been looking for a house for over a year and had finally decided to build our own Big/Little Home; so I trudged through a small forest at the edge of Albemarle County to see the Blue Ridge Mountains appear magically through the trees. I knew this was it. This was the place my dreams would come true.

When I brought Great Grandma Ada to see the 14 acres of wilderness her daughter-in-law had talked her son into buying, she kept looking down. She was picking up rocks and pointing out the flora. I had to coax her to look up and out at the mountains. She never really understood why we left NJ, and frankly I’m not sure either.

But with the grace of time, I realize now she was focused on the ground because she just didn’t want to fall. I look down a lot these days too.

Bob and I spent New Year’s Eve on the couch watching “Don’t Look Up!” on Netflix. I had no idea what it was about, and at first was pissed that Meryl Streep was smoking cigarettes as POTUS. I know she’s one of kind, but really? Slowly its true meaning became clear… the world is about to end, from (name your catastrophic event, a virus maybe, or climate change, or a meteor) and nobody cares. Politicians care about their polls, and the rest of us? We just ignore the inevitable and watch stupid animal videos. It’s an accurate allegory for our distracted, divided times.

“Two astronomers go on a media tour to warn humankind of a planet-killing comet hurtling toward Earth. The response from a distracted world: Meh.”

https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357

Now for the backstory. We’d just finished watching the Grands while the Bride and Groom went into battle every day at their hospitals in full PPE gear. Covid was back with a vengeance thanks to a surge of Omicron variant. Every night I watched as my daughter returned home, not to hugs and kisses, not before she showered and washed her hair. I could feel her pain, her exhaustion. I never saw the Groom, he was gone from 6 am to 9 at night, and then taking calls through the wee hours.

And I’d just finished reading Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny’s new book, “State of Terror.” It was their first collaboration and I hope it won’t be their last. Let’s just say the ex-president in State of Terror bears a striking resemblance to a certain twice-impeached Palm Beach resident. And yes, this book is fictional, but the geo-political thriller is a little too close for comfort. When I closed the final chapter, I couldn’t close my eyes.

We threw open our garden door on New Year’s Eve to hear country music float up from the Bicentennial Mall where the Nashville note would drop. People were standing shoulder to shoulder, unmasked, as if they were living in an alternate universe. Bars were open. A friend texted me – her hairdresser is moving to TN from NY, why? Because she wants to get away from Covid restrictions.

Needless to say, this was NOT an auspicious start to 2022. Comedians do riffs on toilet paper cozies and nobody seems to mind. Children have gone back to remote learning, leaving me to wonder how our mental health system will cope with these future teenagers. I’m thinking about strapping a sign board on myself with these words, “THE END IS NEAR” and walking down Broadway. Really.

Whatever you do, DO look up!

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Meatless Monday

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on April 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Herb plants are potted and vegetables are in the raised bed. I’ve added a new phlox to the garden and even sprinkled some flower pots about just for fun. As much as gardening is hard work, somehow this year I couldn’t wait to dig my hands in the dirt. And I’ll blame it on the Zoom Pilates, my body hardly suffered from all that bending and hoisting.

Which leads me to ask, what do you do just for fun?

I’m currently reading a book about fun by Annie F Downs; “THAT SOUNDS FUN” or The Joys of being an amateur, the power of falling in love, and why you need a hobby! The Grands and I did a quick trip through Parnassus Bookstore and I was drawn to the local author table. I rarely need to buy a book because of Bob’s monthly gift from the store’s signed first edition club, plus my family and friends revolving free library. But I was drawn to the title after this past pandemic year.

Fun can be big or small, it can be planned or spontaneous. For example, the Bride lets us know when she’s working a day shift and the Groom is in the Covid ICU. This is bound to be a wonderfully fun day for me because I get to puppy sit! I mean, who doesn’t love a puppy? Especially one with big pink ears who looks like Winston Churchill! In fact, today our little Frenchie is on the scene.

So gardening can be a chore, and puppy sitting could be an obligation, it just depends on your attitude. Like cooking, for instance.

I can honestly say that I used to adore cooking, especially for loved ones. It’s my “love language” I’ve been told. But EVERY single day, breakfast/lunch/dinner for a year, and usually just for the two of us… has become a bit mundane. And I like prepping and chopping and such solo, it’s meditative for me. But, since Bob has discovered sourdough, we have to work around each other in the kitchen.

If I’m doing Zoom Pilates in the morning, and I’ve figured out in my mind what’s for lunch and dinner – yes, food is often what I’m thinking about on the yoga mat – then I’m a happy camper. Last week I’d roasted a big pork loin and delivered it to the Groom because the Bride had an evening shift. He was happily surprised to have dinner delivered along with the above mentioned puppy. Then the next day the Bride told me the truth.

They are trying to go meatless for the month of April!

I mean the whole family has decided to tackle Climate Change by changing their diet. I did see it coming; the Love Bug loves pasta with butter, period, and has already delivered a speech to her class about making Mondays meatless in their cafeteria. Still, it was a shock. It was like my daughter telling me she had to stop ballet classes when she turned 10. It was interfering with her schoolwork!

This weekend the Bride made meatless meatballs with chickpeas that were kind of like falafel. And she suggested we join them on a Zoom call with their friends (other doctors and environmental lawyers) about the agricultural impact of Climate Change. We learned that often rain forests are clear cut to make way for cattle grazing – and the more cows and sheep we consume, the more methane these animals produce.

“…global greenhouse gas emissions will need to fall by 40% to 50% in the next decade. Scientists say the only way to achieve that reduction is to significantly increase the amount of land that’s covered in trees and other vegetation and significantly reduce the amount of methane and other greenhouse gases that come from raising livestock such as cows, sheep and goats.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/08/748416223/to-slow-global-warming-u-n-warns-agriculture-must-change

Bob and I were not only intrigued, we were mortified. At least we are open to learning something new from our children. Ever since Bob turned 40 I’ve been trimming away red meat, making turkey meatballs for health reasons. Now, we can factor in a healthy planet for future generations. I only have two caveats – the production of cheese is considered to have a negative impact on the environment, and so is the farming of shrimp! These are two steps too far.

Tonight we’ll play Super Boggle and I’ll make veggie burgers just for fun.

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Shalom Y’All

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on December 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

The 2020 holiday season is about to get weirder. For instance, last night was the first night of Hanukkah and I almost forgot about it! It felt like I was just recovering from Thanksgiving. The laundry was done along with the turkey and scrumptious leftover sides . The garden area returned to its normal seating arrangements, and Bob replaced the fire pit’s can of propane. And last Sunday, just before popping on a plane back to LA, Aunt Kiki performed a little wizardry on my holiday card! Shhh, it’s a secret.

Then just as the Groom begins his shift in the Covid ICU, and we are all going back to being a socially-distanced-outside pod, which is our “normal” for the year, and the kiddos are back in school, the Bride lets me know that Hanukkah is coming right up. I know Jewish festivals fall on a lunar calendar, but come on, just a few days after Thanksgiving weekend? In years past, I would take each Grandchild on a separate trip to Nordstrom; we’d listen to the live piano music, have lunch and pick out something special to wear. One year it was a pair of Ugg boots.

We would also all visit Phillips Toy Mart, a family owned specialty toy store in Nashville for over 70 years. We’d watch the model trains steaming around their quaint tiny villages, and pet whatever animals were visiting, and then they could each pick out one toy. Another day would find us at another local shop in our Hanukkah tradition – Parnassus Books. And I must admit, I’d buy them whatever books they wanted. Remember, we have EIGHT crazy nights of lights and gifts for children. My trips with the Love Bug and L’il Pumpkin only covered three nights, I had five (well 10 counting 2 Grands) gifts to find yet!

This year I quickly found some books online for curbside pick-up at https://www.parnassusbooks.net/ but I still miss meandering in our famous book shop. The Bug likes mystery now, and my little guy prefers ninjas. We’ve been avoiding the mall, so I had to pull up my account at the evil empire of Amazon. Only one gift has arrived so far, a game called “Invasion of the Cow Snatchers,” it’s a magnet maze logic puzzle and thank goodness it was next day delivery! Think magnets and hilarity – “You’re the pilot of a flying saucer, sent to Earth to capture cows for scientific study. You have to negotiate your way around and over numerous obstacles — a grain silo, barn walls, crops, fences, and hay bale — to get the bovines onboard.” 

I told the Grands it was a “family” present for the first night, and since I had a huge bag of M&Ms ready to play the dreidel game after latkes, they were happy as clams. I thought of Ada while frying latkes, she gave me the recipe, but I’d barely ever made them because she always did. Yesterday it was 70 degrees! The Bride brought the children over early, since the Groom sometimes doesn’t return home until after they are in bed. He’s been working 15-16 hour days, and taking phone calls all night, he forgets to eat. The Bride has been smart to take his ICU shifts off, she will return to the ER next week.

Last night we sat distanced outside to light the first candle. We won’t be baking holiday cookies together, or shopping. I guess I will just drop off gifts whenever they arrive because it’s getting colder this weekend. We already ordered Little Passports, https://www.littlepassports.com/ so that’s two nights done.

This was us at our Thanksgiving in the garden, and our menorah last night.

slide along from right to left!

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Into the Unknown

Posted in books, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2020| 2 Comments »

In order to grow, we humans must face our fears and jump into the unknown, like the deep end of the pool. We need to cross barriers and borders in order to learn from one another, to understand the world, both the wild and the human side, in all its glory. It can be exhilarating and scary at the same time.

Otherwise, we would all be experiencing a life of quiet desperation.

The famous Henry David Thoreau quote always terrified me, even as a young girl. I remember riding along the NJ Parkway on family trips, looking at people in their cars as they passed by and wondering if they’d given up. Were their dreams a mere memory?

When Thoreau wrote “Walden; or Life in the Woods,” I thought he was telling us that we must become monks, and live in a hermitage far from civility in order to avoid the trap of conformity. Maybe that’s why we started our married life on a mountain in the Berkshires. And ended up building our first house together in the Blue Ridge. Living here in a city, has taught me that we actually do need people at times.

“The book describes an interesting experiment Thoreau made with his own life when he moved to live in a cabin in a forested area by Walden Pond, Massachusetts. Among many other things, the book advocates solitude, self-reliance, contemplation, proximity to nature, and renouncing luxuries as means of overcoming human emotional and cultural difficulties. Thus, Thoreau in fact suggests in the book that people can stop leading lives of desperation and can improve their condition. The Walden experiment was initiated by the conviction that there is no need to go on living in desperation, quiet or not.” Psychology Today 

This year has been so (insert overused word, like “unprecedented”). And like most things that we cannot control, we have all been trying to find ways around our semi-quarantine world. We have learned to Zoom, have groceries “Shipted,” to have plants curbside delivered, to visit grandparents through glass in a vestibule. Our vacations are put off. Some of us have lost jobs. Americans, in a communal way, have been quietly desperate for about 25 weeks now. And we’re getting bone tired.

Is it September yet?

Today, Bob and I are going to look at some RVs. In the past, I was never one to “renounce luxuries” and sleep on the ground in a tent. Now that I’m older, I’m still not! But the thought of traveling around with your bed in the back of a camper sounds mighty appealing. And not just for us, sales of RVs nationally have risen over 40% compared to last summer. https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2020/08/03/rv-sales-rev-as-vacationers-avoid-hotels-air-travel/#29e7cd2a254bn

Granted, I have no idea what to expect.

Just as remote school has begun, and BIG news – today pedal taverns are allowed back on Broadway?? – this may be the moment to try something new!

The Rocker went camping last weekend in California, in a tent. But they couldn’t light a fire for obvious reasons. Still they loved it and brought their dog along. What if we packed up Ms Bean and headed west, escaped all the city noise, the hammering and digging and nail guns and leaf blowers, and stepped into the unknown world of recreational vehicles?

My Granddaughter had a virtual sleepover to celebrate her 8th birthday this weekend with her friends! Each kid has an iPad for school, and they were allowed to Zoom late into the night from the comfort of their own beds. Here is the Love Bug on her new wheels!

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An Inflection Point

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, science, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 7, 2020| 2 Comments »

Did anyone else watch that horrific footage of the Beirut explosion this past week and think of a nuclear bomb? Or has the world forgotten that we still have over 13 thousand atomic weapons waiting peacefully around the world to be deployed. https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/

There are nine men in control of the bombs we know about, nine with their fingers on the button of a blast that could level the entire earth.

Yesterday marked 75 years since America dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima in 1945. Three days later, we did it again in Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were incinerated or badly burned. The survivors are now well into their 80s. And yet, today the news is all about economic numbers and coronavirus graphs – nuclear disarmament isn’t on the radar of nationalist/strong/men leaders around the world.

Coincidentally, I’m right in the middle of July’s first edition book, “Inheritors” from Parnassus. It’s almost like reading a separate story every night; each chapter builds on the other with differing points of view from the same Japanese family two years after WWII ended. Right before sleep, before entering my COVID nightmares, I escape into a tragedy of the the war’s aftermath. How does one survive under American occupation? How will we survive this inflection point while trying to “reopen” our country? Here is what NPR has to say about Asako Serizawa’s masterpiece:

In the before times — e.g., pre-pandemic — the big thinking on social issues by institutional media, philanthropy and academia had reached a point of commodification — curated conversations about the nature and causes of oppression, public health, and public policy were (and still are) sold as revenue generating events. Fixing social problems meant having money and therefore access to policymakers. I’ve curated enough of these events to understand the impact monetized access has on the balance sheet of high profile think tanks and social justice organizations.

But the pandemic and upheavals in our civic culture forced a pivot. Now, we’re reckoning on fundamentals — on happiness, on good and evil. Now, ordinary citizens drive the conversations about solutions for the common good, in social media, through street activism, citizen journalism and grass roots litigation. This emerging civic culture is demanding access to solve tough questions: shall we re-boot the American idea? What are national boundaries for? Does American society need something else besides consensus government? What might that something else look like?  

“The Inheritors provides a stark scenario as one answer. These stories follow the impact of exclusion, of cultural and biological manipulation, of men turning away from humanity…” https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/890571662/inheritors-maps-a-complicated-family-tree-through-the-centuries

A young photo journalist uploaded a picture of her high school’s crowded hallway in Georgia, no masks with students shoulder to shoulder, and she was suspended by her principal. She tweeted that she didn’t mind, this was “Good Trouble.”

The Groom uploaded a video urging Gov Lee to mandate masks in TN. Yesterday he spoke again from isolation, his voice not quite as strong, but his message was even stronger. https://fox17.com/news/local/tennessee-who-urged-gov-lee-to-take-more-precautions-tests-positive-for-covid-19

He is a critical care doctor battling this virus with courage. When I asked him if he’s losing weight, he said something that warmed my heart,

“No, your daughter’s love language is food.”

In our after times – post- pandemic – which way will the curve of equality and humanity go, what will keep us up at night? I have to believe our arc is trending toward Good Trouble.

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