Category Archives: reflections

The Blizzards of My Childhood

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We are spending today at home, mostly inside the house which, at this moment, is comfortably warm and cozy. The “warm and cozy” could change at any moment as we are under a high wind warning in an area which has a reputation for wind events that knock out the power at least once each winter. 

The terrain outside our windows is white. We had a bit of snow night before last. Not deep, but there’s a layer of ice under it which makes it a bit treacherous for walking. My first experiences of that little layer of ice were humbling. I grew up in Wyoming and prided myself on my ability to get around in the snow, both on foot and by car. But I soon discovered that there’s a reason Northwest drivers are chicken when it comes to driving in the snow: what looks beautiful covers that layer of ice which changes everything. Caution is, in fact, advisable here.

Blizzards are uncommon here, but they were an annual event when I was young. They were exciting (for us kids, not necessarily our parents). No school, for one. For my sister and me, it also meant that we were home with mom while dad was working. He was a railroad engineer and seemed always to be trying to get his passengers from one station to another following behind the snowplow. (My sister and I would not exist were it not for a blizzard in the ‘30s. Dad met mom in the hospital where she was his favorite nurse treating his frostbite from a blizzard misadventure.)

If we couldn’t go out to play, we invented adventures inside the house. We rearranged the furniture, draping blankets over chairs and tables to create tunnels to crawl through. We got out every single board and floor game in the house and played them all. (Tiddly Winks was my personal favorite.) We got to dine on cocoa and toast, still a go-to meal at times of despair. And we fought. Angels we were not. We cannot today figure out how mom survived it all.

Once the winds died down, we could bundle up and work our way out of the house. Often, either the front door or the back was blocked by snowdrifts. But the drifts created a unique opportunity for adventure. I remember a year when we could climb a drift all the way to the roof of our house. In ordinary blizzards, the drifts provided instant forts for snowball fights. 

We were blessed in many ways. Power outages were rare for us, even during the worst storms. Dad always survived the storms, even when the train got stuck, though more than once he had to leave the engine and walk to the nearest town to fetch milk for the tiny tots in his care. Mom might even have enjoyed the chaos we created at home. As kids, we were oblivious to the impact of the storms on the world around us. And such breaks from routine, when they end well, are a valuable part of childhood. These anomalies expand our sense of what’s possible and rev up our problem solving abilities. All good – when they end well.

How’s Your Day Going?

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“How’s your day going?” So many friendly exchanges begin with this question. But today, I’d say, ask me anything else. I got up more or less on time even though my husband said up front that we were out of coffee. We had some ancient ground espresso in the freezer for our stove top espresso which is fifty miles away at our new digs right now. I figured that I would use that in our French Press. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? 

Actually, no. Just do without the coffee until you can get out to a store or an espresso stand. That’s my advice after running this experiment. 

So we are moving. That’s great! But if I was ever in doubt about the wisdom of this move, this morning’s brief trip to the grocery store has removed that doubt. Sunday, 10:00 a.m., ought to be uneventful, right? My first stop at the store was the in-store coffee bar. As I got to the counter to order, the barista was just finishing up a sign that said, “Closed.” It seems that she was the only person who turned up for work today, and nothing was ready for customers. She was closing so she’d have time to put pastries and other food items in the display case and basically get the shop ready for customers.

Since I got there before she got the sign up, and I only wanted to buy beans that she could grind, she took my order. I reached for my phone, which has my coffee app, my wallet app, and my store card. Damn! I’d left my phone at home. Fortunately, I had my actual, physical wallet with the actual physical coffee card and another credit card. So I paid with real plastic, took my freshly ground coffee, and proceeded to look for the other items on my short list.

Croissants, check. Bananas, check. Ice cream, check. But where the heck are they hiding trash bags? I asked three people who guided me to various aisles that turned up empty. Fourth person, bless her heart, knew right where they were. So trash bags, check. 

Then, as I was making my way to the checkout counter, I saw a security guard closely following a bedraggled person with a handful of items. I’m guessing he recognized her because there are enough bedraggled people in my neighborhood that store security couldn’t possibly tail them all. In any event, she bypassed the checkout counter and headed for the door. She was told to either pay or leave her items behind, at which time she started screaming and accusing the guards of bad behavior, knocked over flowers on display thus creating a great pool of water in the entrance, and made a commotion that I’m sure you can picture. Hard to say if she was actually injured at any time in the process, but as I left the store a few minutes later, two cop cars and an aid care were at the entrance.

This is the same store, mind you, at which an assault on a employee about a year ago led her to transfer to a different location. I saw her at her new store one day and said I recognized her from my neighborhood store. She said she was still recovering from the assault there several months earlier. 

Nothing truly awful happened to me directly today, but there was one final bit of frustration: once I got home and opened a bag of coffee to make a new pot of actual French Press, the beans looked more like fine gravel than the usual somewhat coarse grind I’m used to. Good news, though. They work a lot better than the ancient espresso. So now I can chill for a few minutes with a decent cup of coffee – and then get busy packing again. 

How’s your day going?

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My Very First World Problems

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I got a parking ticket yesterday. $47 for backing into a space that was signed for parallel parking. No matter that every other car north of mine was backed in to their spaces. There was a sign that said, “Parallel Parking Only.” I thought it only applied to the space south of mine in which one car was parked correctly.

I could maybe contest it. But for me to get a ticket for following the mob instead of thinking for myself only seems appropriate. I’m always, always preaching that the mob could be wrong. So I think I’ll just pay it and count it as a. lesson. 

Meanwhile, the parking ticket was placed on my car while I was in the nice, new County Service Center, the place you go when the Department of Licensing won’t issue you an enhanced driver’s license because there is no record that you changed your name 56 years ago when you got married. Yes, you got that right. But hey, I took a number, got in line, spoke with a very nice civil servant, got two copies of my recorded marriage license (filed under a name with a typo, thus not easy to find – also fitting as I am the Queen of Typos). After pouting a bit about the parking ticket, I realized that the document I got did not actually verify that I changed my name when I got married, and the name change is the only part that the DOL really cares about. 

I intended to go back today, take another number, and try again to obtain proof that I changed my name, but, of course, it’s the 4th of July. So I will try to remember to try again tomorrow. 

Meanwhile again, we still need to clean up the living room after dumping all of our camping gear in it when we came home last Friday. Did I mention that we went camping last week. What. A. Treat! Yes, camping. Tent, cots, sleeping bags, outhouses, picnic table, fire pit. The whole works. Perfect weather. Not crowded. (We went Sunday – Friday because it’s impossible to get reservations on the weekend.) 

It seems that I love to get out of town. I try not to complain about the constant city noise constantly, but I don’t love it. Makes me love winters when we close our windows. We live close to a freeway and a bunch of hospitals, a fire station and crime, so in addition to the general traffic noise, we have sirens and sirens and more sirens. It’s pretty handy to walk across the street when your heart is failing, or your abdomen is shrieking in pain, but I’m not certain that that convenience makes up for the noise. Hence the joy of getting out of town.

We had one other first world problem, namely a drug that my husband takes daily (for about 20 years, that makes his life tolerable) was unavailable as we were leaving town. Back ordered! Out of stock! Couldn’t be found anywhere! He had enough to get through two weeks, so we went camping and hoped it would get resolved by the time we got back. It wasn’t, but we got a text today saying his Rx is ready. Hope it’s that one ☝️.

All of this has reminded me that my life is so good. Just imagine if we couldn’t afford a car (or gas), or if we didn’t have a government service center a mile away with friendly civil servants eager to sort through gazillion documents to find the one with the typo that was actually mine, or if I couldn’t afford to pay the parking ticket, or if we couldn’t escape the noise of the city now and then, or if we didn’t have ready access to medical care and prescriptions, mostly covered or very low cost, or if we couldn’t live in a retirement home with activities and good neighbors and food that I don’t have to cook, or if I didn’t live in a country where I could speak my mind without going to jail, or live with the luxury of not being in a war zone. 

Folks, I will take my first world problems, with gratitude, any day. 

In This House, We Believe… What Exactly?

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Recently, I put up a post about the Cowboy Code of Ethics asking you all if you would accept it as it, modify it in some way, or do some completely other thing. Then I needed to look up the wording for signs I see around our neighborhood starting out with “In this house, we believe…” with a list containing phrases such as Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, No Human is Illegal, Science is Real… often ending with “Kindness is Everything.” Not exactly a code of ethics, but an interesting exercise none the less.

In the process of looking for that sign, I discovered that people with other ideas had adopted their own versions of this list. I found one that read: Biden Stole the Election; Fauci Can’t Be Trusted; Bill Gates Isn’t a Doctor; Hillary Belongs in Prison; Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself; Media is Propaganda. So, OK. That’s them. 

Then I opened a Substack post in which the author had created her own list. Here’s what Jenny Holland writes:

In this Substack, we believe

  • Tucker Carlson is the most perceptive, intelligent broadcaster today
  • Donald Trump is far less corrupt and dangerous than Joe Biden
  • Steve Bannon is just a Reagan Democrat, not the second coming of Joseph Goebbels
  • MAGA is the the 21st version of the early 20th century labour movement, not the Brown Shirts
  • Anti-vaxxers are probably right about everything
  • Conspiracy theorists should be listened to
  • Traditional Catholics are not domestic terrorists
  • Muslim parents are right to protest LGBT lessons in schools
  • January 6 was a fed-surrection
  • Giorgia Meloni is the most interesting politician in Europe and the left is angry because she sounds more left-wing than they do
  • Viktor Orban is correct about protecting traditional Christian values

I responded to this post by explaining what I agreed with and what I disagreed with. The author was kind enough to reply saying she thought I wasn’t hopeless. 

So, dear readers, what would we agree on if we were to come up with our own version of “In this house, we believe…” I will start, and probably not finish, this task expanding on my thinking on some of them. Feel free to challenge me on any of them.

In this house, we believe:

  • All lives matter.
  • Doubt is essential.
  • Fairness is fine, but don’t expect that you’ll get it.
  • Schadenfreude is acceptable once in a while.
  • Western medicine is capable of good things, but a little humility would be good for all. (I survived pneumonia as a kid with the help of penicillin; I’m alive with the help of a pacemaker today.)
  • The health of my community sometimes requires sacrifices on my part.
  • The concept of “My Truth” is BS, though “The Truth” is often elusive.
  • We all act based on our hopes and fears. Understanding other people’s hopes and fears might help heal some of our divisions. We could, at least, have better conversations.

Regarding the first of these, “all lives matter,” I honestly, truthfully, deep, deep down, believe that if we are not safe to say that all lives matter, we cannot heal our divisions. Saying this does not erase our history, but if we cannot respect each other enough to say that their life matters just as our own life matters, then we cannot get to square one in solving anything.

Regarding doubt, we obviously need to accept some things as provisionally true in order to get out of bed in the morning and do anything at all. But we should also be willing to entertain new information and change our minds when something persuasive comes along. It’s becoming really, truly hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong, but doing nothing is not an option, just as picking a side and sticking with it no matter what is also not an option. 

Western medicine, aka Big Pharma, drives me crazy with their ridiculous propensity to take advantage of patents, their ability to flood any legislative body with lobbyists, and their ability to present cherry-picked information to doctors along with steak dinners and cocktails. Is the answer public funding of all research? I doubt it. Better oversight by a more independent FDA? Perhaps. Whatever the case, we need to address this. AND other forms of coziness between physicians and services such as labs, imaging, and other equipment providers.

Public health has been targeted since Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and masking school kids. But it’s essential. So many of the improvements in life expectancy over the past 200 years are due to public health efforts. We can’t allow this service to be undermined.

“My Truth:” Give me a break. Yes, your experience has shaped your thinking, but no, you do not have “Your Truth.” You have your thoughts based on your experiences. Actual truth is what we can agree on after testing it in a series of back and forth challenges. And even then, it’s provisional until somewhere down the line, new information upends our current understanding. 

My brain is now maxed out for the day. Time for you to argue with me!

Can I Meditate My Way Out of Here?

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Let’s imagine you are shopping for a new place to live. You want a walkable neighborhood, meaning that you can walk to a drug store, a grocery store, a bank, a library, a movie theater – the essentials of urban living. You find a neighborhood, find a dwelling place, the vibes seem OK. You move in. 

Your new place seems pretty good. It’s not ideal, but then few things are. You’re a stranger, but you soon discover that most of your neighbors moved here because they had friends or family already here. They ignore you. You join in some neighborhood activities, but in between organized events, no one calls, your doorbell doesn’t ring. Eventually, you offer up an open house for your nearest neighbors. People come! They mix with enthusiasm, they linger. But after they leave, your phone doesn’t ring; your doorbell doesn’t ring. Hmm.

As you sample the various public activities, you find a few that interest you.  You attend and join in the conversation. You begin to learn more about your neighbors. You learn that they are not exactly what they claim to be. They claim they are all about inclusion, that they seek out diversity, but the diversity they seek does not include the likes of you. What will you do now?

Will you pull up stakes and look for a different neighborhood? How far would you have to go to find one where your sort would be welcome? You could go back to your home town, but you’ve changed in ways that it hasn’t. You could move to Canada, but it’s changed, too, and now it’s worse than your new neighbors. You could find property in the country where you wouldn’t expect your doorbell to ring (but it did!), but you have health concerns that couldn’t be met there. 

Maybe the problem is you, not the neighborhood. Well, not maybe: it is. You actually are hoping for a neighborhood of adults, similar to the neighborhood of your childhood, where adults were curious to learn more about their neighbors without immediately sorting them into my kind and not my kind. I remember a remarkably inclusive neighborhood where my blue collar parents were invited to mix with the hoi poloi (they generally didn’t). Jews and gentiles mixed regularly. No, my neighborhood wasn’t racially mixed, but people had serious conversations about issues of the day including serious ones such as how to sort the town into two high schools in a way that didn’t create a ghetto school and a privileged school. 

I know a handful of adults, by which I mean people who are curious about what other people think. They want to learn why someone has an opinion that is at odds with their own. They admit that people with whom they disagree have some good points. Inclusion to them includes people with ideas that challenge them. If you are reading this, you are probably one of these people that I view as adults. Thank you for at least being curious if not actually open to my point of view. 

As for my dilemma about where to live, I don’t know what to do. This is a good place for my husband. If I followed my mom’s example and died before my husband, I’d want him to be here. But it’s not a good fit for me. Society in general is so thoroughly sorted today that there may not be a good fit for me anywhere. I’m not confident that I could find a place where I fit, and I probably couldn’t afford to move anyway. 

I have a few good role models here; people who likely share some of my views but just never share them publicly. I’m doing my meditations today on whether I need to give up, shut up, and join them. They have somehow found a way to be here without hoping to find any personal support here. Could I do that without descending into madness? I might have to. Wish me luck.