Notes:
- Post title: Joanna Klink, from “Night Sky” in “The Nightfields” (via adrasteiax)
- Photo of U.S. Capitol Building via ABC News
The shift to peace is soft, barely there. A scrape of gravel, the breathing of trees.
January 7, 2021 by 26 Comments
…For us to be able to get some peace…to have a chance for a reset…
November 7, 2020 by 22 Comments
Thank you for sharing Sawsan.
T.G.I.F.: It’s Been A Long Week
November 6, 2020 by 25 Comments
Look away, America. For your own good, look away. Everything will still be there when you come back. Even once the vote counting’s done, there’ll be the recounting, and the tag-along lawsuits.
So take a walk, take a breath, take a break from the election drama unspooling at a pace better suited to a garden slug than an advanced nation’s sophisticated vote-counting system. So, psychologists say, maybe you should get off the smartphone, get back to work, and get some perspective…
“One of the things that happens with uncertainty is we often don’t think realistically about the outcome, and we tend to think catastrophically. So, you’re already thinking that if your candidate loses it’s going to be awful, it’s going to be unbearable, it’ll be disastrous,” said psychologist Shelley Carson. “We overestimate how this event — or any event — is going to affect our happiness in the future.” …
The year “2020 has been filled with many things, and uncertainty has been a major one,” said Sperling, who is also director of training and research at McLean Hospital’s Anxiety Mastery Program. “To have ongoing uncertainty with this election on top of all the uncertainty we’ve already had this year, I can imagine that being particularly trying. People are eager for results, some certainty, some knowledge of what’s going to happen.”
Sperling said worries about the unknown trigger the body’s autonomic nervous system, which controls our fight-or-flight response and recruits internal resources such as the stress hormone cortisol. Under normal circumstances, this heightened response lasts only until the uncertainty is resolved, and the body returns to normal. During prolonged periods of uncertainty, however, the stress can wear us down…
“These are unprecedented times where there is a lot more at stake now,” Sperling said. “That may make this election feel bigger than they may have felt in the past. … There are so many big decisions that people may feel there’s a lot that’s important to them that’s at stake.”
Sperling suggested counteracting uncertainty by carving out times in our day for activities that are personally meaningful and that we control, whether it’s going for a walk, having a cup of coffee without interruption, or connecting with people who are supportive of us.
Carson said going for a walk not only breaks one’s focus on national events, it provides an exercise boost. She suggested deep breathing for two minutes, which has been shown to calm the autonomic nervous system. We can also try meditation or listing things for which we feel grateful, because anxiety and gratitude are incompatible, she said.
“The thing to do is step back from it. You have to quit hitting ‘refresh,’ ” Carson said. “You can distract yourself. … Go do something different. If you can put the phone down, that’s wonderful.”
— Alvin Powell, from “Feeling election stress? Stop hitting ‘refresh’ in The Harvard Gazette (Nov 4, 2020)
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
November 2, 2020 by 26 Comments
“One way or another, we’re all white-knuckling our way toward Tuesday. I’ve probably made too many impulse donations to candidates I believe in, but I regret none of them. My husband, son, and I have written letters and held signs. In our small town, we’ll don our masks and vote in person. Beyond that, my approach during these last days has been to stay outdoors as much as possible. I can’t control the outcome of anything that matters, but I can keep the birdfeeders full. I can sweep out the shed, rake up the leaves, and pull out the petunias. I can stay grounded in the simple, necessary tasks of my own life. And I can look at the sky, at the now bare maple tree, at the snow that covers the ground this morning in a frosting of white, and trust in the forces at work in the world that are far beyond my own limited seeing and my own narrow understanding. One day last week, I rounded the corner of the house pushing the wheelbarrow and was stopped in my tracks by the sight of fifty or sixty robins hopping about in the front yard, a gathering as uplifting to me as the determined crowd of citizens who have showed up downtown every Saturday all through the fall to stand in silent solidarity with Black Lives Matter, voting rights, and democracy. When we looked up from breakfast a few days ago to see a herd of deer just outside the window, they seemed almost like silent messengers sent to remind us that we share this time, this place, with others and that we’re all connected, for better and for worse.”
— Katrina Kenison, from “Our Time” (October 31, 2020)
Notes: Image from Mennyfox
Sunday Morning
September 27, 2020 by 24 Comments
No weather so perfectly conjures a sense of foreboding, of anticipation and waiting, as the eerie stillness that often occurs before the first fat drops of rain, when storm light makes luminous all roofs and fields and strands black silhouettes of trees on the horizon. This is the storm as expectation. As solution about to be offered. Or all hell about to break loose. And as the weeks of this summer draw on, I can’t help but think that this is the weather we are all now made of. All of us waiting. Waiting for news. Waiting for Brexit to hit us. Waiting for the next revelation about the Trump administration. Waiting for hope, stranded in that strange light that stills our hearts before the storm of history.
— Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights (Grove Press, August 25, 2020)
Photo: DK, 6:15 am, September 27, 2020. The Cove. Stamford, CT
She always bats 1.000
April 1, 2020 by 19 Comments
As Rob Watson, one of my favorite environmental teachers, likes to remind people: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.”
You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot manipulate her. And you certainly cannot tell her, “Mother Nature, stop ruining my beautiful stock market.”
No, no, no. Mother Nature will always and only do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last,” says Watson, “and she always bats 1.000.”
Do not mess with Mother Nature.
~ Thomas L. Friedman, With the Coronavirus, It’s Again Trump vs. Mother Nature (NY Times, March 31, 2020)
Photo: Economic Times
One Tiny Beautiful Thing
February 25, 2020 by 36 Comments
Paying attention to what is happening in Washington is a form of self-torment so reality altering that it should be regulated as a Schedule IV drug. I pay attention because that’s what responsible people do, but I sometimes wonder how much longer I can continue to follow the national news and not descend into a kind of despair that might as well be called madness. Already there are days when I’m one click away from becoming Lear on the heath, raging into the storm. There are days when it feels like the apocalypse is already here.
Except it isn’t, not really. Not yet. One day when the relentless rains let up for a bit, I went to the park an hour before sunset to walk on the muddy trails and take a break from the bad news. The woods were as lovely as they ever are after a rain: the creeks full of rushing water, the gray bark of the fallen trees slick with moss. Above the trail, the limbs of the living trees creaked in the rising wind, the kind of sound that makes your heart ache for reasons too far beyond words to explain. Though the forest understory is already beginning to green up, weeks too soon, the towhees scratching for insects stirring in what’s left of last fall’s leaves were not in any way sorry about the early arrival of spring.
A few hundred yards on, my eyes caught on a tree I hadn’t noticed when I was walking in the other direction. About seven feet up the trunk was a knothole, a place where a limb had long ago broken off and let water in to rot the wood. Perhaps a woodpecker had helped to deepen it, too, and given the water more purchase over time. The hole was small, a dark grotto in the thickly grooved bark of the stalwart oak, a hiding place that reached far into the mass of that old tree, and the failing light deepened its darkness. Who knows how many miniature woodland creatures have crept into its crevice over the years to nest, to shelter from the wind and rain, to hide from predators — or to wait for prey.
But a creature lurking inside it is not what singled this knothole out among the hundreds, even thousands, I had passed on the path as night came on. What caught my eye was a cluster of tiny seedlings colored the bright new green of springtime, so bright it seemed to glow in the gloaming. The tender plants were growing in the loam inside the knothole. Far above the ground, a hole made by decay in a living tree had become a cold frame, a natural greenhouse that lets in light and keeps out frost. Life in death in life…
Instead of giving up something for Lent, I’m planning to make a heartfelt offering. In times like these, it makes more sense to seek out daily causes for praise than daily reminders of lack. So here is my resolution: to find as many ordinary miracles as a waterlogged winter can put forth, as many resurrections as an eerily early springtime will allow. Tiny beautiful things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world, and I am going to keep looking every single day until I find one.
~ Margaret Renkl, from “One Tiny Beautiful Thing” (NY Times, Feb 23, 2020)
Photo: Mohan Bhat
Driving I-95 S. Tethered to Nothing?
September 25, 2019 by 30 Comments
5:15 a.m. Traffic flowing. 16 minutes to the office.
Long day yesterday. Whaddya remember? What Stuck?
In bed. 9:40 pm.
ZzzQuil slow drips.
Mind whirring, but in slower revolutions.
Right ear bud pumping in “The Daily Podcast” with “The Anatomy of a Warren Rally.”
Words drift in and out, sleep meds seeping deeper. And then Mind stops, and locks on. [Read more…]
About right.
September 24, 2019 by 12 Comments
Is this verbal violence, then, simply incompetence? Is it the verbal equivalent of someone who has not learned the piano sitting down and trying to play Rachmaninov’s Third? The rudeness of these public figures gives pleasure and relief, it is clear, to their audiences. Perhaps what they experience is not the possibility of actual violence but a sort of intellectual unbuttoning, a freedom from the constraint of language. Perhaps they have lived lives in which they have been continually outplayed in the field of articulation, but of this new skill – rudeness – they find that they are the masters.
~ Rachel Cusk, from “On Rudeness” in Coventry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. September 16, 2019)
Notes:
- Book Review of Rachel Cusk’s new book Coventry via The New York Times: “Rachel Cusk Said She Was Done With Autobiography. These Essays Suggest Otherwise.”
- Portrait of Rachel Cusk (May 2018) via The New Yorker
Flying AA 1263 DFW to LGA. Over all Walls, Barriers and Fences.
January 9, 2019 by 61 Comments
Not a statistically significant sample for the Data Kings, but good enough for me. Here’s a driver profile summary for my last 5 Uber rides in Dallas:
“Egber”
Descent: Kurdish, 1st generation arrived in U.S. age 1
Car: Hyundai Elantra (spotless inside)
Music Playing: Country
Uber Rating: 4.88
My Rating: 5.0
“Fouad”
Descent: Egypt (1st Gen)
Car: Toyota Camry (Spotless)
Music Playing: Classical
Uber Rating: 4.82
My Rating: 5.0
“Rafat”
Descent: Jordan.
Car: Toyota Camry (Spotless)
Music Playing: Classical (soft)
Uber Rating: 4.88.
My Rating: 5.0
“Bennie”
Descent: U.S. Lake Providence, Louisiana. African American. “Retired Grandpa of 5. Love People.”
Car: Lexus ES. (Spotless)
Music Playing: Jazz
Uber Rating: 4.94
My Rating: 5.0
“Jason”
Descent: Jamaica (1st Gen)
Car: Nissan Maxima (Spotless)
Music Playing: Pop
Uber Rating: 4.91
My Rating: 5.0
This Rider (DK)
Descent: Canada (1st Gen). Green Card Resident.
My Uber Rating: 4.92
Punch line:
God Bless America.
I love this country.
Photo: (via me-poppins)
Increasing awfulness from rock-bottom bad
December 11, 2018 by 6 Comments
I’d brought my computer, but maybe I could actually just not turn it on, and the dreary growth of little obligations that overran my screen would just disappear; maybe the news, which—like a magic substance in a fairy tale—was producing perpetually increasing awfulness from rock-bottom bad, would just disappear.
~ Deborah Eisenberg, Your Duck is My Duck: Stories (Ecco, September 25, 2018)
Notes:
- Photo from (and Don’t miss Article): Deborah Eisenberg, Chronicler of American Insanity (NY Times, September 27, 2018)
- Deborah Eisenberg’s book Your Duck is My Duck: Stories was selected as one of Dwight Garner’s top books of 2018 in Times Critics’ Top Books of 2018
It’s Been A Long Day
August 16, 2018 by 21 Comments
It’s a been a long day. You’ve turned on the tube and flip to a cable news channel. Any news channel will do. MSBC. CNN. Fox.
You expect a deluge of the following:
Amarosa. Secret Tapes. Hush Money. Collusion. Russia. Manafort. Cohen. Yanking Security Clearances. Secret tapes. Rigged Witch Hunt. Michael Avenati. Stormy Daniels. Putin. Cover-ups. Tariffs. Trump Tower Meeting. Lies. Fake News.
Instead, you sit mesmerized watching the media and Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Daily Press Briefing in a back and forth exchange:
- Media A: “Sarah: Can you tell us about the President’s plans to improve the math, science and english scores for all of our children?”
- Media B: “Sarah: Can you tell us what the government is doing to return the 450 migrant children who have been separated from their parents?”
- Media C: “Sarah: Can you tell us what the Government is doing to prevent the spread of red tide and the killing of hundreds of species of sea life in Florida? And what we’re doing to prevent this from happening again?”
- Media D: “Sarah: Can you tell us about the President’s plans on improving the state of our nation’s airports, highways, subways and railways?”
- Media E: “Sarah: Can you tell us what we are doing to stop the spread of the California wildfires?”
- Media F: “Sarah: Can you tell us what we are doing to protect our children from gun attacks in our schools?”
- Media G: “Sarah: Can you tell us what we are doing to prosecute the 300 priests who molested 1000’s of children in Pennsylvania over the last 70 years?”
Photo: Washington Post
Walking. O say can you see by the dawn’s early light.
June 22, 2018 by 51 Comments
Dallas, TX.
Wednesday. 4:05 am. Pre-Dawn.
It’s sticky, the air is heavy, rain showers are imminent.
I’m walking from an outbuilding to the lobby to pick up an Uber to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. I’m on the first flight back to New York.
Two bodies are framed in their silhouettes. They stand under a street lamp filling a work cart with garden tools. They stop talking, watch me approach and offer a “Good morning Sir” with full smiles and broken English.
Of Mexican origin.
I approach the front desk. Martina is the tag on her lapel. “How was your stay Sir?” She doesn’t break eye contact. Customer Service coach whispering in her ear during orientation, be confident, you belong.
Of Haitian or DR origin. [Read more…]
A Few Honest Words (Please)
June 20, 2018 by 15 Comments
If you’re gonna lead my country
If your’e gonna say it’s free
I’m gonna need a little honesty
Just a few honest words
It shouldn’t be that hard
Just a few honest words is all I need
I don’t need no handshake
No firm look in the eye
Don’t tell me what you think I ought to hear…
~ Ben Sollee, from “A Few Honest Words.”
The tune was the opening track in his 2008 debut titled “Learning to Bend” which was an open letter to political leaders in the U.S. that perfectly captures what we’ve all been pleading for in a year of national turmoil: the truth. “I try to never be too specific,” Sollee says. “I’m trying to agitate the idea of what is happening. [“A Few Honest Words”] is not directed at one politician, but the culture of politics. (From Team JamBase: A Few Honest Words with Ben Sollee, November 5, 2008)
Ben Sollee, 34, is an American cellist, singer-songwriter, and composer known for his political activism. His music incorporates banjo, guitar, and mandolin along with percussion and unusual cello techniques. His songs exhibit a mix of folk, bluegrass, jazz, and R&B elements. Sollee has also composed longer instrumental pieces for dance ensembles and for film. And don’t miss the video:
Photo of the White House: by kenziemoney15
Boycott. The Embargo. It was draconian and complete.
March 11, 2018 by 36 Comments
Right after the election, Erik Hagerman decided he’d take a break from reading about the hoopla of politics…Mr. Hagerman developed his own eccentric experiment, one that was part silent protest, part coping mechanism, part extreme self-care plan. He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016.
“It was draconian and complete,” he said…It was just going to be for a few days. But he is now more than a year into knowing almost nothing about American politics. He has managed to become shockingly uninformed during one of the most eventful chapters in modern American history. He is as ignorant as a contemporary citizen could ever hope to be.
James Comey. Russia. Robert Mueller. Las Vegas. The travel ban. “Alternative facts.” Pussy hats. Scaramucci. Parkland. Big nuclear buttons. Roy Moore. He knows none of it. To Mr. Hagerman, life is a spoiler…
It takes meticulous planning to find boredom. Mr. Hagerman commits as hard as a method actor, and his self-imposed regimen — white-noise tapes at the coffee shop, awkward scolding of friends, a ban on social media — has reshaped much of his life…The fact that it’s working for him — “I’m emotionally healthier than I’ve ever felt,” he said — has made him question the very value of being fed each day by the media. Why do we bother tracking faraway political developments and distant campaign speeches? What good comes of it? Why do we read all these tweets anyway?…
“I had been paying attention to the news for decades,” Mr. Hagerman said. “And I never did anything with it.” At some point last year, he decided his experiment needed a name. He considered The Embargo, but it sounded too temporary. The Boycott? It came off a little whiny. Mr. Hagerman has created a fortress around himself. “Tiny little boats of information can be dangerous,” he said…
~ Sam Dolnick, excerpts from The Man Who Knew Too Little (NY Times, March 10, 2018)
Pro or Con the Subject. Edel Rodriguez, Artist.
January 11, 2018 by 24 Comments
Year of the Dog
December 30, 2017 by 25 Comments
“A baby in a hospital in Bangkok is dressed in a dog costume to celebrate the coming Year of the Dog.”
And here I thought every year is the Year of the Dog…
Notes:
- Fun Fact: Our President Donald Trump was born in 1946, also the year of the dog. But that is not good news for the US president, as Chinese culture predicts a year of bad fortune for anyone that shares the same zodiac sign. (The Guardian, Dec 29, 2017)
- Photo by Athit Perawongmetha, wsj.com, December 28, 2017)
Live & Learn 
