Things That Change... Or Don't

It’s funny how you can feel fully healed and completely broken at the same time. How some things can seem so far behind you and still be ever present, right in your face.

This spring has been dichotomies and oxymorons and a roller coaster of events and soul-churning emotion. Some of the best moments of my life have been built like layers of a sandwich along with some of the worst pain and most intense fear and most numb resignation…. there have been days that I couldn’t even fit that sandwich in my mouth, let alone swallow. (Dirty minds, I see you)

In February, I visited Scandinavia for the first time and it may have been one of my favorite escapades ever. I spent time with family and old friends and I made new friends. I lost someone that I was once very close to in one of the most unjust and unnecessary ways imaginable in March. I jumped out of a C-47 and rode a round canopy to the ground with my cousin and lifelong adventure buddy a few days after that loss. I golfed. A lot. I ate too much and I drank plenty. I went to baseball games and hockey games and Futbol games and met amazing people and saw things I never even knew existed. The world’s longest tunnel. The oldest Stave Church. The Red Sox bull pen. The VIP lounge at a Golden Knights game. I got tattoos, I sat in classes, I sat in casinos, I sat on beaches, I sat in churches. I screamed in rage until I could laugh at myself. I laughed until I cried, I cried until I slept and I slept until I woke up to the morning sunshine and the love of friends, both here and gone, that told me we were all ok.

The combination of grief and fear (I am paralyzed by heights) and excitement and anger and ecstasy and overcoming all played into several weeks of emotional upheaval and the strangest night terrors I’ve ever experienced. I nearly drove my Best Friend away when I lost control a few times. But that’s the thing about Best Friends - they teach you what “unconditional” really means when you deserve it the very least. I have never been more grateful.

This spring I am learning that I am not nearly as self-aware or “fixed” as I thought I was. New cracks have opened up in my soul and some days they feel like gaping crevasses that will swallow me alive. Some days it feels like they’re repairable, with the help and support of the few who know. That’s the thing about healing I guess, it comes in stages and seasons. Sometimes old breaks start creaking and groaning when the weather changes. All you can do is slather on the salve of unconditional love and embrace the ache.

I haven’t been able to find the words to say anything about my friend Rich until now. Rich and I became close in the year that I left Marble, even though I had known him since he was a little boy. He was a philosopher. We shared books and thoughts and traded ideas. He was wise beyond his years, curious past what he was allowed and had just enough of a rebel streak that I couldn’t help but love him. In my brokenness at the time, I caused Richard pain when we had a significant falling out. We didn’t speak for many years, but about a decade ago we reconnected and after repairing the breach, we picked up where we left off, talking about things well beyond our depth and imagining a world we weren’t allowed to.

Rich died on March 23rd, a few days before his 41st birthday. He was shot by law enforcement when he drew a firearm and pointed it at them. This was after non-lethal compliance attempts had failed. Deputies were there to serve warrants on Rich based on interactions with his family in recent month since his younger brother Jesse died. Jesse’s death was a blow that none of us have recovered from, and justifiably, Rich held his parents in some part responsible for that loss. But as his parents hold power in the community at Marble and now even in Stevens County, when they filed charges for malicious mischief and trespassing, Rich became a criminal on his own property, in his own home. He was reported to law enforcement by a “neighbor” at Marble when he was visiting his daughter. That’s where they arrived to serve warrants. Rich knew there would be no justice. Just as Jesse knew. Just as I know. He knew going to jail only put him more at the mercy of evil and manipulative leaders who would happily sacrifice him to avoid responsibility for the abuse they have inflicted for decades.

Richard’s death was his own responsibility. He made the choices he made. But I understand them. The rage I feel at the injustice of it feels unmanageable some days - at the risk to our local deputies, who did everything exactly by the book and whom I support without question. The anger at a twisted and warped community who refuse to accept the consequences of their failures comes in nauseating waves. Richard and Jesse are two lives lost. They aren’t the only ones. They won’t be the last.

One of the deputies called me to walk me through the details of what happened and it breaks my heart that any of them were in that situation. I can never express the depth of my gratitude to these men and women for doing their job well and truly and having the humility to reach out and help people like me understand the unfathomable.

Since Richard’s death, I have had dozens of people, old friends and total strangers, reach out to me with so many questions and thoughts and feelings… It’s like my old world rushing back into this new life I have tried to forge and reminding me that I will never fully escape. But I am starting to see the whole of my life as something less linear and compartmentalized and something more like a continual loop, or a timeless orb. When my Uncle Jim passed away last year I had an overwhelming sense of the connection of everything - a connection outside of our understanding of time and space in this three dimensional world. I feel more connected in some ways to Uncle Jim, and to Jesse, and now to Rich, than I was in real life when we lived so far apart. They are always with me now, laughing at my mistakes, kicking my ass in to motion when I am frozen in fear, and wrapping themselves around me when my heart aches for the lost possibilities and wasted hopes.

I sound like some new age hippy, and to be honest, I know it makes all of them proud.

I can’t believe the experiences I have had in the last few months. The ups and downs and the kaleidoscope of emotion that I’ve been living in have tongue tied me, but my words are coming back and I need to talk about the rage and the fear and the pain, because I know I am not alone.

I am here, if you feel alone. I don’t have any good answers but I do have hope. I do know almost everything is survivable - injustice and betrayal and broken hearts - but we do need each other. I carry the love in my heart for all of you that is amplified by the big hearts in heaven who surround me now. Please reach out if you need to talk, or to sit quietly and hurt. I am proficient in both, as well as finding ways to laugh at this ridiculous life and the people therein.

Conversation Hearts

Say what you need to say.

Say something.

Say Anything.

In seeking to be seen and heard, is there such a thing as too open? Too honest? I’ve been talking to Offspring No. 3 about the idea holding back thoughts, ideas and fears not as repression, but as a power play. As my social circle has diminished over the years, a large part of the paring comes from learning that most people, given the chance, will use your words against you. Sometimes with good intentions, sometimes unintentionally. I once believed that there was no such thing as oversharing, sharing too much, being too transparent, too honest. But the years (and people) have taught me that wearing my heart on my sleeve and exposing myself can be more of a liability, and there’s a lot of power to be had by holding back.

Learning that some people - hell, most people - don’t deserve to know your deepest fears, your most profound thoughts, is one of the biggest and hardest lessons. Learning to say less, listen more, to watch, to observe and absorb and withhold unsolicited input goes against the opinionated grain that the self-absorbed world around us has normalized.

Every one of us is convinced of the value of our opinion. Of the validity of our fear. Of the correctness of our idea. More often than not, My ideas, fears and thoughts have turned out to be wrong, silly or unfounded… but once they’ve been unleashed on the world, good luck getting them back.

There’s power in understanding that less can be so much more when it comes to communicating, and it’s not repression, or suppression, or being seen and not heard. It’s reserving the best parts of you for the audience that deserves it. The ones who ask. The ones who will listen. The ones who will hear. Nobody else really needs to know where I stand, or how I feel, and that’s not dishonest.

2013 Kraut Beruch in Liv's Kitchen

It occurred to me today that I need a food processor. It was probably when I was trying to match the shade of the fucshia splatter of plums to a paint for my kitchen walls, since it seemed eversomuch easier than cleaning it up. I was making plum jam, again, but this time, the "easy" way. Since they are small Italian Plums, which means nothing more to me than difficult to understand and probably too exotic, removing the pits is, well, the pits. Now we know. So I decided to cook them down and run them through my food processor. Oh, except I don't have one. Or I do, but it looks remarkably like me, in an apron, smashing cooked plums through a colander with a ladel. The jam turned out really good, and so did the new purple kitchen. Once upon a time I owned a Bosch mixer/food processor. It did everything for me. Shredded cheese and mashed potatoes and made bread and whipped cream. Now I do everything the hard way, or I don't do it at all. Like bread. I had this abundance of cabbage this week and couldn't figure out what to do with it. My first brilliant idea was to make my own fermented sauer kraut - super easy and healthy! My family sneered at me with disdain, since they won't even eat clean sauer kraut from a jar. So I made a LOT of pico de gallo, and keep trying to think of reasons to invite people over to eat it. But I still had more cabbage. And then I remembered: KRAUT BIEROCH! Of course. Back when I was industrious, and had a food processor that would both shred the cabbage, and make the bread dough for me, I used to make Kraut Bieroch quite regularly, which is really just once a year, but still. Kraut Bieroch was the clear answer to my cabbage abundance, but there was the issue of bread. Chopping copious amounts of cabbage is one thing, kneading bread, by hand, another entirely. And not one I was interested in delving into, after making many quarts of plum jam, freezing 4 gallons of peaches and staring at the cucumbers that I intend to pickle tomorrow. But I had this stroke of brilliance - or at least lazy, time saving ingenuity. I bought a bag of rhodes frozen rolls, in leiu of a food processor, and thawed them out to make my Kraut Bieroch without the drama of bread dough. And guess what? It worked!!! My kids even liked it! Aspen helped make the second tray, so they looked a little bit like zombie Bierochs, but they still taste like the juicy little german dumplings that they are. Because I have now piqued your curiosity immensely, and because you now know the easy secret of making close-to-genuine Kraut Bieroch, I will faithfully share the recipe with you.

KRAUT BIEROCH

German Cabbage Burgers

1 head of cabbage

1 decent sized onion

enough garlic to fend off a pretty finicky vampire

1 lb of ground beef (or two, if you're not cheap and/or if you're iron deficient.)

Salt and Pepper to taste (I used Johnny's and Montreal Steak Seasoning, because it's good in everything.)

1 bag of Rhodes frozen dinner rolls (dough, not brown and serve)

Let the rolls start thawing early in the afternoon, so that you can roll them out before you bake them. 

preheat oven to 350º

brown hamburger with the onion, diced up to disguise it as cabbage, so Aspen won't complain

when it's brown, add the cabbage, and your seasonings. 

spray a couple of your biggest cookie sheets with Pam. Or chemicals, as Aspen calls it. 

press the rolls out with your fingers til they are flat and a few inches across, I did them one at a time. 

put a spoonful of your cabbage-burger mix on to the flattened roll and then pinch the edges together, like a cute little dumpling. It's tricky figuring the first couple out, getting the thickness just right and not catching any slimy cabbage in the edges, cause they won't stick together then. flip the closed bierock upside down on the greased cookie sheet and do all of the rest. Pray they don't all spring apart and ooze greasy goodness all over each other, in which case they are still edible, but slightly more messy. 

Stick them in the pre-heated oven and bake them until they are golden brown. I have no idea how long this is, because I neither used a timer nor looked at a clock, but since I had time to sit on the couch and catch up on Facebook, I would guess 20 minutesish.

These are really good plain. Or, if you ask some people, with ketchup. Kizzie even ate them without making weird faces. And I felt like I had pulled a fast one on the culinary imps that seek to thwart my food processer-less cooking. 

The 2024 Election: A Diatribe

di·a·tribe

/ˈdīəˌtrīb/

noun

1. a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something.

I am bitter. I am angry.

How have we let Them have this much power? How have we allowed the Fourth Estate, which sacrificed it’s autonomy on the altar of profit decades ago, rob us of our friends and family, cut us off from our neighbors, people with whom not long ago we could have disagreed with and still not dissembled our entire social network.

How can we look in the mirror and acknowledge that a meme, a commercial, a news broadcast, an out-of-context sound byte, echoing in perpetuity through the halls of cyberspace, made us unfriend, block, insult, or even FEEL that rising heat of anger in our cheeks toward people we once loved and respected?

I cannot in good conscience condone our electoral process or any of it’s trappings as a noble or necessary endeavor. It has become one more ploy in assuring that we, as a nation, as a community, will never again be united. I cannot in good conscience encourage my children to vote, when I am asking them to be complicit in a charade of virtue signaling and moral posturing, adding their names in support to candidates who will only make them regret their decision. I can’t ask them to assume that responsibility. I am ashamed for the America my children are inheriting.

I am ashamed of the petulant and indulgent society that sacrificed honor and integrity for power and profit long ago. I am ashamed that we have squandered our inheritance. We have traded our national destiny for a bowl of pottage. And the bowl we pass on to our children is now empty.

And we stand on the brink of internal conflict. No matter who wins this election, we all lose. Neither side will admit defeat, when in reality, we have been collectively defeated already - evidenced by the candidates we have before us for the highest office in our nation. The battle is lost, but the war is just beginning.

The next few weeks will tell the story of a sick nation. A house divided. The One splintered into the divisible many. And we are all complicit, regardless of how we have voted.

Love your neighbor. Turn off your television. Read books written before 1950. Don’t share The Thing that makes the “righteous” heat rise up in your face, because more than likely, no matter how resonant, it came from one of our good friends overseas. From China. From Russia. From the ones who watch with bated breath, giggling with the good fortune of our implosion.

We are in a long term cycle and the worst part of it is beginning now. Find your tribe. Love your people. Create security. Quietly define and defend what matters, and I promise you, what’s happening out there isn’t what matters.

Chappel Roan, Proxy Wars and Cold Medicine

Rant warning.

This is a post I'll probably delete in the morning, but a head cold courtesy of the 1500 person Rail Ridge Fire Camp and hot whiskey have me thinking clearly. Or not. You be the judge, and I mean that, sincerely. I'd like to hear where I'm wrong.

Unspeakable atrocities against innocent humans have run wild since the Oct 7 2023 attack on a music festival in Israel by Hamas. It's been one year of unfathomable suffering in a sliver of land that has been war torn for centuries - eons even. But this time, it's the marionette Hamas, puppeteered by warmongerers and oil oligarchs, with the megaphone of the virtue-signaling Fourth Estate backing the full eradication of the State of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish Nation. Israel responds like a rabid, cornered animal, like a nation denied a home for generations upon generations. Like a people who have been, a time or two before, threatened with complete obliteration. And the whole thing is a proxy war for the people who have the oil and the people who want the oil and the people who are manufacturing a war machine in perpetuity that pays all the bills of all the legislators who vote for all of the aid we send to these places.

Record breaking fire weather and storms ravage the country while FEMA blunders it's way through the management, or mis-management, of an unmanageable situation. Conspiracy theories run wilder than the flooding rivers of the Carolinas, while all the time, if you were there, on the ground, you'd see people helping people the way it should be, while the government moves money around in a shell game that justifies another decade or so of excuses for why the rich get richer and the poor run out of ways to survive. If you want to get on the other side of that, just start tracking where these career politicians are making their investments ahead of major disasters and unrest in the middle east.

We face an election without hope. No one, deep down, likes Donald Trump any more than the creepy uncle who gives them quarters at Thanksgiving and is entertaining until mom gets pissed and he mercifully leaves. And I hope, in spite of the "protest too much" syndrome of Harris backers, nobody seriously likes her much either, if they're really honest. We have no good options.

And yet even so. EVEN SO. Nothing has outraged me quite as specifically as hearing that Chappel Roan recently canceled a string of concerts due to mental health concerns from all the pressure she was under to declare who she supported in the upcoming presidential election. As if there was really any question about who Chappel Roan - arguably one of the biggest musical phenoms (correction - FEMININOMENON) of an entire generation and a wildly charismatic standard bearer of defiant LGBTQ (sorry if I missed some) support - would vote for. And yet the bullies wouldn't rest. They wouldn't relent until she canceled shows and finally released a statement addressing her political support. And it makes me so angry I could spit. Almost as angry as the bullies and tyrants who think "Taylor Swift should shut up about politics" because she has the audacity to have a different view than they do.

Since when do the bullies win? Since when do we get to demand to know how someone votes? Since when is an artist subject to different privacy rights OR (yes all you hard-right assholes) first amendment rights than the rest of us? If they want to talk about it, that's their right and prerogative. If they don't, we have no business asking. Shame on us. What have we become? Our cancel culture and public shaming and the ENDLESS boycotts, all the while claiming our steadfast adherence to the first amendment. It's garbage. And it flies in the face of E Pluribus Unum.

I don't agree with Chappel Roan's politics, or Taylor Swift's. Or anybody else for that matter. I care about the fact they are American citizens with the right to think and vote as they please and I will defend that to the death. Along with, for better or worse, as in the case of my rant right now, the right to speak, or not speak. That right is not conditional and it is not based on political affiliation.

If it isn't clear to you by now that the posts you're seeing and sharing on social media are engineered overseas by entities who thrive on our misfortune, then maybe it's time to put the KoolAid down. The farthest-right and hardest-left memes and headlines and clickbait propaganda all originate from the same source, and it's not friendly. (and yes, I am preaching to myself as well)

We are no longer the greatest country in the world. We are gullible, we are bullies and we are bullied, we are misled and soft and easy. None of us has a clue what's really happening. Turn off the voices clamoring for your outrage. Hold fast to your convictions and base them upon knowledge and experience that isn't derived from media conglomerates owned by the same warmongerers and oil oligarchs feeding innocents into the insatiable jaws of turmoil.

And side note, any federal agency that has to do their own "rumor control" webpage is doing something wrong, speaking from direct personal experience. (I'm looking at you, FEMA)

Undo it all. #ChappelRoanForPresident

About Shit

There's a good chance that the septic tank at my house hasn't been pumped out for over a decade. Truth is nobody can rightly remember the last time it WAS pumped, when the previous three residents are asked. There's also a good chance that the epic season of toilet overflowing two winters ago had something to do with the unpumped septic tank. If you're curious about those catastrophic events or would just like a refresher in why today is better than anytime between September and March of 2014-15, here are some good links:

The broken toilet
The third toilet flood
Basically 6 months of my blog posts are about poop floods.

Anywhoo... I made an appointment to get the septic pumped next week, before the snow hits and/or the ground is frozen solid. Trouble is, I have no idea where the lid to the septic tank is. I have a vaguely general idea where the tank itself might be, VERY approximately, but I beyond that, I am literally shoveling blind. Feeling energetic, independent and capable (which is ALWAYS a warning sign of impending doom), I started digging in the non-specific area that might lie above a septic tank. Well truth be told, first I had to pick up all of Aspen's stuffed animals that Frank had taken outside and scattered thoughtfully over the general septic tank area over the last few weeks. He has a special fondness for teddy bears and giraffes. There were at least 18.

I quickly realized two things: I am terrible at shoveling and I have no idea what I am looking for. So, after starting a handful of four-inch deep divots in my back yard, it became pretty obvious that a) there was no septic tank out there at all and b) someone probably needed to bring a backhoe over or something because dirt is hard. The dogs thought we were having the Most Fun Ever looking for something like a rock or dirt clods in all the dirt, but really whatever I was doing with that shovel wasn't nearly as much fun as getting balls out from under the couch or as productive as shoveling Frank's lovingly deposited and record breaking piles that also punctuated the dig site.

On the bright side of my unsuccessful "digging" expedition (which closely resembled Derek Zoolander's attempt at coal mining, but way less fashionably [rubber boots and sweatpants only look hot on Blake Lively]), I distracted myself in the tool shed and found a rickety ladder which I can use later to try to pick pears. If I am lucky I will fall from the top rung and break something so I won't be able to work in SPED any more. Lord knows I am never that lucky. I will just end up with a scratched up face to add to my already totally un-dateable status.

In the meantime, I am using the excuse that I need to get a Pulaski from Halle to stall my digging for now, while I think of a better excuse to never dig again and Google things like: "what does a septic lid look like?" And "how to avoid pumping your septic tank, ever". I mean toilet floods aren't that bad, right?

Also I think I got the black lung.

Self Sabotage

There’s the irony of it.

I’m so obsessively worried about being the woman I want to be - being in the place I want to be, that my obsession will cost me that place. The only way to get there is to just adhere to the path I was on long before I saw that place. But the past has taught me that no good thing can last. That I am only where I am because of an accident or fluke. That as soon as they figure out I am a poser, I will be rejected and abandoned as always before. When really, it’s the pervasive fear of rejection and abandonment from a place I never expected to be that makes me wholly unlikeable and much more likely to be abandoned and rejected.

But the first time I was rejected and abandoned, I wasn’t afraid of it. I had no idea it was coming. I was so blissfully ignorant. So secure and unaware. Now the fear absolutely consumes me. I am sure, at any moment, it will come. I am so determined to avoid it, to prevent it, to at least see it coming, that I set myself up for it and make it almost impossible to avoid.

God help me.

On Office Life

I stare vacantly at two monitors and wonder how long it would take anyone to notice that the return stare of the monitors had turned me to stone like The Medusa. 

New Life Plan (2017 Edition)

April, 2017 - Ok, so here's the thing. I have been doing a lot of soul searching, ruminating, philosophizing, reading All The Right books and talking to All The Right People. Recently, a Very Important Person loaned me a book which most of you have probably already read called Feel The Fear and Do it Anyway. I read and reread this book and while some of it resonated as ideals that I have been operating in unwittingly, there were many new and convicting truths that I needed to hear, oversimplified in this quote:

"...begin to discover which, for you, is the path of the heart. Which path in life will make you grow? That is the path to take."
– Susan Jeffers

 What has come out of this (drumroll please) is that at long last, a semi-clear and mostly-defined goal for my life in the immediate future. This is exciting for many reasons, which I am sure you are waiting with bated breath to hear.  For one thing, you won't have to listen to quite so many what-am-doing-with-my-broken-wheel-of-chaos-life stories anymore. (Don't worry, the swirling vortex of terror will always remain). Also, I might not have to hit you all up for advice about broken toilets, help fixing the water heater, or how to potty train a 5 year old dachshund (no, I am not getting rid of Dagny), because my plan involves, wait for it: SUCCESS! But the most exciting part of my new plan is that I NEED YOUR HELP!

I was thinking about going back to school. Again. To be a New Thing. Because I am not Enough Things already. Because teaching, waitressing, EMTing, PIOing, writing, PRing, volunteering, mothering, cooking, etc, aren't enough? It seems, on some level, like a reasonable idea. Become a Physicians Assistant and make All the Money traveling All the Places and helping All the People. Get a teaching certificate and do the job I am already doing, but for reals. You know, smart stuff like that. But the problem with those plans is that I don't WANT to be a PA. And I don't WANT to be a teacher. and I don't really know what I want to be except one thing: writing. And why be bothered to double the student loans that I already can't even think about if my heart isn't in it?

But as I examined All the Pathways, and knowing that what I am doing now is becoming and endless spiral in my life, I realize I need to stop spinning like a broken compass and point myself in a specific direction. You know, follow my heart. Follow my arrow. And the arrow, for me, always leads to words.

So writing. How do I get to the place that I am not working so many jobs that writing becomes more like a cute hobby than my Lifesource and Mainstay? My end goal, or more correctly, the end of my beginning goal, which kicks of PHASE 2 of THE PLAN, is to get a book done. And by done I mean published and in the hands of random strangers that I am not related to. This is where you come in.

Me getting published happens one of two ways: 1) Some rich eccentric who owns a publishing house sees one of my blogs, is swept away with my profundities and immediately demands ownership of all of my written material, transforming it into an international bestseller. OR, more realistically, 2) self-publishing, with the hard work and limited success I have witnessed many of my peers endure. or 3) I develop the material (working on that), get brave about sending it out for rejection (working EXTRA hard on that) and the credibility of my popularity and current audience help sell me to potential publishers. Which means I need a bigger audience.

Which means, if you read something I write, and you like it (you don't even have to love it, although that would be preferable) - share it! If two of your friends like it and share it, and two of their friends... well it's like multi-level marketing except it doesn't cost anything and you don't get anything out of it. Except maybe a signed copy of my first published masterpiece which might be the Book of Poohology that you've been waiting for your Whole Life, or it might be a young adult novel about a redhead named Billee. See what you have to look forward to?

If you're all "yeah... I am just not a sharey type person. Because you know, then people know that I am on social media and I prefer to maintain the illusion that I am NOT scrolling Facebook 24/7..." (you know who you are, lurkers) then the next time you are at a wine bar, or a brewery, or a play date at the dog park with your friends, you can just tell them about the super great blog post about  [insert topic here] that your friend Liv wrote and how totally pertinent it is to whatever conversation you're having. Even if it's not, I don't care. Or tweet it. Or whatever. As long as you plug livstecker.com as many times as possible. Shamelessly. Forever.

If all of this is way too much commitment for you, that's fine, I will also take cash donations towards a new laptop that will actually let me load pictures into my blog posts without making me switch devices three times.

(PS, you don't have to share THIS specific blog post because then all my new readers will think I am just an attention seeking wannabe... which might be true, but still, unnecessary advertising.)

9/11/2013

It is September 11th.

I got two “new” vintage aprons today. They're cool. They are a little bit too long, but they have pockets. And they were made by a woman named Marge. That makes them extra cool. Now I can get busy for sure in the kitchen.

yes, I am wearing something under it. seriously, you guys.

I went to a commemorative assembly at the school this morning where I was scolded for not wearing my fire department shirt by some people, scolded for not sitting with the responders by others, and scolded by my daughter for being there at all. Apparently within the last 24 hours I have earned the rank of Worst Mother In The World, after I let The Stepfather go up and help the four younger cousins & sister clean up her room, which had been the battlefield for a frenzied Lego war. He touched something wrong, I guess, and isn't supposed to be in her room at all, which is interesting, considering he PAYS FOR IT. She gave each of us a severe tongue lashing, and apparently I was grounded from being seen in public because I was severely reprimanded for showing up for the 9-11 assembly. That's why I didn't wear a uniform of any sort. I was there as a mother. To shame my daughter, as she delivered a 45 second speech about the responders that died in the twin towers. I was there to remind her that I am a mother first, and a responder second or maybe last, whether The Stepfather moves her dirty clothes or not. I must have been forgiven and ungrounded by noon because I stopped by for lunch at the Special Ed room, where all of my favorite people hang out (why is that so weird?) and she came to see me there.

September 11th changed us as a nation, but there are moments that I wonder if all of the changes have been good. Or if we have adopted an even more arrogant philosophy that American's aren't allowed to suffer. That it's a crime against humanity to wound the American Pride, and we should be dealing with more important things than terrorist attacks, like Stepfathers invading bedrooms. This daughter of mine was four when the towers fell. We lived in a tiny straw house, with dirt floors and some sort of improvised running water. She was happy to have new shoes and hot dogs for dinner. When did life get so much more ridiculous? I take full responsibility for forgetting to teach my kids that good things must be earned. That nothing comes without hard work. That no earthly possession is worth as much as a relationship, a family. I know that they are teenagers, and one day this knowledge will come to them. I have faith in that. But I feel like I have not done a good job imparting it to them. And The Stepfather agrees heartily. How do you teach your child gratitude and humility? To prefer other human beings above themselves, even sisters (ew)? I don't think it totally occurred to me until I had my heart chewed up and spit out and then I turned and did it to someone else, that nothing could be as important as loving others more than yourself.

I love this country. And it shakes me to my core when our vulnerability to random acts of terror is showcased as it was on this day 12 years ago. I am ashamed that part of our response to this exposure was to puff up arrogantly, shake our collective fist,  and spend thousands of lives to put those crazies in their place. I absolutely think we needed to respond, but I think we also should have done some cultural resetting, realizing that the superficial icons of our country didn't hold any weight compared to our family, our liberties, our beliefs. But it's easier to focus on the bad guys than to look inside and get into an argument about where we have gone wrong. We're so busy running the rest of the world that our own household is out of order. Story of my life.

But now I have aprons. Which means my household WILL BE in order. Which means I will make pints and pints of glorious salsa today. Thank you Marge.

Ode to an Emotional Support Flannel

Listen. I am a child of the 90s. I feel deeply insecure about being in public without a flannel. It’s been this way since at least 1993. I guess it was a combination of Kurt Cobain, Stevens County Church of Christ Homeschool Counter Culture and an inherited affinity for Little House on the Prarie for me, but whatever the cause, plaid flannel is a deepy ingrained need in my positive mental health wheelhouse.

I cannot overcome the conviction that ANY outfit is better with a flannel. Jeans? OBV. Dress, yes, and some combat boots, fo sho. Cut-offs are grossly inadequate without a flannel. Leggings… duh, what else? And no man is a man who does not regularly appear in plaid flannel. Thank you Brawny. Sorry, not sorry.

A substitute for the ESF. Close, but not it.

But all of this leads to a certain perplexing problem: finding The Perfect Flannel. The Flannel to End all Flannels. When I was younger it was a GAP number in shades of blue and grey that I would not be separated from. It saw me through courtship and marriage and the birth of at least two offspring. I wonder where that shirt is now…

Secret Waterfalls in Yelapa, and The Flannel

I’ve been through myriad flannels since those days, always on a quest for The Flannel. THE ONE. I’ve tested out designer names - flannels that cost upwards of $100. I’ve worn Goodwill Specials missing buttons with questionable stains. The best ones are always either second hand or $20 at the local farm store - as was the Best Flannel Ever. I stumbled across it about 5 years ago at North 40 in Spokane and something about the plaid, and the softness, and the fit… I wore it until it started to fall apart. I wore it from coast to coast and all around the world. On fire assignments and during snowed-in winters. Mexican beaches and Walla Walla Wineries. The elbows wore out a couple years ago and I started hunting for a replacement.

Offspring #3 in The Flannel

That happened to be about the time Aspen was headed to Vietnam and in a moment of panic realized she hadn’t packed a flannel. I told her to grab one from my closet on the way to the airport. Which one, out of no fewer that 78 flannels, did she grab? THE Flannel. The One.
She drug it across Vietnam. And several airports. Quite literally.

Isla Mujeres ESF

But this is what makes a flannel great. It’s adaptability. The comfort it provides. The versatility and universal language that tells anyone, anywhere - “chill, man.”

Aspen drags the ESF

I hunted for a long time and finally found the same flannel on Ebay. two sizes too small and had to pay exorbitant shipping from Canada, but it’s worth it. I may even give one to Aspen someday. It’s things like this that make me stockpile when I find something I love. Who knows when it might run out or disappear forever. But I guess that’s what makes things so valuable.

Maybe The Flannel will never be fully replaced. But neither will all the memories I have in it.

BE. Come.

This life is so fleeting. I’m so immensely grateful for the beautiful people and places that have been put in my path. The people are few, and this year, fewer yet. So many have gone on ahead. The places are many. And will be many more until I go on ahead.

I’ve wasted so much time trying to become what I thought I should be. What “people” wanted. It’s taken me almost a half century to realize that no amount of becoming will ever be enough for most people. And most people don’t matter.

Funny. That word. Becoming. It used to be synonymous with beauty. We were trained to turn ourselves into something desirable based on… what? Commercial advertising?

I have Become. I am aging. I am flawed. I love that I can bask in the filter of a southwestern sunset. I don’t want Instagram to fade my blemishes. I have earned them. Every scar.

I have become. I have no time to waste on trying harder. Fixing things. Perking or plumping or embellishing. My mascara runs, if I wear it, because the tears of joy, or pain, and the sweat of suns from Fairbanks to Phoenix melt the paint from my lashes, which will always only be mine, as sparse as the good lord determines.

I have become. I’m happy to give up the underwires and push-ups and longlines and balconets and demis and, regardless of the cruel feedback I have received, wear, or NOT wear, whatever the hell I want to.

I have become. I am grateful that aging means my annoying witch hairs now grow in white, and are less visible before I get to plucking them.

I have become. I grateful that my body, as broken and soft and wicked as it is, can still be useful to the ones I love.

I have become. I am grateful for the pain of loss. The pain of growing older, that reminds me how very precious each moment, Each memory, Each touch, Each little surge of joy, really is.

Quit becoming. Just Be. And Come.

I have become.

Freedom vs. Liberty

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

FREE'DOM, noun

1. A state of exemption from the power or control of another; liberty; exemption from slavery, servitude or confinement. freedom is personal, civil, political, and religious.

2. Particular privileges; franchise; immunity; as the freedom of a city.

3. Power of enjoying franchises.

4. Exemption from fate, necessity, or any constraint in consequence of predetermination or otherwise; as the freedom of the will.

LIB'ERTY, noun [Latin libertas, from liber, free.]

1. Freedom from restraint, in a general sense, and applicable to the body, or to the will or mind. The body is at liberty when not confined; the will or mind is at liberty when not checked or controlled. A man enjoys liberty when no physical force operates to restrain his actions or volitions.

2. Natural liberty consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature. It is a state of exemption from the control of others, and from positive laws and the institutions of social life. This liberty is abridged by the establishment of government.

- Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

We place a high value on freedom in this country. Our Declaration of Independence promises us the unalienable right of liberty. And yet, looking at the definition of liberty - freedom from constraint - is this a reality in any of our lives? We are constrained by societal “norms.” By cultural and religions morays. We are constrained by ever burgeoning laws, regulations and rules imposed upon us by nations, states, cities, HOAs, and every other organized layer of society that we subscribe to.

Either willingly or unwittingly, we relinquish our autonomy by acquiescence to the comfort of a :civilized” world. There are constraints everywhere. Are we every truly free?

Even if we cast off all societal restraint and lived in an anarchic state, as long as we have human connections, we will never be completely without constraint. The love we bear for others constrains us to certain behaviors. Or at least the ones of us with any moral compass. As parents, we dedicate our lives to jobs we don’t love and tasks we don’t enjoy for the betterment and survival of our children. As lovers we forgo certain self indulgences to shelter the partner we have chosen. As children we learn to respect others and offer deference to our parents and elders in the community. All constraints, and most self-imposed. So are we really free?

Reading through the definitions of freedom and liberty, one difference stands out. Freedom is lack of CONstraint imposed by outside forces, whereas liberty is lack of self-imposed REstraint. interesting that Jefferson and his cronies promised us liberty in the declaration, and not freedom. An unalienable right to decide for ourselves what holds us back. To choose our own restraints. To restrict ourselves based on our own, individual moral directives, beliefs and values. Which leads logically to the necessity of religious liberty. Any mandated belief system is an immediate violation of liberty.

It is also interesting to note that there is no downside, or negative version of freedom, while the concept of liberty can be abused and have a negative connotation. Release from the constraint of outside forces is always good - it provides the opportunity for self-governement. Abandonment of self-imposed morals (i.e a lack of self-government) can have a destructive and deadly end.

Is freedom indulgence or responsibility to you? Is liberty something you abuse or harness for maximum effectiveness? Your actions tell the story. Use the gift of freedom and the right of liberty well. Be the change you want to see in this country, in your community, in your own life and relationships. In the words of Scott Avett, “Free is not your right to choose,” it’s the ability to move through life with only the restraints you place upon yourself based on what you value.

We celebrate liberty in this land only because so many before us relinquished their own freedom to answer the call to serve. So many of our best Americans willingly submitted to constraints in order to protect liberty worldwide. What will you do with your liberty? I want to be worthy of the warriors who have sacrificed their own freedom for mine. I want to choose the constraints and impose the self-restraint that will make this world the best possible place for the ones I love.

“ I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” Isaiah 6:8

dolce far niente

Sweet Idleness. The Sweetness of doing nothing.

If you look at my life from the outside, I am sure it’s a fantastic view. I have limitless options. I choose my direction like a kite in the wind every morning when I wake up. I have everything I need. I do anything I want. It’s almost perfect.

But the inside… I am never enough. And I have realized it doesn’t matter how many houses I own or jobs I have or How Very Much I love some one, there is nothing I can do to be enough. And because I am not enough, my wings are clipped. I am not limitless. I live in a prison of inadequacy.

I asked the universe, one recent afternoon as I lay curled in the fetal position in such intense pain I really thought I might die, what would I have to do to be loved the way I love others?

The universe answered me:

NOTHING

I realized the people I’ve loved the most deeply did nothing and could do nothing to change that. I loved them for who they were regardless of what they did or didn’t give back or provide for me. I understood that I would have loved them just as deeply (and in many cases, did) even if they only gave me hurt in return. Because I SAW them. I loved them for the soul I saw. Even if they never saw me back. But there is nothing they could do to change that. To change me. And so, there is nothing that I need to do to be loved. Someone, someday, will love me regardless, and perhaps even more because, of my inaction. Dolce far niente.

I see that I have to get to the other side of trying. Of working, of “persevering”, of believing and hoping that I can somehow earn my place. The space that I occupy.

Truth is, I don’t have to. It’s my space and nobody can move me from it til the good lord sees fit, although I’ve begged him to see fit on many dark days. I’m learning to not give up my space. To not shrink to a size of convenience or accommodation for someone else. To no become a ghost in my own life out of deference for others. I am beginning to understand that if I can get past the idea of earning love, I can live unapologetically and open. And maybe I still die alone, but the fear of rejection and abandonment and NOT BEING GODDAMN ENOUGH, can subside when I understand that all the trying and stress and anxiety and “commitment” (i.e. insanity) and devotion won’t change whether I am loved or not. My actions cannot make someone love me any more than their actions made me love them. So I can chill. I can accept the fate of The Unloved until, in spite of my lack of striving, somebody SEES me. And even likes what they see. And loves me, the way I love others. With my luck I won’t really like him and hence the pain of the universe cycles.

Emotionally I’m desperate for affirmation and acceptance and attention and connection. But I’ve been working on denying myself those things. Some days that goes better than others. Luckily I have very few places to turn for this since I deleted TikTok and most of my 1000+ FB friends seem interested in my philosophical tailspins or even whether I even take my next breath.

I’ve been having physical chest pain that scares me. But I know it’s just this. It’s a broken heart that I’ve kept under the compression bandage of survival for so long. Years? Decades?

It can’t be cured. It will never heal. But maybe it can find space to at least beat again. Dolce far niente. Just be.

Total Eclipse from the Start

In 3340 BCE, a bunch of Neolithic Irish Priests documented a series of celestial events onto a pile of rocks. The Loughcrew Cairn stands as the oldest recorded total solar eclipse in human history. These petroglyphs mean that people have been chasing eclipses since about 160 years before the wheel was invented.

Ancient cultures saw the total eclipse as a religious experience, usually a bad omen, a premonition of destruction, or in the case of an ancient Chinese emperor who wanted to know what had caused the sudden darkness - the imminent beheading of some hapless astronomers who didn’t know. What ancient Chinese records DO say about the event in October of 2134 BCE is that “the Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously.”

Rahu swallows the sun

Whether it was a Chinese dragon, a South American Jaguar or a Scandinavian sky wolf, most early people had some theory about the creature that consumed, and promptly regurgitated the sun in the middle of its daily course. In India, the floating head of the demon Rahu occasionally caught the sun and moon in his mouth, but, lacking a body, they slipped out shortly after, according to legend. Ancient documentation on clay tablets found in a Syrian cave reference an eclipse that experts say took place in March of 1223, BCE. The Holy Bible itself makes note in the book of Amos, chapter 8 verse 9, of an 8th century Assyrian (now Iraq) eclipse that took place: "And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day."

Fast forward a few hundred years and people started getting wise to the repeating pattern of the eclipse. It probably helped that they started traveling more too (now that they had wheels) and discovered that the once-in-a-lifetime event happened fairly routinely, just not often in the same place. By the time that humankind had graduated into the Anno Domini they were predicting when and where the next total eclipse would be and all making up all kinds of theories that had nothing to do with giant mythical creatures. Less dramatic? Hardly, considering the vastness of the cosmos that were just beginning to make sense to astronomers.

The first photograph of a total solar eclipse in 1860

But what is it about a total eclipse that is so captivating to human audiences? Rarity seems like an unlikely motivator when the event occurs every 18 months somewhere in the world, and yet more than seven million people are expected to make the trek to experience the totality in August of 2017.

Dubbed the Great American Eclipse for the sweeping course it cuts across the entire nation like a beauty pageant sash, the August 21 path of totality makes its first all-American appearance in Lincoln City, Oregon where local law enforcement have issued preparedness warnings that residents should stockpile and prepare to shelter in place before the hordes of eclipse chasers descend upon them.  The shadow will move east/southeast across the country, leaving a path of partiers that some brilliant website analyst describes as “ 20 Woodstock festivals occurring simultaneously across the nation”, before finishing the visit along the beaches of  South Carolina.

Unlike comet-tracking cults and celestial doomsday believers, eclipse chasers appear to be cut from a completely different cloth. You won’t find end-of-the-world gibberish on eclipsechaser.com - rather, the community is a scientifically driven, curious group hailing from every imaginable background who all agree on one thing: there’s nothing like it in the world.

“The feeling of the eclipse when it happens, you can't describe it, it's like magic.” 30 year old Latvian IT consultant Agnese Zalcmane told the Daily Mail in 2015, “One minute the sun is shining then it starts getting darker but it doesn't get dark like it does in the evening or at dusk - it goes dark very, very fast. Within half a minute it's completely black and it is something that is very strange to experience.”

Seasoned eclipse chaser Rhonda Coleman tells the Bend Bulletin, “We depend on our sun for everything. You can’t help but feel a little dread when it starts to lose strength, when it starts to lose power, when it starts to dim in the middle of the day — when it’s not supposed to...For just the short period of time, everybody’s just looking up at once. It’s this beautiful connection to the family of man.” The experience seems to draw strangers together into intimate throngs with one purpose. Author, eclipse chaser and psychologist Kate Russo describes the experience in one of her books on the subject.

“You can literally feel the ominous shadow before it arrives.  The temperature drops.  The wind picks up speed.  The Sunlight slowly dims, bathing the surroundings in an eerie twilight that produces colours with shades rarely seen in the natural world.  Then it is time. Moments before totality a wall of darkness comes creeping towards you at speeds of up to 5,000 miles per hour – this is the full shadow of the Moon.  You feel alive.  You feel in awe.  You feel a primitive fear.  Then – totality.” Something akin to the ghost story your older brother told you late at night in a shadowy tent, the total eclipse haunts the experienced viewer with tenacity.

Hotels, campgrounds and resorts that were booked more than a year in advance are facing scandal after they scratched all reservations and jacked the price up to meet demand. The Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville, Tennessee, falls directly in the path and is hosting an Eclipse Party on the day of the event, showcasing country stars (pun intended) and celestial-themed food and drinks. Google is rife with websites featuring eclipse chasing tips that range from where to get your eclipse glasses ahead of time (or better yet, make your own!), to the best weather pockets along the path of totality. Granted, it’s the first total eclipse in the United States since 1979, but the good news is if all of the eclipse glasses are already sold out and your favorite central Oregon resort is booked up, you’ll likely have another shot on April 8,  2024 when a total solar eclipse will climb the U.S. from Texas to Maine on a northerly route.

For more info, check out this article from Forbes magazine.

Holding Pain

Where do you go with the deepest darkest pain you’ve ever felt?

Is there a space safe enough? A drug strong enough? A faith pure enough?

I’ve been trying to learn how to process pain, and the resultant anxiety and fear - or maybe they are the cause of the pain and I have it backwards. I’ve been studying up on grounding and regulating practices to stave of spirals. So far I haven’t found one that works. I’ve been considering throwing more wasted money to hear a counselor tell me that I am made in the image of a god so horrific I can’t imagine what business he had making anything after his likeness. I’ve tried drinking more. I’ve tried drinking less. I’ve tried not drinking, eliminating coffee, drugging myself to sleep… I’ve tried praying. Maybe to the horrific god or maybe to someone else. I’ve tried looking my inner child straight in the eye and asking, “who hurt you?”. I couldn’t maintain eye contact. It was too horrific.

Life is pain. Yes I know. It’s unavoidable. And as with all things, the more intense the joy, the more intense the pain of loss. I guess the real question is why do I seek out joy when I know it will never last? Why don’t I run from that brutal heart-tease and avoid it at all cost? It’s the same irrational behavior that causes me to get dogs who I will outlive by barbaric measures, and put myself through the agony of that loss over and over and over. I am insane. Literally.

But where do you go with the pain? I’ve tried sitting with it quietly, or screaming it out in rage while I violently dismantle a 100lb decorative wooden wishing well. I’ve tried yogaing it away, sleeping it off, pretending it’s not there. But it eats me alive.

Marcus Aurelius says that we suffer more often in imagination than in reality, but what if the pain isn’t just imagination. Sure, the loss hasn’t occurred yet, but like a terminally ill patient, the writing is on the wall. You know it’s coming. It can’t be stopped, and to try to stop it would only create more damage. So you accept the pain. But where, where do you go with the pain?

The World We Live In

We live in a world where you can be anything you want.

Once upon a time, this was a good thing. Now being anything you is want is a write-your-own-ticket on the dime of everyone else. The broken hearts of your parents and children and lovers and friends. Being anything you want can change from thing to thing and moment to moment and we’re told that’s just fine. There are no limits. We wonder why we are drowning in epidemic suicide right now… maybe it’s because we can be anything we want, even if what we want to be is dead.

Do we deny ourselves anything anymore? I sure as hell don’t. My kids complain I’m impossible to buy presents for because if I want it, I get it. New shoes - ordered. New dog - adopted. New house - bought. 13 lbs of Gummy Raspberries… FREE SHIPPING! Small Batch Sourdough toast at 0100 AM to chase the Jameson I’ve been sipping since 1400 this afternoon, why not?

We live in a world of self indulgence. A world where self-sacrifice for others or self-denial for our own health and wellbeing is demonized and shameful. We live in a world where doing the Right Thing is the thing that will get us cancelled, unfriended, doxxed, blocked and isolated. Ironic, coming from the world that said you can be anything you want. Anything but honest, and true, and just.

We live in a world where if you don’t take care of a partner, they know they can walk away from you without consequence. But also a world where even if you do, they might anyway, because why not? We live in a world where being a good parent who teaches self-government and critical thinking can land you in jail, or at the very least, cost you custody. We live a world where lying and cheating and stealing… well it’s ok since they replaced all the registers with self-checkouts at the store. We live in a world were children are taught to hate parents, disrespect adults, and have no idea that any of the offices or positions in government or society ever had any respectable status. The “adult” world is a joke, and they know it. The financial system is a fallacy. The medical system is even worse. Insurance of all types is a scam. Education is nothing but a war on critical thinking and intelligence. In our quest to honor and respect all beings, everything has become unrespectable.

I predict a near-future return to orthodox religion as the next generations seek desperately for anything sacred, anything holy, anything that is beyond their grasp. As humans, without something out of reach to work for, we are useless. Without use, we are hopeless. Without hope, death is the only thing with meaning.

We live in a world where there is no justice anymore. There is the ever-changing law of fairness and all of our decisions are based on feelings, not truth - and in case you wondered, those two things are VERY rarely the same.

We live in a world where laziness and cheating the system is rewarded. Where hard work, innovation, ingenuity and sincerity are punished. Where health is taxed and gluttony and filth are idolized.

We are forced to tolerate and accept anything, because if we don’t, we face rejection, intolerance and ostrasization ourselves. Ahhh, the irony is rich.

And if you’re feeling judged, I am preaching at myself.

We live in a world without lines, until you mention personal responsibility and accountability… now you’ve crossed them. We cannot answer for our emotions, we can’t be blamed for our needs. We must indulge them to make sure that no one is holding us back or repressing us, or just in case we have undiscovered trauma that was inflicted upon us, we must find it and heal at any cost. I am as guilty of these sins (yes, I said it), as anyone. As everyone.

We live in a world that has lost all respect for the Power of Consequence. We have become perpetual victims. We have forgotten how to learn from our hurts and mistakes. We just become bitter, or a cat, or Barbie.

I get why so many of us want off of this planet. Why the real thing many of us want to be is dead. I UNDERSTAND. We’ve all gone mad and like the emperor with no clothes, we smile and support and pretend that the garments are not only there, but they’re beautiful. See how naked we all are. Set aside your conditional “tolerance” and “acceptance” to hear words from the edge of civilization: This Will Not End Well.

It’s time to Undo.

V-Day, 2015

Things About Valentine's Day

Things About Valentines Day

Valentine Throw Down at The Doghouse:

Step 1

Wake up at 7:44 from a nightmare wherein your best friend accidentally runs over your only true love (Dagny) when your daughter accidentally throws a ball in the highway for her to catch. Interpret the meaning of this dream as the unintentional heartbreak all around you. Happy Valentine's Day.

Step 2

Make waffles (which you hate, thereby reducing risk of overconsumption) with strawberries and whipped cream, bacon and eggs for 6 teenage girls, two of whom say thank you. Feed the leftovers to dogs, all of whom thank you.

Step 4

Go back to bed and make sure no dashing romantic has sent a surprise Valentine Facebook message, text or IM.

Step 5

Give up on all such fantasies and go on a 2 mile "run", pounding out all of the negative thoughts.

Step 6

Wait two hours for the hot water to come back before you can shower, since three teenage girls took 45 minute showers as soon as you got back from your run. Eat the leftover bacon that you hid from the dogs.

Step 7

Get dressed in something as unsexy as possible. Because who cares. Make sure you are wearing unmatching underwear, since obviously no one is going to see them unless you get into a car wreck, which really isn't on the agenda.

Step 8

Giggle when fourth teenage girl attempts shower after you used all of the hot water. Then realize the joke is on you as you are locked out of the bathroom and your hair is drying after the fashion of Ramona Quimby. But hey, who's going for sexy anyway?

Step 9

Leave the house in an undecided foray into fun... it's 7 hours until the basketball game you will be at, but sitting at home in the meantime just seems like a waste of a Saturday.

Step 10

Get the mail. And then go home because sitting at home actually sounds pretty fun.

Step 11

Go back to bed and turn on the matress heater and force Dagny to snuggle for most of the afternoon.

Step 12

Finally get out of the house for a pizza and a beer and to watch the NPHS boys NEARLY win a loser out regional finals game. It was worth the drive. I am proud of our boys. And girls. Even when they use all my hot water.

Step 13

Go home and collapse into bed, once again, and finally. (with Dagny, of course)

An Ode to St. Valentine

Before you write off Valentine’s Day as another invention of American corporations in the quest for perpetual revenue from mass produced greeting cards and several thousand tons of seasonal candy, take a moment to consider the long, if not convoluted, history behind the holiday. Long before it was chocolates and diamonds and fancy dinner dates, Saint Valentine’s Day became a celebration of enduring love.

Valentine of Rome was a Christian saint in the 5th century who was martyred in 496 AD for his faith. He was buried on February 14th, and the anniversary of his death was observed by the Catholic Church after he was canonized. According to legend, Saint Valentine wore an amethyst ring embedded with the image of cupid. He officiated at the illegal Christian weddings of Roman Soldiers, who were forbidden to marry, as the Emperor Claudius II believed that married men did not make for good soldier material. It was said soldiers would recognize him by his cupid ring and request the performance of his secret nuptials. The amethyst later became the birthstone for the month of February, and is said to bring love. St. Valentine is said to have cut hearts out of parchment and given them to the soldiers that he ministered to, beginning the tradition of heart shaped cards.

Eventually Valentine was imprisoned for his Christian ministry, and while in jail, he is said to have healed his jailer’s daughter, Julia, from blindness. A letter sent from his jail cell to the girl was signed “from your Valentine”, perhaps the first Valentine ever sent. After his death, Julia planted an almond tree with pink blossoms near his grave. The almond tree is still symbolic of undying love and friendship.

The Catholic Church removed St. Valentine’s day from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, but the holiday was well rooted in tradition across the globe by that time. Speculation has tied the holiday to the ancient Roman feast of Lupercalia, a three day celebration of fertility in mid February, but there has been no traceable connection to this observance and the later resurgence of the romantic theme appointed to February 14th by poets and lovers who were far removed from Rome’s pagan roots.

The first romantic association with the church holiday of St. Valentine’s Day wasn’t until nearly a thousand years later, when Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet, penned the verse: For this was on seynt Volantynys day, Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make. ["For this was on St. Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."] Later, scholars would argue that the Valentine he referred to was not Valentine of Rome, but the feast of St. Valentine of Genoa, who died nearly 100 years before Valentine of Rome, which was observed in early May, a time more likely for the mating of birds in Britain.

Whatever the reference really meant, Valentine’s Day was securely established as a celebration of love on February 14th by the beginning of the 15th century. Following Chaucer’s lead, French and English poets latched on to the theme and over the next 200 years, references to Valentine’s day, featuring birds and romantic love surfaced across Europe. The oldest surviving Valentine came from Charles, Duke of Orleans, referring to his wife as his  “very sweet Valentine” while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in the 1400s: Je suis desja d'amour tanné, Ma tres doulce Valentinée… Even Shakespeare gave a nod to the holiday in Hamlet in the early 1600s.

Mass productions of romantic poetry, cards and love notes was well underway in England by the end of the 18th century, and in 1847, the first commercially produced Valentines were available in the United States. It wasn’t until the late 1900s that the traditional note giving escalated to chocolates and jewelry. This became a trend in the United States when the candy and diamond industries saw potential for growth. It is estimated that over 190 million Valentines were sent in the United States in 2015, not including homemade exchanges between school age children. The average amount spent on a Valentine’s day gift in the US last year was $131.

However you choose to observe (or not) the festival of love that is Valentine’s Day, the story of St. Valentine, perhaps embellished over the years, is a good excuse to let the ones we love know that we are thinking of them. It’s also a good chance to break out the scissors and glue stick and show our love with a little bit of creativity and personal attention. Maybe we don’t need diamonds and puppies to tell our Valentine’s how much they mean to us, but since the middle ages, we’ve been using poetry to get our point across. The cliche “Roses are Red” rhyme began in 1590, with Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene, but was adapted into a nursery rhyme in 1784 from Gammar Gurton’s Garland:

The rose is red, the violet's blue,

The honey's sweet, and so are you.

Thou are my love and I am thine;

I drew thee to my Valentine:

The lot was cast and then I drew,

And Fortune said it shou'd be you

What Dreams May Come

It never occurs to you that the world will end at the most inconvenient time. We make our apocalyptic plans based on scenarios that include the people that we love or trust, resources that we imagine we’d have at our disposal after all of our careful stockpiling, without realizing that out of 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, the majority of that is spent either at work or sleeping. So unless you sleep with your ideal survival partner (come on, be honest), or work with the zombie fighting crew you’ve dreamed of, there’s a high statistical probability that you’ll be stuck in the end times with some of the least favorite and most useless people you know in a bunch of cubicles that can stop neither bullets nor waves of radioactive fallout, much less zombies. 

This thought has crossed my mind several times - mostly when I am traveling far from the people I care about and I have the same recurrent but variable dream about the End of the World. It comes in slightly different forms and I am beginning to understand I have these dreams when I begin to feel isolated and distant from the ones who are important to me. Maybe the dreams are not literal prophecies about how the world ends, even though they are full of massive detonations, planes cartwheeling out of the sky and a sense of panic overriding the logic of everyone around me. Maybe the dreams are analogous to the helpless sense of not being able to immediately reach my family when I am somewhere remote and hard to get to, like Uganda or China or Alaska or the Zips on Market Street. 

Last night I dreamt that I was on the South Hill in Spokane and something on the far northeastern corner of the city went up in a cataclysmic explosion that shattered windows across town. I knew I had to get across the river and to my house but when I reached the downtown area, the dam on the Spokane River had broken and a dozen or so small children playing along the banks in the floodplain were swept away while I stood, frozen in shock, with a handful of homeless people who chuckled hysterically at the sight. There was no way I could have reached the children before the giant wave, full of automobile-sized debris, did. I was helpless, and also cut off from getting to where I knew I needed to be. 

Years and years ago I had a similar dream but I watched the mushroom clouds in the distance from the safety of some sort of a bunker with a weird assortment of friends… knowing that my family was out there somewhere, and most likely would not survive. We watched through a small slit window as giant airliners fell from the sky like rocks in a lake. The scene was eerily silenced by the thick walls of the bunker, but the screams echoed in our imaginations as we watched in total helplessness. Halle says I need to quit writing my dreams down in case they start to come true. I suppose I should quit dwelling on them, or cultivating them into sci-fi novels - as I am with the one where the entire planet is incinerated for the agrarian pursuits of an extra-terrestrial species (more on that later), but I believe I am supposed to interpret and understand why I see these things in my sleep, and even more importantly, why I remember every detail so vividly. There is something I am supposed to learn. 

The biggest thing that stands out to me is the helplessness I feel in the moment of crisis. The inability to reach my children or parents or the other people I love. The isolation. Always in my dreams the paralysis I experience is followed by action of some sort. A solution to bridge the gap, or the flooded river, in the case of last night. But I wake up feeling impatient to begin the action now, proactively. Close the distance between me and my loved ones. Be ready. Build the bunker. Create the safety zone for the imminent alien attack (I think back in the last century there was shock therapy to treat this kind of thing). Maybe more importantly I need to be closing the gap between me and the people I love the most. Spending more time with them, in the right places. These dreams are just an opportunity to identify and solidify the relationships that really matter, to create rendezvous points, access routes and communication plans, both literally and figuratively, with the ones who matter. 

These recurrent nightmares haven’t quelled my desire to travel yet, even though it may be all of the miles that trigger them. I am fortunate that when I am working so far from home, I’m usually with people who I’d definitely pick for my Zombie Fighting team. I’ve also carved my travel routes to include friends and family who could definitely hold their own in an apocalypse and that helps some. But the dreams certainly make me think through these choices. They  make me more selective in my travel partners and the teams I work with. They make me conscientious of escape routes and backup plans for extrication. I don’t think I am paranoid, not yet anyway… just more deliberate, which isn’t the worst way to be.