man and banana

I clipped my dog Romeo's nails, then we hopped in the car and drove to Temple Street and parked in the shade under the huge maple tree. We began our walk.

A muscular middle-aged man walked by wearing navy blue shorts and a navy blue T-shirt. He was swinging his arms, sporting white ear pods. I noticed that he was gripping something in his right hand. Not a phone, it was yellow. A banana! A man walking with a banana!

I spotted a lady planting a garden and we started talking. We chatted about our dogs who looked like twins, and sourdough bread making. 

Then Romeo and I walked onto May Street and there was a red suitcase in the middle of the sidewalk. How mysterious, I thought. I walked up to it, and circled around it. I noticed the zipper was open. I did not investigate further.

On the drive home I saw a group of undercover cops on East School Street making an arrest on the sidewalk. I recognized one of the officers. Okay, I'm ready to go home and read.

“Not just the beating. The words. 'Boris, you're stubborn, lazy, worthless, you can't do anything right, you're evil' -- at least once I heard him call Boris evil. When you grow up with things like that, you never get rid of them, never. Words like that are a tape that plays in your head for the rest of your life.”

― Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order

“You are like a nearsighted person who can see the cracks in the bowl when she's wearing glasses -- and so chooses not to wear glasses while looking at the bowl.”

― Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order

It takes time and humility to relax enough to truly begin learning.

 Joan Wickersham, Being a beginner is a lot harder than it sounds 

 “When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others.” —Robert Greene

"Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. .. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority." —Bertrand Russell

I wrote because silence became louder than their lies. Bukowski

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers. James Baldwin

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should. Kurt Vonnegut

"Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines." Paul Brunton

People empty me. I have to get away to refill. Bukowski

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached. Simone Weil

 “Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.” —Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.” — Oscar Wilde 

 "The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds."  William James

 At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction; he has a secret horror of all which makes him feel his own littleness; the eternal, the infinite, perfection, therefore scare and terrify him. He wishes to approve himself, to admire and congratulate himself; and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness. —Henri-Frédéric Amiel

 “Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.” ― Michel Houellebecq

“As the years pass, the number of those we can communicate with diminishes. When there is no longer anyone to talk to, at last we will be as we were before stooping to a name.” —Emil Cioran

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash

“All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.”

― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime. J.G. Ballard

“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”

― J.G. Ballard

 “I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”
― J.G. Ballard

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.” --G.K. Chesterton

"You will learn at your own expense that in the long journey of life you will encounter many masks and few faces." —Luigi Pirandello

Carl Sagan: If something can be destroyed by the truth, then it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

Strangers

Every once in a while our biological father would drive up unannounced to see my sister and me and take us for a day.

He had already started a new family with his adopted children and new wife. Then a few years later he divorced them and married a third wife. Occasionally he would show up with wife number three waiting in the car.

Now every once in a while my sister calls on me now that her children have grown and left home. Every once in a while she wants a sister but it has been only once or twice 47 years. She is a complete stranger just like my father was. 

Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It? Technology should facilitate learning, not substitute for it. By Clay Shirky

 https://davidlabaree.com/2025/05/26/clay-shirky-is-ai-enhancing-education-or-replacing-it/

Coleslaw

I just walked Romeo and when I came home I made a bucket of coleslaw by chopping up a small dense head of green cabbage, three red onions, six carrots, some broccoli and a few dried cranberries.  I used mayo, buttermilk Dijon mustard pickle juice red wine vinegar and a dash of sugar and salt and fresh pepper for the dressing. It's colorful! Now it has to incubate in the fridge for a few hours to blend the flavors.

Patriot: A Memoir is a posthumous non-fiction book authored by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny

Patriot: A Memoir is a posthumous non-fiction book authored by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2024. A self-described memoir, Patriot is Navalny's second book, following Opposing Forces (2016). Patriot details Navalny's life and career.

The first portion of the book is in narrative form about his life and career, while the second portion is in the form of a prison memoir - some of it describing the boredom, isolation, and suffering living in such a prison, but also including reflections on a variety of topics, "from 19th century French literature to Billie Eilish". It also demonstrates his long fight against giving in to despair despite the authorities' punishments, and gives advice on how not to lose hope.^[2]

The book also includes a manifesto for transforming Russia, which include "free elections, a constitutional assembly, decentralisation, and a European orientation". The last entry in the memoir was made on January 17, 2024, a few weeks before his death.^[3]

Navalny began writing Patriot in Germany after he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. He returned to Russia in February 2021, having written much of his memoir by that time, and he was arrested. Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in August 2023 on charges of extremism. In February 2024, he died at a penal colony in the Russian arctic.^[1]

The book will be published in Russian, but will not be shipped to Russia. The Russian Government-controlled and state media ignored its publication.^[2]   

Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity.

 Carl Sagan

Gorgeous Breads

I couldn't bear to waste the quart of sour milk we had on hand. So I decided to make bread from it. I added rye flour, semolina, bread flour, whole wheat flour, sourdough starter and some ground barley and wheat berries. I shaped the dough last night and set them to rise in loaf pans overnight in the fridge. I baked the 10 mini loaves this morning placing them in a cold oven. The final push happened as the oven heated up. They are a beautiful golden color! I forgot that the milk is a form of sugar and this contributes to the beautiful color.

Man swims 62 miles around Martha’s Vineyard to press for protections for sharks

A British-South African endurance athlete crossed the finish line of his 62-mile (100km) multiday swim around Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, becoming the first person to swim all the way around the island off the coast of Cape Cod.

Lewis Pugh, 55, began swimming multiple hours a day in the 47F (8C) water on 15 May to raise awareness about the plight of sharks – as the film Jaws nears the 50th anniversary of its cinematic release.

The swimmer and campaigner has said he wants to change public perceptions and encourage protections for sharks, which are at risk from human threats and which he said the hit film wrongly maligned as “villains, as cold-blooded killers”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/26/lewis-pugh-marthas-vineyard-swim-shark-protections

A thousand saplings have started growing in the big yard.

I cut the grass in small yard using the weed wacker. Ten minutes of noise. Then I raked up the  partially decomposing piles of Autumn leaves. This was a small step but it feels good to have the side yard look nice again.  I washed the dog quilt and bathroom towels. There's always so much to do especially as the seasons change but it's best to do small steps at a time. Celebrate the victories. Bill is correcting final exams. I just cut the saplings surrounding the picnic table. I baked a batch of granola and set the bread dough to proof overnight in the fridge. It was nice to see the neighbor's young kids playing outside.

Crimson Courage

https://www.crimsoncourage.com/  

Who We Are

Crimson Courage was founded by a group of alumni to support Harvard’s independence despite financial and other unconstitutional threats from the federal government. Now we are a growing, non-partisan community of alumni from all Harvard schools standing up for academic freedom and constitutional rights at Harvard and in higher education nationally. We are working to establish a coalition of alumni from colleges and universities across the nation to protect independent higher education from overreach by the federal government.

(Click here to  learn more about the risks to Harvard research caused by the government’s funding freeze.)

Join Our Community

By joining the grassroots Crimson Courage community, you gain opportunities to:

• Support Harvard’s freedom from government interference;

• Endorse academic freedom and freedom of speech;

• Oppose federal efforts to suppress voices, censor vital scholarship, and diminish the presence of varied populations and viewpoints;

• Improve on-campus communication and mutual respect among people from different backgrounds; 

• Collaborate with other universities and organizations in advocacy for independent higher education nationally; and

• Add your voice to the dialogue surrounding issues of academic independence across the nation.

“You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."

[Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]”
― Junot Diaz

What we do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy. Junot Díaz 

I am going to be rather hard-nosed and say that if you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.  URSULA LeGUIN

The Creative Adult is the Child Who Survived

URSULA LeGUIN

I meet my characters the way I encounter people in life—at a place and in a situation where I have less knowledge than I’d like and am almost always, at first, paying attention to the least important details. After that, I’m in discovery mode.

Walter Mosley

 

The Dissident: Alexey Navalny: Profile of a Political Prisoner David Herszenhorn

The Orange Menace is Imitating Putin

I am reading the Dissident and now it all makes sense what is going on here in the USA. 

Fight the bastard bullies!

Read this Boston Globe article. 

The problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness. Ram Dass

 source

Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

 “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

 

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo 

 

  “To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.”
― Victor Hugo

Our mind is enriched by what we receive, our heart by what we give.

― Victor Hugo

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

― Victor Hugo 

 

Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it - there is a certain shameful solidarity. ― Victor Hugo  

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

 ― Victor Hugo 

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

 

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
― Victor Hugo 

 

Don't educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so they know the value of things, not the price. ― Victor Hugo

It takes me out of my own limited, chosen world.

I do a lot of writing and note-taking on trips: in airports, on airplanes, on trains. I recommend taking public transportation whenever possible. There are many good reasons to do this (one's carbon footprint, safety, productive use of time, support of public transportation, etc.), but for a writer, here are two in particular: 1) you will write a good deal more waiting for a bus or sitting on a train than you will driving a car, or as a passenger in a car; and (2) you will be thrown in with strangers—people not of your choosing. Although I pass strangers when I'm walking on a city street, it is only while traveling on public transportation that I sit thigh to thigh with them on a subway, stare at the back of their heads waiting in line, and overhear sometimes extended conversations. It takes me out of my own limited, chosen world. Sometimes I have good, enlightening conversations with them.

LYDIA DAVIS

This was why she could not sleep.

“This was why she could not sleep. She could not say the day was over. She had no sense that any day was ever over.”

― Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

“Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion - you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.”

― Lydia Davis, Essays One

The Return of Odysseus by George Bilgere

 read

Darya Navalnya

"No matter how many people try to deceive themselves, hoping that another madman who clings to power will behave decently in response to concessions and flirtations, it will never happen," she said

"The very essence of authoritarian power involves a constant increase in bets, an increase in aggression, and the search for new enemies." Darya Navalnya 

 The Dissident Alexey Navalny by David M. Herszenhorn (p11)

Like Riding a Bicycle poem by George Bilgere

 read

the reader’s bravery is allowing himself to trust the writer, to surrender himself to the world she has created.

A novel, in its truest form, is a questioning of what it means to be human, of what a life is. But what makes it different from, say, a work of philosophical inquiry is, among other things, the way it uses (or misuses, or differently uses) language and, second, the particular sense of discomfiture it can provide. Not that a novel needs to disturb or dismay or unsettle in order to mesmerize or provoke, but it does, or should, force us to reconsider, to rethink. The fiction writer’s bravery, then, is her dedication to never second-guessing the reader, even at the risk of her own book’s likability; the reader’s bravery is allowing himself to trust the writer, to surrender himself to the world she has created.

HANYA YANAGIHARA

Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.

Jorge Luis Borges 

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. Jorge Luis Borges

All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. Jorge Luis Borges

We've been in a POLITICAL PANDEMIC since the MONSTER took office.

I love this poem. It's a painting with words.

The Coffee Cup

by Donald Hall

The newspaper, the coffee cup, the dog’s impatience for his morning walk: These fibers braid the ordinary mystery. After the marriage of lovers the children came, and the school bus that stopped to pick up the children,   and the expected death of the retired mailman Anthony “Cat” Middleton who drove the school bus for a whole schoolyear, a persistence enduring forever in the soul of Marilyn who was six years old that year.   We dug a hole for him. When his widow Florence sold the Cape and moved to town to live near her daughter, the Mayflower van was substantial and unearthly. Neither lymphoma nor a brown-and-white cardigan twenty years old   made an exception, not elbows nor Chevrolets nor hills cutting blue shapes on blue sky, not Maple Street nor Main, not a pink-striped canopy on an ice cream store, not grass. It was ordinary that on the day   of Cat’s funeral the school bus arrived driven by a woman called Mrs. Ek, freckled and thin, wearing a white bandana and overalls, with one eye blue and the other gray. Everything is strange; nothing is strange:   yarn, the moon, gray hair in a bun, New Hampshire, putting on socks.

__________

From Old and New Poems, Ticknor & Fields, 1990.

 

Learning the Quirks

The reason my car has malfunctioned a few times is due to my interfering with disobeying the proper sequences. I am used to a standard shift and this is an automatic. If I turn off my car off while it's in drive it gets angry. Seriously. I believe the electronics get confused. So I am trying to be vigilant. My car is Pontiac G6 2009. She is a great car. I am just having to learn the quirks.

Dream

I dreamed that I found a book of Edward Hicks paintings in a used books pile at the library and opened it and my name was written inside in pencil in a child's handwriting. My middle name was spelled wrong.

I never knew the details of Edward Hicks' life until I read them just now.

By 1816, his wife was expecting a fifth child. After a relative of Hicks, at the urging of Hicks' close friend John Comly, talked to him about painting again, Hicks resumed decorative painting. This friendly suggestion saved Hicks from financial disaster, and preserved his livelihood not as a Quaker Minister but as a Quaker artist.^[6] Around 1820, Hicks made the first of his many paintings of The Peaceable Kingdom. Hicks' easel paintings were often made for family and friends, not for sale, and decorative painting remained his main source of income.^[7]

In 1827, a schism formed within the Religious Society of Friends, between Hicksites (named after Edward Hicks' cousin Elias Hicks) and Orthodox Friends.^[8] As new settlers swelled Pennsylvania's Quaker community, many branched off into sects whose differences sometimes conflicted with one another, which greatly discouraged Edward Hicks from continuing to preach.^[9] Nonetheless, in his lifetime Hicks was better known as a minister than as a painter.^[10] He is buried at Newtown Friends Meetinghouse Cemetery in Newtown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. he died in 1849.

Edward Hicks (April 4, 1780 – August 23, 1849) was an American folk painter and distinguished Christian minister of the Society of Friends (a.k.a. "Quakers"). He became a notable Quaker because of his paintings. 

Quaker beliefs prohibited a lavish life or having excessive quantities of objects or materials. Unable to maintain his work as a preacher and painter at the same time, Hicks transitioned into a life of painting, and he used his canvases to convey his beliefs. He was unconfined by rules of his congregation, and able to freely express what religion could not: the human conception of faith.^[11]

One of over 60 versions of The Peaceable Kingdom painted by Edward Hicks, c. 1833–1834. Brooklyn Museum

Although it is not considered a religious image, Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom exemplifies Quaker ideals. Hicks painted 62 versions of this composition. The animals and children are taken from Isaiah 11:6–8 (also echoed in Isaiah 65:25), including the lion eating straw with the ox. Hicks used his paintings as a way to define his central interest, which was the quest for a redeemed soul. This theme was also from one of his theological beliefs.^[12]

When the Seasons Change (with Pollen & Full Moon)

I saw a sun dog this morning on my way home from walking Romeo. The south end of our street was closed due to road work. I was at our intersection talking to Mike the traffic cop. "Look! See that?"

"A rainbow," Mike said. "Does it mean good luck?"

"Of course," I said. "It's called a sun dog and it's from the sunlight hitting ice crystals."

When I came home I realized I didn't have my keys. I used the secret hidden spare key to get back in. I was hyperventilating, telling myself breathe, breathe, calm down. No keys. I must've dropped them on my walk. I left Romeo at home and ran back out. I passed Mike and told him, "I dropped my keys on my dog walk!"

"You'll find them," Mike said.

 

I ran down East School Street in a total panic, retracing my steps. I had the wherewithal to remember where on Hazel Street Romeo had pooped. That might be when the clip slipped off my jeans pocket, right next to Nautical Enterprises. I didn't see the keys so I rang their doorbell. They opened the door and said "We have your keys!! We saw the YMCA tag and were either going to call the Y or maybe just hang the keys on the telephone pole." 

 

I said thank you. "Calling the YMCA would have worked because I work there! And I've found keys before and dropped them at the police department. But if you hang them up and someone steals them they could get into someone's house!"

 

"But thank you so much, I always lose my keys when the seasons change," I said, laughing. I came home and hunted for my fanny pack, figuring that would be more secure now that I'm not wearing a winter coat. After several searches around the house I started remembering when I used it last, and I finally found it.

poet Ezra Pound once said, “Literature is news that stays news.”

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. Gandhi

Maybe I should write down what a dream staff meeting would be like where I could share my excitement about what I am learning about teaching. And while I'm at it write about my dream siblings and parents. Write down what you wish they could've said, could've been.

Family roles, institutional roles are ingrained and reinforced by the tribe. They're hard to change especially when nobody wants them to. My thought is okay but I must explore this for myself.

We have to be the change we want to see in the world. 

Ghandi

I once told my kids that their taste buds change with every shoe size, in an effort to explain to them that their food tastes will change as they grow. They've always taken it very literally, and try foods they've hated in the past with curiosity every time they get new shoes.

Gretchen Ronnevik

Quotes from my kids, this balmy Sunday morning of 29°F: “Why do I have to wear a coat? It’s above zero!” “I just want to feel the sun on my skin. It’s amazing.” “I hope it’s this warm on Easter this year.” “Can we drive home with the windows down?”  Gretchen Ronnevik

 

My husband’s late grandmother, who kept her house so clean that a wild pheasant once flew into her porch window and broke its neck, took one look at that pheasant and decided to pluck it and gut it and cook it up for dinner. And she and her husband even voted in different political parties. I remember seeing them holding hands on the way to the voting booth saying, “We’re off to cancel out each other’s vote!” Gretchen Ronnevik

 

A home is where we rest and receive care, can be vulnerable, and find intimacy.

Gretchen Ronnevik

It’s an old story. A woman cuts off the ends of her ham before she sets it in the pan to bake it, just like her mother taught her. Her mother cut off the ends of her ham before she set it in the pan to bake it, just as the grandmother did. When asked why she cut off the ends of the ham before baking it, the grandmother replied, “Because my pan was too small.”

Traditions are often born out of necessity, and in moments of deep distress or overwork, it’s easy to seek comfort in nostalgia. As we often ask ourselves: How did the previous generations survive? How did they get everything done?

Everything is supposedly quick and easy now. The invention of “TV dinners” and the microwave revolutionized homemaking. When women aren’t spending hours a day preparing food, they have time to do many other things.

My grandmother was a working mother of seven. She worked as a psychiatric nurse to help support the family since my grandfather’s wages were modest as a church planter/pastor. She loved instant anything. To her, it was the helping hand she needed. She fully embraced the technology of food you could just buy and heat up.

My mom shared a similar attitude. After her divorce with my dad, she was sling-shotted into the workforce, and quickly worked to finish her degree so she could support our family. A latchkey kid of the 80s, I did my fair share of heating up a pound of ground beef to be ready for her to make Hamburger Helper when she got home from work.

As for me, I married a farmer. I have a garden. I had always wanted to be a homemaker. But once I became one, I had no idea what I was doing.

***

There was one conversation when my mother-in-law took me to the local farm supply store to get seeds for my garden. She was going to show me the ropes. She told me to buy the Green Arrow variety of peas. I asked what made the Green Arrow variety better than other varieties. She looked stunned by the question. “Because it’s what my mother-in-law told me to get.”

Thinking it was like the story of cutting off the ends of the ham, I said, “Are they more disease-resistant? Do they produce more pods? Are the peas bigger?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s just what I was told to get. And it’s what I’m telling you to get. This is the best seed.”

I’m a curious, mischievous person, so I bought some of each variety of pea seeds. I would plant them all, take notes, and decide which pea I liked the best. It would be my little experiment. My mother-in-law was not amused. Why would I waste garden space like that? Just do as you’re told.

I spent the whole summer on my experiment. My conclusion: Green Arrow peas were totally the best for our soil. They produced longer pods, and were less work when it came to shelling. This saved me time in the kitchen. She was right. I had just wanted to know why.

Gretchen Ronnevik

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

At the table, one never grows old. Italian Proverb

 I also feel this way about teaching swimming and English. It gets me into the moment and out of myself.

 "A tavola non s’invecchia mai"

After a lifetime of hounding authors for advice, I’ve heard three truths from every mouth: (1) Writing is painful—it’s “fun” only for novices, the very young, and hacks; (2) other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision; (3) the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality.

MARY KARR

The Mother Wound

Article 

 by Bethany Webster

It takes courage to do this kind of deep inter-generational healing work!
It's a privilege to be conscious enough to embrace this healing journey.

Many of our ancestors did not have the courage, psychological capacity or the will to step onto this path.  Honor your choice to be a pioneer to break the cycle.

You are NOT a selfish or ungrateful daughter.....

• for wanting to heal, grow and release unhealthy patterns with your mother.
• for wanting to have a voice and authentically share your limits, needs, and boundaries in that relationship.
• for wanting to change the dynamic with your mother into something in which you ALSO feel seen, respected and understood.
• for no longer wanting to do all the emotional labor in your relationship with your mother.
• for feeling deserving of respect in the relationship and making requests that honor yourself.
• for having things you are unwilling to do in the relationship.
• for letting your mother have her upsets, tantrums without rushing to save or rescue her from herself.
• for wanting to limit contact with your mother (either temporarily or permanently).
• for taking space to focus on yourself and your wellbeing.
• for taking the space to reflect on what your childhood experience was like so that you can heal old patterns and step into more of your power and potential.
• for not answering the phone or the email in the timing that your mother wants.
• for no longer being willing to be the role of therapist, counselor or emotional caretaker for your mom.
• for having different values, beliefs or worldview from your mother.
• if you decide you do not want to continue certain family traditions in your own family.

These choices are all part of your sovereignty as a woman, as a separate individual with your own voice, needs, limits, and desires.

This is all part of self-worth, self-love and self-respect.

This is part of healing the Mother Wound as well as healing from codependency and enmeshment with our mothers.

Even if no one in your family understands why you are changing, growing or evolving, it's OK. Ultimately we don't need them to understand.

 

Becoming the "inner mother" to your inner child gradually creates the inner safety you need to be free, authentic, real, and receive all the good things you deserve in life.

Best Laid Plans

Friday my husband looked tired after a week of wrestling with his evaluation evidence report on top of teaching regular school amid changing schedules for student stress relief programs that ironically caused more stress for the teachers. I was worried. His neck looked stiff when he turned his head. The stress is not healthy. A couple of years ago this caused him to faint a number of times and the determined cause was stress and subsequent shallow breathing.

I spent the previous day recovering from four days of teaching and shoulders sore from swimming. I read a disturbing but compelling book, The Days of Abandonment, a novel by Elena Ferrante. I spent the afternoon on the couch lying down with my dog snuggled lengthwise beside me.  

Friday I had the day off and knew a storm was coming. We've had a week of torrential rain and a serious amount of flooding in our back room caused by a gutter blocked by leaves rerouting water in through the wall air conditioner. I had been sopping up puddles using every towel in the house and catching the waterfall using buckets that I emptied every half hour. 

I was tempted to clean out the gutter myself before the onslaught of the next storm but I was afraid of doing it myself. "That's dumb, Emily, that's how people get hurt." I have heard stories from friends who got hurt when they were home alone doing a move like that. The ladder was heavy and both of my shoulders have been sore and recovering from tweaks from heavy lifting (school bags) recently. I would have to wait until Bill gets home.

So I decided instead of risking the ladder on the roof I'd run chores. First off I drove downtown and parked at the library returning my library book. I brought Romeo for his walk; we walked along the river's berm. I spotted the homeless tents along the river and was heartbroken. The community garden had become a camping spot as well. 

I continued on and picked up my asthma medicine at CVS. It was cool and cloudy so I felt okay leaving Romeo in the car for a few minutes. Then I thought I'd buy dog food and pick up milk across the street so we wouldn't have a weekend of chores. 

I went up to Tractor Supply and bought the gigantic bag of food and asked if they could help me load it into the trunk. They said yes. When I returned I noticed that Romeo had eaten my plastic container of raisins I carry in my bag for emergencies. OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I should've put my bag in the trunk where I usually keep it. I am not used to driving doing chores with my dog. At home my bag is always up out of dog reach. Maybe I should never carry raisins again!

I drove across the street and I ran in to grab a gallon of milk, a bag of apples, and bananas and called my vet and left a message. After arriving home I phoned again and they said they were overbooked. They suggested a few places. I started hyperventilating because I was reading about toxic reactions and kidney failure in dogs that eat raisins. I called another local vet clinic and the receptionist said "you're okay, breathe, you have time." She suggested an urgent care vet facility. I was trembling from head to toe. I called. I made an appointment. I looked up directions. I put out towels and buckets in case the rain returns. And we left. During the drive Romeo was chill and content although maybe picking up on my anxiety.

The rain became torrential and I got all turned around in Mall Land. I phoned the clinic and they gave me directions. Go straight and turn at the hot tub place. Typical Rhode Island, navigating by landmark. Did they really think I knew where the hot tub place was? The rain was torrential. Anxiety was obscuring my ability to focus. My whole body shook and I got turned around again and phoned again. I made a few traffic violations, being in the wrong lane and entering a mall exit. But I made it on time, 1:29 for the 1:30 appointment. I was still shaking like a leaf.

The vet gave Romeo something so he'd vomit and explained the uncertainty of raisin toxicity. In some dogs there's no reaction and in others it's toxic. We would have to wait and see. Ideally he should be on a 48-hour watch at a 24-hour hospital but that would cost about $2,000, the vet explained. I panicked even more when they showed me the bill for what they planned for today. I must've blanched. I asked if I could continue this process with my own vet tomorrow. Just the vomit medicine procedure today, and the subsequent blood tests at my vet, please? They agreed. 

I scheduled a follow-up blood test for this morning with my vet's clinic. Meanwhile Romeo was doing fine. We fed him pressure-cooked boneless chicken breast and white rice to counter the potential nausea from the vomit inducing medicine. He loved his dinner.

Today Romeo is still doing great. We had a blood test this morning at my vet's. It revealed that he is in good shape and everything is normal. So far. We have another final blood test Monday at the 72 hour mark. I hope he continues to thrive without symptoms. I am hopeful too, the vet said.

The National Nightmare

 ICE agents detain one, two others arrested during chaotic scene in Worcester (Boston Globe)

Chaos erupted on a Worcester street Thursday when federal immigration agents apprehended and transferred a woman into an unmarked car as two other women, one of whom flailed at the car in distress, were arrested by Worcester police amid a large and unruly protest.

Dozens of local officers responded to the scene after receiving reports that a hostile crowd of protesters had surrounded a federal agent. One of the women arrested, a juvenile who is believed by witnesses to be the detained woman’s daughter, was forcibly taken into custody after standing with a newborn in front of the car.

The other woman arrested was School Committee candidate Ashley Spring, 38, whom police said had pushed multiple officers as they attempted to arrest the juvenile. Spring allegedly also threw an unknown liquid substance on them, police said.

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The altercation is the latest flashpoint in the aggressive federal crackdown to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants, including the controversial detention in March of Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk near her Somerville apartment.

“I was horrified and overwhelmed, watching her be torn away and listening to her screaming,” said David Webb, a Worcester man who said he watched the juvenile be arrested. “I was kind of frozen in place, unable to do anything about it.”

Worcester police said they asked the juvenile, who was holding the newborn, to move away from the car because she was endangering the child.

“Eventually, she complied and gave the newborn to someone else,” Worcester police said in a statement. “As the vehicle moved away, she ran after the vehicle and kicked the passenger’s side of it. It appeared that she was going to run in front of the moving vehicle, and officers took her into custody.”

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The infant was not injured, police said.

Earlier, according to Webb, he had seen four or five federal officers standing in a semicircle around a vehicle on Eureka Street at about 11 a.m. One woman was in the vehicle’s passenger seat, another was standing outside the vehicle, and they were passing a baby between them, he said.

The officers “were wearing tactical gear that labeled them” either as agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Webb said. Plainclothes officers also were on the scene, he said, including one with handcuffs and a weapon visible under his T-shirt.

Attempts to reach the Department of Homeland Security for comment were unsuccessful. Worcester officials said earlier this year that they would not partner with ICE operations and that police would not make arrests because of immigration status.

As the number of onlookers and residents grew, Webb said, about 30 to 40 Worcester police officers arrived as the crowd became more agitated, demanding to know if the agents had a warrant and breaking into a prayer of protection for the family.

Protesters pressed close to police and agents during the confrontation, many holding phones aloft to record the scene. As the distraught woman approaching the unmarked SUV was being subdued, one video showed, police adamantly ordered onlookers to back off. Swarms of police and protesters moved back and forth in clusters across the street, with some residents rushing to the latest flare-up.

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A woman who posted several videos of the altercation added a scathing critique of the incident.

“Is this what you support?” she asked in the post. “A mom being separated from her baby? In our own neighborhood? This saddens me so much to have witnessed this!”

Another video posted by the woman shows what appears to be Worcester police forcibly pulling the distraught woman away from the SUV. The vehicle moved slowly, and officers were directing traffic and clearing the street so the car could leave.

Worcester police said they also had received a call “that ICE officers were on scene and refusing to show a warrant to the crowd. Worcester Police officers responded to preserve the peace and prevent anyone from being injured.”

When officers arrived, authorities said, “They observed a chaotic scene with several federal agents from various agencies attempting to take a female into custody. Federal agents had placed this female under arrest and were attempting to leave in a vehicle.”

“The crowd was unruly, and several people were putting their hands on federal agents and Worcester officers in an attempt to keep the vehicle and the arrestee from leaving. Worcester officers attempted to de-escalate the situation and keep everyone safe,” police added.

Webb said tensions escalated after Worcester police responded.

“They immediately tried to take control of the scene that another agency had lost control over,” Webb said. “They were quite aggressive and immediately tried to arrest people.”

Online videos and photographs show many marked and unmarked law-enforcement vehicles lining the street, which Webb said police had blocked to prevent the protest from becoming larger.

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Worcester officers “100 percent did support ICE and protected ICE,” Webb said. In addition to arresting the woman who approached the van, he said, “They escorted ICE off the street and through the protesters.”

The juvenile has been charged with reckless endangerment of a child, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, police said.

Spring was charged with assault and battery on a police officer, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct, and interfering with a police officer, authorities said.

“This chaotic incident is still under investigation,” police said. “Video is being reviewed and further charges might be forthcoming.”

Emily Spatz contributed to this report.

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Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.

Thomas Deininger - Trash to Treasure (In Tiverton RI)

It has been a crazy past few years, how have you been staying positive? 

I’m one of those types that needs meditation, exercise, proper eating habits and to do something creative everyday so I don’t lose the plot entirely (to the extent that there even is one).

What is your motto in life? 
I have a lot of mottos that get me through. Finding humor, wonder and/or beauty in the mundane or ordinary is the real objective. The unlikely miracle of this opportunity to even consider the concept is profound. 

source

Alexey Navalny's Memoir

excerpt from Patriot a memoir 

book description

Alexei Navalny began writing Patriot shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, his commitment to challenging a world super-power determined to silence him, and his total conviction that change cannot be resisted—and will come.

In vivid, page-turning detail, including never-before-seen correspondence from prison, Navalny recounts, among other things, his political career, the many attempts on his life, and the lives of the people closest to him, and the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime.

Written with the passion, wit, candor, and bravery for which he was justly acclaimed, Patriot is Navalny’s final letter to the world: a moving account of his last years spent in the most brutal prison on earth; a reminder of why the principles of individual freedom matter so deeply; and a rousing call to continue the work for which he sacrificed his life.

“This book is a testament not only to Alexei’s life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship—a fight he gave everything for, including his life. Through its pages, readers will come to know the man I loved deeply—a man of profound integrity and unyielding courage. Sharing his story will not only honor his memory but also inspire others to stand up for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that truly matter.” —Yulia Navalnaya

The Dissident

A news-driven biography of Vladimir Putin’s nemesis Alexey Navalny— lawyer, blogger, anti-corruption crusader, protest organizer, political opposition leader, mayoral and presidential candidate, campaign strategist, provocateur, poisoning victim, dissident, and now, prisoner of conscience and anti-war crusader. THE DISSIDENT is the story of how one fearless man, offended by the dishonesty and criminality of the Russian political system, mounted a relentless opposition movement and became President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable rival—so despised that the Russian leader makes a point of never uttering Navalny’s name.

There’s an old saying that Russia without corruption isn’t Russia. Alexey Navalny refuses to accept this proposition. His stubborn insistence that Russians can defy the stereotype and create an entirely different country made him such a threat to Putin that the Kremlin wanted him exiled—or dead—and now seems intent on keeping him locked in a prison colony for decades. 

International correspondent David M. Herszenhorn, weaves together the threads of Navalny’s remarkable life and Riveting and complex, THE DISSIDENT introduces readers to modern Russia’s greatest agitator, a man willing to sacrifice his freedom—and even his own life—to build the decent, democratic country he wants to live in and hopes to pass on to his children.

source

Alexei Navalny

 

“We must do what they fear--tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most power weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.”
― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

“What are Ukraine's borders with Russia? The same as Russia's with Ukraine, which we internationally recognized and defined in 1991. There's nothing to discuss here. Almost all borders in the world are more or less accidental and cause someone discontent. But in the twenty-first century, we can't start wars just to redraw them. Otherwise, the world will sink into chaos.”
― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

“The hero of one of my favorite books, Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, says, "Yes, the only suitable place for an honest man in Russia at the present time is prison.”
― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

“When corruption is the very foundation of a regime, those who battle it are extremists.”
― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

“If you were to ask me whether I hate Vladimir Putin, my answer would be, yes, I hate him, but not because he tried to kill me or put my brother in prison. I hate Putin because he has stolen the last twenty years from Russia. These could have been incredible years, the sort of period that we’ve never had in our history. We had no enemies. We had peace on all our borders. The price of oil, gas, and our other natural resources was incredibly high. We earned huge amounts from our exports. Putin could have used these years to turn Russia into a prosperous country. All of us could have lived better. Instead, twenty million people live below the poverty line. Part of the money Putin and his cronies simply stole; part of it was squandered. They did nothing good for our country, and that is their worst crime.”
― Alexey Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

We must do what they fear--tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most power weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.

― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

Colorful Simple Supper: Brown Rice, Red Onion, Carrots, Peas, Garlic...

We made this tonight and it was FABULOUS!!! (we use boiled chicken in place of egg). I chopped my own carrots into triangles and a big red onion (for color) I had frozen peas on hand. We pressure cooked chicken breast in the instant pot for 10 minutes, 5 min rest, and shredded it and added it to the veggie rice mixture at the last minute. I added soy sauce and Sriracha and sesame oil. I will do this again!!

https://www.simplyscratch.com/easy-vegetable-fried-brown-rice-egg/

listen

Girl • 1996

Fourteen

Lyrics of Fourteen Performed by Brave Combo & Tiny Tim

Fourteen!

Fourteen girls in baggy pajamas

What if I′d gone to the south bahamas

Told me I had won the mystery prize

Tied my head behind my back and blindfolded my eyes

 

Fourteen tons of golden ripe bananas

The one I'd trade for my long lost bandana

The one I won one time at the state fair

With little pictures of james dean slicking back his hair

 

Fourteen is not my favorite number

At night I dream, I see fourteen spelled out in lumber

Fourteen - I can′t understand

Fourteen - 'cause I'm just an ordinary man

Fourteen - I can′t understand

Fourteen - ′cause I'm just an ordinary man

 

Fourteen men to witness my confession

If I′m ever sentenced and die for my obsessions

There's fourteen songs all named fourteen

With fourteen verses each that I dearly love to sing

X-i-v is how the romans said it

In retrospect I′m sure they don't regret it

Eventually their empire finally fell

F-o-u-r-t-e-e-n is how we came to spell

 

Fourteen - is not my favorite number

At night I dream, I see fourteen spelled out in lumber

Fourteen - I can′t understand

Fourteen - 'cause I'm just an ordinary man

Fourteen - I can′t understand

Fourteen-′cause I'm just an ordinary man

An ordinary man, an ordinary man

Fourteen!

 

Writer(s): Eric Randolph, James Burnett