The Letter of the Season

The Letter of the Season

Swirling colors of orange, red, yellow 

Falling leaves blowing,

Lifting and flying.

Flames licking logs, cuddling close in fleece, flannel, wool

Lilting laughter and love,

Warmly filling hollows in the lingering light.

This little verse is brought to you by the Letter L.

The Leaves and Me

  

"Autumn us a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

Albert Camus

Ahh, Camus. As I write this, I wish my feelings were as optimistic, and my spirit was able to go with the flow of Seasons, as we knew them. But my emotions now are flying off in every direction the wind blows, scattering like dry leaves.

Covid  narrowed our times of travel, theater, visits with family & friends, excursions to museums, public gardens, and left us  far less stimulations that normally filled our lives.  During the lockdowns, and darker days, our domestic life of all meals at home with each other provided comfort. 

Despite discussions of relentless bad news caused by the disease, a tanking economy,  thousands living on the streets, and a vicious mad man and his willing accomplices, hindering instead of helping, our own Nature scene outdoors, and the assurance that Seasons bringing change, freed my spirit. I’d gaze out at birds coming to our feeders, and at the barren branches of our trees. I loved the evergreen of the Hollytree next door; the tall Italian cypresses, and the beautiful cranberry colors of the red twigs.  I’d sit at the kitchen table with my coffee eagerly anticipating buds on the trees in our back garden. 

 

Then there they were! Every day, Paul laughed as I gave the Leaf Report. Oh, Honey, look! The Oak Leaf has some buds now! I watched the Pretty Girl Maple, the Curly Willow, and never failed to thrill with each new bud on the varieties of trees. They all eventually, front and back, leafed out. Our  Daphne Odoras blossomed a month early with the most heady fragrance I know. I was so grateful. 

But there lurked the ominous. I heard warnings about our low snow pack, melting glaciers and threats of the worst wild fires we might ever have,  because of  climate change. And like all the other things that were made worse, by the current person occupying the Whitehouse, and his willing greed-mongers, climate change due to human causes, without good science heeded, we now experience massive storms, floods, and fire and ice disasters. The predictions of drought and wildfires were spot on.  And so it has gone. Still, I believe we have a lesson of hope with every season.

Another Leaf Report

During the worst of our smoke filled days, during the fires, something happened to the small leaves filling the Maple tree adjacent to our deck; they are a glorious dark green. A great many of them literally turned an ugly greyish-black, edged in brown.  These were apocolyptically the antithesis of our vision of glorious falling leaves. They cringed, shrivelled, and dropped dead covering our deck and little Japanese garden. They were the color of what it felt like to be confined twice over. We were locked into insularity by covid-19, and by air quality described by the the index as so bad, it was the worst on the planet! 

In front or our home,  the  large Katsura fills our view from the windows, as it stands in the parking strip. Ordinarily in more “normal’ years,  I thrill seeing the beauty of golden leaves gleaming in sunlight, and enlightening fog, or rain-darkened days, well into October. Early this October, it was November bare.

And yet…the maple retained most of the beautiful dark green leaves, our paper bark maple, oak leaf maple and vine maples are beginning to redden and  make a show of the colors we love. These trees exemplify resilience. Last Spring every morning was a thrill, and hope-giving. As Winter pends, so does another wave of Covid. The President wants us to be like a herd of cows. He lies to the Nation about immunity, cures, and we will be gazing from out windows at barren branches, hoping the rains will extinguish the fires. And Spring will bring the buds and flowers. And November will bring a new President. A new leaf.

 

Looking Through the Cracks

ANTHEM  by  Leonard Cohen

The birds they sang At the break of day 

Start again I heard them say 

Don't dwell on what Has passed away 

Or what is yet to be. 

Ah the wars they will Be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again 

Bought and sold

And bought again

The dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring 

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs 

The signs were sent: 

The birth betrayed 

The marriage spent 

Yeah the widowhood 

Of every government 

Signs for all to see.

I can run no more

With that lawless crowd

While the killers in high places

Say their prayers out loud.

But they've summoned, they've summoned up 

A thundercloud

They're gonna hear from me.

Ring ring ring ring ring

Ring the bells that still can ring 

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in

You can add up the parts 

But you won't have the sum 

You can strike up the march, 

There is no drum

Every heart, every heart

To love will come

But like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in.

That's how the light gets in.

That's how the light gets in.

 I’ve been looking for light for days. Actually since the day Trump won the election, and the Liberty Bell seemed to have split completely. Leonard Cohen died the day after the beast was elected. And then “mere anarchy,” manifested in the anti-goverrnment governance, and was “loosed upon the world.” As the beast slouched toward D.C., it occupied the highest office in the country, it disassembled the intentions of agencies created for the public welfare. Health, Education, Human Services, Safety, Scientific Research.

It altered policies for a just democracy, while it severed world alliances. I kept thinking about R.E.M.’s song line: “It’s the end of the world as we know it.” But I don’t feel fine.

The followers of the beast, along with the willing members of its Party, enabled Climate change resulting in fire and ice. Now there are the highest temperatures ever measured in our country, along with the rest of the world. There are now massive hurricanes and tornado events, massive floods, droughts,and the worst fires ever known on the entire West Coast, while glaciers fracture and float into our oceans. Neither fire nor ice would be nice.

Amid the 100-plus days of marches to protest and demand justice, I think of “I too am America” and long for that truth to be self-evident.

Families have been torn asunder by policies that include children in cages, women subjected to assaults on their bodies in the form of unecessesary medical procedures, evoking the Nazi medical experiments on prisoners, deportations and a border wall. There’s more I.C.E! “Something there is that does not love a wall.”

As the numbers of illnesses caused by Covid take more and more lives, we are split and divided. We can’t hug and hold loved ones, or visit those in care situations. The beast has fostered disagreements about using masks to protect ourselves with committment to the greater good, and is now encouraging the spread of the pandemic for “herd immunity.” The beast is willing to risk millions more deaths. Huge gaps of facts and alternate facts have created a massive rift.

“This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends. not with a bang, but a whimper.”

Tents line our sidewalks, streets, and parking lots, “homes” to those without shelters, and now masks are needed so they can breathe. “Gimme Shelter.” a rock concert turned ugly.

Millions of people around the world are demonstrating for freedom; millions are fighting oppression.

In my memory and in photos, I see Lady Liberty, arm raised holding the light high. “Give me your tired, your poor....” Millions of our people care; offer help, demonstrate, work for betterment. We had a President admonishing us to hang on to Hope. We the People, who want to free the Dove, and say “yes we can” will still strive to peer through the fractures and cracks. We seek the light of the intentions and aspirations of a “more perfect union.” We can find the places the light gets in, and create more light. We who love and are able, can do more than survive. We can shine the light and transcend.

———————————————-

With appreciation to Leonard Cohen, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, The Rolling Stones, R.E.M., Langston Hughes,T.S. Elliot,  Emma Lazarus, and Thomas Jefferson

MY FAVORITE BOOK: THE LITTLE PRINCE

 

“The men where you live, said the little prince, “raise five thousand roses in the same garden—-and they do not find in it what they are looking for.” 

“They do not find it. “ I replied. 

“And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water.”

“Yes that is is true “ I said.

“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.”

                                                            

The Little Prince

During  my Statistics course in graduate school I was assigned a paper to write about “The Little Prince“ by Antoine De Saint Exupery. It was a brilliant assignment for a person earning a Master's in Counseling Psychology. All the quantification in research statitistics, and  the conclusions should contribute to Life Quality.  This was to be my goal as a therapist: Help people live the most meaningful way they could. I had always loved the book with seeming childlike simplicity viewed through the eyes of a child from a distant asteroid.

This is still one of my favorite books. So my Petit Prince mobile suspends below a skylight in my home. I look past it at the sky, see clouds, rain, snow, stars and always know we are just floating in a vast universe on a tiny planet. Our Earth is full of beings concerned with ”matters of consequence. And one must look with the heart.

Note: My wonderful grandson, Max, has gifted me with several versions of this book.  Other than the mobile in the top photo, the photos here are from the pop-up version.

No better Time than Now: Never Was, Never Will Be

Sherry Fishman

“’I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’” —J.R.R. Tolkein, Lord of the Rings trilogy.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Imagery from fantasy novels/movies has been running through my head. The sulfurous orange glow of Sauron’s castle is a contrast of orange flame and a dark spew of blackness spreading out to envelope the land. The evil orcs marching to destroy everyone, an army of clay monsters, formed from the earth to conquer on behalf of Sauron. 

Harry Potter’s London, enveloped in horrific darkness as reptilian cloud death- eaters swoop from the skies to suck the souls from everyone. The governing Bureau of Magic taken over by evil magicians in order to destroy all that is good and right.

These metaphoric images conjure the real ones: smoke emanating from the ovens of Auschwitz;he ash spewing far as “good” people looked away. This is where Viktor Frankl was imprisoned and lost his family, so while in the midst of losing all he loved, he searched for meaning. This was how he chose to go on.

So did Elie Weisel, and my Rabbi, Michael Cahana’s mother, Alice Cahana, who lost her sister during the death march after they both survived the camps.  She had to leave her sister laying alone to die, else she herself would have been shot. They all lived in the times without a choice, except how to respond. And from that darkeness came the choices they made and gave light to the world. Frankl and Weisel, through writing, teaching, and leading; Alice through painting. One of her paintings hangs in the Vatican. 

Today here, we see people having to leave their loved ones alone dying of Covid-19. We see systemic racism and brutal murders of people who are black; we see people hungry and houseless. We see the foundations of Democracy being attacked; we see families torn apart, rising facism both nationally and around the world.

So many of the people are striving via protests, donations, activism, and dedicating themselves to keeping our America one of ethics, equality and justice. My choice is to fight to make a more perfect union. I know I am not alone. I will proudly support the Democratic ticket, not because of partisanship, but because it is a party sharing the values of inclusiveness and dedication to our Constitution. 

Joe Biden had unbearable losses and chose to serve his country while giving his love and devotion to his surviving children and to myriads of people he met and cared about.

Ady Barkan has ALS, is dying of it at 36. He will leave behind his young son and loving wife. He spoke last night, the second of the streamed Democratic Convention, about the need for affordable health care. Advocacy, activism, loving and living is what he’s chosen, while his functions and physical abilities continue to diminish. 

We believe the choice of how to respond in the “worst of times” means in this moment. We are righteously appalled at the harm to others, the cruel policies, the trend towards facism, the darkness of ignorance, lies, cover-ups, corruption and greed. And we also understand we must strive to heal, not to harm. 

That is our choice in the now. It was the choice in every country throughout history. Essentially we know that no time was without the horrors; and we know that is our only choice now. 

There is a Talmudic saying by Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for me, who will be. If I am not for others, what am I? If not now when?”

Do I Celebrate the Day of American Independence July 4th 2020?

If celebrations are meant to feel proud and happy of what is, than how can I celebrate the birth of this Nation?(Yes I am alluding to that film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nationin which the KKK is depicted as heroic).Yesterday “President”Trump stood at Mt. Rushmore on July 3rd with his entourage of syncophants decrying the destruction of statues honoring slave holders, racists, traitors in the Confederacy. He disregarded the fact that the land he stood on belongs to the Lakota Sioux Nation, that the genocide of the native Americans was how the land was acquired. He has betrayed us in more ways than I can count and decries the protestors who are fighting for black lives and true justice as treasonous. Ahem, a bit of projection? And I don’t mean film.

I am the granddaughter of immigrant refugees escaping the pogroms and the egregious horrors of the Holocaust.  My wonderful mother-in-law of blessed memory had a cross burned on her front lawn in Leggonaire, Indiana when she was a girl in the 1920’s. My father-in-law was fired from the American Federation of Labor Radio Station in Chicago during the Depression because he was a Jew.  FDR wouldn’t help the Jews of Europe during the time Hitler was sending them to Concentration Camps and mass murdering them. A boat of Jews seeking refuge at our shores was turned away and sent to their deaths.

FDR sent masses of Japanese Americans to concentration camps, while Nazi’s were allowed to hold a massive rally at Madison Sqaure Gardens. These Nazi loving American citizens were accepted, as our European allies were invaded by Hitler’s troupes!

 When my father and uncles served in Army and Navy, they were subject to anti-Sememtic discrimination, as were the Black, brown, Native American, and Japanese soldiers and sailors. Still, they willingly served our country in WWII. 

Our family was aware that our America needed improvement, when it came to discrimation and bigotry. In neighborhoods along the north shores of Lake Michigan, signs stood at the entrance to the upscale suburbs: NO DOGS; NO N—-ERS; NO JEWS.

Nevertheless, my father proudly flew the flag, marched with the Jewish Veterans of War in 4th of July parades, We were proud to be Americans, and we believed our country was a wondrous leader of the free world. It was the best of what the other countries were. We were the light unto the Nations.

The United States of America had a system of government to improve the wrongs, and there was incremental progress brought about by organizing for labor, women’s rights, civil rights, and regulations. Public education and public health were regarded as an important function of Democracy. Our system was set up with checks and balances and struggles for rights, (both individual and States rights were always an issue). 

Journalism and the dissemination of news was from newspapers and a few radio and TV networks. Most of us received the same reports, even if we took differing points of view about the issues and events of the world. People actually read the newspapers with small print daily!

We had the Constitution; the three equal branches of government, the separation of Church and State, and we had the ongoing set up to make a MORE perfect union. Ours was an aspirational country. So we had struggles, protests, marches and steps toward progress, for women and minorities, for labor, for regulatory agencies, for equality and justice.

 1980: Along came President Reagan who didn’t like “big government". Along came cable and social media creating individual angles with separate “truths”. Along came attacks on Public Education and Science. Along came consolidation of lobbies for the rich, and the empowerment of Corporations, (now, as Mitt Romney said: “Corporations are people my friend”). Along came “right to Life" and Phyllis Schlafly, whose right to lifers seemed fine with the murders at abortion clinics. Along came “Law and Order”, and the “War on Drugs”, and a sanction of more and more systemic racism with disproportionate imprisonment of black men. 

There was a game called Capture the Flag when we were kids. After Ronald Reagan, it looked like we were right wingers if we flew the flag; but Paul and I decided the flag stood for what our Democratic Republic aspired to. We decided not to let the flag be captured by the right wing and flew it every National Holiday. But we always knew that people might think we were on the side against our beliefs. This Fourth of July, we placed our “In our America” sign and one saying: LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.

We do celebrate our country and want it to be what the aspirational intention is. We will keep working for: WE THE PEOPLE, IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION.

Life is an Interesting Time

May you live in interesting times: a Chinese curse

Thank you all for your birthday wishes and greetings. So many of my cards, texts, and posts alluded to this being a year of stupendous events. It is indeed. Locked in, but fortunate enough not to have Covid, I remain outraged by the systemic racisism. I am lucky to have friends of diverse backgrounds to guide and accept my love for them. But when one has lived many decades, other times and upheavals were also part of what Life is. I was born in 1943 during WWII and the Holocaust. Dad was in the navy in the Pacific Arena, and Mom and I, along with my Aunt Lily (changed later to Lisa) and cousin Michael, lived in Bubby and Zayde’s apartment in West Side Chicago. My grandparents and my aunts and uncles of their generation were immigrants who had lived through pogroms, but had escaped what the Nazi’s did to their families in Eastern Europe. My father’s mother died of the Spanish Flu in 1918 right after Dad was born.

 For all the horrors (Nagaski & Hiroshima and the revelations of Hitler’s carnage) going on in other parts of the world during and after the war, I was fortunate. My life was filled with good relatives and happy times. But the years in which I was a child were also fraught with dangers. I hid under school desks while sirens shrieked during air raid drills, in case the Russsians dropped the A-bomb. I watched the McCarthy hearings. I marched along with Paul during the years of civil rights, women’s rights, against the Vietnam War, and then was horrified to see students slaughtered during protests, the savage lynchings and murders of blacks, the attacks on the people struggling for integration at lunch counters, and the assasinations of the Kennedys and Dr. King. 

So interesting times are a part of what living in this world is about. The Little Prince was published in 1943; a story for adults through the childish wisdom of St. Exupery’s little boy from another planet. He encountered people throughout his star travels concerned with “matters of importance”. Those “matters” were based in a quantitative view of the world. That little prince’s wisdom regarding the quality of life has been a part of my own life from the year I was born. That quality of life, my family and friends are my riches. 

That is where I was when after leaving Facebook, I was compelled to return. I missed you! 

So many of you dear friends and family are on this strange media thing, that can keep us in algorithms as targets for ads, but I’ve found the matters of importance are here on Facebook, when it comes to knowing your ideas and interests. Yes for private things we can connect in other ways, but connected we are. The longer I’ve lived, the more places I’ve been, the best of my experiences are meeting friends and maintaining relationships. You made my birthday wonderful. Your greetings and warmth are with me every day. 

Is There a Realisation? A Question after Watching" The Great Realisation

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

“They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot” Joanie Mitchell

In this “opening up” time of the current pandemic, I find myself wondering what has been not only realized, but has the potential for keeping “Paradise”? The Great Realisation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5KQMXDiM4)is a  lovely story read by a father to his son about how the world was brought to a halt because of the Pandemic. People no longer were driving cars or trucks;  production was very diminished. Then skies became clear again, birds and sea life once again thrived, because the pollutants of the industrial world subsided, so people of the world could see what was and what could be; well, it was a pretty bedtime story.

We encountered a visually idyllic scene last Sunday in Laurelhurst Park, with happy families, or friends sitting together on blankets in a verdant span of greenery. Bicyclists were flying by on paths, most wearing helmets because they are observant of their own safety. Skaters with knee guards and kids on scooters, along with many people walking, were filling the sweet sunny air with laughter, talking and calling loudly to each other. Above there were the puffy clouds floating across a brilliantly blue sky viewed through lacy leaves and spiked rimmed frames of deciduous trees and firs and cedars. It was a dreamy Sunday in Laurelhurst Park with dogs leaping and frolicking to catch the frisbees and balls tossed by their loving owners, calling to them, “Catch, fetch, come here boy, come here girl.” 

There were many people sitting on the benches near the manmade pond: happy children and parents were preparing the bread pieces to toss to the ducks floating by. Azure blue areas of the water created by toxic algae are partially created by the human food, tossed to the ducks, that doesn’t get eaten (and, by the way, it’s not healthy for the ducks).  Nevertheless, well-intended people continue to feed the ducks, but are inadvertently harming them. There are signs posted all around asking people not to feed the waterfowl, and explaining why. However the bread pieces are what these people are throwing; the laughter and excitement of the children and exclamations are a delight to hear. Can or does good information help maintain safe ducks, a healthy pond?

We are still asked to wear masks as we are opening from the Covid-19 lock down. Yet Paul and I notice that 95%-99% of these very happy people are not wearing masks. These aren’t the people who protest, or carry guns to proclaim their rights and their freedom. Maybe they are people who just want to be free to beathe again. We step back from this idyllic scene. We envison all the research videos showing aerosol clouds, perhaps containing virus particles. propelled from unmasked mouths adding a greyish spray to the image of a glorious day. We are walking on those park paths, as all the shouts and laughter expell from people’s mouths; our cloth masks can’t adequately filter those aerole droplets. We wear them to keep others from our exhalations, laughter, coughs and sneezes. We, too, could be asymptomatic Covid spreaders. The brightness of the day faded as we returned home to once again feel safer in lockdowm.

Does awareness, a realization, help? We hear of people in grocery stores refusing to wear a mask as requested,  or someone on an airplane refusing to follow safety protocol, but he/she/they will wear a seat belt. Hear them say: “It’s a free country.” These are ordinary people who wouldn’t want to deliberately harm others, and are generally aware of rules of safety. Many of them display In Our America signs on their front lawns.

Where is the realization that we were told to retain social distancing, wear our masks, and consider the general good of the whole? I am sad that my fellow neighborhood lovers of recycling, enviromentally green lifestyles can’t retain an inconvience for the sake of others, a temporary (albeit seems like forever) committment to the greater good. 

Within all of this little microcosmic example of a “Great Realisation,”  a dam broke in Midland, Michigan, a dam that was known to be old and unsafe, flooding and destroying homes. There was a realization by regulators about the dam, but there wasn’t enforcement.  A slew of dictators in the world, sacrifice thousands and thousands to retain power and fuel their greed, among them our own President. In our country many of our President’s appointees to his Cabinet and goverment agencies along with Senators and Congress people in the Republican party are quite aware of the deaths of thousands of people, but don’t behave as if they care. It seems that realization is not a factor in preserving health, the public good,international relations, or our environment.

 I am left hearing Joanie Mitchell’s lyrics: ‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Were the the people I  do believe care because they mostly make a great deal of effort to do the right thing, willing to do so when they don’t like it, I’d have more hope. I long for it. But I foresee a whole lot more parking lots paving Paradise. 

If the World Were a Hospital

In 2006 Paul and I went on a Journey of Peace to the Middle East, led by Rabbi Joshua Stampfer (of blessed memory) and Rev. Rodney Page. They had led a trip some 20 years earlier with the same desire to bring together people of the Abrahamic faiths to further our efforts for peace. The trip afforded us a chance to meet leaders and peace makers in Israel/Palestine. Among them, we were fortunate to meet Sari Nusseibeh. Sari was a Palestian whose family were the keepers for generations of the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. (This because of generations of feuding branches within Christianity), and Sari was of an esteemed Muslim family. A former member of the Cabinet of the Palestinian Authority, a philosophy professor, and then President of Al Quds University, and an author, his books are numerous and include Once Upon A Country: a Palestian Life. We returned to Israel with Eric, Rebecca, Max and Sophie, for our grandaughter’s trip celebrating her pending Bat Mitzvah. Paul had written to Sari to see if he would consider again meeting with us. He suggusted we meet at The American Colony Hotel which was perfect, since we’d planned to go there to celebrate Sophie’s 12th birthday. We were honored to meet there with Mr. Nusseibeh, co-author of the Oslo Peace Accords!. At our table, Sari told us he'd had dinner with his good friend / Shimon Peres, just a few nights before, and Shimon said: "If the world were like a hospital, we'd have peace already.” Sari said “Shimon was correct. He told us his personal story exemplifying this truth. He looked at Sophie and said: “Sophie, when my daughter was your age, she had a bicycle accident, and we took her to the hospital. A terrorist attack had just occured, and the ambulances were bringing in the wounded. As a Palestinian, I thought we’d be told to go elswhere, but that didn’t happen. They took wonderful care of my daughter.” During this time of Coronavirus, Paul and I heard an NPR story as a current example of Sari’s story and Shimon Peres’ dream. I hope Shimon is listening from Heaven. And I am so heartened to have met Mr. Nuseibeh. Here is a link to the story. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/13/855237010/hotel-corona 

How is Today Different from All Other Days?

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Today is April 15; and like the first of the four questions asked on Passover, I inquire, why is this April 15th different from all others? In this time of Co-vid all days are the same, and yet all days are different from others. Today our taxes aren’t due. Today we need to welcome the “stranger” only from a great distance, along with our friends and non-household relatives. Today we are to remain in place and wonder what day it is? Oh yes, Wednesday, the middle of the week, and our lives are not impacted by that fact, unless we have a virtual date scheduled, either for business or social reasons.  

Today is like all other days and like none of the ones we’ve experienced until a pandemic changed everything. Today like all the days since our devastating time of this disease, I check the numbers: how many are diagnosed,  how many people we’ve lost, I continue to count every loss as an offense against humanity when our so-called President hits the bottomless bottom: new ugly acts on his part: pitting States against States for necessary medical tests, equipment, resources; witholding the relief checks from people who need that money for surviving, so he can put his vile campaign signature on them! He withheld funding for the World Health Organization at this time of Co-vid! Today I find is no different from any other day when it comes to what I think about the maniac in the Whitehouse.

And I never considered myself to be a hypochondriac. I trust my ability to know when to be concerned about my cough, (asthma); my body aches from arthritis, my reactions to gluten; but when I don’t feel very well, I’m taking my temperature. That’s different.

I comfort myself with music, cooking, wine, being in my Garden of Tranquility, and I get to sit here in my bathrobe writing at midmorning. So this new rhythm of life is now the way it is. I am blessed with the loving family in my life, with being in reach of Paul’s arms for a hug, with being able to offer love and comfort to others. This is the same as all other days, but not so. As Joni Mitchell sang: “Don’t it always seem to go; you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I know what I’ve got, and pray I don’t get the thing that’s taking so many lives.  That is how today is different from all other days. Knowing what we’ve got. 

Angel From Maywood

Too many people are hearing the actual “…sound of loneliness,”(John Prine). I grieve for this, although nothing in my immediate personal life is causing such deep sorrow. I do miss my brother-in-law Michael and dear friend Gary who died within a week of each other in October, 2018, but my grief is for my sister and close friend Terry, because they are now widowed and alone in this time of Covid-19 lockdown.  

I grieve for the tremendous losses and suffering of patients caused by this plague. I grieve for the overwhelming suffering of our medical people, who are not only devastated by their inability to keep people alive, but because they now are having to virtually connect family members to their dying relatives. I grieve for those who are dying away from the comfort of loving touch, and for the family members kept away from those they are losing. I grieve for my country, losing it’s good soul and being slaughtered by the selfish greed of the evil that has entrenched itself.

When Bill Withers died, I wept and kept singing Lean on Me the song for our times. We all need somebody to lean on. Then John Prine died of Covid-19 just a few days later, and I couldn’t stop crying. The tears were certainly for him and his kind heart, his triumph over so many other illnesses, and his beautiful songs. He is now an angel from Maywood, who wrote (among many songs)  Angel from Montgomery, and Hello in There. He’s now “shaking the hand of G-d” a line from……I grew up in Maywood, Illinois. I was born 3 years before John, and because Maywood was the home of my childhood, I just felt a special connection, even though I’d never met him.

My tears were cathartic and a release for all the sad in me. The sad is ongoing, for all the reasons I listed.  I listen to Bill Withers’s & John Prine’s songs. We were all given the joy of their music.  And I am comforted that there are so many good people: we can say “Hello in There” to the lonely, and offer people “somebody to lean on.” And we can work to take back our democracy. That is solace.

The Together /Apart Seders

My  sister-in-law Suzanne’s dear-departed mother once said:

“It should be a crime for families to be apart.”

It feels criminal now that we, who celebrate this holiday of Passover, centered in the home, and the quintessential holiday of our peoplehood, our ethics, our love of Torah, family, rituals and traditions, are celebrating scattered like matzoh crumbs. 

The time of being at one table, the time of having the youngest child ask the Four Questions, the time of laughing at the macho men choking on the moror (bitter herbs), and trying not to choke, or tear up from the heat, the time of even children getting a little shicker (drunk) because of the four glasses of wine), are all now in virtual reality; and in our memories of the real reality. Now all of us are eating whatever we can cook, having a Seder plate laden with whatever was availbale at the store, or online (for those of us who don’t shop for ourselves); this is now how we celebrate. 

We certainly can read the story of the Exodus, say the blessings, see each other’s Seder plates, Seder tables, each other’s faces. We can hear the laughter, the discussions, examine the search for meaning in the themes:  welcome the stranger, let all who are hungry come and eat, stand for freedom, stand for justice. 

However, we can only imagine the hugs, the deliciousness of shared food, the desire to sing together (it's impossible to coordinate singing virtually without edits). So this covid-19 plague time will, hereafter, be part of our “telling” every year at Pesach. And in addition to the last line in the Haggadah being “Next Year in Jerusalem”, we will say Next Year Together.

Our Virtual Togetherness

When shall we all meet again?

Whether sunshine, cloudy, or in rain? 

When the covid disease is done?

When our lockdown battle's won? 

Till then we're in ethereal space.

Still get to see each other’s face, 

We must assure our camera’s on,

Find a good hour for everyone. 

Google Hang Outs, Skype, What’s App, Zoom, 

FaceTime, “gathered” in a room, 

Sure it’s a screen, cameras to face 

A virtual visit to be in “one” place 

Apologies to William Shakespeare ©Sherry Fishman 

An Unpretty Ditty

April 2, 2020

It should make us livid.

Docs, & nurses, getting covid. 

No PPE’s for the heroes 

And Trump acts like Nero. 

It’s getting quite scary,

His lies make us wary. 

On the White House Lawn

His entourage must fawn.

The “President” campaigns 

While the Nation’s in pain, 

Illness and death stats grown. 

Our  Nation’s States are on their own! 

Changing Lyrics for Verse in the Now

March 31, 2020 

Woke up it was a Portland Mornin 

and the first thing that I saw, 

Was the sunlight on our new leafed trees 

I gazed outside in awe, 

At the hopegiving life all blooming 

While the the killer covid looms 

Hope shines outside my window 

A balm for all the gloom… 

My spin on Joni Mitchell’s song, “Chelsea Morning”  ©Sherry Fishman