From the Edge of Darkness 11: Hater

Trashcan; Charley Freiberg photo

Confessions of a Hater

For a little more than a year, I find I really, really dislike a whole lot more stuff than I like. The stuff I dislike – despise – hate – gets longer and longer, every week:

I hate that I haven’t been able to read the news for more than a year because every single day there are at least three items that make me wildly angry.

I hate that politicians are so concerned about keeping their jobs that there are very few willing to do the right thing for the country.

I hate that we have a president who makes being a US citizen embarrassing.

I hate that we have a president who is a danger to us and the rest of the world.

I hate that our president is stupid, foolish, racist, misogynistic, an assaulter of women, cruel, boorish, egotistical, functionally illiterate, a multi-time bankrupt, insults our allies and praises our enemies, has no comprehension of diplomacy, is rude and pushy to other foreign leaders, panders to the worst tendencies of his followers, doesn’t understand politics or history, lies, lies some more, rarely speaks a truth – so rarely it’s impossible to tell when he actually is – acts like an out-of-control four-year-old, doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, can’t listen, wastes our money, is selling-out our nation to increase his personal wealth…and more.

I hate that news journalists keep interviewing administration spokespeople who don’t answer questions, lie about everything, and don’t even make a pretense of dealing in reality.

I hate that we don’t have the national balls to end gun violence.

I hate that corrupt adults make fun of children who are demanding a change in our laws about guns, dismiss them utterly, or accuse them of being pawns of hazy conspiracy promoters.

I hate the prevalence of conspiracy lies and the people who deal in such either to gain fame, make money, or otherwise foment disruption and scare people.

I hate that we’re losing our national heritage of wild and natural places.

I hate that we’re pretending that we aren’t destroying our environment.

I hate that most commercial food is no longer real food, tortures the animals who become our food, and is poison.

I hate that in 2018 we’re still a country of racist pigs.

I hate that in 2018 we’re still having to deal with men who prey on women as a gender right.

I hate that people are so afraid of each other that they feel they have to walk around armed.

I hate the stupidity of people who walk around armed and believe they’re under control of their weapons and know what they’re doing. 

I hate that rich people continue to speedily get richer, and poor people continually fall further and further behind, and yet we vote for and praise people who are promoting that scam, against our own best interests.

I hate that we don’t have universal health care, and that people who can’t afford decent health insurance are suffering – still.

I hate that so many rich people are fighting against any raise in the minimum wage – even to $15/hour, which in this day and age is barely on the edge of a living wage in some parts of the country, and in other parts of the country is still below practical poverty level.

I hate that so many people fear and hate any other people who look/live/worship/sound/love different from them, and that our mistake of a president has made those fearful haters feel justified and heroic in their fearful hate and the acting out of it.

I hate that at least once every day, in response to something going on in our national horror show, I say, “Thank God I didn’t have children; thank God I’m 61 and not 21.”

I hate the lack of compassion for others displayed by a majority of politicians.

I hate that those in charge, who don’t need to draw on state and federal aid programs, suspect a majority of those who do need to draw on those aid programs in order to survive of scamming the system.

I hate that there are so few politicians willing to do the right thing for the whole country – or the whole state- and that the others have sold their souls to the NRA or other corrupt entities that are trying to manipulate our political system to benefit themselves and their own narrow interests.

I hate that we never hear politicians say the words “compassion,” “honor,” “compromise,” or “justice,” nowadays – except in an ironic sort of way.

I hate that so many people believe the lies they’re being told.

I hate that so many lies are being told that journalists have to be our memories and arbiters of truth and falsehood, because there’s just too much for the average person to keep sorted without help.

I hate that there are so many people jailed for things that don’t merit jail time, and we refuse to fix it.

I hate that our president is trying to prove his false premises about illegal immigrants and others on the bodies and lives of decent human beings whose lives he’s making a living hell.

I hate that late-night comedians are the people we need to go to in order to hear rational thought.

I hate that so few politicians express strong disgust at the nasty things that happen in politics nowadays.

I hate that our president has made us a target of ridicule around the world.

I hate that our president has made us untrustworthy as an international partner.

I hate that we’re so blind to our own national deficiencies that we pretend we’re number one in all sorts of things – healthcare, education, civil rights, for example – when we’re actually far down the list of the best.

I hate that I worry that we’re living in the first throes of the end of our national experiment.

I hate that I no longer believe that most people – read that “politicians” – are actually trying their best to be good, humane, responsible, reasonable, honest people.

And that’s just a start. 

Yup, I’m a hater. And proud of it.

Printed in the Concord Monitor, March 7, 2018, as "Confessions of a Hater."

Spring is a State of Mind

Sure, Mom, whatever you say... Deb Marshall photo

 

Last day of February: I hear geese honking overhead. It’s 60 degrees in the Upper Valley; in White River Junction, you need to hunt hard to find snow. 

In my yard on the southern border of the Upper Valley, there’s no need to hunt – there’s still plenty of snow, but also some widening patches of bare ground, and my driveway – which is more like a short road – is a stew of deepening mud, deep giant pools of frigid water, and a lot of rotting ice covering one or the other and some hidden patches of really slippery ice. It’s early, but we seem to be in that time of year when we wonder: if we get the car out of the driveway, will we be able to get it back in? And if we don’t, will we lose our boots slogging down the drive through the muck to the house, and how are we going to get groceries in and trash out this year; and should we warn the UPS guy and the milkman, or let them take their chances?

There are eight bare-ground inches between the southern wall of the house and the snow that still well-covers the raised beds; Catmandoo can get into this dry moat from either end, and he’s been making the most of it. I can tell because his fur is full of sand and dried leaves and little twiggy detritus from all the rolling he’s been doing in the moat. He demanded that I fetch out his porch chair from the cellar, so he can properly lounge in the warming sun on the kitchen wart (as he watches the birds and wards off the gang of squirrels for which I put out bird lure), and now the chair goes in, and out, in, and out, almost as often as he does. When he’s out having a roll in the dirt, Biscuit Beastreau will try to steal his chair. The sun has gotten strong enough now that she gets overheated quickly and has to seek shade, usually before His Lordship returns from his dirt-bath and discovers an interloper in his chair and has to beat her up. Catman doesn’t share.

Around the full moon there’ve been a lot of noisy, after-midnight cat races going on in the downstairs while we’re trying to sleep upstairs. Today I picked up the internal remains of a mousie that one of the Furry People left neatly on the kitchen door rug after one evening spree. I hope that means there’s been an end to this winter’s pantry mouse.

In New London, there have been sightings of a three-bear gang wreaking havoc on bird feeders, but I’ve seen no signs of our bear, yet. It’s early, but it’s been warm, so I flip the wart light on and count to 10 at night before stepping out to look about before letting the Barkie Boy out, just in case. I know for a fact that the skunks are out doing their skunky mating dance; and in the past week, I’ve met a couple of dogs who’ve been anointed.  At least five times a night, I say sternly to Abu, “Don’t go greet any black and white kitties you might see out there.” I don’t know why I bother: he’s mostly deaf, but he reads my mind pretty well so I’m hoping he picks up “leave ‘kitties’ alone” and not, “ooh, kitties! – go sniff them!” 

Why I think a stern warning from me would make any difference is a mystery. The First Hound, who was an even bigger boy, towered above skunks, but he loved what he thought of as kitties, and whenever he saw one out near the compost bin he’d race over and put his snoot between their legs below their nice, fluffy tails, and lift them off their feet. The skunks would let loose with the defensive spray and get him  on his massive chest on the way down from their snoot ride. Then he’d happily come back in the house and once in, before the tell-tale stink registered in my brain, shake shake shake all over the stove and kitchen rug and walls and, usually, me. Did I learn to hitch him up when I let him out at night so he couldn’t reach the lovely black and white kitties? Not a chance. Do I hitch Abu up before I let him out at night during skunk mating season? Ha! Do I wonder why I’m being that stupid every single time I let him out at night? Absolutely. Does it change what I’m doing? Do you have to ask?

Second day of March: Oh boy, it’s wet out there. I can tell it’s at least pseudo-spring, though, because my first patient today cancelled his appointment this morning because he needed to boil sap. When you gotta boil, you gotta boil. Stomach bug vigorously going around has further reduced my patient load today, so I rescheduled the remaining patient and I’m home, avoiding working on the tax thing – oh, how I hate working on the tax thing! – by catching up on correspondence and writing a blog article that isn’t all politics and doom. Well, unless you count the mud in my driveway, which turns it into a pit that can suck you directly to hell.

Winter Prittithangs; Deb Marshall photo

Daytimes recently have been too warm to use the woodstove; some nights are, too. More and more often I find myself going to bed all bundled up in the winter flannels, and 30 minutes later starting to shed bits – first the jammie bottoms, then the jammie top, then the feet come out from under the blankets, then a blanket comes off. By morning I’m chilly again and trying to figure out where I flung all the flannel bits in my sleep so I can warm up and sleep another half hour.

Today’s storm hasn’t been too awful, so far, at least not over here  away from the coast; but the weather folks keep promising further horrors to come before midnight. I’m glad to be here at home, where I can look out and see the jays and chickadees and the little black birds snatching seeds off the wart railings, and the squirrels sneaking up to the far ends where they aren’t visible from the window. Every so often I’ll open the kitchen door just for the pleasure of watching the squirrel gang – sometimes as many as six at a time – race across the driveway, up the snow bank, and into the trees. One day I was treated to the sight of one of the squirrels finding its path up the snowbank to be too slippery, and it slid down over and over, all four feet paddling uselessly,  in what I imagine to be a total panic before it finally found a grip. Interesting as this is, neither of the Furry People nor the Barkie Boy try to chase the squirrels  anymore, but I can hear them laughing as the squirrels dash off. Then the two Furry People will get up onto the rail and plant themselves, barely moving, amidst the birdseed for awhile. The chickadees ignore them and just move to the far end of the rail. They know that by the time a Furry Person rises out of their sphinx-like reverie and skitters down the length of the rail, they’ll have had plenty of time to  grab the delicious seed and fly off.

The pile of seed catalogs has grown tall; I keep telling myself that if I finish the tax prep, I can reward myself by starting to peruse the summer garden possibilities. But you know – out my back window, past the pink prittithang and the last freesia in bloom, and the tall spires of calla lilies that poked through their pot this past week, it still looks like winter. Yes, it’s possible to get to the compost bin now without having to clamber over snow banks; and yes, the top third or more of the compost bins have emerged from the deep snow. But it’s still all white out there, and I’m still pretty sure we’ll have more snow, whether we want it or not. I won’t believe in spring yet until Mother Nature proves it.

What it really looks like outside; Charley Freiberg photo

I could be surprised! But I still remember that February thaw when we lived in Maine, that completely cleared the snow off the little protected garden next to my kitchen door, and thawed and warmed the dirt. I eagerly planted lettuce seed, thinking how much fun I’d have calling my family in NH and crowing about how I was eating fresh salad greens from my garden in February. Two days later, someone was laughing, but it wasn’t me, as the weather gods dumped more than a foot of snow back on top of my precious winter garden.

A taste of yum: take a bite of a cube of smoked cheese and some candied ginger together – you’ll think that summer has arrived, for a moment!

 For the blog alone, 2 March 2018.

From the Edge of Darkness 10: Gun Gal 4

Charley Freiberg photo

When January 1 rolled around, I thought maybe I’d make a list: how many shootings take place in New Hampshire in the Concord area every week? Barely into January, there were more than 10; and then there was a school shooting elsewhere; and now, six weeks into a year that’s new enough that folks are still sometimes writing the wrong date on their checks, there have been a whole lot more local shootings, and four school shootings around the country.

I can’t tell you how many people have been shot in New Hampshire so far this year. I found that I couldn’t bring myself to write them down. I don’t have the constitutional or emotional capacity to do it every single day. I can tell you that during the short time I tried, there was at least one shooting reported at least every other day, and those were only the ones that happened in the Concord area, not in our bigger cities, not up north, not on the coast or in western NH. And I can also tell you that the shootings weren’t part of a bigger crime – not part of robberies or kidnappings, for example. They were people who knew each other shooting at each other, because apparently, that’s how many gun owners solve disagreements. One struggles not to wish they were better shots, to start solving the problem through attrition.

This past week, once again, we had to listen to our clueless leader intone “we all grieve with you” words at the families who lost loved ones in the latest school shooting. “We’re all one family in the US, united in our grief,” he said, or some such thing. Once again, he’s wrong. We aren’t one big family, and we aren’t all grieving with the families whose child or spouse or friend was murdered. We’re two families, and we’re of two completely different minds about the gun violence that’s tearing us apart. We’re families at war with each other, and it’s a war that’s literally killing us.

Members of one of those families, hearing about the latest massacre, want more fire power, more easily acquired, faster, more deadly, with fewer and fewer limitations on who can own it and where they can wield it  and what kinds of weapons  are available – the better to get the bad guy before the bad guy gets them is the disingenuous justification.

You can be pretty sure that many members of that family spent the weekend in gun shops and on line buying more weapons, while funerals for murder victims in Florida were taking place. The other family tries vainly to batten down the hatches, to make our public buildings more impervious to attack - which of course is impossible – the equivalent of buttressing up the fort during an extended siege by an enemy which is not only armed to the teeth, but is mostly invisible and living with their arsenals undetected amongst us. Besides that, we keep our fingers crossed tightly and knock wood a lot – haven’t been shot at yet!

I don’t want to hear any more about how this latest shooter is insane. Of course he’s insane – sane people don’t pick up a gun and go out shooting at other people on purpose. The same can be said about all the local gun nuts who shoot at each other or other people they know – they’re out of their right minds, too, sometimes caused by too much alcohol, or too many drugs, or too many out-of-control hormones, or too easily fired-up tempers. We don’t need to talk about what anyone knew or didn’t know, or suspected or didn’t suspect about the most recent shooter(s) – it doesn’t help to know, and it doesn’t change anything.  Shoot someone else on purpose and it’s a given – you aren’t mentally competent, and you shouldn’t have had access to a gun. Maybe you were sane yesterday, but the day you went hunting humans, you definitely weren’t. Maybe it makes people feel better if they think someone else recognized the insanity but didn’t say anything about it before people were murdered, but it shouldn’t. The whole nation is culpable every time someone shoots up other people, because we’ve allowed it to happen, over and over again, and we do nothing – nothing - to put an end to it.

The insanity we need to talk about is our own. The insidious insanity that enables us to make mouth noises about the horror of it all, and not actually do something about the problem. The group insanity that allows us to no longer be shocked that only six weeks into a new year, we’ve already had FOUR SCHOOL SHOOTINGS and all we’ve done is pledge to make schools harder to get into – more locks, more bullet-proof glass, more metal detectors, more emergency drills. The incomprehensible insanity that keeps us from putting some serious hurt on our other family’s ability to get and hoard more weapons; that doesn’t do something big and terrible to people who own guns and don’t keep them well locked up; to people who put weapons in the hands of strangers in exchange for a few dollars and a nose-thumbing at the concept of responsibility; the insanity of encouraging commerce and manufacture of weapons for private citizens without any requirements for safety and competence. The incomprehensible insanity that lets us go along with the status quo when we know for a fact that there are many more of us than there are of them, and we all agree we want to make it stop, and yet, we don’t make it stop. How many more years, how many more politicians, how many more pay-offs, how many more threats, how many more dead children, dead neighbors, dead family members, dead friends and neighbors, before we snap out of it and act like sane people?

Are we totally stupid? Have we forgotten that there are some things about which we shouldn’t compromise? Have we lost the ability to weigh a human life against the right to own any and every gun one likes, and see that the human life is far, far more precious and worthier of preserving?

Our respect and value for human beings has been seriously eroded, replaced by an undefined we. We have the right to own guns; we are being threatened by Muslims/Mexicans/foreigners/gays/liberals/you name it. We need to hold onto every little bit of what we’ve got, and the individual who is consequently being terrorized and damaged beyond repair be damned. 

We need to snap out of it, before it’s too late. I was reminded recently of a line from Angels in America (by Tony Kushner): the Angel says “Before Life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible/ It will for a long time before have become completely unbearable.”  

We’re there, in most areas of our national experiment. And if we continue to act like the fixes are impossible, we’re going to exist for a very, very long time in the completely unbearable.  We need to howl like wolves, drowning out the snapping and snarling of the dogs who shout about gun ownership rights. We need to be loud and we need to howl daily and publically, with letters and votes and money and public shaming, until we force a change. Putting serious restrictions on weapons owned by just folks isn’t going to make any of those people’s lives impossible, but it will cut down on how many other lives have been made unbearable. 

Thank you, from the heart, to the gun-owner in Florida who voluntarily surrendered his semi-automatic weapon to the police and encouraged other gun owners to follow his lead, saying that he enjoyed his gun, but that no civilian needs to own such a thing: that man is a true American hero, and possibly the most sane amongst us. Now, how about the rest of the gun owners – are you sane enough to man up and follow his lead?


Published in the Concord Monitor, February 21, 2018, as "Stop the Carnage: Unbearable days in a gun-infested America."

Lunar Yuks

Lunar Yuks

Our whacky lunar shenanigans this year are completely charming me with their ironic humor and outright hilarity. Best jokes ever, and boy, have I appreciated the excuse to laugh, for a change.

First up: Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day, this year, is also Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent. Lent, for those of you who don’t know, is the period of many weeks that precedes Easter, and it’s a very somber time in the Christian calendar. We, as a human group, have been very, very bad; and one of us is going to save all of us from ourselves by becoming the ultimate sacrifice.

Catholics, and maybe Episcopalians, go to church on Ash Wednesday to get their foreheads smeared with an oily mix of ashes, in the shape of a cross. “Remember, Man,” the priest intones, looking deeply into their eyes as he makes the ashy symbol on each church members’ forehead, “that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

Bummer! Modern translation: Okay, bub, here’s the truth – whatever you like to think about how great and worthwhile you are, actually, you’re nothing - just dirt. Not only that, but you’re going to die, die, die, dirt eternal!

During Lent, many Christians make some sort of sacrifice to honor the ultimate sacrifice the Saviour made. Many of those Lenten sacrifices are to give up something that’s a luxury, or enjoyable – like chocolate!  (When we were kids, my mother the pope gave us special dispensation to take a single day off from our Lenten dessert fast on St. Patrick’s day, so I could eat a piece of my friend Wendy’s birthday cake.) 

So today, after being reminded in pretty basic terms that essentially you’re a worthless clod of dirt, this year you then show up for your Valentine’s Day date, still wearing your ashy cross (because you aren’t supposed to wash it off). Your honey looks deeply into your eyes, and tells you that you’re the most important thing in the world and a cherished gem…and presents you with a lovely, specially-made heart-shaped luxurious dessert that you can’t eat because you just gave up sweet things for Lent!

This year’s celestial layers of irony about one's essential worthiness, and what one gives up and what one is given (remind anyone of a particular Christmas story about haircombs and watches?), have had me giggling all day. But the better celestial joke is yet to come.

Easter is the day the Saviour rose from the dead, saving mankind from – well, from being nothing but an eternal pile of dust, essentially. Through his mercy, we become cherished children of God again. And the Easter Bunny shows up with basketloads of chocolates to reward us for our long Lenten sacrifice.

Except this year – April Fools!

Lunar Strangeness

January was a blue moon month –two full moons; and that February is, consequently, a no-moon month – how often does that happen, and what is it called? And that means that March will also have two full moons. Checking The Old Farmer’s Almanac ahead for the rest of the year, there are no more blue moons scheduled, and certainly no more missing-moon months. Checking the Space.com website – which is a kind of nifty website, it turns out – they call January’s second full moon the “Super Blue Blood Moon” and inform us that there will also be a total lunar eclipse of it. 

There are a couple of other interesting juxtapositions in the first quarter of this year: Valentine’s Day is also Ash Wednesday, which means some folks who get chocolates from their sweetie on Valentine’s Day won’t be able to eat any because they gave up chocolate for Lent; and my favorite – Easter Sunday is also April Fool’s Day! There’s cosmic commentary for you!

The critters get kind of whacky around full moons, and last month was no exception. The Barkie Boy nightly delivered a squeaky toy that he dropped at my feet so I could toss it down the hall, over and over and over, making it squeak dementedly as he raced back with it in his mouth. Not bad for a mostly-deaf 16-year-old hound. Catman was in full, overloaded coon cat mode: shredding whatever caught his attention with his extra-large paws, in an elegant long stretch taking up more than half the critters’ side of my bed and daring the Barkie Boy to do anything about it, leaving the dog to curl up in a tight, nervous ball at the foot of the bed; and demanding attention and hissing when he doesn’t get enough. 

Winter Lace; Deb Marshall photo

Beastreau Biscuit, besides doing a rocket-speed race around the house every so often for no apparent reason, has renewed her dedicated mousing night-time activities – that kind of stimulation I can happily support, unless she brings another live one up from the cellar to join the fall kitchen mouse in the pantry, where it seems to have moved and has wreaked havoc with a bag of peanut butter cups I forgot was stashed there.  

I think I’m happier with the mousie hiding somewhere in the pantry than I was when it was doing a nightly dance across the top of my kitchen counters. The ripening tomatoes have been safe, and I’m not constantly cleaning up mousie poop, but I haven’t managed to discover where pantry mouse is nesting, yet.  Many bags of strong-smelling mint have been scattered about the pantry shelves, hoping to discourage Mousie, and I just hope that doesn’t drive her back into the kitchen. Some day soon (after I’ve finished the tax prep, after I’ve gotten a few other important items scratched off the to-do list) I’m going to have to haul everything out of the pantry and see if I can find Mousie’s lair.

Full moons affect people, too. I can guarantee that more than half my patients will find themselves more sensitive to needle insertion for the week surrounding a full moon, and when I was teaching t’ai chi, there would be a week when no one could remember moves they’d done for a decade, they’d lose their balance, and it was hard to keep the class’s attention. Students who are psychiatrists or psych nurses have told me they dread full moon nights – their patients will have exacerbated symptoms, and whoever’s on call is sure to be called, over and over. Policemen also tell us that full moons create interesting work conditions.

People are animals, deep under the skin, no matter how sophisticated we think we are. The full moon pulls on the sea that is us, as surely as it changes the size of tides in the ocean. We may not notice that we’ve been affected, but we should just assume we are. 

Which makes me extra nervous about our current state of affairs. We have a man-child sitting in the President’s seat, who has proven over and over that he has little sense about what’s appropriate and no filters; and he’s surrounded by advisors – and maybe a few keepers who must be frustrated, irritated, and who are only partially successful – who are as tone-deaf or as self-centered and sociopathic as the man-child himself. Congress, which is filled with more patron-sensitive lackeys than patriots, has proven itself incapable of doing anything that it bipartisanly agrees on, much less the things it can’t agree on – it’s not going to save us if the man-child throws a dangerous tantrum. Alas.

I’m not sure what ancient peoples did to calm the waters during crazy times, but maybe we should find out and try it. Nothing else seems to be working.

And just in case keep your fingers crossed for the next few months, don’t walk under any ladders, don’t cross any black cat’s path, and don’t read Twitter rants.  A little salt tossed over one’s shoulder wouldn’t hurt, especially if it happened to disable a certain someone's technology toys.