[Above photo: Could this be better?!! Pinelands Farm cross country tracks]

6 February 2022

Portland is well-adjusted to snow. Plows are everywhere. Big rumbling ones clearing the streets. Entrepreneurs with hydraulic blades on the front of their pickups, scraping driveways and parking lots. All manner of small and tiny self-propelled plows zipping up and down sidewalks, like the scoopers in Paris. And why is it that Parisians, looking down their long Gallic noses, are above bagging and disposing of their own pup’s poop?  Do they, in fact, not poop and, thus, are overwhelmingly surprised and repulsed by their dog’s business?

Somehow, I link it to their withering attitude towards those of us attempting to speak their language. Yes, we often butcher it. But isn’t it better to try? Isn’t that more respectful than simply being impatient with them for not grasping our tongue? I recall being at a cocktail gathering in Berkeley for a visiting French analyst.  Our son was at Ecole Bilingue and at that moment was in France for a several week exchange. He was in “Puteaux”. “Eh?” “Puteaux.” “Eh?”  This enlightening exchange continued for awhile, me trying to twist my tongue impossibly and use extreme glottal stops. Finally, on my last try, “Puteaux.” “Oh. Of course, Puteaux.”, drawn out dramatically.  Under her breath, no doubt, saying, “Why didn’t this dolt say so in the first place?” He and his sister, of course, were so fluent that they could pass, since they’d been immersed in it since kindergarten.

We had a big snowfall last weekend, which encouraged me to drive to Pinelands Farm, some 35 minutes distant. It is 5000 multiuse acres with 30km of groomed trails through meadows and woods. I seem to get lost in these places, as I had the day before at Riverside Golf Course.  This means, for me at least, 35km of groomed trails. Both days were glorious, bright sunshine and temperatures in the low 20’s, keeping the snow fast. In fact, I liked it so much that after my extended tour I returned to the Outdoor Center and applied the day’s pass fee to a membership for the entire season. It is unbelievably good upper and lower body exercise, given my inefficient movements. I have a rueful admiration for the young ‘uns who skate past at half again my speed. It is not easy to grow up and old.  “I used to race cross country in Colorado in high school.”, I mutter under my breath.

Friday we had about 3-4inches of snow (?sleet) as fine as sand. It was gritty and as light as talc as I swept if off the roof and windows of my car on Saturday.   A perfect day for skiing, I thought, as I squinted into the bright sun, driving through a wonderland of snowy woods and fields heading for Pinelands. Once there and on the trails, it was another story. 19F with a windchill factor lowering it to 4F. My nose immediately began to freeze so I put on a comfortable 3 layer tight-fitting face mask that my sister-in-law manufactures. (The middle layer is virus-trapping polyester fabric. GreenPeaPie.etsy.com) Since my nose runs in the cold, pretty soon the mask was saturated. And I was gasping, truly gasping, for breath. I wondered if I was having a coronary but had no chest pain. It being so cold and windy and I, feeling breathlessly vulnerable, turned back to the Outdoor Center, put my skis in the car, and ate lunch in the café, chastened. When I got home, I was beat, having exercised only 30-40 minutes. Later I realized that I was waterboarding myself, trying to breath rapidly and deeply thorough a soaked cloth. However, it made me feel old in a way I haven’t felt before. Accepting my ageing is taking some adjustment.

It is snowing lightly now, again, a gentle fall of large flakes, like a flock of shedding geese passing over.  [Maybe the MyPillowGuy is finally self-destructing!]  It’s 20F and dropping to 4F tonight. This afternoon I walked for a few miles, taking lunch at Sichuan and passing down to the waterfront so I’d have a hill to climb home. For reasons unclear to me, I am pretty breathless going uphill. I feel great on the level and perhaps just need to do more hills, gently and repetitively.

I’d forgotten about slush. I kind of like it, since my boots keep my feet dry. It is a funny admixture of two states of matter, liquid and solid. If we looked closely enough, probably some is evaporating in a gaseous state, as well. Since it hasn’t been above 25F for the past 3 days, it must be the pressure of tires and feet that heat the snow. Perhaps it is salt added to lower the freezing point. We used to dread it, which now puzzles me. Since we couldn’t use it for fun—snowballs, snow angels, snowmen, sledding, skiing —and it seemed determined to get our feet wet and cold, we scorned it. By April I may lose my admiration for slush. I say ‘admiration’ since holding an intermediate position—-neither solid nor liquid, passive nor aggressive, not forcing nor yielding—is not easy. Witness the state of American political polarization. The Middle Ground is elusive for most of us.

Jamelle Bouie wrote a very helpful article in the NYTimes today. It concerned Whoopi Goldberg’s innocent ignorance expressed on The View about the Holocaust: “It wasn’t racism. It was white people against white people.” Bouie’s point is that racism is not defined by skin color, rather by “the belief that human beings can be delineated into categories that share immutable biological traits distinguishing them from one another and determining their potential and behavior”.  As in Superior Race and Inferior Races. It has been used for centuries to group humans into classes: who deserve to be royalty, clerics, wealthy merchants, soldiers, professionals, the proletariat, slaves, etc. It is a way of justifying, solidifying, and excusing the practices of the ruling elite who determine the rules of the game. The essay was very helpful to me in trying to understand the genesis of the primal, and tribal, struggles with which our nation is aborning, yet again.  My only direct experience of birth and the pain has earned my respect..                                

[Above photo: Skiing at Riverside today.]

30 January 2022

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Norm is 84yo and has been running the same 1 chair barbershop in the same tiny, two-story flatiron building on Congress Street for over 60 years. The last scalping he gave me in late October was sufficient for 3 months. Getting bushy over the ears and on the back of my neck, I returned this week, risking all. The basic haircut, I’ve discovered in Malawi, Myanmar, and Maine, is close-cropped sides and only slightly longer hair on top, giving me the look of a yokel or a Tatmadaw (Myanmar army) Private.

“How would you like it?” “Just trim it back over the ears and up my neck. Leave the top long.” “OK”. We chat. He tells me how accurate the Farmer’s Almanac is at predicting the severity of the coming winter weather, snipping away. “They look at the thickness of fur on the animals, how many nuts are the squirrels storing, something about the bees and about the birds.” Meanwhile, he is cutting the sides and top short. He puts the warm foam on my neck and scoops it off with a straight razor. We talk a little about covid and kayaks. Then he recaps the patter about the Farmer’s Almanac, word for word. And I realize he has re-lathered my neck and is shaving it a second time. I don’t have the heart to call his attention to it. I pay and tip him $2, he thanks me, and I look in the mirror at the identical haircut I got the last time. I suppose we all have our defaults and when our minds begin to slip, we rely on those. I’ll see him again in late April.

Upon awakening this week I thought about my first class of Child Psychiatrists in Myanmar and decided to write an email to one of them, Hnin Aye. She was a quick study and a very unassuming star in the class, first on both written and oral examinations and very thorough and intuitive with children and parents. She doesn’t have a child, which saddens her. She used to accompany me each day for a few blocks as I headed home from lecture in the late afternoon and we would talk. Her husband is in the merchant marine, at 35yo a First Mate about to take his Captain’s examinations. Hnin is always so happy to see him when he returns after 4-6 months travelling the world on a massive container ship. “We just love to chat with each other.” The two of them took me out to my favorite Wa (an ethnic group) restaurant in Yangon. Despite her talents, for Hnin is also a terrific teacher, I could not persuade her to enter an academic track.  She prefers to live in simple quarters in Maubin, a small delta town, and work in the district hospital and in her private clinic.

As I was having breakfast at 7:30AM, I scanned my emails to find one from her, sent at 4:20AM my time. My phone charges overnight in the kitchen, so I hadn’t seen it previously. We don’t communicate regularly and haven’t exchanged emails for perhaps 4 months. So how did that happen? I have had other, similar, experiences, anticipating something or deciding to contact someone and they turn up unexpectedly.  I think there must be channels of communication of which we are unaware. I know others have tried to explore this and it all sounds a bit woo-woo to me but how unlikely for it to be coincidence. I haven’t thought about her since our last exchange. Ah, sweet mystery of life! On the other hand, I get no response from sticking pins into a tiny replica of 45!

Prior to my lung cancer I gave blood regularly. The blood bank was a short walk from my house in Berkeley and it seemed like an easy way to be helpful. After my cancer and multiple chemotherapies I was not allowed to do so. I think there was an unsubstantiated fear that blood-borne tumor cells might contaminate my donation. I was told that 5 years after I was cured, I could resume giving. Now the delay has been reduced to 1 year. Listening to Morning Edition this week I learned of a blood shortage.  The Director of the blood bank at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville said that instead of a 3-4 day reserve, they had only 1 day and that it reflected a national dearth. I made an appointment that day at our local blood bank and donated a unit. The nurse, Laura, noticed a mole with very irregular margins on my left bicep. “You’d better have that looked at.”

Now that attention was called to it, it suddenly seemed to me it had been growing and it was remarkably irregular at its edges.  However, it wasn’t the multicolored demon I associate with melanoma. But then there is amelanotic melanoma.  The following afternoon I had it biopsied. The 5 days until I received a phone call relaying that the biopsy was benign seemed a month. I recalled how difficult it had been to await the results of PET scans, MRIs, multiple biopsies, and even the surgical pathology report when I had lung cancer.  Knowing it was in me, growing and spreading, it seemed an eternity until I was able to schedule surgery and have the primary tumor removed. And my treatment went as rapidly and optimally as could be in a well-organized medical system. It alerts me to the fact that I am nowhere near to accepting my final breath on this tortured but miraculously lovely planet.

Prayers are sometimes, eventually answered. Portland received a good blanket of white yesterday.

As for today’s title, its members were the audience for a pamphlet written by Mr. Kurtz, as noted by Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness.  I certainly wasn’t prepared to absorb that tale in depth as an undergraduate. On a recent re-reading with a bit more life experience, I found it compelling, mixing as he does power, charisma, and intelligence with lust, corruption, and evil. “Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.  The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself.” Of course, Mr. Kurtz wrote in the margin at the end of his pamphlet: “Exterminate all the brutes!”

Which brings me to the swelling stream of revelations by the January 6^th Committee of the extensive plans to interrupt the peaceful transfer of office and power from one president to the next at the conclusion of our last national election. The louder the cries of “Witch Hunt!”, the more assiduously should we shine a light on those howling and on their actions. False electors? Encouraging a riot? Looking for “just a few more votes”? A Power Point plan? Attempting to corrupt his vice-president? Refusing to interfere with mayhem in our Capital? Plans to seize the voting machines? Martial law? Continuing The Big Lie?

“He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: ‘The horror! The horror!’”

[Above photo: Three generations at Beach Island, 1980]

23 January 2022

Counterintuitive Einsteinian propositions like there are places in the Universe where there is no time, matter can be so compressed that a mote can weigh more than the Earth, energy and matter are equivalent, or its not important whether you choose to pay for the subway or to jump the turnstile are appealing to me now. Time, for example, expands and contracts according to our perception of it. How long were the summer days when I was a child, playing in the lake, rowing a boat and towing a toy one, or trying to catch a perch? Now days move with such rapidity that their passage is difficult to even notice!

In response to this, perhaps, and realizing that (my) time is finite, I am bringing order to my life. I am scanning and organizing all photos and negatives, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of the latter. I just spent an hour cleaning off my Desktop, deleting, refiling, and so forth. My p-Touch label maker was compromised; I left batteries in it, thoughtlessly, and after 4 years in storage they leaked, corroding the poles. All efforts to clean the latter were insufficient to restore it to health.  I gambled ($10) and ordered a power cord and have revived it. Now I have labelled my new skis and poles, as well as my many file-folders and anything else I can think of. I’ve scanned most of my writings and organized them into categories (labelling the notebooks). This is all so antithetical to my basic nature that I surprise myself. It is wonderful to be able to instantly find what you are seeking, unless the search itself is the goal, like stumbling upon a breathtakingly beautiful village in the Shan Hills of Myanmar or roaming through Paris. And, I certainly have time on my hands, given that it is below freezing outside every day and we are starved of snow. I do walk an hour or so each day, using a face mask to cover my nose and a knit choker to keep the lower half of my face from chill.

My sister called me and was upset that I was publicly (here) criticizing our now-40 years deceased mother. I respect her concerns, although I feel differently about it than she does. I am using this blog for many reasons. It began as a letter to family, friends, and patients, a not-so-intimate recording of my experiences and thoughts/feelings as I endured the discomforts and terrors of lung cancer and its treatment. Then it became a snapshot of each week as I worked in and wandered through Malawi and Myanmar. With the novelty of those settings no longer available to me, I have turned inward and am reviewing my life-to-date. And in the process, I find that having a witness or 30, for I have never attempted to publicize my blog, helps me to write and to remember. I don’t feel a need or desire to resume psychotherapy or analysis.  I have panned much of the gold out of that stream over my lifetime. And I am not in distress.

It upset my sister, however, for which I am sorry. Her conscious thought was that it would damage our mother’s reputation. Mom was an amazing person and did a lot of good in the world, helping both patients, organizations, friends, family, and even those who helped her. She assisted her housekeeper’s son through college and graduate school, for example. Many of her patients sent us notes at her death, writing of their gratitude for her help. I doubt that many of my few readers actually knew my mother.

As I am learning, it can be painful to revisit the failings of a loved one, especially how they have failed us. It hurts more to have them stirred up if we have put those injuries, and their inflictor, comfortably to rest inside us.

I don’t need this blog to be True Confessions, nor my version of Mommy Dearest. I do want it to be more than affable, inoffensive, and bland. In addition to being boring, in the blandness is a dishonesty, portraying someone as faultless when they were not.  A person who overcomes external hardships, whether in the forms of bad luck or poor judgment, or those internal, such as mental illness of any degree of severity, is much larger and more admirable to me than one who manages to avoid those.  That my mother had a difficult childhood, her parents vocally wishing the second daughter were a boy and then to be followed by two boys, makes her accomplishments shine more brightly. That she had 3 serious depressions, was widowed with two young children, and then proceeded to complete psychiatry, child psychiatry, and psychoanalytic training and subsequently exercise her skills with care and intelligence is more worthy of my admiration than if she hadn’t experienced those adversities.

Another aspect of this question intrigues me. Like guardrails or warning signs on a mountain road, would an atmosphere of openness about current relationships and behaviors favorably influence future behaviors?  We celebrate “great” leaders, like Alexander, Cyrus, and the Pharaohs, as well as great edifices like the mighty stone fortresses that dot the globe. If we were honest about the blood costs of their conquests and those constructions, the cruelty and slavery involved, etc. it would temper our adulation, I think. As with an ordinary schlemiel like myself, for example, if I know that my actions will be readily viewable by others, might it exert a beneficial effect on my behavior? 

It seems to me that the CRT struggle, not that most Republicans actually care about its substance other than as a useful wedge issue, is about transparency and understanding.  Don’t talk about things in class that might “upset” a child. What preparation for life is that? Even animals who clearly lack conscious awareness can learn from their mistakes; don’t lick the hot stove, don’t run into the road without looking because it hurt like the devil the last time you did. “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Santayana reminds us.

Of course, there are places for privacy. Children shouldn’t be privy to their parents’ sex life, as much as is possible, or their parents’ filicidal fantasies.  Therapists must be scrupulously confidential about their clients.  Statements that would merely wound someone else should be withheld. Secrecy between peers should often be honored.

What is unsaid, however, is often absolute poison in a relationship. The extremes are with infidelity and with incest, I suppose, although concealed past experiences, including crimes, that have shaped one member of a relationship(s) can exact a terrible price on all.

It is a slippery slope, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean we should simply mount the escalator down a secure, confined tunnel. These issues can be considered. Moving ever toward transparency and communication feels progressive to me. I suspect that many of the couples who were not able to talk with each other about their sex lives in the first half of the 20^th century experienced no end of misery as a result.

I am unsure here and I recognize a quality of defensiveness in what I am writing. But it does help me to understand my past to put these things on paper to be witnessed. I wouldn’t have done it when my mother was alive, as it would have hurt her. I choose to think that if she knew it would help me to do this, she would agree to it, evidence of her sense of culpability and love of her child (81yo child!). These are complicated questions with no simple answers.

I hesitate to say it but it appears that the noose(s) is tightening.  A conviction on Fraud may provide a fitting term for a man who is estimated to have told 30,000 untruths (averaged 21/day) in his 4 years as president. Then again, Sedition, relating to interruption of the peaceful transfer of power after an uncompromised election, is waving a flag. No breath-holding here, but things are looking up. Of course, that might mean we’ll have a 2024 candidate who would prohibit discussions in schools of slavery and racial inequality lest they cause “discomfort”, who plans to empower a squad of “Election Police” to discourage non-existent fraud, and who denounces and forbids mask mandates. I think he is a bit smarter than DT, though perhaps not as cunning.

[Above photo: An amaryllis in front of a painting of Bagan, representing the old, cruel royal kingdom. Not so different from the current military dictatorship.]

16 January 2022

Lord, the trouble with writing a blog, or ageing, begins when you recognize you are repeating yourself! I told the story of ski racing in Colorado twice. I generally read the previous post or two before beginning to write. Well, I suppose you can just skip over repetitions. Or maybe you are getting old enough you don’t notice.

Portland was built with bricks. In the port area, there are many old brick buildings. Up a few streets in Downtown, are many more, often of a quite lovely design—-probably banks or something prosperous. The large homes here are often of brick. It isn’t earthquake country, clearly. Which brings me to the sidewalks. You guessed it, brick. Get a little moisture from rain or snowmelt, let it freeze and, voila, all of Portland is a big skating rink. I tend to walk in the streets when the sidewalks are really treacherous.

I went for a walk yesterday, 9 degrees but with the wind chill factored, -8. I was doing OK until I turned to walk into the wind. My nose instantly felt like a piece of wood and I had visions of frostbite, gangrene, and amputation. It is one of the really grim aspects of facial burns or Hanson’s Disease (leprosy).  Looking into someone’s bare nasal cavity is shocking and repellent beyond what is warranted. I put my glove over my nose and headed home.

I recall being incredibly cold at the top of a ski race in Climax, Colorado. The wind was also howling, blowing loose snow about. We were a tough bunch, I think, to tolerate that without loss of digits.  When it snowed in the evening in Denver proper, I’d often take my skis, my car, and a length of rope and drive by 2 or 3 friend’s homes. Then we’d take turns, one driving and the others on skis hanging onto the rope which was tied to the bumper. We would stick to less-travelled streets where the snow was good and often head for City Park. It was flat and poorly illuminated so if we turned off our headlights we could drive through it on the grass, hoping not to hit a tree. We didn’t damage anything and it was so much fun!

In writing my memoir, the details are prompted by old photographs, letters, diary entries, a surprising amount of mediocre poetry, and, most helpfully, dreams. My dreams and my associations to them are helping me remove a lot of thorns from my soul in that they allow me to assess details of my past anew. The central attachment figure for me growing up was my mother, similar to many of us. She had amazing and wonderful talent and spirit but also a very negligent and destructive side, especially when slighted.

Aren’t you a little bit old and a little far down the road to be sorting this out now? I ask myself. Do it when you can, I reply. I was able to make peace enough with her when she was living that we could enjoy each other’s company. I’d buy her plane tickets to visit. She also liked my wife a lot; and was a little frightened of her, I think, since she didn’t fit comfortably into any of my mother’s customary boxes.

I have been formed in many parts by my relationship to her, learning to be careful and measured when with her, especially if she was on a tear. I recall a crucial moment, for me, between my medical school graduation in NY and starting my internship in Seattle.  I travelled to Mexico for several weeks and was supposed to head to Denver a week or more before the start of my internship. Mom had invited my older brother and his family to visit from Virginia and we were all to head to Mesa Verde. It was her plan, not mine. I certainly loved them but needed some wildness, sandwiched as I was between so much hard work, long hours, and incredible self-discipline.

While in Mexico I met an anthropology PhD student, Winfred Pulst, from Heidelberg University and he invited me to accompany him. We flew into the jungle in the Chiapas Highlands and lived in a tiny hut on a small lake in a village of about 80 Lacandon Indians. They were Mayans whose ancestors, by virtue of their remote jungle habitat, had never encountered the Spanish. It was an incredible experience, once in a lifetime. But it meant I couldn’t join my family for a trip in Colorado.

My mother was furious, leaving me an angry note, no money, and no car key when I finally got home to Denver. Rather than feel guilty, as I ordinarily would, I thought about the stresses of medical school and internship, decided that I deserved to take my vacation as I wished, and was able to brush off her rage. We’d all experienced it so much growing up, mixed with her other and remarkable qualities, that it wasn’t a surprise.

I had two dreams last night that recalled both sides of her and it felt terrific to write it all down clearly. On balance, she did remarkably well with what she had and had been given but she left all of us with scars of varying length and depth.

My current life is centered on inner experience, not the exotic externalities of, say, Myanmar or Africa. This may mean that my blog posts will devolve, about which I have mixed feelings, into memories and reflections.  They will likely be of more interest to me in writing than they will be to an audience reading them, suggesting that I should just write and not publish.

I do think that part of my resiliency, as one of you queried recently, is that I have attempted to externalize my struggles in order to better see them. I have stacks of notebooks reaching back to college. I had more but my mother threw away my locked footlocker with all my Harvard possessions when she moved across town. It was clearly labelled and she didn’t ask me what I would like done with it. It’s another example of her impulsive indifference to her children, I think. She moved from one huge house to another even larger, so space wasn’t an issue. And she was unable to apologize, defensively blaming me for storing it at her home, although she’d never complained about it previously.

What puzzles me is, having read a good bit of George Vaillant’s work on the life course of a cohort of Harvard undergraduates, I am alone in old age and have had some pretty big stones tossed my way but I am not depressed, isolative, alcoholic, or even unhappy. I feel hopeful about my future, more than I do for the planet’s. It leads me to think about the good things I have received from this difficult mother.

I keep thinking an orange jumpsuit would compliment DT’s orange complexion. It may be in his near future. You shouldn’t be able to broadcast lies without consequence, certainly as a major government figure, lies that result in violence, death, and destruction.  I don’t like whatever violence accompanied the BLM protests but the two examples are not equivalent. He was encouraging and organizing his minions to “stand down and stand by” and to “fight like hell or you won’t have a country”.

No leaders in BLM were encouraging violence. It is inevitable, unfortunately, that when change is occurring, the rage of a few of the oppressed will out.  Or perhaps it is just a few opportunists, looking for a free case of Jack Daniels, a wide-screen TV, or simply to break or burn some stuff. It shouldn’t be compassed and they need to be held to the law.  In a democracy, largely peaceful protests of a people who have not had equal treatment for centuries is something we should applaud. Squeaky wheels get greased.  There is little scheduled routine maintenance for social inequalities.

I hope my life gets a bit more exciting so I can share that, as well.

[Above photo: The Riverside Golf Course, 18 holes groomed for cross-country skiing.]

9 January 2022

The idea of 17,000 therapists waiting online would, I imagine, terrify rather than reassure a therapy-naïve person seeking help. More ambush than embrace. It seems like a bad bit of marketing. All those therapists hanging around, waiting for fresh meat. It is surprising that PBS continues to announce the possibility, as if it were an enticement.

Five to seven inches of snow coated the streets and parks Thursday afternoon and night. I broke out my new Rossignols and skied to the Western Cemetery and around the Western Promenade. Between unshoveled sidewalks and unplowed streets, I had to remove my skis to cross streets only twice. It was great fun to try to retrieve my old cross country chops. I worked up a terrific sweat.

As a kid in Denver I raced on the Eskimo (not PC) Ski Team. It was sponsored by Frank Bulkley who owned a ski shop and a ranch in Middle Park where I worked 3 summers. I wasn’t a great racer for some reason—-just OK enough not to feel embarrassed—but I really liked jumping and the occasional cross country race. We skied all over the state, going to Steamboat Springs, Aspen, and other areas to race.

My most memorable cross country race was at Winter Park, our local (and very good) area. I had to poke holes with a knife in the soles of my work boots so they would fit on the pegs of the bindings since I didn’t have proper cross country boots. I motored along, passing lots of people and did quite well.

At a jumping meet in Steamboat, we were all terrified of the hill, twice as large any we’d previously jumped. The estimated speed at the take-off was 60-70mph and your jump was dependent on strength and timing. It was necessary to spring up and forward from a crouch with all your strength at just the right moment. But then you soared through the air, supported by an updraft, for a long, long time, landing easily on the nearly vertical outrun. A friend of my oldest brother, Marvin Crawford, had been on the US Olympic ski jumping team—we never were competitive with the Finns, Norwegians, or Swedes—and he coached us a bit before we set off. It gave me reassurance and, thus, courage.

Yesterday I drove a few miles to the Riverside Golf Course. When there is snow, the 18 holes are groomed for cross country skiing. I did the large loop of about 4 miles, going up and down small hills and passing a placid but chilly river bordered in white.  The day was sunny and the parking lots were packed but the area is so large that it never felt crowded.  Middle schoolers who ski for their teams were practicing. Older couples with dogs in booties. And young hotshots skating, which is much faster than my classical style. A couple of hours of moving at a good clip is great exercise, upper and lower body. And the scenery was, well, snowy. I spied a Vietnamese restaurant on my drive out and stopped on return for a bowl of Pho ga, Pho with chicken. It was the best I’ve had since being in Vietnam in 2004. Not walking distance from home but worth a short drive.

Today the temperature is 35F and the rain is washing the snow away. But it appears we’ll get another blanket next weekend.  Now I am set to enjoy the cold. There is a larger groomed area, Pinelands, about 35 minutes away and I shall try it soon.

It is very sad and a little infuriating to see the state of the country. So angry, so opposed, so unable to hear or speak civilly to one another across the divide. I count myself among them. The misinformation, wickedly used for power, is evil.  Now we all are eager for shadenfreude, to take pleasure in seeing the other side fail, shamed.  The craftiness of Facebook and other opinion Media who exploit our desire for blood and sensation are apparent. It is tough to stop disinformation without censoring free speech. It seems to me, however, that if someone of any Party knowingly encourages others, through misinformation (we used to simply say “Lies”), and the latter commit crimes, injuring or killing others, destroying property, looting, etc. that the source of the misinformation is at least as culpable as those incited. Tucker? Donald? We don’t want to punish innocent people, of course, but I’m not suggesting that.

On the other hand, it is adolescent and ignorant of MoveOn to hawk bumper stickers that say, “You lost. Get over it.” I wrote them the same. Why scornfully and triumphantly shove it in their faces? It may be directed at DT but those who voted for him will feel it points toward them, increasing the divide.

I also feel that, as well as I think Joe Biden is doing, our country needs a younger, more vibrant leader. He looks really, really old to me. Older than I feel—or look, I might say. Elizabeth Warren, who I supported, might have angered others with her edge, the know-it-all schoolmarm. Bernie was unelectable, being too far from the mainstream, even though I agree with much of his platform. Pete Buttigieg—not so easy to spell—is measured, tolerant, and smart as a whip, more like I’d want to see. At least Joe has surrounded himself with bright, honest, and competent people, not thugs.

I’m working my way, chapter by chapter, through Orwell’s Roses, a gift from a friend. Rebecca Solnit, who I mentioned last week, has written a brilliant book about the need, which Orwell knew and lived, for both bread and roses in our lives—the utilitarian and sustaining parts and the enriching and inspiring bits, desire as well as basic needs. Her mind is encyclopedic and her prose so deft it is cause for both celebration and envy.

I began my new course in psychotherapy with 8 psychiatrists scattered around Myanmar. They are, as were my earlier students, bright, engaging, eager to learn, and unfailingly polite.  Most of them grew up in a corrupt dictatorship which severely limited their learning and earning opportunities. And they are again, after a 5 year partial-hiatus, being ruled by a cruel, corrupt, and violent dictator. They continue to try to do the right thing for the needy in their country. The deaths from covid and conflict are widespread. One presented an 11yo boy who is permanently blind from injuries suffered during an explosion.

Off to the grocery store.

[Above photo: One of Portland’s grand early 1900s mansions facing the Western Promenade and the Fore River.  A recent ad offered a 1400sq ft, 3 bedroom apartment in one of them, with its own turret, for $2500/ month. Why buy?!!!]

2 January 2022

I can recall thinking that if I could only last to 2020, that would be enough life for me. Ha! I’ve moved the goal posts and am looking at 2030. It seems incredible, when I recall that my father and his father each died suddenly of a heart attack at 55yo. It is a gift, this life. A misery for some much or most of the time. But Hope, that ephemeral candle, distant in the darkness, is inextinguishable for most and we stumble, trudge, glide, or sprint onwards.

Given the breadth and number of my good friends and my regular attention to written media, I am stunned—hurt, even— that no one in the past 5 years has kept me abreast of the single most important discovery of the 21^st century. Or is it an invention? No, I don’t mean Tinder or Tik Tok or tiny cameras that make Ansel Adams proud of every photo.

I mean, AVOCADO TOAST. Combining familiar ingredients—-bread must be 10,000 years old, and avocados, who knows? Then a topping of salted toasted seeds, or a touch of hummus, perhaps some tapenade—-marshmallow fluff, the imagination soars. So delicious, so nutritious. So handy. Sophisticated. Clever. Intuitive. You get the point. It is currently competing with smoked kippers for my favorite. And, wonder of wonders, the avocado boom in the US and Mexico, that is probably an ecological disaster, provides plenty of those egg-shaped fruit at reasonable prices, even in these northern climes.

My virginal experience was at local coffee shop 10 days ago. A friend and I had tried to lunch at Szechuan Kitchen, a local eatery that my daughter recommended. The night she and Sadie stayed here, an employee tested positive and the place was closed. 10 days ago it was only open for take-out and the curbs on Congress Street right now are hard and cold. We moseyed along the street toward Noods, an all-purpose noodle shop. Closed. Then my friend spied a coffee shop. I had passed it many times, but thought it was a shared work-space thing. On the menu—You guess!—was avocado toast. So that is what manna tastes like! I wanted a second but they had run out. I’ve been back once and have made it at home twice. The perfect handy lunch. I didn’t even feel like a cigarette afterwards.

I see the direction in which this is trending. I made a loaf of olive-walnut bread to bring to my brother’s home for Christmas dinner. I employed a “starter” and was guided by the Tartine bread book my daughter generously gave me for Christmas. I am a voracious, but very slow reader. A tutor of mine at Harvard suggested, putting a kind spin on it, that I really savored the words of a novel, say, as if I were reading poetry. Ha! Plodding, I think. Anyway, this book, written by Chad Robertson, has a lot of interesting autobiography. By the time I finished that part, I needed to get on with the baking.  I plunged in, reading the directions for each step as I went. After assembling the ingredients, there is a 25-40 minute “rest”. Then, with an addition of a bit of warm water and the salt, the 3-4 hour “bulk fermentation” follows.  An initial shaping and a 20-30 minute “bench rest” is followed by the “final rise” of 2-3 hours.

I’m used to making bread with instant yeast. If I followed his directions, I’d be 3-4 hours late for supper, not a thoughtful move. I cut things short and turned, folded, and baked, which yielded a magnificent-appearing loaf, dense as a brick. (It was delicious toasted with some butter, its appeal definitely due to the olives and walnuts.)

After feeding the starter—It is kind of like having a house-broken pet that isn’t very social—daily for a week or two, I wanted a little return on my effort. So I began, again, yesterday, letting the dough rest and rise for over 4 hours. Although the starter seemed lively enough, the dough didn’t rise at all.  I’m sure I have done something very wrong. Anyway, I had purchased a large box of yeast; I proofed a tablespoon-full with warm (80 degree) water and a teaspoon of sugar. It was foaming like crazy in 10 minutes, so I mixed it with the dough, added a bit more flour, and let it rise. Did it rise?!!!! A dusting of rice flour on the top, eversion into the skillet half of my Dutch oven, sesame seeds liberally sprinkled on top, and baked to perfection. Very tasty, however, not sour.

The bread at Tartine is the best I’ve ever had. Simply perfection! Clearly Chad is maniacal, exceeding “obsessed”, about his bread. I don’t have the patience to nurse it like he does. My mind begins to wonder about shortcuts. If the sour flavor is from yeast and bacterial fermentation, which yield citric and acetic acid, could I just add some of each to my mix and use Active Dry Yeast for a similar result? No doubt, someone has tried this. I shouldn’t be publicizing it, lest you visit and sample my loaf and this knowledge with spoil it for you.

This is part of what I do, socially quite isolated, in the Maine winter.

I have gradually learned to appreciate the maturity that goes into crafting and negotiating legislation.  It is so easy for me to join the stridents of the “Radical Left”—this couplet always kills me, since it sounds like cruel, desperate people trying to do things to harm others, which is an apt description of the Far Right these days. As they say, Congress at its best is like a sausage factory, requiring compromise and patience.  Reading Heather Cox Richardson’s essay this morning about Lincoln’s thoughts and actions leading to the Emancipation Proclamation was an enlightening experience for me on the complexity, ambivalence, and growth of his mind.  It was like looking into a microscope on the first day of Histology lab in medical school, trying to get the damned slide into focus. Lincoln gradually achieved the focus, that “all men are created equal” actually means that slavery, its economic benefits to the slave-owning class notwithstanding, was a deep moral wrong. And I was taught that history was mainly the dates of battles and the names of the winners!  https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGmtFHHhfsXWSlXWGWDGngJdSGW

Good talks with family and friends over the past few days have buoyed my spirits. Ari is kayak camping for 4 days in the Everglades. She says it is incredibly lovely: 150 pelicans in a flock, many manatees swimming under their kayaks, lemon sharks, and lots of fish in the mangroves. She sounds very happy and likes her guy’s parents.  

If you don’t know about it, the Criterion Channel is a find! At $99/year it rivals Netflix yet has an amazing permanent and rotating archive of films. They are doing French New Wave starting this month. In their permanent collection are the Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Kurosawa, Fellini, De Sica works that were the yeast of my adolescence and early adulthood. Jeanne Moreau. Sophia Loren. Swoon!  And, of course, Marcel Pagnol’s amazing Marseille Trilogy.

Happy New Years to all. Health and prosperity, love and laughter. That about covers it.

[Above photo: Lengthening shadows in the Western Cemetery. My photos shall soon improve as I have a new, very capable camera, mine having died.]

26 December 2021

The power of prayer. Or, at least, of wishing. We had another top-dressing of snow yesterday afternoon and last night. Even though it will likely melt in the mid-30’s temperatures of the next few days, it is glorious. And, despite cleaning off my car and again shoveling my back and front steps, my sidewalk, and the same for my landlady who is in Canada with her honey, I continue to love it.

Driving for 45 minutes through snowfall last night on the way to my brother’s home in Brunswick, I re-experienced the thrill of driving into the Rockies in winter as a kid. Like the time we tried to pass a sluggard and slid into the ditch, rocking the stick shift between first and reverse trying to escape its hold, until we dropped the transmission. That was a bad time but I don’t recall our mother giving us hell for it. We coasted downhill to the Ford dealership in Idaho Springs where we left it for repair.

Then, driving with friends in my own car, a 1936 Ford V-8 with a leather rooftop, a continental tire, and a crank-opening windshield, to Winter Park for a day of skiing. The tires, of course, were bald and the mechanical brakes, which required constant beneath-the-car adjustment, made us swerve right or left when applied. We got up and down safely, despite an abundance of snow on the road and others spinning about.

When I reached my destination last night I was warmly welcomed and fed a glorious meal. By mutual agreement we don’t talk politics since we three see the world, and its alterations, very differently.  We talked and talked and I learned more of my sister-in-law’s family history, as well as some of my own. My brother was the executor of my mother’s will and, in sorting her belongings, he retrieved a large plastic bin filled with letters and photos. We looked at only a few last night but they stunned me, recalling times both good and painful.

Among the more memorable were photos of my paternal grandfather, who I never knew. He had a 6^th grade education but went to night school to become a CPA. He and his family lived in Denver and he delivered the payroll by buckboard to the Guggenheim mines in Colorado. The discovery in Leadville of high grade silver-lead ore formed the basis of the Guggenheim mining fortune, which they then developed globally.  My grandfather, Judd Stewart, impressed the Guggenheims (either Meyer or his son, Daniel) and he was hired as one of their “personal accountants”, moving his family to Plainfield, NJ.

In the course of his employment with them (dying at 55yo of a coronary occlusion), he amassed a considerable fortune, which was left to his wife and 3 sons. No matter that, according to family legend, he and his wife didn’t talk to each other for 10 years—“Roger, would you ask your mother to please pass the gravy?” All the money paid for the boys to attend Cornell and when my father met my mother in medical school, he had a 41foot yawl, “Playmate”, a Chrysler touring car, a closet full of Saville Row suits, and a mistress in an apartment in Manhattan. With the crash of 1929, all of the above, including all the money, vanished. Except the suits. The mistress, naturally, was gone before.

This is a long digression as a preface to my discovery of numerous photos of Judd that I have never seen. In every one he looks tight, angry, vain, and controlling. No wonder Grandmother didn’t want to talk with him—or sleep with him, as they had separate bedrooms. I wondered briefly if writing this was a betrayal, airing the family laundry. I am of the belief that we have a desperate need to learn about relationships from any and all sources and if that includes from the dead, so be it. And marital misery is so universal as to be prosaic, not shocking. But I was shocked at how strongly I reacted to the visages of this unhappy, driven ancestor.

Switching gears, as I was walking through the Reiche School playground across the street from my apartment, heading toward Spring Street and the Western Cemetery, I felt that oceanic fullness: all the little kids, of all hues and speaking a rainbow of languages, busy running about, buzzing like bees, Brownian movement. I felt their immense potential, as we all must if we attend them, since they are tomorrow and my sun is gradually setting.

I am interested in becoming more familiar with this feeling of simple joy, almost a breathlessness. When I have attempted to understand the religious beliefs of others, my thoughts fall into the common categories of hope (especially for those in hopeless situations}; comfort (in familiar rituals); reassurance (in times of fear and darkness); and in the appeal of awe and grandeur (being affiliated with it). What I haven’t really considered is the experiences of oceanic fullness.

I’ve had these, commonly as a child, in nature and when hearing a great piece of classical music. And on seeing beautiful buildings. Also, in the intoxication of falling in love. I was surprised, as a young man, to realize that I held a view of my childhood as very priviledged, feeling I’d been lucky. There is luck in being born a white male to employed, educated parents in the US in 1940. But it puzzled me that my mother’s recurrent mental illness, my father’s death when I was 9yo, their arguments, her lability and suicidal behaviors, and our frequent moves didn’t temper my sense of good fortune.

It relates to two things, I believe. One, the bad stuff was so painful to me that I banished it from my mind. And, secondly, I did have many, many experiences of a wonderful limitlessness and connectedness which colored brightly my childhood memories. Awakening before anyone and running to the dock, not a breath of wind on the water, to jump into a rowboat and move out into the beauty of Lake Washington at sunrise. Or, to be among the first at the top of the ski lift, looking down at unbroken powder snow. Or, coming over a rise in the Sierras to see a crystalline lake and trout surfacing. My list of settings is as limitless as the feelings they induce in me. I’d guess that many people who experience (I’d say,”Imagine”.) oneness with a god have a similar feeling of love and limitlessness. It’s a powerful motivator to seek the same again, I’ve found.

 I recommend to you an article— https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/20/rightwingers-us-social-change-coming — by Rebecca Solnit, an essayist of the moment, suggesting that the powerful river flowing through our history towards fairness, inclusion, and equality for all humans has an unstoppable flow. And that GOP attempts to dam it are bound, eventually, to fail; change is coming and it is frightening or abhorrent to some but that won’t halt its current. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us.  We may resist Trump, as well we should, but he—they—are actually the resistance. One is a skirmish, the other is the war.

Also, watching Amy Jo Hutchinson testifying before Congress about the lives of the impoverished “doing the best they know how” in West Virginia and elsewhere is powerful and brings their plight home. I’ve watched it 3 times. Scroll down the page at  https://www.rattlethewindows.com/  to see it.

I’m off for a snowy walk.

[Above photo: The Subaru with my apartment in the background. Note Ari’s wreath on the porch.]

19 December 2021

Most of us spend too much of our adult lives trying, consciously or not, to overcome our childhoods. It’s not that we have a choice.  I’m glad we aren’t instinctually-bound like cats or dogs but our early attachment experiences, especially, affect us so profoundly that they determine many of our future choices, whether deciding to or not to.

We had the first real snow of the year last night, about 6 or 7 inches. It is very beautiful. And it is so exciting to me, after years of living in California and, recently, Southern Africa and SE Asia. Having spent my first 18 outside of Seattle (Mercer Island) and in Denver, I was no stranger to snow. As a family we all skied. My older brother, Roger, won the 4 way (downhill, slalom, jumping, cross country) championship for Seattle high schoolers when I was 10yo. I well remember the day of his victory. He, and my next brother, Charles, each went to the US Jr. National Championships on two occasions.

I raced on a team in junior high and high school in Denver but never was as successful. I had a lot of fun, however. I actually enjoyed jumping and cross country the most. We’d compete with kids from all over the state, travelling to Aspen, Steamboat Springs, and many other ski areas to race. I remember going off a HUGE jump in Steamboat, and felt quite pleased with my courage. At the take-off of the inrun you are traveling about 60-70mph and have to throw yourself up and forward with effort at just the right moment.  I also recall doing well in a cross-country race in which I had to dig holes in the soles of my hiking boots to fit into the bindings; I didn’t have proper boots. But I just motored along and passed a lot of struggling kids.

Once in a downhill race at Winter Park, our go-to local ski area, I descended to the top of the course on Upper Hughes. Our team was the first in Colorado to wear helmets and the wind whistled in my ears so I passed it to my friend.  Later, as I was speeding on a traverse across a connector trail to Lower Hughes, I lost my line, got into some new snow, and piled into the trees. I was knocked out and was taken down in a toboggan, put in an ambulance, and hospitalized overnight in Denver, where I had a few stitches reattaching my right ear. Little did I know then that in 10 years when I refused to go into the Air Force during the Vietnam War (on principle), they used my head injury as an excuse to avoid a public fight and to release me honorably. I didn’t have to go to prison, which is a good thing.

Our Portland snow also reawakened enough wonderful memories that I called my brother, Chas, and we reminisced about our skiing and hunting trips as kids. Once we drove back from Harvard on Spring Break and spent it all living in the timer’s hut—-think a small room with walls and openings for doors and windows, 4 feet of accumulated snow on the floor, sitting halfway up the first major run at Winter Park. We shoveled it out, put down a tarp, and kept cosy in our sleeping bags. The absolute best was early in the morning when it had snowed the night before and we would be first to ski that light, light Colorado powder snow down to the lodge for a cup of hot chocolate. I don’t recall but think we likely cooked simple meals on a gas stove in the hut. Or perhaps ate a bowl of chili at the lodge.  My mother was very tolerant of our adventures, driving all the way from Cambridge to Denver only to disappear for our week of vacation.

During high school we also hunted several years for deer in the Fall in the foothills of the Rockies. I think I may have written about this already so I won’t elaborate, other than to note we’d often awaken in our tent to find a new dusting of snow. My god, it was beautiful to be young and strong and in the wilderness! We had only one rifle which Chas, being older and more likely to hit a deer if we saw one, generally carried. We, with no regrets, never had the opportunity to shoot a deer, although we did shoot, pluck, and roast a Blue Grouse over our campfire. Delicious!

This week I enjoyed a noon-time concert of VentiChordi, a violin and oboe duo accompanied on that performance by a pianist. They were all wonderful musicians and I envied their communion on stage. I hadn’t realized that CPE Bach, Johan Sebastian’s eldest son, was a fiery fellow, frequently getting dismissed from his positions, despite being a gifted composer and musician. Ah, those early attachments.

Two social events—-this really is a diary—enlivened the week. Ariane and her friend, Sadie, with Sadie’s 9 month old, Wynn, spent the night. The boy is a wonder, babbling like crazy and pulling himself to a stand with ease, which he has been doing for at least a month. We laughed and ate and Sadie and Wynn tried out my new airbed. It is pretty amazing, self-inflating and -deflating, the sleeping surface rising 2 feet above the floor.  I bought a thick, padded matrass cover and with sheets, duvets, and pillows they were very comfy. Ari slept through the night in her sleeping bag on the couch. Wynn is busy teething and awakens every hour or so for a quick nip, so poor Sadie is sleep-deprived.  In all respects other than sleeping, he is an amazingly alert, curious, and easy child. His default is an engaging grin.  It is so lovely to hold a child.

Sadie and Wynn drove back to Brooklin and I took Ari to the Jetport where she rented an SUV to drive to Florida. She’ll see friends at stops on the way. In Florida she’ll meet her guy, Jon, and kayak for a month or two in the Everglades. She is ready for a good time!

I also had the friends for supper who I’d expected last week. My error worked to my advantage, as I successfully contrived a meal where the cooking is brief and simultaneous. She is the daughter (and niece) of good friends and the head of Urgent Care at Maine Medical Center, the Big Dog in town. Becca has been very helpful in getting me oriented to Portland, a sweet, smart, and generous person. Her husband does IT, so I wondered what we might find in common. Of course, he also was a jazz musician through college, as well as having a double major in Math and Physics. And he got a Masters in composition.  He is smart as a whip, is very warm, and has broad interests. Anyway, we had a good time, although my choice of cheeses was too pungent for Becca—something French like a D’affinois and a Cambazola. I had bought both for supper the previous week so they had a chance to ripen in the fridge. Best to have a hard and a soft cheese, I think.

I may tire of snow by March or April but I am enthralled right now.  After lunch I shall take a long walk. Harold and I will spend four days cross-country skiing between three huts in the Maine Huts system in the Carrabassett Valley in early March. We signed up for full board and baggage transfers.   The scenery is reportedly glorious.

As I did growing up, I now pray for snow.

[Above photo: I love cemeteries, preserving as they do peaceful open space in metropolitan areas. They are funny, too, implying that the deceased care about the size of their stone/mausoleum or their surroundings.]

12 December 2021

This has been an eventful week. We had our first two days of snow dusting. I prepared a dinner party for friends but did it 7 days early, so I am cooked for the week. It wasn’t all bad, since I was forced to clean and organize the house and I like it this way.

I heard a great local jazz group last night at the Portland Conservatory of Music. I got there early by error and was able to chat with the guitarist. I mentioned that I used to nurse a beer all evening at the 5 Spot in NYC, listening to Thelonious Monk, when I was in med school in the ‘60s. He wrote his dissertation on Monk, played for Monk’s widow, and incorporates Monk’s style into his own compositions! We hit it off. The group, Time Zone, has played all over the world (sic) and does their own take on regional styles. The last three numbers were in 5/4, 7/4, and 25/16 (Bulgarian) tempos; he got lost at one point in the last song, cracked up, and regained his place. As they say, if you want to grow, do something every day that scares you a little.

At 11PM Tuesday evening, I realized that it was the 1^st Tuesday of the month and I was going to get a ticket the next morning if I didn’t move my car. I bundled up against the cold rain, and drove all around god’s green (wet) acre looking for a parking spot.  After almost an hour, I despairingly dropped into the school parking lot directly across the street from my apartment. Of course, they don’t patrol it and I moved it by 7:15AM to a sweet spot in front of my building.

I realize I kind of like the challenge of finding a parking spot, as perverse as that sounds. It makes it so satisfying when I get a good one, a kind of game. Otherwise, I’d just pull up the driveway and not give it another thought. It’s a bit like shopping in Yangon. When I first arrived, I would go to the slick City Mart supermarket, which is very similar to ours; it was quick and painless. Increasingly, I’d go to the street (“wet”) market and get fresher and cheaper food with a greater variety. I’d also have interactions with the vendors, which was generally fun. And I felt some accomplishment out the other side, whereas a trip to City Mart was, well, meh.

I’m deep into The Dawn Watch, a recent biography of Joseph Conrad by Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard historian. It is another lively page-turner. My god, life was nasty, brutish, and short for politically active Poles then. Russia was already the bully, sending the Polish Opposition into gulags in Siberia where they would starve, freeze, contract tuberculosis, and die.  Given his traumatic and land-locked beginnings, Conrad’s accomplishments were astounding. They would be in any case, even with a much easier start.

I’m reading it before I re-read Heart of Darkness, in preparation to re-read A Bend in the River by VS Naipul for the modern novel course.  We just read and discussed Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter, which many of us found a difficult read. Sticking with it, however, I came to love it and felt moved and challenged by the author. 

Reading about the opposition to apartheid and the evil tyranny of the South African government has particular meaning for me right now, and not just in reference to our own American journey. In the past week the military in Myanmar, in response to an attack on a military caravan, went into a village, gathered 11 youth (14yo was the youngest), bound them, and set them on fire.  In another incident a military truck accelerated into a group of protesters, killing 5 and wounding others.

One of my former students who lives in Magway is providing virtual supportive counselling, along with a group of 6 other psychiatrists in various parts of Myanmar, to border populations and those in refugee camps. She called today to see if I would do a training on brief psychotherapy for adolescents. I am thrilled to have a way to continue helping in Myanmar and will do so.  The course will start the first Wednesday of January and run 2 hours per week for 4 months. It doesn’t get me into the community in Portland, one of my goals, but does allow me to keep helping in Myanmar.

I visited the dentist last week. It was quite an experience after similar trips in Myanmar and Malawi. The place was new and modern, with digital imaging and a really smart dentist. She got my number quickly; I take good care of my teeth but grind them a lot, causing bone resorption. I know that when I drink coffee I do. But I have only been drinking decaf.  Apparently, there is enough caffeine in decaf to make trouble for me.

In response, I bought a Rolls Royce of a Waterpik that both brushes and squirts, I use micropore tape to keep from mouth breathing if I roll onto my back at night, I drink no coffee at all, I am assiduous in not grinding and in keeping my tongue where it should be in my mouth during the daytime, and in all ways dental I am a model patient. No half-measures for me! We’ll see how things are in a few months when I have a follow-up appointment.

I went for a long walk in the residential part of the West End today, it being sunny and temperate. The many old houses are immense and beautiful, with fancy decorative brickwork. I cannot imagine what it takes to heat them. Or dust them. I stumbled upon the historic Western Cemetery. It is a large area, with many paths, views, and stones.

The cemetery taught me some historical sociology. Many of the stones list a name, a rank, a regiment, the particular conflict, and dates of birth and death. Thus, “Nathaniel Abbott, Corp(oral), Trobridge’s Cav(alry), War of 1812, 1790-1842”.  I found it interesting that many defined themselves by their military service, even when it didn’t take their life. And women were generally identified as “Wife of —” or “Mother of—” whereas men were never “Husband of—“.  Women, even if they survived their husbands by many years, were uniformly listed beneath the latter on the stone. There was a stone without dates, just saying, “Hay” with two equal-sized adjacent stones noting “Mother” and “Father”. It all spoke loudly to me about societal values in the 1800’s.

I purchased a good quality photo scanner in 2015 and have never used it. As I was on the verge of buying a file cabinet to organize and store the 4 large crates of papers, I thought, why not scan them, get rid of the paper, and make them easily available to me. I have spent several productive hours  scanning what I want to keep and tossing all the paper. It feels great!  And, of course, I have begun to encounter artifacts, letters or my own writings, that shed light on my past in ways surprising to me. Once I have scanned the papers, I’ll scan the many negatives and old photos I have to preserve them.

I also came across a trove of aphorisms. I used to print them and put a pithy or inspiring one on the wall for staff and kids at Seneca Center: “Life isn’t about holding good cards. Rather, it’s about playing a poor hand well.” Or, “Be kind to all you meet for everyone is fighting a great battle.” The best were 4 pages of Groucho Marx: “From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday, I intend to read it.” Or, “Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.”  And many more risqué ones.

I think I’ll watch “Duck Soup” tonight.  

[Above photo: Fishermen on the Mekong River in Vietnam. Not a photo. Not a painting. A weaving, done in a workshop by children who have lost a limb or two from stepping on a hidden land mine.]

5 December 2021

It really isn’t the end of the world, yet, but daylight is an increasingly brief encounter here. Nodding to that, I arose in the dark to take my car to Phil’s Foreign Auto in S. Portland. My landlady, Kim, suggested Phil’s as a reputable shop. I drove there last week, as well, and happily saw it was primarily for Subarus. But the receptionist had mistakenly put me in for a different day and the shop was swamped.  Graciously, I thought, I exhibited flexibility, rescheduled for this week, and drove home. Actually, since it was pouring rain, I was happy not to brave the streets on foot looking for a bus.

Today I returned, it wasn’t crowded, and I had a chance to talk with Bruce. He’s the owner. Phil, his dad, died in 1998. He’d started the shop in 1983. Bruce was living in Hawaii at the time of his father’s illness, biking to work and swimming each day on Waikiki. But the climate—-bland, warm, unchanging—didn’t suit him. “I like to shovel and plow snow. I’m built for it. I’ll go out with a sweatshirt and no gloves and I’m just fine.” Bruce returned to Portland and took over the shop.

Get this. They provide a free shuttle service, door to door, in a new bright yellow Jeep. Jodie drives it and she loves her job. As much as she loves sailing, having learned by racing on Etchells. An Etchell is a speed machine; you tune the rigging before each race. I digress. She dropped me at my door. And when they text me that the car is ready, she’ll collect me whereever I am. Concierge service! For an 18yo Subaru. Well, for its owner. To think of my wasted energy obsessing over whether to take my bike, my kick-scooter, or the #21 bus to get home on this 28 degree morning! A small and pleasant surprise.

I take extended walks on days when it isn’t raining, both to get to know the town and for exercise. Yesterday I came upon a long line, perhaps 75 people. At first I thought it was a food pantry or providing a hot meal. But people were of all ages, well-dressed and groomed. So I asked “Why?”. “In line to get our booster shots.” “Why not go to CVS or Walgreens?” “Their appointments are months away; the closest I could find for today was in Waldoboro.” Waldoboro is 63 miles. No wonder Maine is at the top of the list for covid vaccination rates, although there are pockets of skeptics and anti-vaxxers inland and to the North.

I had lunch with a friend (Peggy) of an old friend (Kate) and as we talked she mentioned the Center for Grieving Children which has branches in Portland and Sanford, ME. I later looked them up. It is a place for children and families who have lost, through death or divorce, a family member to meet others in the same boat and to try to talk about their feelings. I’ll talk with the Director of Volunteers in 3 days to see how I might put my paddle in their stream. How helpful such an organization would have been for us as a family after my Dad died. I was 9yo, my immediately older brother was 12yo.  Finding words and a sympathetic ear to hear my confused, angry, guilty, bereft feelings could have meant the world to me. As it was, I simply stewed alone, feeling weird that all the other kids at Scouts had a dad for the Father-Son nights. It felt like a personal failing.

I want to get into the community here in a small way. I may also volunteer to help at a soup kitchen on Christmas Day. I’ve considered it for a long time but never actually did it. This year my dance card is open so I’ll take a chance. I loved being a child at Christmas. And I loved seeing the excitement of my children at Christmas, excepting the year we bought Nate a globe of the world and he thought we had relented and that the box contained a Nintendo set. It also was fraught, for me, because for reasons of my own, hers, or both of us, it was nigh impossible for me to gift Poki what she wanted. I accept that I am not a skilled or intuitive gift giver, which puzzles me since I am a skilled psychotherapist, The latter requires wanting to learn about and know others deeply.  Christmas now has less valence for me; I greatly prefer Thanksgiving. Thus, it wouldn’t be a sacrifice for me to serve others, rather a pleasure.

It is difficult for me to hear some of the Supremes talking about their control over women’s bodies, especially the men. And, as well, any citing of their personal religious beliefs, as if they were authority for others. I accept that they have chosen those values for themselves. It reminds me of competent Muslim women in Myanmar who would love to be free of their useless, philandering husbands but cannot initiate a divorce. The men can, as I’ve mentioned once before, approach them and say, “I divorce you.” three times. Then they are divorced.

Religions have an aspect like a club, with special songs, rituals, and cultures. I accept that some people find them comforting and that they often do wonderful community work through education, health care, and other good deeds. But when one religion, or one sect of a religion, begins to dictate what all others may or may not do, especially with their own bodies—-that is, when religious belief is turned into law—it is intolerable to me, especially if it is contrary to the will of the majority of people it effects. If Justice Barrett doesn’t want to have an abortion, it’s her choice. But just because the official position of the Catholic Church prohibits abortion shouldn’t mean that any woman cannot make this most personal decision for herself. I recall that there was a general worry, needless it turned out, that JFK would superimpose his Catholic beliefs onto the presidency. It appears to be different with the current membership of the Supreme Court.

I finished an amazing book—Over the Edge of the World—about the first circumnavigation of our planet. It was brilliantly led by Magellan but his hubris caused his death in the Phillipines. I’ve seen the memorial on Mactan Island to Lapu Lapu, the warrior-leader who refused to accept Catholic conversion. Magellan attacked him to assert his supremacy and was slaughtered. The book details the suffering, the smells, and the dangers of long-distance sailing in those days better than anything I’ve read. It is a page-turner, which I don’t find often in much of what I read.

And in closing, a most amazing essay by Merritt Tierce about not getting an abortion— https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/magazine/abortion-parent-mother-child.html?searchResultPosition=2  , she who became pregnant at 19yo, two months before her college graduation. She dives into the complexity of religious belief, guilt, sexual desire, maternal love, personal ambition, etc. in a manner I found deeply moving. I thought it was lyrical, clear-eyed, and imbued with love and honesty. A stunning piece.