It’s not that I have nothing to say that I haven’t posted in a few days. I can usually find something to say. Nevertheless, we have been blessed with some amazing weather this past week and I confess that I am reveling in moderate temperatures and low humidity. A recent spate of lovely, temperate days followed by cool nights has triggered the annual change of colors in the trees. We are moving from the vibrant green of summer to the intense colors of early autumn. Now is when the colors are moving through a crescendo of intensity from slightly gold or red to their most vivid and wonderful. After that, they gradually die back and fall off the trees, either drifting gently or tempest-toss’d in the strong winds that mark the transition of the season.

I don’t remember ever having complained about raking leaves. However, I could be wrong. I know I have marked the blisters that seem to form on my hands whether or not I wear gloves. I find the process meditative. I love to listen to the sound of the dry leaves as they turn over when I rake the pile forward to the street for pick-up. It reminds me of water, of the sound of small waves when they meet the beach.

And so it was that in one of those meditative moments, the poem below began to write itself. It took some tweaking as poems always do, but I have been pleased with the result and have rarely shared it with anyone. Still, I think it’s time to put this one out into the world. In this effort, I identify with Anne Bradstreet’s The Author to Her Book. While I have published articles in music educator’s magazines and letters to the editor of the local paper, I have never had the courage to share any of my poems with anyone other than the closest of friends.

Yet I am inspired to take the risk with this one. Call it either some sort of autumn madness or simply the need to set this poem free and into the larger world. Perhaps it has aged enough that it is time to leave the nest:

      Autumn Lake 

Pewter-skied Sunday
        Still.
Across the neighborhood, television screens flicker
        Sunday combat.
A far-off leaf blower hums 
a tuneless tenor.
I rake leaves in the center of the universe.

The man with the leaf blower cannot hear
The autumn lake.

Palm flat leaves
strung in red-maple-rippled-ridges
against the beige grass.

Autumn lake.

Catching the top of the ridge, I
turn leaves that  tumble down;
Dry, liquid sounds as waves
against the sand
water against pebbles
washing at the edges of the world as

I swish them down again
and again.

This summersound, here
on the cusp of November.

The man with the leaf blower cannot hear the autumn lake.

I am not a Luddite. Honest. I appreciate what advances have happened in the world of technology. Writing on the computer is so much easier than typing on a typewriter. I Love the delete key! I love being able to cut/paste whole paragraphs into something that might read better. My phone? When I am on the road alone, I appreciate having the cell phone. It allows me to feel alone but still connected if I need to be. It’s far better than being stranded on the Minnesota interstate in winter with a dead car, a five year old, and no way to call for help.

The past two weeks have, once again, plunged us into tech world. Yes. The old analogue television finally went the way of all televisions. First the picture tube went, leaving us with only a bright line across the middle of the screen. We lived with audio only for another two weeks, then either the audio died or the cable box decided we didn’t need it any more since there was nothing to see. At any rate, for a few days the rest was silence. This, of course, was not unexpected. It was clear for some time that the old TV was on life support. It was only a matter of time. Nevertheless, we got every inch of use out of that old television.

In the meantime, we ( I ) did more research on what should replace the old set. Given a budget parameter and my personal preferences for something not so gigantic as to overwhelm our small living room, I printed out specs and prices and let the Hubs figure it out. I confess, however, that in the research process, I slanted all my findings to what I preferred. The budget limitations helped with the bias. In the end, I got to go to Costco and purchase the replacement. The most astonishing thing was the weight. Yes, I checked out the poundage in the specs, but the fact that I could manage moving this unit all on my own was both surprising and delightful. The much smaller analogue set took two of us to move.

Then came the project. The table we kept the old set on was too narrow by a few inches, so we had to move another old end table to butt up against the first. Oh. A high differential of 1-1/4 inches. Boo. Out to the local DIY stores to discover that of the three stores we went to, only one had a sheet of plywood of appropriate thickness that wasn’t warped. This was a hunt that took several hours. Coming home, the Hubs was exhausted and I was worn out simply by the stress of it all. It goes without saying, that it took him a day or two to recover to the next step.

To the next step we went. Measure twice, cut once. I have to say that when the Hubs takes on a project of this sort, his perfectionist tendencies hold him in good stead. By the time we built the supports, it was perfect. While he wasn’t certain, once I proved that things were lined up by slapping down a level and letting him see that all was good, we moved on.

To make a long story a bit shorter, let’s just relate that we followed all the assembly directions and got the set onto its table. (No, dear, I am not putting my thumb on the screen . .) By then, enough time had passed that we didn’t have long to wait until Claude the cable guy showed up to check out the cable box. Good Claude checked out the box, pronounced it good, then helped us get everything hooked up. Viola! Picture and sound. Will miracles never cease? Yesterday I found the appropriate connector box at Best Buy, read the directions, took a deep breath, and hooked it up to gain access to our DVD player. Holy! Cow! After some searching in the TV menu, I figured it out! The “Star Wars” disk I had playing in the player showed up. Amazing.

This may all seem a bit overwrought, but on the other hand, given our issues with technology, gaining a television and a DVD player all without considerable cursing and arguing is nothing short of miraculous. It seems that if we stay in our lanes, we can manage to get this all done without thinking about hiring either a lawyer or a counselor. My next step was to unfreeze the movies I had frozen in the library reserve system. With my baseball team likely out of the playoffs and my football team broadcast this weekend on a streaming service, and with the leaves still on the trees and no raking to do, I will have time to indulge myself in the movies I have missed. Like all good things, it took some time. Ready the popcorn, Hubs, I am ready to go!

Today is Be Who You Are day. This is something I discovered today at the library when I was offered a Be Who You Are button to wear. This official–or unofficial?–day, September 30, was founded by Todd Parr, a best-selling children’s author, whose books address those things that I wish we had addressed back so many years ago. It’s OK to Make Mistakes, It’s OK to Be Different, Kindness, and Love The World are all among Parr’s titles that let small humans know that inclusivity and acceptance are an important part of being in the world. It’s good to know that we have evolved over time, but I wish someone had told us it was important to be kind. The best I heard was when, as an undergrad, a friend said that everyone is entitled to their own weird.

So who am I? What do I do about Be Who You Are day? It certainly would be easier to celebrate if I were still in the middle school classroom. While it seems that middle school is the place were social ranking, cliques, and bullying appears to rank high on the scale of who we are or whom we expect others to be, for me, it was elementary school that taught me, if nothing else, that I can ignore the haters. Believe me, fat kids know they are fat. They don’t need anyone else to tell them that. I still maintain that learning to ignore negativity is fundamentally why I don’t hear nor do I use sarcasm these days. At sarcasm I am a total failure. Don’t waste your time. You may throw a barb, and I may hear you, but it won’t stick. There are those who maintain that children who grow up in homes where sarcasm is common understand its use better and use it themselves. That could be an important point. I don’t remember much sarcasm going on. What my mom said was pretty direct. Perhaps she was sarcasm impaired as well. Who knows.

Nevertheless, I may be trying to get to the Be Who You Are of today as if every other day was a day in which I was not who I was. Does that make sense? I think I act with a hard-won understanding of what it is to walk around in me and that includes words like acceptance and openness. If I screw up, I want to know rather than have to dissect someone’s sideways or left-handed comment. If I have to call another person out, I want to do it more with a rhetorical question than a snark. (Do you object to that eighth grader making out with her Black boyfriend because he is Black or because she is making out in public by the bus pickup?) Inquiring minds want to know.

In the end, I think who I am is complicated. Aren’t we all? If we are to grow in understanding of the world around us, we have to stay open and we have to keep questioning. If only for that, I think I’m Ok. I try to do positive things and I don’t need everyone to know what I do. Maybe I am a stealthy merchant of the things Marley, Scrooge’s partner in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, realized this life lacked: The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. When I screw up. . .and believe me, I have, it’s out of ignorance, not spite. It’s the screw-ups that haunt me. What’s done is done. I can only hope that others have shorter memories than I, though I doubt it. At any rate, I am who I am. I shall be who I am today!

Oh my, I am tired to death of midterm election ads. Somewhere in the back of my head I hear echoes of the opening of Psalm 22: “My god, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.” When newscasters say that elections are getting more expensive, they aren’t kidding. Nevertheless, someone is making money–and I think it is those who write and produce the ads as well as those who provide platforms for their broadcast. The amount of mud slung in this election cycle could, I think, build a nice, thick-walled adobe mansion for someone. Really.

The interesting thing is the number of “positions” that really are not relevant to the candidate who is the object of the mud. For example, a candidate for US senate doesn’t have much to say about state legislation. How the state changes bail requirements, funds education, or funds police is not a matter for the US senate. If the city wants to impose a sales tax, the US senate has no say. Furthermore, the increase in local reckless driving and violent crime is also not a topic for the US senate with the sole exception of gun control bills. It might be nice if the federal legislature actually did something about an assault weapons ban.

As far as I am concerned, a plague on all of it. Really. I am anxious for a slight respite post-November 8. We might have a week or two before the whole thing starts again in advance of the 2024 election. Thank goodness for the mute button.

Recently, as I was out on morning pick-up-the-trash duty, I had a quick chat with a “regular” passerby who is out for her morning walk. She thanked me for the daily cleanup and mentioned that she had called the local alderman to report the gas station up the block for the mess they allow to exist on their lot. She was adamant that she was never going to vote for that alderman again–and why didn’t I run. I mulled that suggestion over and then discarded it. I can only imagine the issues around a run. I mean, I am happy to be of service, willing to take on the task and deal with the issues. I am not at all willing to deal with everything else that goes with it–particularly the trolls on social media out there. After all these years of teaching, I have a pretty thick skin, but not thick enough, I think, to survive things as harrowing as death threats. So no, thank you. I’ll do my community service more privately.

There’s the rub. If we want good people to serve in our government, we need to give them room, offer some grace, then hold them accountable. I think term limits aren’t so necessary because we have elections. If the person in office is corrupt, doesn’t do well, is incompetent, then throw the rascal out! The problem as I see it is multifold: the incumbent is better funded, often controlled by his donors and has, as noted in the current cycle, an almost unlimited bank account. It would be nice if they repealed Citizens United. It would better serve all of us. The voting population is apathetic, no matter how fired up they are right now. When push comes to shove, on voting day the voters need to show up. Early voting starts soon. I want to see the polls jammed. Too often it seems that once in office, the incumbent focuses more on his own needs and the needs of his sponsors than he does the needs of the greater population. Then again, if the base turns out and the opposition doesn’t, then change doesn’t happen.

Yes, I suspect I am rambling. I am grateful for the mute button. Even better, the picture tube on our TV has died–or something. We have a single bright line across the screen in which we can see movement and color, but little else. At the right angle, sometimes there is a glimpse of someone who is projected upside down. Cool. I don’t mind all that much right now. We have a new set in the box. All we have to do is set it up, though that’s a little complicated. As long as it gets set up by October 6, the debut of Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19, I am all good. On the other hand, it’s not the end of the world if I miss it. Few things are. I can guarantee you, dear reader, that my Hubs, Hamlet, will have things set up by the time Yellowstone premiers on November 13. That’s a safe bet. What all this means is that the mute button not only mutes the sound, but the messed up picture means I don’t even have to see it. Sports? That’s what radio is for.

In the long run, I know that this too shall pass. If one listens to all of the hoo-hah, no candidate is good for the office, whatever it is. If we had a drinking game in which we took a shot every time one candidate referred to the other as “radical,” we’d be on the floor, totally pickled, before 10:00 in the morning. Forty-five days from now and an assortment of hours and seconds hence, we can see the light at the end of this cycle’s tunnel.

Then cue the recap, the analysis, and Steve Kornacki on the big board.

I love baseball. Baseball is the sound track of my summer. While I am not an aficionado, not able to tell you, dear reader, who scored how many times from second base with two men out and the batter with a full count, I do enjoy the game. Like opera, baseball takes time. Both opera and baseball come from a different era, one where speed might be measured in horsepower, but that the horsepower actually came from a horse. Let’s be clear: horse power not at a continuous gallop as we see in so many movies, but horse power that takes the well-being of the horse into consideration. Not with a gallop but with a walk, how ever brisk. The pace was so much different. Ride, drive a carriage, or walk, transportation took time. Everything took time. Baseball is a pastoral game, played in a park or on a field, not on a gridiron. So it is that I have come to appreciate the pace of baseball.

Nevertheless, we live in a fast paced world where so much is in motion. Even the backgrounds on the nightly broadcast news are in motion. I suspect that it keeps the attention of those so used to the visual pace of other screens. It was an old theater rule that one should not walk on someone else’s line. It takes focus from the speaker. Today, even the few moments gained by weaving through traffic seem to be worth it to the dangerous driver. Yet we all wind up waiting at the same traffic light. For that reason, I suspect, those in charge of Major League Baseball (MLB) have decided to do what they can to speed up the game. Next year, pitchers will be on the clock.

On the clock? One of the good things about baseball is that there is no clock. It takes the time it takes. Football–both kinds—has a clock. Basketball has a clock. Baseball was, blessedly, clock-free. According to those who are on the MLB competition committee, it is precisely it’s pace that drives the audience away. Ergo, we put the pitchers on the clock. Pitchers will have 15 seconds to throw a pitch with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on base. Hitters will need to be in the batter’s box with eight seconds on the pitch clock. We restrict them to only a few pitch-outs and then punish them with a balk if they somehow lose count in the throes of competition. After those few pitchouts, then, the base runner knows that the pitcher cannot pick him off–he is free to attempt the steal and hope the catcher cannot throw him out.

The steal. I love the attempt. I love it when the catcher nails the second baseman who goes on to stifle the attempt. Well, at least if it’s the opposing teams base runner. Next season the bases will be larger in order to encourage the steal. This is a good change, I think. Not only will it give the runner a larger target on which to land, but it helps the first baseman to avoid getting spiked by a runner charging down the line to first base. This, I think, is good.

Then there’s the shift. The shift means that infielders move over a considerable distance so that the second baseman is often in short right field. They shift based on the batter’s tendencies to hit to one side or the other. In reality, this means that it is into the shift that singles go to die. Once the shift became entrenched into the defense, I feel that it became overused. It took away so much of the action. Me? I am for eliminating the shift. It’s about time.

If we talk about time, can we talk about the replay? I know that there are limited challenges, but it seems that this is a bump in the road. Yes, umpires are not 100% correct. Everyone misses calls, and particularly egregious misses, I think, are at the root of the replay. On the other hand, it has umpires second-guessing themselves. Might the replay undermine self-confidence? Next, the automatic strike zone? Might we use the tennis “eye” to debate whether the pitch was a ball or a strike? Yes, it will make the strike zone more consistent, but on the other hand, does it open the door to more never-ending challenges? Inquiring minds want to know.

Baseball is, for me, and interesting blend of chess, ballet, and drama, as well as an athletic competition. Chess–the interplay of right-handed pitchers vs. left-handed batters and vice-versa. When and who becomes a pitch-hitter? Should pitchers hit or should we use a designated hitter? As long as it’s the same in both leagues, I have no problem with the DH. Baseball is the moment when an outfielder makes an impossible catch, either crashing the wall or sliding under the ball. Amazing. I think the leap to steal a home run as amazing as anything I have seen at the ballet. And hitting? Really? There’s some drama in the engagement of pitcher and batter. Anyone who can hit a ball coming at the batter at 90+ MPH with a round bat and reverse its direction, coming off the bat now at a speed as fast as 104 MPH? Now there’s a physics problem. Amazing. The shortstop who seems able to field the ball, move it to his throwing hand, then fire it where it is needed most? Equally astounding. With a thesaurus of synonyms, the best I can come up with is wow.

It takes time. I can get to the park early and catch batting practice; stay late to avoid the crazies trying to get out of the parking lot. I don’t care that it takes time. I go to the park with the understanding that it takes time. Golf has no clock. A round can take hours. While a football’s four quarters time out to 60 minutes, the game itself takes at least twice that long and no one seems to mind. Tennis? No clock in tennis. A five set match is a marathon. Consider that a Cricket match can take days. Why should baseball be any different? A pitcher’s duel moves faster than a blowout, but on the other hand, unless one appreciates great pitching, the game itself may seem tiresome if what you want to see is offense. Still, one has to appreciate that pitcher/catcher combination that flummoxes every batter. No-hitters are still rare events. Perfect games? Call that another wow, even if my team loses.

In the end, the result of the new rule changes remain to be seen. Whether a faster game brings more people to the park or whether there are more secondary entertainments in the park to occupy the audience–Xgolf being something new, children’s playspaces being something more–may or may not be the solution. I have no solution. I have my own love of the game and the willingness to let life take the time it does.

Play ball!

Time for a mixed bag of thoughts on books. Some fiction; some nonfiction; perhaps a dramatic script. It’s all a bit of a reading buffet, I think.

Let’s consider another Louise Erdrich, this time The Night Watchman. This was Erdrich’s Pulitzer Prize novel and one of many that she has written that focuses on the Native American experience. The focus for The Night Watchman is based on the experience of the author’s grandfather, who took on the US Government’s Termination Bill, which proposed to eliminate Native reservations and push the population into the cities. While the government claimed that jobs would be available, the Native’s experience was far from that which the government offered. The tribal elders worked over several years, gathering information and facts to support their argument in order to send a delegation to D.C. to appear and argue for the Turtle Mountain reservation. I was inspired by their persistence and their work.

There are several story threads in Erdrich’s work. While there is a strand that focuses on a teacher who organizes a boxing gym and his protégé, Wood Mountain. Another compelling line is that of Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, who works at the same manufacturing plant as Thomas Wazhasnk, the title’s night watchman. Patrice, 19, has been class valedictorian and is the first person in the family to have a “white people’s job.” It is she who leaves the reservation in search of her sister Vera who has not been heard from since she married and left for Minneapolis. Patrice’s search takes her to the sleazier side of the city, where together with Wood Mountain, she manages to survive and enjoy what seems, at first, limited success.

In the end, I found the book satisfying, but discouraged over the experiences of the characters and the truth that supports Erdrich’s narrative. One would think that we could do better. There is no promise that the federal government has kept–ever, and Erdrich’s story simply supports that fact.

Certainly far from Erdrich’s narrative is Rachel Kopelke Dale’s The Ballerinas. Three young girls meet in the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet School, one the daughter of a POB “star,” Delphine, one an American with virtuosic but raw talent, and one schooled from the beginning at the POB. Delphine left the school to travel to Russia with her dancer/choreographer significant other, who told her that she would never become the star her mother had been and that she should study choreography to advance her career in the art of ballet.

Delphine returns to Paris along, having been dumped by her boyfriend, to develop the ballet that she thinks will establish her as a choreographer in the Paris Opera Ballet. Things are seldom what they seem to be, and in reuniting with her friends, the reader bounces back between the trio in adolescence and in adulthood. There are the tropes of the predatory male dancer who works his way through the population of young dancers in the school, the artistic process of developing a full length story ballet that involves that same male dancer and his ego, as well as the ups and downs of reuniting with friends who have changed as the years have gone on.

Right about the time I thought the narrative would fade, not with a bang but a whimper, the plot picks up and the fireworks start. The “gun” we saw in an earlier chapter returns to fire and in the end, there is a comeuppance and a success. This is, I think, a basic beach read, but for all of that, I was content in having read it.

Moving right along, consider Stuart Stevens’ It Was All A Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. Yes, I have read a good many politically-based books over the past five years. Yes, I have considerable difficulty reading those that claim that Donald J. Trump is somehow a vessel that God sent to save the country, no matter how flawed he is. Stevens was a political operative, having worked on several campaigns, electing Republicans on all levels. His book makes the effort to show that the current condition of the GOP is nothing particularly new, but that “Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP’s DNA, from Goldwater’s opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens and states’ rights rhetoric. He gives an insider’s account of the rank hypocrisy of the party’s claims to embody “family values,” and shows how the party’s vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.”¹ This was not particularly new information, given how long I have had to observe Republican candidates and how much other reading I have done, but this is a particularly readable volume. Stevens does a good job of tracing the history of the actions of the party, especially in the South; especially in relation to white supremacy; especially steeped within the evangelical movement. While it left me not with a total book hangover, what Stevens had to say has reverberated for some time.

I enjoy watching the annual Tony awards as well as the Kennedy Center Honors every year. This year a particular title was called several times: Take Me Out, a drama by Richard Greenburg. Fortunately, our library’s collection includes scripts and, of course, I had to check it out. Truly, it’s about baseball. How could I not? Take Me Out looks at the complex relationships in professional baseball. Before the play opens the protagonist, Darren Lemming, has come out as gay. Darren, the fans, his teammates, the opposition, are all forced to examine what it means when America’s favorite pastime has a gay man of color as one of its stars. As the team moves closer to the playoffs, events happen that make everyone, audience included, question the price of victory. I would love to see this drama live sometime, though I am not entirely certain that it would be our local repertory theater that will take the risk.

Finally, Erin L. Thompson’s Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments is a timely book that I hope more people read. I rank it as a companion to Ty Seidule’s Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause. I think Thompson’s is a book that, if I were teaching history, I would include at least a few chapters in a class read, research, and discuss project. There was an old AP Language exam prompt that asked the writer to discuss the sort of things that should be considered when creating a memorial of any sort. Who or what should we memorialize? How should it be designed? Where should such a memorial be established? Of what should it be constructed? Smashing Statues looks at many of these aspects in light of the current arguments for removing monuments that venerate the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. She looks at the history of the movement to erect statuary as well as the reasons so many statues were constructed.

She further discusses what is and what could be done with statues that have been removed. Of course, there is the problem of the Confederate Memorial carving on Stone Mountain, Georgia. It is certainly difficult to move it and to simply obliterate it echoes the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas at Bamyan in 2001. Personally, I am for contextualizing Confederate monuments. Put them in a museum, in a sculpture park, somewhere where we can appreciate the art work without venerating the subject. I think the same would apply to the Lincoln Emancipator/Kneeling Slave Emancipation Memorial. I know that the copy that stood in Boston has been removed,² though I know not what has happened since. The discussion was an interesting one. In the end, I agree that this is a complicated issue that needs to be included if we are to take one small step toward a more perfect union for everyone.

1 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/48806578-it-was-all-a-lie

² https://apnews.com/article/marty-walsh-us-news-1bbe10800ca102f9af56a6a04615adb5

Freedom is a word we seem to throw around a lot these days. In thinking about this entry, I hear the voice of my sophomore English teacher: You have to narrow your subject!!!! Mrs. Ingrelli said that so often, pumping her clenched fists as she said it. Narrow your subject in order to focus your thinking. What about freedom? It’s not a word specifically mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, although liberty is. It’s not in the US Constitution itself, though it is in the Bill of Rights. It is in the Emancipation Proclamation, but not in the reconstruction amendments–the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. On the other hand, liberty is.

This, then, made me wonder if there is a difference between liberty and freedom. I am certainly confident that there have been philosophical discussions on the topic. How could there not be? On the other hand, I have only an hour in which to write, and so with apologies to Mrs. Ingrelli, I took a moment to Google search. I found a distillation of the argument to a few sentences: The term ‘Liberty’  relies heavily on implication of responsibility and duty, and attachment to a greater whole society or philosophical belief system. In contrast, freedom means the raw ability to act and do as one wills.¹ In addition to this site I found others that went into more depth, using the argument as a set of classroom lessons into which I would like to delve more deeply. It has been an interesting search.

Nevertheless, looking only at these definitions, the single thing that pops out is that liberty, implies responsibility and duty to the greater society, and freedom, does not. To which I imagine myself tenting my fingertips and thinking “verrry interesting.” So if I am at liberty to pursue happiness, then I may do so within the bounds of the social contract. I am at liberty to drive my car from point A to point B, but I am bound to obey the rules of the road. I won’t crash into your car if you won’t crash into mine is part of the social contract. So does that mean, then, that if I am free to drive my car from point A to point B, I may speed past you in the parking lane, weave from lane to lane, and jump the red light since no one is imminent, particularly if you, the other driver, follows the rules of the road and stays out of my way?

I may have the protection of the first amendment’s freedom of speech to say whatever I want. The first amendment protects my utterance of as much unsavory language as I want. I am free. I am not free of being thought of as a total jerk. There are those who say that political correctness limits my freedom, yet from my point of view, I am at liberty to be thoughtful and compassionate. I am able to express myself without hurting others. If that is the case, then why would I want to deliberately offend, trigger, or otherwise inflict pain on others in the name of my personal freedom? Which, of course, brings me to the whole issue of how we relate to those around us.

David French published in his French Express, an article that argued that Christian ethics are upside down.² It was published again in The Dispatch and discussed with him on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program a week or so ago. I find his argument compelling and have written similarly, if not as eloquently. If I am to treat someone else with the dignity and respect he or she deserves simply as another human being, then my liberty and my commitment to the social contract demands that I am aware of the impact of my words. My problem in this discussion has its roots in watching angry people shout obscenities and call others vile words all in the name of their personal freedom. It is not the words that confuse me, it’s the actions.

Freedom means that I can storm the US Capitol in the name of my freedom to support a falsehood. I can hurt others in the name of freedom. I can refuse to do one small bit, refuse to wear a mask, in the face of a global pandemic in the name of freedom. Freedom grants me to troll whomever I want to troll online because I have freedom. On the other hand, liberty grants me freedom, but does absolve me from the consequences, both overt and covert, of my actions. Of the two, I sleep better under the aegis of liberty, since I think liberty also implies freedom, but the freedom to act in accordance to a commitment to something larger than myself.

¹Read more: Difference Between Liberty and Freedom | Difference Between http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/difference-between-liberty-and-freedom/#ixzz7eJVhf3XZ

² https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/christian-political-ethics-are-upside?triedSigningIn=true

There are people who love mustard. The addition of a nice mustard to a recipe only makes the dish greater in the collective opinion of those who love mustard. I understand that there are many varieties of mustard–so many that there is a museum dedicated to the proposition that this noble condiment deserves a museum. (https://mustardmuseum.com/) Truly, what more would a condiment want?

I, however, am not one of these people. I find mustard to be both disappointing and, if not disgusting, then something vaguely north of that emotion. I shun mustard for a variety of minor reasons, that when gathered together and stacked up, has me saying “hold the mustard” whenever possible. For some reason, for me and whatever chemistry I have, even a bit of mustard pretty much negates everything else. I will taste mustard for the rest of the day and well into the night time. It is easy to imagine myself looking like someone’s dog who has a healthy dollop of peanut butter on the roof of his mouth.

Upon further review, mustard was not a crucial condiment at home. My personal aversion began with an early experience, the first time at a major league baseball game. Not only did I get to see my team live, in action at the ball park, but Mom even bought a hot dog for me from a strolling vendor. Truly, for me this was a Big Moment. I freed that hot dog from its aluminum wrapping and first wondered “What is that smell?” A single bite revealed that whatever this was, it was not my favorite moment. I looked at Mom in wonder. “What is this?” It was my first taste of ball park mustard. I didn’t even have to ask. All of it took was a look. She explained that all ball park hot dogs came already decked out in mustard. Bright. Yellow. Mustard. I finished the hot dog even though I didn’t enjoy it. In our house, you didn’t waste food, even if you didn’t particularly enjoy it. It doesn’t matter. Eat your green beans. What a time for one’s first conscious taste of mustard. Clearly even today, I have a sense memory of the moment. Never again have I bought a hot dog at the ball park.

I wasn’t sure about McDonald’s when the franchise first came to town. You mean those fifteen cent burgers came already decked out in condiments? Really? Was this worth the risk of encountering mustard when we were ravenous at the halfway point of what was a 20-mile bike ride? I took the risk, and luckily the mustard was at a minimum, almost (but not quite) dampened by the enthusiasm of the ketchup and the onions. Besides, there were people in line. Asking for a special order holds up other people. Ergo, hang in and focus on everything but the mustard. Then there was the visit to a Subway sandwich store when the special was a bratwurst sub. Bratwurst and onions? Maybe cheese sauce? How could anyone ruin a brat? The answer to that question? Slice it up and cook it in mustard sauce. What a disappointment. They ought to put a warning label in their advertisement–or at least phrase it to reveal that the wonders of bratwursts bathed in a hot tub of lovely yellow mustard. A copywriter can make that sound more appealing than I can.

A nice Dijon is a tad better if used sparingly. But still, I avoid it when I can. I won’t add mustard, even that nice Grey Poupon or a deli mustard, to a recipe. I would rather do without than take the chance of living with it for the rest of the day. No one misses what they don’t know was supposed to be there, or if they do, no one at the table says “Hey, this would go better with a little Grey Poupon.” Our family pallet is not all that refined.

There are those somewhere out there that might think that I was a deprived child. Consider that I was well into my 30s before I tasted horseradish on a sandwich. My mother-in-law, whom I loved, was building ham sandwiches for the family. Since I was downstairs working on a project she called down to ask me if I wanted one. Sure! In a few minutes we met at the steps and I gladly picked up what looked like a ham on rye with mayo and lettuce. Mom was a wonderful cook. I really looked forward to that sandwich. Here again, one bite and Bam! What looked like mayo was actually a layer of horseradish. She never thought to ask, assuming that everyone ate horseradish on their sandwiches. My first thought was “Am I being punished? Does she resent my having married her middle son? What did I do wrong?” Then I accepted the fact that it was likely that all the sandwiches had horseradish and that this was simply the way she built them. It wouldn’t have dawned on her to do otherwise. The solution was to peel off the bread with the layer of the white stuff, then do my best to enjoy the rest. Nevertheless, like yellow mustard, the taste of horseradish was my closest companion for the rest of the day.

It goes without saying that there was a moment beyond which mustard (particularly yellow mustard) has never crossed my lips again. The image is disturbing. If you are squeamish, dear reader, skip to the next paragraph. The culminating event was the challenge of changing the diapers of a nursing baby. It is difficult, almost impossible for me to see yellow mustard without seeing a poopy diaper. It went on for months and months. Never again. If you want mustard on your roast beef, be willing to apply it yourself.

My aversion to mustard in all its forms will never break the bank of French’s or Grey Poupon. The jars and bottles of the stuff that reside in the pantry in order to please the Hub’s pallet will stay there until he passes on, and then I shall pass on whatever is not several years beyond the expiration date. Yet, I am told that mustard is one of those things, like honey, that does expire. I am not betting on that. What to do with that which may have withstood the test of time? I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Meanwhile, the condiment industry will continue to flourish in all its tasty glory. Those who love mustard will continue to do so with or without my blessing. As for me, I shall enjoy my burger sans the yellow stuff in order to relish everything else.

The one year anniversary of the exit from Afghanistan by the United States has been much on my mind. It is certainly difficult to ignore given the amount of news coverage lately. The only event close to bumping it off the lede are the issues surrounding the former president’s collection of classified documents that never should have been taken to Mar-a-Lago in the first place. I think more and more about the women. The women whose lives have been changed in so many ways by the return of the Taliban to lead the county. They had opportunities, they became educated, they became professionals in their own right. They had choices.

Life here in the West is different, I think, for women who are followers of Islam. I am happy to note that Nike has designed an “active” hijab and that there is now modest active- and swimwear out there for women whose faith demands modesty. Even looking though the Land’s End catalogue I find swimwear that includes a swim skirt or a tankini for those of us less willing to display our saggy baggy fold-overs in public. Such places as Land’s End make it much easier to find something suitable. More modest.

As I was working on the next book log entry, I got to thinking about the burka. We find so many pictures of women covered in the blue burka in news reports today. I wondered if I had already reviewed The Whirlwind by James Clavell. His novel covers the unsettled time in 1960’s and 70’s Iran when the Shah left and the Ayatollah Khomeini takes power. The main characters are members and families of a helicopter company who need to leave and take with them the copters and the spare parts in order to save the company from financial disaster. So what does this have to do with modesty, the burka, the chador, and the hijab? A bit. Perhaps like chewing on a stick of gum, some events in The Whirlwind have stayed with me long after I finished reading the novel.

There is one moment in The Whirlwind when an Iranian male looks at a female Western journalist who has not covered her head and fantasizes what she would look like, head thrown back and in some sort of sexual ecstasy. The language is fairly vivid and our male observer imagines first raping her, then killing her for her wantonness in going about in public with her hair uncovered . This could simply be James Clavell’s interpretation gone into a deep dive into the pool of stereotypes of the time. On the other hand I confess that Clavell got me wondering if the Prophet requires modesty to protect the women from the eyes of men and their fantasies? I have read that there are women who have said that the chador and the abaya made them feel safer on the streets. I understand.

For me, one thing leads to another when it comes to whatever piques my interest in a book. From The Whirlwind, I read Karen Armstrong’s biography of Muhammad and several other books centered around Islam. From the mother of one of my students I learned more. While I know something–enough to be a tad knowledgeable–there is more to be learned.

Nevertheless, I must confess that to me, the burka looks, to my Western eyes, over the top. Miriam, the female protagonist in Khalid Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, is forced into the burka by her controlling husband, Rasheed. Completely covered, with vision limited by the lattice like opening in front, Miriam feels cloistered, claustrophobic at first. The headgear is heavy and she has no peripheral vision. She trips over the hem. Even her hearing is limited. However, given who she is and the manner of her anxiety and fear, the burka provides her with some security. No one notices her. It is a place to hide. Yes, this is a novel, and yes, I should not ground all my thinking in fiction, but one thing leads to another. Of course, I had to look things up. The results consider that life in a burka contributes to several health problems including asthma, hearing problems, and cardiac issues.

Afghani Taliban leaders have said that the burka is a sign of respect. My question is: Respect for whom? For Allah? For the Quran? Ok. That makes sense to me. Is it protective of and respectful of those men who lack self-control? For the idea that the husband is the only male who should look upon his wife? For the difference between public and private persona? On the other hand, in Western eyes, the burka is a sign of male domination, of the restriction of the lives of women. Of limits and control. Today in Afghanistan, women are limited in their education, in their ability to move freely about the community, in their ability to live what we in the West think of as active and fulfilled lives beyond the confines of home. Do they sell modest activewear in Kabul? Inquiring minds want to know.

In closing, I want to share with you, dear reader, from Karl Vick’s Time Magazine article for the week of June 6-June 13, 2022 (p.98) regarding Hoda Khammash, an Afghani activist who, during the time between the rule of the Taliban, wrote poetry and talked about being president. She was invited to a conference with the Taliban in Oslo where, “even though speaking out meant that she could not safely return to Afghanistan, she used her opportunity to speak out on behalf of detained colleagues. ‘I feel their pain with my bones thousands of kilometers away, and hear their groaning under the torture of the Taliban.’

Karl Vick writes:

When the US first went to war in Afghanistan, its women and girls–barred from school, forced under burkas, and confined to home by the ruling Taliban–were a justification. Since the US withdrew, they are an inconvenient truth.

So now what? What do we do with inconvenient truths? Do we face them or do we ignore them? In this case, it is difficult to say. I await an answer.

Some time ago I had written about my face in the mirror. It looks great in the morning after having spent several hours parallel to the floor. The pull of gravity changes direction. It doesn’t pull directly southward first thing in the morning. Maybe the pillow props it up? I am a side sleeper after all. When I look in the mirror in the morning, I think “Not Bad.” For a while, though, such was not the case. A close look in the mirror made me think of the squared-off face of my grandfather. All I needed was a thicker mustache. Now, some serious months later and thirty pounds down, I can see my old self in the mirror.

That’s “old self” as in the person who was considerably younger than I am now. I just have to look past the brown spots and the bumps and wrinkles. While I like to think I am not all that vain simply because I roll my eyes at Botox, wrinkle creams, and hyaluronic acid, I confess I am happy to see something of my old self looking back. Nevertheless, the day has its way with me. By bedtime, I look in the mirror and think Aw-w-w-. Gravity. This is why I am not getting a tattoo in the near future.

The gym has been the place where I can simply be alone and do my thing. I am, perhaps rightly, proud of myself when I do a kilometer on the rowing machine in a little over six minutes. In this effort, yes with the dial set at more than the minimum, I hit the stroke rate of 27 stroke per minute. It is certainly not a gold-medal worthy speed, having read about all of that in The Boys In the Boat, but hey, for an old lady, not awful. I have established something of a baseline against which I can measure further progress.

Over time, the gym experience has changed a bit. Earlier, there was music on the PA in the locker rooms, but not the main room. There had been a rule that personal music was fine, but that it had to be kept to one’s self–use earbuds or headphones. For someone like me, this was nirvana. I could simply zone out into my own world without something thudding overhead. But somewhere alone the way in the past six weeks, someone up front must have realized that the PA was not turned on in the main room. Personal music be damned, PA full speed ahead. I tried ear plugs, which worked, but then I ran out of foamy ear plugs and haven’t replaced them. Music not of my own choice can drive me crazy. Once upon a time there was no such thing as background music. Now it is ubiquitous. It has taken some time, but I have gotten better at tuning it out.

This is not necessarily what I want to do. Even so, I have found that, yes, this is not my generation’s music. Given the number of Silver Sneakers clients who occupy the gym at my time of the morning, one would think that might be taken into consideration. Maybe change the feed once in a while? Really, it took some serious time to get into my generation’s music in the first place. I consciously ignored the birth of the Beatles. Me? Oh, I was into Beethoven and Mozart–oh yes, and the composers of the concert band music. The Beatles? Passé. At any rate, there is little coming down on my head at the gym that interests me. Perhaps that makes it easier to ignore.

All in all, progress is being made. I have been at the gym three times a week for the past 18 months. Little by little, I can see some changes. I actually have biceps. A close look reveals that I even have triceps! I can do more and schlepp more groceries than I have in the fairly recent past. Much of the time I feel feisty—I have more energy. And so it is that even on days when I don’t want to go to the gym, I go. My sessions are getting ever so slightly longer and I am increasing the weights on the machines. I find that rolling hills are nice when on the treadmill, and while adding the rowing machine has been a challenge, it has been fun. Little by little. I think less about losing weight and more about getting healthy. When I think about doing something else besides hitting the gym, I think about why I got started in the first place. I remember: I don’t have to be the best. I just have to be better than last time.