Time Flies

I know it’s an old saying that “time flies.” As I dated this blog for the 30th of January, I really don’t know where the time went. Monday will be the first day of February and then Punxsutawney Phil will make his yearly prediction of the length of winter. That sacred day is known in the Christian world as the Presentation of Christ. Jewish law mandates that an offering be made on the 40th day after birth, and that the child and mother are to go to temple and make the offering. It is a touching feast day and I look forward to celebrating it each year. It means more to me than the groundhog thing. This offering made by the child and mother goes back much further to the time when child sacrifice was a “thing.” The offering presented was a substitute for the child himself (it was a first-born male child that was the sacrifice). Remember that Abraham did not seem to bat much of an eye when asked to take his son and sacrifice him. It seems that we have come a long way since then, but remember that children are sacrificed everyday by malnutrition, abuse, homelessness, inadequate education, and prejudice. I just returned from walk number two for the day. We’ve had mostly cloudy weather for the last week and it wears on me. The combination of winter and clouds makes me less than happy. It does help to get out and walk even though the temperature requires a good deal of bundling up. I can do it, and most days I do. It is a struggle, nevertheless, and one must be cautious of the ice. I moved into this neighborhood over 35 years ago. Quite a few of the lots were empty at that time. Since then the area is “all built up.” Much of the building is rental property. I receive several offers to buy my house every month. I am sure that it will become a “rental” property when it is sold. As I walk along the sidewalk the number of houses being moved out of or into is pretty surprising. There was another today. I’m not sure the neighbors will be sad to see this one being vacated. A few days ago a woman stood in the middle of the street screaming at one of the occupants using more expletives than I can count on fingers and toes. She was, perhaps, the one standing outside the garage with her worldly belongings waiting for a ride when I passed by this morning. This afternoon the moving truck was in the driveway and being loaded. My personal belief is that the occupant was running a used car dealership with some interesting specimens with temporary licenses parked in the driveway, over the sidewalk and in the street. They seemed to be of the high-end variety–Jaguar, Mercedes, Lincoln, etc. but they were all missing something, like a fender, a door, a window. Surely they were real bargains if one was in need of a fixer-upper.

The great good news of the week was the phone call on Tuesday telling me that I had an appointment for the first injection of COVID vaccine this coming Thursday at 7:20 AM. The second piece of good news is that the massive storm headed toward the east coast is supposed to miss us. Our temps have not been that bad. One of the memories that came up on Facebook was of this date a couple of years ago when the temperature was -27º! Today the high was 30º. I shan’t complain. Sophia spent a good deal of the morning going through her massive toy box looking for a worthy replacement for the object affectionately known as “Miss Purple.” She has misplaced it. It is her favorite and she is bereft without such. After hauling out several prospects and giving them a tryout she evidently decided the lost is irreplaceable. Did she return the items to her toy box? The answer is so obvious that I won’t presume to say yea or nay. We all know about impulse shopping. When one does not have the capability to roam the aisles of the closest Target and pick up items one never realized one needed until it had been seen, then one is attracted by the adds that pop up while watching YouTube educational offerings. My latest

purchases arrived Thursday. These are wooden puzzles, which incidentally do not “click” together like normal jigsaw puzzles. The shapes are sometimes flowers, fish, animals, other recognizable objects. Because the shapes are recognizable that does not mean they are easy to place! Anyway, I’m working on the first of two. I’ll not make a prediction as to the completion date. It’s been a good and relatively quiet week. Praying for friends who are desperately ill has taken a good bit of time. When I consider them, I feel especially blessed to be as well as I am. Thanks for reading. Thanks for thoughts. Thanks for praying.

It Was a Peaceful Day

I did not watch the news this week. I did watch the historic inauguration on Wednesday and I will admit that I was impressed. This, by the way, was not news it was an actual happening. No one was putting a twist on this event as it was happening. The inauguration speech was worthy of a president of the USA. The oaths were sworn with dignity and with seriousness of purpose. I can’t say the musical choices (aside from the National Anthem) or the performers were exactly my cup of tea, as it were, but the appeal to many was obvious. Even the replacement of the crowd with flags was moving. And most impressive of all was that there was no violence, thank God. Let me back-track, the most impressive of all in my humble opinion was the young poet laureate Amanda Gorman. What an outstanding young lady she is. Her emphatic reading of her poetic work was an important part of the ceremony. It was remarkably well done considering she has struggled to overcome a speech impediment. Her mother is a teacher in the Watts area of Los Angeles. Amanda has announced her intention to run for president of the United States in 2036, the first year she will be eligible to do that. The memorial event the night before in memory of the 400,000 who died of COVID-19 was touching. It has taken the leadership of this nation a long time to admit to this overwhelming tragedy. Now it has been done, and the healing can begin, I hope and pray. A peaceful snow has fallen almost all day and continues into the night. It will stop and then begin again just gently coating the world with white. It’s a beautiful sight especially through the living room window while sitting near the fireplace.

Sophia, resident cat and ruler of the house, rather enjoys her time before the fire. She is fascinated by the flames. She will watch them leap for a time and then decide that a nap is called for. Interestingly enough, she finds that most things call for a nap. Her most active time is in the morning waiting for me to emerge from the shower and “play her game.” It is just amazing how some brightly colored tinsel on a string can entertain her for as long as I am willing to play. She never gets tired and walks away. I have other things to do, thus I am the one who makes and end of it. I wish for peace for four friends suffering from various afflictions, cancer, hereditary disease, COVID-19 and complications, and depression. Looking at the gently falling snow my wish is that their troubles could be resolved as easily as those flakes float down. I am also deeply grieved at learning of the death of another my former students at the too young age of 37. My chemotherapy week went well. The first day, always the longest, seemed interminable this week. I have to have blood drawn first so the lab can process it, and send the doctor the report before I see him so that takes an hour. The doctor is sometimes late because of patient overload or late

reports. Then it is off to the infusion center for the first of five days. This time around it was announced that the shipment of my medication had not arrived so a courier had been dispatched to fetch some from the other large hospital system. Then I was told it had arrived and needed to be prepared and finally the robot delivered it to the nurses’ station and the IV was started. The blood draw usually takes 10 -15 minutes. The doctor’s appointment never is more than 15 minutes (this particular day was less than 10). The infusion itself is 30 minutes. I was there four hours! Waiting is so frustrating. Then, on Wednesday, when I arrived they announced that my medicine had been delivered in the morning! So for the last three days I was in and out in an hour. I hope your week has gone well. I thank you for reading. I’m grateful for your thoughts and prayers. I am feeling well and thankful for you.

I Nearly Made It!

Last week I said I needed to practice what I preached. I’ll pat myself on the back and say that I did a pretty good job. There were just a very few times when I lost my mind and tuned in to the news again. I must say that I do feel much better, mental health-wise. The hold that the media has over us is pretty frightening.

A friend posted this on her Facebook page which pretty well sums it up. Henri Nouwen’s meditation for today also speaks to me about the need to recognize those things that actually rob us of our true freedom. “Freedom Is Our Goal While fear and anger are the most natural and most obvious reactions to a state of emergency, they have to be unmasked as expressions of our false selves. When we are trembling with fear or seething with anger, we have sold ourselves to the world or to a false god. Fear and anger take our freedom away and make us victims of the strong seductions of our world. Fear, as well as anger, when we look at them in solitude and quiet, reveal to us how deeply our sense of worth is dependent either on our success in the world or on the opinions of others. We suddenly realize that we have become what we do or what others think of us.” I can’t say that a lot has gone on this week. It’s been pretty quiet. Nice weather at the beginning of the week with temperatures in the high 40s the day before the blizzard on Thursday night and Friday. We did not get a lot of snow but we had a whole lot of blowing. The old dirty white stuff is now covered up by a fresh coat of snow. Some say that’s good. I’ll refuse to comment. According to the calendar we are in the month of January so we can expect a little winter in this part of the world. My college geography professor pointed out several times that the most productive people live in the parts of the world that experience seasonal changes. Supposedly we are invigorated by the yearly round of seasons. After experiencing who knows how many seasonal changes I can’t say that I’ve proved his hypothesis, if it were his hypothesis and not that of someone else. He never quoted an authority as far as I can remember. I know I do look forward to the change of seasons particularly winter to spring, spring to summer and summer to autumn. I must be honest and admit that I don’t look forward to winter, although once it is here, it’s not all that bad. Granted, my outlook changed when I did not have to be at school at an early hour. Before my retirement from the public school system the policy was to not announce school closings until the morning of the day school was to be closed due to weather. The mind struggle then was over how early one must rise to (1) find out if school were closed, and (2) allow for time to plow the driveway before the usual round of preschool readiness activities. I will freely admit that I did not sleep well in anticipation of the following day’s events. Now I can sleep all night, get up when I want, look at the snow, and decide that any trip out of the house is canceled for that day. I did that very thing on Friday morning. My usual task is to “babysit” the desk at the Visual Arts Center in the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science. Since the pandemic struck and the Pavilion was closed for several months, business has been slow to pick up again. I really enjoy volunteering there and was looking for a safe way to continue that. I knew it would not be wise for me to act as a docent for school groups given my immune system. Being at the desk is really quite safe. Masks are required and no one is really near me if anyone actually comes in. Given the blizzard without and the prospect of no, or very few, customers within I called in “snow bound.” I can’t say a great deal was accomplished at home, but the homebody was safe and sound and warm.

This would have been a perfect day to begin work on the 1000 piece puzzle of the harbor of Santorini. It still remains in its hermetically sealed package. Perhaps tonight? Last week, on Tuesday we did have a perfectly gorgeous sunrise. It brought to mind the first line of one of the hymns for the Daily Office, “O splendor of God’s glory bright.”

There have been no medical problems this week for which I am most grateful, as I am for all of your thoughts and prayers sustaining me through the week. I hold all of you close to my heart.

Practice What You Preach

It is time for me to do that. Over twenty years ago I swore off newscasts. When the nation was shocked by the events of 9/11 my recommendation for healing was to stop watching the endless repetition of the events on each and every newscast. People could not heal when the event was being made real to them 24 hours a day 7 days a week. With the absolutely unbelievable events of last Wednesday I “fell off the wagon” and began watching the news again. It has done me no good, only made me more and more angry. I need to stop and I will do that right now. I won’t be able to process the horrific event of the attack on the Capitol of the United States until I stop seeing it. What we witnessed is such a shocking event. I guess there is not any reason we should be shocked. The man who incited the crowd to riot is the same person who rejoiced when his election rallies shouted “Lock her up.” Now he doesn’t understand why some are blaming him for this debacle. This whole spectacle is made even worse by watching the video made by his son of the party in the tent on the White House lawn immediately before the speech that incited the insurrection. Mindless projection of falsehoods and misinformation has become so prevalent that we are in danger of disregarding it. One of the president’s favorite minions is our useless governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem. She declared in a national speech that the new senators from Georgia are communists. She doesn’t even know them. The defeated would-be senators tried to tie them to communism and their accusations were proven false after that was investigated. She had posted on her Twitter account this week that “words matter.” Interesting fact that between 1995 and 2016, Noem’s family-owned Racota Valley Ranch in Hazel, South Dakota deposited over $3.7 million in government farm subsidies.  In 2012 alone, they cashed $232,707 in subsidy checks, according to the Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidy Database. Just perhaps there are others who need to practice what they preach. It is strange that these events and the continual effort to pass the blame reminded me of a third grade class many, many years ago. Those who know me from the past probably know that I had no furniture in my music room. To me it just got in the way of how we moved, how we played instruments, how we made music. Consequently we all sat on the floor, teacher included. The lack of barriers, i.e. desks, put a great responsibility on the students as far as managing themselves. Although this arrangement was new to kindergarten students, by the time first grade was half over, the students adapted admirably and respected each other’s space. One of the benefits of teaching a multi-year subject was seeing the same students every year. They knew what to expect from me, and I from them. Discipline just wasn’t a problem usually. Most years I was able to teach the first day of class without speaking! That was a test of what the children had learned, and what I had taught them. This particular third grade class had a new student. He was very well dressed, always clean, super polite and a perfect scholar, so it seemed. Every class there was some kind of disturbance amongst the students in his vicinity. Some of them were known mischief creators and, of course, they received the blame. It wasn’t until several weeks had passed that I finally discovered it was mister perfect that was the cause of the problems. He denied it, of course, but after being caught he was at least smart enough to stop inciting misbehavior. I wonder what happened to him. Perhaps he became a politician! It wasn’t only the spectacle of people breaking down fences, doors, beating a policeman with a fire extinguisher, desecrating a sacred national space that bothered me. I know from other events of this past year, had the crowd been formed mainly of people of color they would have been mowed down by gunfire without question. Yet this mob urged on by the president, seemed to have no problem overrunning the Capitol Police who appeared to be totally unprepared. It’s over. Soon this administration will be finished, if one can call it an administration. How long will it take our nation to heal? We’ve had a touch of winter this week but nothing too bad. A little snow and temperatures above freezing most days. It being only the 9th of January I expect different weather before spring has sprung.

Sophia has developed an interest in a squirrel that uses our deck as a short cut to the neighbor’s tree. She’s quite content to spend part of her day looking for said squirrel. She’s frequently disappointed but nevertheless perseveres. I’ve felt well physically and psychologically, until Wednesday. I’ll enjoy another week off and then return for infusions next week. I’ll enjoy it because I will practice what I preach and return to “no news.” Really, no television news, because I do read the newspaper. That way I can skip the articles in which I really am not interested. At least I only have to read disturbing news once and not over and over and over again. Peace to you and to our nation. Thank you for your prayers, thoughts, and good wishes. Pray for our country.

Vergangen ist

There is beautiful chorale prelude by J. S. Bach which seems to have a rather melancholy color to it. The title in German is “Das alte Jahr vergangen ist.” Somehow the German speaks more powerfully than the English, “The old year now hath passed away.” A couple of verses are worth quoting: “1. The old year now hath passed away; We thank Thee, O our God, today That Thou hast kept us through the year When danger and distress were near. 5. Wherein as Christians we may live Or die in peace that Thou canst give, To rise again when Thou shalt come And enter Thine eternal home. 6. There shall we thank Thee and adore With all the angels evermore. Lord Jesus Christ, increase our faith to praise Thy name through life and death.” That first and the last verse really spoke to me about the year past. It has been a year of danger and distress, for sure. So many people sick, so many people having died, it really is hard to comprehend it all. How can all these people in the United States and around the world have succumbed to a tiny little virus? The facts are overwhelming. And looking at the statistics from other places one wonders if something different could not have been done. The daughter of my friend who died this past autumn came here to be with her mother. She, her husband and children live in Vietnam, where her husband works for the United Nations Resettlement Agency. By coming here she knew what she would have to go through to return home. She would have to quarantine when she returned. She would have to really search for flights. She would have to be tested before the airlines would let her board. In all she was away from her children and husband for 84 days. In a Facebook post she also stated that Vietnam has had 35 deaths from Covid-19. They have been virtually a closed country since the virus started to spread. She is not complaining. She’s just stating facts–only 35 deaths in the whole country. When she returned she spent 15 days in quarantine in a hotel with meals brought to her room. Although she could not see her loved ones until the 15 days had passed, she’s not complaining. In South Dakota over 10% of the population has tested positive for Covid-19. Some complain when asked to wear a face mask or socially distance. A article in the local paper resulted from an interview with some young people about what they were going to do on New Year’s Eve. Several were from Minnesota and were anxious to cross the border to South Dakota where they could go to the bars and mingle because of the lack restrictions here versus Minnesota. It seems to me that our priorities are way out of whack. Das alte Jahr vergangen ist. Please, may we never have another like it.

We’ve had some lovely chilly days. The wind seems to have gone elsewhere which is just fine with me. Due to the lack of wind and the superfluous amount of sunshine, I’ve been able to walk outside every day from Wednesday on. Bracing would be the descriptive word, but it feels so good to be out. Mind you, this is after the snowfall on Sunday and the blizzard on Tuesday. I returned to the cancer center for infusions every day this week, including New Year’s Day. On holidays infusion patients formerly were shifted to the hospital so the cancer center staff could have the day off. Due to the large number of Covid-19 patients they can’t accommodate the cancer patients so the staff has to work holidays. When I visited with the oncologist on Monday he reviewed the scans which I had on Christmas Eve. The CT scan showed very little change. The lesions in the lung are basically invisible. The liver lesions are the same or slightly smaller. The MRI showed a new little spot in the brain (6x3x4 mm). It could be cancer or a small stroke I didn’t even realize I had. The next MRI will show if it has grown or remained the same. If it shows growth or there are more spots that may mean the cancer has moved to the brain. I don’t feel any differently than I did before, so I’m not really worried. The doctor pointed out that I am at the age when these tiny strokes can occur. I really didn’t need to be reminded of my advanced age, but it was of some comfort to know that a stroke could be the cause of the spot. There is some other stuff in my head revealed in the MRI that is consistent with chronic small vessel ischemic disease. To save looking it up, ischemic disease has to do with trouble in the blood vessels in the

brain. In the rest of the body it is arteriosclerosis. That’s the simple explanation. Look it up if you want the complex explanation! Tomorrow is my last day at the console (until the next time). I have gotten in some good practice. We will see if the “good practice” holds through the service tomorrow. The church is opening again to the public so there may be a few more souls there than last Sunday when it was closed. Sophia has enjoyed her long afternoon naps in the sun. I completed another jigsaw puzzle, finding the last piece on the floor. I may have brushed it off the table myself or … I hope you have entered into the new year with hope. Thank you for the prayers and thoughts and communications. Be well. Be safe.