“Love … is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.”
– Anne Truitt
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays: http://lindaghill.com/2014/11/05/one-liner-wednesday-grammar-is-funny-like-that/
Memory is both a blessing and a curse.
There are so many wonderful memories – of my daughters growing up, of contentment with my spouse, of the many decades of life with my parents close by, of extended family gatherings, of singing and playing music, of wonderful discussions with friends, of seeing beautiful sights, so much loveliness in the world…
But somehow the dark memories intrude, even when I attempt to push them away – the pain of seeing my daughters struggle against illness, the bewildering journey of the last six months of my father-in-law’s life, the health issues with the remaining family elders, the loss of my family’s beloved parish to an abuse of power, the ongoing tragedies of war, racism, exploitation, sexism, oppression which rely on memory to keep old grievances and what should be bygone practices alive…
What to do? Try to use the positive memories to give strength to heal the legacy of the dark memories.
Easier said than done.
This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt is “memory”. Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-november-114/
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“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.”
– Galway Kinnell, American poet, who died yesterday at the age of 87
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“Voting is a civic sacrament.”
– Father Ted Hesburgh
(Apologies for being US-centric in the timing of this, but, given that the vast majority of people reading this live in democracies, voting will be pertinent at some point in the year.)
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Two degrees Celsius is the threshold between what is considered impactful but manageable global warming and catastrophic global warming. Climate scientists will tell you it isn’t that clearcut. We are already seeing major impacts at only one degree-ish. At two degrees, we may get major feedback loops happening, like the melting of permafrost and the release of methane hydrates from northern seas and oceans which would accelerate warming further.
Two degrees C. has been translated into 350 ppm carbon dioxide. We have now topped 400 at times in the atmospheric readings on the Big Island of Hawai’i – I think it is Mauna Kea, but it could be Mauna Loa – and the levels keep rising.
What is disturbing me even more is that global atmospheric methane, after a long period of stability, began rising in 2007. Methane is more short-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but is a much more powerful greenhouse gas – 86 times more powerful in a twenty year context and 106 times more powerful in a decade. Given that our timeframe to get global warming under control is now very short, methane in the atmosphere is particularly troubling as it has such a strong effect in the immediate future.
So, why do I hear the word degrees and immediately go into my global warming spiel? I write about this a lot, as an offshoot of my commentary on the dangers of shale oil/gas aka unconventional fossil fuels aka fracking. I have spent countless hours writing and researching and commenting on these topics. It started as a personal thing as my state, New York, is currently under a moratorium, while our neighbor state Pennsylvania is drilling extensively. And I live in a border town.
I could literally write about this for hours, but I will spare you. I apologize if I was unclear at all in this post. It’s the whole stream of consciousness thing – no fact-checking or editing allowed…
This is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. This week’s prompt was “degree/degrees.” Join us! Read how here: http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-2514/
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“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”
– Julia Child
Please join in Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Details here: http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/22/one-liner-wednesday-one-filament-short-of-a-lightbulb/
I’m up in the middle of the night again. Theoretically, I could write a post from the backlog of things I have queued in my head or draft folder, but I don’t have enough sustained focus to do so. Instead, what follows will be (part of) the swirl that constitutes the “top” of my mind at the moment.
* I wonder if I will get my pre-election open letter to Governor Cuomo written before the election. It would be about the fracking moratorium, of course, the emerging science, the threat we feel here of being a sacrifice zone, the need to chuck the current outdated and corrupt draft SGEIS, etc.
* Ebola. Seriously, people in the US, get a grip! Other than a few dozen people, your chance of exposure to ebola is non-existent. If you want to do something useful for your health, get a flu shot – and catch up on any other immunization you might need. Millions of people have died from flu complications around the world over the years. It is easy to catch and transmit. Flu vaccine works partly by having lots of people immunized, creating herd immunity to help protect people who can’t be immunized and the percentage of people who will develop flu despite being immunized, who will generally have milder cases because they were immunized than if they had not been.
* So much war and violence. I don’t actually know if I could write a post about this. People are – and should be – so much better than this by now.
* The confusing muddle of the synod of the family and evangelization, which will be continuing at least for another year.
* The comfort that the beauty of a glorious Northeast foliage season has been in these past few weeks of dashing about on caretaking duty.
* The rest of my planned follow-up to Smith Alumnae Chorus event posts.
* More chapters to My (Feminist) Story.
* Poetry, which is the one thing I have committed to making progress on, despite the swirl going on in my head. Truthfully, I’m not doing everything I had intended to with it, but I have made all three meetings of the poetry critique group I have joined and where I have found welcome, help, and acceptance, begun the five-week fall semester of Binghamton Poetry Project, and may even attend, though probably not read at, my first ever open mic next week. I don’t have the time to do the research I need to figure out submissions, I owe a thoughtful email to a poet friend, and I wish that I had time/brain to write and edit more, but I am giving myself a pat on the back for making some progress.
* At some point, I really will get some of my Hawai’i photos – from May! – in shape to post FB albums and to re-post blog entries with some photos added. I hope to do this before our next visit to the Islands…
* Spiritual matters. There is so much going on – experiences with our elder and younger generations, a recent parish mission, studying Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond, missing contact with my spiritual mentor/companion and other friends with whom I can share soul-conversation.
* An update to my empty nest post. Something along the lines of when the sandwich generation goes open-face…
Maybe I should attempt some more sleep before dawn. Or attack the mounds of mail that arrived this week… At least I attended vigil Mass yesterday so I don’t need to drive about and try to be attentive for church this morning. And B. promised to make us a nice Sunday breakfast this morning.
It’s actually Friday and I just read the prompt which is the word “shape”. I figured I needed to write now, because my time is very unpredictable these days, so here we go.
My mother-in-law is in sad shape. I don’t know if that is a term that people are using now or not. I remember hearing it when I was growing up.
A backache she woke up with on Sept. 7 tuned out to be from a compression fracture of her L1 vertebra. By the time we got to the neurosurgeon and they did an MRI, the vertebra had collapsed. She spent two days in the hospital in order to have a procedure where they inject bone cement to stabilize the bone fragments. If the procedure had been done when it was still a compression fracture, they would have put balloons in and injected the cement to stabilize and shore up that vertebra, but once it is collapsed, it isn’t possible to retain the function. Also, the chance for fast pain relief would have been much better.
As it is, progress is very slow. She is on strong pain meds and does best when she is lying down, except that she needs to be up and about to get stronger so that she can start physical therapy and build her core muscles and leg muscles so that she can function and perform daily tasks. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a big appetite before and this has reduced her to not having an appetite at all, so she has lost weight. It’s all turned into a muddle of meds and side effects and one thing making another thing harder to do.
As you might expect, my spouse and I have been up there a lot and have been bringing her to appointments and running errands and talking to the health professionals and trying to get her to eat and helping with laundry and bringing in the mail and so forth.
This afternoon, I kind of hit the wall. I can’t tell the whole story – privacy and such – but I do think that I may finally have gotten her to realize that she has to be the one to actually make up her mind to get better. She has to stop saying “I know I need to eat and drink more” and actually do it, instead of making excuses. If she doesn’t, she isn’t going to maintain her weight, much less gain what she needs to. She has to want to get stronger and make up her mind to do it, instead of putting energy into self-pity.
We can’t do this for her. She has to do it for herself.
I am exhausted by it all and really wanted to have a good cry about it, but couldn’t quite manage it. The eyes watering while cutting up some onions to make ham and scalloped potatoes for dinner doesn’t count. Maybe later…
This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. Join us! Find out more about it here: http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/17/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-1814/
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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
~ e. e. cummings, whose birthday was yesterday
Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Details here: http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/15/one-liner-wednesday-amusing-nonsense/
After working through most of the aftermath of my parents’ medical misadventures in August, I had the foolish idea that I could make plans for the fall. The problem wasn’t making the plans as much as executing them…
In the rule of things happening in sets of three, the third member of our family’s elder generation has had medical issues which have necessitated major time commitments and the further jettisoning of things from my already pared down but still lengthy to-do list.
I had signed up for Blogging 101, reasoning that, even though I have been blogging for a year, I still struggle with some of the mechanics of blogging and could use some help. While I managed to do a few assignments the first couple of weeks, I haven’t had time to even look at the site since then, so Blog Fail #1.
Yesterday, I read the email and pingbacks that Some Kernels of Truth had nominated me for the “One Lovely Blog” Award with a touching paragraph about Top of JC’s Mind. I am so honored and humbled, but I know that I can’t do justice to fulfilling the requirements of acceptance. Blog Fail #2.
While a large part of these failures is lack of time, the larger problem is lack of brain power. Even when I can get online time, my mind is running through medical information and planning practicalities for the coming days.
I would urge you to click on the links above and check out the truly lovely Some Kernels of Truth and all of the listed links. It will be at least partial redemption of Blog Fail #2.
JC
Joanne Corey 