October, with Pumpkins and the Scent of Apocalypse

The first day of October dawns drizzly down here on the far southern coast of North America.  A few hours ago, I made this Facebook post:  "The full moon shines in the west; it's shrouded by haze and framed by dark tree branches. Meanwhile, lightning flashes and thunder rumbles. Welcome, October!"

I thought it would be a rainy day--in fact, there was a burst of rain, so I decided to bake some pumpkin bread.  Of course, when I got started with the spices and the mixing, the rain stopped. I tried to go for a quick walk, but had to come right back.  At least I've got a tasty way to get my vitamin A today.

I was up very early to get some grading done.  As I graded, I listened to coverage of Tuesday night's presidential debate.  I do wonder if my students got better grades because of that background noise.  The worst of my student essays is FAR better than any argument that I heard come out of that debate--although to be fair, it became clear that one man couldn't get a word in edgewise, and one man was more interested in bombastic bullying than a well reasoned argument.

Far better to turn to music.  This morning, I was thinking about U2's "October," and I came across this video, which has very early footage of the band.  Enjoy!

I remember a different October, in 1983, when I bought a copy of U2's War and then in short order, their earlier albums.  It was a season of bomb blasts and dead Soviet leaders, a different political season, but a similar apocalyptic vibe.

Or maybe October always comes with an apocalyptic vibe, as hinge months tend to do--that time between the lushness of summer and the coming dead of winter.

If you like your U2 with more of that apocalyptic vibe, here's a great video from a Paris concert that mixes "October" and "Bullet the Blue Sky."  Wow.

I Am Woman, but Baby, Don't Get Hooked

I was saddened to hear about the death of Helen Reddy, even though I never owned an album of hers.  I loved the iconic song, "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar."  I feel like I spent much of my childhood in the 70's with that song in the background. I feel like I should have more to say about her, about her music, about the fact that she died on the same day we had the worst presidential debate ever--but I don't.

I did not watch the debates.  I rarely do.  By the time the debates come in the life of the political cycle, I already know how I will vote, so there's not much motivation for me to stay up late watching dreary policy discussions done in short bits of time.

Of course, we didn't get that experience last night--it sounds like last night's debate was even worse than I thought it would be, and I thought it would be bad.  If I wanted to hear people shouting over each other and ignoring the ways we're socialized to be civil to each other--well, I really can't imagine wanting that.

And even if I did, it's hard for me to stay up that late.  Instead of watching TV, I went for an evening swim because it's South Florida, and it's still summer down here, and I was hot.  I watched the moon rise, which was amazing.  As always, I thought, why don't I watch the moon rise more often?  Why don't I swim more often?

As I was finishing up getting ready for work, I heard that Mac Davis died yesterday too--another staple of the AM radio days of my childhood.  He's being remembered for writing songs for Elvis, including "A Little Less Conversation," one of my favorites.  But I was surprised to realize that I can still sing the refrain of "Baby, Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me" all these years since I last heard that song.

I wish I had a clever way to conclude this post, something that would link icons of 70's AM radio to last night's elderly men who want one more chance to lead.  I wish I had a stinging and original observation about women and roaring and presidential debates  and gender and the gendered ways we treat each other.

I am nostalgic for campaign seasons that made me feel hopeful.  I am missing the songs of my youth which sang about issues I couldn't comprehend.  I am feeling the need to read some William Blake or maybe some Mary Shelley and to spend the day thinking about innocence and experience and the way forward.

Taxes, Poetry, and Other Obligations

The world can't stop talking about Donald Trump's taxes, although I'm sure there will soon be something new that makes us appalled.  I have known since early in my working life that the tax laws are skewed towards the wealthy.  I paid the highest percentage of my income in taxes during my grad school years, when I was earning the least amount of money; and much of those earnings were grad school assistantships, which Ronald Reagan declared could be taxed about a year before I started grad school.  

I have known that Donald Trump had something to hide, since he kept hiding information.  Therefore, I'm not surprised when the information makes him look bad.  I've known he's a man of questionable character for decades now--so I'm not surprised when his behavior makes him look bad.

Soon we can move on and discuss the debates, and soon we'll be voting.  Hopefully soon after that, we'll have solid, verifiable results.

However, I want to talk about something more pleasant.

Two weeks ago, I tried to write a poem that incorporated Hildegarde of Bingen, but I felt like I was just doing the same thing that I've done before, using the life of a medieval mystic (usually female) to contrast to the lives we're living now.

This morning, I came at the poem from a completely different angle:  what can a medieval mystic teach us about how to live during a time of pandemic?  From cloistering to robes to ordering the day--if I lived a different life, a freelance writer kind of life, I'd write it up as an article and hope that I'd get my big break.

Maybe I'd even write a self-help book--but would it get published before there was a vaccine?  If there was a vaccine, would there be a need for such a book?

And now I'm thinking of my unpublished book length memoir project, a project which probably reads very differently now.  I haven't been working on getting it published. so I'm not broken hearted that it probably won't be published in our current time.  It can join the others in my file of "Might Be Useful Some Day" manuscripts.  Sigh.

Wait, I said I was going to talk about something more pleasant.  Shelved manuscripts probably aren't the most pleasant thing.  But the evidence of continuing to show up, continuing to write, even in the face of unpleasant news from the larger world--that is pleasant indeed!

The Delights of a Different Seashore

At one point during our months of talking about the possibilities of vacationing together, my mom did wonder why we would want to leave our South Florida beach existence to travel to a different beach location.  But every beach location is different, although I do think that when I'm a little old lady looking back on our travel times, I'll get confused about which beach town was which.  Many stores in a beach town look the same as in other beach towns, although their signage may be different.

Hilton Head Island, at the far southern end of the state of South Carolina, is very different from South Florida beaches.  For that matter, it's very different from Myrtle Beach, which at the northern part of South Carolina.

When I walked on the beach at Hilton Head Island and looked away from the ocean, I saw lots of pine trees and oaks.  There were places where I didn't see a house or a resort.  It felt remote, even though I know it wasn't.

When I did see a building, it was a completely different building than the South Florida buildings.  There must be some sort of building restrictions, because there were no high rises on Hilton Head Island.  Although there were huge houses, houses that would cost millions to own, they weren't obtrusive, the way multi-million dollar mansions are in South Florida.

I loved walking on the beach, which was wide and firm.  The beaches on the east side of Florida aren't like that.  There's fluffy sand, which looks lovely, but isn't great for walking.  In South Florida, I don't see as many fiddler crabs--or more precisely the bubbling holes in the sand that speak to their presence.

The beaches at Hilton Head aren't great for sea shells, but Hilton Head seems more committed to sea turtles than our beaches here.  In South Florida, we talk about sea turtles digging the dark, but we can't achieve the level of darkness that Hilton Head does.  It was the kind of dark that made me a little afraid of the thought of walking at night, although I know it's a much safer walk there than here.

I loved seeing the ships out on the water.  I loved knowing that fishing trawlers were out there.  Down here, it's cruise ships, well, back when cruise ships were sailing.

There seemed to be lots of toddlers on the beach--toddlers with parents and grandparents, but more toddlers than I'm used to seeing on beaches.  We also saw a lot of well behaved dogs.  The dogs and the toddlers had the kind of joy that reminds us all of the wonders of the ocean.

I should probably use that reminder as I return to daily life.  I don't get over to my own seashore as often as I would like.  Let me think on that realization and perhaps make a goal or two.

Travel in a Time of Pandemic

At the beginning of the year, I had a different set of travel plans:  two trips to a seminary campus to do my onground intensives for my certificate in spiritual direction, some trips to see my family, at least one retreat (Create in Me) and maybe two (the quilting retreat in October). At the beginning of the year, I worried that I might not have enough vacation and PTO time.  Now as I approach the anniversary of my hiring, I worry that I might lose vacation that I don't have time to take.

As it became clear that the pandemic would be restricting us for longer than a month or two, my mom and I strategized.  I sent her some weeks where it might be easy for me to get away from my job, and she started to work her magic; one of her alternate life daydreams was being a travel agent, and she can get the best deals of anyone I know.

She found a week at Hilton Head Island for September 19-26, which was perfect for me, the middle week of a 3 week break between quarters.  My spouse continues teaching remotely, and we'd have wi-fi at the condo my mom found.  So off we went.

The trip up felt easy.  I felt almost giddy, even though I 95 isn't my favorite travel route in normal times.  I felt the temperature getting cooler as we drove north, and I felt so happy.  I wanted roadside stands, but we didn't see any, and we weren't in a mood to linger anyway.

We got to our condo and got settled in.  A week ago, we went to a Hilton Head Bi-Lo to get our food for the week.  We found a great deal on whole chickens, so we had a delicious chicken dinner, and then a chicken and rice dish, and then later, the best chicken and dumplings I've ever made.

We are lucky, in that we don't need to go out to eat, we don't need to have tourist attractions, we don't need movie theatres or other distractions.  I have friends who don't feel like they've had a vacation if they can't go and do all the time.  I am happy to have a stack of books and time to read, and my mom, dad, and spouse feel the same way.  We know from the past that we travel well together.

We stayed at a Marriott time share, so we had resort amenities, although they have been limited by the pandemic--all of the amenities like bars and the workout room are open for less time than usual.  The pools and hot tubs are more limited, but we had no trouble finding a chair and keeping our distance.

When we chose this week, I thought that Hilton Head would be a bit more deserted--not quite completely off season, the way it would be in February, but not the way it would be in July.  It wasn't crowded enough that I worried about disease transmission, but I did notice more children on the beach than I thought would be there.  Of course, now that some school districts are meeting remotely, school can travel too.  

For the most part, we stayed close to the resort.  We did go to a farmer's market on Tuesday, but there weren't many vegetables.  Still, the weather was beautiful, and we wandered around the historic site and the museum at the Honey Horn plantation.  I loved the butterfly enclosure.  We saw lots of butterflies all week, different than our South Florida butterflies, but still a treat.

Even though I had some work to do with my online classes and checking my work e-mail once a day, it was good to get away. It was good to see my parents--I know that they're safe and might have been safer if we had stayed away.  But I also know that they're in their early 80's, and we don't have decades to spend together.

We had a great week together.  It was wonderful to be with them and wonderful to be in a slightly cooler climate.  I needed a change of scenery--we've had a hot summer, which isn't unusual, but we've had day after day of no sea breeze, which makes it less bearable.

Tomorrow I'll write more about the beach itself, about the delights of a different seashore.  And later, I'll write about what I read during my short vacation.

Piecing, Peacing

I I thought about dismemberment and what it means to put bodies back together--both our individual bodies and groups of people (the body politic, the church body, and on and on I could go). 

For my first sketch, I just tried to capture some ideas:

This morning, I returned to the idea of putting something together with a pattern, and then I added the haiku-like creation:

I had something else in mind, something completely different, but this sketch is the one that came this morning.  That part of the process always intrigues me too.  Later, perhaps I'll explore further.

Compounding Goodness

We are about 40 days away from the election.  I'd been thinking about the number of weeks rather than the number of days, so I was surprised to see this post from Diana Butler Bass that told me that we're 40 days out.

Because she's writing from a religious perspective, she suggests that we treat these 40 days the way we would treat the season of Lent, with specific practices that root us in a mindful discipline.  I understand that her religious approach may be offputting to some, yet she offers important reminders to us all.

It's good to remember that we're not powerless.  We're not living under a dictatorship, although it may feel like it at times.  It's important to take these actions, because, as Bass reminds us, "Heartfelt, even wordless, prayers speak magic into the universe. Small actions add up, daily acts compound goodness."

She suggests we do one action a day, and she offers a variety of actions:  "lighting a candle, attending a protest, volunteering at the polls.  We could donate money or time.  We could write postcards to voters or postcards to others who need encouragement.  We could write letters to legislators."

She also suggests we pray once a day.  I would add that we should be thinking about the world we want to create.  Most of us know what kind of world we don't want to see.  But we're not always very good at thinking about what we do want.  

It's hard to create what we do want if we haven't spent time pondering it, creating images, giving our subconscious brains something that we want to attract.

Let's light our collective candles and do that now--and then let's take actions to make it so.