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Year of Birthday Cakes

Jan25
I saw the first mini irises popped up in the dry dirt on January 21, the earliest ever I think.

I want to be a helper. I am certainly grateful these days for the reminder to look for the helpers, when the wounds are so heavy. The contrast between the monks walking for peace across the south and the ICE thugs besieging Minneapolis is staggering.

Bird Buddy caught this lovely northern flicker Friday morning, just as the lightest snow began to fall.

The helpers, the good people with big hearts, are showing up in many thousands along the trail of the Walk for Peace monks; and the helpers generating compassion in action are showing up in the many thousands in the Twin Cities. It’s helpful to keep these many thousands of good-hearted Americans in mind.

By bedtime when I went to shut off the generator the snow was deep and heavy, weighing down birch limbs and wild rose stems almost to the ground.

My heart breaks for the VA nurse murdered yesterday and the mother murdered two weeks ago, and the two-year-old girl and the five-year-old boy and the fourth-grader and and and… I mean just imagine it for a second and it can’t help but break your heart (if you have one): a tiny child with no sense of what’s happening or why suddenly ripped away by strangers from all they know, and shipped to who knows where.

This morning the sun came out.

The sun coming out helped my heart yesterday. I remember the wisdom of the teachers that when I get mired in sadness because of anyone’s suffering I’m helping no one. I only help if I let that sadness morph into compassion and take action to alleviate the suffering of others. You can do it too. Call your congresspeople every day, show up in the streets if you’re able, write letters to editors, talk with friends and family, share reliable news sources with them if they’re blinded by propaganda from the regime. Do something to support the resistance: action is the antidote to anxiety. The stakes have never been higher.

Also, or if it’s all you can manage, do some random act of kindness for a neighbor, or a friend, or a stranger. And also: take care of your own nervous system. Everyone has their own unique capacities in each moment, each day. I took the weekend off, mostly, from screen time, from news, and still it was hard to relax. There’s this dreadful undercurrent, against which happiness, joy, and gratefulness become acts of resistance. So I spent the weekend in the kitchen, mostly, baking for friends and neighbors in gratefulness for their kindness.

Watching as much GBBO as I do, I got to feeling that there are too many great cakes and not enough birthdays. It’s time to step up my cake game, and anything you want to get good at requires practice. So I decided that I’d try to bake a birthday cake for everyone in my found family here this year. Clearly I can’t ship them to Portland, Florida, Santa Cruz, Virginia, Alabama, etc., but if I can drive it I aspire to bake it.

Today was devoted to a Bake Off worthy birthday cake for Neighbor Mary. The challenge I set myself was creative fillings, so I made white chocolate ganache and piped it around the bottom layer because that’s what the bakers on the show do. I don’t know why. I covered the first layer with ginger jam and a thin layer of the ganache.

Atop the second layer I smoothed the last of the raspberry and hibiscus jam, sorry there wasn’t more of it but committed to it once I started. I didn’t want to mix it with any other jam and get judged for sloppy flavors. (Does Paul Hollywood say sloppy flavors? I don’t think so.) I didn’t have a time limit and two kitchen icons waiting to judge me, but I can’t say that it wasn’t a bit stressful. But the fun kind of stress, where you’re stretching your capacities in your growth zone, like on the show.

I did have a deadline and some important distractions throughout the day. I was glad I had paced the elements, baking in the morning so it could cool completely, making the ganache before lunch so it had time to cool enough to whip, and starting assembly immediately after my family zoom so I could deliver before dark.

I covered the whole cake with chocolate cream cheese buttercream. Please recall that piping was not the challenge. Piping does challenge me, and I easily loaded the piping bag with a trick I saw on Instagram from Blue Cottage Bakery, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that step in the right direction. I scribbled the remaining ganache on top, plunked the cake in a Chewy delivery box, ripped the snow cover off the windshield dislodging six inches of frozen snow, and drove around the block just after sunset.

Neighbor Mary was thrilled. Her delight and joy was the icing on the cake for me. I begged her to wait for her birthday tomorrow to cut it, but she wanted to send me home with my tithe tonight so she cut a sliver for herself as well. (That’s my tithe above, and her sliver below. Obviously, I need to taste test all the birthday cakes so I can judge for myself.)

As she tasted and swooned over the various components, I told her what they were. I waited til the end to tell her what kind of cake it was. I wanted to capture her reaction for all time. “It’s a chocolate mayonnaise cake,” I said, camera ready.

“Yay mayonnaise!!!”
If you were wondering about the first cake picture, in the mixing bowl, now you know: white sugar, brown sugar, and lots of mayonnaise.
Obligatory Wren picture to share the joy: So often when I get up from the couch during TV time, to fuel the fire or refill my water glass or feed the cat, a line from ‘Cecelia’ sings to mind: “…when I come back to bed someone’s taken my place.”
And just to give Topaz equal time: it’s a little blurry because she’s always looking around, but for one remarkably rare moment yesterday she sat on my lap.

The Maui Puzzle

Jan11

A friend loaned me her Maui puzzle over New Year’s. It’s extra large, gloriously vibrant, and layered with whimsy and meaning.

There’s often a natural starting place with these Liberty puzzles that calls to me, in this case the octopus.

After the first few obvious segments were assembled the puzzle revealed its unique strategy which was to complete the sea first, the sky and volcano next, and then fill in the town in between. It took almost a week to do, and provided joy through some otherwise bleak days.

The little swimmers in the top left revealed themselves only when that section came together. The whale grew in one part of the sea based on similar colors, but found her home on the opposite side of the puzzle.
The several sea turtles brought back mixed memories of my one trip to Hawaii decades ago. The highlight for me was swimming close to a sea turtle on our last day.
Throughout the puzzle were moments of pure delight like this one.
It was like three puzzles within a puzzle.

A little part of me died hearing about the murder of Renee Nicole Good. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, encountering the wrong person, a scared and angry veteran ICE agent. Before we knew as much as we know now, Dan Rather’s account summed up the horror clearly the next day. Since then we’ve all seen variations on the truth of who she was and what occurred, and perhaps just as many variations on the lies the regime concocted instantly to obfuscate guilt: their own, and the murderer’s. We can cleave to the truth, amplify it, hold her and her beloveds in compassion in our hearts. A GoFundMe for her family has raised more than 1.5 million dollars and appears to have paused donations. There are many other ways we can support them and honor her memory, and the memory of Keith Porter killed by ICE on New Year’s Eve, the two Portland victims of an ICE attack on January 8, and the many more lives lost and disappeared by the bully regime’s illegal enforcement arm.

It pleased me to recognize the Hawaii state bird, the néné, once critically endangered but brought back from a low of 30 birds in the 1950s to several thousand now. This goose has the smallest range of any goose species. We did not see néné on that trip.
Though we didn’t visit Maui, it was poignant to recognize as it emerged in the puzzle the Lahaina banyan tree that famously survived the historic wildfire that decimated the town two years ago. What a shock that was! Who ever thought that could happen there?

Part of our species’ problem is the “can’t-happen-here” delusion. I’ve never understood how people can say, in this day and age, “I never thought it could happen here.” School shooting? “I never thought it could happen here!” Vehicle assault on a parade? Domestic terror attack at CDC? Vengeance assassination at a newspaper office? Even a natural disaster out of place or out of season due to climate collapse, like Hurricane Helene’s devastation in the Appalachians; or the freak wildfires that demolished Lahaina and other towns on Maui. Anything can happen at any time, and more worse things can happen in more unlikely communities now than ever before, due to human cultural conditions and climate influences.

Then there was the moment of mythical recognition when I realized that all the weird swirly pieces near the top created the portrait of the volcano goddess Pele. And of course there was a lei or a floral crown around the peak.

There was a suspected (and unlikely) fatal mountain lion attack in northern Colorado last week. Honey Badger asked if I knew the chances of being killed by a mountain lion (which is minute) and our conversation flowed from there naturally to the chances of being killed by an ICE agent. This is currently relatively small but growing. As many people have been shot dead by ICE in the past eleven days in the US as have been fatally attacked by a mountain lion in Colorado in the past 26 years. I’m grateful that I live where my chances of being assaulted by a mountain lion may be slightly higher than my chances of being attacked by an ICE agent. I feared for my city friends this weekend who took to the streets in masses in Indivisible’s ICE Out for Good protests. I honor their courage to assert their First Amendment rights!

The scrumptious colors throughout the puzzle carried a batik vibe.

Little parts of me die daily, beyond the cells and neurons. Little parts of my soul. I think this happens with most people who feel empathy deeply, or who care about the natural world, or who trust in our government; and in people who are ill or care for ill or dying beloveds; or who suffer the atrocities of war torn areas they cannot leave, climate catastrophes that force them to flee, and so many of the tragedies that over population, power concentration, resource extraction, and other horrors born of human greed, hatred and delusion just keep on ramping up.

Working the middle section from the beach upward and the tree downward, the giant Maui puzzle came together. Another delightful surprise was finally fitting the first of four odd pointed pieces into place to reveal that the two beach walking figures were holding surfboards. Duh!

But little parts of me are reborn each day also. The beauty, kindness, and courage I see in people around the world every day flickers to life the same qualities in me. The awe of nature that surrounds me renews my spirit and freshens my cells. The wisdom of teachers and elders stabilizes my perspective. While working on a new puzzle this weekend, I listened to a podcast from the Plum Village monk Brother Phap Huu, The Way Out Is In. In the current episode ‘Calm in the Storm,’ he says that the practice of generating joy every day is foundational work. He goes on to discuss skillful introspection, and the infinite variety of ways that we can cultivate joy, from our own hobbies to appreciating the joy of others.

For me, it’s Liberty puzzles while listening to dharma talks, or starting a bake with a clean kitchen, or teaching, or and always taking pictures… And more than ever, being present for friends and students who want or need to talk, and listening deeply, genuinely caring about the lives of others. And this caring brings with it the weight of their unique sufferings, and the cycle continues. Hold what I can hold, generate joy through the practice of gratefulness, do what I can do in any given moment with the wisdom available at the time. Let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day.

Just What We Need

Jan4

I was grateful this morning to see this flock of evening grosbeaks in the birch tree. A friend was distressed the other day because there aren’t as many birds as usual at her feeders. She thought maybe it was because of the sharp-shinned hawk that she’s seen hanging around. “I doubt it,” I told her, “I haven’t had as many birds the past couple of weeks either. I think maybe they’ve just moved on for winter, finally.” Despite the fact that this weather barely qualifies as winter, I thought. But then yesterday morning when Wren burst outside first thing, I saw a sharp-shinned hawk fly off the rose bush where the sparrows roost. And this afternoon, I saw it again… So maybe this is a good year for sharp-shinneds, and maybe not so great for songbirds.

Whatever. Inside, in my own little world, wildlife abounds in the Liberty puzzles this season. This ‘Cutout of Animals’ was more fun and harder than I thought it would be, and great for mindfulness practice. As usual these days I don’t use the box top for help: I look at it once and set it aside. There was a lot of detail in this that I missed in my glance, and my assumptions were challenged every which way. At first I put all the whimsey pieces right side up as I assembled them, and put most of them facing each other.

I had made a point to note the general order of the species stack but no more detail than that. The more pieces I fitted into place, the wider apart the camels got until they ended up in the corners facing opposite of how I’d set them. For the elephants, it was another twist: as I assembled them I failed to notice until they were all together that the images were upside down.

I noticed immediately that the entire puzzle was an imperfect mirror image in both the artwork and the whimsey pieces, and shortly afterward that there were two of every piece except for a stack that would tie down the middle, and a few surrounding the one-each human male and female whimsies.

So this puzzle invited itself to be built from the center outward, from the bottom upward, and from the corners inward.

The anchor at the bottom center was, logically, man’s best friend. (Though the image reminded me of an awful AI interpretation when I asked it a few years ago to make a picture of a dog licking a girl’s face) It made perfect sense to me that dogs would hold up the whole world, and delighted me that the artist had tucked the squirrels in between them.

An added layer of whimsy was revealed with the surprising discovery that the squirrel pieces fit into the dogs’ bodies; just one of the many layers of whimsical delights in this puzzle. Strategy also included matching speckles all around.

And one final twist was that I knew in advance that a piece was missing. A second piece in the bottom edge had been damaged beyond use prior to the puzzle’s arrival from the Florida branch of our puzzle club lending library, so I ceremoniously threw that one in the woodstove. But the missing piece… I had no idea which one that was. This actually loosened my attachment to finding and placing specific pieces, and kept me working on multiple sections and moving on more quickly rather than hunting, hunting, for the next piece in any one segment. So, you know, more like most people do puzzles. It was kind of liberating, but nothing I’m likely to get used to.

Doing this animal puzzle over Christmas was fun and relaxing. The wheels of justice were slowly grinding nationally in a hopeful direction with the Epstein files revelations and the unconstitutional National Guard mobilizations decision, when I started the New Years puzzle. My health seemed to be gradually improving. Despite the freaky climate signs, I was feeling pretty calm. I called my representatives on Friday to give them another piece of my mind about the illegal assaults on Venezuelan boats and the dock attack. Action is the antidote to anxiety.

But then I woke up yesterday. Not only to news of an unconstitutional war on Venezuela, exactly the concern I had expressed to congressman Un-Hurd and my beleaguered senators the day before. But to find a frog wide awake sitting on top of the pond. Which is unheard of in deep winter here. Absolutely apocalyptic.

With the (one, long ago) snow completely melted in the garden I ventured in to see more shocking evidence: carrot tops emerging, snapdragons that never died back, a bed of tiny lettuces, and a cluster of blooming violas. This is April weather.

So, just what we need. Another oil war. War does nobody any good except for the oil barons. Think of all the profits they make on the fuel for the machines of war alone! And now, they’ll get even greater profits as they steal all the oil from under Venezuela. Not only will many humans in Venezuela and in the US suffer from this illegal war, any war exerts devastating effects on the natural world, on all living beings in its path. And any further extraction and use of fossil fuels violates every law of climate science and common sense. With the evidence of staggering climate collapse all around us, the charlatans who run this government exemplify the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion in their pursuit of reckless, lawless distraction from the noose of dawning sanity slowly closing in on them.

I’m grateful to have sane, compassionate, smart, and wise people in my life to tether me to the basic goodness supposed to exist at the core of each of us. (That exploration is ongoing.) One of those is Ted Leach, who posts a short daily insight which always includes interesting source links, like the interview with Venezuelan journalist Quico Toro I link to above about charlatans; and these two articles by Toro offering an inside perspective, one from December 12 in which he essentially predicts this attack but misses the motivation, and another from yesterday in which he evaluates the likely outcome. Thanks, Ted!

Oh well. One silver lining to climate chaos is that it revealed my missing garden knife before it totally disintegrated under the snow. And you see, that all about me perspective is why we’re in this shitstorm in the first place. There’s not much I can do about other people’s poisons, but I can dedicate myself to the practice of trying to root out my own greed, hatred and delusion, gradually replacing them with loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom, so that the ripples my life makes in this big pond are more beneficial than harmful to all beings.

Learning to Fly

Dec28

In what might have been the last cheese sandwich of 2025, I used romaine, cheddar, mayo, mustard, hibiscus-raspberry jam, and a quick turkey salad made from Thanksgiving leftovers I had picked from the carcass and frozen for Wren. It was a big container and I found enough pickings to make a couple of meals for me.

The uncanny weather finally got wintry with a trace of snow last night, and a seasonal drop in temperature. Before the rain on Christmas, we took a startling walk through the woods. I’d hoped to walk to the rim since the mud had dried enough, but just as we turned east a neighbor across the canyon started shooting, which frightened Wren and made me turn west, taking the short loop back to the house. The mosses were vibrant, and a fall aster was in bloom. This is all wrong.

We humans are making so much progress on so many fronts that it just makes me sad to see how the species insists on escalating its rapacious slaughter of the planet and sabotage of our species. Scum does indeed rise to the top, and now that it’s followed Russia’s lead in this country and many others, the potential of power-hungry malignant narcissists to irreparably break our world with greedy extractive industries is coming to a head just at the time when medical science is on the cusp of discovering treatments for Alzheimer’s, advances in consciousness studies and the intersection between science and spirituality give real hope for finally understanding the imperative to cooperate rather than compete, and the flowering of Buddhist philosophy as a path to peace is growing loving kindness and compassion at an exponential rate.

Amy randomly sent me this recipe for sourdough discard dinner rolls, so I made them on Christmas Eve and have been enjoying them in various ways since. As soon as they came out of the oven I poured some almond butter into a little bowl, with just a hint of recurring aggravation—you can’t really call it butter if you can pour it straight from the refrigerator—and spooned some jam, and enjoyed a simple lunch.

After some very fat sandwiches that night, I sliced the rolls into club style threes to make a sandwich with havarti, lettuce and mayo on one layer, and havarti and lemony pesto a friend made. I’ve eaten them several other ways and still have a couple left, but it’s almost time to bake sourdough focaccia.

The week overflowed with baked gifts as well as abundant sunshine. Among the cookies and biscotti that arrived also came the annual Potica delivery from the next door elves. Last year I was caught taking a shark bite right out of the bag; this year I restrained myself to just sniffing.

I’ve spent part of the weekend in retreat via zoom with Tergar Meditation on Dream Practice, learning how to meditate while sleeping, and how to cultivate lucid dreaming. Some of the most blissful dreams of my life were the few in which I could fly. I used to either jump off a roof, or take a long, slow running start with strides extending longer and higher until I achieved liftoff. But it’s been decades since I could fly in a dream, despite my longing.

It’s been decades since I experienced any kind of lucid dream, until last week when I realized I was dreaming, almost woke up, made myself stay asleep. I’d signed up for this retreat weeks before that, and was pleased to learn during the talk this morning that I had just overcome one of the main obstacles to lucid dreaming: realizing you’re dreaming and immediately waking up. I’m on the right track! And it turns out, the next step after you realize you’re dreaming is to do something, almost anything, to anchor yourself in the lucid dream: taking off flying is the easiest thing to do! Far simpler than transforming a flower into a building or a person into another kind of animal, or even transforming yourself into a newt.

My favorite Christmas gift: a perfectly small bowl with a fucking grasshopper built right in, from someone who knows me too well.

I’m grateful for a week filled with kindness, connection, and compassion in my little bubble, and a week of hopeful exploration of the rich potential and beauty in the human spirit worldwide. We are not prisoners here, nor potted plants. Action is the antidote to anxiety.

Savoring Connections

Dec19

Moments of joy came throughout the week from connections with friends. Jennifer sent this marvelous photo last weekend of a redtail hawk perched on her fire escape in downtown San Francisco. I’m grateful for friendships through the years and across the country, new and old, simple and complex, in person and online. With the common ground of mindfulness and gratefulness, I’ve formed meaningful friendships with people I may never meet in person.

I had hoped to be generous with the three leftover lemon tartlets, but only managed to give away one of them. The other two I savored for breakfast last weekend. I found a little pot of leftover cream cheese frosting in the fridge, so I topped the first tart with that and the last raspberries.

The final tart cried out for a little leftover lemon curd since there was only a lonely dollop of icing left. I’ll definitely make these again.

My Colorist friend sent this gorgeous Christmas card she created. She explained that the passion flower represents “the Passion of Christ in all its beauty and terror,” with Mary “looking adoringly at and embracing the end of Jesus’s earthly life instead of the beginning” as in traditional nativity scenes this season. And of course, the sumptuous colors.

She also introduced me to the Hugo Spritz in her comment on my last post. I made mine without the prosecco using soda water only for the bubbles to give it less of a kick.

I’m grateful that grownup vitamins come in gummies too.

I sometimes wonder where the day goes, these short winter days. It seems like I get the bare minimum done and then it’s dark. One fun task each day is feeding the birds, and an especially meditative part of it is spreading the Bark Butter on various limbs and posts. Bark Butter, created by the founder of Wild Birds Unlimited, is a “spreadable suet” that includes peanut butter and corn. I put it out for the nuthatches who love it, but the jays come to devour it too.

A local friend sent this picture of an anomalous goose down in Delta with a flock of Canada geese (genus Branta). INaturalist identifies it with 100% certainty as belonging to the Grey Goose clan (genus Anser). A delightful conundrum.
This week’s sourdough, with a seasonal star.

I’m grateful for the great healthcare I receive from Delta Health, one of the many rural hospitals threatened by the Republicans’ healthcare plan which Andy Borowitz says is “Move to Canada.” I had a late afternoon appointment with my PCP for a checkup. I love her. She’s quick, thorough, listens well, trusts me with decisions, and we have had some hearty laughs, especially last week. And then the drive home from town was exquisite. I’m so rarely out of my little hollow at sunset, it was a treat.

My friends Ted and Cathey live about 80 miles north of Selma, Alabama, where the Walk for Peace monks stopped midday today, then walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. My whole day was infused with the joy of knowing my friends were there, carrying a little piece of my heart with them. Ted posted this and more photos on his daily blog, and will share more tomorrow.

This week of savoring friendships included some great phone conversations with friends from Florida to Virginia to Oregon, all of which also included some hearty laughter, such balm for the sorrowing soul in these dark times. Tonight’s small new moon/early Solstice gathering wrapped up this past week like a gift. The bonfire was slow to start but quick to burn, and safe in the bottom of an empty, muddy irrigation pond.

Grateful to feel safe in the bosom of my found family, I yet held in my heart the sorrow of those who lost beloved children, parents, friends, and family in mass shootings this week, to murder, to starvation, to climate catastrophes like floods and landslides, and so many more ways the ravages of human depravity manifest.

May I grow in understanding and compassion, and may my thoughts, words, and actions contribute to peace in this world. May all people grow in understanding and compassion, and may their choices contribute to peace in this world.

At the height of our ritual fire, the FedEx truck came down the driveway and a pack of dogs from three households ran barking off to greet him. He’s a great guy, we’re all grateful for Scott, and so are the dogs because he gives them treats. I whistled for Wren and she didn’t come, I got up and called and finally yelled for her, and still she didn’t come—but then I looked to the left and saw her trying to get to me through the fence—poor baby! She had probably come right away, but she came the wrong way and got stuck on the other side of the studio. I stepped through and gathered her up and held her close the rest of the evening. She’d had on her parka, but still got chilly, and has been sleeping next to me or on the heating pad ever since we got home.

Countless Connections

Dec12
Helpful little dog cleans up the ice cream box for me after lunch.

Tonight was Zoom Cooking with Amy, but we did a lot of prep ahead of time. We texted back and forth all day, first to decide what to cook and then to see how it was going. Since I had the tart shells already, she made some too, and we each blind-baked them. I lined mine with scrunched parchment paper and weighted them with dried kidney beans which will now be saved and labeled Pie Beans so I don’t try to cook them later. They baked for twenty minutes at 350℉, then I removed the paper and beans and baked them another five minutes, and let them rest on the counter.

Amy usually directs these endeavors, so she texted to tell me to mix the lemon zest with the sugar ahead of time and let it sit. The “Classic Lemon Curd Tart” recipe calls for zesting and juicing four large lemons, but I don’t think they’ve ever seen lemons this big. I zested three of them and got sloppy on the second one knowing I’d have more than enough. One and a half lemons exceeded the two-thirds cup of juice needed, but I juiced the rest and filled four silicone freezer molds with a third cup each. Then I set aside the lemon tart project to make the cracker dough.

Amy chose these Cheddar Cheese Shortbread Crackers which we mixed mostly according to instructions, but added fresh chopped chives from another recipe, and rolled the dough in seeds before chilling.

I rolled one log in poppy seeds and one in white sesame seeds. We decided later as we ate them that sprinkling a little kosher salt among the seeds would make the seasoning perfect. Then we chilled the dough until we were ready to zoom.

Between the mise en place and the actual cooking, I was grateful to zoom with a young friend I am just getting to know, though I’ve known about her for a long time. When she asked how I’ve been and what I’ve been doing, I chanced to mention my obsession with Great British Bake Off. Pema Chodron talks about the discipline of keeping your mind and heart open, always receptive to where you find yourself in the moment, in the world; and also about trusting that we “live in a rich world that’s never running out of messages.” I could have left out the mention of GBBO but it’s what feels alive for me right now so I said it. My friend said with some surprise, “Have we talked about this?”

“No,” I said. She then told me that she knows one of the contestants from this season, and went out with him just a couple of weeks ago when he was in New York. I was thrilled, and asked to hear everything he told her about being on the show. It was more stressful than he thought it would be, she said, the people were all fantastic and supportive, he made some great friends, and so on. If I hadn’t mentioned the show, we wouldn’t have had that moment of delightful connection, and I would never have seen this adorable picture of the two of them.

We also talked about grief: how there’s no wrong way or right way to grieve; the idea of titrating or pendulating, i.e., touching into the feelings and then stepping back into all the living going on, touching in then stepping back as one is able, thereby developing capacity and resilience; and, how grief can soften with time though it may never disappear. I was reminded of something beautiful that my cousin’s fiancée wrote to me recently, just over a year after he died so unexpectedly:

“For me, grief feels like it’s love turned inside out. Its heaviness gets lighter as I get stronger and time moves on…. As painful as it was to lose my love, it gives me comfort feeling that my heart is now strong enough to carry this beautiful soul within me, and I’m forever grateful.” 

Terri Mayer

Our conversation gave both of us the tender opportunity to feel closer for a moment to someone we grieve, to touch into the well of grief and maybe lift out a spoonful, or even just a drop. And then to go back into our day and our lives with a stronger link in the chain of interconnection. In no time at all I was zooming with Amy and we were whisking up lemon curd tartlets. So simple, so delicious!

While they cooked and then cooled, we sliced our cracker logs as thinly as we could, and while they baked we made a Ritini, my instantaneous variation on a martini, which used gin, elderflower liqueur, a tablespoon of leftover Meyer lemon juice (like I said, I’m gonna make the most of every bit), and a couple of raspberries.

We enjoyed a couple of sips of the cocktail before realizing that it didn’t really go with the cheesy crackers, so we poured a little red wine for the savory portion of our meal, and caught up on everything under the sun. We each baked one tray of crackers and also ate most of it they were so addictive. I’m glad there are leftover logs to slice and bake later, or even freeze for much later.

And then it was time to savor the sweetness that was days and miles and many hands in the making. I know who grew the lemons. Who grew and picked and packed and shipped the raspberries? Following back all the ingredients in the tart, all the elements in the simple setting: the plate, the glass, the gin, the liqueur, the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, the whipping cream and vanilla bean paste… I’m grateful for and to the countless connections, humans, and other beings who contributed to this perfect moment.

Sparkles

Dec3

It’s hard to take anything personally from this perspective! This image is from The Atlantic’s 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar. This is Day 3’s offering, showing more than a hundred galaxies in Galaxy Cluster Abell 209, about 2.8 billion light-years away from my tiny speck of a life. Refreshing! I’ve always loved sparkles.

“Peace isn’t found in perfect conditions. Peace is found in how we care for one another, in the bonds we share, in the kindness we extend to all beings. Even in winter, love keeps us warm.”

Today was the first day I remembered to check in first thing with the Venerable Monks on their Walk for Peace. It’s been cold and rainy as they wend their way through Louisiana, some of them barefoot, some in socks and sandals, some with canes, walking to spread peace on earth. Between these macro and micro perspectives, I feel humbly grateful for this precious day that will never come again.

Wren’s Good Week

Nov19

After four years of practicing gratefulness, knowing at the time I began that it was in response to overwhelming grief, I’m beginning to understand how these two feelings dance together. 

Grief and gratitude are kindred souls, each pointing to the beauty of what is transient and given to us by grace.
Patricia Campbell Carlson

It’s been a tumultuous week. Some weeks are just like that. Equanimity was shaken, largely from inside, but I’ve gotten good practice in letting go and letting be, in beginning again. Exquisite autumn weather has enabled me to be outside a lot with the animals and the trees, which is always soul soothing. We visited the Ancient One a few times and sheltered in her embrace for some meditations.

A nice man came to plant a couple of free trees, a river birch and a Fremont cottonwood, and Wren was very helpful. Afterward she thanked him profusely. What a pleasure it’s been over the past year to see this little dog blossoming into a joyful outgoing creature, from the suspicious, frightened little rescue she was when she came here three years ago.

Despite my internal turmoil, Wren enjoyed a very good week. We had planned since spring to upgrade the patio area on the west side of the pond, and that work finally happened under her capable supervision.

The ‘trail mix’ gravel was spread, edged, and raked all in the nick of time before a good day’s rain left snow low in the mountains and frost on the pumpkin down here. Now this portion of the yarden will be safer for me and my aging friends to access, and more welcoming for mindfulness or purely social gatherings.

Wren also inspected the woodpile after a new addition. A friend was sad to have to cut down a dying aspen in her yarden, but happy to give me half of it, for which I’m very grateful. And I’m grateful that my little aspen thrives still, twenty years after hitchhiking here hidden in the soil of a potentilla shrub I transplanted from a friend’s garden.

The little blueberry bush which didn’t even bloom this year nevertheless grew under its protective netting, and then turned this stunning red. I’m grateful this week for nature’s beauty, bounty, and resilience, and for my own growing capacity to turn mistakes into lessons, to cultivate resilience, and to open my heart over and over. A phrase a friend quoted last week keeps coming back to me: “Your people are the ones who make your heart feel seen and your nervous system feel calm.” Intentionally connecting with ‘my people’, a profound acupuncture treatment, and allowing everyone to be my teacher have all helped restore balance. And this excerpt from a lesson by Sam Harris in the introductory course on his app Waking Up really shook some sense into me:

“The truth is, you know exactly what it’s like to feel overwhelming gratitude for your life. And if you have the freedom and the free attention to listen to this lesson right now, you are in an unusual situation. There are at least a billion people on Earth at this moment who would consider their prayers answered if they could trade places with you. There are at least a billion people who are suffering debilitating pain, or political oppression, or the acute stages of bereavement. To have your health, even just sort of; to have friends, even only a few; to have hobbies or interests and the freedom to pursue them; to have spent this day free from some terrifying encounter with chaos, is to be lucky. Just look around you and take a moment to feel how lucky you are. You get another day to live on this earth. Enjoy it.”

After another busy day delivering oxytocin to me and herding the sparrows, Wren finally rests. She is silently encouraging me to knit faster so she can show off her new sweater that matches her beautiful blue eye.

This Week in Cheese Sandwiches

Oct27

I started the week with a fresh loaf of sourdough, which I hadn’t made in awhile since I was obsessed with tomato sandwiches on the complicated mock wonder bread. It’s a relief to return to the simplicity of sourdough. Tuesday evening in grief, I ate a simple deconstructed cheese sandwich with the first two slices: mayo and havarti on one, butter and rosehip-crabapple jelly on the other. Yeah, the jelly is a little overcooked as I’d feared, a bit thicker than I’d like, and a little sticky to spread, but it tastes great. I had to try it before I send off the jars to the lottery winners. In case, you know, it was a total fail and I had to eat it all myself with a spoon.

With local tragedies and national catastrophes, it’s a good time to remind myself that most people are good and kind and there’s a lot of great news that just doesn’t make headlines while the bad news come so fast and furious. I don’t remember how Daily Good found its way into my inbox, but I’m grateful there’s a group of volunteers curating good news stories around the world (also, it seems that AI is working for good in this instance); 625 stories so far this month, which I trust is a drop in the bucket, simply knowing how many good, sweet connections were made just in my neighborhood this week.

Wednesday’s sandwich was a simple cheddar, havarti, lettuce and tomato, but I wanted extra crunch so I quick pickled some tiny red onions from the final harvest. Mayo and Penzeys sandwich sprinkle completed the project.

One of those good things came in a voicemail yesterday from an unknown number. Last year when I struggled so before hip surgery, I had registered to get assistance from North Fork Senior Connections, and also offered to volunteer for them in some capacity after recovering from surgery. I hadn’t done either yet, and sort of forgot about it. But there’s a new crew closer to home now, and the coordinator wanted to know if I could use help with anything next weekend on their Service Saturday. As it happens, I could! I was so grateful to be asked, and when I called back I also gratefully volunteered to bake and do other light services as needed. I’m looking forward to participating in this community building network created “to support aging with dignity, choice, and companionship.”

In more good news, I started the Bibliofillies pick for November this week, The Book of Hope, Jane Goodall’s conversations with Douglas Abrams. Abrams brought us The Book of Joy a few years ago, chronicling the beautiful friendship of H.H. The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s perfect timing for me, and maybe for you, too. I’ll take inspiration anywhere I can get it.

Jane has been much on my mind since her death October first. I’d admired her for years before I was fortunate to meet her. I worked at Busch Gardens in Tampa, as a conservation educator in the zoo division of the amusement park. Busch housed a chimpanzee colony, and Jane had just emerged from Gombe after understanding that she needed to speak to the world about the plight of wild chimps, and the urgency of saving the species and their forest habitat. The zoo was aflutter that she was coming to Busch to speak, and would also, incidentally, be evaluating our chimp facilities. She was gracious and kind as she greeted a lucky few of us junior staff. She was not impressed with the zoo’s chimp habitat, however, which prompted a total, costly revamp which ultimately, years later, earned her approval.

She campaigned tirelessly to protect our precious world, and though her hope faltered occasionally, she never lost it, confident for four reasons: “the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of youth, and the indomitable human spirit.”

Thursday was cool and grey with glorious rain off and on all day, and snow in the mountains. It was crisp but cold outside Friday so the sandwich had to be grilled: Brie, pickled onion, mayo, and calamondin jam.

Jane told Abrams, “Hope leads to future success in a way that wishful thinking does not. While both involve thinking about the future with rich imagery, only hope sparks us to take action directed toward the hoped-for goal.” It occurs to me: Wishing is to Hope as Empathy is to Compassion: Hope and Compassion spark action. Robert Hubbell’s weekly dose of perspective Saturday touched on this same idea. He covers the White House horrors every day, yet he remains an inspired, hopeful, and inspiring activist, lifting us up daily with his newsletters and a weekly livestream pep talk.

“Hope and optimism are not the same thing,” Jane says. (Boy do I know that from the inside! As I read this I think, Hope is wishing plus Action; Optimism is wishing plus Belief. I’m grateful to be reading a book that’s making me think.) Abrams says, “Archbishop Tutu once told me that optimism can quickly turn to pessimism when the circumstances change. Hope is a much deeper source of strength, practically unshakable.”

Saturday’s sandwich was not grilled, but otherwise essentially the same: Brie, pickled onion, mayo, with the new red jelly and lettuce. And Jane, for company, in the sunroom.

Hope, Jane says, “does not deny the evil but is a response to it.” And later offers this pressing insight, “If we live in a society with a reasonable standard of living and some degree of social justice, the generous and peaceful aspects of our nature are likely to prevail, while in a society of racial discrimination and economic injustice, violence will thrive.”

Today’s cheese sandwich: mayo, havarti, pickled onion, lettuce, bacon, and apricot jam. It was a beautiful, mild day here, on this precious planet, and I savored lunch outside, with a different read, keenly aware of everything, absolutely everything.

“Facing our grief is essential to combatting and overcoming our despair and powerlessness,” she says, and adds, “Every day we make some impact on the planet. And the cumulative effect of millions of small ethical actions will truly make a difference. That’s the message I take around the world.”

I was online leading a meeting this evening so I missed the sunset, except for the layered cloud colors I could see through the kitchen window beyond my computer, and the alpenglow, which I could see behind me through the east window, reflected back to me in my square on the zoom screen. There was a pang of longing to be out in it. So I was thrilled to get a text an hour later of this gorgeous sunset over downtown Hotchkiss from my friend Mary Hockenberry who caught it on her evening walk.

A Little Light

Oct23

Our world lost a little light this week. Wren’s little buddy up the road was run over and killed. He had just celebrated his two years old birthday. It was instantaneous. He chased a car out the driveway into the county road and a tanker truck took him out, probably without even knowing it. His person had chased after him and found him. Barely a minute had elapsed. As she stood in shock, a cowboy stopped to offer help. She called a couple of friends, one of whom notified me; the other, whose car he had chased, returned with a third friend and began to dig a grave.

At our first meeting

We met him shortly after he came to live on the mesa, when he was not quite three months old (see Puppies). Most of my pictures of him then, and later whenever he came to visit, are blurry because he was always in motion when I saw him. He loved to run, to hunt, to chase, and in true terrier fashion once he set his mind on something he did not willingly stop.

Last month in his courtyard

I’ve loved dogs who have died in far worse ways, long slow agonizing deaths, from stomach cancer, or drinking anti-freeze, or even being struck by a truck and lingering long enough for their people to watch them suffer, unable to help. Oso’s untimely death, like any death that touches us personally, that wracks our own little world, is a poignant reminder that anything can happen at any time, that we’re given this one precious day as a gift each time we wake up alive. We don’t know if we will even have tomorrow, or if life will be the same for us tomorrow as it was today.

I had been making chicken broth when I got the text “Our sweet Oso is in doggie heaven…” I was ladling the broth into pint jars, and knew in my bones the right next thing to do was to drive up with a jar of nourishing broth, knowing she wouldn’t have had anything to drink or eat and may not remember to do either for hours. When I arrived they were putting the last rocks over the small grave under a juniper in the center of the driveway circle. After subdued and tender greetings, I handed off the broth and helped gather tools. Another friend arrived as I was leaving. Altogether five women showed up for our friend in her literal hour of grief.

Last winter playing with Wren

In the slow, mile drive home I felt the weight of the change in her world, the brutal empathy of knowing how I would feel going to bed suddenly bereft of Wren, waking the next morning without her. As I rounded the last corner it hit me how truly terrible I would feel if it had been Oso’s person instead, or any of us five friends who came to offer comfort: It could have been any one of us, on foot, or bike, or in our little metal bucket on wheels, getting smashed by an industrial truck. Or a train. And from there it was a small step to recall the suffering and grief that rocks millions of lives daily when a beloved dies, a pet, a child, a spouse, a parent, a friend, from illness or in unexpected ways, in wars, in famines, in all the ways. A sudden ache for everyone I love, a pre-grief, blossomed in my breast.

At almost one years old

We each respond to grief in our own unique way. I know more than one grown man who has sobbed at the loss of a dog and never shed a tear for a person’s death. I tend to get very quiet for a long time; some might call it shutting down. Oso’s person has been grieving with courage, grace and equanimity, holding the horror of what happened, the self-wounding if only‘s, the surrender of inevitable acceptance. She is grateful that it was mercifully instantaneous; he never saw it coming. She was helpless to stop it. And the cowboy was a gift from god there in her moment of need. It was a horrible accident, the kind of thing that just happens (all the time), nobody’s fault but simply a result of conditions beyond anyone’s control: cause and effect. Even in her grief she is able to express gratefulness for the mutual love in their short companionship together.

Just a week ago
A pine siskin snacks on sunflower seeds in the autumn garden yesterday.

Monday evening a junco smacked into the living room window and broke its neck. Grief took center stage early this week, in the smallest of deaths. And then there was Oso. And just this afternoon, after this blog was largely written, I learned of the sudden, surprising death of a pillar of the community. I barely knew her, but another dear friend was shocked to find her dead on the floor of her garage after she failed to show up at an event. She was a mother, a grandmother, a vibrant healthy elder, and now just like that she is not. Her family, her friends, rocked and grieving. It happens every day somewhere, 150,000 times: a person dies.

I’m reminded to hold my puppy extra close, and my people too.

A shattering twinge of knowing my own death takes my breath away sometimes. This is why we can’t remember it constantly. It’s just too shocking to contemplate our own death, or the fundamental truth that everyone we love will eventually be lost to us. And yet we must, at some point, consider it deeply. Any hospice worker will tell you that many people are filled with regret when they come to the end of their life without having done so. When we think about death (our own and others’) ahead of time we grow in wisdom and compassion. Awareness is a breath away. Death is certain, time of death uncertain. One thing we can know is that life will change after the death of a beloved, but we can’t know in what way: what further sorrows or antidotal joys will arise moment to moment. To live fully is to be present with whatever is, in each moment. Like gratitude, grief changes everything, for awhile.