Tag Archive | human nature

Hubris

Dec30

Human hubris is not something I’m grateful for, let me be clear. But it seems to be a fact of life and a condition of our species’ nature. So I just want to name it. It’s time, as a friend said today, to call it ‘climate catastrophe’ instead of ‘climate change.’ It’s been time for awhile. Extraordinary drought, extraordinarily high sustained winds, and apparently a downed power line, today led to an extraordinary wildfire in the Boulder/Denver suburbs. By the time I turned off the TV an hour ago, more than 600 homes had been destroyed. No count yet on loss of life. Not to say this could have been avoided, given the human population of the area, and the trajectory we’ve been on sabotaging our planet’s climate for the past 150 years. Thinking, somehow, that we were in control!

As someone who lived in one of those decimated neighborhoods said to me twenty years ago, “They’ve got to put ’em somewhere.” I had picked up Girl Scout cookies at her house, and asked how she felt about the new subdivision under construction across the field behind her cul de sac. Hers was a neighborhood about twenty years old, small homes separated by quarter acre yards. The new subdivision was McMansions jammed together wall to wall, hundreds of them in the same area that dozens of homes occupied in her neighborhood. She smiled with generous equanimity and said, “They’ve got to put ’em somewhere.” A symptom of my privilege, I suppose, or my good fortune, that her answer surprised me.

In my neighborhood, where homes are separated by ten, twenty-five, or forty acres, and could also all be incinerated by a wildfire, I get grumpy that a new neighbor leaves on a glaring ‘security’ light overnight, shining right into one of my windows. If you can’t stand the dark, why move to an area like this? I wonder. We who’ve lived here awhile are grateful for our dark skies, and find these new spotlights a distressing intrusion. As, I imagine, do the wild animals whose land we share. Ah well. Worse things have happened, like the Marshall Fire. I live with the keen awareness that a single lightning strike, or careless cigarette, or rogue firework, can destroy my neighborhood. And still it feels, watching these planetary winds, these astonishing wildfires, these unprecedented floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes, that I live in the safest neighborhood I possibly could. And for that, I am grateful.

I’m not grateful that the US Congressional representative for my neighborhood is psycho criminal insurrectionist Lauren Boebert, and I was super surprised to get a robocall from her–note that the transcription typo is Siri’s error, and the voice sounded right, and the message was on her point–from a number apparently registered to the Palestinian Territories. WTF? Did anyone else in this district get such a robocall? I could go on about that.

It might seem as though my three day break from the gratitude blog has soured my disposition! In truth, I’ve done a heroic job of staying positive over the past year, I’ve enjoyed a few days of going to bed early with a good book, and I’m still just as grateful for all the good things in my life, and in the world, as I have been. But I am experiencing a lack of patience today with stupidity. And I’m allowed a lapse, we all are. I spoke with one friend today who zoomed with a bunch of triple-vaxxed friends the other night, and a third of them had Covid. I spoke with another friend whose Trumpista family had gotten together for Christmas and half of them now have Covid, from her 4-year-old niece to her 70+ lung-cancer-missing-two-lobes sister. She is enraged at them all, and I can’t blame her. Equanimity, acceptance, compassion, and loving-kindness are not easy to practice. And yet, the alternative realm, in which I used to dwell, is just dark and pointless. I finally had to turn off coverage of the fires, and stream “Drag Race Italia” to reset my attitude.

There is so much beauty, grace, and kindness in this world, human and otherwise, that we can sense and experience if we choose to focus our attention on those things. There is so much that is out of our control, from the weather to the choices of others, that will only make us sick with despair if we choose to focus on that. Mindfulness is a balancing act: to be able to know the truth of all that is dark in human nature at the same time as knowing all that is good and bright. We maintain our sanity, our compassion, our humanity, by choosing to turn our attention to what we can influence, and letting go of all that we cannot. We can always affect those around us in a beneficial way by acts of generosity, kindness, compassion; by remaining calm in the shitstorms–or firestorms, or wind or snowstorms–around us; and by appreciating the most basic gifts our lives provide, from electricity and running water to enough food and the other species who share our world: cats, dogs, birds, deer, trees, bees, bunnies, wallabies (depending where you are!) and so many more, even spiders and snakes.

I’m grateful for eggs, mushrooms, onions, cheese, homemade hot sauce, and fresh parsley from a pot in the sunroom; grateful for a quick omelette for lunch today, and for all the friends and neighbors with whom I connected on this crazy busy day.

Grammar Gripe

Jan5

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I can’t do it any longer. I can’t not say anything. I don’t want to offend people, or sabotage their world views, or judge them. I just want to enjoy being a living incarnation of the magnanimous force that created this universe and keeps it in eternal unfathomable motion. I just want to be a good person.

My dear friend gave me a shirt last year that says, “I’m silently correcting your grammar.” I am. Even though sometimes the rules are ridiculous, like punctuation inside or outside of quotation marks. I can’t help myself. It’s the one thing I can do. It’s the one thing that I love. I learned grammar like a fish to water, and therefore, I can play with it. As a writer, I can play with grammar.

But you? You news writer for NBC who wrote for Miguel Almaguer to say, “Downloaded more than a hundred million times, prosecutors allege the widely popular Weather Channel App was doing much more than giving users the forecast….”

Prosecutors were NOT downloaded more than a hundred million times.

Yet that is is actually, in fact, what Miguel said, with his grammar. There is no dispute about it, if you agree with the laws of English grammar: the prosecutor was not downloaded more than a hundred million times, The Weather Channel app was. That sentence, if you want to be educated about it, should read, “Prosecutors allege the widely popular Weather Channel App, downloaded more than a hundred million times,  was doing much more than giving users the forecast….”

Now, how hard is that to understand? You should have learned that in sixth grade, NBC writer.

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My contribution to Christmas Dinner was peach pie. 

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I pulled whole peaches from the deep freeze and microwaved them for two 30 second hits, mixing them up between, rolling the bottom peaches to the top, letting the top peaches slide down the inside of the bowl. 

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Peels and pits to the side for compost. Their skins really do slip right off, and they practically break in half. Still partially frozen but juicy, they’re so small I can put them in the pie shell in halves, pit-side down, round shining essentially fresh peach halves.

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I did bake the bottom crust first. Having finally figured out to add a little more water at this altitude right off the bat, and mix fast but not too much. 

My friend’s husband Steve was right: you have to use your hands; a pastry cutter won’t result in the right size butter inclusions. You need tiny, uniform pockets of butter (or butter/lard) to make the pastry flaky. That’s science. I don’t get it exactly but I’m beginning to experience it, and I believe experience is what makes a pastry chef, or anyone, an expert at something, whether they can explain the physics of it or not.

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A nearly perfect peach pie: enough peaches to fill and round the pie plate, mixed with some sugar (not too much), and a palm-full of tapioca, stirred, and left to sit. Crusts mixed, chilled, and rolled; the bottom crust baked for around ten minutes with parchment paper weighted with beans; filled, topped, and baked, like, forever.

I think my new oven is not quite calibrated for my altitude. I think ten minutes at 450 degrees would be ideal. Then filled and quickly covered, crimped, and replaced in the oven for another ten minutes. Then, the book says, bake at 350 for 45 to 50 minutes. 50 minutes came and went, another ten, another ten, it took forever to even start to brown. Once the peach juice bubbled up inside the edge I took it out of the oven. Mmmmmm, the aroma.

Pastry baking science aside, how hard is it to comprehend that United States President Donald Trump flat out lied? He promised during his campaign, and was elected on the promise that, Mexico would pay for the wall.

It infuriates me that people, whatever their alliance, are not outraged, are not bombarding their Senators with phone calls and emails, exclaiming that this Shutdown is not good for America, and that Trump promised Mexico, NOT WE, would pay for any wall. He lied to you!

If every one of the nearly one million Federal workers who are working without pay, or not working without pay, would call their Senators and tell them whether or not they favor this Trump Shutdown, maybe, he says, for years, I bet that Congress would hear a whole lot more NOs than they would YESs. Every one of these people, whether they support or oppose Trump, counts on the income, purpose, and dignity of their job with the Federal Government. Trump does not speak for them. They speak for themselves.

This is a broken promise masquerading as some other closet monster. It’s monsters all the way down. The squirrelly (no offense to squirrels) course that this person’s chicanery and abuse takes is exceptionally skillful. The guy is a magnificent manipulator. And I’ve come to know some damned skillful manipulators through the years, even as recently as last summer.

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Thanksgiving’s pie was apple/plum, both from last year’s harvest, in the freezer. I figured out the crust mixing physics that time, but not the cooking science, so it had soggy bottom, ick. Also, the apples were undercooked, too al dente for my taste. Otherwise, a good mix of cinnamon, sugar, tart apple, and more tart, but less of, plum, just a layer on the top.

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Sorry friends, I didn’t ask your permission. But you kind of have to assume, knowing me, you might show up here one day. I love this picture. It expresses to me the ultimate in community. When I moved here almost 27 years ago, I could never have imagined how lucky I would become, how grateful for so much in my life. Every day that I wake up, I thank my lucky stars. For waking up at all, for the day ahead in this place, for community at ever-deepening levels.

So, that’s grammar and the president’s lies out of the way. Back to the allegation that TWC, our go-to weather source (and admittedly a drama queen of a station), has been illegally stealing our private information. “The app deceptively collected, shared, and profited from private location data of millions of consumers….” Miguel went on. Then he introduced the LA City Attorney, who said:

‘Think how Orwellian it is to have a third party you never had contact with know where you’ve gone for a therapist, for a date, for what you did last night…’

“Banking on TWC brand, the Weather Company, owned by IBM, operates the app… which manipulated users into turning on location tracking, using valuable personal data, for commercial gain.” Owned by IBM? Why should this be surprising? We’ve all signed those agreements we never read. We’ve all been complicit in so many ways in the prostitution of our privacy.

I’m sick of it, I tell you, sick of it. All of it. It is all I can do to get out of bed in the morning some days. But there is so much to live for, so much to get out of bed for, that I can sometimes set aside the incessant enervation of our species’ chatter, to enjoy the day.

Today, “another bluebird day across the state,” said Colorado Public Radio. It was spectacular. Blinding in its perfection. Every second with eyes open was a calendar photo. And the minutes and hours or portions of hours spent indoors with friends, or alone, were succulent every second. I could not be a more lucky human being.

IMG_5246.jpgSo much I don’t have, yet so much more that I do. Let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day.

 

 

 

The Best of Us, the Worst

Feb15

In which we enjoy a Baked Alaska (which rather resembles some sort of sea creature or astral event) 626 style during a singular lunch.

In which we enjoy a Baked Alaska (which rather resembles some sort of sea creature or astral event) 626-style during a singular lunch.

I drove some friends ninety miles to the big city today, to catch a train. They are on their way to pick up another friend in Denver, who’s just gotten off a ten-day kayak trip down the Gulf of Mexico. When we left, and when we were eating lunch, we hadn’t heard from her; her trip with three others occurred during the windy season, creating five to eight foot waves in the Gulf. We were all a little edgy underneath (and two of us more overtly) because she was supposed to be off the water two days ago. But we anyway enjoyed our lunch out at a fancy locovore restaurant, and I even ate a burger because I was assured it was locally and (essentially) organically-grown beef.

We talked with glee about the gravitational wave news proving something about Einstein and two black holes colliding a billion years ago, and I crowed about my old friend who’d had a hand in it, and then we branched out to apocalyptic meteor and supernova scenarios. We talked a lot, indirectly and directly, about death, with great good humor. We talked about the worst aspects of human nature, and our better animal and spiritual aspects. In the back of our minds was What if she didn’t make it?

She did. She had a fabulous time, I found out later. In the meantime, we parted ways after lunch, and I began a long list of errands. When any of us go to Grand Junction, there is usually a long list of errands: the Liquor Barn which always has the best price on Bombay Sapphire, PetSmart for our dog and cat needs, Vitamin Cottage for the most economical organic groceries, Office Depot… things you can’t get out here in the rural West. I was obligated to attend a Board meeting this evening in another town, and I was trying to hurry through my errands to make it home in time to turn around and head out again.

Leaving PetSmart, at the traffic light by the Mall, I watched a motorcycle police officer pull into the intersection and stop his bike. He dismounted, and his bike tipped over almost knocking him down. He recovered and awkwardly struggled to right the bike, succeeding just as three more motorcycle cops drove past him, followed by a funeral procession. In that way that knowledge dawns on you, not like a bolt of lightning but with a steady sureness that only takes a few more seconds, I recognized what it was, and I began to cry.

Last week a 17-year-old boy, masked and lingering near two schools, shot Mesa County Deputy Derek Greer. The suspect was apprehended; the deputy didn’t die right away, and local news reported that he was being kept on life support in order to complete organ donations. That was the last I’d heard of it a few days ago. When I saw the hearse, the dozens of flashing-light vehicles, black buses, and vans following it, sorrow washed over me. Just so sad. Senseless. I sat there and cried and cried, and thought of that man’s family, and of the kid who’d killed him, and all the suffering rippling out from that singular moment when their lives collided.

I thought of my grandmother’s funeral in Tennessee many years ago. I’d never before seen this: As the small procession we rode in moved through the small town where she had lived for so many years, people stopped on the sidewalks and held their hats over their hearts; they pulled their cars over, got out, took off their hats. They had no idea who this funeral was for; my granny hadn’t lived there for over a decade. They were simply showing their respect for whomever it was, showing their shared comprehension of our mutual mortality.

Then I looked out my right side window, and an older man in the truck next to me was watching me. “It’s that officer,” I said. “I know,” he said. “So sad,” I said. “Yes,” he said. The patrol cars continued to emerge from the curve about half a mile away. The man asked me if I’d heard about the man who was struck by a car last fall, and told me all about it; it was his 58-year-old son, who is still recovering but might lose his leg. So sad. I wished fleetingly that I hadn’t opened myself to this conversation. I’d been immersed in the endless funeral procession, noting the counties heard from, meditating on the range of grief: first dozens of cars from Mesa County, then squad cars from all over the state, Ft. Collins, Parachute, Cedaredge, Adams, Garfield, Rifle, and more, even Moab, Utah.

The procession went on and on. Five minutes, ten, more. Fifty vehicles, seventy, more. A Delta County car (my deputy) pulled up to the motorcycle cop, who mounted and joined the procession. But still more cars came, now interspersed with regular drivers. Our light turned green. People behind us honked and yelled. But the couple of cars ahead of me and my neighbor stayed still and let the rest of the mourners pass before us. I cried again, at the grace these drivers showed. We were all anxious to get somewhere. We were all touched by what we were witnessing, and were in no hurry to interrupt this impressive, heartbreaking display of respect for a fallen officer.

Eventually the procession ended, the green arrow directed us to proceed, and we did. Not a quarter mile on at the next intersection I was startled by the broken siren of an emergency vehicle announcing itself, and to my left, coming down the road that leads from the interstate, was another procession of flashing-light vehicles as far back as I could see, another quarter mile at least. I drove home calmly in crazy traffic. In this vast and incomprehensible universe, I was moved to a sad and tranquil peace by what I had observed, the best of human nature that I’d become a tiny part of in a tiny way.