Lives in the Balance (Jackson Browne)

Night of Stars by Victor Sparre

Feeling a bit melancholy this morning, in that Garden Day was cancelled, due to (steady earlier this a.m. and now pouring) rain.  In fact, there is a Tropical Storm Warning for South Florida this entire weekend, meaning a few plans I had are now on hold, or at least re-calibrated.  It's okay, though; I've done two short yoga sessions (Adriene released her June 2022 calendar) as well as a Joy Workout (noted below) shared in the New York Times a few weeks ago.  Prior to that, I had my standard two cups of coffee, the second accompanied by an apple fritter my dear husband went up to Dunkin Donuts for.  Yum!  My day bodes an overabundance of reading (is there any such thing?!?), and maybe a hot bath.  No reason to leave this house, so I am burrowing in... ☔

As more details continue to unfold re: the Uvalde school shooting last week, it is obviously apparent that stricter gun controls are needed, and I am appalled that so many resist the need for even the smallest of restrictions (no assault rifles sold to anyone under the age of 21?  Hello, no-brainer!).  In the meantime, we grieve... we mourn... we speak our minds/truth... and we continue to advocate for the children, and for anyone who has been killed or wounded in these senseless acts of violence.  And, while we change the world, we can still count our blessings... 💖

It is indeed Feel Good Friday and, as is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten/enlighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy!

~ Jen Psaki’s legacy? One of the best press secretaries ever:  During her last week at the White House, we look back on her tenure and the integrity she brought to the job.

~ Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki will join MSNBC this fall:

Psaki will also host a show on MSNBC's hub on the Peacock streaming service, which the network said is expected to debut in the first quarter of 2023.

~ In Life’s Last Chapter, What Matters? A Room With a View:  A window overlooking a stand of trees helped revive this writer’s dying mother

~ Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert:  “Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday, and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to?… I hope for you so much, and feel so eager for you… that the expectation… makes me feel hot and feverish, and my heart beats so fast.”

~ The Joy Workout:  Six researched-backed moves to improve your mood (reach, sway, bounce, shake, jump for joy, and one I named “celebrate” that looks like tossing confetti in the air)

SONG:  Lives in the Balance by Jackson Browne

BOOK:  Children Under Fire: An American Crisis by John Woodrow Cox 

POEM(S):  We Need to Teach the Children the Old Words by Caroline Mellor

“Words are world-makers”

— Robert MacFarlane

We need to teach the children the old words,

words like brabble and grubble,

twitter-light and clinkerbell;

words which dance and trip and slip

and drip like honey off the tongue

Teach them that a hazy halo of cloud

around the moon is called a moonbroch

and that swiftly moving clouds are named cairies;

how a vixen’s wedding is a sunny shower of rain,

and that a single sunbeam breaking through thick cloud

is known as a messenger

Teach them to know the seasons and scents

of queen of the meadow and bride of the sun,

how to tell Jupiter’s staff from fairy fingers

and which roses bloom with the strawberry moon

Teach them to spot pricklebacks in the tottlegrass,

how to recognise a smeuse or a bishop-barnaby,

when to watch the sky for flittermice and yaffles,

and to pay attention to the dumbeldore and mousearnickle

as she graces the lazy leahs of summer

Teach them a few of the old Sussex words for mud,

like gubber and slub and stodge and pug,

so they know that the precious soil beneath their toes

is anything but worthless dirt

Teach them to be users and keepers and makers

of the words which bring the land alive:

a storybook, where everything has its rightful place,

including us;

where the wilds are fearful and filled with magic

and people do noble things, and nothing is impossible

In this world of harsh new words —

words like planetary dysmorphia and solastalgia,

extinction debt and grief mitigation,

megadrought and megafire,

anthropogenic, pyrocene,

words which alarm and get stuck in our throats

describing a world which our hearts cannot grasp —

we need to teach the children the old words,

so that if they should feel lost,

the old words might colour for them

a warm and breathing, living map,

a light to guide them safely home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glossary

brabble — to argue loudly about matters of no importance

grubble — to grope around in the dark for something that you can’t see

clinkerbell — icicle

twitter-light — twilight

queen of the meadow — meadowsweet

bride of the sun — calendula

Jupiter’s staff — mullein

fairy fingers — foxglove

*prickleback — hedgehog

*tottle grass — high grass

smeuse —the gap in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal

*bishop-barnaby — ladybird

*yaffle — green woodpecker

*flittermouse — bat

*dumbledore — bumblebee

*mousearnickle — dragonfly

leah — meadow, clearing

*gubber — black mud of rotting organic matter

*pug — a kind of loam, particularly the sticky yellow Wealden clay

*stodge — thick puddingy mud

*slub — thick mud

Author's Note:   I owe the title and first line of this poem to my friend, Jelly Julieda, who has graciously granted me permission to use her words here. I have also been hugely inspired by the work of Robert MacFarlane, and urge you to read his wonderful book Landmarks if you are interested in the relationship between landscape and language.

The words marked with an *asterisk are native to my home in the Sussex Weald.

Poem to Be Read at 3:00 a.m. by Donald Justice

Excepting the diner

On the outskirts

The town of Ladora

At 3 A.M.

Was dark but

For my headlights

And up in

One second-story room

A single light

Where someone

Was sick or

Perhaps reading

As I drove past

At seventy

Not thinking

This poem

Is for whoever

Had the light on

QUOTE(S):  "The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough." ~ Colum McCann

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” ~ Helen Keller

Sleeping Beauty (Tom Prasada-Rao)

Remember the sleeping spell scene in Sleeping Beauty?  

Until my retirement in late-June 2019, I led a very deadline-driven life.  I have been accused of thriving on chaos, and I have recently embraced the truth in that.  Seems that the only way I could get anything done was to fill my life with so many events and obligations that I had only a sliver of white space in my calendar, and that's where I shoehorned/crowbarred in whatever unexpectedly popped up.  Effective, yes.  Attractive, no.  I always made it happen, but at a great cost to my emotional, mental, and physical health.

Only a handful of people know this, but... my greatest fantasy, for decades, was that the whole world would go into a one-week deep freeze/sleep (except for me!), so that I could furiously catch up... on e-mails, phone calls, concert booking, work duties.

Not that I conjured this virus, but it seems my vision has come to fruition.  Not to minimize the real risks, harm, and financial setbacks associated with COVID-19, and I have immense gratitude for those who remain on the front lines of essential people... but most of us are now experiencing some sort of suspended animation, during which we are being given an *opportunity* to re-calibrate our lives.  We have been offered the gift of time, which was always in short supply.  We can read, bingewatch, exercise, meditate, eat healthy, connect with family and friends (whether up-close-and-personal or from afar).  We can engage in Radical Self-Care.  All that is asked of us is to be patient and follow the rules to stay safe and well.  I am finally getting around to some projects long on my To Do List:  whittling down the e-mails in my inbox, writing in my Grandmother's Journal for Colin, fine-tuning our will, etc.

Yes, there is a tendency to go stir-crazy but, honestly, going inward will serve us well during this difficult time, re-examining our lives and tweaking how we can come out better people on the other side of this.  The struggle is real, but so is the challenge...  :-)

P.S.  Yesterday I watched Brittany Runs a Marathon on Amazon Prime, which reveals at the end of the movie that it's based on a true story.  I posted on our family group text, saying that I thought, post-coronavirus, we should run/walk a 5K together.  We're all in!


“People are getting restless,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday night of the growing social discord in the country. “Especially the people who aren’t too bright.”

Thus began a lengthy monologue from the Jimmy Kimmel Live host, during which he savagely mocked the protesters as well as President Trump for putting wind behind their sails.

“I get that people need to go back to work. I do. But the point of stay-at-home is to get a lid on this so we can get back to work, and then stay at work,” Kimmel said, before comparing the protesters—many of whom have carried signs in support of Trump—to a death cult. “I’m starting to think that these characters who support Trump might be suicidal. They seem to be fighting hardest for the things that will kill them. They want the freedom to gather in large groups during an epidemic. They want guns. They want pollution. I figured it out. They want to die, and they’re taking us down with them. It’s like if the Titanic was headed towards the iceberg, and half of the passengers were like, ‘Can you please speed this thing up?’”


SONG:  Sleeping Beauty by Tom Prasada-Rao

BOOK:  Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

POEM:  Notes to Myself During National Poetry Month, 2020 by Dante Di Stefano

Remember, bluets still sprout
beneath your boots
when you take your daughter
for a walk by the river.

Even though an orange snow fence
surrounds the jungle gym
in the park down the street,
there’s the low fork
of a young oak to sit her in.

Remember, even if the hoops
have all been unscrewed
from the backboards,
you can still feign a hook shot for her.

Remember, if the balcony
is closed,
sing through the wall.

Find the riot, unquelled,
in the cherry blossom’s center.

Remember, beneath each scarf,
bandanna, and surgical mask,
there is a throat
that might break into sudden
surprising aria.

Remember, how astonished
your daughter is
at motorcycles and ladybugs,
a pebble she finds
in a neighbor’s driveway,
the stars, the moon, mayflies,
streetlights seen from
the window before bed.

Remember, the image of
your wife’s brown hair
sprawled on the pillow
in the blue hour
of any morning
is worth more
than all your poems.

Remember, even an angry word
from her
is worth more than
the best line of poetry
you have ever read.

Remember, your poems
cannot shelter you,
or make a roof
for the ones you love.
Remember, the earth’s
sole vocation is to astonish.

Remember, the angels of the earth
choir themselves
with mouths full of sod.

Remember, glaciers melt,
oceans rise,
coastlines recede.

Remember, everything can happen
at once and always,
and God, and heaven, and hell.

Remember, the world is
inside you,
the meadow between
one clover and one bee.

Remember, the world is sweet
and spinning, still.

QUOTE:  "Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change." ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson