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

You're Aging Well (Dar Williams)

M wrote some wonderfully reinforcing ideas about beauty on her pin-up blog the other day, which of course got me thinking about my own interpretation as well as my self-image - ultimately, in my opinion, it distills down to "beauty is as beauty does"...

I have had years/weeks/moments in which I felt stunning... magnetic... indestructible... at what would not be considered my ideal weight/size - however, because I felt involved (with my family and friends/my community/the world), I wasn't thinking about any perceived inadequacies. I've realized I have a talent (actually more of a *need*) to contribute, share and widen the circle - when my blinders are on, my ego gets in the way and I tend to concentrate on the trivialities.

Which is not to say I still shouldn't care about how I look and becoming more healthy (through nutrition, exercise and rest) - when it becomes an obsession such that I'm not only *not* enjoying life but completely narrowing my focus, something is wrong. People appreciate my authentic smile, my gift of listening, my love of music - they're not likely to spend time critiqueing my hips, my hair, my nails.

Our bodies were designed to age: sagging breasts, graying hair and crinkling eyelids - if we've made the most of our time on the planet, we should also be able to track incremental wisdom, peace and compassion. The purpose of skeletons, muscle and skin is really only to keep our souls, hearts and minds safely surrounded - as long as we live with purpose, enthusiasm and good will, we will remain forever young in the ways that count... and aging well in aspects that matter.

SONG: You're Aging Well by Dar Williams

BOOK: I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

POEM: Beauty by Tony Hoagland

When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.

After all those years
of watching her reflection in the mirror,
sucking in her stomach and standing straight,
she said it was a relief,
being done with beauty,

but I could see her pause inside that moment
as the knowledge spread across her face
with a fine distress, sucking
the peach out of her lips,
making her cute nose seem, for the first time,
a little knobby.

I'm probably the only one in the whole world
who actually remembers the year in high school
she perfected the art
of being a dumb blond,

spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab,
tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill
which was her specialty,

while some football player named Johnny
with a pained expression in his eyes
wrapped his thick finger over and over again
in the bedspring of one of those pale curls.

Or how she spent the next decade of her life
auditioning a series of tall men,
looking for just one with the kind
of attention span she could count on.

Then one day her time of prettiness
was over, done, finito,
and all those other beautiful women
in the magazines and on the streets
just kept on being beautiful
everywhere you looked,

walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance
in which you sense they always seem to have one hand
touching the secret place
that keeps their beauty safe,
inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it—

It was spring. Season when the young
buttercups and daisies climb up on the
mulched bodies of their forebears
to wave their flags in the parade.

My sister just stood still for thirty seconds,
amazed by what was happening,
then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head
as if she was throwing something out,

something she had carried a long ways,
but had no use for anymore,
now that it had no use for her.
That, too, was beautiful.

QUOTE: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." ~ Helen Keller