Birthday!

Monday

• Bedecked tree in deep woods on the Nature Conservancy’s Upland Farms.  Winter Solstice the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere,  appropriate time for a new year via the Romans, Druids, Christianity, and Western European colonialism.  In about a week it will be “2016 CE,” a world standard ferociously enforced by computers. 
• We are one, at least in aging digitally together.  Not long ago, hardly anyone knew how old they were, or when their birth date might be.  If you survived childhood, you became an adult.  If surviving thirty or so years of adulthood you became an ancient.  Years were measured in passage of the season and collection of taxes, and otherwise left everyone unaffected.  Now, we calculate our calendar age to the microsecond, tie our “secret equivalent age” to biometrics, and have a grand vision of what must be done in each annual cycle.  Sure, we each have our own birthdays, but Earth, as always, provides the real downbeat.   

Tuesday

Ok, folks, all together, one, two, three:

Happy solstice to you

Happy solstice to you

Happy solstice dear Terra

Happy solstice to you.

How old are you now?

How old are you now?

We just can’t believe that!

Happy Solstice to you!

Now everybody make a wish while Terra tries to blow out all our emissions ….

Wednesday

• Last winter this day freezing and snow, this winter nearly sixty and fog.  The land does not know date nor season nor weather.  The land did not know trilobites nor dinosaurs nor people.  Most inhabitants of the land just recognize it is daytime and survive until darkness.  Only humans compare one year to another.
• Ancient Greeks _ and most other religions _ assigned no birthdate to their gods because that would be certain blasphemy.  Prophets, on the other hand, are often dated by year _ which is difficult because true prophets are often not recognized until they are well along in years, and even in literate cultures born vaguely “in the fifth year of the reign of good king Maniac.” Assigning a specific birthday is impossible, and generally evolves by convenient convention.  Yet, here we are, celebrating one “birthday” after another, and happy for doing so.

Thursday

Joan was once again trying to fit our celebration of Greg’s birthday into the complicated holiday schedules of everyone involved.  “He always did get cheated, you know,” she says.  “Only five days before Christmas, everyone forgets and merges them together.”

“Oh, I know.  My grandmother was an actual Christmas baby.  One party and, of course, the presents all jumbled up.  Much better to be born on the other end of the calendar,  June or July.”

“Too hard to plan,” she laughs.

“In a few years, I’m sure that everyone will actually be timing things exactly.  Maybe they are now, for all I know.”

“What I hated were the cutoffs for school _ that you had to be so many years old by, say, January 1.”

“That’s the real problem.  Years in general.  How old you are _ especially at 5 or six _ should really be measured in months or days by the calendar.  Not to mention that everyone develops differently.  Still, I thought that someone nearer a year older always had a big advantage in sports and maybe in achievement.”

“You’re awful yourself, these days,” she accuses.  “You always round up.  You say you’re 69 when you’re still 68.  Nobody does that.”

“I round up everything, expenses and years.  I’ve consistently found that more useful.”

“Let’s see now,” she returns to the calendar.  “What about Wednesday, after he’s done work?”

Friday

• Warm fog and showers unable to satisfy eccentric cultural longing for white coating on the ground.  ‘Tis the season of extravagant expectations _ family, love, bonuses, gifts, myths, anything at all.  Now that all other needs and whims are more or less instantly satisfied,  what remains are holidays on steroids.
• I’ll spare you the “I was happy with a yo-yo” stories; we were not deprived, but  major kid stuff was reserved for Christmas, and there was a lot less of it.  Our parents did not treat a car or new appliance  as a gift _ those were major expenses that involved planning and penny-pinching.  I see people infinitely more goods, but none happier than we were back in “the good old days.”

Saturday

• The natural cycle for life on the surface is the sun.  Hawks and squirrels roam the day, Owls and raccoons the night.  We are advised of our natural circadian rhythm,  and most of us are forcibly reminded to sleep periodically each twenty four hours.  Day and night are probably most of what many animals are aware of.
• On the other hand, bacteria, which own the earth. presumably don’t much care if there is light or not.  Fish and shellfish are probably far more affected by tides.  Inhabitants of the deep sea never notice sunlight at all.  An insect cycle may be complete in less than an afternoon, the prototypical active time of a mayfly.
• Humans have invented measurement.  Days pass into numbers and the moon waxes and wanes and the seasons warm and chill down or dry up and rain.  We plop them into proper places on a calendar, find how close we are to solstices or arbitrary year end.  We annotate our own place in these records, when we have precisely checked off another three hundred sixty five.
• Even more intriguing, people have fashioned metaphors.  One of the most complex, at least in European-influenced cultures, is that a year is like our lives.  Like the year we are born helpless and nearly dormant, then thrust and blossom into grand and beautiful virility, then slowly dry and finally disappear.  A folklore version of Ontology recapitulating Philology.
• Yet all that is false.  Years don’t exist, except in our minds.  Our lives and growth and achievements are not at all at the same pace or with the same attributes  as the environments of the northern hemisphere.  We know that our consciousness exists in the moment, but we always seek some deeper pattern.

Sunday

• After the excitement of a wonderful holiday, the slight let-down and then a final remaining glow.   After much work and worry, the house is all decorated, the lights cheering the foggy air, the presents exchanged and (mostly) properly appreciated.  Then everyone goes home, another year older, another set of memories layered on the old ones.
• So one of our religions has had yet another birthday, the sun has passed solstice, soon the calendars will change to recognize the facts, and we all feel, somehow, a little more aged than we did a few weeks ago.  Even the mild weather has been unable to hide that winter is ready to swoop in at any moment.  I’m not a person who ever hated the holidays, but I did get more keyed up in the past than I do now.  Much to be grateful for, of course, but that has fortunately been true every day of the last year for me.

Seasons Sonatas

Monday

• Nature always appears harmonious.  After all, people have evolved attuned over tens of thousands of years.  Yet there is also a marked flexibility that somehow makes desert, swamp, ocean, jungle, savannah, woods, and whatever else beautiful to properly adjusted outlooks.  Art may attempt to capture that harmony, or may challenge it, or (in the best work) somehow do both at the same time.
• Our musical tastes are formed early, and I hardly appreciate classical.  Yet even in the early jazz music I love,  I miss a great deal because I am not a musician.  My greatest fault, as in many things, is in not paying adequate attention.  I know the beginning of Chopin’s moonlight sonata quite well, but no matter how many times I listen, the rest just blurs into one long piano relaxation.  Not unlike how I often experience scenery and other important environments in my life.

Tuesday

Sonata ought to be a song

That murmurs, glistens soft along

Shouts demanding in our ear

Concentrate on what we hear

-

Winter swirls some icy ways

Snow can’t brighten shorter days

Disaster looms a constant dread

Disruptions whisper stay in bed

-

Some will brace for bitter cold

March forth challenged to be bold

Others dream of sweeter times

Wish to wake in warmer climes

-

Me, I’m torn, I like to go

Examine purity of snow

But other hours I like best

To just accept my enforced rest

Wednesday

• Cable provides a music channel called “Songs of the Seasons.”  Unsurprisingly, these are mostly pop tunes with lots of words to clue the audience.  Classical music suffers from only providing titles.  Nobody would associate “March of the Wooden Soldiers” with Christmas except for its use in a few movies, and Nutcracker would be just a sequence of pretty melodies without the ballet costumes and handy program guide.
• I sit here and enjoy the ways colors blend together, or subtly contrast, always in a different kaleidoscopic way depending on where I look or how I vary my focus.  In such magical stillness, I may recall one seasonal tune or another, which are irrelevant to this moment.  I would insist that this overall experience is very much like that of closely listening to a sonata or symphony.  Abstract, harmonious, challenging, soothing and much more, all at the same time, all constructed by the marvelous trillions of neurons that provide me with my being.

Thursday

Standard carols echo around crowds here at the mall.  I’m sitting in a little alcove of chairs, waiting for Joan to finish up at Macys.  Conversations of others doing the same thing rise around,  as I pick out fragments.

“These songs sure bring back memories, don’t they?”

“Some of them, I guess.  I can’t stand some of the cynical newer ones they keep putting on.”

“Yeah, I’m more partial to Bing Crosby and Sinatra myself.  But I guess they have to move with the times.”

“Why?  They don’t care about the times anywhere else.  This is all just nostalgia to make old people feel like spending money for grandkids.”

“My grandkids sure don’t know them like I did.  I think they’re more familiar with car and beer ad jingles.”

“Oh, yeah, and forget hymns.  Why, when I was their age we had them every Sunday, right out of the hymnal, had to memorize them all.”

“Well, we believed.  It meant something back then.”

“Should mean something now.  Damn political correctness.  Why can’t we just be happy that we took over the planet and let it at that.”

“Not much Christmas spirit, there?”

“Humbug yourself.  It’s true, though.

Friday

• Crows cawing only birdsong, but steady wind whispers through trees, dead grasses rustle, waves slap shore.  Human sounds accrete all around _ whistling of boat rigging, low rumble of jets low overhead heading for landing at JFK, tires and rasping engines of trucks making last-minute holiday deliveries, and incessant whine of leaf blowers.  Humans are, sometimes unfortunately, part of nature too.
• Any true seasonal sonata would include that.  Probably we wouldn’t go to the lengths that Spike Jones gleefully pasted over tunes, but time of year is infallibly marked aurally by our own sounds.  A really brilliant artist might be able to weave it all pleasingly.  Or maybe not _ we tend to be more abrasive and raucous than even those annoying big black birds.

Saturday

• Transforming experience to art is odd.  Movies require narrative, drawings composition, paintings color, photographs  unique immediacy, writing translating existence into meaningful words.  But how to use sitting on a hill or walking through the woods or gasping against the wind to compose a song?
• First and greatest question is why bother.  The world provides it all, what exactly does an artist have to contribute?  Capture the moment, perhaps, as much as any aspect of it can be.  Recall memories.  Distill some common feeling.  All of those are difficult in any medium, but to try to capture, recall, or distill while limited to musical notes is almost inconceivable.
• Oh, I can imagine a shepherd playing a flute easily enough, or even a folk singer strumming on a guitar, creating something that might catch the public fancy.  But I cannot, for the life of me, put Chopin on a park lawn to come up with a Coindre Hall Autumn Sonata that would ever have more evocation of a particular place than its title.  Is that my own musical incapacity?
• Yet, second question is why can I imagine that sonata, rising from the waving of bare branches, harmonizing with blended browns of the rushes around the stilled pond, counterpointed by occasional calls of geese and ducks over the water?  If I am centered I can almost hear it in my mind, a song of nature, yet inexpressible in the sense that anyone else would ever understand what I am trying to do.  Even the most accomplished evocation, such as “Appalachian Spring” only becomes meaningful when I am aware of its name.
• Music, I suspect, is our most abstract gift to the universe, and a gift to which only other humans or our gods themselves can ever respond completely.  But it is also one of our must perfect expressions of pure love of being, whatever the occasion of its origin.  

Sunday

• Open harbor should provide silent refuge, but unless wind blows strongly any given car or motorcycle is apt to be bellowing a Christmas tune, any given homeowner may be blasting outside speakers with the same. Holiday music has been increasingly insistent for over three months now.  But this week it is ubiquitous _ on radio and TV, in stores, along the street.  If newspapers could talk they’d be playing jingle bells.  Suddenly at the end of next week it drop by half, a week after that will be banished for another year.  The proverbial man from Mars would be quite puzzled, particularly at  constant references to “sleighs” which haven’t been used for a century, and never ever used in places like Florida. 
• Music on my mind because many of these ditties are in the form of “earbugs,” those annoying snatches of song that keep playing through my background thoughts even though I desperately try to send them away.  Certainly not sonatas.  With crude but effective hooks and structures, they get triggered and reinforced at every snatch of melody, and sometimes by other stimuli as well.   My particular seasonal concert.  

North Pole

Monday

• All place names are collective fictions, even though the modern world likes to believe that naming magically makes real.  No bird or fish recognizes “Huntington”.  Imaginary lines outline legal jurisdictions, but a guide is needed to locate “downtown.”  The North Pole is a dimensionless dot over drifting ice with no boundaries at all. 
• When I was a kid, the North Pole was both magical and real.  Santa worked there.  Now, I suppose, children realize he has been displaced by eminent domain and natural disaster, his outmoded factory dismantled, his elfin workforce _ unable to use iphones let alone make them_ laid off.  He’s probably lounging on a beach somewhere in Costa Rica, while Mrs. Claus reminisces over old photographs of the polar domain.

Tuesday

People strode their dimpled flat world thoughtlessly,

Then Thales conjured up his sphere

Which Newton with Copernicus cutely placed,

Circling sun, spinning on a handy stick

Jammed through North and South poles.

My childhood knew exactly what was what.

North Pole on top, just like us.

Cold icy remote as hell

Unreachable, forbidden

Finest place for Santa Claus to work.

Now, science claims it isn’t where it was

North switches sometimes south, like magic

Overhead each day fly jets, subs lurk underneath

Someday soon dark prophets scream

The few surviving kids might row right by on rafts

All “truth” is conscious mystery:

No real North Pole exists at all

Never did, just in our minds,

Our many models, maps and maths,

And, on occasion, myths

Wednesday

• Various names were applied to this hill by native American tribes, by colonists grazing sheep on the South Down, by wealthy Mr. Brown who never got to use his gold coast estate, and by priests remembering Father Coindre.  Nobody pausing here to enjoy the view cares. Come a few hundred years, this may well become Huntington Reef in the Gulf of Connecticut.  By then, the North Pole too may be long forgotten. 
• All is transient and personal.  My Huntington, my North Pole, is not yours.  Whatever we may share of the conception of each is further restricted to our time and place.  This scene changes, its name also changes, and we are brief but important visitors.  Yet somehow I also think it natural that Coindre Hall, like the North Pole, like I myself, has always been and always will be as it is this moment.

Thursday

Little wreaths sparkling white lights hang from each street lamp in the middle of the day.  By the soldiers and sailors memorial at east end of town I find Ed disconsolate on a bench.  “Oh, come on,” I kid him, “get some Christmas spirit.”

“Sure ain’t what it used to be,” he complains.

“Nothing is,” I smile.  “Weather’s good.”

He ignores me, “Back when, we didn’t get any toys from at least June on, ‘Wait for Christmas.’  That was a big thing.  We all believed in the season.”

“It’s festive now,” I argue.  “People believe in the season, if nothing else.”

“Well, when I grew up kids at least bought into the whole thing, Santa, toys, life always working out for the best.”

So that’s what’s got into him.  “We had our share of cultural chauvinism.  All kids do.  We thought what was around us was around everybody, obviously all the same.”

“Oh, you’re right about that,” he says.  “Santa was a visible manifestation of God _ omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and good.”

“He’s still pretty omnipresent, at least ….” I could see five pictures of him from where I stood.

“I liked the innocence of the old days,” he almost whines.  “Now everything is relative this and relative that and nothing is simple any more.  I want simple again.”

“I think it was just as complicated back then,” I tell him.  “Everybody didn’t get presents, lots of people didn’t celebrate Christmas at all.  We just ignored them.”

“So what.  I liked it better.  It was more fun for the kids.”

“Grump, grump, grump,” I tease.  “Merry Christmas anyway.”

“Happy whatever to you, too,” he growls.

“Bah, Humbug!” I move on towards the dimly sounding traditional songs echoing tinnily from speakers, ignored by everyone.

Friday

• No touch of North Pole around here.  It might as well be May, roses still blooming, the migratory ducks somewhat confused by the unnatural heat.  Most seniors quite happy for the delay of snow and ice _ all the romance went out of white Christmas with the blizzards of last year.  Some no doubt regret putting their boats away, but the buoys are safely stored as always.  Hard to tell if it is climate change or just a nice unusual December.
• I’d lay bets on climate change.  I appreciate the warmth and the chance to stroll in light jacket without heavy hat and gloves, but I keep looking behind my back.  I feel like one of those naïve folks rushing out onto the newly-exposed glistening sea bottom to gather treasures, ignoring the ominous murmur of the distant but onrushing tidal wave.

Saturday

• Our world expands as we grow, sometimes too much.  The certainty of the North Pole and all it implies, complete with Santa Claus, gives way to provable knowledge or a willingness to accept lack of knowledge.  We find, along with that, that others do not share our legends, backgrounds, hopes, and goals.
• Nostalgia is in some ways a desire to become once again as certain in knowledge and belief as a child.   Everything was much easier when things were clear.  We may not recognize that the changes are in us, in how we perceive.  I wonder why everybody cannot be just like me. 
• Some claim we have, as a culture, become too sensitive, too aware, too relative for our own good.  That is certainly the fundamentalist creed in any religion or politics.  Traditionalists shout that hanging on to the myth of the North Pole, objectively true or not, has social value. Such myths help bind tribes together, and make us civilized, at least within our tribe itself. 
• Unfortunately, leaving childhood is exactly like leaving Eden.  Colorations and differences in the world and its peoples are real, whether we choose to be aware of them or not.  Ignoring our differences is not useful to survival, but trying to understand and accept everything and everyone is equally destructive.
• Once upon a time I knew, as surely as I visualized Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, what was the right way to live and how to be.  Now, I am less certain, and even less sure I will ever find any certainty at all. 

Sunday

• This sleigh at the Halesite fire department looks like it may have trouble getting out of the rapidly growing grass.  The real one up at the North Pole is probably facing slush, pothole puddles, and crevasses into the arctic sea.  If any of them do get airborne, they will surely be stuck the first place they land, dry roof or muddy field.  Unless of course _ always possible _ a polar express wind whips in by month end.
• I’ve had a lot of fun with the North Pole this week, probably because it and Santa Claus are some of the least controversial of subjects.  For or against, few seem to believe anything striking at the core of their being and beliefs.  It’s too bad we do not have more neutral topics like that  _ sometimes every conversation seems a potential minefield.  I guess irritation just goes along with being fat and happy.

Distant Turmoils

Monday

• A brief survey of the news this morning will surely show there are many horrors happening to many people everywhere.  Whether there were ever less is impossible to know, but awareness is probably greater.  Trying to pay attention, or to begin to care, about everything can be irritatingly painful.  Ignoring everything and crawling like Candide back into the garden also seems wrong.
• We live in a cultural mythology that claims we can “do anything,” leaving us guilty if we are doing less than we think we should.  But this is dangerous too, for it is easy to become overextended and empty.  We have no better answers to life’s philosophical questions than any of the ancients.  Yet hubris is not only rampant in our engineering, but also in our everyday thinking.  Too much attention to the news, too much worry about how we should affect it, is also dangerous to our health.

Tuesday

Children starving, folks in pain

World is warming, acid rain

Open any page or screen

Then try to hide from what you’ve seen

Why should I care, what ought I know

Of Paris, Peking, Chicago?

.

Olden times had plague and war

Vikings, Mongols, Huns and more

Frequent famines, bitter freeze

Hungry wolves,  uncured disease

Somehow humans stayed alive

At least enough to fill their tribe

.

Just down my street, I’ve read of crimes

At the market, hunger lines

I’m built of several trillion cells,

A few, I know, are shot to hell

And even if it all goes fine

Age claims I’m running out of time.

.

I’ve always managed, found a way

To reach tomorrow through today

I may not fix those distant ills

I may not guess what future wills

I can make dinner, loan a smile

And hang on happy for a while.

Wednesday

• Hardly expected to find a squid washed up on Gold Star beach.  Well, surely not washed up, more discarded from some disappointed dreams of a late-season fisher.  Its origins were definitely not in the harbor proper _ seems even the seagulls have not recognized it yet.
• This fits well with the weekly topic _ here was a (presumably) happy little sea creature, blithely squirting along, suddenly scooped up into events beyond its control.  Some old religions told of gods netting people as if they were fish, for their own hidden purposes.  Regardless of the scientific validity of such gods, the metaphor is spot on.  And I wonder if this squid _ had it been aware of and worrying about human nets _ could have lived any better or longer a life.

Thursday

Mark was looking sullen when I stopped him by the Dairy Barn.  “What’s got you so upset?”

“Oh, Ephron yelling at everyone over there,” he gestured down Gerard Street.  Ephron is our local prophet of doom, always seeking ears and shoulders and wallets to carry forth his struggles against evil in the world, as he sees it, anyway.

“Free country, Mark.  What’s he spouting today?”

“Oh, he’s got them all mixed, now.  Global warming, of course, aggravated by the police state, wealth inequality, genetic modification,  political corruption, all orchestrated by the CIA.”

“Interesting brew.  But I’m sure he has proof, he always does,” I noted sarcastically.

“Sure, pamphlets, a few wet-around-the-ears junior high kids.  You can disappear into any belief you dream up these days.  Always find as much support as you want anywhere on the internet.”

“Harmless,” I ventured. 

“Nah, I think it destroys civility and common sense.  I’d like to sue him for child abuse and being a public nuisance.”

“He’s got friends.  Even a one-trick pony has a right to be heard.  He doesn’t really bother me as much as those people with weird fixes.”

“Like?” asked Mark.

“Oh you know, religions or new age junk, or silver bullets, or wishing to make it so, all the way up to killing off those who you want to blame.”

“The only thing that works, for most of us, is small local actions.  Driven, I am afraid, by money rather than idealism.”

“I don’t understand.”  After all, I did think a lot of the problems were important and should be addressed.

“Pittsburgh and LA only cleaned up pollution when it was destroying the economic viability _ Beijing will no doubt do the same.  Here we didn’t get most of the trash off the streets until our municipality could get money for recycling and there was a return bottle deposit.  And individuals like us only cooperate when we can save costs with lower electricity use or insulation, or improving our life by not wasting so many precious hours in cars.”  He paused for breath.

“But” I began to protest.  Too late.

“Just entertainment anyway, all this stuff, a new opiate for the masses while those in power play their little games,” he huffed in disgust.

“Oh, not that,” I finally decided to play along.  “More astrology.  Everyone now thinks science can be used  to predict and control all futures.  Like the Babylonians staring at the heavens.  And you can always find an astrologer or scientist who wants to make a buck.  At least if they can keep their options opaque and open enough.  You know, ‘If you do this or don’t do that a mighty empire will fall.’”

“But not how, or when, or which empire,” he laughs.

“Yep!” And we, like the world, continue on our daily ways.

Friday

• Following another distant workplace mass murder, Huntington’s little world is calm and quiet, seemingly unaffected by events elsewhere.  Like an idyllic Pacific atoll where inhabitants remain unaware that the Japanese and American navies are steaming toward it.  Perhaps the island will escape future problems, but that seems less likely by the day.  Yet the natives still must fish, still must eat meals, and might as well celebrate luxurious beauty while they can.
• Before routine security scanning, I once toiled alongside the cubicle of a fellow programmer _ a normal enough fellow who liked to brag about his various collections, including quasi-legal automatic weapons.  Harmless enough, until I overheard him muttering to himself about “they can’t make me do that,” “I can’t stand this,” “I’ll show them.”  With some trepidation, I contacted management.  He was fine once HR stepped in to put him back on previously unsuspected medications.  My middle-aged colleagues and I might have survived an attack from his Samurai swords (another collection) but would have done less well facing an M16 or AK47.   Today I consider weaponry control similar to other collective legal responsibility, such as driving safe cars or not dumping poison into lakes.

Saturday

• How to deal with large problems, especially those outside your age bracket or field of competence and influence, has been a problem since tribes became large enough for humans to specialize.  Some issues have always been so overwhelming that there is little anyone can do but hunker down and hope.  Today we believe we are masters of the universe, which may be more true than it ever was, but does not quite extend to really huge difficulties, nor down to individual catastrophes.  Nor does it help us resolve contradictions when individuals are hurt for the presumed greater good. 
• Mark Twain, for example (I know, I know, just a pen name, but who cares) never fought in the Civil War, during which he was prime army material, even though he was against slavery.  Would the world be better off if he had been killed at Antietam?  What good would have been served by Picasso scrabbling around in the resistance, rather than painting serenely in the south of France.  And those were people of influence, unlike most affected.
• We like to think we can control wars and violence, but in spite of the chants of democracy, choices of leaders are limited and nobody can predict the tensions they will be under when they face hard choices.  We like to think we can overcome plagues and disease, but often resources are redirected too late, and sometimes only crude blind luck saves whole populations.  We dismiss hunger and famine as things of the past, but a simple breakdown in our grids and networks _ caused, perhaps, by a massive solar flare _would have civilization starving within a matter of days.
• I am much better off than those who lived centuries ago.  The modern industrialized world for many of us is a far more controllable and sane place than anywhere used to be, even for those in power.  Random accidents still occur, of course, and the threat of disaster will be with any species until the final days when the sun dies.  But day to day, mostly, is more than adequate.
• We probably should worry.  It’s good for the culture.  All of us aware of global warming will lead to actions that may help, just as enough people getting sick of massive pollution eventually led to cleaner local water and air.  But reading, knowing, talking  _ well those aren’t direct and don’t feel real. 
• My guess is that our worries about future horrors _ whether climate or otherwise _ will be dealt with or resolved in ways we have no way of anticipating.  I’m glad we are concerned _ we should always remain concerned and willing to do something together.  But when we focus on one problem we lose sight of the correlations _ what happens to coal miners, or industrial production, or food supply.
• I would like to believe we and our leaders are honestly trying, but I don’t think we have all the knowledge and control that we imagine.

Sunday

• Tides have flowed ceaselessly for eons, but not precisely here.  Huntington harbor was formed by melting glaciers _ an instant ago geologically, soon followed by people, much later by swans, and finally these houses.  If high tide damages a home along the shoreline, or high wind damages one atop a hill, what responsibility do the inhabitants of each have for the other?
• My consciousness is a brew of complicated urges and tensions, finely tuned by billions of years.  A person with no empathy sees everything as entertainment, and becomes a psychopathic monster.  One with too much feels the pain of all and falls into fatal melancholia or unsupportable innocence.  We are immense, fluid, mysterious, and impermanent.  Our societies must be mirrors of that complexity.  

Well, Thanks

Monday

• One would expect that thanks to God and the Universe would arise in fat times, when everyone is overwhelmed with the bounty of happy being, as exemplified by this marina.  That would misread the perversity of the human spirit. People usually take bounty for granted, and end up complaining about the quality of their silverware, the poor habits of their servants, the evil thoughts of their neighbors, or their own victimization compared to just about everybody else. 
• Days of common thanksgiving, illogically, are usually declared in times of disaster.  The typical exhortation no matter how bad the crisis is “think how much worse it could be!”  My task has always been to reverse that scenario.  I don’t mind complaining bitterly when life is awful, although I hardly ever find it so.  I think it a duty to be thankful every day for everything,  and I am constantly reminding myself how much worse my life and my world could have been.

Tuesday

Thanksgiving Limerick

Earthquake, drought followed by flood

Locusts, fire, war, lost our food

Diseases were gotten

Our cheeses went rotten

At least we ain’t dead yet, thank God

Wednesday

• Birds should be grateful _ lots of berries and fruits still hanging on the tree, as yet undamaged by frost.  The rest of nature is asleep or storing things like nuts where they can be easily found later.  With all that is around, one would suspect there is easily enough for all, that provisions have been made for every tiny being on the planet.  Malthus and Darwin and the rest have proved that idea to be cruelly wrong, a fact which we easily verify for ourselves.
• People are different.  For the first time, we have real opportunity to limit our populations, and guarantee at least food and personal security to just about every human born.  That we do not _ from violence or greed or maladjustment _ is hopefully changing.  Paradigm shifts occur almost by themselves, like US pop culture becoming worldwide, and perhaps the next big one will be finally that all folks on the planet are in this together and will thankfully share the overwhelming bounty being created.

Thursday

Curt was, as usual, complaining as we waited in line at the supermarket.

“So you didn’t have such a nice thanksgiving, even with all the family over?”

“Oh, it was nice enough, especially in principle _ we know we should get together once in a while.  But geez, what a bunch of complainers.  The adults were whining ignorant envious wimps.  Their kids were worse _ vicious unappreciative grasping monsters.”

“Ah, c’mon,” I try to cheer him up.  “People are always like that, always were like that, when they get together with people they trust.”

“I don’t think so. Well, maybe.  I did get sick of being told how easy my life had been, the fifties were a utopian lark, the sixties were our indulgent fools’ paradise,  and you know they truly believe we never had to worry about anything.  But, oh them!  Woe, impossible to find decent jobs, insecure about everything.  Their house is huge, but someone else’s is huger, their car is nice but they want something nicer, the kitchen was done over, but it’s already starting to show its age.  And horrors, Adam is not as brilliant and focused as Jennie, Heather loafed the summer and missed out on soccer camp.  What garbage.  They have no idea what they have.”

“Surely, we have been the same.”

“Nah,” he grumped, “Nah.  I’ve always been happy and properly grateful for a wonderful life, even during harder times.  Them, no matter what, they think their world is going to hell and pretty hellish to be in right now and they can’t understand what they are supposed to be so thankful about.  Stupid little twits all of them.”

“So it actually was horrible time,” I finally agreed.

“No, of course it was great.  We love our family.  Whatever gave you that impression?”

Friday

• Amazingly warm weather continues.  Nice for anyone taking advantage of it outside.  No doubt bad for the planet.  But that is true of many things, and there is always a question how much we enjoy the moment at the expense of losing the future.  We need to be thankful for each day, each minute of grace.  And yet we should also be grateful that there have been pasts which we can remember, and there will presumably be futures that we can imagine.
• I realize that personally there is little I can do to stop planetary warming on my own.  There are enough shrill voices.  My own contribution to climate change is miniscule _ I hardly drive, take maybe one plane trip a year, and try to be conscious of reusing materials.  But that makes no difference.  So I enjoy the lovely temperature, putter around my yard, and without too much guilt leave worries of the future to the future.  I guess I should also be grateful I can do that.

Saturday

By any measure I have been among the most fortunate of people.  I never deserved to be born, and I surely never deserved my good fortunes.  I was willing to do what was necessary: to love, to work, to appreciate, to hope.  Rewards tumbled all about, and all I needed to do was be willing to recognize them.

There are many unhappy people, or at least I so gather _ most of those I actually know seem content enough.   For much of the world this has been a measurably better time than most of the past, and it is a well-known historic fact that after such improvements is when revolutions usually occur.  Perhaps there is about to be a revolution.  Maybe it will even be a good one, for a change.

Some worry about social trends, some about climate change, some about falling populations, some about overcrowding, some about things I know nothing of.  The best of times, they cry, the worst of times.  Don’t I realize that ….  Whatever. Wake up do something.

What I do beyond the boundaries of my yard has little impact.  What is one drop among seven billion identical to me?  Life has always been out of control, the future has always been unknowable, and yet somehow we arrived here in these interesting times.

So I wake up and give thanks.  I walk and give thanks.  I fill myself with food and give thanks.  I am grateful I can think, and sleep, and still do many things.  The only proper reaction to being alive and conscious is to be awed.  Those who give those miracles up to preach despair are, I firmly believe, simply fools.

Sunday

• Sometimes, naturally, being Pollyanna all the time becomes wearing.  It is a rare person indeed who never has negative feelings about their place in the world.  That is especially true after trying so hard to look at the bright side of things for a week.
• I suppose I have ups and downs like anyone.  What have I done, where am I going, what’s the use of it all.  Silly, but there it is, just as real as being happy for all I have.  As day breaks, I know my task is to once more try harder to celebrate all that is.  A somber close to a wonderfull week.
•  

Shrinkage

Monday

• With more indoor time enforced, with greater preparations required for wandering in the open, with occasional thoughts of ice and snow, with shorter days and longer shadows and less powerful sun _ autumn is traditionally a period of shrinking inwards.  Of course there are busy tasks to prepare for harsh winter, but everything tends to contract towards home and hearth.  The natural world seems much less jubilant and sensual, an evil shadow of what it once had been a month or so ago.
• Technology has changed most of that.  Work and home continue as always, hours and tasks unaffected now that there is electricity, commerce, and interchange.  Saturnalian end-of-year festivals engage all our free time, weather is irrelevant _ even huge blizzards mostly an inconvenience if they bother to show up at all.  I’d be a fool to lament this easier and happier existence.  I’m willing to keep my toes in nature, try to stay in tune with the slowed rhythms, but I never lament being warm, well fed, and active.

Tuesday

Hibernation.  An idea

Whose time has come again.

Wait out the cold, the freeze, the wind

Dream beyond the pain.

Safe underground, safe in our beds,

Safe behind our walls

Safely retreated from the world

Safe stuffed deep in our halls.

We all know illusion’s charm

And though that may sound sweet

Monsters lurk, if not destroyed,

Will kill us as we sleep.

Wednesday

• These ruins of a pump house at Coindre Hall seem appropriate as the temperature drops.  Destruction, decay, and forgetfulness play an underlying theme in late November.  Winter may be the hopeless season when all seems lifeless and going outdoors is an act of defiant desperation, but autumn resembles a warning.  That is seized upon by philosophers and theologians to remind people how insignificant each one is in the vast universe.
• I have no idea where I fit into “the” universe, but in my universe I am the main event.  Today is magnificent, life is wonderful, and I look forward to tomorrow.  What I do is consequential to what will happen in my environment.  Deeper thoughts of cold logical philosophy and nagging intuitive religion rarely color my underlying consciousness moment by moment.  Even in autumn.  Perhaps that is a fool’s happiness, but such joy is real for me.

Thursday

“Hi, Jim, finally need the gloves, eh?”

“Yeah, summer’s fled, I guess.”

“Any big plans for the holidays or afterward.”

“Oh, the usual.  Family over for Christmas, of course.  Then we’re off to Florida for a few weeks beginning of February.  Not looking forward to it, to tell you the truth.”

“Sounds nice to me.”

“Ah, but I have everything I want at home.  Books, TV, food, routines, comforts.  I admit I don’t get out much, and certainly not far away, but I don’t miss it.”

“I share that.  Guess we’re both getting old.  When I was younger nothing seemed too big an adventure.  Now it sometimes seems an effort to even go grocery shopping on Saturday.”

“Some people age with lots of energy and are always doing stuff.”

“True.  Not me.  I like to take my time now. Frankly, I don’t envy them.  I always think they’re missing what I found.”

“Well, soon enough we’ll have spring and summer again, and more than we can handle around here.”

“Speak for yourself,” I laugh, “I’ve still got lots of leaves and other cleanup to keep me busy for weeks.  Not to mention cleaning  _ like you _ for holiday visitors.”

Friday

• Last lingering reminders are still all around, like these roses blooming into the teeth of an approaching storm.  Some days are still warm.  Fine outdoor sights and weather can be appreciated more now that they are endangered.  Someone who has just escaped catastrophe, or knows vacation is about to end, can easily discover fresh joy from previously mundane surroundings.
• I am the luckiest of creatures, blessed with memory and means to organize it so the past lies open.  That which I have experienced does not easily disappear.  Even trapped in freezing snowdrifts,  I can remember daffodils and autumn oaks, things I have done, people I have known.  My entire lifeline lies open to my consciousness, so that even when I sink seemingly bounded into a comfortable chair, I remain the king of infinite time and space.

Saturday

• I remain happiest in climates similar to that in which I grew up in Pennsylvania.  Anybody can justify anything, of course, so as I reflect on how fine it is to have seasons, I must also realize that perhaps that is because they attach strongly to my own past.  I like to think seasonal patterns teach us all something healthy, a perspective that we lose when we totally control all climate and always follow an identical daily routine.
• Predictable seasonal patterns _ wet and dry, or cold and hot, or whatever _ are the most obvious about which to moralize, but in fact all life has cyclical patterns of some type.  Even in the unchanging desert or ever-soaked rain forest there are differences between night and day.  But I think where no part of a cycle lingers with some potency, there is a tendency to believe things are eternal and unchanging.  Those of us enjoying _ or afflicted by _ strong contrasts as the year turns are more likely to believe ongoing gain and loss is inevitable.
• We anthropomorphize even wind and rain, even length of daily sunlight.  Suddenly I may believe my life has entered its autumn, as frailty strikes not only me, but all those my age that I know.  This melancholy may extend to worrying about a final winter I may not survive.  What is the correct reaction?
• Clutch closely that all that is around me?  That hardly works, like hiding under a tree in the rain, I will eventually get wet.  Clutching does little more than make my worries impossible.   Let go of everything and live for the moment?  Unfortunately, the possibilities of my moments are somewhat curtailed compared to when I was young and strong, and in spite of my “accepting my age” most of the time there will be unwelcome consequences for paying no attention to tomorrow.
• My solution is to project my inward thoughts out to the seasonal attributes.  Watching trees and birds and rain and long evenings is an enjoyment always available.  Understanding or fantasizing is a pleasure never fading.  My physical possibilities, in this season and at this age, may indeed be shrinking, but that need not affect my mind and soul.

Sunday

• An almost mad dash to the south for sunset each evening.  People exclaim they can’t believe it is getting dark already.  Trees have assumed their interlacing skeletal frames for the coming snows.  No wonder that ancient peoples made a ritual of end of year worries that the night might become eternal.  No wonder that we do the same.
• A month from now the sun’s race southward slows, stops, and begins a slow return after winter solstice.  Even though the heart of winter remains, that is a time of beginning hope.  But these final weeks until that rebirth are psychologically difficult.  The contracting constriction of everything natural strikes deep into our soul, a longer chord similar to circadian rhythm that we may ignore, but experience unconsciously nevertheless.