Beautiful iris from my garden

My garden makes me aware that there is beauty in everything, from a tiny earthworm wriggling its way through the earth, to a honeybee drinking water from the birdbath, to the lovely flowers that are blooming en masse now. I have become aware of colors--all shades and hues of colors--because they are in abundance in a garden. The different greens in the leaves of different plants and how they reflect the sun's light shining through them, the varying shades of blues and violets, the brown color of the earth and what that tells you about the quality of the soil. The list is long. I could post many photos of the different flowers that are blooming or have bloomed this year, but I've settled on posting one today, because suddenly this year, my iris plants produced many flowers, and they are beautiful. So here is one photo of a lovely iris bloom.....it's just a pity that they don't last very long.

Surreal times and the reset button

Since the pandemic started, a reset button has been pushed for my life. I follow the same routines, get up at the same time, shower, have breakfast, and then start my work day. But it’s not the same as leaving the house to go to my office. Forcing us to stay home forced a retuning of the way I live my daily life. I start my work day at the same time as I did before. But I live my work day much differently than I did before. I’ve grown to like and enjoy the freedom of being my own master, and luckily, I won’t have to return to the old way of doing things, even when we are asked to return to our offices. I’ve made some important decisions that I will share with you over the coming months. Suffice it to say that my life will be very different at this time next year, God willing.

These are surreal times. Who would have thought one year ago that we would be here—talking about a virus that has become front and center in our lives? It’s the main topic in all the news and social media, and in conversation with family and friends. None of us knows what to expect or when it will be safe again to do the things we have taken for granted for most of our lives. Wearing masks will become part of our lives, using disinfectant on our hands likewise. We will think twice before we go to events where a lot of people will be attending. We will think twice about going to concerts, to sporting events, even to church. We will perhaps be more reserved about hugging and touching others. I don’t know how I feel about it all; I alternate between feeling numb and feeling a bit melancholy. And when I don’t feel numb or melancholy, I am actually content. Because there is nothing we can do with the situation that has come upon us except to adjust to it as best we can. I’d love to travel to NY in August, but that won’t happen. Even if I wanted to, SAS cancelled the flight I had booked. And anyway, it’s not safe to travel to the USA right now. The EU has decided against letting Americans travel to Europe at present due to the high number of Covid19 cases in the USA. Regardless of whose fault it is or isn’t, the fact remains that the virus has hit the USA very hard. Questionable leadership has not made the situation any better.

I needed the reset. I needed the abruptness of the sudden stop to make me take a good long look around me, to see what is important and what isn’t. Much of my poetry during the past five years has hinted at the changes to come in my life, but I never considered that an outside player—a virus-- would be calling the shots. I no longer need the work world the way I did before, neither for intellectual stimulation nor for social interaction. There is very little of either nowadays, and it took being at home full-time to realize that. The ever-replenishing fountain of motivation that work used to be for me is gone—dried-up. I still have ideas for projects, but funding and personnel to realize them are non-existent. I have become a paper pusher, and even though much of what I do for my department is actually useful and I’m glad to be of service, I’m a paper pusher nonetheless and it’s not what I signed up for. In the long run it won’t be enough for me. If I had wanted to become an administrator, I would have pursued a business degree and not a doctorate in science. But it’s ok, because I’ve made specific decisions about how to deal with all of it. The pandemic gave me the time to figure it out and to make the decision. There are silver linings to every cloud; there is always something positive to take away from a negative situation. And as long as we have our health, we will continue to cope and to eventually get past this. Being at home is a good time to learn more about ourselves and the people with whom we share our lives. It is possible to be content in the midst of the chaos and unrest, sickness and death that exist around us and globally. It is possible to be realistically optimistic that life will be good again. Global society has had its reset button pushed, and hopefully most people are retuning their lives in order to meet the new world order.

Cries of despair

Yesterday as I was walking to the garden down the road I usually take, I became aware of two seagulls flying overhead, quite agitated, swooping down and circling and then rising again. Their calls were piercing and intense, and I began to wonder what was going on. As I continued to walk, I noticed something that looked like a small fur ball a short distance in front of me, on the sidewalk. As I got closer, I saw that it was a baby seagull, folded into a ball, dead on the pavement. My heart sank when I saw him; I knew there was nothing I could do for him. I am not sure how he died, but his parents were panicked and in despair over the death of their baby. It did not appear to have been hit by a car or bitten to death by a dog (which I have seen several times in the past few months). The mother especially kept swooping down and ‘talking’ to the baby gull, perhaps in the hope that he would respond. I think she was also letting the world know that she had lost her baby, and she wanted us to pay attention, to give her the attention she so desperately wanted. The incident brought tears to my eyes. I spoke to the mother and told her that I could feel and hear her despair, because it was despair she was feeling. I acknowledged her despair. It occurred to me that we don’t always understand the animal and bird world; they are sentient beings and they understand death, especially the deaths of their young. It’s not often we are witness to such death, but it made me cry to see it.

Since the pandemic lockdown started, there are more birds that have found their way into the city and into the garden, seagulls especially. Perhaps this is due to the fact that there is very little ship and cruise traffic, such that there is not much food for them at sea. Seagulls are scavengers and eat a lot of the refuse and leftovers that ships leave in their wake. The reason for the increase in bird numbers remains unclear, but I know that I am sharing my daily life with more birds, which makes me happy. But I also know that they are at risk of being injured or killed in their interactions with humans, dogs, cats, and cars, and that there will probably be more deaths.

I thought about how I have been unable to really cry since my brother died five years ago. I cried a lot when I first got the news of his untimely and unexpected death. But in the months and years afterward, it’s been hard for me to cry. It’s not that I am not touched by what goes on around me, it’s just that I have not really been able to cry. It as though something in me wants to, but a numbing lid gets put on those feelings. I guess some of it is a protective reaction to being deeply hurt. But this past week, there was a news story about a five year old boy in England named Tony Hudgell, a double amputee (he has prosthetic legs) who was inspired by Captain Tom Moore, the 100-year-old veteran who raised thousands for the NHS by walking around his garden. Tony decided to challenge himself to walk a little each day to raise money for the NHS, and as of yesterday he had raised over £700,000 target. I watched the video of this brave little boy, and my heart went out to him. His pluckiness and persistence in the face of his odds made me cry. It took a little boy who has suffered incredibly, already at his young age, to make me cry. He lost his legs due to abuse suffered at the hands of his birth parents; he has since been adopted by good people. I despair at times at the injustice of life, that allows parents to do this to a child. I wanted to scoop him up into my arms and hug him, he is so cheerful and sweet. You can read more about him here:   https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-53066749

A young woman who used to work for me was diagnosed with lung cancer about five years ago. In the space of those five years, she has undergone surgery to remove the lung tumor, chemotherapy that weakened her permanently, radiotherapy, brain surgery to remove the few metastases that found their way to her brain, immunotherapy, and now radiotherapy again because the brain metastases have returned in large numbers. Following her initial brain surgery, she had to undergo physical therapy to help her learn to walk again. The immunotherapy has made her very sensitive to sound and to light. She does not have many months left on this earth, and this too makes me want to cry out in despair. She has been so brave through everything she has experienced; she has suffered quietly and has always had a positive and encouraging word for others when we have visited her. She and others I know who have terminal cancer, have shown me that it is possible to co-exist with the unfairness of their illnesses, but I still feel like screaming when I think of all that they go through and have gone through. I know there is little I can do for them, and that is perhaps also what bothers me. There has been and will continue to be, loss of loved ones due to illness or old age. I know this, and that is perhaps one of the reasons I have not been able to cry. I am steeling myself for these eventualities. But it is impossible to really do that. There is no way to shut out the feelings. I think I have been afraid of drowning in those feelings if I let them get the upper hand. So I have kept them under lock and key until this past week. They are no longer under lock and key.

Mid-June garden update

We've had wonderfully warm and sunny weather for the past week, which the garden just loves. The daily growth spurts are amazing. From one day to the next, I come to the garden to find that the flower buds on my physocarpus (ninebark) plant have bloomed; the leaves of the plant are a deep red color, whereas the flowers are white and fuzzy--quite pretty. The kaprifol (honeysuckle) plant right next to it is blooming and happy. The zucchini plants have also grown larger in the space of a couple of days, and yesterday they had begun to flower. The pumpkin plants have also begun to spread out. My mini-cucumber plants are producing some really good-tasting cucumbers, ditto for my radish plants. This year will be a banner year for strawberries, raspberries, and black currants, also gooseberries. The red currant bush produced thousands of berries last year, so this year it's taking a well-deserved rest. One of the two blackberry bushes developed cane rot, so I had to cut it down, but it's already coming back and seems to be in good shape. My perennial garden is blooming--oxeye daisies, carnations, and cranesbill (a hardy geranium) so far. My coral bell (Heuchera) plants have spread out and are quite healthy, and my irises this year are just beautiful. The pachysandra plants that I planted under one of the larger trees at the entrance to the garden have grown taller and are beginning to spread out. So things are moving along as they naturally do in the garden. Here are some photos of the garden from this past Saturday--you can see for yourself!

oxeye daisies

ninebark flowers

zucchini plant starting to flower

left side of the flower garden (mostly perennials)

right side of the flower garden--check out the crane's bill plant with blue flowers

the coral bells perennial garden--they are just gorgeous plants 

my rose bushes that cover the arch entrance to the garden have started to bloom 

my irises are blooming this year--so many of them 

Fake news, moral relativity, false people

I decided this past week to cancel my digital subscription to a major US newspaper. It doesn’t matter which newspaper for the sake of this post. I cancelled it because I disagreed with their editorial decision on a particular issue. It bothered me that the newspaper caved to public pressure on that issue. And their expectations were that their readers should understand that, but my opinion is that the editorial page should be able to present multiple sides of any issue. However, in 2020 that doesn’t seem to be possible. You have to take one or the other side whether you want to or not or are ready to do so or not. I can’t do it just because someone tells me I have to. I was raised bipartisan and will remain bipartisan. I need to be able to look at all sides of an issue. And frankly, there are often multiple sides to an issue. So being multi-partisan might be the way to go. This doesn’t mean that I don’t take a stand; often I do, but only after reflection and self-questioning (what do I believe or feel or think about this or that issue). I don’t want to be ‘told’ what stand to take, I want to figure things out for myself. That is the result of my parents and my Catholic upbringing. Unfortunately, the current president has done nothing to encourage reflection and bipartisanship.

My point is that it was nearly impossible to cancel my subscription. I got an email from customer service asking me to reconsider, and telling me that they would reduce my subscription cost by 75%. It’s interesting by itself that they automatically assumed that I cancelled because the subscription was too expensive. They also thanked me for being a subscriber and stated that it was due to the support of subscribers like me that allowed them to continue to pursue the truth. They added that the truth was more important now than ever. I agree with the last sentence, and hope that the newspaper really is interested in pursuing the truth. We’re constantly being told that there is a lot of fake news out there. I’m sure that’s the case. None of the media (newspapers, television, or social media) can claim to be the only ones who pursue or know the truth. None of them can claim to ‘own’ the truth. Those who say things like that are those I write off immediately—I’m simply not interested. Up to this point, I thought certain newspapers stood head and shoulders above the rest. Now, I’m not so sure.

The older I get, the more sensitive my bullshit detector gets. My advice to most people—don’t try to put one over on me, pull the wool over my eyes, or coax me over to your side (which is of course ‘the right side’). You’ll regret it. I’ll write you off faster than you can say ‘morally relative’. I have zero patience left for partisan political agendas, fifteen-minute-of-fame agendas, or people who want me to support agendas I don’t believe in—the list is long. I’m not hopping on your bandwagon to promote the newest management philosophy in the workplace, I’m not interested in listening to the same psychobabble week after week, month after month, about this new vision or that new innovation. I don’t care. The old expression ‘put your money where your mouth is’, is the only thing I’m interested in. When management has been told time and again that more employees are needed to solve a particular problem, and management continues to push the ‘relevant’ flavour of the month management philosophy (New Public Management, LEAN, etc.) that we all need to work more effectively with less resources and less people, then management has a big problem. Most of these philosophies are ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ (the emperor is naked, but we’re told to praise his clothes) philosophies. I won’t cede to them. I won’t think positive when the situation in front of me is clearly negative and needs to be acknowledged as such in order for it to be solved. I won’t pretend everything is ok when it’s not. But we’re asked to pretend every day, and it makes me weary. Most of it is fake, and most of it is pure bullshit. But we’re told that it’s not and we’re told to believe that it’s not. We’re told that it’s ok to be direct and honest in the workplace; but it’s not. We’re told to think big and to be innovative; but when we do that, it’s wrong. We’re told to communicate effectively, but when we try to, we find that we cannot write the whole truth; it takes hours to formulate a politically-correct email that won’t offend anyone or step on anyone’s toes (status, position, or territory). My God, it’s boring. Effective communication? No.

This is not life the way I want to live it. I want to live honestly and to not pretend. I want to live according to my ethical and moral principles, not according to someone else’s political agenda at work or in society at large. I don’t want to give up my principles in order to align myself with someone else’s ‘side’. I don’t want to be loyal to people who I know are false. There are many false people who want to drag you into their sphere, those who tempt you with status, money, power, or prestige. Those people who shift their beliefs and thoughts according to the popular flavour of the month philosophy (moral relativity). Those people who lie to your face. Those people whose sole interests in life are fame and fortune, whose greed dominates (and dooms) most relationships.

Perhaps the corona virus pandemic has given me the time to see how society and the workplace really are. I’ve had a chance to do a reality check. What I know is that society needs a re-haul, bigtime. Press the restart button. I’m not sure what we should move toward, but perhaps moving away from fame and fortune, from greed, and more toward a spiritually-oriented life, would be a start and a welcome change.  

Civility and respect for others

I cancelled yet another newspaper subscription this morning. My husband and I have discussed cancelling our different newspaper subscriptions for the past two years, mostly because we find that they have gone from being newspapers that used to try to present the news in a neutral fashion, to being purveyors of whatever agenda they wish to push at present. To some of you, this might seem rather short-sighted; after all, you can argue that we need to get our news from someplace. We need to follow what is happening in the world. And to a certain extent, you're right. But also wrong. Because what I didn't see happening was this--we're happier without them. We no longer start the day with misery; we no longer have to discuss all that's wrong with the world at the breakfast table. I no longer ruin the start of my day by letting all the world's ills overwhelm me the minute I get up. They seep in anyway during the day, and if we watch the tv news as we do sporadically, we certainly get our dose of misery. So we don't escape it, we just control how it happens and how much we let in.

Newspapers in all countries need to be careful about over-pushing their agendas, be they conservative or liberal. Most of us grew up in a bipartisan atmosphere (at least the families I grew up with in our neck of the woods), able to see both sides, even if we leaned toward one or the other a bit more. I know there was political unrest, hatred, bitterness and spite back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s when we were growing up; you just need to google Vietnam, racial unrest, Watergate and Nixon. But it is so totally extreme and out of control now. Nowadays, judging by what I see happening in the USA, we are so bitterly divided, with the gap widening a bit more each day, such that I fear for the future of our country. We are still a young country compared to most European countries that have centuries of wars and unrest behind them. It feels like a civil war is already taking place in America, fought in the media trenches and in social media and online generally. If you have the 'wrong' opinion and express it, you can expect to be hung out, brutally criticized, suppressed, fired from your job, or other such outcomes depending on the audience that gets a hold of what you said. You will get your fifteen minutes of fame and then some, but not in the manner you would have chosen for yourself. Good people who might want to say something become afraid to do so, whereas the people who don't care at all what other people think of them, have free reign.

I don't want a civil war, nor do I want a world where we are not able to express our opinions. But there is a way of expressing opinions that needs to change. We need to relearn civility. Civility is defined as 'formal politeness and courtesy in behaviour or speech'. We need to relearn how to respect others. It is possible to have a different opinion from others without expressing hatred for those who do not share your views. It is possible to discuss both sides of a situation without being labelled a pariah for doing so. Isn't this approach what judges and lawyers engage in everyday? They work on court cases that need examination of both sides of the issue. Imagine a world where judges ruled a person guilty before the trial. That would not be a democracy, and would not be a country I'd want to live in. And yet, we are behaving in this way on social media and in the media generally, judging and sentencing people before they and we have had a chance to discuss the issues.

Some younger people I know have now limited or cancelled their social media accounts because of the hatred they see online. It's tempting to follow them. I haven't up to now because social media remains an important connection to my family and friends in the USA. But I have reduced my interaction with social media in order to stay peaceful. You might ask why peace is so important to me; after all, the world has many problems that need to be tackled. That's true. But I know from experience that anger and volatility don't solve problems. They fuel the fire of hatred and revenge. Assertiveness, peaceful protests, standing up for yourself, being able to reach out to the other side in order to discuss the issues--these are what solve problems. Diplomacy, compromise, an empathetic approach--these solve problems. Anger gets spent, and after it burns out, the real work begins. The question at present is who will be willing to work for real change in politics at home and globally. The type of change needed must be fronted by civil and respectful leaders.

An excellent article by George Will: if you read one article today, read this one

I am posting the link to a recent article in The Washington Post written by George Will, that I think is excellent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-one-should-want-four-more-years-of-this-taste-of-ashes/2020/06/01/1a80ecf4-a425-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html .

The strange thing is that the George Will I remember from many years ago was politically conservative, a Reagan supporter, and not given to suffering fools in either political party. I haven't followed his doings much since the 1980s, but apparently he's become a bit less conservative as he's gotten older. Or perhaps it took a Trump to shake him up. In any case, this is a man who has previously had Republican leanings, and who recently wrote this article that I am posting today. It is an anti-Trump article, but also an anti-Republican Congress article. It skewers Trump and his Republican Congressional supporters. I would never have thought this type of article would come from Will, but it has, and I applaud it. The title of the article is 'Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers'.

Here is the article in its entirety:

Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers. 

June 1, 2020 at 9:18 p.m. GMT+2 by George Will

This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.

Presidents, exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted today by journalists preening as the “resistance” — like members of the French Resistance 1940-1944, minus the bravery — can set the tone of American society, which is regrettably soft wax on which presidents leave their marks. The president’s provocations — his coarsening of public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by people as mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be punished. He must be removed.

Social causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one person’s words and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters hired in 2016 to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them “please don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was fulfilled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Minneapolis pavement.

What Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviancy down” now defines American politics. In 2016, voters were presented an unprecedentedly unpalatable choice: Never had both major parties offered nominees with higher disapproval than approval numbers. Voters chose what they wagered would be the lesser blight. Now, however, they have watched him govern for 40 months and more than 40 percent — slightly less than the percentage that voted for him — approve of his sordid conduct.

Presidents seeking re-election bask in chants of “Four more years!” This year, however, most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the president predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four more years of this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal, dampens enthusiasm.

The nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had many causes much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator of them. Most of the causes predate his presidency, and most will survive its January terminus. The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.

In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.

A political party’s primary function is to bestow its imprimatur on candidates, thereby proclaiming: This is who we are. In 2016, the Republican Party gave its principal nomination to a vulgarian and then toiled to elect him. And to stock Congress with invertebrates whose unswerving abjectness has enabled his institutional vandalism, who have voiced no serious objections to his Niagara of lies, and whom T.S. Eliot anticipated:

We are the hollow men . . .

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

or rats’ feet over broken glass . . .

Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.