Author: Bev

I feel like I’ve been oozing stuff for years.  I’ve given stuff away, sold stuff, thrown stuff out but stuff seems to leech out of the walls of our home.

I’ve done this whole purging of extra stuff, since I read “Living Simply,” back in the 70s.  I have to conclude there are fairies bringing stuff into this house while we sleep.  But the stuff looks vaguely familiar when I pull another hoard of it from the crannies of this structure, we call home.

I promise I’m not a hoarder.  In fact, I’ve believed that I haven’t kept a lot of stuff over the years.  I’m not a collector.  Uhm, however a certain someone I’ve lived with for forty years, is.  But I’m telling you I’ve purged one closet after another and we still have boatloads of stuff to get rid of.

I’ve been in our basement for what feels like months, peeling away layer after layer of stuff: broken stuff, waiting to be fixed; obsolete stuff threatening to tell on me and reveal how old I really am; and my husband’s stuff that requires just the right turn of the moon to obtain a consultation about whether he needs to keep this and that for another three decades or can I throw it out.

The collection in our basement includes: my white roller skates complete with black and white furry pom-poms with bells on them;

our first computer, a Mac Plus;

my first big girl paintings, as opposed to posters – two from a market in San Francisco and one big one from a furniture store in Woodbury, PA – it was a start toward art. 

There is box after box of software for this computer or that; and my “round chair” and brass lamp that I bought at Pier One for my first apartment without rented furniture.

Yesterday I instituted a household policy about stuff.  It goes something like this: if we haven’t unearthed this stuff in twenty or thirty years, it’s time to either fix it, bring it to the surface and appreciate it, or throw it away.  Nobody else wants it and apparently, we don’t need it either, thus the long past use-by date.

Our house is relatively compact.  And, anyone whose been in our home would say it is usually tidy and uncluttered.  So where is this stuff coming from? 

Our closets are small.  Like most houses of our vintage, there is an attic, a basement, and an attached garage.  These are invitingly dangerous, potential “storage” places for stuff.  Have you heard the Scripture about building barns for more stuff?

I cleaned out the garage a week or so ago and made massive progress in relieving my life of unused stuff.  It’s much improved and growing in efficiency and order.  But I’m sadly aware that there remains more to be gone through and too many things semi-hidden, jammed into corners, recesses, over, under, beside or on some such prepositional place (as in all “the things the bunny does”), in that garage.

The attic contains the things of our grown daughter’s early childhood.  These are things I will never throw away and she wants, “someday.” The baby Dior onesie, toddler huarache’s, “real” diapers and adorable diaper covers, stuffed-lion rattle, a million stuffed animals, blue sky & cloud crib linens, the Barbie doll house her dad built for her (complete with the dozens of Barbie’s and their necessary accoutrements), and books and more books, etc.  My heart melts when I go up there.

The basement stuff is mostly that of my husband’s and my past professional lives, and our daughter’s home-school materials from nearly twenty years ago.  There are videos of every performance of my spouse’s jazz bands and percussion ensembles, spanning two or three university careers.  I just unearthed huge posters of music festivals we organized,

charts of the reproductive system

and stages of gestation from my human sexuality classes that would fit right into the décor of your and my gynecologist/obstetrician’s office;

posters from poison control used at a booth at a health fair my college committee on the environment sponsored

;and a board game I created for my American Subcultures class.

There are programs and posters from every recital, concert, and musical performance featuring my artistically prolific husband or one of his many ensembles.  And books.  Don’t get me going on books.  I’ve given away so many books.  But they grow like weeds in our house.  And, these books are from my pre-policy of using the library rather than buying books, for the most part.

Speaking of weeds.  I kid you not, I discovered a living, breathing ivy vine thriving through the garage wall.  I haven’t yet purged that little sucker because it would involve moving a metal filing cabinet, weighing a ton, full of my spouse’s sheet music collection from his early career as a performing jazz and classical musician.  That will have to wait for another more manic clean out, maybe next year.

Speaking of from one year to the next, there are boxes and boxes of CDs from our percussionradio.net venture waiting to find a new home and we’ve got floppy disks, cassette recordings, and CDs from the first titles and every one to this day, in our catalog of hundreds of percussion performance pieces at HoneyRock Publishing.

“What to do, what to do,” chanted Jemima Puddle Duck from Beatrix Potter’s tales, and so said Bev Barton LeVan as she trots up and down the stairs to and from the basement a hundred times a day, some days wearing out my Fit-bit activity-tracker.  One thing I am determined to do yet, as this summer dwindles, is get through everything I’ve unearthed in that basement.

I’ve got my work cut out for me, but “stuff,” you listen up, I will conquer you!

Times tables.  It’s that time of year.  Back to school time.  “It’s time to get up” kiddos.  I get a smidgen of anxiety just thinking about it and I’m old, by comparison.

Time has a whole slew of meanings.  One of my favorites is from Esther 4:14, “for such a time as this.”  This saying speaks to destiny.  Esther came out of some sad circumstances into some favorable ones because time was fulfilled for her.  We all look forward to time-fulfilled.

Then there’s marking time, “a sign of the times.”  I remember marking time back in our high school’s military-type marching band.  Marking time was marching while standing still.

Not moving forward seems a bit scary to us go-getters.  But we all have to mark time from time to time.  We exclaim, “it’s about time,” when we finally get the signal to move.

It has been said that “time is the great equalizer.”  You and I have been given the same number of hours in a day as the greatest and the least among us.

The elite, the disadvantaged, the youngest and the oldest, the world over, have the same amount of time to spend, each day.  We are all equal in this one thing, time.

Race, ethnicity, success, failure, riches, poverty, intelligent or dumb-as-a-door-nail, are all irrelevant to how many hours are in our day.  We’re all on the same budget, as to the spending of time.  We all have the same parameters, the same rough outline.

“The times, they are a changing.”  Will these be “good times?”  Do you “have the time?”  How much control do we have over time?  We all know that “time flies.”

Of course, we can carpe diem, seize the day.  Or for you, is there “so much to do, so little time?”  Then again, we can “take no thought for tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34).

How much do you let others control your time?  What do you do if “time and again,” “they won’t give you the time of day?”

“What time is it,” for you?  Do you focus entirely on the future, which is subject to change?  Tomorrow is where anxiety lives?  What if?  I have a saying posted on my office telephone, to remind me to stay present, “next week has been exhausting.”

Or is it the past, where you spend most of your time?  From a television show, Imposters, I once heard something like this: “your past can’t hurt you now.  You already lived it.  Just go back for an occasional visit.” 

To mix Beatles song lyrics into one bit of contemporary psychobabble: “don’t let the shadow of yesterday prevent you from following the sun, today.”  Take some comfort in knowing, certain things are timeless, like beauty, art, music, kindness, exercise, words, faith, hope, charity….  Think on these things.

It’s roll-call time.  Raise your hand and say “present,” when your name is called.  Otherwise it will be assumed that you’re absent.  “Time and again” I have to remind myself to live in the present, another word for a gift.

No matter where you spend most of your time: in the past, the present or the future, spend it positively, wisely, generously, and with a thank you on your lips, because “time is money.”

Thank you for reading this edition of The Times and remember that life is not tied to a timeline, and it’s never ever too late.

I was reminded of something I heard years ago, “Everybody has three lives: a public one, a private one, and a secret one” (A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez), when I blurred the lines, walking to the mailbox in my slippers and sleep shorts.

Our mailbox is located along a well-traveled rural route, but I was hoping I could get away with it this once, but no.  Not one, but two vehicles passed while I deposited my mail, hoping to do so invisibly.

It was decades ago, when living in a downtown apartment across from a popular night-spot, my husband beckoned me to the sidewalk to see something, the sky perhaps.  I had just applied a facial mask, which was doing its thing to tenderize my skin.  He assured me that we would be seen by no one.

Not so much that time, either.  Some relatives of relatives were entering the bar and hollered a cheery greeting.  I was caught both times that I relaxed the rules on my public versus private self.

I’ve worn makeup to go out since I was a teenager.  Even though I work from home, I get up and dress every day, and when I go out to run errands, I dress in business casual attire.

I’m not sure of the motivations of other people, but mine, on that day, was not an “I don’t give a hoot what others think,” or “I’ll wear whatever I want to my own mailbox.”  It was a practical rather than a rebellious act.

It was such warm weather, it bordered on hot.  As an aside, back in the 70s, before the word was used to describe “sexy,” my friend’s boss once told her that the word “hot,” was crude and should never be used to describe extreme heat.  Instead, the more appropriate descriptor is “very warm.”  It seems a little Downton Abbey-ish to avoid a word for the sake of decorum, but I still halt for a moment before saying it’s hot outside.

At any rate, to excuse my wearing sleepwear to the mailbox, it was hot outside.  I don’t react well to heat and humidity, physically or cosmetically.  I was simply not ready yet to dress in my going-out clothes, and the mail needed mailing….

You and I have both seen many a male wear pajama bottoms, as day-wear.  “Lounge-pants,” some guys call them.  Don’t get me started on the regular trooping of pj’s at Walmart.  To each his/her own.  But, that’s not me.

I grew up even more rural than I live now, with no immediate neighbors.  So, I’m not sure where I learned the concept of the private back yard versus the public front yard.  But I know the concept in my bones.

In this unspoken protocol, family, friends, and neighbors come to the back door and strangers, service professionals, and acquaintances are welcomed at the front door.  It’s to distinguish between one’s public and private selves, I guess.

It’s similar with the back yard versus the front yard.  The front yard is usually formal and doesn’t disclose who you are.  The back yard is, in contrast, casual and separated for play, projects, and open to people who know you: family, friends, and neighbors talking over the, sometimes imaginary, fence or hedge.

Neither of these selves, the public nor private one, are secret.  In fact, I imagine the secret self is relegated mostly to the unconscious – secret even to the self.

We’ve been working feverishly on our yard throughout this pandemic quarantine period.  To say that we have a lot of trees, would be an understatement.  We’ve been the collection point for several teenagers of friends and acquaintances from the area, completing a science assignment to assemble leaves from a wide variety of local trees.

I’m not whining about yard-work being a lot of work, because we made our bed and are happily lying in it.  But it’s still a lot of work and not being native to 90-degree weather and oppressive humidity, it’s been work that is taxing on our growing-older bodies.

We pretty much have the front yard, including our side yard with a small apple orchard dominating it, under control. The side yard with seven new apple trees, trellised and espaliered, and the rotting grape arbor torn down and replaced by training poles to make grape-trees out of the plants, is also well on its way to the new norm.  That’s with the exception of the semi-annual shed clean-out.

We’ve made our way to the back yard, which requires a number of seemingly trivial projects, but again each one will be backbreaking but will massively clean up the casual space where we welcome friends, family and neighbors.

Speaking of neighbors, what is it they say about neighbors?  I know what the Scriptures say, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” But, it’s the other one that just slips my tongue, oh yes, “good fences make good neighbors,” from a Robert Frost poem, “Mending Wall.”

Our neighbors are welcomed to our back yard.  We’ve all shared tools and tips, advice and condolences, picked some folks up when they’ve fallen in the vicinity, literally, and retrieved one another’s wind-tossed belongings: “here’s your lamp globe;” “your cat’s collar was under my truck;” “we saved your grill cover in that wind storm.” …

And, we share stuff, or I guess it’s technically borrowing the proverbial cup of sugar: “do you need some green beans?”  “Here are some tomatoes.”  “May we borrow your extra-large wrench?”  “Do you have an egg I can borrow until I get to the store tomorrow?”  “We’re never going to eat those popsicles the delivery man gave to us; would your kids like them?”

Neighbors have come and gone over the nearly thirty years we’ve been in this spot.  Some have been here about as long as us.  And, we’ve had disagreements over the years – always involving boundaries, thus the fence/hedge cliché, but always mended our differences into a neighborly configuration of friendliness, if not agreeing to disagree.

I guess that’s where the “love they neighbor” thing comes from.  It’s a version of the Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  We’re all flawed.  We all make mistakes.  No one is perfect.  We’re only human.  These are the truths that live in the back yard as opposed to the “date face” that we present in the front yard.

I’ll leave you with this placard, which my neighbor mentioned when she recently dropped over to our work-in-progress back yard, “backdoor guests are best.”  This sentiment, along with its mentality, has been around since the olden days and we’re fortunate to live in a rural area where the idea of neighborliness and the Golden Rule, still rule.  Amen?

 

I’m not Native American and my husband is not African-American.  But 23 and Me has stated that hubby is 1% African and I am 1% Native American – both of us having respectively, a full-blooded African and Native American relative some generations back.  Move over Nelson Mandela and Elizabeth Warren, here we come.  Just kidding.

My husband taught Jazz at a traditional black, land grant university.  I taught a Sociology class called Contemporary Native Americans at a college steps away from the Navajo Reservation.

Were we illegitimate?  The schools that employed us certainly trusted that we had the expertise to carry out our jobs with professionalism.  My husband was well-respected for his development of the Jazz program, by students and teachers, administrators and the community.

As for me, the aforementioned Sociology course that I taught was already on the books when I was asked to teach it.  I considered the offer to teach the class, with trepidation.  But I really felt I could improve upon the extant lesson plans which focused on field trips to trading posts, pow-wows, fry bread festivals, and arts events – just a tad “fluff” as to the sociological nature of those plans, in my opinion.

Having taught quite a few Introduction to Sociology sections already and loving Sociological Theory, I restructured the course around such concepts as bias, racism, prejudice, and contemporary examples of these toward Native Americans, in our regional media (the Four Corners of NM, UT, CO, AZ).  The Hispanic Dean of Students sat in on one of my classes, apparently to check if the white girl teaching it was legitimate.  He shook my hand on the way out.

Like everything else I’ve ever taught, I learned more about the subject matter having organized the course material, than the students did hearing it.  But how does one teach something you haven’t experienced?  How I did it, was in a small way my educational preparation, but in large part, it was EMPATHY.

Sort of like walking in someone else’s shoes, and just short of psychic knowing, is an acute psychological and imaginative experiencing of a place or people, vicariously not literally.  It’s empathy.  By the way, have you ever tried to walk in someone else’s shoes?  This is especially evident with a worn pair of shoes and if your pattern of walking is opposed to theirs.  It is a striking experience if their weight is more on the outside of their foot (supination) and yours is pronation, which is when your weight is more on the inside of your foot.  It feels literally like you’re wearing the left shoe on the right foot and vice versa. Awkward, but you get a minuscule sense of how it is to be them.

I’ve been fascinated with Greece for years but I’ve not been there yet with my feet.  Acquaintances may think I’ve been there because I talk with such empathic familiarity about the culture.  I promise, it’s not a fake it ‘til you make it exercise.   It’s like faith, the conviction of things unseen and it’s as sure as what is observed with one’s eyes.  It’s empathy.  I intensely feel like I’ve been there, I know the place.

In fact, in my first demonstration speech in college, I explained how to make baklava.  It was student days and we were married students on a student budget so I cracked black walnuts from a tree on Uncle Vaughn’s property for my sample baklava for my teacher.

Have you ever cracked black walnuts?  Well first of all it was a miracle that we had any to crack since a whole team of squirrels confiscated nearly all that we gathered to dry on the driveway.

A hammer and a resistant surface are the tools I used to crack those hard-as-a-rock nuts.  I managed to retrieve enough nuts for the Greek nut and honey filled pastry.

The problem, I learned, with using those free black walnuts was, the nuts and the bits of shell look alike and my hammered nuts were the same size as the obliterated shells.  Uh-oh.  My teacher nearly had a dental emergency from my black walnut filled baklava.  But I got an A on the speech!

Before I’d been to England, I spoke with familiarity about the place having read so much English literature – empathy.  I loved Italy through the magic of television, primarily PBS travel shows – Rick Steves Italy, and food shows – The Frugal Gourmet, long before going there.  I read and loved A Room with a View, uniquely and wonderfully English and Italian, and Under the Tuscan Sun, until the books tattered.  I even managed the niceties of the language enough that the locals thought from our dialect that we were from Canada, at least it was the right continent – empathy.

I’ve traveled the world and in many an era, through books and films.  I feel like I’ve been there – empathy.  I’ve traveled so much more with my imagination than I have with my feet; but traveled, I have done nevertheless – empathy.

There is no excuse not to “feel” for another.  Everyone can “know” what it’s like to be in another person’s shoes, through empathy, if we only care to.  Take care, y’all.

Let’s get this straight, right off the bat.  My mountains can be your mole-hills and your mountains, my mole-hills.  But, both mountains and mole-hills pose some sort of obstacle, which we perceive as either something near-impossible to overcome, or something on which we stub our toe or trip over, causing temporary discomfort.

Either way, every obstacle is dealt with first, through perception.  My obstacle today was clearly a mole-hill, brought on by a frustration resulting in the statement, “I feel like I take one step forward and three steps back.”  My husband said, “that sounds like dance steps.  You’ll probably write a column about it.”

Then, as thoughts can tumble, I thought about a local young man’s mountainous fight with lymphoma, whose family relies on a different dance, a Chinese proverb, “fall down 7 times, stand up 8.” 

This column could be subtitled – How to See a Mountain, but I avoid the phrase, “how to.”   Like a plague, I avoid it.  I’ve grown over the years to detest “how to – in 10 steps ….”

The “Mountain-dance,” is about perspective.  It’s about how one can see mountains, metaphorical ones, from different perspectives. Seeing from another perspective is perhaps a greater feat than climbing the most challenging mountain.

Mountains, from my long-held point-of-view were to be climbed.  How far up we are, marks our progress.  The mountaintop is the goal.  Having reached the top denotes success.  The pinnacle is the culmination of our journey and the view is the reward for our effort.

Mountaintop vistas are coveted the world over.  From the top, there are no more obstacles to obstruct one’s view.  You’ve made it when you’re at the top of the mountain.

We climb the ladder in our careers, for what?  To reach the highest point possible, where the view from the office with many windows is unimpeded.

For years I thought I wanted a chance to live uphill or on a mountaintop, having lived for years at the bottom of the hill where all the debris blows, the water drains, and the dirt settles.  I’ve thought it might be nice to dwell atop the mountain instead of just taking walks there to get a taste of its freshness, wildness, and peaceful views.

But then I had a dream.  It was one of those dreams where instead of a scenario with setting and action and such, it was a matter-of-fact statement:

Downhill skiing – grateful for the law of gravity –

                            We will always make it to the bottom of the mountain.

I have a documented fear of downhill skiing.  Part and parcel of that fear was that I would be unable to get back to the top of the mountain, having fallen somewhere mid-mountain.  “I’ve fallen, and can’t get up.”      

This dream suggests a different, even paradoxical perspective of mountains; namely, the bottom of them.  I’ve lived down here forever, adapted to the conditions and become acculturated to its challenges so much so, that I hadn’t considered, prior to the dream, that there’s another way to see living at the bottom of the hill.

It’s like getting driving directions from a local.  They don’t see distances accurately because they’re so accustomed to traveling those highways, that their perception is skewed by familiarity – “It’s a mile or two; turn right at the big oak tree.”  It turns out your destination is five miles and the oak tree no longer marks the spot where you should have turned.

When we were driving through the English countryside in 2008, we asked for directions and were told to turn on to “Bah-ole” road, which we first interpreted in American English, as “Battle” road.  Having found no such road on the map or otherwise, we found another road starting with B and ending with an L – “Bauxhall” road.  I don’t think it got us where we wanted to go, but we muddled our way.

That travel experience illustrated quite clearly that we don’t all share perceptions of direction.  We also probably should count it all joy when we share any perception with somebody because that might just be kind of rare.

Always having been preoccupied, and with my sight firmly focused on the long, hard climb uphill to reach my goals – I couldn’t see that perhaps my reward is located at the bottom of the hill.  The lovely law of gravity demands I make it to the bottom of every hill I descend, even if I get there sliding on my backside the whole journey.

This perspective is reminiscent of Jesus’ many paradoxical teachings like, the first will be last, etc.  I will have triumphed when I make it to the bottom of the mountain.  In another dream focusing on descending the mountain, we were triumphant in reaching the bottom of the mountain trail and sort-of pitied the people we shimmied past who were just starting the climb.

Might the conquest of some mountains be to raze them rather than to climb them?  One could see the bottom of the mountain not so much as a valley, but as the bottom of a shoe – overcome, conquered.

Life could be seen as razing said mountains rather than climbing them, about breaking down obstacles rather than overcoming them.  I can envision myself struggling for eons to climb up over big boulders on the mountain.  Then, I change my perception of the obstacle, dig a little trench around the boulder, put my weight against it, and presto, it rolls down the mountain.

A Scriptural piece of inspirational poetry, concerning the razing of mountain-obstacles is found in Zechariah 4:7, where an angel showed a ruler named Zerubbabel a new perspective of his obstacles.  “What are you, O great mountain [of human obstacles]?  You will become a plain, [a mere mole hill].”

My hope is that you will conquer your mountains and mole-hills.  Whether your dance is one step forward and three steps back, or seven steps forward, fall down, get up, and hit step eight, hard; it matters not whether you’re ascending or descending the mountain, start with step one, and let the dance begin.  This is how to see a mountain. 

A new chapter in life seems like it should be a subtle change; after all, it’s the same book.  However, “things are not always what they seem.”  For example, a change might not be a new chapter at all; it might be sort of like a new paragraph, but more than a paragraph.   Or, what you thought was change might really be the same thing, in disguise or with a twist.

I’ve come a long way baby (1968 Virginia Slims cigarette campaign) but am keenly aware that I have miles to go before I sleep (Robert Frost poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening).  These contradictory quotes slightly explain the confusion many of us feel with the happenings of this Spring, 2020. It’s a surreal time with cultural and social change becoming the new normal (a twenty-first century adaptation to change).

Even subtle change can throw you off kilter a little bit.  When I think of off kilter, I see the image of a pin-ball machine and hear the ding-ding-ding of the little, metal ball going awry and throwing everything out of whack; off balance.  Or, when I’ve squeezed too many pairs of jeans into one load of laundry, and the machine takes on a life of its own, rocking the entire house – that’s off kilter and it applies to these “times they are a changing” (Bob Dylan).

It’s well known in social science that even good change, like marriage, birth of a child, a new job, or a positive move for a promotion or something similarly terrific, meets with a stress reaction in a person’s body and mind.  We have no control over this reaction; I guess you could say it’s autonomic – it just happens, like it or not.

It seems that sudden or long and dragged out; being prepared or unprepared, have little to do with the shocking emotional impact that change has on one’s life.  Change is jarring and inevitable.  We want to welcome it, receive it genially, but never really do.  I like to think I’m pulling off a Grace Kelly in changeable circumstances but what comes out of me is more like Lucille Ball.

A few years ago, our seventeen-year-old cat, Mikayla Jane (Mickey) passed.  I had been taking care of her 24/7 for several weeks, as she had slipped from dementia into deafness, blindness, and relative incontinence.  As every hospice or palliative caregiver knows, your life becomes fairly saturated with care.  You care for and you care about that one’s every need.  You’re alert to subtle signs and signals, and even to unexpressed, potential needs.  You’re there for them, all the time, hyper-vigilant.

When we lost Mickey, I grieved far deeper than I had expected to grieve.  Because we knew she was close to the end of her days, I expected to quietly mourn her loss, shed a few tears and move on in the peaceful knowledge that she would struggle no more.  I was surprised, however, at the emptiness I felt and the potent sense of loss I experienced in her absence.  In fact, I had a panic dream where I urgently had to get a blanket for her because she might be cold.

The change from presence to absence was palpable and disquieting.  Quietness, that I usually treasure, felt somehow alien.  Being by myself in the house, also a condition I generally cherish, felt lonely – a feeling I can say I’ve only rarely experienced.  I’m not sure one can ever be ready or prepared for the change associated with loss.

In the Gospel of Thomas, which is considered to be extra-biblical wisdom literature, I noticed a fascinating and critical expansion of Jesus’ familiar words from Matthew 7:7:

“Ask and it will be given to you,

Seek and you will find,

Knock and the door will be opened to you.”

The Gospel of Thomas version is:

“If you are searching,

You must not stop until you find.

When you find, however,

You will become troubled.

Your confusion will give way to wonder.

In wonder you will reign over all things.”

The surprise in Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Thomas, is that when we find what we’ve been searching for, it’s not instant joy and ecstasy.  Albeit temporary, it’s trouble and confusion.  That surprising outcome of seeking and finding is the thing that throws us off guard.

When we played hide-and-seek as children, finding was the end of the game.  So, as adults we feel disconcerted at the realization that when we find what we’ve been searching for, we’re not at our destination; we’re just at another intersection.  “Oh my,” said Dorothy at an intersection on the yellow brick road, or was it at the sight of lions, tigers, and bears, along the journey?

A conversation with my daughter reminded me that without discomfort we won’t change.  As long as we’re feeling good and nothing gets in the way of the status quo, we stay where we are, how we are.

Apparently, we need a prod to move us out of our comfort zone.  I think of the prod as a similar mechanism to the thorn in the Apostle Paul’s side (2 Cor 12:7).  His thorn was an ever-present reminder to him not to get too puffed-up at the abundance of revelations he received; to keep him balanced.  Paul’s thorn hurt, and, not a masochist, he asked God, three times, to remove it.  However, in that his thorn remained ensconced in his side, one can assume, Paul accepted it.  He effectively said, “it is what it is and I might as well let it serve its purpose.” 

Everything new is strange – change is strange.  The late David Bowie asked many years ago, (Changes 1971-2), are we ready to face the strange?  Shall we become chameleon’s, reinvent ourselves, and adapt to the rapid-fire changes confronting us as we circle this cultural carousel, jacked up on caffeine?  Or, shall we sit quietly and observe the merry-go-round and wait for what goes around to come back around?

In whatever style we choose to receive change, some of which may result from a national election, perceived racism, COVID19 ramifications, and general malaise or unrest, we can be certain “ch-ch-change,” and lots of it will come.  And, most assuredly there will be many births, maybe even baby-boom 2.0.  So, we can also look forward to burps, coos, giggles, and sleepless nights with a purpose as part of the changes that come before 2020 bids adieu.

 

Okay, I awoke to the dictionary.com word of the day, panivorous, subsisting on bread.  My mouth began instantly to water, triggered into imagining a crusty chunk of sourdough dripping with olive oil.  I again began to salivate at the hint of a French baguette, better yet with chocolate bits scattered throughout it.  Oh, and a buttery croissant needs nothing but a little heat to enhance its tear-apart, eat-it-plain texture….

Enough reverie.  One cannot forget the fragrance of home-baked bread.  Wait a minute, I’ve gone right back to bread reminiscing.

My daughter has been asking for my cardamom bread, since Christmas.  I really must dig my bread machine out of its semi-permanent ensconcement in the back of a bottom kitchen cupboard.

Those of us who struggle to maintain a healthy weight, and/or have a pesky genetic history of diabetes are warned away from the delectable enticements of bread.  Have you ever seen white bread turned to paste?  It’s my novel theory that bread turns not just to sugar throughout the process of digestion, but to heavy, thick, drywall-type plaster pasted to my interior walls, adding heft to what would surely otherwise be my featherweight visage.

We’re instructed by the Bible, not to live by bread alone (Matthew 4:4) even though it is also referred to as the “bread of life” (John 6).  So, bread of life represents spiritual food.  The counsel to not live by bread alone suggests we need more than the simple necessities to sustain life.  We need mental, spiritual, and aesthetic nourishment, to give life meaning.

“The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs.  One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.” – Victor Hugo

Back in the sixties, bread meant money.  “Do you have any bread, man?”  We all have to have it, to survive.

I came of age in the early 70s, listening to the inventors of soft rock, Bread, the band.  Amusingly, they named their band while stuck in traffic behind a Wonder bread truck.  Isn’t Wonder bread the epitome of white bread, the stuff that all the stores in rural Pennsylvania run out of when there’s a winter storm on the horizon?

The lyrics of Bread songs take me back quite literally to a time of teenage innocence when it was apropos to be in love with love.  It’s a scary feeling of vulnerability, though.  Even now, in the reverie of recollection, I’m on edge and jittery.

It seems like a growing segment of today’s young, up-and-coming women (Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comes to mind) seem to be fueled by a different kind of not so innocent love, but rather, a lust for power.  They’re achieving this power strangely through victim-hood, having been wronged, angered and hellbent on turning the tables for themselves via a kind of revenge-porn.

Could it be that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez represents not just her constituents in Bronx (and a bit of Queens), New York, but a body of the young who are bottom-line seeking love and appreciation, through power?  As Mother Teresa once said, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”

However, power is addictive, so I’m told.  Once this segment of society’s revenge antics has a smidgen of success, the power they feel, maybe for the first time, sets off an addictive chain of events that is self-fulfilling.  Now, in a position of power, they perpetuate a policy of victim-hood as the route to success.

Back to some reminiscing about past history, “I like bread and butter.  I like toast and jam…” – Jay Turnbow, Larry Parks, writers; The Newbeats 1964.  My husband and I met and befriended Jay Turnbow and his then, lovely wife, Linda, while working and living in New Mexico.  They took care of our yellow tabby-cat, Simba when we ventured back East to visit family.  Jay was a “bread and butter,” kind of guy, so his lyrics were simple and genuine.

In the mid-fifties when I was born, “bread-winning,” and “this job is our bread and butter,” were common sayings about work and sustenance, making money or “making a living.”  Those were “crust of the earth” times, simpler in many ways.

These monikers were coined with bread as the centerpiece because bread has been seen as a food staple, if not a general term for food, for many humans throughout history.  Bread and butter were the absolute basics, after which one could buy more and live above the level of sustenance.

I have to admit I am among the old, in 2020.  That’s difficult to say because I don’t feel old.  I think I’ve “kept up,” pretty well with the times.  But the fact is I’m not young nor “up and coming.”

I still like bread.  The basics, for me are enough.  The things I live and breathe are God as my foundation, my husband as my partner, my beloved family and friends, my work, my home, and travel.  These are the things that fuel my existence.

Many Americans in 2020 want more.  I worry that the fuel for not a few of today’s ambitious youngsters, is well beyond the basics of “time, love, and tenderness,” (Michael Bolton, writer Diane Warren 1991) but victimization, anger, and rebellion.  The cultural extremes to which we have turned seem to have been spawned by a generation with many a pissed-off victim, railing at the wind with one complaint after another.

I can’t help but think of Robert De Niro’s character in Ronan who, when asked if he had ever killed anyone, replied: “I hurt someone’s feelings once.”  It seems like the progress we’ve made from our olden days, to these days, is mostly the bread of strife, hurt feelings, and offense, which has tenuously been equated with murder.  If you offend someone through disagreement or misunderstanding, you’re accused of murdering a chunk of their identity.

Rather than murdering one of my fellow Americans, Id much prefer murdering a piece of crusty French baguette, Middle Eastern flat bread, Native American fry bread, Greek pita, an Italian loaf of garlic bread, Chapati East African bread, or a thick, chewy bagel from our Hebrew brethren.  I’m never discriminating as to my preference for bread.  Let’s say we break some bread together, America.