Turkey Feathers

Last year outside my office, we had Tom Turkey who fanned out his tail to impress the handful of ladies he'd brought with him.  Then we had turkey babies.  It was a summer of adventure just outside my office door.

This year - sigh, alas - it appears that we do not have the fanfare (so to speak) that we had last year.

There are a couple male turkeys around, but I think they are part of the brood from last year. My guess is that they are a lot of gobble and no action.  Already we are into June and I have seen no displays of grandeur by anyone looking to create a brood of babies this time around.

This does not mean there is lack of activity though.  I must avoid turkey poop when leaving the office.  That's something, I suppose.  A friend asked me to take video of whatever turkey action I saw, so it's his fault that I look like a stalker:



And then there are the turkey feathers.

On three separate occasions now, a turkey feather has been left on the grassy hill just up from my office, in just about the same spot each time.  On each occasion, I collected the feather:

I posted this on Facebook.  Someone said, "It's code for something."  I think she's right.

Revisiting Memory Lane

Here is a post I wrote a couple years ago, about visiting old stomping grounds...


When I was in San Diego a couple weeks ago, and was going to travel to see a relative for the day, the Mapquest program decided to take me through Poway, where I grew up. It probably wasn't the most efficient route from here to there, but I decided it was destiny that I re-visit old stomping grounds and so decided not to re-route the path.

As I drove into the town from the highway, nothing looked familiar. All had grown up too much for me to recognize anything. When I had lived here, this little town was unincorporated. But it's California and it's near San Diego, and so there was no option but growth, I guess. So I figured it was fine to drive through town, but not much of an event.

Then boom - it was like 40 years had melted away. Suddenly I was driving by the old school district buildings - and my old middle school - surrounded by growth, but with no doubt of where I was, where this road was taking me.... Then I drove up Espola Road (wow, just the same, just the same) and then, at Poway Road, I turned left rather than right (so I wouldn't end up driving by the old church after all...).

A few hours later, when I was driving back to my father's house, I couldn't resist. Rather than turn left on to Twin Peaks from Espola Road, I kept driving, headed for our old house. Suddenly all seemed so much the same from when I grew up. I remembered that there was a covenant in the area, where people had agreed not to break up their property into separate lots until at least the year 2000 (I think that was the agreement). That covenant had left the property established into single family homes with huge yards, all chaparral. (Remember chaparral from science class? A type of habitat? There's tundra, and forest, and desert, and chaparral....)

So then I got to our old house, where I lived from the ages of 6 to 12. It looked the same, except it was painted a different color. When I lived there, it was white. I called it the White House. I didn't know at the time that there was another White House 3,000 miles away. (When I found out I thought, oh, the president lives in a white house too?)

And as I peered into the house's back yard - not trespassing, mind you - I saw the rocks still on the hill in back, and thought of all the pretend games we played there - robbers, and Indians, and everything under the sun. Once we were playing a sort of capture-the-flag kind of game, and my sister was hiding out in one of the caves back there, and she said, um, I think I should get out of the cave, and her leader (or was it her captor?) said to stay put, and she said, well, I would, except for the snake in here... And as I remember it now, the snake cooperatively rattled its tail and everyone skedaddled to safety. Of course, that's how I remember it now. It could have been just a regular snake and not a rattler at all. But where is the story in that? Besides, we saw plenty of rattlers back then, in all that chapparal. And fires. Fires, too. Once on Halloween, the fire was coming so furiously that the orange in the sky almost matched the orange-paper pumpkins taped on the windows at school. We didn't always evacuate when there was a fire, but that time we did. You don't stick around when the sky is that orange.

So I saw the rocks and thought of those stories, and took a photo of the memory. Who knows if the rocks will still be there tomorrow, much less 40 years from now? Our old house (no longer white) is to the left, and the rocks are hardly visible - though there are some, right in the middle, and if you knew the site, you'd be able to picture the rest of the terrain. (If you click on the photo, you can see it better.)


And then I kept driving down the street, just looking at the old neighborhood, seeing that the covenant had done its job and people had kept their houses intact as I had known them (with changes, of course, but basically the same).

And then I came upon the corner that had been my old bus stop, for my bus for elementary school. There it was - exactly as it had looked 40 years ago. How is that possible? In California of all places, how is that even possible? But it is. Because there it was, with the rock and the tree and all of it, just as it had been back then.


So then I figured, what the hey, and I went by an old friend's house, and a young woman was in the driveway on a cell phone, and I asked if the family from before still lived there, and she paused long enough to shake her head and laugh and say no and then went back to her phone call, and I felt a little foolish but hey - it didn't hurt to ask. Just in case.

Three Haiku - No, Four!

Did you know that the plural for haiku is "haiku"?

I just did a dance with a spider that attempted to wriggle out of the paper towel I was using to get him from the inside to the outside of my house.  (Of course it was a him!)  My dance started to sound a little like a haiku - you know, three lines with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second, and 5 syllables in the third... So I wrote one.  Then that haiku felt lonely, so I wrote another one.  And a third.

Wait - is that a fourth?

A lonely haiku
Had me write another one
And then another.

Here are the first three:

spiders are scary!
when they try to escape from
a Bounty-full jail

buckets of rain pour
from sky to rusty buckets
so rainbows emerge

just as night begins
a star shimmers to the west
adventure awaits

Random Reactions

On Facebook, I am seeing friends and relatives post how they would have wanted a gun in their home had they lived in Boston this past week - or how people in Boston would have wanted that, I should say.  They must be watching Fox News.  I turned on Fox News for a minute - one minute - this past week, and that was what the announcer said.

I have hidden the Facebook posts.

It is one thing for Fox News to be opportunistic on behalf of the NRA in this time of crisis for our country.  It is another to watch friends and relatives buy into the story and assist in politicizing this moment via a nonsequitur cry to arms, for guns in the home (something that is not even in the pool of debate on Capitol Hill).

It was a week of tears for me - often tears of gratitude, that I am a citizen of this great country where the good hearts of people can overcome the attempt of terror by a few. I'm a little dehydrated, especially after watching some of the pre-game ceremonies for the home game of the Boston Red Sox yesterday.  Beautiful.  Am so glad the Sox won, 4-3.  I am so proud of our law enforcement, and of our Boston brethren, stepping up when needed.  Boston Strong.

I saw this article today, about how the NRA's successful lobbying against "taggants" in gunpowder likely slowed down law enforcement this week in Boston.  I post it here (not Facebook, since I try to keep my Facebook postings far away from politics):

http://www.nationalmemo.com/how-the-nra-impeded-the-boston-bomber-investigation/

Politics aside, it is a really interesting article.

Hearts Broken, Spirit Intact

With everything else that happened this week...

I was watching news so I happened to watch the entire press conference of President Obama expressing disappointment at the 54-46 "vote for" proceeding on a new background checks law that lost because of Senate filibuster rules.  I am dejected, that our country has come to this.

Expansion of our background check law - to include those background checks at gun sale shows and for Internet sales - this is too controversial?  Really?

Starting the press conference, and introducing the president, was Mark Barden.  He is the father of one of the children killed in Newtown.  He had worked to help get this law passed.

When he talked, my heart broke.  I felt so bad that our Senate had let him down.  Perhaps this is why one sentence he said stood out for me more than any other.  He said, "Our hearts are broken.  Our spirit is not."

Powerful to me in those sentences is that he switched from the plural ("hearts are...") to the singular ("spirit is...") and yet, in both, used "our."  I don't know if he misspoke, or he intended it.  But these two sentences, structured this way, switch so that individuals feeling the same thing transform into individuals uniting as one voice.  I believed him, when he spoke.  Some day - this too shall pass - and I mean that in every sense of the expression.

Here is an article on what he said:  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/father-newtown-victim-introduces-obama-senate-vote-defeat-background-check-deal-article-1.1319708

Also powerful to me was the president's sigh as he took the podium.  People are saying the president spoke more forcefully yesterday than they have ever seen him.  When he took the podium, and gave that sigh, he expressed how I felt.  When he started speaking, he put into words the words I would have said, had I had the heart to say words.  In his demeanor, he spoke for all of us whose hearts were broken.  As he spoke, I realized that our spirit can remain intact, just as Mark Barden had said.

I thank them all for their hard work - especially the work of yesterday, of standing at a podium and speaking in the face of despair (as they faced the truth that, on this day, the simplest of amendments could not be passed). They spoke with a determination that salved, for a moment, my broken heart.

"Mary and Martha" and Malaria

This is something I did not know - that there are nearly a million children dying of the preventable and curable malaria every year in Kenya, and that it is inexpensive to take the steps to prevent it (a mosquito net costs about $7.50, the rapid testing kit costs about 60 cents, the emergency drugs cost under $2).

This article - by Richard Curtis, the screenwriter of the film "Mary and Martha," on HBO this week - is a short, compelling description of the problem he saw, the confusion he had that there was no media attention on the problem, and the journey he took to become part of the solution.

Compelling in the article is Mr. Curtis' description of a speech given at the end of the film by the character Mary's father:

Did you know that if you take every single person killed in a terrorist act around the world in the last 20 years -- and add to that every life that's been lost in the Middle East since the Six Day War in '67 -- and add to that every single American life we lost in Vietnam and Korea -- and every single other military conflict America's been involved in since then, Iraq, Afghanistan... If you take all those lives -- that we'd all have given so much to save -- you've still got to multiply them by two to get to the number of kids who die of malaria every single year.

A dear friend of mine who passed away in 1994 (torn from us too soon, only 36) was a champion of Kenya, loving the country and the people, inspiring others to help the country through annual donation drives of eye glasses and the like. So the headline of this story caught my attention. I could not be Claudia's friend and fail to read the article. Now it does appear that I will be watching the film. I hope you do so as well.

"Mary and Martha," written by Richard Curtis, is directed by Phillip Noyce ("Salt" and "Rabbit Proof Fence," among many others) and stars Hilary Swank and Brenda Blethyn.

Beethoven Outbreak

Just saw this clip from October of last year - have watched it twice - cried, both times - am unsure why - it is alchemy, by the way - Beethoven's Ninth?  It is alchemy.  Ask me sometime, what I mean by that.  But it is.

Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the Ninth.  As the story goes:

"Although he attended the premiere of his 9th Symphony - on May 7, 1824 - Beethoven heard not a note.  Sitting on a stage for the first time in twelve years - with his back to the audience - his gaze was on the orchestra, choir and soloists.

"History tells us that Beethoven, who was beating time to the conductor’s movements, did not know how the people responded to his Ninth Symphony.  Taking his arm, the alto soloist (Caroline Unger) turned him round to face the crowd.

"Although he could not hear their roaring approval, Beethoven saw their clapping hands and smiling faces.  Bowing deeply to the premiere's concert-goers, he began to cry."

A New Spring

Years ago, I found the story of the 1946 Spokane Indians - the team that died in a bus crash midway through that season.  It was the first season after World War II.  Eight of the nine who died had served in the War in some capacity.  I had learned of them in the summer of 2003 and done some research on them for another potential project that never manifested.  So there I was, knowing about this great group of men who had sought one destiny and ended up with another, with no place to share it.

So I decided I had to write about them.  I thought maybe I could write a short story.  A novel appeared instead - ultimately titled "Until the End of the Ninth." (Coming up with the title is another story altogether.)

But between the urge to write and a finished novel, there comes a first word.  For as much as I loved these men and wanted to tell something of their story, I sat without words, in frozen state, with the enormity of the thought of where to begin.

I had a table full of news articles, printed from the microfiche at the local library, all from the spring and summer of 1946.  I randomly pulled out an article.  I would start my writing from there.

It was not a particularly auspicious beginning, is what I thought when I saw the article's heading.  It was from midway through the season - sort of a muddy place.  It was nice that it was an article about a game the team had won - at least I would be writing about a win.  Its headline, from May 16, 1946: "INDIANS STOP NEAR SHUTOUT: Tia Victoria In Ninth; Win In Twelfth."  They did have a way of winning in the ninth (is what I thought when I saw the headline - this was something I already had learned).  So it was a good article to have randomly selected in that way too.

That headline begins Part 2 of the novel.  They were the first words I typed.  From there, I wrote what came to me:

To the Victor goes the Victoria.  Or so it seemed on May 15, 1946, the day the game was played.  Nine was the lucky number - "in the Ninth," the key phrase.  Winning was the ultimate result.  In extra innings, no less.  It was in the ninth that they tied Victoria.  It took more than nine to produce the win.  They needed three more innings that day to get the win. They needed 12 to win.

If they hadn't put it together in the ninth, they would have been shut out.  Silenced for the day.  All that effort, all that batting, all that work, all for naught.

The Indians were lucky to beat Victoria that night.  It took a lot, to beat Victoria like that.  More than perseverance, more than hope - faith too, and maybe a commitment to the mundane.  Always a commitment to the mundane.  Playing day in, day out, game after game, pitch after pitch - and then, in a moment's silence, when all seems statically standstill, someone does something to change the flow, or create it. ...

So what is the consequence when you tie victory in the ninth, and then have the audacity to surge on beyond it, going all the way to the twelfth to beat victory itself?  Is it transcendence?  Or is it a foolhardy version of Russian roulette? ...

It goes on from there, including how they got close quickly that year - perhaps because they were back from the War and were playing for the love of the game - appreciating life itself - "Maybe the war had taught them how to appreciate things like playing in the moment, breathing in the grass, standing in the sun..."

It's baseball season now - a new spring.  Here's to hoping that the people playing ball right now are loving the moments of the game - and are doing something (in a moment's silence, when all seems statically standstill) to change the flow, or create it.

Cycles - With Update

I'm worried about Annie.

Annie is my angel cat. Alex is the incorrigible one, but Annie is the one who has the light spirit of an angel.  She is the one who knows when something is wrong, knows when someone is in need of care.

And now she is the one in need of what she provides to others.

She's about 17 years old now.  I got her in August of 1998.  The vet estimated her age at 2 1/2 then.  So she is about 17 now.  Apparently that is about 85 years old in human years.

She's got arthritis now.  There's a cupboard of clothes where she likes to sleep but it is up high, so I have put a chair and phone books underneath the cupboard so she can step her way up and down from this favorite napping place.

She stays inside now.  She used to love to go outside and she does so every so often now, when the weather is warm.  But I don't think her eyesight is as good as it used to be, so I am content with keeping her inside where she won't get lost.

She's eating mostly wet food now.  I did find some kitten dry food on Saturday that she seems to like, but she is short on saliva these days so the wet food is just easier to eat, I think.

Her fur is not pristine clean anymore.  She was always such a fussbudget about that fur.  But it's hard for her to keep it clean these days.  I have given her baths which she tolerates, and then sort of preens around when she is dry again, as though she realizes she looks so pretty.  I've organized her first-ever professional bath for 1:30 today.

She's still alert, and active.  She still knows when I need her company.  She still is happy when I come home from a long day of work.  She still purrs.  She has the greatest purr. 

She played like a kitten just now - looking adorable, as always, when she plays like that, rolling a little on her side and looking at me to see if I'm noticing how cute she is being.

I've written at least four books (two published, two not) and several screenplays on my computer.  From the beginning, she has sat on the table where I worked, curled up next to the computer as I wrote, holding the space still so that I could focus.  When I have written on the couch instead (like I did for my most recent script), she has sat next to my head on the back of the couch while I typed.

I'm not sure how I will write when she is gone.  I'm not sure how to imagine any part of my world with her not in it.  But it's got to happen, right?  She's 17.  She can't live forever, can she. 

I'm  taking her to the vet this week.  Keep your fingers crossed for my good friend Annie.

UPDATE: Well, it is as I had feared. Annie has kidney disease.  Her numbers are not the worst in the world, but they are not the best either. She now has a whole new diet, new medications... I will get trained tomorrow on giving her injections of subcutaneous fluid, which I will give her two or three times a week.  She seems pretty healthy under the circumstances, and the vet hopes the treatments will stabilize her, but people keep expressing their condolences because I guess the outlook can be grim.   Actually, she seems in pretty good spirits. It is hard to believe she is sick.  And she looks so pretty!  Here she is, right after her bath:

I love this girl. We will see how things go. Condolences aside, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic.

Basketball Now

Okay, so I was disappointed about last week. All went very quiet around here last weekend when teams lost.

But basketball looks interesting today (now that I'm out of my black attire).

I may just watch it.

Anticipation

With all that is going on, and all I have to do.... I keep thinking about basketball instead.

Enough!  Egads.  Don't I have better things to do?

(basketball....)

It does not help that Gonzaga's women play on Saturday right here in Spokane.  I've been to some tournament games here, when the women play.  Very exciting!

But today is about Salt Lake City.... and 1 p.m.

Enough, I said!

And now back to my regularly scheduled program, entitled "Thursday's Workday."

Just A Note

Here I am, at the end of a visit to Chicago, for my mother's birthday celebration with family.  I saw siblings and extended family.  We like an excuse for a party.  I have been able to see my nephews, ages 5 and 2.  They're so great.  They're such good boys, with big smiles and hugs.  We continued the family tradition where one (or both) of them is sick when I arrive, and then I get sick as a result.  Ta da! (As the youngest would say, arms raised over his head in celebration of the milestone.)  Just like with my Dad's big birthday bash in San Diego a little over a year ago ... I was sick, courtesy of toddler germs. Ah, well.  The only option was to have no hugs.  And that was not an option.

My mom has reunited with cousins and so we had the chance to meet new people too, in the midst of it all.  It is amazing how connections do not cease even when time has passed.  The cousins laughed looking over old photos, and the "baby" cousin said to my mom, "No wonder I thought you were so tall" (as we looked at a photo of him as a kid, about waist high to my mother, in her teens).  I had a chance to see my uncle from North Carolina and his family as well, including a cousin of my own.  It has been since 2008 that I'd had a chance to see them all, so this was good to see them now.

As always, I take home with me such good stories of sweet nephews...

Each morning the older one would make his way to my room in the early a.m., to see if I was awake yet.  This woke me up.  He was a master at convincing me that I wanted to get up with him while the rest of the house slept.  This too is a family tradition of sorts over the last few years (once he had a big-boy bed and was able to get up on his own).  I love this ten-to-twenty-minute detour - just the two of us - before the day begins.  I asked him this morning if he had had any dreams in the night.  He said he didn't remember them.  Then he said something about science.  I asked him what he meant.  He said something about science, and kids dreaming - it was something he had read, or seen on TV.  I was still confused.  He couldn't remember the details.  I like talking to him about his dreams.  Sometimes the best information comes from dreams...

And the little one is just charming these days.  He has a grand smile and a big hand clap.  He gets more and more words as the days go by.  He loves to emphasize in the affirmative. "Yesh," he will say when he agrees with you about something, or when you've accurately guessed the word he is trying to say, or the thing he wants you to get for him.  And he holds no fear, that one.  The boys were having a balloon fight - he didn't flinch.  The cousins had just arrived, and he drove his new dinosaur toy across the lap of one of them (presumably so she would know that she was welcomed in his home). 

Last night, the boys played hide-and-seek with an uncle (technically a close friend of the family, but a diehard uncle all the same).  He raced and hid, and they did the same.  They squealed and laughed as he played the game with them.  The little one spent almost no time hiding - he prefers the hunt.  It was nice to see the uninhibited joy on their faces - especially now that I no longer have the flu.

Oh, and Gonzaga got a number one ranking for March Madness. Did you see?

Just A Thought

When people speak of the "liberal wing" of the Supreme Court, they have no idea how flipped over that sounds.  Breyer is a liberal? My, how the center has moved far right...

photo by elycefeliz found here 

As Seen On The Internet

I saw a comment at the end of a difficult news story (about a supposed do gooder in Spokane who is now charged with illegally bilking people out of money).  Emotions run high, I have no doubt.  This particular commenter was outraged at the behavior of the individual who was the subject of the story.  The commenter said a few things to ensure that his opinion was known.  He then concluded with the following advice:

"fine god, repent, and free your sole"

If only we all could do so well.

Cowboys

I saw a five-year-old cowboy the other day.  He had on a fringe vest, a holster, boots and all. He sauntered when he walked. It was in a parking lot - not out on the range - so there was no horse.  I smiled when I saw him. He started to smile back, but then got stoic instead. I nodded at him, in a "I see you are a cowboy" sort of way. I think he wanted to tip his hat.

A friend of mine is an actual cowboy - a rancher actually, on the Great Plains in southeast Wyoming. He is strong and good, does not approve of my politics and loves me anyway.  Once he let me ride the range with him. I helped round up a couple stray cattle who had broken through the barbed wire fence.  He had me chase after one of the strays by galloping my horse up a hill where the stray had gone. He told me to race by the stray and cut him off. It caused the steer to startle and head back down the hill, towards the other cattle, my friend and his horse. It would have been easier for my friend to have taken care of that task himself. He graciously stepped to the side instead, to give me a chance to have the experience.

I have achieved many different feats in life, but this moment stands out as one of the most exciting - when I headed off a steer at the pass.  It was the Cowboy in my friend that allowed me my memory.

There is something about the spirit of the Cowboy that causes me to have some faith that humanity can ultimately find its way. Cowboys are the mavericks, who live a zen kind of day, responding to the travails of the moment - its weather, its meals... The closest modern day equivalent for cowboys are Navy SEALs. But Navy SEALs are hand chosen based on quality of character and physique. Cowboys are self-selected - decide for themselves to join the forces that ride the range. And still they are more likely than not to help a stranger in need.  Perhaps there is something in the title that draws to it the kind of individual who will help out another if the need arises.  Perhaps it is the lack of humanity surrounding them on a day-to-day basis (out there on the range) that creates this tendency towards good deeds when they do happen upon another human being in need.  The Lone Ranger is their superhero...

I went to Montana this weekend, to the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. On my way, I crossed Lookout Pass - the mountain pass that must be crossed to go from Idaho to Montana on I-90.  As I crossed into Montana, I recalled crossing this pass years ago, coming the other way. I was coming home from a trip to Arizona that included spring training book signings for my baseball novel, as well as a book signing at the Phoenix Airport.  (Book signings at airports carry their own mysteries.)

As I got to Lookout Pass back then - crossing from Montana into Idaho that time, knowing I was just a couple hours' drive from home - a spring storm hit.  Truckers were pulling off the road to wait out the storm.  I'm sure they were radioing each other up and down I-90, warning each other not to risk the journey. I had no such wisdom. All I knew was that I wanted to get home. I kept driving.

I became the only vehicle on the road. The snow was blinding. I was terrified. I slowed to a crawl.

Suddenly a truck came up quickly behind me. The trucker pulled into the left lane and passed me at a dangerous speed. As soon as he had passed, he pulled back into the right lane, right in front of me, and put on his brakes - slowed to about the speed that I was going. He terrified me about as much as the weather did. I was pretty mad at him for what seemed to be his recklessness.

Then I realized - he was doing this for me. He was using his truck as a shield for me so that the snow wouldn't blind me, the wind wouldn't try to throw me from the road.  I stayed behind him, protected, as we made our way down the mountain. He was in a sturdy truck and didn't have to go so slow - but I did, and he was staying with me until we got out of the storm.  I realized the truckers must have radioed each other, saying there was a crazy lady in a little Subaru who was trying to make it through the Pass, through this storm - they must have worried I would die trying (a reasonable concern) - and this guy stepped up, radioed them all back, said he'd take care of it - he'd help me through the Pass.

As we got to the base of the mountain, and the storm had mostly cleared, he took off. I watched him disappear in the clearing fog and realized I would never be able to thank him, or tell him that I figured out what he had done.  He likely would have enjoyed knowing it, but it wasn't needed.  He had done what he had done because it was what he did.  There was no horse, and I presume he did not wear a fringed vest. But he was a cowboy all the same. I wonder if he tipped his hat in the rear view mirror at me as he disappeared from view.

Coal Mine Canaries

I think of all the people who tried to get the Church to stop - to own up to its failures, its protection of pedophiles over children, over the decades.... I think of all the damage done, to children and to faith...

The Los Angeles Archdiocese yesterday released about 12,000 pages of internal memoranda, psychological reports, Vatican correspondence etc related to pedophile priests (looks to be 124 priests).  (News reports state 30,000 pages but apparently it is 12,000 pages.)  At the same time, the current Cardinal removed from administrative or public duties the now-retired Cardinal Mahoney - head of the L.A. Archdiocese until 2011.  Mahoney will remain a priest in good standing. The current Cardinal - Jose Gomez - wrote in his statement regarding Mahoney and the files: "I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed. We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today." 

The quote can be found in this article, which also outlines the history of these files getting released: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/cardinal-mahony-stripped-of-public-church-duties-amid-priest-abuse-.html

The files can be found here: http://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/listing.html

I will try to update with articles that analyze the contents of these 12,000 pieces of paper. It's just paper, right?

The Effort

Out my window just now, I saw the neighbor from a block away, making her way up the block on the other side of my street. She is walking through all the snow and ice - treacherous right now, as it thaws in the day and freezes over at night. She does this walk every day, every day - even a day like today, where the walk way is icy.  I would not attempt it.  And certainly I would not try it if I had to use a walker.

I think she's had a stroke but it isn't my business, so I don't ask. I do wave to her whenever she goes by and  I am outside too. She waves back. Even though it takes her effort (as she must shift her weight to move her hand to take it from the walker to the air) - she waves back.

I had never seen her before a few months ago, when I started seeing her walk like this. I don't know if we've always been neighbors and she just never walked before (so I never saw her), or whether her stroke (or whatever it was) caused her to have to move from where she was living before. Maybe she lived somewhere with stairs, and she now needs a single level home. Maybe she had to move because she couldn't afford where she was anymore, due to her health. I don't know. I don't ask.

I told her once that she inspires me. She smiled, and said thanks, even as she was a bit out of breath. It is a slight incline to my house from hers. And she does live a whole block away. She didn't ask me what it was about her that was inspiring. It's pretty clear, after all. She has a walker and she's in the snow. And maybe she inspires herself. She should be proud, for all she's done - how she never gives up, no matter what.

Whatever it is that she has been through, there is one thing I've noticed: she seems to get stronger every day. Every day she walks and, as days go by, it seems as if she is moving just a little bit better - a little bit faster - a little bit more steadily.

There are times when I lament something in my life (this or that) that I stop myself and think: if she can make the effort, than certainly so can I. And so I do. She inspires.

A Gift

I awoke to the sound of a cat hacking something up. It was Alex, not Annie (as I knew where Annie was - next to me, blinking awake like me, awoken - like me - by the hacking noise).  It is usually Annie, not Alex, who leaves behind these kinds of - gifts. This time though, it was Alex.

At some point thereafter, I got up and wandered the house, peering into corners and crevices, looking for the what-came-out outcome of the hacking. I even turned on lights, looking for the leftovers, but to no avail. I sighed. I knew this meant that I would locate it later instead, via the "bare feet" method. It would happen at some point - maybe today, maybe tomorrow. All I knew for certain was that it would come as a surprise when I ultimately "found" it.

But then I noticed Alex crouched in the middle of the multi-colored rug in an oh-so-odd manner. It appeared that he was eating something. Why yes he was - yes, he was. He was eating the half-eaten cat food that he had hacked up earlier. I got a paper towel, shooed him away, and cleaned up what was left.

Lucky, lucky me.

Quiet White

It's Monday - a quiet day at any time, but especially today, the day before Christmas. It's been raining all weekend, melting what little snow there had been in the days preceding. How muddy was Christmas going to be?

Until now. A sweet cover of white snow came over night, to greet this quiet morning. Its presence adds to the quiet that is this day - mutes the edges of the dark (which it is, still, even at this time in the morning - during this time of year)

And now - just now, as I finish this acknowledgement of the snow that has arrived - I hear the sound of a neighbor's snow plow coming up the block. He'll clear a path for me, I'm sure. Yes, it was more than a sprinkling of snow last night.

Newtown

I saw the headline, briefly, Friday morning - but I had no time. I saw it, read it, left it for court. And more court. And unexpected court. All day long.

Then I came home at the end of the day and watched a news show. And just cried. Along with the interviewees. Along with (almost) the news reporters.

My nieces grew up in Connecticut. My nephews will start school soon. Taking the lives of the innocents - unfathomable.

I do not have children, though I work on their behalf - through my legal cases, through my writing. Still - to have children, and to watch the news these past three days ... what people must be feeling ...

My niece is in Paris on a scholarship this year. I noticed she posted something yesterday on her blog, only a day after an earlier posting. When I saw the title of the post - "Newtown" - I realized she had been compelled to write. It is her thoughts that I share here - bits and pieces of thoughts that she has had -

http://jacqueline-feldman.com/2012/12/15/newtown/