Daily Blues & Views

A good number of folks I know are having a horrible year, so far.  This is happening just when some of us thought that after last year, things were bound to improve.  Not so.  So far some of the things people are dealing with run the gamut from small, bothersome, irritations, to the biggest stressors of all.  In the space of a couple of weeks, I've heard stories about jobs suddenly ending, cars being hit while parked, and then fixed, and then hit again, to the big illnesses like inoperable tumors and recurring cancer diagnoses. All this and the planet is imploding.  Don't forget that.  As a friend of mine likes to say, "Is it a two or a ten?" A little of both, I'd say.  I think the thing to be careful of, is don't let a two become a ten.  Easier said, sometimes. We're having a week of uncharacteristically hot weather here in the Pacific Northwest and that seems to aggravate everything.  Decision-making comes slowly. Motivation even slower....

Seems like I've moved...again.  Not physically, but in my mind.  I now reside at the intersection of Today and Someday.  When those two streets intersect, it's a collision, of sorts.  It's the realization that most, if not all, your Somedays now reside under the heading of Today.  That is, you have to make them happen today because Someday just got smaller in a big way. I was always in my head a lot as a child.  Whether raking leaves, mowing a lawn or walking home from school, I thought mostly of things that might come to be, someday.  The wonderful meditation of expectation was usually what preoccupied me.  It's not a bad thing.  In fact, I recently read where people who have something to look forward to are usually more content than those who don't.  I find real wisdom in that. But there is another kind of expectation that isn't so useful.  As a child, my elementary school teachers often told my parents (it was usually my mother...

I've been spending some time with my 93-year-old mother-in-law.  As you might imagine, that, in itself, has its challenges.  But apart from the physical limitations of sight and hearing, the mental ones of technology and age, she does remarkably well at navigating the massive social change that surrounds us all. Betsy is a liberal.  A classic liberal.  She lives in Berkeley, California, and in many ways epitomizes the world-view of what that is supposed to mean.  She's lived through world war, and at least 15 Presidential terms, notwithstanding the fact that FDR was elected 4 times. This past weekend, as luck would have it,  most of the family went in different directions and the two of us remained to spend some time together. We watched some films, we took a hike around a local lake at one of the regional parks that dot the East Bay hills, and then settled in one evening to watch a political commentator on cable news.  Not surprising, the prog...