We planted these white pines over 18 years ago
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Saturday, December 17, 2016
A class discussed how we celebrate the winter holy days, and of course, there are many ways. Eat with your chosen family, stir the mind and feel festive with your libation of preference, dance, tell stories, give, share, enjoy the moment. Each way has its own mythic adornment to make it more fun. My favorite is the tree, but I also love St. Nicholas. I asked them if their parents had told them about Santa Claus, and when exactly it was that they had stopped believing. Usually it involved just going to school and hearing other kids talking about it. As with many magical things, I'd been a little behind my peers in giving up the belief.
I'd probably started having serious doubts when I was 8 or 9, especially after spending a summer in a hospital with sick and dying children, and watching a car accident where someone died. Maybe because of that my parents worked a little harder to make us believe that year. Ya see, we'd been playing with a boomerang that summer, and since we'd had no idea how to use it, we'd thrown it up above the house, and instead of coming back, it just landed on the roof, where it stayed for months.
Since I was already doubting Santa, I decided to perform a scientific test. When we wrote our letters to Santa with the requisite offering of milk and cookies, I put a post script on my note:
"Oh, and Santa, as long as you're up on the roof, can you bring my boomerang down?"
One can imagine our magical surprise when we saw the boomerang sitting in front of the tree among all the other presents the next morning. I really was blown away.
Of course, the next year, on the first day of school, the kids near my seat were proudly bragging about when they'd stopped believing in the lie. I think it was a kid name Jesus (pronounced "Hey Zeus") who first brought it up. So at the next Xmas, we demanded an explanation from our parents. My father admitted to reading our letter after a long night of stressful wrapping and packaging, smacking his forehead and saying, "Oh no...", going out to the shed to get a ladder, going up on the roof in the middle of the night, smiling weakly as the police car drove by without stopping, and then bringing the boomerang down. I don't think we ever really learned how to use it.
After sharing that story, I attended our office holiday party for the first time in three years of employment. I had a great time, for many reasons, but especially because they gave me the number 42 for the raffle. 42 is the meaning of life in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an amazing movie about Jackie Robinson, and, I just learned the day before, President Barack Obama's address five blocks up on 109th street when he'd been a student at Columbia. It was the last number they called, which won me an Amazon gift card. Maybe I'll use some of my new found winnings to get a present for Santa, by which I mean my father, who has truly grown into the part: a large white beard, a bowl full of jelly, bright red pajamas in the dining room after a morning of hunting, and even a workshop where he does wood working, carving birds, painting birds, and sometimes making toy ducks (well, actually duck decoys) for nephews and nieces and neighbors' children.
Of course, most people think of children at Xmas time, because they need gifts the most. Before the party I'd seen many posts about Alleppo, and during the conga line at the party I had to avert my eyes from the television displaying undernourished African children with tears in their eyes. Sometimes you just have to focus on the present conga line and take a small bit of solace in the fact that you, at the very least, gave some money to those causes. Come to think of it, I've already got plenty of money to spend on gifts for Santa. That Amazon gift brought by 42 is going to an aid organization, as it should
A much more unequivocally happy part of the party was when people locked arms and sang, "New York, New York" at New York Language Center, and I stood next to the tree and looked across the street where they were selling all those other trees, reminding me of my first job ever.
When I got home from the party I decided to get my act together and do some holiday season cleaning. After all, I'm a night owl, so after a night out there's still plenty of time to get things done.
Some time around 3 am I decided to go for a walk and brought my iPod with me. I waited to start the music until I got past the Xmas tree in the park across the street, when I approached the hill leading up to City College of New York (one of the "fathers of the internet" attended school there).
The first couple years I've lived up here there was scaffolding blocking most of an old mural on the side of the school that borders the hill. A few months ago it seemed that they'd completely redone it overnight. Now there is a beautiful new mural stretching a few dozen meters. It begins with someone holding a bird in their hand, which always makes me think of my father, the real life "bird man."
Around this time I turned on my iPod to listen to some songs from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, the best Xmas gift my father has ever given me, the winter before I graduated from college and moved to New York City for round 1, ten years ago.
This music will always have a special place in my heart and in my journey playlists because three years later, after "graduating" from my first experience in New York, I saw Springsteen play at the best music festival in America, Bonnaroo (translation "good street"), and at one point they played "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," prompting a guy in a Santa suit to come out and dance. After that the artist I recently learned had spent many years battling depression announced, "This next one is for the graduates!" He then launched into the first song on Born to Run, which is "Thunder Road." Naturally, I'd just listened to that in my room before going outside on a walk.
"Have a little faith, there's magic in the night...."
The part of the mural that always catches my attention is the dazzling array of butterflies. They're everywhere: bursting from cocoons, reading what we write on our phones, hovering over pencils. I love them. "A butterfly flapping its wings in Finland..." Also, this time I finally paid deep attention to the snow owl...
I looked at the butterfly and remembered that piece I'd written where I'd pondered, "What if God is the butterfly?" Just then, the snow came. I mean, it wasn't a few flurries like it always does in the movies. The sky just opened up and the snow came pouring down. I walked up to a streetlight to get a better view of the snowflakes. As I reached the spot where I could best view the thousands of seemingly inconsequential little dots gliding and dancing in the wind, I smiled as wide as the sky as the opening crescendo "Backstreets" reached its climax.
I'd only been planning to go up the hill to get a look at the skyline (which wasn't even visible), but of course it turned into a much longer walk. After "Backstreets" I had to ditch the headphones to get the full effect, what with the wind rustling the few leaves left on the trees and all. Of course, I enjoyed some piano and Bernstein's climax to "Appalachian Spring" as I reached the street lamp on my corner.
Magic is always there, not just at certain times of year. And yes, horror and sadness are always there, not just when there's excess. Sometimes there is more or less of each, but one of the best ways (of many) to dissipate the hate is to sustain and share the love.
If you don't believe me, the next time it snows at night, find a street lamp and watch that invisible force moving all those snow flakes, those atoms, those boomerangs, those people, those stars on their journeys with the unpredictable mysterious wings of the universe. If that doesn't do it for ya, just bring some music
I'd probably started having serious doubts when I was 8 or 9, especially after spending a summer in a hospital with sick and dying children, and watching a car accident where someone died. Maybe because of that my parents worked a little harder to make us believe that year. Ya see, we'd been playing with a boomerang that summer, and since we'd had no idea how to use it, we'd thrown it up above the house, and instead of coming back, it just landed on the roof, where it stayed for months.
Since I was already doubting Santa, I decided to perform a scientific test. When we wrote our letters to Santa with the requisite offering of milk and cookies, I put a post script on my note:
"Oh, and Santa, as long as you're up on the roof, can you bring my boomerang down?"
One can imagine our magical surprise when we saw the boomerang sitting in front of the tree among all the other presents the next morning. I really was blown away.
Of course, the next year, on the first day of school, the kids near my seat were proudly bragging about when they'd stopped believing in the lie. I think it was a kid name Jesus (pronounced "Hey Zeus") who first brought it up. So at the next Xmas, we demanded an explanation from our parents. My father admitted to reading our letter after a long night of stressful wrapping and packaging, smacking his forehead and saying, "Oh no...", going out to the shed to get a ladder, going up on the roof in the middle of the night, smiling weakly as the police car drove by without stopping, and then bringing the boomerang down. I don't think we ever really learned how to use it.
After sharing that story, I attended our office holiday party for the first time in three years of employment. I had a great time, for many reasons, but especially because they gave me the number 42 for the raffle. 42 is the meaning of life in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an amazing movie about Jackie Robinson, and, I just learned the day before, President Barack Obama's address five blocks up on 109th street when he'd been a student at Columbia. It was the last number they called, which won me an Amazon gift card. Maybe I'll use some of my new found winnings to get a present for Santa, by which I mean my father, who has truly grown into the part: a large white beard, a bowl full of jelly, bright red pajamas in the dining room after a morning of hunting, and even a workshop where he does wood working, carving birds, painting birds, and sometimes making toy ducks (well, actually duck decoys) for nephews and nieces and neighbors' children.
Of course, most people think of children at Xmas time, because they need gifts the most. Before the party I'd seen many posts about Alleppo, and during the conga line at the party I had to avert my eyes from the television displaying undernourished African children with tears in their eyes. Sometimes you just have to focus on the present conga line and take a small bit of solace in the fact that you, at the very least, gave some money to those causes. Come to think of it, I've already got plenty of money to spend on gifts for Santa. That Amazon gift brought by 42 is going to an aid organization, as it should
A much more unequivocally happy part of the party was when people locked arms and sang, "New York, New York" at New York Language Center, and I stood next to the tree and looked across the street where they were selling all those other trees, reminding me of my first job ever.
When I got home from the party I decided to get my act together and do some holiday season cleaning. After all, I'm a night owl, so after a night out there's still plenty of time to get things done.
Some time around 3 am I decided to go for a walk and brought my iPod with me. I waited to start the music until I got past the Xmas tree in the park across the street, when I approached the hill leading up to City College of New York (one of the "fathers of the internet" attended school there).
The first couple years I've lived up here there was scaffolding blocking most of an old mural on the side of the school that borders the hill. A few months ago it seemed that they'd completely redone it overnight. Now there is a beautiful new mural stretching a few dozen meters. It begins with someone holding a bird in their hand, which always makes me think of my father, the real life "bird man."
Around this time I turned on my iPod to listen to some songs from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, the best Xmas gift my father has ever given me, the winter before I graduated from college and moved to New York City for round 1, ten years ago.
This music will always have a special place in my heart and in my journey playlists because three years later, after "graduating" from my first experience in New York, I saw Springsteen play at the best music festival in America, Bonnaroo (translation "good street"), and at one point they played "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," prompting a guy in a Santa suit to come out and dance. After that the artist I recently learned had spent many years battling depression announced, "This next one is for the graduates!" He then launched into the first song on Born to Run, which is "Thunder Road." Naturally, I'd just listened to that in my room before going outside on a walk.
"Have a little faith, there's magic in the night...."
The part of the mural that always catches my attention is the dazzling array of butterflies. They're everywhere: bursting from cocoons, reading what we write on our phones, hovering over pencils. I love them. "A butterfly flapping its wings in Finland..." Also, this time I finally paid deep attention to the snow owl...
I looked at the butterfly and remembered that piece I'd written where I'd pondered, "What if God is the butterfly?" Just then, the snow came. I mean, it wasn't a few flurries like it always does in the movies. The sky just opened up and the snow came pouring down. I walked up to a streetlight to get a better view of the snowflakes. As I reached the spot where I could best view the thousands of seemingly inconsequential little dots gliding and dancing in the wind, I smiled as wide as the sky as the opening crescendo "Backstreets" reached its climax.
I'd only been planning to go up the hill to get a look at the skyline (which wasn't even visible), but of course it turned into a much longer walk. After "Backstreets" I had to ditch the headphones to get the full effect, what with the wind rustling the few leaves left on the trees and all. Of course, I enjoyed some piano and Bernstein's climax to "Appalachian Spring" as I reached the street lamp on my corner.
Magic is always there, not just at certain times of year. And yes, horror and sadness are always there, not just when there's excess. Sometimes there is more or less of each, but one of the best ways (of many) to dissipate the hate is to sustain and share the love.
If you don't believe me, the next time it snows at night, find a street lamp and watch that invisible force moving all those snow flakes, those atoms, those boomerangs, those people, those stars on their journeys with the unpredictable mysterious wings of the universe. If that doesn't do it for ya, just bring some music
Friday, December 2, 2016
Friday, November 11, 2016
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
I still believe in all of my beautiful warm-hearted friends who have saved my soul with their expressions of empathy, my heroically smiling students who have reminded me that you can live in a country with a shameful leader and still enjoy your life and help others enjoy theirs, and all the Americans who once again helped the right candidate win the popular vote, although the confusing constraints of our history, both literal and figurative, brought us something else.
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
A year and a half ago I was in class and a student asked me what I thought about the following year's presidential election, even though nobody had declared a candidacy for president yet. I responded by saying, "You can just give it to Hillary Clinton, as far as I'm concerned. She's probably more experienced than anyone else, the Republicans rarely have ideas lately, let alone good ideas, and it's about time we've had a woman. I think that will have positive reverberations for generations. Besides, we're doing pretty good with Obama now, and she'll probably just keep most of his policies going, so yeah, I hope we can avoid another drawn out election season because it gets earlier and earlier every year!"
Well, as you know, I didn't get that latter wish about a simple breezy election. Oh no, it has been anything but that. Ever since one of my least favorite people announced his candidacy (a designation he earned the day and way he announced his candidacy), I've spent much of the past year and a half explaining to students just how our country works, how our history has come together, and why so many people could be accepting of someone who doesn't even have any public service experience somehow running for president. It's not like you'd ever ask a dentist to perform open heart surgery. They're different areas of expertise.
Even though we've heard plenty about all of the candidates in this past year and a half, and we got a nice taste of what's possible from a man who recently bought a summer home on North Hero island on my favorite lake in the world, I look back and fully support my original position. I would be enthusiastic about having Hillary Clinton as the President of the United States. After all, North Hero is right next to Clinton County, where my mother and my grandfather were born and raised, and where my grandmother taught her students to strengthen their empathy, to fight against racism, sexism, and inequality, and to make the world a great place to live. I hope to honor her memory this day
Well, as you know, I didn't get that latter wish about a simple breezy election. Oh no, it has been anything but that. Ever since one of my least favorite people announced his candidacy (a designation he earned the day and way he announced his candidacy), I've spent much of the past year and a half explaining to students just how our country works, how our history has come together, and why so many people could be accepting of someone who doesn't even have any public service experience somehow running for president. It's not like you'd ever ask a dentist to perform open heart surgery. They're different areas of expertise.
Even though we've heard plenty about all of the candidates in this past year and a half, and we got a nice taste of what's possible from a man who recently bought a summer home on North Hero island on my favorite lake in the world, I look back and fully support my original position. I would be enthusiastic about having Hillary Clinton as the President of the United States. After all, North Hero is right next to Clinton County, where my mother and my grandfather were born and raised, and where my grandmother taught her students to strengthen their empathy, to fight against racism, sexism, and inequality, and to make the world a great place to live. I hope to honor her memory this day
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