You're reading, which means you're still here, living, breathing, sensing, feeling, thinking.  That in itself is an accomplishment.  Celebrate yourself tonight, and welcome a new spin around the ball. If you have loved one's who have left, I wish you comfort, strength and love to help you through years ahead.  Beyond that, remember: a life worth living goes up and down and up while our world spins round and round.

Hindsight is 2020, and what is clear to me is that we have always been lucky to be with other spirits to share experiences, and whenever we are without something or someone, if we're willing to learn, we understand that we are being taught to be thankful for and truly appreciate what we often take for granted.  It is important to develop an ability to enjoy existence on your own, alone, while perhaps also taking some breaks from your phone.  Of equal importance is to love people and be with them when you can, because you never know where and when we're gonna go amid the trials and triumphs in the universal show.

In 2021, we should get together and have some fun

Something New

28 inches of snow overnight made for a fun stroll this afternoon

Move Activity

 A cloudy afternoon splitting firewood

Giving Some Thanks

I composed this on Thanksgiving night.  It isn't writing so much as a "thankful" list.  Very simple, and true.

What am I thankful for in 2020?

The obvious.  I am thankful my loved ones and I are alive and well.

I am thankful for healthy food

I am thankful I survived covid and without complications, while maybe getting immunity

I am thankful my parents have been safe, and my relatives, and my friends

I am thankful I was able to move to the lake from NYC in the pandemic and to live in the cabin, and live eight months in the camp

I am thankful my parents did all that work to prepare it and keep it going and pay the taxes

I am thankful they went along with my plan to live there until November, possibly even Thanksgiving, and that water pipes didn’t freeze, and our pump still worked, and we got firewood.

I am thankful for views of the lake in three seasons, and sort of four with the snows and freezing temperatures in early spring and late autumn

I am thankful for technology to make connections and various entertainments possible in this time where we are without normal human interaction

I am thankful I have been able to continue teaching my class with so many positive people I am very lucky to speak with, even see here and there

I am thankful dad repaired my canoe after pulling it from the lake five years ago

I am thankful for being able to go canoeing so much

I am thankful for kayaking

I am thankful for hiking, and for all mountains which made it possible

I am thankful for creativity, writing, imagination

I am thankful for having and reading so many books

I am thankful for being able to watch television in the cabin

I am thankful for kind neighbors

I am thankful for employers giving me Listening & Speaking for so long

I am thankful for students who have requested keeping me as their teacher

I am thankful for being able to use the car to go to the forest to teach and ride home

I am thankful for the improvements we made on the camp over the years

I am thankful friends visited me

I am thankful organization makes complexity possible

I am thankful for the farm, forests, fields, ponds, brook

I am thankful for mind enhancers in all ways

I am thankful for women who bring joy

I am thankful for having so much opportunity to see the stars

I am thankful for waves and their sounds

I am thankful for sitting by the fireplace, or on the beach

I am thankful for the dock

I am thankful for the rain keeping the water level high enough to use a pump

I am thankful for having an island to canoe to, and that night with the fireflies and leaping fish

I am thankful for the warm blankets, electric ones, couch, chairs, tables, and having many rooms so I wouldn’t need to work or relax in the same room where I slept

I am thankful for getting away from the traffic and construction noises

I am thankful for escaping from having so many roommates

I am thankful for having functioning transportation to go to mountains

I am thankful for America voting to evict the current president

I am thankful I am living life in a way I enjoy well into my 37^th year amidst here

I am thankful I’ve been able to really enjoy such tasty food and all the other pleasures

I am so thankful for being able to listen such beautiful music whenever I want

I am thankful to explore so much new music

I am thankful for electricity

I am thankful for water

I am thankful for clean air

I am thankful for the modern civilization connecting life to produce what bliss we know

I am thankful I get such enjoyment

I am thankful I have a brain, heart, courage, strong body with creative imagination

I am thankful my voice works

I am thankful I can see the world’s wondrous beauty

I am thankful I can hear the music of the spheres

I am thankful my nose works scenting magic

I am thankful my taste buds deliver grace

I am thankful my feet and legs and toes help me walk

I am thankful my arms, fingers, hands help me touch and feel

I am thankful for my nervous system

I am thankful for my circulatory system

I am thankful for my respiratory system

I am thankful for my endocrine system

I am thankful for my digestive system

I am thankful for my excretory system

I am thankful for my skeletal system

I am thankful for my muscular system

I am thankful for my reproductive system, unit, balls, and orgasms

I am thankful I have skin

I am thankful I have hair

I am thankful I have shelter

I am thankful I have clothes

I am thankful I have money and ways to get money to exchange for goods and services

I am thankful I have a degree, from an Ivy League institution at that

I am thankful I have licenses, such as a driver’s license and passport

I am thankful I have health insurance I have barely used

I am thankful I have a job I enjoy where I get control over what we do

I am thankful I have a working car

I am thankful I have my laptop and places to store files

I am thankful I have a new phone to replace all others

I am thankful we have better faster internet

I am thankful for so much abundance

I am thankful for constant availability of nature

I am thankful for so many great news sources and information sites

I am thankful for amazing television shows

I am thankful for musical artists, whether old or new

I am thankful for all the writers who educate while somehow entertaining

I am thankful I get to live this incredible journey

I am thankful I’ve traveled on so many adventures to become stronger, more confident, with various great experiences, lessons, stories, joys, people to love

I am thankful I know many ways to use letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, ideas, wisdom, language, knowledge

I am (most likely) thankful I know you, if I do

I am thankful for battles won

I am thankful there is a 2021

Relating

I am thankful we have language so we can have conversations about what exactly we are thankful for this year and years before, on top of life, finding ways to get along as we meet each other, trying to make life healthier, wealthier, more fun and beautiful, with wisdom, creativity, imagination wielding new knowledge, directing energy in vibrations aware we can play in many ways, exploring what works

Home

I wrote this seven months ago, but left it a while.  Since I've moved from the cabin where I wrote this, and am writing this foreword from the room where my grandparents died, I might as well share it today.

April 12, 2020:

I've been cogitating about privilege, and how I am privileged to be here, perceiving, thinking, feeling, breathing, moving, seeing, hearing, scenting, feeling, tasting, living, all while viewing a squirrel gathering acorns, bouncing around on the ground above the waters and wind and pine trees and mountains and snow and sky with clouds as three birds glide through air above wave upon wave, determined and on their way, to somewhere else, some new day.

Naturally, we are all here as the result of many privileges, although the whole point of comparison is that some of us have more than others.  We can all focus on what is on our plates and find some form of happiness, yet certain experiences still have more quality than others.

After being alone in a cabin for fifteen days, I've recently had the privilege of mixing with society, albeit from a distance.  1st I visited the laundromat, which was cramped and kind of depressing, but then I received the greatest prize of all: grocery shopping.  Quite an adventure, leading to vital treasures of food, energy and life.  The Alchemist is right.  The treasure is at the pyramids.  I'm serious, my grocery store is on Pyramid Drive.

Before shopping, classes went well today.  The morning involved the usual 11 pupils.  I had them write questions they would like to ask one another, and one of them was about what we would love to do first when this whole storm passes.  Some of the answers: taking a LONG walk, going to the park for a picnic with the family, walking outside with a girlfriend who is currently being kept inside by her worried parents, going to a restaurant with friends, meeting friends and giving them huge tight hugs, having a few drinks in a bar, partying at a trance music festival, simply going outside, visiting the beach, visiting Philadelphia.  I said playing cards with my friends and family.

I asked the woman who wants to visit Philadelphia if she knew which Ivy League University she was going to visit.  She didn't.  I told her she should visit UPenn, founded by Benjamin Franklin.  I asked her because she wears a different Ivy school's sweatshirt every day.  Her American hobbies revolve around visiting Ivy League campuses and craft breweries.  First was Brown, then Harvard, then Columbia.  After three I joked she hadn't worn my alma mater yet.  She asked what it was.  I told her, "Cornell."  Never heard of it.  Sigh, not the first time.  At least she hadn't heard of Penn or Dartmouth either.

Even if she'd never heard of it, I'm obviously privileged that I was able to attend such a beautiful university.  I feel privileged to be alive, have good health, a ticking mind and imagination, a fairly athletic body, loving parents and a strong, intelligent, funny sister, kind and/or funny relatives, many true friends, freedoms, and on and on.  I worked hard my entire educational career without my parents ever pressuring me to do my homework or study hard.  They often remind me of that when I talk about my privileges.  Even so, I am a legacy.  I'm living in a cabin built by grandparents who both attended Cornell.

My grandmother's great aunt was one of the first women to ever attend an Ivy League, as Cornell was the first to admit women.  She didn't meet my grandfather there, but later, by coincidence, they found each other.  She taught history in high school, including a course named "Problems of Consumer Democracy," and urged her students to go out into the world and alleviate the injustices that brought her heart (and intellect) so much pain.  Eventually, she used her cunning to persuade my grandfather to build a place by the lake so he could go fishing here.  My grandfather grew up on a farm and was the first to attend school, where he studied agriculture before he started his own tree farms and mill.

As for my parents, my mother worked very hard in school, got into her parents' alma mater, and became a social worker to help those without privileges.  My father's generation was the first to attend school in his family, and although the third child to go, he was the first Ivy Leaguer (although my uncle would attend Cornell for graduate school around the same time).  Basically, I had many advantages compared to people I was competing against to get in, but my parents never gave any money to the school.  As they explained it, if I got help from the legacy, it was because they knew a member of my family could probably handle the work.  They also figured, based on how my parents served society, that my interest in government, writing and history courses might lead to a similar type of career.

Anyway, I began the day by waking in this 35 degree cabin built by my grandfather at the behest of my grandmother and renovated by my father and mother and me.  After some hesitation, I ran to the shower, and listened to music because I finally can, not having any roommates anymore.  I had it on this "Totally Stress Free" station that wakes me up every morning, and when Sam Cooke's "(What a) Wonderful World" came on, I couldn't stop myself from not only singing in the shower, but dancing as well.  Completing a 15 day self-isolation and then stocking up on food and clean clothes can have that effect.

Now, I don't claim to be an A student

But I'm trying to be

For maybe by being an A student, baby

I can win your love for me

After getting clean, I cooked some breakfast, logged into class, and then enjoyed a long conversation about grocery stores where everyone described when they most recently achieved the basic life goal of earning more life, and how they had to be more patient than usual, but it was usually fine, and they mostly got what they wanted or needed.

I cooked lunch afterward, kept the fire going because it was so cold and rainy today, and then had a private lesson with the Colombian classical viola player, where we mostly learned vocabulary related to metropolitan cities.  I learned Cairo was named "The Mother of the World."  I'd been there and I didn't even know that.  Makes sense to some extent.  I recommend a few pyramids nearby.

My next student was a one time lesson.  All I knew was that she was writing a research paper and needed help revising.  It turns out she is from Afghanistan.  I once had a male roommate from Afghanistan who remembers the civil war and despised the Taliban, and now I've finally gotten the female perspective.  She wants to be a journalist, and was writing a paper about gender inequality in her country, which is, according to various studies she cited, just about the worst place to be a woman, although, apparently India has more gender inequality by some measures.

As she'd lived in New Delhi, we were able to converse about our impressions of that nation and my nation.  She actually thinks Americans are less arrogant about our place in the world, and she feels more accepted in New York than she did in Europe, India or Afghanistan.  She had to put herself through college, as her father didn't even want her to because she's a woman.  Now she's married and feels as though she is respected in the Metropolitan Area.

She has so many stories about other women and the violence and oppression they had survived.  I know that such things happen all around the world, including somewhere, right now, in the small county where I've moved, and how it's on the rise in this country given the lock downs.  Even so, whenever I subtly bemoaned how Muslims and women have been getting attacked in this country, she kept brushing those concerns aside, as she's had a positive experience herself.  However, in her paper, she brought up the critics who argue that she shouldn't point out the injustices in her country, because it's that way to some degree everywhere.  I agreed with her that relativistic arguments pointing out that other countries hurt their own in various ways isn't justification for such deeds anywhere.

We needed sixteen extra minutes to complete the consultation on her research paper, but I didn't mind.  I would have done it whether or not I'm in the cabin whose existence was requested by my grandmother.

I am privileged to have read her story and learned about her point of view, because we all benefit when we listen/read and learn about what each of us goes through.  Such experiences help us repair our world, spread more love, and create energy anew.

Moving

There is always some element of nostalgia when I move.

I know I could simply put everything in bags and pack them in the car.  That would be faster, yes.  But I after I do all the heavy lifting, I put on some records and before I know it, I've inevitably begun looking at what I should be putting in bags and boxes: book covers, photographs, and pieces of paper with quotes and passages, strolling down memory lane.  

When I left New York, it was six years' worth of belongings stuffed just about anywhere possible, given how cramped things were.  In those four days I packed up all my things and moved up north, I spent a couple extra hours reading quotes from various pages I'd posted on my walls, or old papers from students I'd saved, reminiscing about all those wonderful interesting different people I'd met.

This evening is faster.  I only spent one extra hour looking at inspirational quotes from various heroes, taking a few extra moments to read the book titles as I took them off the shelves and fit them into boxes.  I am pleased I've read so many, while also looking forward to the many whose mysterious pages, ideas and rhythms I have yet to explore.

I've got a roaring fire going after packing enough for the night, and I've decided I've earned a Heady Topper I've been saving for this moment, with one more episode of Northern Exposure I've been waiting to watch for a few days.

Thanksgiving was my original goal for staying here, and I've made it.  Also, I can look back on some contributions.  I learned a lot more about plumbing, I kept the pipes from freezing many nights when the temperatures were unprecedented for still having the water hooked up, I tightened the screws on the roof in order to prevent leaks, I moved the dock several times to deal with the changing shoreline, and I brought life to this place.  After being unoccupied for years except for occasional weekends and weeks, someone had to experience the beauty of such a Shangri-La full time.  When my neighbors were inside, I was often on the dock, having a fire on the shore, or canoeing and kayaking under the stars, regardless of air and water temps.

So incredibly pleased I've been living up here.  On to the next chapter.