Now what?

So much swirling in my brain, not the least of which, how could I have guessed it so wrong, how could Nate Silver himself have missed this colossal election upset? I kept reassuring all my Hillary friends that we were fine, there was no chance. It took me only a couple of hours of election returns Tuesday night to see we were all wrong. It was red, not blue's night, across the board.

I voted a mixed ticket, based on candidate experience, voting records, and did not vote for a single candidate on my ballot who didn't have some type of civic service record. I voted my conscience and my hot ticket items.  Nobody I voted for got elected. I did a lot of research and my normal type A due diligence, but I still got it all wrong.

I was literally sickened to see the election return map start to go red, so I turned off the tv.  I slept fitfully for an hour or two and woke knowing and needing to confirm. So my husband and I watched the news from 2:30-4:00 am and then decided the best way to proceed was to try and sleep because we have work in the morning and he is travelling for one of his many jobs and we are old and tired. I tossed and turned. But my brain decided to start singing Tomorrow in my head, from Annie. I could not make it stop.




That song drove me nuts. For hours. But I did nap and when I awoke, it was a sunny day, thank goodness, and my big goofy silly dog was happy to see me, and I embraced that damn song. Sang along with my brain worm, just to help drown out the despair.

I've read a lot of media today, listened to many voices smarter than me. Garrison Keilor, my blogger and facebook and news feed friends.

John Green, who I adore and respect so much.



This video clip where journalists discuss post debate issues that were being ignored, and the concerns they had about this election, and this poorly chosen candidate summed up my concerns and the true heartache of this election.



I'm worried for my cynical and disillusioned kids, with their big hearts and bright brains. What will this disconnect between their concerns and their country bring? Their votes did not count, they do not get the country they want. From what I can gather, most of what they want is good, sound and sane. Kind, inclusive, adaptive. If millennials ruled the world, this would be how election morning would have looked.





I am trying to embrace compassion and patience right now. And focus on breathing. In and Out. Gratefully. And to love the people I love and to be kind to everyone I meet.

And remembering what I said about the other party accepting the results of a democratic election. I would not have tolerated their disputing these results, so I must live by my own judgements too.

We need to listen to each other more, and get our news from the same sources, maybe.

Something.

Anything.

I noticed Hillary and Bill wore purple at her concession speech, red + blue together, one happy color of America united. Or maybe a nod to disbanding the electoral college votes to allow individual votes to count.

Let's all hope for some purple. And that this new president earns the job and title he just got elected to, with minimal pain and suffering for us all. Or that he is thwarted by Congress in the worst of his intents.

Bless all our hearts and this big dumb country, now more than ever.

xo

Trying to find the publish button.

This will either be my tenth draft post since February, or I will finally finish a babbled pile of thoughts and publish. Or just save and surrender.
Who knows?
I don't.

I keep starting posts about having nothing meaningful to say and inadequate tools to say it, that end up rambing on so long I don't even want to reread them. Hence the drafts and the silence.

So, spring was awesome, full of adventure and travel and fun. Summer was nice too, a warm busy cocoon of family and food fun and travel and hanging out, then poof, now it's fall. It's been mostly good and I've been mostly ok.

Mostly.

I started feeling sick in August. Stomach problems. Thought I had food poisoning or a bad IBS flare-up. I was tired, achy, fevery and convinced I was cancer-riddled until my Dr. tested me for parasites and c-diff. I got the lesser of the evils, Giardiasis, which I could have gotten from anywhere, really, but bad water, dirty produce or animals are the likely sources, or a door handle, a shopping cart, anywhere anyone infected touched. It took three weeks to diagnose, and the treatment is two weeks of some nasty meds that make you throw up if you drink any alcohol, plus they make your mouth taste like dirty metal and kill your appetite. Ick and Yuck.

It's not been fun, especially since I was tipping toward problem drinking this summer and the cold turkey sobriety has been very sobering. Feeling all my feelings is tedious. On the bright side, I was as heavy as I'd been since I was pregnant 20 years ago, so the weight loss is good.

Another bright side is I'm sleeping better for a change, and my hot flashes aren't as awful, maybe no wine is helping there.  A really bright spot is my compulsive hand washing and germ phobia kept me from sharing this infestation with anyone else. I did jokingly offer to infect a few friends and family who struggle with drinking and or weight, an icky in-home rehab program, but no takers.

So while I was being tired and sober and feeling all my feelings and learning how to just be without a wine glass in my hand, my sweet dog started panting a lot, and then limping. I took him to the vet, and they suspected diet, or hip problems or maybe Lyme disease. Blood work turned up heartworms.

We have been to the vet three days in a row for blood draws and xrays. I'm still in shock, and trying to steel myself for the long expensive painful journey to stop his parasite from killing him. He was on preventatives, but apparently there are some resistant strains, especially in the southeast where we camped all spring, or he threw up or didn't chew his meds or this year's mosquito armageddon got him, or who knows what the heck what. Since I bought the heartworm preventative at the vet, the manufacturer will allegedly pay the $500 fee for the arsenic injections that come after 30 days of antibiotics to clear up the comorbid bacterial infections. It's gonna be a long haul and I'll be beside myself until we are out of the woods sometime in 2017. I think I'm cried out for now, and trying to tamp down the worry. I'm striving for acceptance. And grateful things aren't worse. They could always be worse.

And then there is this dumpster fire of an election year. I can blame the meds for the bile taste in my mouth, but we know that's not the only cause. I've become obsessed with political polls and studies of the increasing polarization of our culture and the sociological implications of all this anger and division and mayhem, and the disintegration of journalism, and the paradigm effect of facebook and fox news, the loss of civility and so on. I have a secret pinterest wall where I hide all the data and charts and articles I hoard, and several draft posts looking for sense or solace in the crazy, but no.

Apoplexy seems a reasonable response.

See why I haven't written?

I could have written about all the pretty sunsets I saw this summer, or the amazing lightning storms, or my pretty flowers, or the wonderful farm stands where I found wax beans and corn that I will remember always, or my half-assed garden that gave me just enough zucchini and too many tomatoes, and a kitchen infested with gnats, but also many happy hours processing those tomatoes, and the smug satisfaction of doing something earthy and natural like growing some of my own food, even if it's only too many tomatoes. I even made lasagna, and if you've ever made it, especially starting with a basket of garden tomatoes, you know it is a labor of love. It was really good, as far as I could tell, since I can't taste for shit, but the boys told me it was amazing. I've been cooking a lot, but since nothing tastes good, I'm eating out of habit more than desire. Cooking makes me feel useful, and maybe normal. I can't wait to enjoy actually eating food again. With the occasional glass, not bottle of wine.

Anyhow..  Coulda, shoulda, woulda written something on my poor blog, but somehow, no. Maybe today is the day.

Here's some pictures, from the few on my computer, most my digital life happens on my phone now. I'm not going to even complain about my technology frustrations and fatigue, that was a whole other draft post that bored me. I sure hope I haven't bored you yet.

 This is one of so many lovely sunsets I ran out to snap a picture of before the mosquitoes ate me.

These are my favorite daylilies, Chicago Sunrise, but I think they match the sunset too.

This photo taken before we knew we were infected. 

Our little hike about did us both in, but here we are. 

Ain't he the cutest? 

I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get him healthy again, and me too.

Hugs to you all out there, thanks for all the posts that have entertained and sustained me. I'm being stingy, taking and not giving lately. Apologies. I can only try to do better.

xo

ps I have become obsessed with Tig Notaro. Catch her standup or series One Mississippi or her documentary Tig. Look her up on youtube. She's one of my new favorite people, my relativity touchstone, and my hero. I hope to be half as brave in my life.

enjoy every sandwich

I really miss Warren Zevon.

And David Letterman. He is such a gracious host.  

My kids got me an app for my phone called Soundhound. I kept asking what song I was hearing and they said there's an app for that and they hooked me up. Who knew?

When I hear something I like and want to know who it is, soundhound tells me and lets me mark favorites so I can find them later, like today.

Today. So cold and windy and harsh a day, but sunny, and I've found the spot on the couch where a cat would sit, and I start going through my soundhound favorites lists.

Dawes. Have you heard of them? I love them. This is the song I heard and had to find:

It is really a great song, especially the bit at the end with the kids. The perfect accompaniment to an afternoon alone, a wistful mood, a patch of sun and a glass of wine.

But then, the next song that autoplays on youtube is this one...

Zevon, Letterman and Dawes. Desperado Under the Eaves -  my favorite Warren song. 

I believe synergy is the word. Or Serendipity.

My afternoon is perfect now. Except I need a kleenex. :)

Enjoy every sandwich, and song, my friends. 

Thanks, youtube. And Warren. And Dave. And Dawes.

xo

NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts

I have been transported by some wonderful and diverse artists on NPR's Look Back at 2015 Tiny Desk Concerts . The second song on this clip by Anna and Elizabeth, Lella Todd Crankie made me cry. I didn't know what a crankie was until today. Their music made me remember the wonderful mountain music from the movie Songcatcher.  Enjoy.



.

Iron And Wine: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert:

It's cold, snowy and windy today. Pretty gloomy. Except for this in my day. Thanks, NPR.

Time Sinks

I wrote the post below and forgot about it, lonely on my cobwebby book blog draft pile. I forgot what I wrote, all of it. I've read some of my book reviews that I remember nothing about writing either, let alone reading the book I babbled on about. Should I worry? I do, and I hope I can forget about worrying soon as easily as I forget the words I write. I'm trying to look on these little amnesiac discoveries as an adventure, not evidence of slippage, just overload. There's just too much to discover, like this post.

Thankfully, almost two years later, the links still work. I'm listening to the concert as I finish and post this now, because why not? I like to share. I'm going to post it to facebook too, because why not? The concert is so good I just restarted it.  The songs at the five and thirty minute marks I could listen to on repeat.

Dave Pell is still costing me hours of delightful reading and too many open tabs, and my relationship with Chardonnay is still going strong.

Here's to time sinks rescued from the draft pile.


March 2014

This is a verbose post. If you want to cut to the chase, just listen to this NPR Laura Marling concert while you go about your day, evening, whatever. Or just sit and listen to it, and soak it in, because it is a really great concert by an artist I bet few to none of us have heard of until now, Thank You Very Much, NPR.

Eighty lovely minutes of new music and my brain loved it. Reminiscent of Joni Mitchell meets Shawn Colvin, but unique and fresh and evocative. Just lovely.

So, the blah blah back story, or why this post is titled Time Sinks.

I get an amazing email newsletter called Next Draft by David Pell, in which he shares a dozen or more of the most fascinating, interesting, newsworthy, funny, striking or ironic things he finds on the internet. His list is one or two sentences describing each news bit, plus an embedded link, and following up on all the links can cost me hours. Happy, interesting hours. I'm always thrilled to have read something before he links it, because it makes me feel like the winner to already know something before he writes about the topic. Dave Pell is why I have so many tabs open on my computer. One of the reasons.

The prize winner time suck was today's email, with the link to NPR's Bob Boilen's list of his favorite concerts of 2013. Bob went to 662 concerts last year, which I struggle to fathom. I'll not attend that many live music performances in my lifetime, even though live music performances are among my very favorite things about being human and alive. So, he listed his favorite 116 in his Best Concerts of 2013 article. The top ten are featured, with links.Who doesn't love a best-of list? I had to know what made them so good, so I started clicking, with very complicated results. In short, I hated his top 4, no offense to the artists, and wondered what the hell I was missing.

I'm a huge fan of music, and I think my taste is eclectic and well-rounded, or so I thought, and one of my life's little indulgences are the tiny deskside concert series over at NPR. I've watched maybe a dozen online and I am convinced those NPR music people have the best job in the world.

Bob's best-of list had me expecting some really awesome musical experiences. But I was wrong. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe my musical palate is underdeveloped. Bob's top four are a mix of world music and electronica and jazz, and I thought hell, these suck, no structure, they don't go anywhere, they don't move me, and I kept fast forwarding, hoping for it to get better, and then wondered what I'm missing. Sure, there is talent, but nothing that I like or can connect with.

But. Then I thought maybe it's not the music, it's me. I'm pretty sure after batting twenty percent with a trained music professional that I do not have the musical palate or chops to appreciate his top picks. Or maybe I'm just too old for some of this.

Case in point, wine. I'm sipping a nice chardonnay, and 10 years ago, I hated wine. Yuk. Then I discovered white zinfandel, which my wine loving friends would not touch. It's starter wine, basically. My palate learned to enjoy wine of some sort though, and it was good. My next step was to the reisling family, my first white, equally sweet, but easy on my palate too.

Fast forward a year or so and they are too sweet for me, especially with a nice meal. So, hello pino grigio, my new friend. I still couldn't enjoy a chardonnay, it was too intense, oaky and funky for me. But after a while I tried a sip of pinot gris and the next thing you know I'm trying Argentinian torrentes, and then chardonnay starts to taste pretty good too. Suddenly I'm a white wine girl, starting to get picky about which ones too, because they start to taste different to me. Who knew? I thought all wine tasted like crap before I learned to love them.  I even learned to like reds, though they didn't like me back and set my heart and hot flashes into crazy land. Looking over a wine list at a nice restaurant for me now is an adventure, and I enjoy learning all the nuances and finding what other grapes, regions and vintages I enjoy.

The same thing happened to me with art, in a smaller way. I used to hate modern art until I started studying art, and once I figured out the meaning behind the medium, I began to appreciate previously incomprehensible forms, and I'm suddenly a modern art fan too.

Or poetry. I used to need more structure and blatant meaning in my prose when I was younger, but I have stretched my imagination and understanding enough to not only get, but be moved by so many types of written and spoken word. My taste has evolved. Not too far, mind you, as I'm a home learned rural trashy girl at heart, and I'm not classically educated or even that well read - I just like to read is all. But I'm always looking to fill in the gaps and learn how to read and understand more complex works. It makes me happy.

But my point is, finally, that the thought occurred to me that maybe I'm not as musically well rounded as I thought, and maybe I just haven't evolved my musical palate enough to appreciate what the NPR guy was grooving on. Maybe if I try, if I study music a little more, these sounds that seem incoherent and cacophonous now might begin to coalesce into something that sounds like music to me, into songs I might enjoy. Maybe.

Or not. When it comes to music, there is so much out there worth listening to, in the genres I like best, like folk, rock, bluegrass, country, alternative, old favorites or standards or classics to discover. I'm not sure I can squeeze learning to like or enjoy the stuff the NPR guy loves into my listening wish list.

What about you, anyone who has managed to read all this. Is learning to like modern music like learning to like wine? I'm not optimistic.

But, at least I found something worth listening to on the NPR music guru's list: Laura Marling. She was number seven on the list. Her I like, and that's something. A happy discovery - worth the effort to find and to share with anyone who has the time to listen.



I hope I find this post all over again in a few more years, and that the links still work.

:)

A Few too many Words About Flint MI

I read Stephen Rodrick's Rolling Stone piece about the water quality disaster in Flint and I am angry. First, that this could happen at all, in this day, in this country, on such a huge scale is horrifying. Second, that indisputable scientific facts from college professors, laboratories, and pediatricians, as well as desperate pleas from parents of sick children were systematically discredited and ignored by politicians. Third, that the comments section at the end of the article immediately digressed into inane, angry rants between our ridiculous political parties. Stupid humans are missing the point. Please read the article and then skip the comments unless you want to feel like puking.

Regulatory water quality analysis was my business for decades. Drinking water, industrial discharge, landfills, hazardous and radioactive waste clean-up, analytical methods, data quality control: these are things I know. In my lab days, I read and implemented regulatory codes and quality procedures and wrote many of our Standard Operating Procedures for sampling, preparation and analysis for trace metals. After 18 years away from all that to raise my babies, I still know the EPA test methods and the emission and absorption wavelengths for lead analysis, and I can probably still operate the atomic absorption and emission spectrophotometers to do the analysis. I started my career as a sampling technician, and talked to many a concerned mother as I took drinking water samples from their kitchen sinks. I cared very deeply about what I did in my job, and I have been steadily concerned since I retired with the weakening of the EPA,  and the lack of funds to ensure that we maintain all the ground we painstakingly made up since the 1970s. Humans can be so incredibly stupid and short sighted.

I'd been unable to focus on the news out of Flint when the story broke, and when I did, last week, finally pay attention, the first thing I read was the raw data analysis reports for lead in the homes sampled not by a regulatory agency but by Dr. Marc Edwards, a water-treatment expert who teaches at Virginia Tech and has received a MacArthur genius grant. Dr. Edwards and his students were so alarmed by what they were seeing and hearing that they undertook a massive study at their own expense to find out why children were getting sick in Flint. There is actually a crowd funded site to reimburse the university for the analytical costs, because they are staggering and I know why in excruciating detail that maybe only another lab rat like me will understand...

GoFundMe Flint Water Study

Summary of Flint Water testing results

Raw Data tables for Lead in Flint Water     This is the one that made me cry.

I read the reports, and I looked at the lead results. I refreshed my memory for the action level for lead in drinking water, and saw that many of the Flint homes recorded over 1000 times the action level, at hazardous waste levels, not drinking water levels, for not one, but for many homes. The data made my stomach lurch and I burst into tears. I'd never seen anything like this data. I cried for the children and the families who were paying to be poisoned. I cried for the stupidity of the politicians in the city of Flint, and the State of Michigan, for the failure of the EPA, and the media, and I cried for the goodness of those who doggedly and expensively chased down the source of the problem.

Here's the Rolling Stone Article:    Who Poisoned Flint?

After I read the article, I was even more furious at the incompetence, belligerence and neglect of the elected officials, who tried to discredit concerned citizens and scientists at every turn. They are all really sorry now, of course, and many have resigned, after the President declared an emergency and sent in troops with bottled water. The truth came out, only about a year too late.

I couldn't care less about Republicans vs. Democrats or Liberal vs. Conservatives right now, and those who default to that tired old argument are as much a part of the problem as the local, state and federal governments and agencies who failed to protect children from the brain damage that the toxic lead levels will cause. "The long-term effects of elevated blood lead levels in children may include slow development, reduced IQ scores, learning disabilities, hearing loss, reduced height and hyperactivity." Chelation of the blood is the only treatment for elevated lead levels, by the way. And boiling water for bacteria only concentrates the lead further. This is what a very vulnerable, socially and economically disadvantaged city can add to the list of woes for their children, who already attend underfunded run down, toxic schools.

I'm just sick. I'm mad as hell, and don't have a clue what to do about it, but share what I know and hope for better from our elected officials.

I write this from a state without a functioning budget since July, at a political impasse resulting in only emergency funds being released, where the fallout from unpaid vendors like myself, and unsupported public institutions from medical to educational is staggering. I can't wait to see where the economic collapse of 2008 and more stupid human tricks take us next, because it seemingly will not end, just reverberate in unexpected and awful ways for decades to come. I predict there will be many more Flints in our future, especially as we continue to trash our precious groundwater reserves with fracking. 

Is it any wonder I have so many worries for my children? For all our children?

America, you are breaking my heart into little pieces.

Sorry. And now, a happy picture in apology for this unhappy post...... I'll try to lighten up next time.

Tucker kisses make everything better.

PS I forgot to mention that the symbol for lead is Pb, from the Greek word Plumbum, which is the root of our word plumber and plumbing, hence the extraneous b in the words. That b always bugged me until I learned my chemical symbols. 

Flint's Pb problem is very much a plumbing problem.

Hello 2016

This was supposed to be a Christmas post. And a New Year's wish. It's late.
Still, wishing us all a kind, happy, healthy and lucky trip around the sun again this year.

I've been too busy living to write much lately but I wanted to share and record for my own poor memory my favorite media finds of 2015.

Heres all the good stuff  I have consumed or had consume me. Excellent diversions, some pure entertainment, others profoundly life affirming.

Sorry about the wonky link colors, my HTML skills are too rusty to figure it out.

Books:

Memoir:   When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanith   Heartbreaking, humbling, profound writing. I'm grateful for the advance copy from LibraryThing.

Fiction:  Reamde by Neal Stephenson  Insane page turner, 1042 pages of Clancy/Grisham/Stieg Larsson on steroids, found in a free library pile and inhaled in 3 days. Soon to be a TV series and I can't wait.

Biography:  Maude by Donna Foley Mabry   An inexpensive and unforgettable kindle download. I will not complain about my lot in life again, ever.


TV/Film:

Documentary: Of Ants and Men - E.O. Wilson   I adore E.O Wilson, and this is one of the best documentaries I've ever watched. The link has the entire 2 hour show. I've watched it twice.

Movie:  The Big Short by Adam McKay   I love that the director found the humor/irony edge in this infuriating true story of greed and stupidity.

TV/Netflix Binges:  Homeland, Manhattan, Rectify, Bloodline, The Blacklist. Anything about tiny home living. I'm trying not to add another series to the list.


Music: (Links to youtube)

Album:  Global by Todd Rundgren  Blind    Soothe   Rise   Todd's social commentary is spot on, and his music is constantly evolving. Took me a few listens to fall in love with his newest sound. Seeing him live in December was a highlight.

New Artist: My son got me to check these guys out. Amazing harmonies, great timeless sound. Sounds like James Taylor harmonies with a southern rock vibe. I bought the Utah album and love it.
Jamestown Revival - Golden Age | Live at OnAirstreaming
Jamestown Revival - California (Cast Iron Soul)

Youtube Magical Musical Rabbit hole:  German Music:

Die Toten Hosen // „Tage wie diese"

Herbert Grönemeyer - Mensch
Herbert Grönemeyer - Bochum
Xavier Naidoo - Ich kenne nichts (das so schön ist wie du)
The German music has been a huge surprise. I've listened to them all repeatedly. I know a dozen German words from my childhood and had no idea what the songs were about but I could tell by the emotion. I ran some side by side lyrics in German and English and loved the message in all of them.
I wish to speak German now, and maybe I'll start. Why not?


Games:
Cards against Humanity and Exploding Kittens gave us plenty of laughs.
Wordbrain on our phones distracted us to no end. 

The best part of this year has been our relative health and lovely little family, all doing well. I wouldn't dare to ask for more.

I don't have a big pile of resolutions or notions about this year yet. I'm just trying to enjoy the ride.

How about you? What was your favorite diversion in 2015?

xo