Monthly Archives: December 2016

No Abyss Needed

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Posted by on in American Legion, Community, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values

December 20, 2016, Prescott-

Today was either a day of mourning,

if one sees oppression and catastrophe ahead;

a day of rejoicing, if one sees opportunity to prosper,

or to return to old ways of looking at the world;

or, as it was for me, a day when the imperative,

of seeing one’s perceived adversaries as like unto

oneself, has become manifest.

In a few short days, I will bid farewell

to another old soldier,

whose interment will take place,

two days before Christmas.

Then, it will be time

to listen to the Divine,

in another group setting,

as we Baha’is gather

in consultation and spiritual discovery,

for the thirty-second consecutive

Christmas season.

I’m close to finishing

“The Tenth Insight”,

a novel of intense

spiritual energy,

of visions

of Armageddon,

of Rapture,

of Afterlife.

Much will happen,

in those regards.

I believe, though,

that we need not

leap into an abyss

of self-doubt.

We need not

head backward,

into a jungle of despair.

Our journey,

of true togetherness,

may cast a bridge

across the widest gulfs.

It is a matter

of free will.

Service

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Posted by on in Education, Personal Values, Service Activities, Spiritual, Striving

December 19, 2016, Prescott- 

It was a calmer day, today.

We are now down to three-and-a-half days,

until time comes for a change of pace.

The look of surprise,

on the face of one of my supervisors,

when I said I had plans

other than working, gratis,

in the classroom,

over the Holidays,

was priceless.

There is more to life,

than one’s chosen daily routine.

There will be other things

on my plate,

from this coming Saturday,

until the second Sunday

of the new year.

Service is always front and center,

and it takes many forms.

 

Fain Park, Revisited

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Posted by on in Hiking and Nature, Historical

December 18, 2016, Prescott Valley-

This city, southeast of “old” Prescott, is sometimes seen as a counterpart to Gertrude Stein’s Oakland- “No there, there”.  It does have its gems, though, among them, Fain Park, in the southwest corner of town.

I hadn’t been back to Fain, for three years now.  So, this afternoon, following a small biweekly get-together at a Prescott Valley restaurant, I took an hour’s walk along the park’s Cavalry and Canyon Loop trails.

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There is a small lake, created by damming Lynx Creek, which flows down from the Bradshaw Mountains, towards the plains of central Yavapai County.  Lynx Creek also is the basis for Lynx Lake, a popular recreational reservoir, about five miles further southwest. Above, is a photo of Lynx Creek Gorge.

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This is a view of the Barlow-Massicks House, a still-occupied complex, once associated with the gold mining, which took place long before Prescott Valley was established as a town.

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On private land, south of Fain Park, there are several preserved ruins of stone miner’s cabins.

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This is the mostly dry bed of Rose Creek, a tributary of Lynx Creek, and another locus of gold panning, in the early Twentieth Century.

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I came upon Lynx Creek again, just before returning to the parking lot. It was running, just a bit, after Friday’s copious rains.

Fain Park remains, along with Glassford Hill and Mingus Mountain’s western slope, a fine place for connecting with one’s natural self, along the edges of a growing suburban community.

A Progressive Rogue

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Spiritual, Striving

December 17, 2016, Prescott- 

I regard myself as a progressive.  There is only one way to real progress, though, in my view.  That is, for everyone to roll up their sleeves, get a given job done, and not be concerned with WHO ELSE is on the team, or in the relay line, so long as each person is carrying his or her weight.

I was on a team, this morning, whose collective task was to empty a storage yard of holiday wreaths.  We had about a thousand wreaths, most of which were in boxes of six.  Our team, of ten men and one woman, loaded the boxes and loose wreaths onto any of three trucks.  The trucks then brought their loads up to a staging area, in Prescott Memorial Cemetery, where others took the wreaths and placed them at each of a thousand or so gravesites, as part of Wreaths Across America, which honours our departed veterans, each Christmas season.  The team members did not stop for a minute, until the job was done.  Yes, it was cold(18-25 F), but so was shoveling snow, back in Saugus, Deerfield and Bangor, in my earlier days.  As the project director said, when we first gathered for assignments, the men and women whose graves we honoured did not flinch, for convenience’s sake.

I left the site, after our job was finished, and went over to another place, where 45 women, men and children were putting Christmas baskets and backpacks together, for homeless veterans and disadvantaged families.  My jobs were to sort donated groceries into food types, sort empty backpacks into piles, by colour and size, and then help fill twenty backpacks, with donated clothing, safety implements, toiletries and stationery. Once again, each of us worked with the others, across lines of ideology, gender and age, with no regard for differences.

These two events, no doubt, had their counterparts, by the thousands, across the country, and around the world.  We do them, as part of our community loves, on a daily basis, some of us more than others, but each according to his/her own talents and time allowances.

I  went to see “Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story”, last night, in our very comfortable, and inexpensive, Picture Show Theater.  The plot told of a young woman who grows up, a de facto orphan, learning the self-reliance and self-discipline that such a state of affairs imparts.  She trusts few, having been abandoned by her father, and betrayed by two competing groups of tyrants.  The rest is up to anyone, wishing to see the film, to find out for themselves.

I have had to go it alone, several times, in life and I’m sure this will happen again.  Being “rogue”, however, doesn’t mean that one should lose sight of the greater challenge facing humanity.  We are here, I believe, to care for one another with enormous passion.  My opus, gladly engaged, is caring for others with an ever-decreasing regard for my own comfort.  Yes, my “job”, in the eyes of family members, is to take care of myself, and I have that one down, pretty well.  That said, people and their chronic issues will not go away by themselves.  Progress means that the problems of society are to be remediated systematically, or not at all.  It means we do this together, and get over our differences.

Deserving

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Posted by on in Education, Inspiration, Personal Values, Poetry, Striving

December 16, 2016, Prescott-

Today was long,

because of wind, and rain.

Two of our boys fought us,

tooth and nail,

over the tests the class took.

Self- determining a curriculum

is something that

requires inner discipline.

Our students don’t

exactly  have that,

in spades.

I overheard a girl

saying that one

of the boys

likes every girl

in the school.

She said he was named

for an angel,

but couldn’t pass for one.

I think every girl

deserves to be liked.

As with boys,

that liking should

be for who she is inside,

and for her dreams.

As with boys,

girls need to know

they are surrounded

by unconditional love and encouragement.

How is it that doesn’t go without saying?

Vortices

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Posted by on in Community, Poetry, Striving

December 15, 2016, Prescott- 

Four years and a day ago,

a vortex of hate came to call,

on a little town in Connecticut.

These past few days,

that vortex, and its cohorts,

have moved on, to Aleppo,

and left a once vibrant city

looking like Dresden,

or Nagasaki, after

Hate came to visit.

A chill vortex is bringing

snow, from the Rocky Mountains

to the rocky Atlantic coast.

It even brings rain,

to parched Los Angeles.

In special spaces,

around the world,

other vortices bring solace.

I wonder,

which vortex

will I encounter, next?

 

Contentment

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Posted by on in Education, Family, Hiking and Nature, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

December 13, 2016, Prescott-

I will be sending my cards, and a few gifts, out on Thursday evening or Friday.  It will be cutting things close, but this year, I have chosen responsibility over sentiment. Besides, I need to buy a new printer.  Toys for Tots, NAU (my alma mater) and the young people of Streetlight will also need to wait until then.

I am happy, overall, with how my life has panned out, this year.  I am in a position of very intense public service, have a solid circle of friends, am reasonably respected in my community of residence, and have been able to maintain my health and vitality.

My son is holding his own, and getting ready for a great leap of faith and fortune, early next year.  My family, mostly in Massachusetts and Florida, with several scattered in other parts of the country, has been mostly healthy, this year.  I lost two aunts and a cousin,thus far, in the course of 2016. I also saluted an elder who inspired me greatly, as he headed to God’s Eternal Army.

My other love, Nature, rewarded me with a complete hiking circle around this beautiful city, and I have come to the final three segments of an amazing trek through the Sonoran Desert:  Dec. 26-27, and January 6, will find me in the southern sector of Black Canyon National Recreation Trail.  The 19 men who perished while fighting a wildfire in Yarnell, on June 30, 2013, have a memorial place, in Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park.  I will visit that place, on December 29, making my way along the 7-mile round trip trail that brings the visitor to the place where this unspeakable tragedy unfolded.

This year has brought tension, annoyance and suffering to many, perhaps more than in some years, and less so, for others.  I am grateful for having had relatively good fortune, while being prepared, should challenges come my way, in 2017.  A stable job, re-connecting with some friends who have been off my radar for a few years, and good, if too brief, visits with family, give a good backdrop for whatever might lie ahead.

 

Double Twelfth

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Posted by on in children, Education, Inspiration, Personal Values

December 12, 2016, Prescott-

Waking came earlier than I wanted,

on this Double Twelfth.

I felt a sense of trepidation,

not knowing what lay in store,

on this Double Twelfth.

Nonetheless,

my routine proceeded,

and I connected with the world,

in the early darkness,

of this Double Twelfth.

Prayers came before

morning newspaper;

seems I was not the only

awkward riser,

on this Double Twelfth.

My boys had a good day,

overall, though,

glad that I  stayed

the course of learning,

for each of them,

on this Double Twelfth.

The sun set, brilliantly,

and I indulged in hot lentil soup,

before my forty-minute workout,

ending this Double Twelfth.

Poisoned By These Fairy Tales

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Posted by on in Community, distraction issues, Historical, impediments, Striving

December 11, 2016, Prescott-

Don Henley included that phrase, in his song, “The End of the Innocence”, in 1989.  It was partly a reaction to what he regarded as the excesses of the Reagan-Bush the Elder years.

I think of it, instantly, whenever an outlandish conspiracy theory surfaces.  I have my own take on such theories, which are always based on fear-gone-wild.  They are a natural outgrowth of the complex levels of secrecy, employed by so many in the power structure.  Nature, and the human mind, abhor vacuums.  Where there is no explanation, a person will provide one of his/her own.  When no credible explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy was offered, in which all questions were suitably explained to the public, all manner of explanations began to surface.  It was not long, before every unusual or unsettling event, from the Apollo 13 landing, to the airplane crashing into the Pentagon, was questioned, as to it’s ever having even happened.  Even the wanton slaughter of 26 people, in Newtown, CT, was denied by people with a fair audience- as if 20 children and six adults could actually be alive, and visible, one day- and have never even EXISTED, the next.

Yes, this nation is poisoned by fairy tales- both those invented from whole cloth and those made up by people working for God-knows-who, the end result of which is total, rampant confusion.  Now, we will have four years, during which a man with little political experience has the primary job of leading us out of a wilderness, to which many of his own supporters, and a goodly number of his foes, helped to guide us, in the first place.

May he succeed, even if, especially if, he is not initially so inclined.

Sixty-Six, for 66, #1: Icons

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Posted by on in Inspiration, Personal Values, Striving

December 10, 2016, Prescott- I spent the afternoon culling items from my clothes racks and getting rid of luggage, as well as other stuff for which I have no need. The dockman at the local Domestic Violence Prevention agency’s thrift store asked if I were giving up travel.  No, sir, but I am giving up traveling with large luggage.   It all has to fit in a backpack and a light handcart, which I will purchase in the Spring.

Now, on to the subject at hand:  What makes an icon, and does anyone deserve the title?

The second question is answered in a word:  “No”.  We all, at various times, have feet of clay.  I have had those moments, most notably for virtually the entirety of my 20’s, intermittently during my 50’s and the last time, in summer, 2013.

Many of us need iconic figures, though.  Historical personages of this sort, abound:  Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan- each of whom has been yanked off the pedestal by one group or another.  Sports figures come and go, and seem to have shorter shelf lives as icons, than do the above- although flesh and blood heroes, like Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Arthur Ashe and Muhammad Ali, have survived dethroning and controversy and withstood the test of scrutiny.

Icons come to mind for me, at this particular time, because of the passing, on Thursday, of John Glenn and the centenary, on Friday, of Kirk Douglas.  First, Colonel/Senator Glenn:  He would have been enough of a role-model, for his service to the U.S. during World War II, alone.  In the 1960’s, though, every astronaut was larger than life, in the eyes of we who were in Middle School and High School.  The magic of Space was being peeled back, and we were seeing that the likes of Alan Shepard and John Glenn were, indeed, going where no man had gone before- and that the Moon was well within Mankind’s grasp. John Glenn remained the Clean Marine, throughout two decades of service in politics, as well.  No doubt, some will dish dirt on him; no one’s perfect after all, save Those sent directly from God.  My guess, though, is that he, too, will stand the test of time, as a genuine hero.

Kirk Douglas at 100: His life, like that of many others in the film arts, has had its share of scrutiny, tragedy and suffering.  His roles, though, have been varied and astonishing- from Spartacus to Van Gogh.  For us boys in the period of Camelot, his performances defined manliness- both in appearance and in spirit.  How many times did I stand in front of a mirror, and deliver terse rhetoric, with my jaw and chest thrust out?

His true greatness, though, has come with a fair recovery from his stroke, of twenty years ago.  He showed no compunction about being videotaped and photographed, as is, at Friday’s commemorative event.  I can only aspire to such a total lack of vanity, and wish him as many years more,as his quality of life permits.  His final words to the media, on Friday, were:  “I’ll give another interview, when I turn 200.”  That’d be a marvel.

Let’s honour, and treasure, the tall ones among us, while not seeking to either exalt them beyond their levels of stamina or cut them down, out of a desperate urge to level the field.