Just a quick late note about our winter solstice gathering for writing and ritual.
Here’s the link to the Meetup event if you’d like to register and join us. :)
Winter Solstice / Yule — Full Circle
Sunday, December 21, 9:30am Pacific time
May you all have a sweet holiday season.
Riba
Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times has an article on the front page by Ana Ceballos (reporting from Washington) and Seema Mehta (reporting from Los Angeles) about how passing California’s Proposition 50 might not help change house control. I read the entire article, as usual, hoping against hope to find something about how wrong it is for us to be trying to rig our elections against Republicans through the 2030 election cycle.
Today I finally found something. (I should note I haven’t done any actual research, have only kept my eyes open whenever I read something about these gerrymandering efforts nationwide, hoping to read that someone else is disturbed about this, too). The last four paragraphs of the article give us the opinion of Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communications & Public Policy at Northwestern University who believes the fact that this “redistricting trend is gaining traction is part of a broader problem.”
“It is a symptom,” Nisbet says, “of this 20-year trend in increasing polarization and political tribalism.” He argues that “both parties are sacrificing democratic norms and the ideas of procedural fairness as well as a representative democracy for political gain.”
This is stated more clearly and succinctly than my arguments in my earlier post for Governor Newsom and California Democrats voting in tomorrow’s election. But his message is the same as mine—this is just so wrong.
“I am worried,” Nisbet says, “about what the end result” of these efforts to rig our elections will be. People on both sides of the aisle should be worried, too. Frankly, it terrifies me.
Dear Readers,
Well, I’d hoped (planned?) to have posted my first post while being 64 about three weeks before today. And, of course, to have already posted at least three posts by now, to become marvelously consistent throughout this coming year of mine. (Sigh. Grin.) I told myself, per the About page here, that I would not “hold myself” to needing each post to be a postcard, but I love this idea so much, and I think I stalled myself because of this, because I didn’t want to let go of my first post being a postcard.
So today I decided I needed to say hello to you even though I don’t have my first postcard ready to go yet. And yes, I know, it would have been fairly easy to use one of the postcards I’ve bought in the past. I have a nice one from San Francisco and a couple from my desert home. But I began a sketch for a postcard I plan to send to my (dear) friends Marylou and Richard. I used the new watercolor pencils my (dear) friend Moses gave me for Christmas. I have started on a roadrunner, though he is a bit goofy and his tail is too short. (I looked up the maximum size for a postcard online, then cut a sheet of the watercolor paper Moses gave me, too. But then it was hard to fit him properly and proportionately onto the little rectangle. I may have to rethink my methods!)
Still, even just beginning to draw the bird was a big delight. It was one of the first clear impulses I’ve had toward hands-on art in ages, and a good sign, I think, that my “plan” of not making myself do anything I don’t have to do may be beginning to bear fruit. I hope so. I want to tell you, too, that in recent weeks I have not been stuck in anger for days at a time. I’ve noticed this with gratitude and relief and a little bit of gentle pride in the last couple of days, so of course this morning I found myself stuck in self-hatred and anger, and was afraid I had jinxed it, this long-running streak. But somehow I have found my way back to softness again, so maybe not stuck. (Oh please oh please.) I have been truly kind at least three times since my second tantrum this morning. Toco madera.
I hope whatever you are being challenged by softens for you, too, even as you read this. (If you are like me, it is the turning toward myself with a more tender heart that can do the trick. May you each have an ease in this turning toward that I am not always able to find!) Thank you for reading my blog and for waiting for me. I believe I still owe you a song, too. :)
Wishing you all good things, my dear readers. Happy Beltane. Happy May Day. Happy turning of our world.
Tonight my eyes are getting heavy and my heart lighter. It’s the first day of my month, the eve of my birthday, the ending of my year of blogging and this last week or so of crazed posting before I turn sixty-four. Like other important eves of the year, this one has me looking back. My last birthday was hard. It was harder to be connected to myself than it is now. And I was completely cut off from my own home, but now I am tethered to it again, and the song of my white-crowned sparrows and the young mama hummingbird taking a bath and the new generation of lizards there in my courtyard are all part of the fabric of me again even though I am still living away from them. Now I get to visit. I get to know they don’t all think I’ve abandoned them anymore. And now I have lizard friends here, too, and my red-tailed hawk family, my two ravens and the Cooper’s hawk. I even have my mother’s white-crowned sparrows here, though they never serenade in the same way. Tonight I feel a little silly for not being able to let go of it but so glad, too, that I did not abandon my blog after all. And I feel hopeful for the year to come. And grateful, always, for each of you, coming by to read my work—and caring.
Oh, how funny. I was checking to confirm my latest post had indeed posted and happened to notice I had 21 posts last March (and “only” 19 this year in March). I must have been just as unable in 2021 to let go of meeting my posting commitment for the year (and just as swept away by the big changes and new demands in my life). I have to grin. Here I am feeling all funny about inundating my subscribers, and it’s not even the first time I have done this. I have zero memory of last year’s efforts. And, of course, I’m hopeful I can post my 64 posts while I’m 64 throughout the year, all nice and leisurely. But I bet I said that last year, too. Ha!
Thank you, as always, dear readers, for making room for me and all my foibles.
The heater cycles off, and in the welcome quiet I hear the crunch of my mother’s crackers and a house finch singing in Aida’s back yard. I savor the sounds and the absence of sounds and the bit of cool, fresh air from the sliding glass door I have not yet closed all the way. I hear the sound of my pen scratching across the page in my notebook. For this one suspended moment, all is right with my world, and I feel like a writer.
And another haiku-ish thing
just to apologize
to you
my dear readers
for inundating you
in my (silly?) hope
of still posting
63 while I am 63.
(Yes, I am counting
this one, too.)
No Holds Barred 