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Incorruptible Body
Back on Memorial Day weekend I started seeing news stories about an incorruptible Body drawing large crowds in Missouri. It seems an elderly nun had died 4 years ago, not embalmed and buried in a pine box was disinterred and found to be in pretty good shape. I was intrigued enough to find a story of her life and that had pictures and she did look pretty good, all things considering.
As I lay in bed Sunday night I decided to map out how far Gower was and if it was less than an hour I’d road trip over there. How often do you get to see a full on miracle?
I usually get up with the sun and I learned Gower was only 45 minutes from Leavenworth. The convent requested you not arrive before 8:00 am, people live there, for God’s sake, and they were going to inter her in a glass coffin in the afternoon so I really had my last chance to see her aur natural.
It was a pretty drive through the country. The loess hills of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas aren’t really appreciated for how beautiful they are. My first sign there was spectacle ahead was an LED light sign saying watch for stopped traffic in the middle of nowhere.
There was parking in a field across the street and a long line snaking out of the entrance when I arrived at 8:00. It definitely had a carnival vibe with volunteers pointing where to park and volunteer fire department directing traffic. People were excited to ask where you came from but it was mostly Kansas and Missouri with a smattering of Iowans.
The line started to move a little after 8:00. I listened in on the folks around me. There was a group older Filipino ladies behind me who had been on a lot of pilgrimages and visited other incorruptibles. They were pretty charming as they talked about their adventures on the tour bus to Petra. General impression was “it’s hot there”.
Ahead of me was a Catholic mom and her teen and grown kids. They had a lot of talk about Catholic schools and the brother who didn’t make the trip, apparently because he smokes a lot of weed.
There were a lot of canopies with water and fruit and donation jars for area churches. Mostly staffed by big families of conservative dressed kids. Not a lot of solicitation but some QR codes to support the cause. The newly built chapel which led to all the fuss looked sharp. Before you entered there were teen girls with skirts and scarves for the bare legged and bare shouldered. Yoga pants count as bare legged I learned. It was hot so I had worn shorts but I wasn’t offered a skirt.
Sister Mary Willhemina Lancaster had a compelling story even before she died. She was born in 1924 and grew up in a Black Catholic family and when her Catholic school segregated her dad started their own.
She became a nun in the oblate order and at 76 started the order in Gower. This might be a good time to mention I am going to post a couple of pictures of the body.
After the womenfolk were appropriately clothed we entered the chapel where folks mostly followed the admonishment on the sign to be quiet. There were some super geriatric Knights of Columbus complete with sword and sash as an honor guard and also serving as ushers.
I’d seen pictures in some of the stories so I wasn’t surprised to see a pretty good looking corpse. I don’t know what the typical decomposition is in 4 years but I think you’re mostly bones at that point. I watched season 1 of Dexter and a two year old corpse was bones and stringy meat, assuming the show runners did a little research.
People were coming up in groups and families. It hasn’t struck me that I was the only one who had arrived solo. People were kissing her face and heads and draping her with rosaries and medallions, sometimes a goodly string of them. Everyone would kneel and the usher would take a photo with someone’s camera in a posed kind of way. People stuck to the 45 second rule posted without a lot of promoting. There was a lot of emotion in the room.
At my turn I took some rushed photos and kneeled for a bit. I might have tried to pray, I was more taking it all in then putting it out there. 15 seconds tops, was plenty for me.
After the visit I went to the gravesite and got my teaspoon of grace diet. There was a pretty good sized hole it was hard to reach the bottom. There was another Filipino lady just shoveling it in a bag. She got admonished for breaking the teaspoon rule but she said she was with a group so they let her have a few more solid scoops.
I went over to St Joseph and went for a bike ride and hike on trails, the waterfront and downtown. It was a cool and surreal Memorial Day.
So what does it all mean? Was it a miracle? As I get older I get less and less interested in deciding what I believe about things. Things just are, regardless of what I believe. The folks I was with, without exception treated it as miraculous. Even with the crass and objectified relic hunting it was a sincere expression of belief and kind of beautiful.
There was nothing I saw that was incompatible with a miracle. An admirable life of someone who appeared worthy of esteem and an incorruptible Body. When I talked to my sister who is crazy for the miraculous and my Catholic coworker who is pretty devout it was easy to convey I bore witness to a miracle.
But also I suspect that corpse deteriorate on a bell curve. Probably moisture content and exposure to oxygen, insects and who knows what else are drivers of variability. Some corpses decompose very quickly and some very slowly and most at the typical rate. We note the exceptional and the countless typical examples are not noted. I felt no need to research, hypothesize or explain. Just to bear witness to a phenomenon I had proximity too that interested me
When I told my brother about it he suggested vampirism. I didn’t argue against that either. There was a Christian rock song in the 80’s called Renaissance Man that had these lines: ” How does it help you feed the poor? How does it help you love your wife? Tell me Renaissance Man…” Those questions have stuck with me and what I believe or don’t believe about the apparently miraculous don’t really mean that much.
Holiday Letter 2022
It’s a great building, a conversion of an old Jewish temple. One of the coolest buildings in town in a town with a lot of cool buildings. It’s the first time I’ve lived alone for more than a few months. I like it more than I thought I would. Gives me a lot of time to reflect which I was short on for the nine years I served on the Columbia City Council which I wrapped up last year leading to the big changes. In general, it was nice to rip the band aid off and be done with Columbia. Between the brutality of political life and the toll of working with homeless folks it had started to get to me. Getting away and being in a new place doing new things was just what the doctor ordered. If I had stayed in Columbia I would have been pulled into more drama and been put upon do more hard stuff for free, then I feel like doing at this point in my life.
It’s been a little while since I’ve done a holiday letter, but I want to get back in the swing of blogging in 2023 and this seems like a good start. The beginning of the year found me starting a new life in Leavenworth Kansas. I had moved here in November to take a job as the Executive Director of a domestic violence and sexual assault service center. I kept my house in Columbia, Missouri which is about three hours away and I make it back to visit about once a month or so. I got a nice two-bedroom apartment a short walk from work.
So, asides from work my life is pretty quiet. I walk a lot. One of the first things I did is get a list of the Leavenworth Parks and walk to them all. There are some nice ones. Haven Park has mountain bike trails that are fun to hike on, even though the woods are pretty scrubby. Veterans Park has some good trails but it’s on the other side of town, so I don’t get over there much. Three Mile Trail and the River Walk are my go-to walks I do several times a week. I like hikes that start at my front door and a walk through town and down the River Walk to Three Mile Creek and then take the trail to the end and circle back home or walk it backwards if I need more steps is my go-to walk.
It’s a beautiful day for December so I walked down 7th Street to Three Mile Creek to the River Walk and then down Esplanade to 2nd and back was a nice walk and a little longer and may become my new one. I had some back pain so I took the day off and thought a long walk might help me stretch out. I’ve put on a lot of weight this year and am looking to get a lot more active and do some portion control and drop a few pounds.
My job has been fairly stressful until recently. The nonprofit was a bit of a fixer-upper to put it mildly. It had closed down for about a year and never really got straightened back out after reopening four years ago. It took a lot of work to get the accounting straightened our, fix the grant reporting system and bring in solid management staff. We still have a lot of turnover but we are stable if still a bit fragile. I have repaired our relationship with our funders and been out in the community a lot, so donations are up. We’ve improved the data collection but that still needs some work. We are close to getting certified which will be a big accomplishment. We have a few things left to do from our site visit as far as rewriting our rulers to be more trauma informed and paring down our fairly onerous intake procedures. I’m kind of excited about having the space to improve programming.
There has been so much catch up and back-office repair I haven’t been able to focus as much on process improvements. I was finally able to fill our contract counselor position so it’s nice to have another clinical heavy hitter on the team. I hope to start doing some motivational interviewing training for my staff next month. I wrote myself into a COVID grant to do that but haven’t had the time to make it happen. I am also looking forward to doing an annual report. We’ve not done one in many years, and I didn’t have the data or accounting nailed down to do one last year.
Mostly I’ve been pushed at work. Have had very little time to choose my own adventure kind of activities and have been keeping the wolves at bay. I actually have some discretionary time and some ability to slow things up a little and focus more on selfcare. I want to go to Italy in June so I need to get in much better shape to properly enjoy it. Walking more and getting back on the ebike are my big plans and adding some inside workouts when the weather isn’t cooperating.
Besides work I am active in the Chamber of Commerce. I’ve been on the Board of Directors since January which is pretty good for being a new resident. This January I’ll start on the Executive Committee as the Vice Chair. I’m also plugging in on their strategic plan. I’ve also gotten active with the Leavenworth County Human Services Committee and am spearheading their strategic planning efforts. I hope to do it in pieces over the next year working in small groups with rotating members. We rewrote the mission statement, so vision is next.
I’ve also been a Chamber Ambassador, so I go to all the ribbon cuttings. It’s a good way to meet people and find out what is happening in the community. I’ve read research that having lots of weak ties is one of the components of a happy life so I’m doing good on that front for a newbie.
I’ve done a bit of regional travel. I’m planning on wrapping things up here in a little less than a year after I fulfill my two-year commitment. I’m not really cut out to be an executive director. I was a reluctant administrator much preferring direct service and clinical work and clinical management and training but once you’ve been an executive director it’s really hard to get a job doing anything else. It’s been satisfying fixing a broken keystone nonprofit but it’s not how I want to spend my days and the small “p” politics of small-town organizing is a lot to put up with for not having a particular passion for the work or the community. I like them both, but I have a lot of interests and I like a lot of places.
So, I’ve spent some time checking out Lawrence, Topeka and Wichita as well as Atchison which is a bit closer. I’ve done all the hikes within a half hour drive and am working on the hour drive hikes. I’ve also checked out the Flint Hills and Osawatomie. I have concert tickets in Hayes Kansas to see an alt country band, 49 Winchester, in May and my grants manager is getting married in Wichita so I’ll be back down there. The Capitol with the famous John Brown mural is a must see. The John Brown Museum in Osawatomie also has some cool artifacts.
My friend Harry came out and we went to Lawrence to see mewithoutyou on their farewell tour. It was an awesome show and I saw some shows with John. Most notably the Firewater Festival with Blackberry Smoke, the Old 97’s, and 49 Winchester giving memorable performances. I did a float trip down the Missouri from Leavenworth to the next river town. I also did Hartsburg to Jeff City later in the year which was pretty fun. For my vacation I flew into Detroit over Labor Day and caught the Detroit Jazz Festival. I came early and stayed late to see my friends in the homeland.
And that friends has pretty much been my year. Mostly I’ve tried to live a humble and quiet life. I’ve given up big ambitions and focused on what’s in front of me. Overall, I’m pleased with the results. The ego gets going a bit, but I’ve gotten better about keeping it in check and will keep working on it. I’m going to stay on much the same path in the coming year but take better care of myself while doing it. By the end of the year, I should be wrapping things up and packing my things back to my house in Columbia. From there its epic road trip and finding a quiet place to hole up and write a book. I hope to blog more to keep me in the writing mode.
Festivals
It’s been over a year since I published a blog post. A lot has gone on since then. I did a pretty good job documenting my epic road trip last year and then, nothing.
After I made it home I fell into a bit of a funk. I went on the trip to find some direction and a sense of purpose. The one I got was not as inspiring as I’d imagined it would. Living a life and abandoning any sense of destiny. Be humble and find some useful work.
That led to job hunting which I’d never been a big fan of. I don’t like self promotion or rejection and job hunting is a lot of both. I’ll spare you the near misses, disappointments and conundrums. The long and the short of it is I agreed to be the Executive Director of a struggling domestic violence shelter in Leavenworth Kansas. Good, meaningful work in one of the fields I have some passion and expertise and for that I’m grateful.
I had to relocate. As the faithful reader knows I own a modest house in Columbia Missouri. John and Flow agreed to look after it and pay the note while I’m away. I went back to van life for a couple weeks until I found a cool apartment. It’s in an old Jewish Temple, a short walk to work and close to downtown.
I’ve been in Leavenworth about a year and settled in quite nicely. I made a two year commitment and absent any personal life changes that feels about right to stabilize my organization, bank some money and be ready for my post career life.
I’ve also been at my job long enough to earn some time off. I took a bit longer than a week and made my COVID delayed bi-annual trip to the homeland and to see the Detroit Jazz Festival. I’m not a huge jazz fan but my friend Trevor is a super fan and his enthusiasm is infectious.
I decided to fly and rent a car so I could make sure I saw all the family and visit some friends in Toledo. I did all of those things and it was nice to reconnect and see how people are growing and changing. I also did an afternoon at the Toledo Museum of Art.
I did a slow walk through their ancient art collection. I’d been seeing this meme about how ancient Egyptian history is like 3,000 years long and 1,000 years after it began their were ancient Egyptian archeologists exploring old tombs. They had about 2,500 years of artifacts in the museum and it was amazing how consistent it is thematically and in style.
We stayed in a short term rental in Mexican Town. It was a little further out then we’ve stayed in the past but prices are rising. It’s been nice to see Detroit on the rise. That hit home when we had lunch on the patio of the Detroit Athletic Club. Trevor had gotten to know this former Chrysler executive who invited us to lunch. He has served on the board of a number of foundations and organizations that were instrumental in Detroit’s revitalization and with the City as a backdrop he ran through a lot of that history.
The festival itself was really great. We caught some select elements versus catching the bulk of it as we usually did. Less was definitely more. Most memorably was Harriet Tubman, a Doom Jazz outfit. I only caught a few of their songs as I jumped over from Hart Plaza to a side stage but it was really different and really fun. The electric guitar in kind of a metal style was really interesting.
Chucho Valdez was the artist in residence and his set was good. There was a jazz vocalist I really liked and a South African pianist in his 90’s that I liked a lot as well. Trevor and I walked back from downtown one night and that was fun to see more of the city at night.
As a nonjazz fan the thing I like most about the Festival is the diversity and people watching. It truly draws folks of all races from every walk of life from international jet setters to homeless folks. It’s a beautiful thing. Did I mention it’s free?
It’s another festival that got me blogging again. My brother John is the other person whose love of music gets me out to see shows. We’ve seen Blackberry Smoke a few times, Drive By Truckers and some other bands. He likes alt country and southern rock that’s not Lynard Skinnard. When tickets went on sale for Fire Water, Whiskey Myers southern rock festival went on sale I decide to get a ticket and meet up with John since it’s outside of KC.
It’s not really my thing. I’d only heard of Blackberry Smoke and The Old 97’s but I listened to a Whiskey Myers album and decided to go. I came down Thursday after work taking a circuitous route on the back roads. I had my Google maps set to avoid highways from my trip to the homeland so it took me an interesting route. We’re starting to see a hint of color, mostly the yellows. Cottonwoods and Ash are starting the change.
I live in the loess hills by the Big Muddy and enjoy the topography. With a little flat mostly bean fields I went from the loess hills to the Flint Hills which are equally pretty. It was good to see John. I go to Columbia once a month or so to check in, get some extra socialization and go to my book club. I missed last month because I had to work so it was nice to catch up.
Yesterday we got up and walked the first couple of miles of the Iron Hills Trail. It was a typical rails to trails and more for bicyclists but it was good to be out of the dew and get some steps in. I’ve been trying to explore the region since I’m expecting to be a short timer here in Kansas and the Flint Hills are definitely on my list of things to do.
After the hike we caught breakfast at the only diner in town. It’s themed after trains and there are a couple of toy trains mounted from the roof. Reviews say they are loud and get turned on by request. Portions were good and the bacon excellent. On the weekends they have a breakfast bar which is definitely worth it. I met the owner and he was a retired railroad guy who bought the building on a foreclosure. He opened a cafe at the request of the town and it seemed a hub of social life in Oz.
After breakfast we went to the John Brown historical museum and Battle of Ossawatamie site. Awesome place. It was his brother in law’s place who was a nonviolent Abolitionist and JB and sons stayed there for a time. In addition to the cabin lots of cool JB artifacts including his gun, allegedly a sword (I saw his sword in Topeka at the Capitol), his telescope and his travel trunk. There’s a great statue and it’s an old enough museum where promotional materials are now historical artifacts. People used to be cooler is my general impression.
We stopped by the war memorial as well. A Trump flag flying across the street shows how times have changed in Oz. We returned to the hotel and napped and we were ready for the festival.
It was an interesting crowd and we saw some great shows. People were really nice. Not a lot of diversity but for a country music/southern rock crowd they seemed pretty open minded. We saw about as many lesbian couples as folks in Trump gear.
Nikki Lane was really great. Put on a great show and seemed very personable. The Old 97’s didn’t seem to fit in but it was the most enjoyable show of theirs I’d seen. Blackberry Smoke is consistently great. If you’ve not seen them you’re really missing out. I’ve seen them three times fairly recently and it was a long day so I couldn’t Garner a lot of enthusiasm for the show.
Day 2 we caught breakfast at the train place again. They have a buffet on weekends and it was good. We checked out the historic bridges, the Congregational Church, and the Potawottamie Trail of Tears monument. We tried to go to the Louisburg Cider Mill but the lines were long because of their festival. We got some giant barbecue sandwiches and went to the festival.
There was no one I was super excited to see but it was still fun. Quaker City Night Hawks exceeded my expectations. I liked the Reed Southall Band as well. I had lost my enthusiasm for Whiskey Myers after hearing an old song of theirs about the Confederate flag. They didn’t play it in their first hour and we ran out of steam and didn’t stick it out to see if they were still playing it.
Overall it was a lot of fun and good to hang out with John. I had hoped to put some pictures but they’re too deep in my camera roll so excuse the wall of text.
Epic Road Trip #15 (The Final Leg)
Had an expensive fastfood type breakfast at a diner in Granby. Did some laundry and found dispersed camping in the National Forest. I took a not so great site lower on the mountain since I had the donut on. I walked up the road to the High Lonesome Trailhead and hiked that to the cabin at the end.
The next morning I drove into Winter Park, I think and got my tire fixed. Had another expensive fastfood type breakfast and checked out the local thrift store. It was $44 for the flat fix, which was steep but since the other was free I made out ok.
I backtracked to head north and picked up a hitchhiker and took her to Sulphur Springs before her Food bank milk spoiled. It was my third hitchhiker of the trip which made up for my two rides and one for the hundreds of times I’d hitchhiked in my youth.
I drove up north through a large burned area of the Rout National Forest. It was surreal seeing the total devastation which read like an indictment of our poor forest management practices.
I stopped at the big wildlife management area and saw it was moose country. There was no free or cheap camping or hotels in the Walden area and all the restaurants looked like the same pricey fastfood like stuff I was coming to hate about Colorado so I pushed on to Wyoming.
I found a hike in the Medicinebow National Forest on a rails to trails trail. There were a lot of ponds from the borrow pits making the railway and I saw a lot of Willow and some moose droppings so I camped in a burned out area and got up in the cold predawn for a morning hike to see Moose, but no luck.
I drove into Laramie and filled up on cheap Wyoming gas. I drove to the Lincoln statue which is at an elaborate rest area celebrating the Lincoln Autoway which was the first cross country auto route. There were allegedly trailheads there but I couldn’t find them. All the trails had a $5.00 day use fee so I drove on up to Cheyenne.
Cheyenne has a great municipal park with a botanical gardens and a swimming lake. Had a nice lunch at a Filipino restaurant and looked at my options. When I went to Cheyenne I’d decided to turn towards home. I did Yellowstone and Grand Tetons a few years ago and Devil’s Tower at 250 miles away didn’t seem worth it.
With nearly a full tank of gas I figured I could head back to Colorado. Drove down to Fort Morgan where I found a reasonably priced hotel in the High Plains. I hiked a riverside trail along the Platte which wasn’t great.
I headed west and had lunch in Nebraska before turning south into Kansas. I had talked to my friend Trevor that morning about our bi-annual trip to the Detroit Jazz Festival and he reminded me of Nicodemus so I decided to head there. Passed a memorial to the Sand Creek Massacre and related tragedies some of which had happened nearby. I found some free camping east of their in Hill City at a municipal park. It’s hot in the flatlands and I slept poorly.
The towns along 24 each had little historical parks and signs about their settlement. Nicodemus is a National Park site being settled by former slaves. I took a solo guided tour with a ranger and we had a great dialogue on racism and city development.
Nicodemus had a strong start but got screwed out of their railroad stop by the white developer who had helped found the town but pulled some shenanigans to get the stop in one of his white towns. In addition to a good breakfast place the ranger told me about a dugout Nicodemus residents had made outside of Stockton which was a sundown town. It was in good shape and I don’t recall having seen one for as many as I’d read about in westerns growing up.
I drove to Grand Junction and got another hotel as it was hot again. Had some so so barbecue and another crappy hike on a riverwalk this one the Republican River. Then I drove home. It was nice to be back. Nine weeks on the road, ten states, 5,000 miles, 5 nights at friend’s places, 4 nights at hotels and never paid for camping. It was a sweet trip and a great adventure.
Epic Road Trip #11: Jimez Mountains
For full disclosure I have left the Jimez and moved on to Chaco Canyon, one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. I’m on a back country hike and I’ve settled in some shade under an overhang/shallow cave and I am going to wait out some of the heat.
At the end of my last post I was camping in the Santa Fe National Forest trying to hike this elusive Civil War Trail. I ultimately found it and it was closed on a Saturday. I have never known a trail to keep banker’s hours or worked so hard to do something I wasn’t that excited about. Google maps took me to another trail which was not open for the public and I drove to the Jimez a day easier then I’d planned.
You have to pass through Los Alamos which was weird having a military checkpoint but I ended up spending enough time in the area it just became life. They have great dispersed camping in the greater Bandelier National Monument.
I spent a day at Bandelier proper which is very cool. Long house ruins and cliff dwellings. Lots of tourists but I’ve been isolated enough to find them all charming.
I took a long drive to the second site. It had a nice unimproved trail and there were cliff dwellings and some petroglyphs. It was an interesting climb up the Mesa and didn’t see too many people.
I did enjoy the prairie dogs and saw some elk. There is a stand of old growth Ponderosa pine but it’s a manicured stand and didn’t feel like a forest. I climbed one of the hills and there were a lot of wildflowers especially wild irises which I’ve seen a lot of on this trip.
I went back to camp and the next morning I went to Valles Caldera at my friend Rodger’s suggestion. It’s a beautiful valley surrounded by the hills of the long extinct volcano that formed it. It’s a fairly new National Park (2015) and feels more like a cattle ranch (which it still is by statute, when there’s not a drought) then a National Park.
I hiked a short nature trail and drove down to Los Alamos for a vegetable rice bowl which was cheap and excellent (Tiger Bowl). I did the Los Alamos walking tour and learned about life during the making of the first Atomic bomb. There are a few original buildings, some settler stuff and some ancestral Pueblo ruins; all right downtown.
I meditated at the Unitarian church and grabbed a Gatorade out of their Gaia Box. It was raining so I went to Starbucks and enjoyed a coffee and some WiFi and it was well worth three dollars and a poor nights sleep.
It was still raining a bit and their was a nice rainbow which I took as God’s promise he wouldn’t destroy us with atomic bombs. I picked up a quart of oil and made the clerk go look at the rainbow. She was glad she did.
After another night at my usual spot I drove down through Santa Fe and south to La Cinguella Petroglyphs. It’s on BLM land and it’s pre-columbian and a huge collection. I scrambled over the rocks awestruck for 5 hours before I was done in and didn’t see them all.
I got some great Guatemalan food down the road. A steak with a chili sauce and all the fixings. Then I went to REI and got a new pair of Chacos. My old pair were hanging together by a thread as I’d had them for more then a decade of hard wear. Coincidentally I broke the new pair in at Chaco Canyon. Having some tread is amazing.
Speaking of those Chacos. I’ve forgotten how unpleasant the afternoon heat is and I’m getting stuff setting here so I will get back to the adventure and catch you up later. I’ll have to climb a bluff to get a signal tomorrow so maybe I’ll have time to catch the narrative up to the present before then.
I got hot and tired at Chaco and got a hotel room. Going to Aztek today and camping in Bizi badlands tonight.
A Paean for Ganesh
I have a handful of poems I’ve written over the past several years I need to get up here. I think this one might be the latest. I’m still reacquainting myself with WordPress and exploring its functionality on my phone and tablet. I hope to get back to blogging regular and having more photos, audio, links to media and the like. Just archiving my existent material will be a project. And of course it competes with all my other projects and responsibilities and my general commitment to keeping some slack in my life.
Anyway, I like this piece. I feel like I wrote it in the spring of 2016 which was an interesting time. I was struggling with Council and career and added a relationship which was a lot to balance and a bit more than I could manage as gracefully as I would have liked. There was a bit of madness to the whole thing and my filter went down completely. I tried to just be wiser and kinder instead of bringing it back. Although I didn’t quite pull it off out of that time a lot of good arose including, I hope, this piece.
A Paean to Ganesh in Gratitude for Blessings Already Received
An Elephant Never Forgets
An Elephant never forgets
When he is all alone
And often left at home
An elephant never forgets…
That elephants were made to live in love
Oh elephants were made to live in love
In a tribe I can’t describe
On a plane I can’t explain
Oh elephants were made to live in love…
Because elephants have strong moms
Oh elephants have strong moms
A matriarch to lead, caress, defend and feed
The little ones who came,
The sick, the old, the lame
Because elephants have strong moms!
So that elephants are made to live in love
Oh elephants were made to live in love
In a tribe I can’t describe
On a plane I can’t explain
Oh elephants were made to live in love….
the more you do the harder it is to sleep
Its been a weird week here at Leslie Lane. City Council has slowed a bit and our meetings have been getting out at 9ish. There were some appointments to boards and commissions and I had done a bit of politicking and wrestling with all of the issues with their various players and demands on information processing and decision making it leaves me more then a bit spun when I get home. The last 2 meetings I haven’t had dinner before because of a big lunch and rushed for time so I’ve stopped at Taco Bell on the way home. Not a good habit to get into, I’m sure the soda is not helping the can’t sleep after Council phenomenon.
So didn’t really sleep Monday night, made it through a bustling and involved Tuesday. My Co-Occurring Disorders groups have gone up to another level. Its close to the only clinical thing I do and the clients treasure it because its the only time we get to interact and I have been a tour de’ force of random facts, inspiration, and some critical knowledge on getting better. Its been very engaging and very fun and was again this week.
I only had a 1/2 hour after work before my next thing but came home and Flow had made a nice dinner, ham and mashed potatoes with a pineapple/cranberry compote. Quite delish and very much appreciated. I ate that and rode my bike (I am still an every day bicycle commuter though I am close to getting Dad’s truck out of probate) over to Lange Middle School and met with a homeowner’s association. I was only marginally sweaty for day 25 of 90 plus temps (the record is 31 and we are going to crush it in the worst drought of my lifetime). I introduced myself and fielded questions. It was an older crowd and I am sideways to most of them with our job creation scheme that involves a blight decree of their really nice neighborhood and my unabashed support of changing the trash to a roll cart system. But I explained my rationale and listened and we had a very nice dialogue and I remembered why I got into politics and it was fun.
I got home and went upstairs laid down to read a comic book (early 80s MoonKnight) read a page and passed out. I overslept the next morning which was today. I had an all staff training on suicide prevention which went very well. This is how the universe watches out for me. I have done these the last few years and have asked around on a fresh angle with no response. I come home from Taco Bell on Monday and there is a talking head on TV talking in depth about suicide prevention. Flow has a little job teaching suicide prevention classes and had all the materials. I bummed her QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) booklet and taught out of that and our newest policies. I also told the story of the Golden Gate Bridge I had heard just as I walked in the door. 1,400 people have jumped off the bridge with 14 survivors. A pretty lethal attempt and survivor interviews gives us a little insight into “completers” a group we know little about. 13 changed their mind about dying immediately after jumping. It demonstrates the ambivalence of suicidal folk. I didn’t share the 14th jumped again.
After work today I was pretty cashed. Had leftovers, just as yummy and got caught up on my email correspondence, most of it. I may answer one of my troubling emails on that committee thing. I like time stamps of 2:22 am and such and I’m still a little wired. Putting it down on virtual paper helps me get rid of the stuff and I might get some more winks tonight. My laptop gave me the low battery warning and it does not fuck around. It will shut down and I will lose my shit. It feels good to swear, between work and politics I self censor constantly.
So went to bed early and woke from a complex dream. I had gotten a new apartment and married the co-worker I have a crush on but she was on vacation for a coupe of weeks and sometimes morphed into my ex-wife. I was trying to settle in, make plans with friends but managed to get nothing done beyond blow someone off. She got home and I had forgotten about it had other plans I’d blown and was generally befuddled. We lay down in bed, had our first chaste kiss and then I needed to get something out of another room which was a long slow muddle in the dark and down some stairs I had forgot about. I had to be quiet as another co-worker lived next door and he has mentioned “sleep is hard to come by” for him. I ran into a female friend and we were making out until I remembered I had a wife in bed in the other room which is when I woke up. Weird huh? Well I’m getting low battery warnings better put this up. Good night faithful reader.
Decoration Day Weekend
Hello Faithful Reader,
I was just looking around for how to make the blog public again. With a few tweaks I think I can live with it being public. I was just looking and haven’t posted in almost a month. Maybe with knowing I have more readers again I will feel like posting. I feel like, and someone reaffirmed this is a time in my life worth documenting. Its Saturday night a little passed bedtime but I napped hard so I expect I will be staying up later then usual. It was good to sleep, certainly the most solid one in 2012. My thoughts have been rushing since January with the frenetic activity and deep thought of newly minted political life. Overall I am pleased.
I haven’t had a good nights sleep this week. Monday Council ran late with two hours of public comment on this controversial tax incentive/job creation thing we are doing. I didn’t get home until 11:30 and I was pretty wired. Probably should just start taking people on offers of beers afterwards as its pretty stimulating. I work the next morning though and don’t want to give up an evening to get a late night on Tuesday as I had thought I would do during the campaign.
Its hot on the first weekend of Summer. Mid 90s. Still mowed the front yard. We put in a scoop of cedar mulch, mostly Flow. Got the roses and mailbox beds and the beds along the privacy fence in back and a path to the compost and the dirt outside the back porch. Flow mulched the strawberries and garden beds with straw. I cultivated a little but have been hard pressed to do more then mow. I weed whipped the back and skipped mowing its been hot and dry. I mowed the front lawn, mostly because it was longer then the neighbors.
The girls in the basement apartment moved out and the owners have been scurrying around on projects. New neighbors. I thought I was going to start a community organizing project but there is a hitch with my intern starting and I want to involve someone else. I told a neighbor I would start in May but I’m not quite there.
Had about 800 pages of reading for the last Council meeting. All the usual stuff plus trend statements and data for Strategic Planning. We did small groups with Council and department heads and the like. Rotated groups and topics, it was interesting. Got to know a lot of folks. Been on a name learning tear.
Everything has a steep learning curve with all the background information and the level of detail to make informed decisions. I have been sideways with my base early on which makes for a bit of consternation. I also get a lot of positive feedback and bounce ideas off whoever which is fun. I’m going to start doing my prep reading in the dog park and getting feedback from the folks out there.
Didn’t do much with the nap and all. I went to the market and got a lot of stuff since I am helping Harry move next week and won’t be able to go. Got a nice deal on big fresh white onions, a giant purple cauliflower, asparagus (I was surprised at that), a couple of nice looking lettuces (everyone agreed this is pretty much the last week for that with the high temps), kohlrabi, some yellow turnips, kale, carrots, sweet cherries, a couple of big beautiful hybrid tomatoes (seconds even), and some trout for my luncheon tomorrow.
Made some fried cabbage for supper. Cabbage I got at the market last week, an onion with some of the green tops, some of the turnip greens, garlic scapes (I cut those earlier in the week), lightly toasted sesame seeds, fried in olive oil with a lot of crushed red pepper and a splash of Worcestershire. It was good and Flow made crab cakes and naan. We were pretty grateful because we have been living large.
I called in sick yesterday. Hadn’t slept right all week, a little free floating anxiety when I am supposed to be slumbering and stayed in bed late and felt sluggish and dumb. Couldn’t nap and slept poorly last night as well but I feel like my 2+ hour nap today was a break through. There’s been so much change with City Council, the new position at work which is learning a bunch of new programs and trying to wrap my head around a few defuse projects, plus adjusting to being an everyday bicycle commuter.
I have advanced the probate situation and have a meeting on Thursday to sign affidavits and go forward so it will be nice to get the truck on the road again. Going on a float trip on Monday. Trevor, a friend of his, Jesse and myself going South out of Coopers Landing to Millersburg I think. I’ve never done passed Coopers and am looking forward to seeing something new.
Jeff and Vicki, Trevor and Lisa and Harry are coming over for trout. Reminds me I need to look up how to roast garlic. I am going to baste the trout in a yogurt sauce with roasted garlic, lemon, parsley, and chervil, maybe a little mace. I am also going to do the cauliflower in a foil pack with olive oil, turmeric and nutritional yeast. Might grill the asparagus as well. I think I will put one of the trout packs in the freezer. I got 3 packs (6 fish) and Brian isn’t coming and Lisa is a vegetarian so probably can get by with 2 like the trout lady suggested.
Election Day
Well at long last it is finally here. I woke up early like I needed to for the plan. I was groggy, sleep has been hard to come by and last night was no exception. Up late doing stuff, mind turning, fitful sleep. I made coffee and grabbed my stainless steel water bottle out of the car pleased with my forethought for remembering where it was in the car and remembering to grab it, not going to have time to drink it at home got to get rolling to glad hand after at the polling place after voting. It wasn’t until the bottle heated up and I dropped it spilling hot coffee all over my hand that I remembered I don’t drink coffee in the stainless steel water bottle but in the stainless steel coffee cup. No harm no fowl. Good coffee though, a light roast Rwandan I roasted yesterday, quite yummy. Almost a nutty flavor.
I got my shower, shave and dressed as fancy I get, pretty much, my nice shirt, my first silk tie I bought new, perhaps all the way back in the 80s. It was late 80s so not totally narrow but narrow on the top and flared out at the bottom, not like they make ties now but passable.
I’d gotten vetoed on taking Fido to campaign with me. Last year, regular readers may recall I took Fido to the polls. It was the day after Dad had died and we were coming back from the dog park. We’d opened up our hearts to some sweet old ladies (sisters I recall) and we had all talked about losing our Dads. At the polling place I saw Henry from across the street (he’s working another polling place this year) and he offered his condolences and me and all the poll workers all talked about losing our dads. I never felt more part of a community then to walk out of my house and find solace in the comfort of my neighbors.
I’m very emotional today, crying as I write this. The campaign has been a wonderful distraction as the one year anniversary approaches but I am melting down today, just a bit. Its normal politically astute folks have told me. Excuse me while I go find a tissue.
That’s better. Breathe in Breathe out. So I walked down to the polls, sans Fido. A neighbor I had spoken to at length yesterday (for the third time, I had won her vote, Bill Pauls came by and stole it, I spoke at length to her husband trying to get a yard sign placement when he told me about Bill, but won her back yesterday on the final pass). She pushed the edge of talking about the campaign in the sacred neutrality of the polling place. I told her I called it a “personal project” when I talked about the campaign at work.
I did the same thing at City Council meeting when I spoke up for some neighbors who wanted a zoning change delayed to gather more neighbors. I publicly commented in favor of the tabling at one of their all’s request and talked about how I had canvassed the neighborhood for a “personal project”. As I was leaving I was set upon by some J-school students for an interview and none of them knew I was a candidate and had a fair shot at being on the Council next meeting. It was funny. (tabling passed 5-1, only dissenter was our current rep who I think is bent because I’ve been campaigning against his comment that the Ward was “apathetic”. He also isn’t trying to develop a cordial working relationship with me as the rest of the council appears to be. I also obliquely referenced that in my comments which probably didn’t help.)
The woman I worked so hard to capture her vote voted absentee yesterday (that’s at least 3 of those plus my own so I’m getting at least 4 votes). Another neighbor was there, I had gone by her house a couple of times but she never answered the door. She’s super-religious and felt she was voting for Pauls, I would have if I was her in spite of a personal connection which she made an oblique reference to herself, so perhaps I did win her vote. I’ve done a good turn or two for the community and there will be some folks who don’t normally vote showing up today.
Seeing yourself on the ballot is pretty cool. These things are close so I chose myself. I got my sticker and put my ballot in the ballot machine.
I went outside and stepped past the “no electioneering past this point” sign and should have slipped on my “Michael Trapp for Ward 2 City Council” badge and started thanking people for coming out but just couldn’t do it. As I told my advisers in an email “I’m not really a friendly and outgoing person. I just learned to act like one and I can’t do it this morning”. The church is my neighbor and they have a sign saying “no trespassing except for church business”. I respect that. The counter-argument is that by providing access to the polls that extends to electioneering on site but it was all to ambiguous, it was early, I felt weird and I am tired, not just tired but weary to the bone.
So I walked home took off my tie and dress shirt and wrote this blog. I am going to make a second pot of coffee and put some time in the garden, perhaps nap if my racing mind allows, and probably take the dog for a walk. I’ve earned a little R&R. Hell I’m going to put shorts on. I closed my email with “If I lose by 3 votes I will feel silly and self-indulgent”. True dat. If I get a chance to do this again I will take a friend with me to buck me up.
NA step 2 part 2
Hmmm, just tried to link to the cyber recovery page after writing a little intro but it just cancelled out my post. Dang. Well this is part of a project to translate the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous into simple concrete English with all hearing references removed. I hope to finish by Sunday in spite of being horridly busy.
http://www.cyberrecovery.net/NA/StepTwo.html OK, there’s the link, it came up when I was trying to paste in the actual language of the step. Let me try that again.
“We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Some people say church is for people are afraid of Hell. Knowing God is for people whose life has been Hell. Faith is the gift we get for accepting the truth. If the second step is hard we should look at what we think is important or valuable. If we feel we are not getting important stuff or it doesn’t work well we should change. We want to change. Step 2 is about finding and using extra power to change. Believing is knowing what we think is important and what we hate. Believing helps us get what we want in the future. Being weak and feeling trapped makes us value not feeling pain. When we start to love and do God’s will we can still have bad things happen because what we think is valuable hasn’t changed yet. Changing what we think is right as God changes our life helps us “come to believe”.
One way to figure out what we really want is to put in words what we want in the future. It helps to believe in what will help us get what we really want. When we know the future can be good without limit it changes how we see. Many people try to clearly remember what they wanted out of life in early recovery. Then when it happens we will be happy. As we grow in recovery new dreams come. When we tell these dreams to others in recovery we grow and become stronger. Sometimes our dreams help other people instead of us.
We see more when we learn from what others have done. We become more free and helpful to others when we train, study, and work on what we are learning. A part of changing is enjoying how we have changed and seeing it help others. It helps when we can Give it up to God when we believe God can’t help us enough. The belief that God can’t help us is old or not thought out or only a piece of the truth. Most of us are surprised we can change what we believe about God. D0ing drugs hurt us more then health and legal problems but have hurt the way we think. If you put in wrong thoughts you get out wrong thoughts and actions. Because we were afraid we did not slow down and think clearly. We get used to thining wrongly and believing bad things will happen.
When we did drugs we thought the world was bad and we continue to think that. Healthy relationships are an important part of life. Being healthy means we have healthy places to go, healthy things in our life, and healthy people to be around. As we change we can feel weird as we change how we deal with people. Just because something feels uncomfortable doesn’t mean its wrong. We have to ask other people in recovery about stuff that feels uncomfortable. We feel uncomfortable as we change how we look at the world but haven’t gotten used to it yet. If we are sensitive and respectful to God we can learn to see things in a new way. We stop having beliefs that are to small to work.
Sometimes we make stuff by really believing things we knew were true but we couldn’t really believe. Addicts are sensitive to the truth even when they deny it or hide from it. Growing God shows us that we make ourselves and how we make ourselves affects other people. Staying close to God keeps us in our new beliefs. Our beliefs get stronger and more a part of us.
Things that don’t work for us take time to get rid of but beliefs won’t change by themselves. Its easier to go looking for a belief we may have been interested in for a while. We can try to find something that we feel good about and try to learn more about it. Many people find that what they believed as children will work now. Being confused by using drugs might have kept our beliefs from working good. Our new beliefs are not only easier but work better and we get more of what we want. The need for beliefs that work is stronger then being afraid. Once we belief this step it will stick with us and we won’t have to go back and do it again. Thinking about stuff all the time was a way we used to get stuff we thought we wanted. We had problems because we needed so much. Thinking about drugs all the time was about feelings and not meeting our needs. People could see we were crazy. Every time we give up an old fear our freedom and responsibility increase. As we give up our old fears our faith grows. Faith gives us more energy and allows us to do more with what we have. We are clear headed and relaxed.
Fear is false beliefs that we think are real and it is important to addicts. Fear keeps us from doing stuff that hurts us or makes our lives worse. When we are sane fear keeps us in a place where we are comfortable and our feelings won’t get hurt. When we were addicts much of what we believed was crazy. In other areas some things we think we know are not true but it doesn’t matter. Many things are in the middle and sometimes it matters if we are right. Figuring out what is true or not is a lot of work that we have to do every day. Freedom in recovery is comparing what we get to what we lost from being an addict. The longer we are clean the more important the truth is and that is why we keep going to meetings and working the steps. When we were using drugs we were afraid of getting caught and we may have continued to be afraid in early recovery. Maybe our real secret was we built our own cage out of fear? We replace fear with faith. We start to work the steps and we learn to feel pain without using drugs. When we remember the old craziness we learn to face the truth and get better.
Well that’s about all I have this afternoon. Looks like I won’t finish step 2 this week. I will try to get it done on my vacation. I am looking forward to not being maddeningly busy all the time. The only reason I could do this is I am supposed to be doing something else and I’m not. I’ve lost a little focus with a little “short term ego depletion” from all the challenging stuff I’ve been doing.
Multiconstruct 
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