One sentence.

 I am currently reading a book by Timothy Snyder, a booked called "Our Malady."  He is a professor, a historian, a writer and a profound thinker.  It is mainly about the health care system in the U.S.  Or the lack of such a system.

Snyder was very seriously ill in the very beginning of 2020, almost died from an infection in his liver that went undetected for weeks. The book is taken from diary entries he made while thinking he would die and hoping he would live. It's a small book, could be read in two hours, but the indictment of the health care system is spot-on and deserves a lot of thought.

The one thing that got me in the first ten pages of the book was what he was thinking about concerning his two kids as he faced  his possible death. His kids were young, probably around ten years old, so his life with them was still very new. He was, of course, integral to their lives as they were to his.  He states this so perfectly:  "Every bit of their existence involved the expectation of my presence."

I am at the stage where my life is no longer integral to my kids' lives.  I don't think that's a negative thing, it is simply a fact. Actually, I think it's a positive statement because Jenn and Gabe no longer have the "expectation of my presence" in that kind of profound, unwavering way. It's a relief to know that once I am no longer alive their existence will not diminish because of my absence. They are adults and no longer need a parent; my presence is not needed.  Yes, they will probably miss me (well, one hopes) but their lives will go on quite nicely.

For some reason, that one sentence distilled the parent-child dynamic for me. And since what I do on this blog is share my thoughts, ideas and beliefs with you, I wanted to share that as well.

On another subject by Timothy Snyder is an  editorial he wrote for the NYT. The link is below, or copy and paste it into your browser. If you haven't read anything by him, start with this piece he wrote  three days after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html

It is powerfully written and extremely important.

Be well.

Kindness? Yes, Please.

George Saunders is not an easy writer to understand. While I enjoyed many of the stories in his collection "Tenth of December" I didn't enjoy "Lincoln in the Bardo" although I really wanted to. I tried. But failed.

However, I came across a blog from a NYT writer who referenced Saunders' address to a graduating class at Syracuse University in 2013. The address is mostly about kindness and how difficult it can be to achieve it.  And this was more than 7 years ago, when Obama was still President, when we didn't have that stupid POTUS who just left Washington, when there was no pandemic, no children still separated from parents at the border, when unemployment was bad but not as bad as it is now. As dire as things were in 2013,  there was a little hope in the world.  Now, even with the change in the administration, it is difficult to find hope and solace and kindness is definitely in short supply.

The link below has the transcript of Saunders' address and I encourage you to read it. It is short but obviously thoughtful and more important now than ever.

https://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/george-saunderss-advice-to-graduates/

Show some kindness.  Please.

Two weeks have zipped by since we last spoke.....

 Seriously, I am not working, not doing much of anything and yet I can't find time to put a few words down? What a total slacker.  (insert sad, embarrassed face here.)

In the last two weeks I read three or four books, made several dozen cookies, baked a very small two-layer carrot cake that was actually a wedding cake for one of my brothers!  And I got to officiate at the wedding, using the very small amount of power vested in me to pronounce the couple "husband and wife!" 

In California, it is easy to become a "minister" because you can do it all on-line and you don't need to believe in much of anything and it's FREE! When one of my younger brothers asked me to officiate at his wedding, I of course said yes, sat down at my laptop and voila! Was ordained overnight! No pesky classes to take, no pledging allegiance to anything, just signing the piece of paper and I became an Instant Minister. It was painless.

Thankfully, John and Emily (the afore mentioned husband and wife) wrote the script for the 5 minute ceremony, all I had to do was read it in a ministerial voice. The wedding was attended by a total of six people, including the two getting married, and took place outside in a sunny garden. It was very sweet and heartfelt. 

My cake was tiny, just for the two of them, not to be eaten or even sliced at the wedding ceremony. Here it is:  a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  Who wouldn't agree to get married in order to have a little cake like that waiting joyfully in the fridge? 

More to follow, I promise.

MasterClass online Education Platform

 For Christmas my kids and I have whittled down our lists of things we want as gifts because we are all old enough to get what we want and need when we want and need it. So gift giving is more joyful and funny and there isn't a lot of stress involved because we try and give experiences, not tangible goods. For example, we give gift certificates to restaurants or to local theater or towards an overnight out-of-town adventure. (We also give things like dish towels and good chocolate and boxes of pasta, so there are real gifts to unwrap.)

This year my big gift was a year's subscription to MasterClass.  You might have heard about it.... it's been around for a few years and is basically a series of classes curated by amazingly talented people in more than a dozen disciplines: art, music, science, technology, food, journalism, health, home and garden, business, writing, history.....  and so many more. The experts giving the classes are world famous in their specific fields. People like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Margaret Atwood, Martin Scorsese, Thomas Keller, Joyce Carol Oates, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and the list goes on and on. There are at least 100 different seminars, and you can watch a few of the classes from each seminar or you can watch the entire seminar.  Each lesson is around 15-20 minutes and some run 3 - 4 hours if you take the entire seminar.

It might sound tedious but it is anything but that. So far I have watched classes and lessons in cooking eggs, making pastries, Astrophysics, American History, gardening, the Science of Sleep, writing poetry. The presentations are succinct and extremely well done.  You can start and stop any lesson at any time and you can re-watch them whenever you want.

In these times, when we can't go out and mingle, when staying home is what we are supposed to do, getting to sit in the safety and warmth of one's own home and actually learn new things is incredibly important. Well, at least to me. I am enjoying the hell of out what I am learning.  Just yesterday I watched Thomas Keller and Gordon Ramsay demonstrate how to scramble eggs!  And they were polar opposite methods of doing the same thing!

At least my mind can be out and about, even if my body has to stick close to home.