March, 2022

Words are bound to go wrong. They’re a bunch of little double-edged daggers that slice six ways to Sunday and always offend somebody. Often now every word feels to me like a lit match over at least a spoonful of gunpowder. And who am I to wield them at all -- a kind of toymaker with a poor memory for the hard details of the world.

But sometimes the need to speak has the soul thrashing in the night. Sometimes it feels like a duty to witness, even if one’s words are just a useless kind of itching powder. Silence has so often surrounded screaming atrocities. And we are awash in atrocities. Ukraine. And Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Myanmar, North Korea, abuses in Brazil and the Philippines, Haiti, and… Unspeakable anguish slathered on with our trowel. Lie face down and cry for our species.

The burning point of Ukraine: grievous suffering I cannot imagine, shot through with human tenacity and heroism I cannot imagine summoning. A blue and yellow morning star above the apocalypse.

History writes in blood that authoritarian strongmen produce lies and brutality and death. Betrayal. That lust for personal gain and more more more power twists toward madness. That people only hoping to build lives day to day drown in tsunamis driven by the inflamed egos of tyrants. It is a murderous crime and always will be, everywhere.

As Russian protesters are dragged to prison for their courage, Putin has shrunk himself to a vicious seed of destruction that will live only in infamy. I hear the World Wars breathing in the shadows.

So how in heaven do we navigate our little boats piled with hope.

Meantime, in my country, our facts have cracked like the melting Arctic and floated off in opposite directions. We stand on our broken ice and shriek at each other because our truths no longer line up and how will they ever.

Yet it seems we must all of us keep tossing the tiny flowers of our personal effort on the waters. We must do it even as the world burns, and perhaps beyond reach of this moment we will glimpse sanctuary. A swan among the lilies.

A Beautiful Bizarre Magazine "Take Over"

Friends, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine — https://www.instagram.com/beautifulbizarremagazine/ — asked me to pick seven favorite pieces of art, plus one of my own, and comment on why I love each one. They then posted these images and comments on their social media on Tuesday June 8. I was intrigued by the process and honored! Check it out if you have a chance, as well as all the other fascinating art on their site!

Sonnet II

Were my soul a land and sea, and thou begun
A wild climb ‘twixt the lichened stones to find
Midst tiny blossoms starred, bright fruits of mind
On thornèd tree, with much to seek and naught to shun:
Then deep thy reach, beyond the pale spines of sun
To salt anemone with fingered weed entwined,
And high, to arc of bird and leap of hind
The gentle shadow of thy hand would run.
But soft in human body snared and tied,
A single separate shade set ‘round with wrong,
I fold my beating heart within and, thus denied,
Shall be to thee but unexpected song
A dim and solitary stranger cried
Upon the road: I loved, I loved thee long.

~ Isabelle Rathbone Greene, c. 1894

Hope, 2020

Profound relief. Here's to all who voted, who waited hours in line, who served pizza, who manned polling places, who danced and sang and hoped despite all! Here's to you. Thank you.

(From one of my good mother’s paintings — Lou P. Rogers)

The Night Before Voting Day

Kind Visitor, I realize if I don’t want to just curl up and lose my voice entirely, for my own sake I need to say something today. I’ll just tell you why I voted.

I voted because this Supreme Court may well strike down the ACA, taking health insurance from some 20 million of us, destroying protections for preexisting conditions and throwing our health system into chaos in the middle of a pandemic. I want someone in office who will at least attempt to mend health care for all of us.  Death is not the only lasting effect of this pandemic: some suffer lasting damage to lungs, heart or neurological function. Think “preexisting conditions.”

I voted because I believe that until we contain the virus we cannot right the economy and because I believe those losing their livelihood merit substantive help now.

I voted because I want to chase the fighting chance for a livable planet — for us and for every bird, mammal, fish and plant and scene of beauty —  rather than trash it all for transient gain and go down forever on the wrong side of history at an irreversible inflection point.

I voted because to me the phrase “no justice, no peace” is not a threat but an essential human truth. When we shoot an unarmed man 7 times in the back in front of his young children, when we yank children from their mothers and leave them stranded in limbo, we must take the high, hard road and address the underlying causes even if they seem immovable as mountains. Taking the lazy way out and using the government like a bludgeon to smack people down in their anguish guarantees violence.

I voted because I believe even a wounded democracy maintains possibility, while democracy ever more completely sacrificed to authoritarian ego and self-serving power will mute our cries and steal our voice. I trust we would still find a road forward, but it would be harder and longer and I for one would not likely see the fruition of it.

I voted because we are bleeding out those who serve us quietly in good faith. They are being fired or are leaving government because their positions are now untenable. I think of my grandfather and my father in the world wars.  We are alienating allies who have stood beside us for some 70 years since WW ll.  That makes us smaller and weaker and more unsafe.

I voted because I am exhausted by ‘alternative facts’ and unceasing lies, and ugly, thin-skinned  hissy-fits and just plain cruelty and chaos. I voted because I care about my LGBTQ friends and those who love them. I voted because I do not like to hear women called “dog," "fat pig," "slob" or  “horse-face” and I don’t think a ‘star’ has the right to stick his hand between your legs and grab.

I came upon a quote somewhere — I believe it was on a tea-bag tag -- from Walt Whitman:  “Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” I thought, that is exactly how I feel about this administration. It insults my soul.

I voted because I reject it.

Dear Ones, make tomorrow count.

Thank you.

Forest