Muddling along . . .
is the best I can do these days as I count my blessings. The dictionary definition for muddling is to proceed in a disorganized way. That doesn’t have the greatest ring to it.
Celebrating Life’s Events
Living near the shore, I am especially tuned into the ebbs and flows of the tide. Recently, I attended several life celebrations, the ebbs and flows of life: two deaths and a wedding, all for friends in the third chapter of their lives. . .
Navajo world view and more
I won’t pretend to be fluent in the Diné world, but I’ve dipped into the perspective in a book group offered through the Undergraduate STEM Development division at Brown. The book is Native Presence and Sovereignty in College by Amanda Tachine.
Mutually Assisted Destruction
It is painful and nerve-wracking to watch what is happening in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. I feel a moral obligation to do more than sign petitions for a ceasefire, write my representatives and senators in Congress and keep up with my colleagues in Palestine. My colleagues on the West Bank, where I worked just a year ago, are living under tight constraints. Their cities shut down for days at a time after local attacks. Unable to leave their homes, they cannot go to work and their children are not in school. Going outside to play is impossible.
More military support is NOT the answer to Israel/Gaza
The response to Israel/Gaza must be nuanced.
Reminders
There is a lot to be sad about in the world, the US, and my personal sphere. . . I am guessing you may have similar tales these days.
Perspective
It is refreshing to see my world through the eyes of others. I know I have a privileged life here in the US. I am educated, the right skin color, have enough money to live in a “good” neighborhood, and have the freedom to go where I wish. Or another way to say it is WEIRD . . .
Reflecting on Russia and Palestine
Thirty years ago, I traveled to the Former Soviet Union as part of a Women’s Leader exchange and later I hosted a group of our Russian counterparts in Minnesota. It was a different world in 1992 . . .
Life’s Ebbs and Flows
The violence in Nablus and Palestine has decreased with the conclusion of the Israeli election and the olive harvest. Borrowing from Reed: “it has been a cauldron of simmering conflict, oppression, resistance, protests and sporadic violence whose origins go back a millennia or more, but whose wounds are as fresh as yesterday.”
Lockdown
Fourteen checkpoints block the exits out of Nablus. As I write this we are on the 10th day “under a tight Israeli siege.”
Israeli forces instituted “Break the Wave” two months ago, a crack down on Palestinian militant groups who are too young to remember . . .
Back in Palestine
The scent of jasmine fills the September air. Fruits are ripening on the trees--figs, pomegranates, almonds, apples, pears, and olives grow on rock ledges in the deep valley behind the six-story apartment building.
Life Lessons
Summer seems to be winding to an early the end. Brown and yellow leaves are already falling due to the drought that has taken its toll here in Rhode Island. While the drought is much worse in other parts of the US, not to mention Africa and South Sudan, even here in Rhode Island where there are 400 miles of coastline, crops are lost.
Let in the light
The challenges of our times are hard to escape. Here in the US: collapsing buildings likely related to climate change with encroaching oceans and poorly maintained infrastructure, sweltering temperatures in the Northwest, and reportedly appalling conditions in the detention centers where asylum seekers are housed on our southern border. Elsewhere the horrors of COVID and the delta variant continue as wealthy nations' slowly respond to…
The Art of Improvisation
We are watching Ken Burn's Jazz Series on PBS. I enjoy music, but am not a musician and don't have much of an ear. My singing should be only in the shower. What has struck me about the series is the ongoing improvisation that is Jazz. It started with Louie Armstrong in New Orleans, Duke Ellington in NYC, and Count Basie and eventually Charlie Parker in Kansas City. It is a story of race--the creative and improvising black musicians inspiring the whites and then the black artists…