Overwhelmed by the Inbox

It is Monday evening. Tom is making open-face pineapple/cheese sandwiches, and I am maniacally erasing old e-mails, and unsubscribing to all sorts of junk mail that I can't think how I ever got subscribed to in the first place.

And if you think you're not grasping and clutching, think about letting go of Facebook. Ask yourself, how did I get, what? 50 or 100 Facebook posts in my inbox, some of them tagged green, some red, some not tagged. Say to yourself, If you can't control this, we will just unsub (we being your multiple personalities, especially Messy Child and Parental Figure.)
- But Mom, Messy Child whines, then I'd miss out on stuff!

But really, this situation - I receive about 200 e-mails a day, maybe 2-5 of them personal - it has to be stopped. Can it be stopped? I propose to find out. And may I say, of the many messy corners in my life, this would seem to be of least importance. I mean, what about the laundry basket(s) of unfolded laundry. What about going through the old photos and slides and figuring out what to convert to digital? But the task selects itself. So there.

As of now (9:07 Monday night)
inbox 584

As for the other boxes, like the creative writing list, the transplant list, Gentle Reader, let us a draw a veil. Let us keep this task Zen-like. Simple, confined.

Signs of summer

Summer is here -

• the neighbor boys looking for their lacrosse ball
• across the street, a volleyball net on the lawn, set up for the big graduation party. Yesterday there was triples badminton there.
• a tufted titmouse at my feeder . . . the flicker with his red head returns
• a Mu threading through the tall hosta out front
  

Yesterday Tom was winding the Seth Thomas clock and saw through an opening in the trees, the fox sprawled out in the sun on the deck, way back in the yard. A fox! We had hoped she was based here in our yard, under that little-used deck.

Here in this neighborhood,15 minutes from downtown, we cherish this particular form of the wild, a fox and her kits, said to rummage in Carters' compost heap every morning. And deer, as well, since they don't come into our particular gardens and eat our tulips. Even sightings of the scruffy coyote excite us. This is the odd phenomenon that made me very excited to actually see javelinas in a trip out west; residents there hate them - they eat everything in the gardens. We are all for the wild when it suits us. Like accident and surprise, it comes in surprising convenient and inconvenient forms.

As for what else is happening here, close in on Wynding Drive - yesterday James told us that Laura is a match! type 0 - and things are proceeding quickly. I felt something in my stomach, feel it now, as the possibility of this surgery came a step closer. It is a big thing to imagine, to be restored from very old and sick to just like new (although still 67), back to the energy of years ago. I have discovered why I want to live. Just that - I want to live. It's certainly not about deserve to live, or will accomplish great things, or even want to see my grandson graduate. Just want to live.

Catching the Moon

Sometimes I find poetry where none is intended. This morning it was an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the full moon, by Geoff Gaherty, Starry Night Education. This went into the poetic - and what is that? I have italicized the sentences I especially like -

"Now here is something strange. Full moon occurs at 7:07 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, yet the moon doesn't rise until around 8:30 p.m. The exact time of full moon is determined strictly by the geometry of the sun, Earth, and moon: all three fall in a straight line with the Earth in the middle. This is an instantaneous event, and happens at the same instant everywhere in the world, in this case happening when the moon is below the horizon in eastern North America.

Full moon happens in England at seven minutes past midnight British Summer Time, with the moon high overhead, because Britain is about a quarter of the way around the earth from eastern North America. The moon itself is quite indifferent to where on Earth people are observing it from.

Even though full moon occurs at a very specific instant each month, it looks full for a day or two on either side of that instant, at least to the naked eye. In a telescope, you can see the terminator, the line of sunset or sunrise on the moon, and see that it is not quite full.In fact, the moon is never truly full. When everything lines up perfectly, so that the moon's face would be 100 percent sunlit from our point of view, Earth gets in the way, blocks the lights from the sun, and causes a total lunar eclipse."

All right. Here are the statements that came forward out of a largely geometric description of this visual perception event:

Now here is something strange.

The moon itself is quite indifferent to where on Earth people are observing it from.

In fact, the moon is never truly full.

To write a poem, begin with statement one, its friendly, colloquial tone. Next, see where statement two takes you. It is such an interesting instance of anthropomorphizing the moon, something one doesn't expect at all in a scientific article. The moon has feelings, or not. Is nature indifferent to us?

Statement three is a kind of turning point, like, we have this delusion, but, as the author explains, the instantaneous event of full moon occurs while it is below the horizon. Thus, full moon cannot be observed. You can either not like that fact or get interested in the metaphor. There is lots of about the moon in Buddhist stories. Sometimes its reflection serves as a metaphor for delusion. In the image above, the monkey is trying to catch the moon by catching its reflection in the pond. Some versions of the story say, Poor monkey - all he gets is a wet paw.

The last peony

I am still enamored of photography. I found I have a little program called paint, a pale imitation of Photoshop, but despite its simplicity, I can't use it. So I am thinking, just do what you can do, which is take pictures. Above, my try at a peony picture that is not too sentimental, for the background flower is browning. Both are hanging, as they do, sometimes flopping right down on the ground after a rain so they look like a petticoat thrown there.

I have a nothing-much digital camera bought in 2003 (!) so I imagine the technology is much better. I would especially like to lose the gap after your press the shutter, before it takes the picture. This is fatal to pictures of the grandson, and it makes even photographing a peony more difficult, because I have a little tremor (and can't find the tripod). It has a macro feature as well as an adjustable close-up, and I don't know what the difference is, though I use both of them. But they are far from the zoom capability a lot of people have.

I got my hands on a book about digital photography that told me, Know what you're taking the picture for. I knew my constant spill of pictures of my grandson, that is about capturing a reminder of the moments of his growing up.

The other thing I do with pictures now is post them here. I think the best kind of picture for the blog is close and simple, because the picture is small. Above is all the closer I could get to the peony, 4 inches. At that distance you smell it perfuming the air around it. It continues to do that in a vase in the house. And when the flower dies, I strew the petals on newspaper to dry. Later, sitting in a bowl, they continue to release their sweet, innocent fragrance.

Good Samaritans

The sun is out! It's been raining, and some of our peonies are face down on the ground. They don't mind. You dunk them in water anyway if you cut them, because they exist symbiotically with ants, and you don't want to bring ants into the house. Here are words from a peony lover:

Do not try to get rid of the ants on your peonies. This is a natural and temporary activity. It is believed that peonies produce small amounts of nectar and other ant attractants to encourage ants to help in opening the dense double flower buds found in many peonies. The ants may be found covering certain varieties and avoiding others, this is totally normal.

Think of it - selective ants. Who knows what else they know? If let loose in a museum, what paintings would they favor, and how many scientific explanations would be proposed?

I am rambling.

Took a walk outside and didn't find a peony I wanted to photograph. They are so photographed, it seems impossible not to be cliched. Instead, I shot green seedpods hanging from a redbud branch. Redbud is a characteristic woodland tree around here, and in much of the eastern US where there is enough moisture and it doesn't get too cold. You can see how prolifically it seeds.
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I was going to blog today beginning like this: What is Zen about an organ donation? Instead I found the peonies + ants leading me to articles about mutualistic relationships, which are many. Is organ donation one of those? No. Laura can feel the warmth of her own generosity, but I can't give her anything near the value of a kidney to me - ten or twenty more years, years of being able to write and watch my grandson grow up. She will have the very unusual benefit of knowing she did something difficult - it can't be entirely risk-free - and gave life. A feeling much greater, I imagine, than I used to feel when I gave blood, back when I was able. That was a soft, gentle pride.

But this is more, it's about doing for someone in need what you would do for your own sister or daughter. I am seeing Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan differently these days. I think I remember that the Samaritan was a man from out of town who stopped to help someone he did not know - a stranger. We all give (if sometimes reluctantly) to our family, and our neighborhood. Religion applauds the person who can step outside that charmed circle and see the whole world as intimately their own.

A transformed universe

I am so excited I don't know what to do. Want to babble on to someone. Did that to Tom last night. He absorbs it. I'm surprised I slept - it was a near thing, getting to sleep. What happened -

After Zen, we were in the church hall, putting on shoes, just chatting, when a man came over to me. I know him a little; he did Zen orientation with us years ago. He and his wife are nice people, part of a large, loose social set we belong to. People who go to brunch after church. He said to me that his wife wants to give me a kidney. Of course, I burst into tears, overwhelmed by surprise.
~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm going to start over.

Last night I learned I may have a living donor. Someone who is interested in exploring the possibility. An unexpected person, not a relative or intimate friend, just exactly as they say - a person will come forward for you that you don't expect.

Why so excited? A kidney from a living donor is literally a gift of life, years of normal life, a much better life than most people have on dialysis. If I can only get a kidney from a nice, healthy person, that kidney could work for 20 more years; I could live 20 more years and work, that was my first thought. I so want to write, to get my writing out, and I don't have the energy. If I get a cadaveric kidney (if I get one instead of dying on the waiting list) the average life of that kidney would be 10 years. I could tell you a lot about all this, including the amazing fact that they usually take out the donated kidney with laparoscopy these days. But the facts are all online.

Also online are the stories. One of them was in our local newspaper last week, a kidney given by a woman to a man in her church, a man she didn't know until she read about his need and came forth. . . .
~~~~~~~~~~
The possible donor - her name is Laura - just called me to ask where we start. Happily, I had my wits about me enough earlier this morning to call OSU pre-transplant and get the right phone number. Oh, I hope the menu doesn't give her the runaround. In my mind she shines like gold, should be treated like a queen.

Her husband was taken aback by my tearburst last night. He finally said, "Well, maybe I need to see if she really meant it." So this morning I have been trying to hold it and wait, which is like standing in tree pose on the head of a pin. Keeping to my morning routine, eating my usual breakfast, what you do when you get too excited. In a little while I will dress and go to the health club, it being Wednesday. Why not just sit with that excitement? There it is in this center that is neither heart nor stomach, I think. What is it? That golden chakra.

So many of the live donor stories these days are like this - a person comes forth you never would have expected to. Not someone you sit with, not a relative or someone you've given to, another kind of person, someone who understands how kidney failure is a matter of life and death, and has an altruistic streak - a desire to give a huge gift most people are not able to give.

Talk about the practice of generosity. Imagine opening your body like that. The old Zen stories sometimes talk about how the master has given his very marrow and guts, when they mean he has done his best to explain reality. But this really is a piece of your essence. Last night I told a friend, "I don't know if I could have done what she's doing, years ago, I was too neurotic." Afraid, and my mind would have skipped away from the thought.

I had an idea that the universe I find myself in was not loaded with generous people. Last night that transformed, as if there was a gloomy stage that suddenly became imbued with glittering golden light. It transformed an image deep in my mind of what kind of world this is, how life brings all kinds of things in the great river. I know somewhere Pema Chodron says, "Everybody loves something." And I think the nature of many people floating down the stream with us might be kinder than we think.
~~~~~~
[image: the doorway at Benedicte, at Grailville retreat center, in evening light. If I get a kidney I will be able to go on retreat again.]

Bailing out Uncle Jack (and Greece, and Haiti . . . )

I was about ten or eleven years old the night my father was in the kitchen talking to my mother, really angry. I remember he was in his "work" clothes, the ones he wore to do major jobs around the house, like fix the roof. Whatever he was doing had been interrupted by a babbling, pleading phone call from his brother Jack. Another call. Another arrest for drunk and disorderly. Jack lived in Youngstown, 50 miles away. Couldn't he call someone else? There isn't anyone else. You're my brother. What about Louise? She told me she wouldn't come. She hung up on me. Ed, you're my only hope. You're my brother.
My father was telling my mother angrily, This is it. This is the last time. As far as I know it was. And later, how much later I don't know, Jack dried up. I remember him at a wedding, showing me the 12 steps that had saved his life. When he pointed to each step on a card he carried in his wallet, his hands trembled. He had gone very far downhill before he hit bottom.

My father figured it out on his own I imagine - he had just kept bailing out Jack, and Jack just kept getting arrested. My father had a job to go to, he couldn't be up all night driving to Youngstown and back, he needed to live a regular healthy life, get his sleep, maintain his health and family. Then there would have been the money involved back before credit cards and ATM's, money I suppose was never repaid.

We are overpopulating and over-stressing our planet, and so these days we see large bodies of people falling into wreckage. When it's economic disaster that threatens, we talk about "bail-out," and we say, Our economic stability depends on theirs. When there's been a natural disaster, we mount "rescue missions" in the name of simple humanity. But in truth, both are often the result of a mixture of bad judgment and bad luck. The economic mess in Greece is rooted in the way people live there, people who want to retire early, who are willing to let the very rich escape taxation (sound familiar?). The earthquake in Haiti was a double disaster because people lived there without infrastructure or civil government, so that everything just fell in. Building codes, it turns out, save lives.

We are not directly involved in cleaning up the current mess with the Greek economy, though we will not be immune from what happens there. In any case, the fact is, we have plenty to do on our own shores, cleaning up our own mess in the Gulf - an entire coastal economy and culture destroyed by our lust for the fun things cheap energy brought our way. We can turn our compassion in this direction. And we do need to be cautious to avoid thoughtless or "idiot compassion," which Pema Chodron explains here. Maybe Uncle Jack will benefit from serving his time.

Zen photography

Our Japanese maple, making crimson seeds. I took this three days ago. Today has been rain, silent low gray skies, and now sun, then dim skies again, then sun, no, yes, too fast to post status updates. What I like about photography is that its nature is to capture a passing moment, a visual haiku. You don't have to make it - just find it. Or walk slowly enough that it finds you.

A little smile

"I ate all the wrong things today." at The Cartoon Bank
Well, you have to click on the above to see it. George Booth is my favorite cartoonist. I guess his people remind me of home.

The last tulip, not photoshopped

We picked up a copy of my most recent blood tests today. My poor little kidneys are holding their own! - hemoglobin stable at 10, in other words, I'm still making red blood cells. eGFR stable at 8. It's not a good number - 8% of kidney function - but I can live with it and not go on dialysis. One of these days I need to explain why I so don't want that, do want a transplant instead.

After reading the numbers in the van I burst into a spring shower of tears. Relief. After that I had such energy! I didn't think I was depressed over the weekend, waiting for these results, but I was. I go through this every month. It's been four months now since my eGFR suddenly dropped from 12 to 8 for no reason anyone can figure out. When kidneys are this weak, doing their job is hard on them. It's easier to see how sick a person is when their lungs are only functioning at 8%, or their heart.

We went on to the health club, as planned, and I got up to 23 minutes, 1400 steps on the Nustep. (Goal, 30 minutes) Did three of the strength machines (abdomen, chest, back) at a higher level than before. Did my PT exercises to build strength in that left leg that got so weak last year when I was off my feet. I still can't climb a flight of stairs.

There are things you know, but don't realize deeply. Today I realized a cluster of things: that it would benefit me to be stronger, and I can achieve it by doing these exercises, and that it's work, not fun. So part of me wants to add, So get over it.

And let's see - what would be a bit more fun as an image? A picture from about a month ago. This tulip was blown-out, getting near to dropping its petals. It is sitting by the front door in the morning light. I am still very far from using Photoshop or a cheap imitation, though I do have a book now. When I look through the book, I don't think they're necessarily improving the pictures when they "manipulate" them (sounds unpleasant, doesn't it?). I like things that look like they actually do look, a mark perhaps of my generation. I think before you go about changing things, you ought to make sure you know how they actually look.

On not wanting to be Supergirl

There it was today in the thrift store - a like-new box of Superwoman stationary. I opened it. The top card showed her standing in the open jaws of a huge dinosaur. That is so not for me. When I was very little I got to go to a movie about dinosaurs with some other kids. In the movie, these grownups were castaway on an island, and at last a huge dinosaur ate some of them. Picked them right up and threw them in his enormous mouth. I remember screaming and crouching down on the floor. I have avoided dinosaurs ever since, except that I do like the Komodo Dragon Lizard at the zoo, who is easily four feet long, and projects the energy field of an ancient mountain. And is behind several inches of glass.

Superwoman has sometimes been a popular symbol for feminists. I myself thoughtlessly bought a Superwoman watch at the 1972 National NOW convention - you wind the watch up, that's how long ago that's been. How long ago it's been is that at the time I didn't think a thing about what this woman symbolized. It tickled me, that's all.

I now have a different angle of vision. That sex-symbol Superwoman with her gigantic bust and tiny waist and skimpy shorts embarrasses me. I want a woman to look like a person, a real person. I love the feminine, at least the clothes, silk, chiffon, velvet, colorful clothes, and I also love to go about on an ordinary day in a very old tee-shirt and jeans.

I think the symbolism of Superwoman has morphed. When women talk about trying to be Superwoman, they don't mean becoming maverick crime-spotters, but something more like Sarah Palin - go hunting with or without the guys, shoot a moose, drag it through the woods, cook it for dinner, all the while perfectly made up. They mean being Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, able to catch a bomb and save the day just when she was busy winning a beauty pageant in a floor-length gown and heels. It's not true, folks. There is no one like that.

You try to get rid of an image - the sweet little princess who has to be rescued - and here come more images. They are down deep in your psyche, where they can run your life. Today the temptation seems to be to fit the left foot into that little glass slipper and the right foot into a running shoe. Running to work, forging a career, running home to run the house, running the kids to school and to the doctor, and for fun, running a marathon. Who will rescue us from this one? No prince, that's the difference. Nobody but ourselves.

A little financial kinhin

For years now I have avoided buying anything made by Kraft, because I knew they were part of Altria, which is a name behind which an enormous tobacco industry - Phillip Morris - hides. This morning I thought I'd check on that. Indeed, it turns out that Altria sold off Kraft a few years ago and now relies on tobacco and wine. Altria is the last thing I want in my mutual funds - but when you invest pre-tax money in a mutual fund through our state retirement program, you have only so many choices, and none of them are "socially conscious." It is very hard to do no harm in this world, but it would cost us to move this money. And Tom and I have special reasons for ongoing retirement savings. I have seen too many good people end up in old age like the Teachers Stephen and Andrea Levine, sick and without a safety net of savings. (Click here for a moving appeal on their behalf.)

Back to Kraft. Here's a list of their astonishing number of brands. As I surveyed it I thought, They make everything unhealthy to eat. Almost everything. I have liked Grey Poupon mustard and wheat thins - but I'm sure there are good alternatives in the Natural Health section, or down at the co-op. Kraft specializes in the middle-of-the-store items we are advised by Michael Pollan to avoid. (At my Kroger's, you can shop the outside of the store, produce, Natural Health, dairy, bread, and just dart down the aisle with beans and rice and pasta.)

What is this about? I think it comes from the fact that I have been thinking often lately about how hard it is just to not do harm in this world. Still, we keep watching where we walk.

Dharma in my inbox

Q. Which Zen Master is Garrison Keillor talking about:

When someone asked him what his philosophy was, he said: "Feel free and take a fresh look."

A. The ground-breaking American cook, James Beard. As far as I know, he did not meditate - his practice was in the kitchen. Click on his name to go to the recipe for the above.

Getting a transplant call

The way it went, I came home from a very calm afternoon, visiting with Marian in her back yard and then helping spread the money around by getting my car washed and vacuumed - it's still only $13! Then wandering the gardens applauding the first rhododendron blossom, watering the chives, which are in a pot to keep them in hand, and so on. Tom had been working in the garage while I was gone and we both went in at the same time. Going down the hall he said, "There's a phone message. No, two messages.

The first one was from Amy at OSU Transplant. My heart rate accelerated as I wrote down the number. The second message was from Karen, another friend. I wrote down her number, though I already have it in my cellphone, thinking, God, Amy's message came in over an hour ago. You only have two hours to reply to a transplant call. Then they go on to the next person. But surely they would have called me on my cellphone. Wait, I'd left my purse in Marian's house, and wouldn't have heard it. And Tom didn't have his cell in the garage. I ran into my study and put on the headset I use to talk on Skype, where I can hear clearly. Figured out how to put in Amy's number.
Hello.
Hello, Amy?
No, this is Karen.
Oh, Karen could I please talk . . . Wait, is this Karen?
Yes, Jeanne?
I had inadvertently mixed up the phone numbers and called Karen.

I hastily explained that I'd had a call from transplant, and I should get off and return it right now, and then call her back. I don't know if she understood, but she acted like she did.

Now, you don't want to hear the rest, and I don't want to write it. I tried four times to get through to Amy on the number she had given me. Keyed it in wrong, and etc. and so forth, as they used to say. The more I did this, the worse I got. Finally I breathed in, closed my eyes, and said, Maybe I have her number on my cellphone. I galloped down the hall to get it. And connected at last.

And of course, it was not about getting a kidney - I've only been on the list a little over two years. The average wait is three years, but some people wait six, and some people die. It was just about scheduling an annual followup with a surgeon. They want to make sure you can still "qualify" for a transplant - i.e. look like a good bet to survive this major surgery and take your anti-rejection meds. They will ask again if I have a living donor, as if I could have one and not let them know.
~~~~~~~~
Strange. I am just finishing Footprints in the Snow, the autobiography of Chan master Sheng Yen, and learned that he died of kidney failure at age 80. It's said that he turned down the opportunity for a transplant, saying it should go to someone younger. Well, yes. He was 80, while I am only 67. And he was enlightened, so advanced that he was ready to cast off this mortal shell. Here is his beautiful death poem:

Busy with nothing, growing old.
Within emptiness, weeping, laughing.
Intrinsically, there is no “I.”
Life and death, thus cast aside.

Stamps - a meditation on saving money

This thing has happened much the way thought trails do. First, I saw a news segment on a woman who saves $27,000 a year using coupons. She had a big black three-ring notebook with plastic sleeves in it. I figured she put coupons for a certain aisle, like Dairy, in one (or more) sleeves. Then you could just flip flip as you go through the grocery store. This coincided with the fact that I had just made $11.00 with coupons at Kroger. Buddhists call this codependent arising, how my ideas arise from some subtle conjunction of myriad things.

I like anything I can organize (excluding my own filing). Sometimes I like to do things like sit calmly and cut out coupons. I like the very idea of saving, as well as the fact of it. And I had a source. I thought, I know Cat Welfare has something like that notebook. If you bought those sleeves new (maybe meant for photographs, the old-fashioned kind), they'd cost a fortune, but they'll be free in that notebook.

And so, things continued to come together so that I got to Cat Welfare yesterday morning - we had donations for their garage sale, anyway. And, indeed, there hidden on a low shelf was a big black binder with about a dozen of the right kind of plastic sleeves. But they were full of stamps! Someone's old stamp collection, smelling of dust and spider webs, but not tobacco smoke. I saw it as a kind of treasure trove, wouldn't you? Page after page of little envelope corners with postmarks and stamps.

And now I am having a look at it.

The oldest date I see is 1975. . . . Stamps are most often beautiful and intricate, but it seems to be desirable to have them smeared over with a postmark, for they are, all but one 10c stamp. All are American. I thought stamp collections had a theme, but I'm not seeing one here, just pretty stamps mostly, flowers and folk art. Space stations, world peace, pharmacy, Einstein, Progress in Eectronics. Patriotic faces, Lyndon, Harry S. The collector was omnivous. The last date seems to be 1980. So he did this five years, and then died. Why he? I never heard of a woman collecting stamps. Pocketbooks, more likely. It looks like it just sat since then, and at last someone decided to dammit, get it appraised and/or get rid of it. The last of somebody's belongings, unless he had a gold watch.

Trawling in stamp valuing, I try "Long may it wave," a 4c stamp I find in a block of four, postmarked, 1979. Voila, this is called the 48-star flag. But so far two sites don't want to tell me for nothing what this stamp is worth.

Try ebay. Yes, they have a whole category for stamps. Here it is, a single one postmarked "Pray for Peace," asking $1.24. The postmark on my four isn't that cool, but I think a block of four is worth something - though, why? This area is really hard to understand. It is pure collecting, not like collecting Hall pottery which at least you can make tea in.

I try Progress in Electronics, 8c. Hmm. Asking $1.75.

I find a friendly site, Jim's Stamp Album, for those of us who have inherited a collection:

If you've got a U.S. collection, I can give you some quick answers that you can use to set expectations. If a stamp was issued after 1930, is unused, is in great condition, and has a face value below 50¢, it is most likely only worth its face value. If it is used, it is most likely worth less than that.

Well, that squares this around for the night. But now I will have the nagging thought that if Progress in Electronics was worth $1.75, a number of the little stamps could be worth a little something, and add up to money. Or I could generously give the stamps to my grandson, and go clip coupons.

[image The Tre Skilling Banco yellow. In 1996 the only known copy sold for $2.3 K. That's million. Dollars.]

Sic transit gloria femme

It is Saturday, so a free day in my mind, free of my desires to catch up on the laundry and etc. as they used to say. It is a free day so I have been roaming around mentally and of course on the internet. I got to thinking about Phyllis McGinley. I remembered two things about her, a poem and a book of essays drawn from a column in, I believe, Ladies Home Journal. She was a houswife/poet/philosopher. I liked her writing then, when I was in my twenties and the feminist revolution, to say nothing of a liberal education, had not yet set off fireworks around my head. In that day she represented the world I came from or aspired to - a bit higher than middle-class, I suppose. It was a world in which the highest aspiration for a woman, generally speaking, was to be an upper-middle class housewife. Phyllis defended that, and the idea of a house and family in suburbia, which was just then the target of much cynicism and criticism. Yet, suburban America then and now is a tremendously privileged place to live, often safe from crime and boasting good schools, to say nothing of good sanitary sewer systems.

That can easily lead me to one of my meandering talks about having clean water. A dear friend, older than me, just got off weeks of diarrhea. Her western doctor wasn't a whole lot of good, by the way. She reminded me, There are places this is called "dysentery," and it kills people. Yes, it kills people all the time, but seldom in suburban America.

Phyllis had many honors, appeared on the cover of Time, won a Pulitzer prize for her poetry. Yet she is now almost forgotten. My city library, one of the best in the country, has only four works by her, children's books. And I suppose you can buy anything she wrote for $.01 online. There's your note on impermanence, how even praise and blame pass.

However, she is still with me. She inspired me, somehow, with a dream of making a harmonious home, of being a poet and of thinking about my life. I am quite the feminist, but have never let go of that ideal, and I still think it is a good one. All over the planet people are dying in the wake of earthquakes and epidemics for want of a simple shelter the size of our guest bedroom. (That guest bedroom was one of the middle-class things I saw as deeply privileged back then. ) Home, a safe home, is a wonderful thing to have. We forget that. We could begin each day with a list of the things for which we can be truly grateful.
Bare feet on a smooth wood floor.
Excellent full-bodied coffee.
Shelter from the wind that is rising even now
and the rain that keeps misting down.
[image: the back seat of the van two weeks ago, full of woodland and native plants for our front gardens.]