Tuesday, February 28, 2023

When every day is blursday

Winter finally arrives at StarField Farm

 
 
The past few months have gone by in a blur of family stress and change. And even when change is ultimately positive, it is still difficult. 

My spouse left the hospital he had worked at for the entirety of his 30+ year career. At my urging, he has taken January and February off to decompress from the traumatic years of covid, among other stresses, before he decides what's next. Which means neither of us have the external markers of time passing. Hence the title of this blogpost. 
 
Despite everything, I have managed to complete the (as yet unnamed) multiverse novel and am deep into its second revision. In the process, I have unlocked the conflicts at the heart of the sequel. Now I'm eager to complete book 1 and move on to drafting book 2. 
 
Book 1 takes place over a few day span in a Boston winter, so in a way, I've been living in those brief moments in time for several years. Blursday, indeed. When I look out the window today, the landscape finally matches my internal sense of place. 
 
Living in the Northeast US, the other way I have always kept track of where I am in time is the march of the seasons. And that, too, has been changing in ways that I find quite disorienting. 
 
In my lifetime (I'll be 60 this year) I have watched the seasons skew, more extreme "100 year" storms, & overall less predictable seasonal weather patterns.

There's already word that there will be no stone fruit in New England this season because of the weather extremes we had earlier in the month - from 50 degrees F to -13 within days.

I am a scifi geek, so I often reflect on the ST:TNG episode The Inner Light where Picard's consciousness is snagged by a memory beacon & he lives a lifetime with a civilization coming to grips with its own extreme climate change as its sun ends up as a supernova. Ah, Science Fiction shining a light on the present since forever.

This is heavy thinking for a beautiful snowy morning in Central Massachusetts, so I will leave you with a haiku:

 

round bellied birds perch
trees snug in coats of fresh snow
how still the world waits

 




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Monday, November 28, 2022

The False Urgency of Commerce

I have deleted hundreds of emails and text messages in the past week exhorting me to Spend! Buy! Save! Donate! 

To be honest, I love shiny things as much as any crow, but I'm done with the false urgency of commerce.

These not-so-subtle messages embedded in all these communications is that w are not enough. That we need to fill our emptiness with stuff. That we are judged on our acquisitions. 

I guess our society has always had this lurking, but it feels like it's ramped up to eleven this year. 

Fuck that noise.

We are wonderful for who we are. (Thank you, Mr. Rogers).

So share your weird and wild selves. 

We are the gift.



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Monday, October 17, 2022

Work doesn't love you back

 Is it any wonder the message at large is that young people are lazy and don't want to work?

 

I don't make any secret of my age - I turned 59 this year. What that means in the context of this post is I was raised and came of age during a time when the workplace was sold as a second family and loyalty to work was something expected, as an unwritten, uncompensated requirement of employment. 

Despite the erosion of worker protections (this was the era of the slow disappearance of pensions as a new benefit and the abrupt loss of pensions to already retired workers), the message was still couched in the language of mutual obligation. "Take care of the company and the company will take care of you."

Things were starting to change in small ways and in certain occupations by the time I was in my late 20s. I distinctly remember a conversation with my sister - 7 years my senior and working as an accountant in one of the big firms - where she was appalled that I would leave a job after a mere year or two. Her exact words: "no one is going to hire you with that resume."

Well, there were distinct differences in the world of health care and as a newly minted physical therapist in the late 1980, I was in high demand, practically at any hospital in the nation. Still, the notion of your colleagues as a second family was definitely encouraged and as a young single person, I did spend a lot of time after work socializing with my work mates. And many friendships were forged along the way. 

However, there is an insidious undertone to this work-as-family theme: it places management in a kind of loco parentis, or at least as the authority figure with all of the subtle and not so subtle power imbalances that exist in family constellations. 

In truth, management does not consider the worker (except in exceedingly rare cases) as family. The worker - and this can be at any level, in any profession (ask me how I know...) - is simply a number on a spreadsheet and is completely exchangeable and expendable. 

These are the lessons I have been slowly learning from my children's generation. They have a much more realistic view of work and its place in a life. They see through the con, which definitely doesn't serve management/ownership. Is it any wonder the message at large is that young people are lazy and don't want to work? My 20-something children work and work hard, as do their friends. They are just better equipped to understand that work is purely transactional: their labor in exchange for fair recompense. 

Theoretically, you could work as a highly technical and highly skilled professional for many decades at the same employer, have a national reputation in your field, be lauded by your colleagues and professional organizations, have commendations from your employer regarding your exemplary contributions to the institution and none of it matters when it becomes convenient or expedient for the employer to sever your employment. 

Work. Does. Not. Love. You. Back.





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Monday, July 25, 2022

The Way Baseball Connects Us

A once-in-a-lifetime experience: Neil & I with David Ortiz on a trip to Cooperstown


My story doesn't start with a raffle ticket we bought in support of David Ortiz's Children's Charity, and organized with the assistance of The Red Sox Foundation, though that's what directly led to the amazing photo posted above. Actually, my story starts with my late father - who grew up playing stickball on the streets of Brooklyn during the depression. A man who became a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan. Who told me stories of seeing Jackie Robinson play, both in AAA when my father was in Rochester after his WWII service, and also at Ebbets field with the Dodgers. 

The only poem my father knew by heart was Baseball's Sad Lexicon by Franklin Pierce Adams. And I can still hear him recite it in my memory.

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance." 

I was born after the Dodgers broke his heart and grew up a Mets fan after he switched his allegiance. I was a kindergartner the year of the "Miracle Mets" and my earliest of baseball memories is sitting in the driveway with my Dad, listening to Mets games on the car radio. 

I still think a well called game is a thing of beauty. And the sounds of the game bring my father back to me like very little else does. 

My connection with baseball is very much tied to appreciating the game as a fan, rather than as someone who played it. Title IX wasn't law until long after my childhood and where I grew up, girls weren't encouraged to play sports. I went to the occasional game in my graduate school days in NYC and then when we moved to Boston in 1990, I was happy to trade one losing team to another and switched my allegiance to the Red Sox. 

My children grew up Red Sox fans the way I grew up a Mets fan. The only time we could watch TV during a meal was if a game was on. Car rides equaled games on the radio. My children learned that baseball could break your heart when Nomar Garcioparra was traded. 

2004 tied three generations of baseball fans together: My father, retired in Florida, had adopted my team and became a Red Sox fan, me, listening to tight games from the hallway because I was too nervous to watch, and my sons, falling asleep in front of the TV during the late games and demanding to know the score and play by play first thing in the morning. 

Somewhere along the way, my husband became a fan as well. Not just of the Red Sox, but like me, of the game itself. 

One more brief digression before I get back to 2022 and David Ortiz.

During the Summer of 2010, my eldest son and I stopped at Cooperstown while we were visiting colleges the summer before his senior year in High School. It was the first time at the Baseball HOF for both of us. At a local bookstore, we picked up a copy of Joe Posnanski's book about Buck O'Neil and the Negro Leagues and one of my fondest memories of that summer is my son reading me passages during our trip.

Fast forward to 2022. Our kids are grown and on their own. Baseball is still something that connects us. I'm still an avid fan of the Red Sox and especially love listening to games on the radio. (Have I mentioned that a well called game is a thing of beauty?)

And so my husband buys a raffle ticket. He buys it because we support good causes. We are big fans of David Ortiz and his charity raises money for children's medical care. All of our sweet spots. We have no expectations of winning anything.

And he gets an email that he's won. Not just any prize. The *Grand* prize: a private plane trip for 2 to Cooperstown, traveling with David Ortiz. 3 nights in a hotel. VIP seating at the Induction Ceremony. 

Where, not only did we get to cheer for the one and only Big Papi (who is a completely lovely, authentic, and welcoming person), but we also celebrated the inductions of  Gill Hodges - a player my father loved, and Buck O'Neil - the player my son and I bonded over more than a decade ago.  

This weekend was an experience I will cherish my whole lifetime. Perhaps I will be able to tell some future grandchild that I got to meet Big Papi and add another link in this chain.

The connections between generations are as solid as a perfect double play, as joyful as a blue-sky summer afternoon at the park, and as enduring as the hope of a walk-off home run.




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