I usually end the month with a look back at photos that didn't make
it on to the blog. So, here are a few of them. Interestingly, it was all
about the sky in September, and that's mostly because it was a such a
foggy foggy month. When the fog would finally lift, I had to run outside
to see the rest of the sky that had been hidden for so long. Here is a
bit of what it looked like.
This
last photo was first sunrise we had seen all summer. That's how foggy
it has been here. As I type this, the fog has returned. Good thing I
have a photo to remember!
I decided just the other day that I would not watch the Presidential
Candidates debate. I had to think about what to do while Roger and my
mom watched it in the living room. So, I hid in the bedroom with my
computer and did this:
I looked at all the photos I've taken in the past few weeks that didn't make it on to the blog, like this one.
Or
this one, which I had posted on Facebook. Sheets drying in the
morning sun with an iridescent cloud stretched across the sky.
I
thought about how wonderful it is that the summer fog has finally left
us. We've had such beautiful skies here the past few days. In fact,
we've even had a California north coast heatwave, and the temps soared
into the 70s for two days in a row. It was really sizzling HOT! for us.
I
thought about the walks we've taken at the marsh recently. I had shot a
little 30-second video of an American Avocet eating in the muddy flats
of the bay. We hadn't seen such behavior before. It was pretty cool to
watch.
I looked at the photos I took of Roger's
finger injury. Did we tell you about that here? Oh yes, I just checked
and see that we did. Well it's healing rather strangely. Even weirder
than my finger did. I'm going to post a photo. I highly recommend that
you scroll down quickly to avoid seeing his finger, if that kind of
stuff makes you squeamish. I'll just wonder why his finger looks so
creepy while the debate rages on.
Isn't
that the weirdest way for a finger to "heal?" It made me seriously
contemplate why it's healing like that. Roger says it doesn't hurt too
much. It's still a bit sensitive to touch. Mmmm....Is it something in
our diets or in our stars? (I'm kidding. I'm killing time here. Roger
just came in to tell me that Trump keeps making faces.) But just typing
that line about the stars reminded me of the quote:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Ah, the poetry of the old world. I'm not going to think about Julius Caesar at a time like this.
I
thought about my mom's first visit with her new doctor last Friday and
how well it went. We were so concerned that after the excellent care she
had through UCLA medical, that she might find the medical care here
(where the daily newspaper has articles so often about how there are
1300 patients per primary care physician here) not sufficient. But she
truly liked the warmth and insight of her new PCP. And, we took her for
an emergency dental appointment Monday morning, where she learned that
she has an abscess. Ow ow ow. She came away from that appointment with
upbeat enthusiasm, "I really like that dentist. He came in the room and
talked to me like he was a friend." Isn't that a wonderful first visit!
I
posted on Facebook that I was not going to watch the debate, and my
dear friends there kept me posted with their wonderful funny
observations and insights. I feel so lucky. I didn't have to subject
myself to the horrors of our country's presidential debate, but I could still stay
sanely and riotously informed.
And so, I did it. I
managed to avoid the political shenanigans and media frenzy that is our
country at the moment. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was finally
over.
It's interesting to see what journey a single headline in the news can send me on. The other day I noticed that Bayer bought Monsanto for $66 billion.
Ah, two companies that I particularly dislike. It's not a surprise that
Bayer would buy a company that is genetically modifying crops all over
the world. If you knew Bayer's history (and relationship to IG Farben)
you would know that sometimes the interest of human lives doesn't rank
up there with other pressing matters like money and expediency.
IG Farben Plant at Auschwtiz-Monowitz (borrowed without permission)
I would recommend that you google Bayer
and take a look at their connection to IG Farben and Auschwitz during
World War II. It's horrifying to know what companies were up to in the
throes of Nazism and Hitler's regime. If you don't get a chance to read
about it, here's an excerpt:
During World War II, IG Farben used slave labor in factories that it built adjacent to German concentration camps, notably Auschwitz,[27] and the sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.[28]
IG Farben purchased prisoners for human experimentation of a
sleep-inducing drug and later reported that all test subjects died.[29][30] IG Farben held a large investment in Degesch which produced Zyclon B used to gas and kill prisoners during the Holocaust.[31]
After World War II, the Allies broke up IG Farben and Bayer reappeared as an individual business "inheriting" many of IG Farben's assets.[29]Fritz ter Meer,
an IG Farben board member from 1926 to 1945 who directed operations at
the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz, was sentenced to seven years in prison
during the IG Farben Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He was elected Bayer's supervisory board head in 1956.[32]
In 1995, Helge Wehmeier, the head of Bayer, publicly apologized to Elie Wiesel for the company's involvement in the Holocaust at a lecture in Pittsburgh
So
the headline about Bayer sent me looking for information about the
members of my mother's family who had perished in the Holocaust. I found
myself looking at lists of names of the dead. There are so many, and I
wasn't sure I had the exact spelling of the name. But it turns out I
did, and I found this at the Yad Vashem website. I took a screen shot
and then annotated it. My mother's mother's maiden name was Dienstfrei,
three names here are her two brothers and her mother.
Finding
the names Max and Jacob Dienstfrei, my mother's uncles, reminded that
one of their sons, Micah, had survived and was found alive many years later by my my mother's family. He was living in Israel. I did a post
about that more then ten years ago. Micah had a son who was living in
California, someone my parents met, went to his wedding, and kept in
touch with a for a while.
Well, I thought I should
check Facebook to see if I could reconnect with these long lost
relatives. And, of course, I did. Turns out that not only are they still
in California, but their youngest son had just started his freshman
year here at the university in Arcata. They were all here in
August! What a crazy surprise. I wrote to say we hope they find some
comfort in knowing that there is family here on the far north coast.
Yes, family. This young boy's now-deceased grandfather was my mother's
first cousin. And here we are practically neighbors. The history of our connection is almost beyond what I can convey.
So, Bayer and Monsanto, as much as I truly detest your presence on earth, I am glad you sent me on this journey.
I think the politics of my country and the world has finally
overwhelmed me. Nearly every headline is a reminder of just how bleak
things are. While we do go out for wonderful walks in our quiet and
lovely spot on earth, I can't seem to forget just how crazy things are
everywhere. I started thinking about a book we read several years ago
called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. So, I went and reread the post we did about it almost a decade ago. Wow, we were just as blown away back then, and probably much more eloquent about our despair than we are now.
Re-reading
that post spurred me to see what Alan Weisman has been up to lately. I
found a review of a book he wrote in 2013 called Countdown. If you don't go to the link, here's the first paragraph:
If
we wanted to bring about the extinction of the human race as quickly as
possible, how might we proceed? We could begin by destroying the
planet’s atmosphere, making it incapable of supporting human life. We
could invent bombs capable of obliterating the entire planet, and place
them in the hands of those desperate enough to detonate them. We could
bioengineer our main food sources — rice, wheat and corn — in such a way
that a single disease could bring about catastrophic famine. But the
most effective measure, counterintuitive as it may be, would be to
increase our numbers. Population is what economists call a multiplier.
The more people, the greater the likelihood of ecological collapse,
nuclear war, plague.
I know this is a bleak subject,
but do you ever wonder what the heck we humans are doing here on earth,
our one and only beautiful planet? I think about it probably way too
often. One of the things that I am reminded of is how hard it is for
people to actually grasp what the number 7,400,000,000 humans
actually means tangibly. I once calculated that one million seconds
equals twelve days; one billion seconds is 32 years, so seven billion
seconds would take 224 years. If you wanted to look at each human on
earth for just one second, it would take you 224 years. Does that even
convey how many people are on the planet?
A dear friend
posted this on Facebook the other day. It had originally been posted by
Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd. I thought it was worth
sharing.
What do you think the future holds for us on our one and only earth?
Will humans wake up? And what would it mean to wake up? If you were
going to help solve the problems, how would you begin? I sincerely have
no ideas.
It's been a little more than two weeks since my mom
moved in with us. It's been surprisingly easy adjusting our minimal
routines and accommodating her needs into our life. So far so good. She
is a fairly quiet woman who enjoys reading a well-written novel and a
good newspaper. So we have been supplying her with books (and my sister
puts new things to read on her Kindle) and having the New York Times
delivered to our house everyday.
The new recliner
And
yet, we haven't been going out much for our usual walks. Or we have
been going out, but have been distracted by things going on, things
needing to be done. Boxes unpacked. Doctor appointments made. Scheduling
haircuts and visits to the California DMV for an ID card
address changes. Dealing with the newspaper when they couldn't figure
out how to deliver to our door for the first week she was here. Things
we would not have thought about at all three weeks ago. Now they are
part of our everyday lives, replacing the things we might have done or
seen or read. But I look up while I'm typing this and see her reading in
the new recliner that got delivered on Friday. She is comfortable in
it, and can usually remember how to press the right buttons to lift her
feet and lower the back. It's just so good to see her happy and healthy.
And then I remember that Roger is napping as I type
this because he spent most of the night awake and in pain. He had spent a
good part of the past four days removing a mirror in my mom's bathroom
that had been stupidly glued to the wall. Then he fixed the wall,
spackled it, repainted it, and hung the newly purchased medicine cabinet along with the beautiful new matching shelf he built. While drilling
the last screw in, it slipped and he drilled the fourth finger on his
left hand. OW OW OW. Good thing we have the bandages, gauze pads, and finger cots
left over from when I cut off the finger pad on my finger in November
2015. We are getting to be first-aid pros.
I still run outside to peek at the sky. Even a contrail can wow me these days. Ah, the skies over suburbia.