Out in the Expanding Universe in Everyday Ramblings

A view of the river the other direction from up top the hill in the background in the photo from the last post. A break in the rain. We even had a little bit of blue sky yesterday.

Diego is stable! It was a challenging week, and the little guy is doing much better, all systems operational. I went ahead and ordered the med to be mailed anyway for the next round. At least I will be able to cope a bit better then.

I am healing and other than taking antibiotics for 3 more days and the food limitations and the stupid annoying antiseptic mouthwash that stains my teeth that I admit I have grown to loathe, I am doing well. My energy level is back to normal, and I am going to resume my mobility classes.

The book group, which is more like a poetry group was interesting. As we were gathered on Zoom on the eve of Martin Luther King Day and we were talking about hope, most of the readings were by Black Americans. The irony did not escape us that a 78-year white man from Montana was reading “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou. And our facilitator, the actor and self-proclaimed hippie read parts of the last speech M.L.K. gave. He started to cry. It was deeply moving.

It turns out our facilitator, (I need to come up with a diary name for him), we will call him Walt, because he adores Walt Whitman, when he was in 6th grade, also in Montana, in response to a school assignment to write a letter to someone they admired instead of choosing a parent or an uncle who was a fireman like all the other kids did, Walt sent a letter to M.L.K. asking for his autograph. This was just after the letter from the Birmingham Jail.

He got one back. A signed piece of white paper. Since then, he has had CD’s of the speeches that he listens to in his car and very well read copies of collections of the sermons too. It is clear that he has an ongoing relationship with Dr. King.

Walt also asked one of the other members of the group, an artist, to read a piece she had written for this meditation group a lot of them are involved with. It was an essay on how she came to the realization, and she thinks of it like that, almost in religious terms, that it was her purpose in life to share what she had learned with others. It was also moving, and there were tears again. The meditation group is ongoing and meets in the prison that the Midsummer’s Night production was done in. She goes out every Saturday with another woman and leads this group.

Last night, my former class coordinator at the church, who is in the book group and comes to my classes occasionally showed up and asked if we could talk after class.

She asked me if I would consider being on the board of the nonprofit that Walt runs that produced the prison movie and supports the meditation group and is about building a learning community. In two weeks, a gifted actor who lives in Tennessee now, is going to read Eliot’s Four Quartets to us. A work I love.

Walt is very well known in my community. Anybody who is anybody in the arts here knows him. He is amazing at getting people to show up and do things. And my coordinator said that when they were casting around over the weekend looking for a replacement to the board for a woman who has two new grandchildren and is promoting the movie to film festivals, my name came up.

I told her I would think about it.

This morning I get an invitation to go for tea with the whole crew at a hip hotel across the river on Thursday morning. Eek.

I still have the League Fiscal Policy meeting to get through next Monday. There are these two Democratic Socialist women who are pushing Modern Monetary Policy hard involved with this group so it will not be dull. I am feeling a bit in over my head there. I get what they are pushing but this is about positions the League, local and state has taken over the last 11 years or so and it is dense stuff. Oh well.

This is how democracy works.

The important thing is that Diego is okay. I am okay.

I was a hippie for a minute back in the day. It will be interesting to connect with the person who believed in love, peace, and happiness. I found out that my coordinator actually spent time in Plum Village with Thich Nhat Hanh. She comes by her Buddhist practices authentically.

They are saying, the scientists, that the most important element in our ability to experience happiness, is our relationships with others.

Mine are about to expand. Here we go, ready or not.

Last updated January 18, 2023