Category Archives: Community/Interconnectedness

Waiting for my tenant to respond re the Mass Save Home Energy Assessment. Meanwhile, will continue to bang the drum re gun control. Check out this link to Mayors Against Illegal Guns re a fascinating poll. Seems our fellow Americans are more in favor of gun control than you or I might have imagined.

This afternoon I joined my friend Lynne  at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall for A Day of Service and Celebration in Honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I’d thought I’d gone so as to spend some time with Lynne—whose wise counsel re writing is always helpful—and because Nikki Giovanni was to be the keynote speaker.  But when I teared up singing “Lift Every Voice,” I realized, “Patricia, you’ve been hungering and thirsting after this kind of righteousness.”

So, yes, it was teary afternoon, a powerful afternoon: seeing and listening to those beautiful, talented young people of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. Nikki Giovanni’s passionate and wry enlargement of the Rosa Parks story.  Listening to Dr. King’s words read aloud. And how wonderful to hear the crowd roar when Chief Justice Roderick L. Ireland, MA’s first African American Chief Justice—and one of the readers—was introduced!

AND, if that weren’t enough, I had a personal satori, as Lynne would say: A couple of days ago another Friend/friend who’s interested in leadings, asked me: “Civil rights, the criminal justice system and climate change? How do those fit together?”

My answer was something about being open to Spirit and believing that working on climate change was what was being asked of me right now. (And, oh, yeah, while keepin’ on keepin’ on re criminal justice, too.)

But, hey, what did MLK have to say about interconnectedness, huh? That concept that’s so much at the heart of the climate change movement? Dr. King said this from the Birmingham Jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

So that’s why the Transition Towns movement/permaculture/working on global warming issues so powerfully speaks to me, huh?

Nice to know.

. . . and it’s the middle of the winter and all you want to do is get warm, who has time to research the best deal? (Twice, today, I happened to be with people in that dire situation.) So maybe that’s what I’ll do? Starting tomorrow?

So, yes, the blizzard did hit and, lo, we lost power from about 6 until 9:30 am. Since we’d been out late last night—to see “Ruined,” a brutal yet redemptive play at the Huntington—it was very easy to simply curl up next to the warm body sharing my bed (Yes. Yesterday’s blog re body heat was on my mind) and go back to sleep. Eventually, however, the wonder of the hushed, whitened world outside drew me out of bed around nine.

First challenge: How to make coffee. Happily, I discovered that I could light the hi-tech gas stove with a match. Arright! I even remembered, sleepy as I was, to add extra water to the pot so that when I heated it for coffee I was also heating the kitchen.  Slightly.

In those first few minutes of being awake, fortified by coffee and in my warmest robe, pajamas, socks and slippers, I thought: “Well, this isn’t so bad.” But with no cars on School Street, no refrigerator noise, no rattling radiators, no children walking by on their way to school; in utter, utter quiet, I could actually hear this old house start to gently creak. It was cooling down.

That’s when it hit me: This could really, really suck.

I’m not going to claim that in those, literally, chilling minutes before the power came back on and the radiators began cheerfully clunking again that I had an entire mind-meld/totally empathetic Ah HA understanding of what it feels like to be poor and cold and helpless.

But I was pretty close.

An old New England expression, buttonin’ up means preparing for winter: Putting up the storms, stacking the fire wood close to the house, checking food supplies, candles, lanterns, etc. Another winter storm approaching, I find myself caulking a few more windows and—locating my seldom-used cross-country skis. Yup. This storm, I’m gonna do a little skiin’.

I grew up skiing, or so it seems, old-style skiing, “baggy knees skiing.” When the sport got way too chichi for old-style me, I quit. But was delighted in the early 70s to discover cross-country skiing. Definitely a good fit.

So tomorrow I’ll be generating another form of heat as I glide over snowy sidewalks for a spell (I’m still not used to that dull thud when my ski poles hit asphalt or concrete.). I’ll be buttonin’ up my body to go outside, then, after a few vigorous, cardiovascular minutes, unzipping my jacket, removing my scarf.

Sunday night, when the group of people I was with visited the JP Green House, we collectively caused the temperature of that super-insulated home to go up 2 degrees.

Body heat. Hmm.

Today’s Boston Globe had a disturbing article in the business section: Evergreen Solar, a local biz, “has struggled against aggressive competition in China, a poor economy, and increasingly lackluster government support for the country’s solar industry.”

This is, of course, outrageous.

And worthy of a mini-rant. Are you ready? Here goes:

[Historical reference: In the sixties and seventies, many a rant began: “We can put a man on the moon but we can’t . . . ]

We can spend billions of dollars on war but we can’t support subsidize companies like Evergreen? (China, on the other hand has “ramped up manufacturing, using massive government subsidies to produce the world’s cheapest solar panels.”)

This is outrageous.

Here’s how I plan to cope with my outrage and my sense of powerlessness; I share this because it’s helpful.

When I read maddening articles like this in my morning paper, I remind myself that I’m reading, you know, The Boston Globe. Does the Globe know much about the countless visionary individuals and small neighborhood efforts and initiatives and small businesses who, indeed, recognize what’s imperative? Like Slow Money for example?

What do you think?

And I am comforted by the very last words of George Eliot’s Middlemarch—which I just finished last night.

Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Yesterday, in the spirit of Telling Everybody What I’m Doing and Then Listening, my friend Betsy  mentioned her visit to Finland. She’d noticed that the streets were all torn up and had been told that Finland was doing interesting things to reduce their oil imports.

Hmm. Finland. Where it get’s to minus 20 Celsius. So this morning, googled “Finland heating” and came up with a slew of interesting things happening in Finland.

For starters:

1. Recycling excess heat from a large data center—to heat adjacent buildings and homes, I’m guessing.

2. Heating businesses producing heat for local district heating systems. Shared heat.

Both projects, especially the second, required commitment and enormous capital. Could this country, so financially strapped by the wars in—well, it’s just too damned depressing to name them all—turn on a dime, like it did when the US became a mighty war machine, and invest its enormous resources towards projects such as are happening in Finland?

Of course we can.

Why do I say that?

Because I believe in That of God in everyone.

Because I believe in transformation.

Because I am “practic[ing] resurrection.”

And because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the greatest anti-war songs is, you guessed, “Finlandia.”

Saturday morning, I invited my husband to join me to shop at a crafts fair and to pick up our Christmas wreath.

He declined. “We’ve gone there for several years,” he pointed out. “It’s always the same.”

Exactly!

This holiday season, more than ever, I relish same-old, same-old. Aside from not sending Christmas cards (“[Sending Christmas cards is] expensive, and time-consuming and environmentally unfriendly” declared The Boston Globe‘s Miss Conduct yesterday.), I joyfully repeat my holiday traditions.

Why?  It’s not just because lately it seems as though the loonies have taken over my country. Or that my father died. Or that my writing’s stalled. Which make keeping my balance and perspective and equanimity hard sometimes, so that same-old feels safe. Not entirely.

It’s also because when I light a candle  or deeply breathe in the living, green, verdant smell of our Christmas wreath, I connect with the billions of my species who feared/fear the dark and the cold and mortality, yet remain hopeful but yearning.

And I am finding enormous comfort in that connection.

The bells of mindfulness are calling out to us,

trying to wake us up, reminding us to look deeply

at our impact on the planet.

Thich Nhat Hanh

When, in 1770, John Woolman connected “retailed rum, sugar, and molasses [to be] the fruits of the labour of slaves,” he practiced the sort of mindfulness Thich Nhat Hanh espouses.

But sometimes that gets very complicated.

Every morning, rain or shine, hail storm or snow storm, The Boston Globe is delivered right to my door. Literally. Andrey Goncalves, the delivery guy, throws my paper from his car onto my front porch; most mornings, his aim is so precise the paper lands right onto my doormat.

Can you spot the mindful/environmental/spiritual dilemma? Of course you can! It’s that damned car.

“Should I continue to pay NYT BostonGlobe  $46.56 every month?” I began to wonder. “Environmentally, maybe it would be better if I walked to a store every morning where stacks of Globes had been delivered.”

Ah, but just as I was contemplated this, what should arrive with my morning paper but a cheesy Thanksgiving card from Andrey Goncalves!

So what, you might say. It came with an addressed envelope, you might point out. That card was obviously your Paper Delivery Guy’s underhanded way to get a tip.

Maybe so.

But Something about that card “spoke to my condition,” as JW would put it. I remembered Andrey’s faithfulness—even in terrible weather. And his excellent arm. I remembered how long he’s been my Delivery Guy. Which just might be saying something about how much he—and his family?—need this cruddy job? I regarded his name, considered what it might be like for anyone named “Goncalves” to survive in this economy, this anti-immigrant environment. And, cheesy as it was, there was Something heartfelt about that card which, indeed, asked me to take a moment to reflect upon the bounty that informs my cushy life.

What would JW do? Well, truth be told, I have no idea.

But TNH has this to say: “To bring about real change in our global ecological situation our efforts must be collective and harmonious, based on love and respect for ourselves and each other, our ancestors, and future generations.”

So here’s what I’m planning to do: Keep on shelling out almost fifty bucks every month for my newspaper. Keep on giving Andrey generous tips. And, on a rainy or snowy or miserable morning, when I hear that familiar thunk at my front door, to sleepily offer a prayer of thanksgiving to Andrey and all the millions of unseen, unknown men and women whose fruits of labor I partake every single, mindless day.

The bells of mindfulness are sounding.

Thich Nhat Hanh

A week after my father died, my husband and I used a gift certificate from Jeremy and Vita (my husband’s son and his wife; thanks, you two!) to help pay for two Boston Symphony Orchestra tickets. Entering that august, lofty, historic auditorium, I realized that the first time I’d been in Symphony Hall, it had been my dad who’d squired our family there—for Tufts Night At the Pops in 1962. And I remembered a time when I’d been, maybe, six or seven, when he and my grandmother attended a BSO concert and, much as I had begged, had left me home. “You’re too young,” they’d declared. “You’ll squirm and fidget and bother the other concert goers.”

“I’ll be good,” I’d promised.

“Maybe when you’re older,” they’d told me. But we moved, my grandmother died; it was not to be. In college as now, however, whenever possible, I’ve attended concerts in Symphony Hall—but not in the black patent-leather mary janes I’d once imagined I’d wear on my BSO outing.

As I took my seat and perused the program, I was aware both of my own grief and my intense joy to be back in a space that has been such a significant place in my life.  My grief worried me a little: “There’s a lot attached to this evening,” I acknowledged. “I really need for this be perfect!”

Our orchestra seats were wonderful, we’d gotten there early enough for excellent people-watching and, oh, the sheer thrill to watch the orchestra members stroll in, schmooze, play a few riffs, tune their instruments. So far, so good.

But at about 7:55, two women in their late twenties/early thirties breathlessly brushed past us and took their seats beside us, just as the “Please turn off all cell phones” announcement flashed. But the woman beside me didn’t notice: She was checking her messages!

OK, Patricia, I counseled myself. You’re in a diminished state. You came here, tonight, with an unrealistic expectation for perfection. And, I reminded myself, you were raised in a family where concert-going behavior was held as something so significant, SO important, that you weren’t deemed worthy enough to attend.

But still . . .

Just as the conductor entered, the young woman slipped her Whatever The Hell It Was device  into her very nice evening bag (Spiffy electronic gadgetry, spiffy bags; please don’t judge me because I care for neither. OK?).

“Is that thing off?” I asked her. Firmly. But, I’m hoping, with a wee bit of gentleness, a tiny bit of I-know-I’m-a-mess-so-please-forgive-me.

But here’s the thing: That woman spent the entire concert with her head bent down while she leafed through her program. But, I realized, watching her with dismay, that’s what young people DO. (Some do.) In a crowd, on the T, waiting, walking along a crowded, city sidewalk, for crissakes, they bend their heads and check their messages, text, whatever.

No, she wasn’t a complete philistine. It was a sheaf of bound pages on her lap, not an eerily glowing electronic screen. (Thank you, Jesus.) But here’s the other thing: She missed an amazing, electrifying performance by solo violinist Pinchus Zukerman. Who, when he interacted with the orchestra or simply felt/took in Beethoven’s music, had been well worth watching.

Sad, huh?

Did you know that Archibald Query invented marshmallow fluff, right here in Somerville, in 1917?

Quaker query and book publishing agent query today join a brief, grateful tribute to “the ‘Ville.” My hometown.

YAY!