Pretend Normal

A first social gathering since the onset of these COVID times.

No urgent purposes, no missions.  Just getting together with friends for the sake of company.  Masked, outside.  A city "hike" around Roosevelt Island.

To the lighthouse ... on Roosevelt Island.

Friend "Writer/OT" proposed it; I was marginally hesitant, but then another careful friend, "Activist," was willing, which made me more willing.  Sissy was not so keen, but since I won't see the folks again until Christmas, she begrudgingly accepted.  Not that she could have done anything to stop me from going.  I jumped at a chance to resume some sense of normalcy, and to put off impending work - a rite of the long Thanksgiving weekend.  Balance.

So we went.  The three of us took the tram, which required masks, limited capacity, and had the transoms open for the short four minute trip over - not bad for precautionary measures.  We met friend "Defense Attorney" there.  And we walked, and talked.

Duplex for some lucky birds.

Friends were here before us - at some point.

There was nothing monumental about it.  Other than that it happened - the first purely social get together since March.  Eight months. 

From Tom Otterness's "Marriage of Money and Real Estate."

It was not as fulfilling as perhaps I was hoping of a reunion after so long a period apart.  Though, truth be told, I had seen two of the three during Defense Attorney's pressing office move a few weeks back - so that might have contributed to the lower sense of novelty and satisfaction.  

But it distracted from matters at hand.  And so in that sense, it was a successful excursion.  Thanksgiving was the start of that process - refocusing my attention on all I am fortunate to have.  This excursion was more fortune piled on top.  It all helps to suppress the mournfulness.  Maybe that was really it; to expect a friend gathering to completely subsume the other was really too much too ask.  Evaluated on its own merits, the outing was lovely.

Making Way for Bigger and Better, Hopefully

Clearing the underbrush to make room for more vigorous growth.

Former home of two hibiscuses protected by a kind stranger, then rescued and brought home for the Winter.  Future home of a true tree, off to the left, its burlap-wrapped rootball taller than the two sapling hibiscuses. 

Backdrop: On the way home from an appointment this morning for a medical test, I stopped in to my local post office seeking prepaid postcards for the get out the vote campaign for the Georgia runoff elections for the U.S. Senate - none.  Detoured to the next closest post office - also none.  Apparently my neighborhood has many activists who feel passionately enough about the direction they'd like this country to take that they are exhausting the local supply of cheap postcards.  (Backup plan was to print my own; Sissy offered up unused excess cardstock, and I put my printer to use, and found a U.S. embassy-utilized get out the vote graphic (so, as a taxpayer, I figure I paid for that in part), and it all worked out in time for me to join the evening Zoom postcard party.)

En route home from the second post office, I decided to check in on one of "my" tree pits.  And happened along just as a truck with workers and mature young trees were being unloaded on the block.

They were digging up the tree pit I had planted back in the Spring with the weakest of the maples, one that did not make it.  But someone else adopted the tree pit and planted flowers, protecting the little garden with a brick border.  The workers were digging up that work to put in the new tree.

Farther down was "my" pit - that had received the second smallest of the seedlings in Spring; it, too, had died.  And then I had come back earlier in the Fall to plant two hibiscuses.  It was the day I had the nasty encounter with the tree hater.  But then I came back the following day to find my hibiscuses ringed by protective brick fragments - no doubt the work of the guerrilla gardener down the block, and my faith in community greening was restored.  Next to my pit was a tree, positioned for planting.  Mixed emotions - on the one hand, my poor hibiscuses; on the other, of course I wanted the block to have a REAL tree.  So I documented them, wondering ... should I attempt to rescue the hibiscuses?  I had no tools to dig.  Could I go home and come back in time?

I decided to cross the street to check on the maple trio.  They seemed fine, undisturbed, amid their cheerful overgrown begonia tree pitmates.  Around the corner from them, though, more mature young trees with their burlapped rootballs, positioned for planting. 

I crossed York Avenue again, thinking about my hibiscuses.  It was then that I took the above photo - just as the workers were beginning to dig up the brick rings and their supervisor was walking toward the pit.  And I decided to just ask, "If you're digging those out, could I have them back?  Of course I want a real tree to be there, but I planted those when there was nothing."  With their proper equipment, the saplings came out lickety split.  I had nothing in which to carry the bare root hibiscuses, but I rescued them back, and brought them home, and put them into a planter with the catmint - to keep them, hopefully, through the Winter.  In the Spring, if they survive, I can decide what then for them.

They were just underbrush to the City, that suddenly awoke to tend its tree pits.  But they were my little darlings, tied to Mama Hen's garden or grown from seeds I gathered, nourished, cared for, transplanted - in hopes they might thrive and grow and blossom and make my neighborhood better.

So, then ...

... Sometimes we pour all of our efforts in pursuit of a cherished hope.  We put all of our eggs into one basket, figuratively and literally.   And it doesn't work out as we'd hoped or planned.  And then, we can only hope that bigger things are in store, beyond our puny dreams.

Beyond my little hibiscuses, I had dreams of nurturing different life, bigger life.  Had... and then after bringing home the rescued hibiscus darlings, got the test results, and had to start to learn to let go of those dreams.  Processing it all still...  

...I came back to this, to provide the backdrop narrative, now with a bit more distance and perspective.  It is all still a devastating blow.  But I know I will be ok.  The rescued hibiscuses have lost their leaves as our temperatures have dropped.  But their roots should be safe under all the catmint...

I can only hope that there is more in store for me - something bigger, better than my puny little dreams.

Spring in November

Spring-like tidings in mid-November.

Well, the beautiful, sunny, warm weather made it feel that way - mood-lifting, outlook-shifting ... helped in no small part by Saturday’s call of the election for the Biden Harris ticket - thank the stars!  The ticket itself - Biden with his more than four decades in elected service, and Harris with all the “firsts” she checks off - seasoned, yet new and fresh.  Hip hip hooray!

And so today, the Monday after, was a lovely 70-something degree day to be out to soak in some sunshine, activate the vitamin D, and celebrate with lunch of tofu poke with my favorite sister (putting aside for a few hours the work that always hangs over heavy - sigh).

On the river, a jet skier whizzed by the colorful trees of Roosevelt Island, as if there were a whole season full of warm and sunny days ahead, like it were mid-May rather than mid-November.

And in the news, a vaccine, with results in based on 44,000 volunteers, with a tentative effective rate of 90 percent!  We might slowly be able to resume life before too much longer.

To a sense of fresh beginnings in November, ushering in better days.  To finally exhaling, being able to breathe again - literally and figuratively. 

A Taste for Dairy and Sugar - On Instant Gratification

On empty calories and instant gratification. 

It is far more fun to tweak this blog than to do work on what should be the bookend weekend of my vacation week.  How's that for stating the obvious?

Seth Meyers told Jimmy Fallon about his son and his introduction to, and affinity for, ice cream.  There was never any doubt that he would love it; that's not the reason that parents withhold ice cream from their children.  More likely, it is to introduce them to other, perhaps less obviously tasty, foods that might offer more nutritional value and acquire a taste for those, before the easy instant gratification "food."

And so it is for me with blogging and gardening - they are my ice cream, so easy, so sweet.  Not so much return for the time spent.

But I succumbed.  

And in soaking in the Jardin, I came across this guy - a black soldier fly.  I think there were larvae in the compost pile - we first saw them when the bucket was emptied into an empty planter for temporary holding.  When the compost went back, there were wriggly dark and large maggot-like creatures at the bottom.  Ugly, scary, trying to crawl out of the planter.  But then, all grown up, and in the sun, how gorgeous - the purples and blues.  Under the "Fauna" page, I selected the title, rank, really, of "Staff Sergeant" - in honor of one I know, who fit the bill - a bit scary and unruly in youth, who grew into himself beautifully.  And hurt my heart.  But did so in an honorable way, did what had to be done when I suppose he saw "we" didn't have legs.  It's why we're still friends.

As for the instant gratification blogging, well, the end result of the most recent tweaks:

Needs more work to realize its full potential.  But it's a start.

The problem with instant gratification is, as Americans, most of us are so primed for it that we are being spoon fed critical COVID-19 information as if we are toddlers.  This ridiculous Presidential Administration can't handle the truth, and its agencies assume we Americans cannot either, have no discipline or depth of understanding to adopt the measures that will really stem this pandemic.  And the numbers bear out that that assessment is accurate for a huge swath - people won't even accept the simple request to don a mask.  So we are led to believe a vaccine might be just around the corner and when it comes, all will go back to normal.  When apparently the State Department in other parts of the world tells our international partners to plan for years - 2024, perhaps; a marathon, not a sprint.

Preparations - psychological and otherwise - for the one versus the other are quite different.  It would be nice to just know the truth, so those of us who can handle it can prepare properly.

Staff Sergeant Black Soldier Fly has gone off to a land where they are planning for the marathon, on the advice of the American embassy there.  A land far away.  Among the main reasons "we" could never have grown legs.

Election Day Colors

On the literal and metaphorical colors of Election Day.

In particular, the reds ... in the tree I passed en route to an appointment yesterday ...

...(Compare its progression from September 25th) ... 

...Tucked away and hidden in a large evergreen as I left the appointment, but cheerily chirping to draw attention ...

Can you spot the red?

... And, blended with blue in today’s apparel selection.  

I wanted a decisive blue wave yesterday; I have been distracted today at how much angry and hateful red is out there when I thought, and hoped, there would be so much more blue ... but following a tradition a friend started years ago (before the red and blue divide felt so starkly unbridgeable, back when he tended to lean more red, and I wanted to affirm our friendship - we both lean blue these days, a telling indicator of how the Republican Party has changed) - “Purple Wednesday” - on the day after Election Day, like it or not, we must remember that we are a purple land, and figure out some way to co-exist, difficult as that may seem in the moment.  Wearing purple is my tangible reminder to try to be civil, and renew my efforts to bridge the color gap.