Winter Olympics

Goodbye Pyeonchang!  Goodbye to the XXIII Winter Olympics!  I'll miss spending my evenings tied to the television watching ice skaters, snowboarders, skiers, those crazy folks that hurtle down a steep long track--the bobsledders and skeleton riders.  Goodbye speed skaters and cross country skiers.  I've loved every minute, the triumphs and the heartbreaks, the close finishes, the unexpected victories.  The photography and technology was amazing.  The Koreans did a bang up job preparing and hosting this world event.  I've not heard a single criticism.  This year there were more countries participating and more countries than ever won medals.  All the athletes work so very hard and have much in common with each other with their magnificent athleticism and skills in their sport.  I love it that the Norwegians ran away with the medals.  I loved seeing the N. Koreans and S. Koreans play ice hockey on the same team and march into the Opening and Closing ceremonies together.  Goodbye to this wonderful festival of human excellence until 2022 in China.
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Action by Teens

What I loved about teaching teen-agers for many years was their passion, their sense of justice and their willingness to look at what was happening and change their views.  I have never found these qualities in working with adults who seem to me to be ossified.  Few adults make the effort it takes to change.  Now, teens from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have taken buses to the Florida State Capitol to talk to legislators.  I love the teens action and their outrage.  Students deserve to be safe in school.  I can't imagine a single person who would disagree.  The question is how best to achieve that.  The students are demanding action on gun control issues.  One can say, oh they're naive and innocent and change will never come, but change has to start somewhere.  These teens have great authority despite their young age from their recent experience at their school.  The Florida legislators should listen carefully to them.  I hope other teens across the country will get involved especially in the upcoming 2018 elections to defeat Republican legislators who refuse any action on gun control.  These teens inspire me, they are a force to be reckoned with.  Perhaps the NRA's iron grip on legislators can be cracked this time.

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Inspiration

It is a pleasure to meet someone, see someone or read about someone who inspires me to live my life in positive ways.  First, this weekend, Herbert Blomstedt did that.  He conducted the San Francisco Symphony playing the well known pieces of Mozart's 40th Symphony and Beethoven's Eroica, his 3rd Symphony.  But it was Blomstedt more than the music who inspired me.  He is 90 years old and very much vital and alive!  He commanded a powerful presence and with economy of movement led the orchestra is dynamic contrasts and energetic playing.  I loved watching him point a finger at a section or player and the fluidity of how he moved his hands.  Even though he's been gone from being music director here for 25 years and even though much of the orchestra is young and didn't ever play under him, I could feel their love and respect for this marvel of a man.  As I get older, it is easy to focus on loss, but Blomstedt shows me we need to just keep keeping on, doing our best and not giving up.  Second, this morning I read an article in the New York Times about Scott Hamilton who had been the television commentator for figure skating for 30 plus years.  This year he was "retired" as a new flashy couple replaced him.  His attitude about this was refreshing.  He claimed joy in all he had done and with good grace praised the new team.  I am inspired by his positive joyful attitude in the face of multiple challenges.  I am inspired and want to accept change graciously while not ever giving up on vital living.

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Parkland, Florida

The world we live in has changed dramatically in the last twenty years.  You can count the ways.   But this was starkly brought home to me when I volunteered at a book sale at the high school where I taught for sixteen years in the 1980's and 1990's.   While I was working there, we were informed there would be a "lock-down" drill:  the door would be locked, the lights turned out and we had to sit motionless in the center of the hall until it was over.   The friend I was volunteering with thought this was outrageous and totally unnecessary.  She asked, "who would come on campus with a gun?"  Now we know, school shootings can happen anywhere.   That our children are not safe in school is a huge condemnation of our American society.  Trying to understand this, my first thought was that is a sign of increased crowding from over population.  Animals when they are stressed by crowding they do crazy things.  But I can't think of a single wealthy developed country where there has been a single school shooting.  The only reasonable answer to why does this happen here is the easy availability of guns and a culture of violence.  I think Nicholas Kristof (NYTimes) is right we need to face this issue and address gun violence as a public health issue.  Until we do, there will be more mass shootings, our children (and us) will be unsafe in public places and we will become increasingly numbed to the violence.  That last bit is something horrible.

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Garden musings

Spring comes early to Berkeley and it always takes me by surprise. February starts a wave of blossoms that just goes on and on until summer.  This year we're in our second week of an unseasonably warm (hot?) streak of weather.  A pesky high pressure ridge is riding high over California blocking our much needed rain.  The warmth has hurried the trees- acacias, plum, cherry and magnolias - into full bloom.  My west facing garden is once again bright yellow with the prolific blossoms of oxalis.  Each February I'm overwhelmed by this unwanted, uninvited plant, this plucky weed.  Over the years I've tried a variety of methods to get rid of it:  pulling it out only spreads the bulblets; sifting the soil and picking out the bulblets some are always left; putting thick layers of cardboard over the soil keeps them out for one year only.  Each method seems only to encourage and spread the plant.  This year, I'm trying to just enjoy the show of its amazing fecundity.  Each Spring, I am amazed by the power of the Earth to green and grow with our winter rains and warmth.  Daffodils literally grow inches every day until the flower waves like a bright yellow flag announcing, "here I am, here I am, it's Spring, rejoice."  The power of life is something to behold.  My garden is awash with sprouting bulbs and new growth.  Working in the garden this morning, tending, nurturing the new growth, I am once again filled with hope and perspective.  The garden will grow, life will go on.

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Lunar eclipse

Bob set his alarm for 5 am yesterday morning and we got up to see the magnificent celestial event - the blue-super-blood moon that was also the lunar eclipse.  Here on the west coast we had the full show.  I could see it sitting on a chair in my bedroom.  It was well worth getting up!  But it surprised me how slow it all was.  At first the moon got red, neat, and it stayed just red for at least an hour before anything else happened.  Then the right side of the moon got a very fine thin sliver of light.  Suddenly the eclipse began.  It was exciting to watch the light begin to cover the blood red moon, as the light progressed the other side of the moon darkened.  I love looking at celestial events, they remind me to be humble, to recognize that my concerns while big to me are in fact small stuff.  I love events that bring me perspective!

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