What does the future hold?

So my daughter sends me this photo taken last August of my little granddaughter Bea. Her questioning face seems to ask: What does my future hold?
Bea, this is how it is:
We inherit the foundations of our existence, but we alone are responsible for our future. We begin by living with what our parents achieved, and we arrive at old age with what we have worked toward all our days, whether that's peace of mind or a big bank account or a wall full of diplomas or a cave in the woods. We begin with the world our grandparents and great-grandparents left to us, and we go on to create the world we want to live in and leave to our children and grandchildren.
I've just finished watching the first disc of Ken Burns' Civil War, the 1990s television series that has now been remastered and released on DVD. I remember when it was on TV; I remember that I didn't watch it. Back then I was busy raising my daughters. I didn't want to think about slavery and killing, however it might be glorified. The Civil War made me queasy to think about. I hate violence and racism and everything related to them.
More recently, though, with my children grown, I've started to think about the history of our nation. In the mail yesterday I received a pack of poems from the other participants in a writing workshop that I'm planning to attend in January. The workshop is to be held in Kentucky, that "dark and bloody ground." I sat down this morning at 5 a.m. to read through the poems and was immediately noticed that all of them, or nearly all, are about death. We all write dead grandma poems, dead grandpa poems, dead parent poems, etc. when we're starting out to write poetry. Very few beginning poets write happy poems. That comes long afterward, when all the sorrow inside us has been put into its place. It doesn't go away; we just learn to accommodate it.
So here is the story of American history: We slew the Indians; we enslaved the Africans; we then turned on our brothers and neighbors and killed as many of them as possible. That's the history we have to live with. The media and the advertisers and the big corporations and the military industrial complex try to keep us distracted so that we don't even realize who or what we are. We have to fight to find a peaceful moment--a silent, peaceful moment--to reflect.
But the future that we make is another story. We can work for peace. We can spread kindness around us. We can take a stand against poverty and persecution. We can vote our consciences. We can hope for a day when children can grow up safe and healthy, whatever their country, whatever their race or religion. We can give, as God has blessed us to be able to give.
We can keep open minds. We can keep learning.
Bea, I hope the future holds nothing but happiness for you. Just know that wherever I am, I will be doing my best to make that happen.

Better Times Are Coming

Bea is feeling much better and resuming her usual high-jinks. Here she is as a happy Halloween lion, all decked out for a luau. Who could be more enchanting?

I include this to illustrate my point that better times are coming, even when our lives seem at their lowest points. Goodness knows, there are times when we can't see a way out. But there always is a way out.

Today at work, I was unlucky enough to tune in to the breaking news about the shooting in Orlando. I was absolutely mesmerized by the fact that I was seeing an event in another state while it was still happening. I checked the front page of the New York Times. They were still going on and on about yesterday's shooting at Ft. Hood. We are really getting spoiled by the Internet. It's like brewing coffee. Any process that takes more than five minutes is just too slow for me.

Like back in the 60s, a girl could spend all evening just fixing her hair. Brushing it, washing it, rolling it, drying it. pin-curling it, putting on a sleeping cap. Morning she would have to take out the pins, brush it, tease it, spray it. And we thought we were so modern! Nowadays, I wear my hair cut short. I leap out of bed, grab my instant coffee, fly into the shower, wash/condition my hair out of the same bottle, jump out and blow it dry, and I'm out of the house in about 30 minutes.

Likewise, we used to get the afternoon paper, so we had to wait until suppertime to find out what happened in the world that day (or actually, the day before). Radio sped up the news, TV gave us pictures. But all that was so slow. We lived so slowly then. We had a lot of time to cook and sew and think. Now we just rush from one thing to another. It takes having a child like Bea around to recall to us that we need to stay right in the present. Kids resist being rushed. They hate it. Have you ever tried to rush a 3 year old? Have you ever tried to rush a cat?

Perhaps if someone somewhere along the line had taken the time to talk to Major Hasan he would not have had to express his anguish by killing fellow soldiers bound for Afghanistan. Perhaps if Mr. Rodrigez had taken a walk through the park this morning and fed the pigeons, he might have thought better of going to his former place of employment and blowing his former colleages into kingdom come.

William Tecumseh Sherman, who liked to be called "Cump," said, "War is hell." William Stafford, my favorite poet of all time, wrote a book entitled Every War Has Two Losers. I think they were right. I think the speed at which we live keeps us from reflecting on the wisdom of the past and the lessons of history. I call on the people of the world to slow down and dwell on the sweetness of the present moment. Look at your child--and smile. Look at your cat--and scratch him under his chin. Look at the Internet, but don't let its superspeed fool you. We are people living in human time, not machines living at the speed of light.

The Puking Pumpkin

Halloween was kind of a struggle this year. Bea was dealing with a rotovirus and it was no fun at all. Her daddy made her a sympathetic "puking pumpkin" so she would not have to suffer alone.

I can remember when Halloween was so, so different. There was no such thing as going out and buying a costume. You made a costume out of stuff from the ragbag. You could be a gypsy or a hobo.

You could only go trick-or-treating to close neighbors that you knew, and only right after dark. I always went to the neighbors who lived right across a field from us, a couple named Dotty and Woody. (Wow, those would be good cat names.) There was a path through the field from my house to theirs, and on their end of the path were two apple trees, one was a red apple tree and the other was a yellow apple tree. They would always have a treat for me, maybe a homemade popcorn ball, but in addition, they would invite me to help myself to apples from their trees. Now that was really neighborly.

Today Halloween is all about adults and drinking and sex, and I could just care less. The churches have tried to take up the slack with such festivities as a "Holy Ghost Weenie Roast." I am not kidding. I saw the sign outside a Baptist Church.

Even for a rational person like me, the very idea of a Holy Ghost Weenie Roast made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

So on to Thanksgiving, until some wretched fool somewhere finds a way to commercialize and Christianize that as well. I am definitely planning a vegan meal. I saw four wild turkeys crossing the road in front of my car last weekend and I pledged to them that I would not eat turkey flesh this year or probably ever again. I do thank the pilgrims for inviting the Native Americans to a feast and so beginning what I like to think of as the Democratic party. Let's all feast with peace in mind.