REFLECTIONS ON LIFE

AUGUST 2017

REFLECTIONS ON HOME IN COLUMBIA

The many squirrels have been quieting down, scampering a bit more slowly and quietly through the branches of the trees visible from our bed.  Hummingbirds have become the dominant activity, hovering outside our bedroom windows, the hum of their beating wings, flapping – according to Wikipedia – about 50 times per second.  Our lone neighborhood juvenile fox, having injured one of his legs, moves much more slowly through the grass, bright green now from the abundance of rain we have recently received.  With autumn approaching, the wildlife is quieting down in sync with the drying and browning of summer’s green growth manifest in the leaves on the trees.  Immersing ourselves in this beautiful experience of late summer, Lloyd and I are so deeply aware of the tragic conditions late summer and the rising waters are bringing to the south.

Yes, like so many others, at about 2:30pm on August 21, Lloyd and I in our front yard were glued to our lawn chairs on one end and our NASA eyeshades on the other.  Our granddaughter, Katerina, captured this moment in time when all the tragedy on our planet appeared to slip away for a bit, as we were aware of millions of other human beings similarly engaged.

One of the regulars at the coffee shop we visit virtually daily asked Lloyd “how can it be that while both the sun and the moon move from east to west, the moon’s shadow moves from west to east? “ Lloyd explained this phenomenon to me.  Want to figure the physics out for yourself?  I will include it in my September Reflections and in the meantime tell our friend in the coffee shop.

…

For the past several months, when I wake about four in the morning, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, I answer the call of one of the volumes on the book shelves of Lloyd’s office adjacent to our bedroom.  I am aware that this is not a good idea from the perspective of good sleep habits, though it is such a strong and persuasive call in the enticing dark.  One particularly large built-in bookcase holds many of the favorite volumes of fiction that Lloyd and/or I have read and treasured during our lifetimes.  One morning last week I was called not by fiction but rather, from a smaller built-in bookcase by a memoire of one of my Mom’s, and thereby one of my, favorite authors, Vladimir Nabokov, “Speak Memory.”  Among the pages, on onionskin paper that my Mom had used for a carbon copy in her old Underwood manual typewriter, which she used as a stenographer for a well, known Baltimore law firm. (I have a precious photo of her walking briskly through the streets of downtown Baltimore taking notes for a deposition in a B&O Railroad case from one of the attorneys for whom she worked.)  This particular letter was one she had written to Nabokov’s widow upon his death in 1977, when she was the age that I am now, 73.  As you read the letter keep in mind that this is my Mom who never completed high school

“I felt very sad when I read of Vladimir Nabokov’s death last July.  I felt as if I had lost in life someone I knew and loved very much.  I have enjoyed many of his stories and especially the book “Speak Memory.”  He wrote of the petal falling from the tree into the river and the union of the petal and its reflection “with the magic precision of a poet’s word meeting halfway his, or a reader’s recollection.”  It was for this I loved him.  He touched and brought to life many memories I had forgotten, not like his maybe but something else that I had forgotten and wanted to remember.  He wrote of things I had never known and made them seem as real and familiar as my own, both happy and sad.  He was funny too, and sometimes had fun at our expense, but I didn’t care.  And then I know there was much that I missed altogether.  On the dust cover of “Pale Fire”, which nearly drove me out of my mind, there is a picture of him, which looks as if he’s wondering what he should get into next to cause mischief.  I’m so glad I’ve been able to read his books.”

I wonder from whence came my deep love of literature?

Just returned home from lunch at Clyde’s with Lloyd and, my sister, Mary, and her daughter of the same name.  My sister caught me completely by surprise and gave me our Mom’s wedding ring which she always wore and had left for Mary in her will.  She left other rings for me and my other sister, Martha.  Mine is her engagement ring, which she specified for me in her will, and Martha’s was yet another treasured ring, an opal.  I wear my Mom’s engagement ring all the time, and will now do the same with her wedding ring.

REFLECTIONS ON ZACH

Knowing that Lloyd and I will be leaving in a few weeks for our first trip to China, I recently went to an imaging center for a cat scan of my right hip which has been giving me a bit trouble when I’m walking.  I had never been there before.  When I signed in at the front desk, the office manager recognized my name.  Because of my many years in public office?  Nope. She recognized me as Zach’s grandmother.  I was unaware that he had spent a fair amount of time during his last years in this particular center.  Word spread, and within the hour I spent there, I believe every employee – about ten of them– came over to me and said what an impression Zach had made on them.  As he did in so many places, he had told stories to everyone and sang songs. Being in that treatment center, as well as sitting at my desk right now, I can hear his words as clear as a bell:  “Grandma, I’m going to reach out and help other people, and I know that by doing that I will help myself.”

…

Last week, a guy who is probably in his late forties and who works for the county invited me to meet over coffee.  We had done this before, and he had also visited our home where I could show him our family photos including Zach that hang on our walls.  The two of them had a chance meeting in a local drugstore before Zach’s brain cancer diagnosis.  I can clearly recall Zach’s telling me about this encounter shortly after it occurred:  “Grandma, our eyes met, and that was that.  We could and did have conversations about everything.”

As I continue to experience Zach’s great loving positive impact on so many people, I sometimes find myself wondering whether we all have that ability within us.  The distinction being that Zach knew how to access it?

REFLECTIONS ON BALTIMORE, MY HOMETOWN

THE WASHINGTON POST    August 3, 2017

“Amazon’s hiring 50,000 workers”

“Filling warehouse jobs could shake up the labor market, economists say”

Good news for Baltimore, my hometown.

THE BALTIMORE SUN   August 19, 2017

“Get Baltimore to work”

McIntosh says the state has an obligation to provide city residents with better access to jobs on public transportation.  Baltimore Link isn’t cutting it.”

I worked closely with Maggie McIntosh during my years in the legislature.  In this op-ed she writes, “It is all connected.”   That is the needs of the people for decent housing, good safe schools, and the ability to get to a job.

THE BALTIMORE SUN  May 10, 2017

“Bring back streetcars”

“Baltimore’s former trolley system was among the country’s best”

The No. 13 trolley referenced here is one of those I frequented as a teenager going to high school in Baltimore.

REFLECTIONS ON PUBLIC POLICY IN OUR COUNTY, STATE, AND NATION

HOWARD COUNTY

THE BALTIMORE SUN

“Howard County TIF sacrifices taxpayer dollars and development”

Doug Miller       former columnist for the Columbia Flier/Howard County Times

….  and yet our county government continues to move forward with this TIF

MARYLAND

The Maryland legislature is beginning to prepare for next year’s legislative session beginning in January in Annapolis.  With all that is going on in our nation and on the planet, crafting clear and just state policy becomes even more important.

The U.S.

THE BALTIMORE SUN

“Pioneering comedian and civil rights activist”

“In the late 80’s he (Dick Gregory) began going on 40-day fasts to protest the Vietnam War.”

His words apply today as clearly as they did then.  Perhaps even more.

THE NEW YORKER    AUGUST 28, 2017

The Content of No Content

Is Big Tech too powerful?

By Elizabeth Colbert

I have written in previous “Reflections” that Lloyd read thoroughly only one weekly magazine – The New Yorker.

This is a very strong article, and I believe on the mark.

“Now….just a few companies have taken control, and this concentration of power – which Americans have acquiesced to without ever really intending to, simply by clicking away – is subverting our democracy. Thirty years ago, almost no one used the Internet for anything, today, just about everybody uses it for everything.  Even as the Web has grown, however, it has narrowed.  Google now controls nearly ninety per cent of search advertising, Facebook almost eighty per cent of mobile social traffic, and Amazon about seventy-five per cent of e-book sales….”

REFLECTIONS ON OUR PLANET BEYOND THE UNITED STATES

SPAIN

THE WASHINGTON POST      August 27, 2017

“5000,000 march in Barcelona for peace”

“In a first for a Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI joined a public demonstration.”

“Where is our president marching?”

THE WASHINGTON POST     August 15,2017

“A different lesson from history”:  Violence in Virginia elicits shock abroad”

“In countries such as Germany and France that have adopted strict codes policing hateful speech, there were questions about why people were allowed to assemble and propagate a message targeting racial and religious minorities.”

Are we losing, or have we lost, our role of moral leadership on the earth, or did we ever truly play that role?  Such extensive uncertainty and change can be very troubling, and yet perhaps it can also aid in clear thinking

REFLECTIONS ON OUR UNIVERSE

We begin and end this month’s Reflections with the solar eclipse.

Again, our granddaughter Katerina shared with us this so poignant message that was making its way through the student body at the University of Maryland in College Park.  How unbearably sad it is that 38 years later we are infinitely far off the mark hoped for in this ABC News video clip.  Not only have we failed to present their generation with a world at peace, we have presented them with a world where hate reigns in so many places and multiple ways.  Yet we cannot give up.  Each and every one of us has within us the seeds of peace.  May we all bring them to fruition in our own lives.

…

“The real voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”       Marcel Proust

…

“Pools of sorrow, waves of joy

Are drifting through my open mind

Possessing and caressing me

Across the Universe

~Lennon and McCartney

Be well and love life.

~ Liz