REFLECTIONS ON LIFE –
JUNE 2019
ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IS
CONNECTED
REFLECTIONS
ON HOME IN COLUMBIA
Bullfrogs have reached their melodious (at least to my ears)
peak. There must be at least a hundred
of them in our two ponds. I find their
deep resonating mating calls so peaceful in the night. Not all of our neighbors
agree.
Wrens and sparrows built three nests on our home early in the
spring – one above the light fixture affixed to the outside wall of the deck
outside our bedroom, and two on the walls of our kitchen and dining room. These latter two utilized forsythia branches
to lend more support. Then about a month
ago we were mesmerized by the hatching and subsequent food deliveries by the
parents. Now these little birds flit
around on their own among the three bird feeders on our decks and kitchen
window. What a joy to simply sit and
watch them.

As usual I attended the Juneteenth commemoration among the
African American community in Columbia . This year it was held in Town Center . I was surprised to learn that the main
speaker, the head of Howard Community College ’s Library is from Ghana . He was a wealth of information about the
slave trade, We had learned much about
this when we visited Ghana
ourselves right after our marriage 25 years ago. We stayed with our dear friends Harriett and
Jim Lancaster. Harriet had served as the
first director of the Howard County Department of Citizen Services in Howard County
back in the 70’s. Jim devoted a full
week of his life driving us around the country, including the gate through
which Ghanaians passed to board the slave ships.
I am deeply gratified to see that our community college has
chosen someone schooled in the deep history of the slave trade. We spoke, and
formed an intention to get together sometime soon. I can learn so much from him.
REFLECTIONS
ON ZACH
Next month Lloyd and I will head to the beach house on the coast
in North Carolina
with our kids and grandkids. This will
be our third year in the “new” house, the prior one having grown too small
after almost 20 years. Zach has never
been with us in this house, but I can walk a very short distance down the ocean
beach to where he played in the sand and surf.
He and his sister, Julia were the only grandkids when we first began
this summertime tradition. I can
remember my daily morning walks with Zach along the ocean (his idea). We spoke of such varied topics as
the beauty of the sport of boxing (hitherto incomprehensible to me), the pull
of the water returning to the sea, star formations we had observed from the
deck the night before. One memory stands
out above all others - Zach’s demonstrating the style of Mohammed Ali by
leaning up strong against a rope line out through the small waves. Then those words that, although I came to
love them, startled me upon first hearing:
“Grandma, that’s what I did with cancer.
I leaned back and leaned back and leaned back.” Rope-a dope!
Countless times since Zach died more than five years ago, when I
am struggling with sadness about so much injustice, cruelty and hatred in our
world, I remember Zach and emotionally “lean back and lean back and lean
back.” Then I become aware of all the love,
beauty, and courage in our world. It
never fails me.
Thank you, Zach.
REFLECTIONS
ON BALTIMORE , MY HOME TOWN
The Baltimore
Sun
June 9, 2019
“John
Waters deals with a life less shocking”
by Charles Arrowsmith
As a teenager growing up in Baltimore I first developed my love
of good films. What a perfect
environment to nourish that love. Barry
Levinson lived to the north and John Waters to the east – one born a year
before me in 1942 and the other two years after. As a young adult I heard much more of Waters
than Levinson who’s well deserved fame came several years later.
Waters, the king of nonconformists, says about the acceptance
and popularity of his new book “Mr. Know- It – All, The Tarnished Wisdom of a
Filth Elder” - “Suddenly the worst thing that can happen to a creative person
has happened to me. I am accepted.”
Last year Lloyd and went to the Baltimore Museum of Art, right
across Wyman Park from where I went to high school, to see the extensive
exhibit relating to John Waters exhibit.
No doubt he was “way out there” at times. When all is considered there
is not doubt of his great creativity.
REFLECTIONS
ON PUBLIC POLICY
The Washington
Post
June 2, 2019
When I first began serving as Howard County Executive in 1986,
Vinny DiMarco, leader of Marylanders Against Handguns solicited me to be the
first County Executive
in Maryland to take a stand against the gun
lobby by publicly supporting a bill to ban handguns in Maryland .
I agreed.
Now, many years later the damage by guns is beyond our worst
imagination.
Lloyd’s daughter and her husband worked in the city office
building in Virginia Beach
where the mass shooting took place. They
were not in the office that day.
The New Yorker
June 10 and 17, 2019
“Conduction ” by Ta-Nehisi-Coates
I have written of Ta-Nehisi in prior “Reflections on Life.” Since then the subject of “reparations” for
black slavery in our nation has come closer and closer to the forefront. It is not uncommon to read about it in our
foremost publications. It is currently
the subject of congressional hearings in our nation’s capital.
Earlier this month Lloyd and I drove with his sister, Jenet, to
spend a few days in my daughter Chris’ condo on the beachfront in Ocean City . Jenet rode home to Pennsylvania with her son who was staying
nearby and Lloyd and I drove separately. While passing through the eastern
shore town of Denton , I instinctively asked
Lloyd to pull off the road and drive toward the Pocomoke River . When we reached it, we saw a couple men
fishing from the bank. Under a nearby
bridge decorated with magnificent depictions of slavery stood a young black man
about 6’6” in height. He was talking on
his mobile phone. I didn’t want to
disturb him, but I did want to get closer to examine some art on the bridge’s
concrete abutment. As I got closer he
looked up, and I said “Hello, I’m getting closer for a clearer look at these
beautiful murals. He put his phone in
his pocket, and commenced a great conversation about the river and life in the
little towns nearby. I told him about
the stories my mom told me about spending her summers on a tobacco farm owned
by her father’s brother in nearby Calvert
County . After ten minutes or so, Lloyd, who had been
checking out the fishing spots, joined us and we talked longer - beautiful
exchange with this young man. Although
we each spoke of our own personal connections to the history of the area, the
subject of reparations never arose. Yet
I knew, virtually without a doubt, that his family had cause for them.
I wonder whether Ta-Nehisi Coates ever visited Denton
or the town of Prince Frederick in Calvert County where, as a boy my grandfather
worked the family tobacco farm.
My experience in reading “Conduction” was as if I were there
walking with the main character “to cross through Virginia by the North West
Virginia Railroad and then, once in Maryland, link up with the Baltimore &
Ohio and proceed east and north into the free lands of Pennsylvania, and on to
Philadelphia. There was a shorter route,
due north, but there had been some recent troubles with Ryland along the rail
there, and it was felt that the audacity of this approach, right through the
slave port of Baltimore , would not be expected….”
“The slave port
of Baltimore .” Those
words on the page of “The New Yorker” burned my eyes and brought tears to them.
Baltimore , my
hometown, with all its painful past and present. And yet it did give us Ta-Nehisi, who grew up
there. And even now it has the
potential, through so many kids growing up there now, to bring more love and
truth to the world.
The Baltimore
Sun June
20, 2019
It is clear that Ta-Nehisi is extending his role as historian
beyond that of an author. We can only
benefit from that.
REFLECTIONS
ON OUR PLANET BEYOND THE UNITED STATES
A Great Read
On the recommendation of a friend, Lloyd recently purchased and
read “Sapiens” (as in homo sapiens),
a New York Times bestseller a few years ago.
Its author, Yuval Harari lectures in Israel . The book includes the
Timeline of History below:
Years ago Event
13.5 billion The
Big Bang
4.5 billion Formation
of planet Earth
3.8 billion Emergence
of organisms
6 million Last
common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees
2.5 million Evolution
of genus homo in Africa
2 million Humans
spread to Eurasia
0.5 million Homo Neanderthals evolve in Europe
2000,000 Homo Sapiens evolve in East
Africa
45,000 Sapiens settle Australia
30,000 Extinction
of Neanderthals
16,000 Sapiens settle America
Next time you have to wait an hour, a day, a week, a month, a
year for some anticipated occurrence in your life, take a look at this chart
and recall the virtue of patience.
Last month I wrote of the beauty of Morocco
– its people, its souks (markets) in Marrakech, Fes, Casablanca ,
Tangier, its mosques, its sometimes seemingly endless desert lands, its
magnificent Atlas Mountains . I returned home with a mystical and romantic
sense of the land. Then the news of the
two Scandinavian women being brutally murdered in their tent in the middle of
one of the nights of their long and meticulously planned climb in those mountains whose winding roads we traversed with eight other travelers
from various nations in our National Geographic touring van. Evil and nature’s beauty intermingled.
“The Washington
Post”
JUNE 2, 2019
Very poor judgment aside, where is the respect for the natural
beauty of nature being viewed from afar? I cannot help but wonder whether some
of these “adventurers” even see the beauty.
The international border between Nepal
and China
runs bisects the summit. The monks of Nepal could teach these climbers.
REFLECTIONS
ON OUR UNIVERSE
Lloyd and I marked the summer solstice at 11:54 a.m. on our back
deck facing south and overlooking the larger of the two ponds beside our
home. We stood in awareness that the sun
had reached its highest position on this day with the longest period of
daylight. I love the synchronicity of the longest day of the year, when the
Northern hemisphere tilts toward the sun at its greatest angle. The direct
opposite occurs on my birth date, December 21 --winter solstice -- when this
part of the globe has its maximum tilt away from the sun. Sometimes when I am in somewhat of a state of
confusion and my purpose in life is not clear to me, I summon up the image of
this astronomical contrast. I remain in
silence and stillness for a bit. Then it
becomes clear to me. I am here to spread
love. Actually, I believe we are all
here for that purpose. We simply forget
it.
A friend sent me the following Van Gogh inspiration earlier this
month. I have watched and listened
literally hundreds of times, transported each time back to the Van Gogh museum
in Amsterdam ,
and then up into the starry night.
I hope it will bring you the same peace it has brought to me.
Peace on earth.
“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
PS - My monthly Reflections episodes, the Dragon radio show I
record at HCC, can be found at http://dragondigitalradio.podbean.com/category/reflections-on-life/.
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