During the past few months my writing spirit has been encumbered by an illness that causes suicide. I have been fortunate to find a caring doctor who helped me rather than dismiss me.Physical exercise and medicine have helped significantly so I run, play basketball and my body is stronger, says the doctor as he peruses my blood pressure and heart sounds, with enthusiastic approval.
My depression is not event-specific but the spring and the fall actuate it and I have this darkness inside me and I force myself to work, to do domestic chores. I don't wear this on my sleeve. I'm sure no one knows except Lois what's going on
Depression can't be dismissed or ignored because of its inherent danger.It can be treated but not eradicated. Depression is recurrent and stubborn, baffling and powerful, often incapacitating its victims. Treatment is trial and error
Today was a good day. I ran about 5 miles, did yard work with Lois and frolicked with our beagle.I was friendly and outgoing when we went out for a fish fry. I try to embrace the recovery but I'm aware of recidivism inherent in depression.
I'll try to write more posts, now that the world doesn't look so foreboding.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Friday, November 11, 2011
When Good Men do Nothing.
The most sacred power on earth is being in charge of a child. No one should have memories of being a child assaulted in the shower by a trusted adult. Those kids, now adults must have nightmares of Sandusky's nefarious violation of their person-hood.
This abuse of Second Chance kids on the grounds of Penn State is unconscionable. How does Jerry Sandusky sleep at night? How could Mark McQueary and coach Paterno not pursue this with the ferocity of a junkyard dog? What the hell is wrong with Penn State's administration? Their lack of integrity is sickening.
As much as I admired Joe Paterno he has gotten his just desserts. He has no defense and neither does the (former) president of the university or any other administrators. They failed these victims and are a stain that will never be erased from Penn State. Evil has flourished because good men did nothing.
A legend has been destroyed.
This abuse of Second Chance kids on the grounds of Penn State is unconscionable. How does Jerry Sandusky sleep at night? How could Mark McQueary and coach Paterno not pursue this with the ferocity of a junkyard dog? What the hell is wrong with Penn State's administration? Their lack of integrity is sickening.
As much as I admired Joe Paterno he has gotten his just desserts. He has no defense and neither does the (former) president of the university or any other administrators. They failed these victims and are a stain that will never be erased from Penn State. Evil has flourished because good men did nothing.
A legend has been destroyed.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
I am a ninety-niner on the lower fringe of the middle class, I pay taxes and share the angst of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I've ranted at the unfairly-tilted playing field and the fat Wall streeters who would steal from Joe the Plumber. Ingrates! I've seethed at the United States Supreme Court which has ruled that corporations are people and therefore are unfettered in political campaign contributions. As lying attack conservative ads proliferate I've wondered 'where is the outrage?'
The conservatives got their way by a landslide, getting established members of Congress in their "gun sights", to paraphrase Sarah Palin. Demonstrations convened against federal regulation and incipient socialism with the singularity of defeating Barack Obama. His attempts to fix the economy have been rejected by right-wing extremists. Do you really think right-wing ideologues want to revive our moribund economy and put people back on their feet?
Wake up America! The GOP and the (elite) 1% want America to return to the America of the early 1900s, the golden age of wage slavery. Workers died in factories, packing houses and our local mines. Regarded as expendable, they were replaced by other desperate souls and the process repeated ad infinitum. No safety and health regulations in those years. No minimum wage, unemployment compensation, child labor laws or social safety net. If you got hurt on the job for the lack of federal safety regulations you paid for your medical treatment but more likely you applied a poultice to the injury because of your poverty. While you were disabled, you received no pay. Your position at the company was not preserved. You had no money, no job and would beg to work for $3.00 a week as you limped from your unhealed injury. Ten-year-old kids worked to aid in their family's subsistence. Senior citizens worked until the job killed them. There was no limit on the number of hours per week companies could impose on workers. The corpses of workers laid the foundations of financial dynasties.
Will obstructionist members of Congress feel the pain wrought by the trend of increasing financial disparity? Do the billionaires and the newly-personified corporations have pangs of conscience? I suspect opulence has seared their conscience. They worship mammon, not God. They are more concerned about preserving their tax loopholes. Beware! We are returning to 1900 as the obstructionism continues in congress.
Occupy!
The conservatives got their way by a landslide, getting established members of Congress in their "gun sights", to paraphrase Sarah Palin. Demonstrations convened against federal regulation and incipient socialism with the singularity of defeating Barack Obama. His attempts to fix the economy have been rejected by right-wing extremists. Do you really think right-wing ideologues want to revive our moribund economy and put people back on their feet?
Wake up America! The GOP and the (elite) 1% want America to return to the America of the early 1900s, the golden age of wage slavery. Workers died in factories, packing houses and our local mines. Regarded as expendable, they were replaced by other desperate souls and the process repeated ad infinitum. No safety and health regulations in those years. No minimum wage, unemployment compensation, child labor laws or social safety net. If you got hurt on the job for the lack of federal safety regulations you paid for your medical treatment but more likely you applied a poultice to the injury because of your poverty. While you were disabled, you received no pay. Your position at the company was not preserved. You had no money, no job and would beg to work for $3.00 a week as you limped from your unhealed injury. Ten-year-old kids worked to aid in their family's subsistence. Senior citizens worked until the job killed them. There was no limit on the number of hours per week companies could impose on workers. The corpses of workers laid the foundations of financial dynasties.
Will obstructionist members of Congress feel the pain wrought by the trend of increasing financial disparity? Do the billionaires and the newly-personified corporations have pangs of conscience? I suspect opulence has seared their conscience. They worship mammon, not God. They are more concerned about preserving their tax loopholes. Beware! We are returning to 1900 as the obstructionism continues in congress.
Occupy!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The Adventures of Skittles
During the autumn my body goes into the valley of fatigue and my mind into a state of torpor. This lackadaisical state of being will right itself with the first serious signs of winter, infusing my body and being with new found vigor. Until then impromptu naps are common. On Tuesday night I was watching The Cosmos by Carl Sagan and drifted into a blissful nap punctuated by snores that woke me occasionally. My sleep was of an appreciable duration, ending when Skittles dashed to the davenport, perched upon the backrest and peered through the window into the evening blackness. Beagle radar had detected that Lois was home from work! The car was entering the garage. I went back to sleep until my beloved wife entered via the front door.
"Uh-oh! Uh-oh! What's this? What have you done, Skittles?"
I squinted at Lois and acknowledged her presence. Her exclamation must be about a torn sock or a new bite mark on one of our shoes. Lois picked up Skittles' new craft and brought it into my view.
My eyes widened at the gash in the upper region of my beloved steel-toed work boots! I've had those boots for thirty-six years. Thirty-six bloomin' years! Paid seventy dollars back then. Those boots were in the copper mine; they protected my feet as I worked in the woods with a chainsaw. They had the lug soles and higher heels; Logger's boots they were.
An amalgam of emotions washed over me from grief to anger and back to grief as I tenderly fingered the mortal wound in my boot. I flashed back to anger and lashed out at Skittles, who had no idea why Daddy was yelling. Her head bowed and her tail sagged and she looked up with woebegone eyes that melted my anger. I felt rotten for my outburst, but even Lois sympathized at this attack on my footwear.
It took about an hour before I could forgive Skittles. I thought about last fall when I was repairing the front porch trim and I had to go back to the basement and saw another piece on my table saw because the piece did not fit.. The new piece fit perfectly. Common sense told me to drill pilot holes for the nails since the piece was pine and would split easily. I decided to skip the drilling and indeed the piece split and I ripped it out of the nails and flung it and although it was inamate I pronounced it to be the offspring of a bitch.
Later on guilt settled in and I realized that I had over-reacted and spewed some unclean language. I asked God to forgive me. (God has had to forgive me many times since.)
An analogy spun in my mind. God loved me enough to forgive my profanity and he must love me at least as much as I love this mischievous beagle with pleading eyes. I bade her to light upon my recliner and sit with me. She did this tentatively. I caressed her and forgave her, then apologizing for yelling at her.I admonished her to never ruin any of our possessions again. Of course, Skittles had no idea what I was talking about. She was only basking in my tone of love and forgiveness. She licked my face, jumped out of my recliner and went about playing with her toys.
I have coined a term that we use in our household for beagle sins. I call it beaglearity.
"Uh-oh! Uh-oh! What's this? What have you done, Skittles?"
I squinted at Lois and acknowledged her presence. Her exclamation must be about a torn sock or a new bite mark on one of our shoes. Lois picked up Skittles' new craft and brought it into my view.
My eyes widened at the gash in the upper region of my beloved steel-toed work boots! I've had those boots for thirty-six years. Thirty-six bloomin' years! Paid seventy dollars back then. Those boots were in the copper mine; they protected my feet as I worked in the woods with a chainsaw. They had the lug soles and higher heels; Logger's boots they were.
An amalgam of emotions washed over me from grief to anger and back to grief as I tenderly fingered the mortal wound in my boot. I flashed back to anger and lashed out at Skittles, who had no idea why Daddy was yelling. Her head bowed and her tail sagged and she looked up with woebegone eyes that melted my anger. I felt rotten for my outburst, but even Lois sympathized at this attack on my footwear.
It took about an hour before I could forgive Skittles. I thought about last fall when I was repairing the front porch trim and I had to go back to the basement and saw another piece on my table saw because the piece did not fit.. The new piece fit perfectly. Common sense told me to drill pilot holes for the nails since the piece was pine and would split easily. I decided to skip the drilling and indeed the piece split and I ripped it out of the nails and flung it and although it was inamate I pronounced it to be the offspring of a bitch.
Later on guilt settled in and I realized that I had over-reacted and spewed some unclean language. I asked God to forgive me. (God has had to forgive me many times since.)
An analogy spun in my mind. God loved me enough to forgive my profanity and he must love me at least as much as I love this mischievous beagle with pleading eyes. I bade her to light upon my recliner and sit with me. She did this tentatively. I caressed her and forgave her, then apologizing for yelling at her.I admonished her to never ruin any of our possessions again. Of course, Skittles had no idea what I was talking about. She was only basking in my tone of love and forgiveness. She licked my face, jumped out of my recliner and went about playing with her toys.
I have coined a term that we use in our household for beagle sins. I call it beaglearity.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
A Heretic of Sorts
I am a born-again believer in Jesus Christ with a guarantee of an afterlife in heaven. I believe that Jesus has paid the penalty for my sins on the cross and no power on heaven or earth can negate this.
My beliefs are not in lock-step with other believers, however. I believe in the Big Bang theory of the dawn of the physical universe. I believe this beginning was 13.5 billion years ago. I do not believe in a six-day creation. Each day in the Genesis account could be any time interval, say 2.25 billion years. God certainly could have created the entire physical universe in six days but the scientific evidence makes this unlikely. The red-shift in the most distant objects detected in the universe indicates they are moving away from us and calculations determine that their light would have to travel 13.5 million years to the lens of the Hubbel Telescope, as defined by the velocity of light.
There is nothing blasphemous about this. It is merely the observation of science. The "Young Earth Society" , those who espouse the literal six-day creation refute this as a blasphemous assault on the tenets of conservative Christianity. This is not surprising since Roman Catholicism considered the science of Copernicus and Galileo heresy against God and the church. Galileo lived his later years under house arrest even though he recanted his theory of the heliocentric solar system which is now a basic truth of astronomy.
I stand in awe as I look to the heavens on a clear, still night, seeing myriads of stars that look small and cold - mere points of light. In reality each star is maybe a hundred times the size of our sun and may have a million times more mass. Each star is a sphere of white-hot gas, kept hot by an inferno in the bowels of that star, called nuclear fusion. I believe that God created each star with skill and craftsmanship. He created a universe full of stars. He just did not do it in six days, since He is not subject to the constraints of time.
Since I do not march with the evangelicals in lock-step in this respect I am a heretic of sorts.
My beliefs are not in lock-step with other believers, however. I believe in the Big Bang theory of the dawn of the physical universe. I believe this beginning was 13.5 billion years ago. I do not believe in a six-day creation. Each day in the Genesis account could be any time interval, say 2.25 billion years. God certainly could have created the entire physical universe in six days but the scientific evidence makes this unlikely. The red-shift in the most distant objects detected in the universe indicates they are moving away from us and calculations determine that their light would have to travel 13.5 million years to the lens of the Hubbel Telescope, as defined by the velocity of light.
There is nothing blasphemous about this. It is merely the observation of science. The "Young Earth Society" , those who espouse the literal six-day creation refute this as a blasphemous assault on the tenets of conservative Christianity. This is not surprising since Roman Catholicism considered the science of Copernicus and Galileo heresy against God and the church. Galileo lived his later years under house arrest even though he recanted his theory of the heliocentric solar system which is now a basic truth of astronomy.
I stand in awe as I look to the heavens on a clear, still night, seeing myriads of stars that look small and cold - mere points of light. In reality each star is maybe a hundred times the size of our sun and may have a million times more mass. Each star is a sphere of white-hot gas, kept hot by an inferno in the bowels of that star, called nuclear fusion. I believe that God created each star with skill and craftsmanship. He created a universe full of stars. He just did not do it in six days, since He is not subject to the constraints of time.
Since I do not march with the evangelicals in lock-step in this respect I am a heretic of sorts.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Friday Nights
Girls flirted outside the Pinball Palace,
Outside the din of Rock and Roll
And clouds of pungent cigarette smoke,
With stern-faced boys in tight white t-shirts
Tucked inside their tight blue jeans
Proclaimed their manliness.
Pedestrians crossed the hot blacktop,
Wary of the evening ruckus,
Wary of the aggregation,
They went about their business urgent,
In the heat, the heat, the inescapable, clinging heat.
The payday cavalcade went slowly,
Cars as far as eye could see
Crawled, inched past traffic cops
In the payday parade.
The boys and girls,
The luster and bluster
The hubris and the boasting
The laughter and the smoking
Soon became a throng
As some boys sat on car fenders
And their black engineer boots swung
Back and forth, back and forth.
G. robert Nordling
Friday, July 29, 2011
I'm an Observer of Life
It's dark- as dark as nightfall and the rain pelts the windows on this Saturday morning. Cafe business is booming. The business comes in waves of a dozen people or more, then there is no one coming for a while until the next wave. Many of the people are not locals, as I can see by their clothes and the vehicles they drive. No one from out of town has an old or rusted vehicle. Seems the American Dream, or what is left of it, has never touched Ironwood.
People are attending the softball tournament and I hope they like playing in the rain. There are funerals, weddings family reunions and sojourners passing from one end of Canada to the other, using the U.P. as part of their route. Ironwood has become a hub for many summer activities.
People, unaware that the weather was to cool to fifty-three degrees run through the rain, clad in tank tops, shorts and sandals. They must be chilled, to the least. Thunder shakes the gloomy overcast canopy. Puddles in the parking lot ripple with raindrops.
A young father in khaki cargo shorts holds the hand of his little daughter who holds an umbrella. The mother is at the girl's other side, deeply tanned and tattooes proliferate her limbs.
An elderly man shuffles from the street corner with an umbrella. I think he lives in the Pioneer Park Apartments a block away. I wonder if he is a widower. Is there sadness in his life manifested by his slow, melancholy shuffle? At least he is able to brave the inclement weather and eat a meal in the presence of others.
The parking lot and the street are full. But there is an anomaly. There are no pickup trucks. People with pickup trucks usually make up most of the cafe clientele on Saturday mornings.
The mini-vans and cars are inanimate yet the setting makes them forlorn in the gloom of dark weather. It is a shame that Mother Nature is so moody this morning so that the motorists have their lights on. I miss the knots of people chatting and hugging in the sunshine and I know that there will be other times of conviviality outside the cafe but the gloom is intolerable now, blinding me to that fact.
I recall that these halcyon summer days will yield to the dreary autumn and the interminable dreary winter and I will long for next summer's embrace of warmth and brightness.
People are attending the softball tournament and I hope they like playing in the rain. There are funerals, weddings family reunions and sojourners passing from one end of Canada to the other, using the U.P. as part of their route. Ironwood has become a hub for many summer activities.
People, unaware that the weather was to cool to fifty-three degrees run through the rain, clad in tank tops, shorts and sandals. They must be chilled, to the least. Thunder shakes the gloomy overcast canopy. Puddles in the parking lot ripple with raindrops.
A young father in khaki cargo shorts holds the hand of his little daughter who holds an umbrella. The mother is at the girl's other side, deeply tanned and tattooes proliferate her limbs.
An elderly man shuffles from the street corner with an umbrella. I think he lives in the Pioneer Park Apartments a block away. I wonder if he is a widower. Is there sadness in his life manifested by his slow, melancholy shuffle? At least he is able to brave the inclement weather and eat a meal in the presence of others.
The parking lot and the street are full. But there is an anomaly. There are no pickup trucks. People with pickup trucks usually make up most of the cafe clientele on Saturday mornings.
The mini-vans and cars are inanimate yet the setting makes them forlorn in the gloom of dark weather. It is a shame that Mother Nature is so moody this morning so that the motorists have their lights on. I miss the knots of people chatting and hugging in the sunshine and I know that there will be other times of conviviality outside the cafe but the gloom is intolerable now, blinding me to that fact.
I recall that these halcyon summer days will yield to the dreary autumn and the interminable dreary winter and I will long for next summer's embrace of warmth and brightness.
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