Tidings of Comfort and Joy

I have just finished writing our annual holiday letter to friends, and we will spend this snowy weekend getting our holiday cards addressed and mailed.  It's often the only contact we have with some friends, I'm ashamed to admit.  but after I finished the letter and printed it out it occurred to me that I have another set of friends, you - my virtual friends, whose real names and addresses I don't have.  So, I'm publishing the letter here in this journal.  I don't know if anyone ever visits, if this letter will get read by any of you for whom I will always keep a fond place in my heart.  So many of you were so kind during the immediate time of grief and pain of my sister's death, which I could share here in a way I really couldn't with friends at a distance.  Strange, but true.  Talking, either in person or by telephone was impossible, and letter or email writing was almost as hard.  Things are  better, as you will seefrom the letter, but though grief is no longer my constant companion, it is never far below the surface.  The baby I mention, and whose photo I have inserted, is my sister's grand-daughter, such a spark of grace and wonder in our lives.  In the letter I use our names:  I am Mary Ellen, and my partner is Gail. 

 

Dear Friends:

 

We are happy to begin by saying that 2007 was a far better year for us than its predecessor.  It was, in fact, a year of many enjoyable events.  The winter was a big surprise, as we had been led to believe that we would not experience serious snow here in the Rio Grande Valley.  As there is no longer any way to say “never” or “always” about weather anywhere, we will all have to get used to weather surprises, like our “fifty-year event” of multiple blizzards, snow piled on our flat roof, and us without a snow shovel! In which straits we were not alone…there was not asnow shovel to be found in the city.  We ordered one online from Vermont Country Store and felt quite smug.

           We had many delightful visits with both families throughout the spring and summer.  Then, in August Mary Ellen pulled herself together sufficiently to trot her resumé around the town, and as a result had two part-time ESL teaching positions during the fall semester.  She loved them both, but is taking on more work with UNM for the coming term, dropping the Catholic Charities class.  Gail continues to work for the Jewish Community Center’s childcare center, although in the new year she plans to cut down somewhat on her hours.

 We returned to the Mid-Atlantic in October, to attend a family wedding in PA, then for a week in Delaware visiting friends, as well as our favorite beaches, birding spots and seafood restaurants. In November we took another short saltwater vacation on the Texas Gulf coast, for more beachwalking, birding and seafood.  Gail wants you to know that our excursion in a boat called The Skimmer (birding by birders for birders) out into the waters off Aransas National Wildlife Refuge to see the whooping cranes (and many many other birds we never even expected) was the highlight of her year.  It was pretty close to the top for Mary Ellen also, but she’d have to assign highlight of the year to the birth of her niece Jessica’s daughter Penelope, a gift of hope and joy to the entire family.  From the Gulf Coast we drove up to Dallas for Thanksgiving with family and friends, and just two weeks ago Gail flew to Denver for Hanukkah with sons and grandchildren.  So, we are grateful for the gifts of family, friends and health, posole bubbling on the stove, piñon in the fireplace, and for the fact that the endof this administration is within sight.  May the force be with us all in the coming year, la lucha continua.  With love and hope,

The Emotional Heart of Global Warming

When I first read this, Climate Change More Extensive than thought, in Spiegel online last week, I began writing a post I could only, in my despair, title "Totally Fucked with Global Warming." The Spiegel article was the first place that the news from the second part of four IPCC reports, due to be published from Belgium sometime next month, was announced. The first section of the report was published from the international meeting of world scientists in Paris in January, and was scary enough.

This second part, however, will focus more on the results, the effects, of the fact of global climate change. and is so extremely scary that his morning we have the mainstream media, even unto the front page of AOL, getting down with this sort of headline: Climate Report Warns of Drought, Disease :

This report - considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research - focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposedto the more science-focused report by the same group last month.

"This is the story. This is the whole play. This is how it's going to affect people. The science is one thing. This is how it affects me, you and the person next door," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver

So, even though it's a beautiful early spring morning, and I've spent the last half-hour watching a ladderback woodpecker in the cottonwood outside the kitchen window, by now I would usually be contemplating swallowing ground glass after reading the above-linked news, I'm actually not having any such contemplation. No, I'm not, even despite other headlines I've collected over the past week, like this one: Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study, or this one: Bush Climate Report Shows U.S. Greenhouse Gases Skyrocketing, or my absolute favorite, showing as it does, the blind forces of denial that seem to be governing this debate in this country: US Urges Scientists to block out sun.

And why not, pray tell? The suicidal cynic has not suddenly become a cockeyed optimist, has she? Well, no. Probably not in the cards for this lifetime. What has happened is that for the past three days I've been attending a conference right here in Albuquerque, during which I have met, listened to, eaten lunch and drunk coffee, with like-minded everyday people, as well as big names in their fields. The focus of this conference was water, as it was held by the Xeriscape Council of NM, even more specifically the intersection of water and energy in our current world, and the world of our future. Global climate change entered the picture, or was often the main subject, with almost every speaker, every question from the audience, every article and report in our program book. Despite the enormous amount of doom and gloom in every speech, every report, every conversation among attendees, there was also an amazing spirit of positivity, nay optimism, about what can be done to change this horrible prognosis. . So, I'm deleting "Totally Fucked with Global Warming," and will be writing a series of posts from the information gleaned during the conference. Right now, however, this morning, I'm going to go out and work in my garden, turn over my compost heap, and qvell for a while in the glow of the main benefit gained from this conference: the feeling that I'm not alone, that there are many brave and determined souls out there thinking, working, actually DOING something positive and worthy because theybelieve in and care mightily about the future of this planet.

Cross-posted at The Blue Voice

New Year, New Hopes

So, we moved out of a big drafty Victorian farmhouse in Delaware to an far smaller adobe in New Mexico because we wanted to get away from the huge winter heating bills.  And in Delaware now it's in the seventies, no winter in sight.  In New Mexico, by contrast, we have had the worst snow storms in fifty years, along with some of the coldest temps we've experienced since we lived in Massachusetts.  (Where it's currently also springlike in temperature.)  Our heating bills for this winter promise to be world-class, as adobe walls produce an icecave effect in much of the house, unless we keep the heat at a far higher level than we are wont to, even in the drafty Delaware farmhouse.    The presence of over a foot of snow on the roof has revealed the fact that we're probably going to need a new roof.  This one has one spectacular leak from which we've spent much of the past weeks bailing water, as well as a smaller one we just discovered yesterday.  It's a high price to pay for Southwestern cuteness and charm, and we start right now looking for the neighborhood to which we will move in about a year and a half.  Not moving across the country this time, just across town...someplace far newer, less charming, and a good deal more watertight.  Global climate change  apparently means ferocious summer monsoons and winter blizzards for this part of the world.  We bought the first house that appealed to us and was affordable, buying long distance without time to really scope out neighborhoods and shop for a place that we could love longterm.  Now that we are here and have a home base, we can really shop for a living space that will make more sense.  There are so many areas we like better than the location of this house, with leisure to look and explore I know we'll find the right one for our retirement nest. 

Good news on the vision front...at my last doctor's visit she pronounced my corneas almost healed, and was able to refract me into a distance prescription.  With my new glasses I can see to drive, am not driven mad in grocery stores,  and feel much more confident outside the house, walking and so forth.  The next appointment is this coming Friday, when we hope to get me into a close vision prescription, making reading, writing, and computer  work no longer painful struggles.  This is all such cause for rejoicing,and I am.  I have been enjoying the landscapes of extraordinary beauty created by the snowstorms everywhere, as well as deeply welcome company:  

My sister from D.C. and her family were here for New Year's weekend, flying in on Friday night amidst great uncertainty, as they had a stopover in Denver.  It was touch and go whether they would be stuck in Denver, as both that airport and ours here in Albuquerque  were in danger of shutting down entirely.  As it was, they made it with long delays, but they made it.  And my ten year old niece is the person for whom snowstorms were invented.   She had a wonderful time making snow...balls, angels, and people, and tromping through snow up to her knees at the Rio Grande Nature Center on their last day here.  When she was not getting totally wet and snow-encrusted, she was sprawled on her bed reading a Harry Potter.  Oblivious to leaking roofs and the need to get to the grocery store in order to feed guests, she enjoyed every moment of what was a great inconvenience to most adults.  With my better eyes and new glasses, I was able to drive our guests to Santa Fe last Tuesday, where the streets and sidewalks were far worse than here.  They'd never been there, so even in its ice-encrusted form they had a great time.  And I never would have made it through "the holidays" without their visit.  I am trying to sound hopeful, trying to focus on what is improving in my life, but most of the time I just feel as if I have been flung from a high cliff onto jagged rocks:  broken, sad, and lost.  As soon as my close vision is taken care of I need to start looking for a job - something I both look forward to and a bhore.  I want to get out of this house, out of my own head and heart, but I really don't feel that I can function in any normal fashion.  Even though I'm not supposed to cry, because of the toxcicity of my tears and the possible damage to my eyes, it's all I really want to do,  and sometimes there is nothing else for it, I cry.

Now I am waiting for roofers to come offer diagnoses and estimates, while Gail goes off to work, and we move into a new year, with hope for much kinder and gentler times ahead.