Win Lose Draw

This is what the Mississippi River looked like in my neighborhood today as it experienced its scheduled drawdown. I think I read somewhere that it's so the infrastructure of the locks and dams can be inspected. Meanwhile there were flocks of gulls and human onlookers. Many people seemed to be treasure hunting.

 

I watched a crew of workers pull bikes and scooters out of the muck with ropes and hooks.

There was an immense tangle of stuff, including the metal box below. The workers tried for a few minutes to open it--to no avail. The whole situation seemed bleak to me despite the volunteers from the park service talking with visitors about the river and its original configuration before the sawmills, and the flour mills, and the shoring up of the ruined falls. All the while, the evidence of current stupidity and ruination is poking up from the mud. Hundreds of plastic water bottles, trash of every imaginable kind, including the Nice Ride rental bikes and the rental scooters that are a plague for pedestrians on city sidewalks. The pile above represents only five minutes or so of work. I suppose this went on for hours. We're a disaster, we humans. 

I hope someone found treasure. Gold, or silver, or a box of something precious. 

When I got home I opened the bill from my kidney procedure. 20,800 and some dollars--not including the doctor's visits and the testing beforehand. Because I have a Medicare Advantage plan that I pay 99 dollars a month for, all but 250.00 dollars of that was covered. I'll bet our president's care for his Covid hospitalization totaled a quarter of a million. It's disgusting that so many people do not have decent health care or insurance of any kind--especially during a pandemic. These United States are so far into the muck, I fear we may never get out. 

BUT I have cast my ballot. And I do hope for change.

Alaska: the Tundra Bus, A Big White Mountain, and Other Wonders

That's not a bank of big white clouds in the center--it's a mountain--well, part of a mountain.

Which one is Denali? we asked at our first chance to view big mountain. If it were visible right now, you wouldn't have to ask, was the answer. We finally saw most of it today as the Tundra Bus drove us into the wilderness.

We also saw a grizzly bear and her triplet cubs, 3 or 4 small groups of caribou, a couple small gatherings of dall sheep, a big bull moose with a dewlap the size of a pup tent (good god, animals can be weird,) a rare gyre falcon, a willow ptarmigan, and just for good measure an arctic ground squirrel. The landscape itself was the true wonder. It's vastness defies description. At one point our guide/driver pointed out a large rock in the near distance. If I'd wagered a guess, I would have said it was as tall as a big SUV and easily reached by brisk walk. It was actually 3 stories high and 3 miles away. 

Last year my world was not composed of such vistas. Hospital rooms, the room in the nursing home where the man who loved me spent a few nights before we were able to get him to my house. I stared down at the forms I was filling out, and for some minutes now and then into the eyes of a man who was already beginning to leave this immense and amazing world. 

My heart was stone or dust or perhaps vapor for what seemed like the longest time--like maybe you'd have to spend a day on a bus in driving into the wilderness to catch a glimpse of it. The landscape of my heart has been surprising me lately. There are storybook forests of perfect spruce trees in my heart. There are aspens shaking their greenest of green leaves and rivers made of silver. The blue sky there is a new blue, and I just want to throw my arms around it.

Photo by my friend Ellen--if you want to see more of her great Denali photos, follow her on Instagram:ellenslevy

The Morning After

A dirty wine glass and an empty wine bottle sat next to the couch this morning. Leftover Halloween candy wrappers littered the coffee table. A trail of clothes that, in other circumstances, might have indicated unbridled passion led to my bed. Stumbling into my bathroom early this morning, I nearly got tangled in my favorite gray sweater with its "I Voted" sticker. All in all, it was a far less traumatic evening than I had anticipated--though I'd have less of a candy hangover and might have hung up my clothes if Mitt Romney had made that phone call a little earlier.

California still has unlabeled GMO food and the death penalty, but the Three Strikes law makes a little more sense. And there'll be be more support for education. Gay people now have the right to marry in a couple more states, though in Minnesota that fight still needs to be fought--- but, despite the efforts of the Catholic Church, the state constitution there does not now limit marriage to a union between a man and a woman. So there's hope. Hope for the Human Rights Campaign. Hope for better health care. Hope for the economy. Hope in the face of climate change. Hope for tax reform, fair pay, better schools.

I'm pretty sure I looked right into hope's eyes when my mom and I went to the local elementary school to vote yesterday. As I waited for her to finish marking her ballot, a class of first-graders was ushered into the library/polling place. They maneuvered silently to the edge of the room and sat on the floor as their teacher spoke quietly to them in Spanish. One of the poll workers offered sample ballots and dozens of  hands reached eagerly for them. There was a flurry of excitement then. "Dondé? Obama?" They turned the papers over looking for his name. "Aqui. Here." The children leaned into one another and pointed.

"La Senora," the teacher began as she pointed to my mom who was still working on her ballot. The teacher then took a sample ballot from one of the children and showed them the blank space that must be filled in to mark the ballot properly. She pointed at the top of the page and trailed her finger downward. "President, Senator, Congress Person," she said.  When my mom finished she fed her ballot, first one page, then the other, into the machine. The children watched and then followed us out. A parade of hope.