In honor of the wonder of life and death

 

A child said, What is the grass?

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

 

Walt WHitman

The agony of the teeth

 

I do not like pain.   I have had many instances of pain in my life.  Birthing babies.   Various surgeries including the worse one- knee replacement surgery.  But this dental stuff just seems to go on and on and on.

 This is what I wrote- partly for myself to put it into perspective, but also so share with my various dentists, periodontists and oral surgeons, all of whom seem to have some responsibility for my dental if not mental health.

I am currently in pain which is moderately controlled by drugs.  I am pissed off that it took so long and so many dentists to believe me when I told them that I had an infection.   If I had not insisted on my current oral surgeon pushing on my gums with a Q-tip, to see the pus, I would still have the infection and who knows what other damage would have been done to my teeth and my overall health.   

I am really usually a pretty happy, nice person.  But pain changes that.

 

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My bottom tooth, #30, had an old filling in it.  I had a dentist persuade me to have the tooth crowned.  First he did a root canal.  

 

This is what I wrote on my blog January 6, 2013:

https://nancy-motheroffive.blogspot.com/search?q=teeth

 

“My jaw is hurting me.  I had a root canal a while back and it got abscessed and I had to have an awful thing called an apicoectomy.  Look it up if you are interested- it is too yucky for even me to explain.  I got my teeth cleaned last week (great hygiene by the way) and complained about the jaw/ tooth pain.  Looks like the root canal is infected again- which is not supposed to happen.  So I am a bit depressed about that.  I am on antibiotics and hope that will clear it up.  But I really doubt it.  I am not sure I can go through another apicoectomy.  Oh my.  Whatever.”

 

Now, fast forward a bit.   That tooth that had the root canal ended up coming out and I got an implant on the bottom.   The implant was sore and had pus, but the oral surgeon who saw it (I think it was Dr Theberge) took ex-rays and said it was fine.

 

About a year ago I went to my regular dentist who also said that it was fine.

 

Only when I went to Dr Han, and had him press on it with a cotton swab, was I believed.  Pus came out.  Apparently pus does not show up in ex rays.

 

The crown on the implant was removed and Dr Han did some bone grafting in hopes of re applying the implant and crown.

 

There’s more, but the rest is all information that Dr Han is familiar with.

 

Ultimately the implant post was removed and I have been in a lot of pain since then.   

 

At my latest visit to Dr Han he discovered that the teeth on both sides of where the implant was are loose.  Probably too loose for me to have a bridge made.

 

I am convinced that the buccal tie that can be seen in this picture is the cause of the loose teeth.  The tie exerts a lot of pressure on my gums and teeth.   

 

 

 

 

Hugging your mom (lifted from Facebook)

 

Burning Man as writen by a Burner (my daughter)

 

from left to right- friend, Morgan (my son), Kim (my daughter in law), 2 friends, Austin (my son) and Courtney (my daughter)

Courtney Sherwood

  ·

Burning Man: It was fun.

An (admittedly unenforceable) condition of attending: Participants are required to read the survival guide, bring all the food and water they need for the duration of their stay, and prepare for extreme weather. For a number of years now, organizers have been encouraging people to have emergency toilets too. This is an event where vending of anything other than ice is a misdemeanor offense under the terms of the permit with the Bureau of Land Management, with some minor exceptions (for example, large-scale camps can arrange delivery of water rather than requiring every camp member to bring their own water). In short, Burning Man is not a typical festival or a "Fire Festival" type event. "Radical self-reliance" is a core principle people are expected to adhere to -- as is "civic responsibility."

This year, it rained a lot. It got messy and some people got scared.

From what I saw, nearly everyone who actually engaged in the event honestly and on its own terms was fine, with exceptions for people who had child care, pet care or employment situations that were very inflexible back at home, or for whom unanticipated medical challenges arose. Generally, when people in these situations went through proper channels (ie, contacting volunteer rangers, law enforcement or medical personnel), they were able to get some level of assistance to triage their circumstances.

But some of the people who panicked were not given the help they wanted: A man asking to be let out Sunday when it was not safe because he needed to be back in civilization by Wednesday to get to work, when work was less than a day's drive away; a woman asking to be allowed to drive out on Saturday because her husband was 75, with no further explanation -- even though he had also been 75 when it was not raining outside and he did not have any medical needs or issues at home that needed attention; etc.

Some people did have things go wrong - a tent flooded, they ran out of socks, etc. And every time I saw that, I saw other people step up. On the street where I was camped, numerous people walked from campsite to campsite checking in on each other, offering water, socks, etc. One large camp that had a lot of extra space set up a dry secure lounge for anybody whose tent and lodgings were not dry. I ran out of coffee because the closed gate kept me there longer than planned, and within ten minutes of mentioning this fact, somebody had put out the word about my shortage and coffee brewing methods and tracked down somebody who could offer me fresh ground beans out of his supply.

The porto potties were definitely gross, but they did not get to "cholera/health risk" level. The clay-like mud generated by the rain built up and made them disgusting to look at, and because the vehicles were not able to service them for several days event organizers asked people who were able to use jars or jugs to pee in to hold on to piss for a couple days instead of peeing in the boxes to reserve space for poop. (This sounds gross but probably 1/4-1/3 of participants have some kind of piss jar because it sucks to have to walk a quarter mile if you wake up in the middle of the night and have to pee, it's just that most people empty them every morning and instead they did not empty them out.) Some toilets really did get full to the brim, but in every bank of toilets there were always enough available to meet demand, even if it was icky. Next year I will have an emergency toilet instead of just a piss jug to prepare myself.

The people who really suffered were the ones who violated the principles and explicit requirements of Burning Man by failing to prepare, did not ask for or accept help, and then panicked and tried to leave when the roads were completely unsafe. I think a couple hundred folks probably fall into this category, out of the 70,000-80,000 who attended. The suffering they experienced was mostly damage to their vehicles, scorn from other people at the event, and hefty towing fees. And even then, more people got out than got stuck in the mud. But their departures messed things up for the rest of us, because the ruts their tires made in the muddy road caused puddles to pool and compacted the clay so that it took longer for the water to dry up and the roads to be passable.

Since the "roads" we are talking about are all part of the collective consensus reality we create at Burning Man -- places on a vast flat clay plain that was a lake bed in ancient times, designated by cones and flag lines, not pavement -- volunteers were able to plat out a new Gate Road lanes for people to depart on, in order to circumvent the mess made by the folks who panicked.

Burning Man is big enough that it does have a small year-round staff, as well as seasonal paid staff who provide guidance and support in key areas. But the vast, vast majority of the event is put on and managed by volunteers. And every day that it was rainy and chaotic, more volunteers stepped forward to help, both in unofficial and official capacities. I felt an enormous amount of camaraderie and enjoyed the ways we begrudgingly worked together to make, have and find fun in the muck and mud while we were stuck.

In the end, people were actually able to start departing on Monday, the scheduled end date for the festival, although everyone who was able was asked to stay until Tuesday to give the ground more time to dry and to make the lines shorter for those who really needed to go. I had planned to leave on Sunday and drive halfway home, then get the rest of the way to Portland Monday around noon so I'd have a day and a half to do laundry and unpack before returning to work today. Instead, I left Tuesday and drove all the way home, getting in a bit after midnight (ie, 1 a.m. Wednesday morning), and taking a few hours of unplanned time off to sleep this morning before starting work today. I guess I will unpack this weekend.

It will be fine.

Most of what I have seen reported in the media is factually accurate. But it's hard to represent the nuances of an unfamiliar subculture in an accessible way for a mass audience, and most media did not get right the resilience of nearly every participant I met. As a journalist myself, I know that I have failed to represent the experiential realities of others at times even when I have gotten the facts right. It's probably healthy for me to be on this other side of that experience; I hope I remember it and learn from it and maybe even get better at my work as a result.

I've been to Burning Man 11 or 12 times now, and it's often an extreme and uncomfortable event. My first year, temperatures dropped into the 30s at night and I did not have adequate warm clothes. In 2013 or '14, opening day arrivals were on hold for 12 hours because of rain. A year or two later we had high winds with gusts topping 70 miles per hour that tore up tents and knocked over porta potties. Another year in the twenty-teens, the daily high reached 117 one day -- and remember that almost nobody at this event can seek refuge in air conditioning. Last year we had so many days hotter than 100 that overnight lows didn't get below 80 and I spent at least six hours in a medic's tent with dehydration and heat exhaustion. And this year it rained a lot.

Burning Man is in a remote, extreme and inhospitable environment where people are expected to both plan to take care of themselves and also to give generously to others.

Burning Man is also a place where grown-ups go to remember how to play. A little rain cannot stop that. And it did not. It rained. We sheltered, rallied, took care of each other, and we played. Here are some photos and videos from my experiences after the rain fell.

This year was the best time I've had at the event in a long time. It didn't go how I hoped or planned, but what really does in this world? I am so glad that I was there.

Norma Ritter

 Norma was one of the founders of the email list that I have been on since 1995.  The email list is called Power Surge PS for short.

This was the first in person PS meeting in 1997

Norma Marian Ritter, 78, of Guilderland, New York passed away on September 1, 2023, surrounded by her family. Norma (nee Eglash Woolf) was born on the 9th of June, 1945, in Matlock, England. She is predeceased by her parents Victor Woolf and Minnie Eglash Woolf; her sister Eileen Woolf; and her granddaughter Sarah Tzipporah Otter.

Norma grew up in the East End of London, England. She had a strong connection to her Jewish identity, and after graduating from school she spent a year living on a kibbutz in Israel. Norma loved working with children of all ages. During her long career as an educator, she was employed as a Youth Counselor, a Hebrew School Teacher, and a Youth Group Advisor.

Norma’s true passion was supporting and advocating for mothers and babies. She was asked by Chemung County (NY) Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to create and implement a breastfeeding education program to support young mothers and their babies. The program was so successful that counties all over New York State adopted the curriculum she helped create.

At the age of 50, after 20 years of volunteering as a La Leche League Leader, she started a new career as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). In 2010, Norma went on to not only become one of the founding members of Breastfeeding USA, but also the author of the training manual for their Counselors. Throughout her lifetime, Norma helped, supported, and empowered thousands of mothers to successfully breastfeed their children.

Norma is lovingly survived by her husband of nearly 50 years, Glenn Ritter, as well as her 3 children: Dan (Elizabeth Lear), and their children Zachariah Elijah and Ephraim Avdan; Abigail (Joe Otter), and their children Jonah Avigdor, Rachel Lucia, and Isaac Naftali; and Chana Maya (Jeff Shein) and their children Chava Rachel, Ami Yehuda, Kayla, and Ethan.

Norma will be laid to rest at Congregation Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Schenectady, New York, at 1pm on the 5th of September, 2023. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Animal Protective Foundation in Glenville, NY; or Breastfeeding USA at breastfeedingusa.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Something copied from Facebook

 

Follies Of God

“I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

“I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”—Oliver Sacks. (Photograph by Bill Hayes)

As we all face the losses and the gifts.