Walking to Know and Preserve

 

“How do people spend their days?” I often wonder. Of course, such a question is an immense luxury. For most of the people of the world and most of the world’s history, the answer is, “Whatever it takes to survive.” Hunting, gathering, farming, weaving, building or else other kinds of work that brings in money to pay others to do that work that brings food to your table, insures a roof over your head, provides a vehicle to get from one place to another. In that context, it’s not a deep question.

 

It’s also a question relevant for my peer group of retired people. We all have worked some 40 hours weekly for at least 40 or 45 years and that pretty much accounts for a lot of our time. In my case, it was fun, fun work playing games, playing music, dancing and more with kids. But though it wasn’t backbreaking labor in the rice fields, it also was hard, hard work. If you don’t believe me, ask Bobby McFerrin. As a parent in my school, he once threw a party for his third-grade son Taylor in which his classmates went to a recording studio to record a song. Afterwards he told me, “I don’t know how you do it. That was the hardest four hours of my life!!!”

 

If we complain about working too hard and working too much— as all of us do or have— we should also consider the double-edged sword of retirement. The moments when you wake up and think, “Hey, I can do anything I want today!” with glee and just as often, “Hey, I can do anything I want today. But what the heck do I want to do?” Freedom without structure can be just as difficult as structure without freedom. And that’s when the question “How do you spend your days?” becomes interesting.

 

This bike trip has been a perfect blend of a structured schedule, a clear daily goal (bike from here to there), freedom to deviate and dilly-dally along the route if you so choose, then the predictable three-hour evening dinner in the restaurant. Once the bike trip ended, three of us went to an Air B &B near the hilltop town of Monte San Angelo, as noted in yesterday’s blog. Today, Karen and I bid farewell to Mary at noon and had the entire afternoon to ourselves. But what to do? There’s always the routines we bring with us—reading, writing, sketching, cards, crostics— but vacation invites something else. And so we did one of the finest things a person can do when nothing else invites us. We walked. 

 

Just got out and put one leg in front of another and walked. As our “failed” hike yesterday made clear, it doesn’t always matter so much where you walk. Just walk and listen and look and attend and observe and get the old body moving as evolution intended. (One anthropologist theorized that our ancestors walked an average of 12 miles a day). 

 

And so we walked. Took the right fork instead of the left and though that’s a terrible decision in politics, it was the perfect decision in hiking as we actually found a marked trail. I was already writing in my head this post about the joys of walking when I read this sign. Clearly I wasn’t the only person who thought this way!

We did get to the town on the top (the equivalent of some 148 flights and 7 ½ miles according to my phone ap) and feeling the return journey a bit much hiking in my Tivas and shorts and the air getting cold, we bought a bus ticket for a bus that never came. I was up for hitchhiking, but just when we were discussing it, a taxi came by and we negotiated the price down the mountain. Home again to the barking dogs and one final dinner here in Puglia cooked in our B &B kitchen. 

 

So remember. When life is beating you down or the endless hours of the day are stretching out before you with no enticing invitation or you’re tempted to go down the rabbit hole of news or Facebook or Youtube, just get out and walk. Wherever you are, whoever you’re with, walk. Walk to know the world. Walk to preserve your sanity. 

 

Just walk. 

Refusing the Handmaid's Tale

It has been a luxurious privilege and pleasure to absent myself from being in the daily company of evil, evil people. From Putin to many of the Supreme Court justices to the Fox News idiots, all people I don't want to spend a single minute of my day with, it has been a healing two weeks to choose to ignore them. But of course, we can only do that for so long before our refusal to see them gives them more power to continue to wreak havoc on the world. Which they seem to wake up each morning determined to do. So rather than paraphrase it, I include Michael Moore's essay on the most recent outrage. Please read and pass it on.

One hundred seventy million American women and girls were suddenly informed on Monday that they have been removed from the ranks of full citizenship, and that their rights are now diminished so severely they will heretofore be commanded to give birth, whether they want to or not. 

Once pregnant, the government will now make all women prisoners of their wombs, automatically forced for the full nine months to carry the fetus inside them to term, whether they intended to be pregnant or not, a 21st century version of house arrest. 

And when it’s time to give birth, the woman who didn’t want to be pregnant in the first place is either virtually or physically held down until that fetus is forcibly removed from the incarcerated vessel that was ordered to carry it. 

This Order by the Supreme Rulers gleefully violates the very first pronouncement of our Constitution’s First Amendment which clearly states, without equivocation, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  The Ruling this week forces all Americans to now follow the strict religious beliefs of the Catholic Church and much of Christianity which has concocted a fantasy that a fertilized egg is a human being — even though their own founder and God, Jesus Christ, never said any such thing. In fact, the word “abortion” appears absolutely nowhere in the New Testament. This Supreme Ruling, from a Court consisting of a majority of Catholic Justices, has ordered the citizens of the United States of America to now obey a major tenet of the Catholic Church — or be found guilty of a crime. 

This Supreme Ruling removes the right of all women to be equal citizens to men — men who will retain full 100% control over their own reproductive organs. Both men and women have five main bodily systems. Women will now be allowed to maintain control of only four of their top five bodily systems: their circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system and their muscular/skeletal system. But not their reproductive system. That power now belongs to the government. Which makes women 4/5 of a citizen. The State of course exercises no legal control over whatever it is men want to do with their bodies, and no man is forced to reproduce or deal with any of its consequences as women are.

Our Supreme Robed Rulers have relegated women and girls to permanent second-class citizenship. The pretending that women are legally “equal” can now thankfully stop. The truth is they were always 2nd class citizens, thanks to unequal pay, no paid maternity leave, domestic abuse, etc. The fake mask of our American system of “equality” has been ripped off, no more pretending now, because the real slippery slope has begun. This Forced Birth decision is only the beginning. If these fascists are not removed from office, as President Biden has warned us this week, they will be emboldened and they will be on a rampage to undo other freedoms that are an affront to the State Religion they have now shoved down our throats in the Dobbs Case.

Next up: ending same sex marriage. After that: the removal of the Plan B pill, aka “the morning after pill.” They have already eliminated the Violence Against Women Act and they will make that permanent. They have invaded school board meetings with threats of violence if the schools continue to teach that white Americans kidnapped, raped, lynched and enslaved Black Africans to build this country. They will continue to gerrymander, suppress the vote, and keep Black Americans on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Your child will be forced to start the school day, every day, by standing and praying aloud to this Christian God Jesus Christ who never once condemned homosexuality, never once forced anyone to pray. They have made up this fake god to suit their totalitarian political agenda, to force women into the maternity ward, to send Black Americans to the back of the new bus where they are imprisoned by the millions along with other people of color. 

Welcome to the New America. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, only the new boss no longer has to fake-sing his praises for “Democracy!” and “Freedom!” and “Equality!”

The New America is about to become a much scarier place. The Supreme Wealthy are going to take everything from you and they believe they’re going to get away with it. Only November stands in their way. Only November has a chance of stopping them. And that’s on you and me.  

MASSIVE ORGANIZING!

EXPLOSIVE NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE!

EVERYONE BRINGS FIVE VOTERS WITH THEM TO THE POLLS!

EACH OF US PUTS A SIGN IN THE WINDOW OR THE YARD THAT SAYS “VOTE THE FASCISTS OUT!”

Then we might have a chance. 

And I believe we do. Because there’s more of us than there are of them. 

(Note: The ABC News poll this week showed 70% of Americans believe “abortion is a private decision between a woman and her doctor.” Only 27% of the country supports what the Trump Court is about to rule! C’mon people — let’s beat these traitorous bastards once and for all.)

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Everything Changes. Everything Stays the Same.

In 1973, traveling to Europe for the first time with the Antioch Chorus, I went on a mid-trip break to the island of Formentera with three fellow chorus members. One had a friend who had a house there and said we could use it while she was gone for the summer. 

 

So we arrived and following instructions, found the bar La Fonda Pepe and searched out young Pepe, who was supposed to have the keys. He didn’t and seemed wholly confused by the request. We persevered with some two hours of broken Spanish before a light went on and he led us to man who indeed had the key. He led us to  a small stone house up the hill on a dirt path with some furniture, beds and no electricity. There was a little store down the path that provided us with some bread and cheese and such and there we stayed for four mostly magical nights and days. 

 

Today, almost 50 years later, I woke up in Ostuni, Italy, took the train to Foggia, bought some bus tickets with anxiety about which bus it actually was before finally boarding the correct one. Off we went, Karen, Mary and I, for an hour and a half ride with some vague directions to an Air B&B, winding up a tall mountain looking down at the sea. 

 

But the problem was that the ride was only supposed to be an hour and indeed, we had overshot it. With our broken Italian and gestures, the driver convinced us he knew the stop we missed and we stayed on the bus as he began the return trip. He dropped us by the side of the road with sporadic houses up dirt roads, as baffled as ever. With the help of some joggers, we found the road that matched the address. Now we had to find the number. No luck. A car came up the bumpy road and stopped to help us, called Massimo, the Air B&B owner and he finally came to the rescue. 

 

In some ways, it was reminiscent of my Formentera experience but with a few notable differences. This house has a pool of sorts in the front, five spacious rooms including a fully equipped kitchen, washing machine, enormous big screen TV, Wi-fi, large bathroom. Instead of walking down the road to a charming small store and talking with the owner, our host drove us on a fast road to a mall and we hit the supermarket. Amongst the aisles of pastas and tomato sauces, there were also ricecakes and granola. Times have changed. 

 

But in perhaps a stroke of good fortune, the Wi-fi stopped working (Massino said Russia was blocking the satellites) and so we were back in the world where the people we are in touch with are the people around us, the news we hear is what we notice when we walk out the door, our sense of place is here, our sense of time is now. Same as in 1973. 

 

Everything changes. Everything stays the same. 

  

Biking in Puglia: Coda

It is in the beginning of things when life is most fresh, new and full of promise. Our childhood, the start of a romance, the beginning of a new job— all open the windows of possibility, are touched with a magic and mystery of not wholly knowing what lies ahead and thus, feeling an extra sparkle to the moment at hand. 

 

So on the first morning of the eight-day bike ride, once we got out of the town and started riding down a country road, I felt my spirit soaring, touching a childhood sense of time and freedom that, truth be told, I haven’t felt for a long time. And so I wrote a first-draft poem trying to capture and communicate a bit of it, thinking that this sense of unfettered lightness and freedom would not come again on the trip.

 

But I was wrong. At least once every day, with different shadings and nuances, I felt the same unbridled abandon, crossing some bridge to my childhood or young adulthood and feeling wholly 10 or 20 years old in my 70 year-old body. It was often in the morning—again, beginnings— and could not last long, being just the way the world works. What is suddenly novel to the brain quickly becomes commonplace— hence, the practice of making ourselves forever new through meditation, music, poetry, travel and more. 

 

And so thanks Ferula Viaggi, the bike trip sponsors/ organizers for carrying me back to these former selves and forward to my next incarnation. Farewell to my trusty bike, pictured here by the golden gelato that marked the trip and cancelled all calories burned. 

Two bike-less weeks ahead and hopes that the daily reincarnation of blessed innocence may still accompany me. Here’s the poem: 

 

It comes as an act of grace, a blessing

A benediction, a soothing song sung

   by the long tongue

       of the open road.

with its  simple invitation: 

 “Come.”

 

Leave behind the neatly folded and carefully considered contents

   of the luggage of past selves. 

They will be delivered later to the hotel,

      Still useful and somewhat needed.

 

But now they are simply excess weight, a burden.

Now is your time to move through the world as you were meant to.

Light.  Unfettered.     Free.

 

Get up on your bike and coast down the hills

  through the flowered fields, arms flung open wide

   to the welcome warm embrace of World. 

 

Later, the clocks will return and the lists and the luggage,

but for now,

 ah, now, just this.

 

 

Biking in Puglia: Day 8

And so our last day arrived with a 90%  forecast of rain all day after a week of perfect weather. We gathered in the courtyard post-breakfast to bid farewell to two of us heading out early to Sicily. Being who I am, I insisted on a little closing circle of appreciation and indeed, it was well-earned. Lorna, Marcia, Mary, Carol, Geri,  all part of a weekly bike group my wife Karen has been with for some 30 years, are all people I have met, but not hung out with much. Karen often comes back from the ride appreciative of the quality of her friends and having spent the week with them, I understand why. Gerri’s husband Dennis and I were allowed to crash the party and we hit it off great. I opened the circle by quoting a mutual friend who had complained that much of her time with friends was spent sharing past memories and she was missing creating new ones. This week was exactly that— the shared adventures that were indeed memorable, each and every day. 

 

So off the remaining six of us went on wet cobblestone streets and once out of town, rode on an actual bike path hugging the sea with emerging sunshine. (It never did rain the whole day.) The wind at our backs, the road stretching out before us, the landscape reminiscent of a Greek island, me singing a Greek folk song I remembered that was the perfect soundtrack for the promise of the morning. More olive groves and lunch off to the side where a Neolithic Dolmen sat tucked in amongst the trees. Finished the bag of hazelnuts, almonds, cashews, figs and roasted fava beans we bought in Matera. 

 

Some 25 miles later, the white town of  Ostuni loomed before us, perched on a  hill overlooking the sea. Settled into the hotel and out to explore. Stopped by a street accordion player playing the most perfect live music I had heard all trip and I accompanied him on body percussion, disappointed that I didn’t bring my sopranino recorder in my pocket. He was a Roma gypsy and was excited to hear I was American. “Americans very smart!” he exclaimed and I resisted responding “Really? Have you heard of Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson or he who shall not be named?”

 

We came to a park and sat under a brilliantly blooming redbud tree, watching the children and groups of older men and listening to the cooing of mourning doves. Ambled over to a nearby church and heard a group of women singing  a call and response kind of chant. 

 

On to the ritual restaurant search and stumbled into one with a table tucked away in a kind of a grotto setting, with one of the chairs a swing bedecked with flowers! It was a perfect atmosphere except for the loud American 50’s rock-‘n’ roll soundtrack. Better than the disco beat, but still. So I said to the waitress after ordering:

 

“We are Americans who came all the way to be in Italy to be in Italy. Do you have any Italian music you can play? And whether yes or no, can you turn it down a bit?” Lo and behold, she did both and it made all the difference in the world. A perfect farewell dinner with some new dishes—vegetable caponata, eggplant parmigiana, a wonderful cheese plate with green bread, topped off at the end with a limoncello liquor. 

And so ended the Puglia bike trip, eight  glorious days of adventure, exercise, comradery and unrelenting beauty. No better summary than these lines from the Navaho Night Chant.

 

There is beauty before me.

There is beauty behind me.

There is beauty above me.

There is beauty below me.

It is finished in beauty.

Biking in Puglia: Day 7

Out from our trulli room to a glorious Sunday. Breakfast with fresh orange juice (!) and homemade yogurt in little glass bottles. Then out to a park, Karen sketching, me writing in my journal and what looked like preparations for a festival below. Which turned out to be a fast-walking race and the tranquility of a lazy Sunday morning was bombarded by constant fast DJ-like blathering over loudspeakers. Oh well. 

 

Made our way out of town threading our way through the last walkers, ended up on a highway of sorts, came over a peak and lo and behold, there was a stunning view with the Adriatic Sea spread out before us. Coasted down a long hill with traffic and motorcycle groups speeding by and got off at a blessed un-trafficked path with stone walls on either side. A few hundred yards into it, we saw a lovely lunch spot in an ancient olive grove and unpacked our bread and cheese, figs and nuts for a tranquil lunch in the peaceful countryside sitting on stones and tree roots. Once on our bikes, we passed another Italian family off the road, but they had a table set with plates and silverware on a tablecloth and chairs and wine, the classic scene you’ve seen it movies— and it really happens.

 

On we went through the olive groves and I was struck by these thick-trunked ancient trees, some perhaps a thousand years old and now twisted and turned and growing over stone walls and split in two, but still producing olives. Some deep metaphor for us elder humans, which I’ll save for another post. 

We continued on this idyllic road a while before realizing that perhaps we took a wrong turn a few miles back and decided to ignore the directions, follow our noses and ask everyone we passed. It's good to have a map with directions, occasionally a GPS, but when we get lost and have to ask directions, we realize the deep dependence we have on each other and the pleasure of having an excuse to begin conversation. 

It eventually worked out and we entered the seaside town of Monopoli,  a hopping, touristed, youthful place similar to Trani. Our hotel wasn’t ready yet, so I watched the bikes while others got their afternoon gelati. While waiting, I noticed a couple sitting on a bench some 20 feet away talking to teach other. I couldn’t hear them, but watched they way gestures accompanied their conversation. It’s an Italian cliché, but it’s true. What linguist Walter Ong called “the verbo-motor” response, alive in both young children, spirited adults and southern Mediterranean cultures (amongst others).

 

Our hotel rooms were separate and four of us where around the corner. We began ascending the stairs with our heavy luggage and heavy batteries to be charged and groaned a bit faced with the 35-stair winding staircase. But it’s all just more good exercise and up we went. 

An afternoon walk along the beach front, dipping our toes in the predictably cold Adriatic Sea, late-afternoon outdoor café appetizers and then an indoor dinner discussing the origin of International Labor Day (see yesterday’s post). I also asked around the table who could imagine continuing traveling like this for another week or even two and some of us—including me—absolutely could. 

 

And so ended Day 7.  

International Labor Day

I spent International Labor Day biking to Monopoli. Italy. A bit ironic as this day is to commemorate resistance to big bosses buying up Park Place and Broadway in the real capitalistic game of Monopoly! But no surprise that it’s a story that few Americans know.

 

The short version is that in 1886, workers across America organized  a general strike to insist on an 8-hour work day. The police backed the bosses and a riot ensued in Haymarket Square in Chicago, causing the deaths of both protestors and police. The government hung four protesters with no evidence against them and the outrage provoked international interest. Across the world, May 1^st became known as International Labor Day to commemorate the fight for worker’s rights and is celebrated as such in countries worldwide with one notable exception— the United States. Worried that proposals for a U.S. Labor Day on that date would call attention to the event, President Grover Cleveland suggested a day in September which Americans would remember forever as— the day after which (at least up until recently) school would begin in September. 

 

Hmm. I wonder why. When in doubt, follow the money. For much of the 20^th century, labor-management conflicts were handled through the creation of unions. By 1955, 33% of American workers belonged to a union. Today it’s 6%. Back in the day, anti-trust laws were put in place to put a ceiling on —well, monopolies— and rich people payed taxes, giving back to the economy like the rest of us. Now the dogs of greed are unleashed— the top 1% earn more money than the entire middle class! And thanks to Trump’s gift to his cronies, ain’t none of them paying taxes. Amazon workers are suffering from overwork while CEO Jeff Bezos decides he needs a $500 million dollar yacht and hey, why not fly into space? Is anybody noticing?

 

Michael Moore is. In a piece titled “May Day Every Day,” he notes that there is a gradual awakening amongst young people who are gathering to say “Enough.” While the billionaires got richer during Covid (one statistic said 62% richer!) there has been an underground rumbling in the form of “a 57% increase in the number of workers and labor groups demanding to be recognized as a union, demanding better wages, benefits, time off and safety protection.” Starbuck employees, Amazon workers, REI, Apple, the Art Institute of Chicago and others have created, or are in the process of creating, unions that allow for a more humane working environment. 

 

It’s in the interest of those driven by excessive and unapologetic greed, those willing to profit from the country’s crisis, those whose driving mission statement is “More. More. And yet more,” to keep us all in the dark. Economy is the last conversation we need to be having, the one we keep ignoring, the one Florida’s Governor De Santis would ban immediately from schools if we started having it and heaven forbid, teach the children about the real history of May Day. They might learn about the motto of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) coined by labor activist Joe Hill in response to his coming execution: “Don’t mourn. Organize!”

 

And so this little look at Monopoly in the town of Monopoli.