"you can check out any time you like..."

 "but you can never leave"...it certainly was a surreal feeling last night at Madison Square Garden...my first concert in the age of Covid...and first time seeing the Eagles...after so many years of their music strumming in my head...pleasant earworms...and while listening last night...I realized just how easily the music and words could transport me...way back...I could digress...talk about the men sitting behind me discussing everything they thought they knew about the Eagles...loudly...with a steady stream of misinformation...or about the woman screaming in the ladies room for the attendant...apparently she had seen the largest roach known to mankind in her stall...welcome to NY lady...but instead I will tell you about Deacon Frey...that would be the late Glenn Frey's son...who with Vince Gill has stepped in...trying to fill a space left when Glenn tragically passed too soon...instead creating something new and quite lovely...and when Deacon stepped to the microphone for my favorite song, "Peaceful Easy Feeling"...all the anger inside...bubbling since Covid strangled life as we knew it...seemed to fade...Deacon, living testament that art is created as a mirror of life as the artist perceives it...intimate and universal...and can be reborn with new artists...from generation to generation...and so...well, at least for today...before I look at the headlines...deadlines...frown lines...I'll treasure the lyrics..."don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy"...

the heat is on...

excuse me while I schvitz...another heatwave...wildfires across the globe of epic proportion...tempers on both sides of the vaccine war...political careers aflame...how to cool off...not the ocean waters of Long Island...Jaws-back with a vengeance...such is the summer of 2021...the second year in this decade of our world afire...so how to avoid the rabbit hole of despair...we skirt it every day...and when I reach for the pen or keyboard...and feel nothing...I know I am dangerously close to becoming Alice floating away...I started this blog nine years ago...and much has happened...and not happened...kind of like "breaking news" having a lovechild with "Seinfeld"...and there have been attacks of writer's block...the thoughts don't always coalesce...even if the feelings do...but lately the heat...or life as we know it...is sapping my creative mojo...and this raises my ire...and so this half-assed blogpost...it's my mojo on the offensive...trying to reclaim inner strength...energy...and resistance to all that is swirling around us...that which can fry our health...and that which incinerates our spirit...so I try...a poem here...a letter to the editor there...and pushing this blog uphill...one post at a time...through twenty-first century hell...there's always a little heaven when this writer hits "publish"...

American song...

 "still, when I think of the road we're traveling on I wonder what's gone wrong"...Paul Simon's words from another time...America...she's older and fractured...in dire need of repair and rehab...where's the skilled surgeon...the compassionate treatment team...when can she rest...she's like a nurse in a covid wing in the deep south...pulled in so many different directions...sad, because she knows she will lose some patients...angry, because it didn't have to be that way...and hope is just a frayed thread holding her together...I thought about this nation many times in the past few weeks...as I often do around July 4th...for every beautiful color that lit the night in fireworks...there were cherry bombs and worse that scared animals to death...literally...what the hell does that have to do with us as a nation...or maybe it's the most accurate...we seek to recreate that which is the loudest and ugliest...have we truly become the Ugly Americans?...what exactly can lessen the deep chasm that has formed...it splinters and grows as respect withers in a vacuum...how we move forward...even if we fail...is not etched in stone...it is a series of steps we take as a nation...at times one step forward, two steps back...but always moving forward...together...no one left behind...giving this nation...America...the support she needs...and in turn...hopefully getting what we need...what we deserve...

next to normal...

and so we slide towards summer...covid restrictions are lifting week by week...we are seeing family and friends...vaccinated, we hug...lunging towards life as it had been...but we really can't...we are in the new normal...a unique state where we excitedly embrace all that we have missed...but with pause...for those who lost someone to covid, life will never be as it was...for those of us who had covid, there is either a leeriness to the rapid fire reopening...or a sense of invincibility...to a degree, to move on we kind of need to ignore the news...we did have falling numbers of cases...and hospitalizations...this morning I read of a concerning plateau...which paired with sinking vaccinations rates and increases of a more virulent and dangerous delta variant could spell an unsettling fall for the unvaccinated...and they are a formidable number...but people spin the dial on that one...the thought of another pause is too painful...there are hockey playoffs...and tickets to buy for the return of concerts and Broadway...cheer fellow Americans at the Olympics in Japan...a country currently drowning in the virus...there are masks to burn...and school board meetings to scream at...time to get front row seats as deniers eviscerate Fauci...a modern day Roman coliseum headliner...watch out for the cougher in row 2...

Coffee, no sugar...

and so yesterday, I finally made my way back to the office...in the city...after 13 months...now, understand, I do work largely from home...going in one or two days a week at best...but...so there I was...bracing to see this city...my only city...after a long absence...the changes are there...but in honesty they were there before...the changes are, in part, due to the ravages of a society where the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" is stretched beyond the limit...where there has been a mayor who still cannot get beyond singing "Kumbaya" and really do the work...the sometimes ugly and unpopular work that is needed to run this city...there was a sad sigh in seeing it all...the barrage of "closed" and "for rent" signs...the homeless, both breaking your heart and leaving the hair at the back of your neck standing at attention...and so I did my Dorothy skip on the yellow brick road...making my way down the street...avoiding the dog crap...at least I hope it was...dotting the landscape...and opening the door to my favorite coffee shop...which was open and survived this era of Covid...leaving a tear in my eye...the wonderful early morning aroma of fresh brew and warm pastry...and there she was...the manager...cheerful and welcoming as if we had never missed a beat...we talked briefly...I told her it was my first day venturing through the midtown tunnel...and smiled at her...but the mask...could she see the smile lines crinkle in the corner of my eyes?...in the office...placing my hot paper coffee cup in the middle of the desk resembling a Mt. Vesuvius of papers...I sat...and closed my eyes...yes, it is like the seventies out there...without the good music...but it is my fervent prayer we come back again...the hustle...the bustle...the people...the only city...New Yawk...

Under His Eye...

timing is everything in life...just ask Margaret Atwood and her creation The Handmaid's Tale...I admit I am late to the Hulu series...binging through Season Two as I type...but as both a reader, and writer, I was not late to the game when the book was released in the mid-80's...a fictional...some said science fictional look at life in 2005...gee, what could have been her inspiration...the good times of Thatcher and Reagan?...the book, revered, dismissed and sometimes banned left more than a little food for thought...and now, a few days shy of 61, sometimes it is hard to fathom how much things have changed for women...and not...for me...as a girl in the 60's heading off to school...having to wear pants under my dress on cold days, then remove before class started...I look at the credit cards in my wallet...it wasn't until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 that women could get a credit card without the co-signature of a husband or male family member...Mondale takes Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket in 1984...McCain takes Sarah Palin in 2008...and now Kamala Harris...always a bridesmaid in my time...maybe not in the future...back to Handmaid's Tale...the series has chosen to modernize it to reflect our times...interracial couples...gay couples...Atwood was more blunt about what would happen to people of color in her Gilead...but the red cloaks remain...the simmering anger and fear when watching are elicited...in the U.S. today birthrates are declining...reasons range from  economics... choice...environment's possible influence on fertility (something to ponder on Earth Day)...and that, my friends, is one statistic that creates underlying panic in some circles...circles with clout and money...and so I continue to binge and watch Elizabeth Moss and clan...and note painful similarities to changing mores and laws...and wonder...why the hell I chose to watch this at the second year marker of this endless pandemic...but as much as I'd rather watch a repeat of SVU I find I cannot look away...episode after episode...under his eye...

wabbit season...

chocolate bunny rabbits...Cadbury eggs...Peeps...pristine baskets wrapped in a spring palette...the youthful joys of Easter are quite lovely...and as much as Passover will always be my favorite Jewish holiday...you gotta admit...how can chocolate covered matzoh or macaroons compare?...cause after the chocolate rush...they sit in the pit of your stomach like lead...which explains our forefathers wandering in the desert for 40 years...that, and you, might be thinking that Moses never would have turned to Zipporah for directions...but I digress...it really is a season of rebirth, religiously speaking, for many...and our second such season during covid...the pandemic creates a sort of underlying fear that permeates everything...kind of brands us without conscious realization...we miss...no, we crave the rituals...the things that tie us to one another and keep us sane...and grounded...painting, then hiding Easter eggs...the long Passover table meticulously set with the finery of relatives long gone...this year, depending on where you sit in the vaccine or antibody curve...maybe there was a table set at Passover...or one today waiting for relatives to take seats after church...or maybe you are not ready...and so it is small or zoomed...whatever your celebration...we all know deep down we pause and look forward to next spring...wabbit and Moses season...healthy with loved ones...our only complaint - MLB trades...as we reach for a glass to toast the host...Happy Passover and Happy Easter everyone!