"from both sides now"

 I live in a lovely development sandwiched in a retail corridor...highway entrances close by...it was built on the grounds of the old Roosevelt Raceway...then flea market...I live on the earth once pounded by the hooves of majestic racehorses...then bargain seekers looking for schmattas...and so my curiosity was piqued with an article in Newsday earlier this month about a music festival that took place here in 1974...NY Summersault '74...an impressive line-up...Jesse Colin Young...the Beach Boys...Joni Mitchell...Crosby, Stills, Nash and (a late arriving via helicopter) Young...set lists to swoon over...and suddenly when sitting on my terrace these waning summer days...I no longer hear the distant roar of the Meadowbrook Parkway...but instead hear the lilting voice of Joni...who not only performed solo but would join CSNY for exquisite 5-part harmonies...being a writer...a poet...I often go back to Joni's music...her lyrics...genius...recently she was able to perform at the Newport Folk Festival...after many years struggling since a brain aneurysm...it was miraculous to see her performing "Both Sides Now" in the clip circulating throughout social media...her vocal register lower...the pauses...the gut-wrenching delivery of someone who has finally grown into the lyrics written in youth...if you have not seen it please google it...you will be reduced to tears...and so these days when I walk the roadways here...I think of this music and smile...and write...hoping to see what my poems might mean down the road...looking back...

The persistence of memory...

I would say that summer is an evocative time for memory...but lately, as I age...that seems to be the theme for all seasons...but it is the smell of the ocean...the feel of sand between your toes...the soft song of waves rushing the shore...a blazing July sunset...and the sweet sour taste of ripe blueberries...this symphony of the senses...that jars the old brain cells now...takes me back in a rush of memory of places and people...the very little me...and all subsequent versions...faces and laughter play over and over as I close my eyes...this is the joy of travel...I would say turning off the grind...but our world hardly allows that...maybe, mostly turning off the grind...there is always something magical yet humbling at a shoreline...the might of any ocean reminding you of your small space in the largess of the globe...and yet, reminding you of the infinite possibilities of it all...and then again...digging a teaspoon into deep dish blueberry pie...it all seems much simpler, this world...I am no longer navigating in a sea of relentless opinion and bitterness...I am just delighting in the sweetness of nature...just being Sherri Berry...just being...

Gilead

 For those of you who never read or watched "The Handmaids Tale"...Gilead is the US in the future...that future, 2005, now being our past...but recent and ongoing Supreme Court decisions...and their ripple throughout this country put us square in its formation...the lines of fiction and reality have never been more blurred...in this future society that has experienced a significant birth drop...an authoritarian patriarchy takes control and women are no longer people...individuals...but assigned to roles to keep the population going...sound eerily like recent days and you are right...all of this stems from religion...and the fear that if statistics are correct...by approximately 2070, Islam will be the dominant world religion, not Christianity...now, for me, being Jewish...not much changes...low in population except for in Israel, obviously, and in shrinking markets here...I pretty much expect to be part of a minority that is continuously picked on and scapegoated...as the old joke about our holidays goes...they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat...but this statistic about Islam is not sitting well with right-wing Evangelicals...nope...and so with the Evangelicals having the ear of the current Supreme Court majority...we find ourselves in reactionary times moving at  clip speed...back during his first campaign, Donald Trump said he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters...and so with the appointments of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett he has...as we try to catch our breath...and figure out what to do...do not sit on your laurels...election day is in a few months...do research...do not take what any candidate preaches as the gospel...they all may think they will do what's best for their constituencies...but most are owned by powerful donors...think real local for daily quality of life issues...think bigger for your personal freedoms...mostly keep thinking and reading...really reading...not Facebook or Twitter...if you have something to offer...think about running...run now before that heavy red cloak trips you...

the very angry caterpillar...

I titled this blog as a play on words for a cherished children's book...because this week I cannot get the images of 21 murdered souls out of my head...19 children and 2 teachers...19 children still caterpillars...not yet butterflies...there is so much crowding the space in my brain that never seems to shut off at night...reading some of the background story of the killer...wondering where he might have fallen through the cracks...young bullied girls seem to let anger churn inward...cutting and starving and a host of other tragic behavior...young bullied boys sometimes churn and explode...we have seen this on repeat...why do we still make it so easy for them to arm themselves...when do we learn...the answer is not to seal children in their schools...it might seem like some half-baked solution...but fire, anyone?...then there is the old NRA defense card...mental illness...that guns don't kill...people do...then, I ask...what would be the harm in having age requirements...background checks...permits...do you hand your 10 year old kid the keys to your car and say..."go take a ride on the LIE...at 5pm...weekday...eastbound"...maybe a small course so that people really learn how to be responsible gunowners...2nd amendment, you say...it begins with "well-regulated Militia"...what we have is not well regulated...and abolish all AR 15's...that's it...if you have a problem with that...you have a problem...but anger...it is sucking the oxygen out of life as we knew it...and the grown-ups keep yelling...and the kids are dying...and I can't cry anymore...I'm becoming numb...and that is the most terrifying thing...next time I see a butterfly...I will marvel how it even came to be in a world suspended in hate...

bang...bang...

 shot...shot...boost...mask...mask...shit...Covid is an eye opener to the mess that is healthcare in this country...if you didn't already see it before...years ago, many of you probably had a primary care doctor you just called your doctor...maybe there was a partner, maybe two...you knew the front desk, you knew the nurses...urgent care was reserved for weekends when you had no choice...but even there, the doctors took their time, listened...if you needed meds, they were at the pharmacy you used for years...they knew your name...gradually, over the last few years this all evaporated...your doctor became part of a large group...your pharmacy was now dictated by your insurance provider...and now due to Covid... your urgent care is the McDonalds of health care..."I'll have a strep test with my fries please"...the driving force of all of this is not you...it is often not your doctor...he or she could not keep up with the black hole of reimbursements...it is insurance on one hand...and pharmaceutical companies on the other...and all the unsavory deals made in conference rooms and conference calls...you don't believe me?...start streaming "The Dropout" about Elizabeth Holmes, her company Theranos, and how Walgreens...yes Walgreens...was duped...how if it wasn't stopped so many people could have been seriously impacted...but back to doctors and your care...a broken thread of continuity...how many times are people seriously misdiagnosed...over diagnosed...to what end...all of this ruminated in what was left of my brain this week...working its way through a very unpleasant earworm of "Tubthumping"...watch out for what pops up on that car radio when there's fever floating in those brain cells...urgent care...once my rapid test was positive they couldn't wait to get me out of there...spitting out my treatment options...my quarantine requirements...but my cough, my chest I asked...barely a listen...it's Covid cough...which it was...a repeat visit confirmed, despite wheezing in a most unsettling way...that second visit, a doctor who listened...gave me a few minutes...her weary eyes above that mask...this is a war...and the soldiers are tired...but we sent them to battle without the weapons...we let our system go into the toilet and then we got hit with a nuclear bomb in 2020...and nothing has changed...so we start from the bottom up...next local election...see what those running think about issues like this...more importantly...if you go one level up to state elections...who are their donors?...shot...shot...boost...who rules their roost?

Step lively, and watch the closing doors...

I don't have to tell you if you are a New Yorker...we are kind of past the fall of the Roman Empire here...even hardened, "I've seen it all" city dwellers are weary and sad...the attack on the subway riders in Brooklyn is difficult to read about...the footage makes me wince...because somewhere deep inside I feel this is not the apex in our decline...Mayor Adams has inherited a ship riddled with deep holes...impossible in many ways to keep from sinking...and this all happening in the shadow of Ukraine...and the holiest of months for Muslims, Christians and Jews...for me, as I prepare for Passover...the third in this ongoing 11th plague of Covid...I do have to stop and think...about how Jews have always needed to be light on their feet...chased by war and pogroms...or journeying to be closer to the Holy Land...closer to G-d and at peace...light on their feet...have you ever eaten a Passover meal?!...but I digress...this year when you find that quiet space to pray...even if it is not to a G-d, but to Mother Earth herself...take a few minutes...pray for those who run to live...in Ukraine...in war torn countries in Africa...pray for those who we elected to be benevolent and wise in dragging our New York back on its feet...pray that with masks off we learn to smile at strangers...not snarl in contempt...and mostly when you look inward remember...never let the chance of redemption and change pass you over...

a night in Hollywood/a day in the Ukraine

March moves on...the weather is psychotic, at best, in New York...Sundays mean movie award shows...and most movies, sadly, were not seen in the theaters...but in living rooms constantly interrupted by life...the news chronicles Putin's march through Ukraine...in real, unrelentless time...it's an interesting fact that movie viewership soared during WWII...many films part of Hollywood's finest moments...others military propaganda...we have changed since then...and then again we have not...it is no great surprise that the highest grossing films today are pure escapism...and that those fans rally against the awards grab by serious, often depressing, arthouse films...it is no surprise that...with the exception of some actors who put humanitarian efforts above their careers...we view the acting community with some disdain when they lecture us in 5-digit gowns...as my friend and I watched the Independent Spirit Awards last weekend...we sadly wondered if we'd lost our love for award shows...or maybe for the movies themselves...our appreciation for that one really great script that touched the creative soul...and it really isn't that...it's this world...which plays out in the palm of our hand...on a cell phone...24/7...ugly and immediate...it is hard to cheer for your favorite actress when a maternity hospital blows up at a glance in real time...it is more than sad...it is soul crushing...but...maybe it is fortuitous that the pandemic is waning...hopefully not a momentary reprieve this time...and that the smaller movie theaters rise from the ashes...so that on a hot July afternoon I can sit... phone off...popcorn in hand... and look up to watch...the subtitled or dubbed vision of a filmmaker from across the continents...and realize that the artistic distance is small...and most importantly...that the artistic spirit lives under the rubble of hate...which repeats like a scratched vinyl record in the dark...