Already, two months early, I ponder...

I write Bern a poem for each of our anniversaries. I don't know when it started--a decade or more ago, I'm sure. Our anniversary--#47 this September 5--will cause me to ponder a great deal. I sometimes do stuff like have each line begin with the letters of the alphabet that spell out the number. This year would be F-O-R-T-Y-S-E-V-E-N--like that.

I have time to ponder and write.

Here's last's years 'almost' poem.

The Poem I Can’t Write

For days now I’ve been trying

to write a poem that just won’t come.

It’s for our anniversary and about my love,

so it should flow out without any effort,

since I love you so very much.

But the poem is hiding from me,

peeking at me from around the corner,

avoiding me at all cost, it seems.

Page after page I throw away

(or, more accurately, erase from my computer).

Forty-six years of marriage (and years before that)

of loving you—the words should pour out,

full of passion and wonder and amazement.

This time I realized something,

my love for you isn’t something ‘out there’,

that I can examine, reflect on, put into words.

That love is in those letters in the attic.

That love has altered, changed, become incarnate.

The love I feel for you is, quite simply, me.

I am my love for you. It is my very ‘being’

That cannot be captured and enclosed in words.

That is ‘who I am’. So, I am your poem.

This poem is ‘me’, my very being, the “I” I call myself.

I am yours. Your anniversary poem….

September 5, 2016

trumping Trump

OK, you already know about it but I'm going to say it again: the state of New Jersey hasn't passed a budget and shut down certain parts of the government, including the tourist centers, the state beaches and vital statistics. So, don't plan to find out what to do in New Jersey or go to a public beach or get a birth certificate over the 4th of July holiday.

But Gov. Chis Christie and his extended family took a state helicopter to a state owned house on a state public beach so he and his family could enjoy the sun and waves and breezes that no one else in New Jersey could because THE BEACH WAS CLOSED!!!

The shear arrogance and hypocrisy of a governor going somewhere that was closed to the rest of the citizens of his state 'on his watch' is breath-taking. And his explanation is only better--he had said he was going there with his family before the state shut-down.

"So the press found out a politician was where he said he would be with who he said he would be with," Christie said on (where else) Fox News, "I'm sure they'll get a Pulitzer for that....."

Take 3 deep breaths and think of the place you love most in the world (as long as it's not a state beach or park in New Jersey) and then lean into his answer to why he, the frigging Governor, was somewhere he, as Governor, said no other tax paying citizen of his state could be this weekend.

Probably more deep breaths and happy thoughts are necessary....

Even the Republican who is going to run to replace him as governor of New Jersey was appalled by the whole thing.

Pity Christie doesn't tweet (that I know of).

He might give Trump a run for his money.....

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that, even with my bum knees, I can run if I have to.

The bad news is that this afternoon, I had to run.

Bad Dog Bela, 12 and hating the heat with a passion, was supposedly on our afternoon walk around the neighborhood.  In actuality, what he was doing was turning around and trying to get me to turn around and go home and what I was doing was mostly dragging him. On this afternoon's walk/drag down Cornwall Avenue and down the driveway to the Congregational Church's parking lot, he turned around so much that he got his choke collar hopelessly tangled to the point it was choking him all the time and I had to take it off to untangle it.

When I took it off, he bolted back toward Cornwall Avenue and I had to run about 50 yards before I caught him, leaving behind the cane the physical therapist tells me not to be embarrassed to use if my knee is sore. I did two church services this morning--Higganum at 9 and Killingworth at 10 and before and after and in between drove for nearly an hour. That much standing and driving had my knee a little stiff so I had my cane for Bela's walk/drag.

I did catch him and got his collar back on and went back for the cane after I was sure I wasn't having a heart attack. The heart attack wouldn't have been from the 50 yard dash but from the fear he'd run out into the road if I didn't catch him and get killed in the light Sunday afternoon traffic.

Bad as he is, Bern loves this dog to death and if I'd let him be killed I might just have gone to Canada rather than face her--which would get me away from Trump at any rate.

He is old and even more stubborn that he's always been. I think, though, that he was as surprised as I was that he could run that far that fast. He panted for about an hour later and is sleeping behind me as I write this.

Lordy, Lordy, I wouldn't trade anything for the joy of having him with us for 12 years. But I didn't need that run today, though it is good to know I can do it if I'm terrified enough....

Please, dear God, help us....

I won't even try to describe the last few days of our President's and, unfortunately, our lives. You know all about it if you've been semi-conscious. All the stuff about tweets and Morning Joe and CNN. All that stuff. I don't have to tell you about it.

I want my President to be worrying about, well, 'presidential stuff'--foreign affairs, trade, Russia, health care (in a way that matters), the day to day operations of our massive government infrastructure, roads and bridges, inclusion of immigrants into society, safety, just stuff like that as uninteresting and opposite as it may be to what He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named cares about.

When our children, Josh and Mimi, were 10 years old, there is no way I would have entrusted them with their day-to-day life without my guidance and the guidance of Bern.

The reason for that is, they would have done the kind of stuff the President does.

And what amazes me most is that, even though people (even Republicans) object to his 10 year old bully ('you called me that I'll call you that!!) behavior, no one is saying 'FRIGING ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!! IT STOPS HERE AND IT STOPS NOW!!!! GO AWAY AND DON'T COME BACK!!!!

Will no one but God save us?

Dear God, please save us......

(By the way, there is very little of true Presidential substance that can be said in 144 characters. Try to put the Gettysburg Address into a tweet.... )

Why put those two at the same table?

Today is the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. Two men who probably never met and were polar opposites.

When I was at Virginia Seminary I wrote an article for 'The Ambo' (if you don't know what an 'ambo' is you're not an Episcopalian--it's the stand where the readings take place) the student newsletter about how the front door to Aspenwall Hall, the main building, was "Pauline" not "Petrine"

I meant it was rigid, hard to open, difficult to maneuver around. Paul was like that. Paul knew what was 'right' and what was 'wrong'. Peter, God bless him, could never figure out what to do. He was the one who denied Jesus and yet was the 'Rock' ("Petros" in Greek) the church is built upon.

Peter was all over the place--not knowing the right answers at the end of John's Gospel (Jesus asks, "Peter, do you 'agape' me?" And Peter answers twice, "Lord, you know I 'philios' you.") Agape is love with no bounds and Philios is, like Philadelphia, love between friends. It takes 3 askings for Peter to get it right.

I got over my dislike of Paul when the one woman on the faculty let me do a directed study of his letters by reading them in the order they were written, not the order they are in the New Testament. Dr. Mariann Mix saved me from my Pauline hatred--but I still like Peter much better.

I'm much more a Peter than a Paul. Lurching around looking for answers rather than 'knowing' the answers.

So why did they give these two a shared saints' day?

They wouldn't have gotten along. Believe me (as a 'Peter'-type) I don't play well with 'Paul'-types. Just doesn't happen.

Happy both ends of the spectrum Holy Day!

memory (and reality) not all it's cracked up to be

Yesterday I mentioned the Anglican priest,"Sydney" and made a point about my uncle being "Sidney" with an 'i'. I also called the name of the TV series about "Sydney" Grandchester.

Well, it's "Grantchester" I realized and on page 222 of the book I noticed "Sidney" and thought--like any good English major--"aha, a typo!" But when I paged back I realized it was always spelled with an 'i' and not a 'y'!!!

I swear to you that until page 222, I saw "Sydney" everything I looked at "Sidney".

I could just claim that I was using 'alternative facts', but the truth is I actually saw the 'd' in Grantchester and the 'y' in Sidney.

Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be. Like the story of the blind men describing an elephant and the different stories of eye-witnesses to the same accident, our senses can't be trusted absolutely.

I once asked a friend who is 'color blind' to describe the colors he does see. He looked at me like I had two heads. "That's why it's called 'color blind," he said, "I can't tell  you what what I see would be called by you."

That may apply to all sorts of things. I know Bern and I have very different memories of the same events and people often quote my sermon to me in words I never spoke.

Objective Reality seems to be 'subjective' instead. That's certainly true when I listen to Trump detractors and Trump supporters tell what they truly believe to be 'the truth' about the President.

Maybe Kelly Ann Conway's 'alternative facts' isn't so crazy as it sounds.

We in America these days seem to have difficulty discerning 'facts' from their alternative versions.

Sometimes you can see things that aren't there for 222 pages: like the  first 'y' in Sidney. Pretty unnerving, I'd say.

Something to ponder long and hard because it really, really matters, this stuff about 'truth' and 'facts' and 'objective reality'. Really.

photos--black and white

When my last aunt died last year--Aunt Elsie (I had two of those), my mother's youngest sister, at 92--my cousin Gayle Pugh Keller was given all Elsie's photos and she sent them to the rest of the Jones/Pugh/Bradley/Perkins cousins. I got a hundred or so.

I've look at them off and on and in the last couple of days have looked harder, looking with different eyes.

I'm reading a collection of British short stories about an Anglican Priest, Sydney (I had an uncle, my father's brother, named that, except with the American I rather than the British y) who is featured in a BBC TV show I love called "Grandchester". In that collection, Sydney is on his way to London from his rural parish and on the train is wondering to himself, "how much can a person's life change?" He thinks it's a basic question of Christianity, but he also thinks people, most people, stay pretty much the same their whole lives.

Looking at these pictures, I realize how much I have changed. I hardly recognize the life they portray. It's all from my mother's side--but I think if I had photos from my father's side, I'd probably recognize them even less.

My mother's family were all some shade of evangelical Christian. My father's family were sturdy agnostics who grew up Baptist. I'm an Episcopalian.

All these photos are from southern West Virginia. I'm a New England-er for 37 years (the first 50 are the hardest, the saying goes!) with a slight accent I can emphasis on cue into something mountain-born.

My father--a brilliant man--only finished 8th grade. My mother had a teaching degree and only two of her sisters went to college and only one of the women my father's brothers married did--all were school teachers, but I have three post graduate degrees and could call myself  'Dr. Bradley' if I wanted to.

Most of the people in those pictures would have been conservative Democrats or moderate Republicans. I am a left-wing, socialist leaning Democrat.

Everyone in both my families married people like them. I married a Italian/Hungarian/Roman Catholic. My uncle Sid even married my mother's cousin so that Sid and Callie's two children, Greg and Sarita, were my 'double first cousins' as we called it, though it's more complex than that. My mother's family was very precise about relationships. I grew up calling members of my father's family 'aunt' and 'uncle' who were second cousins at best! Because of the Appalachian Diaspora  and the fact that I'm an only child and Bern's two older siblings never married or had children, our kids grew up bereft of cousins. Bern and I had dozens.

There I am, in someone's yard, 2 and a half or so, leaning slightly over, my left hand by my mouth, smiling, almost laughing, like I'm telling a secret. My hair is blond and I'm dressed all in white, down to the shoes.

There I am, on the back porch of our apartmentment where I grew up with a 40 foot drop to the ground--which is the reason for my fear of heights to this day--sitting on a bench with Susan Creasy, the granddaughter of my parents' friends (I was born when Dad was 41 and Mom 38, so my friends' grandparents were my parents' ages). Susan is snarling. I'm smiling up a storm (we're probably between 3 and 4). Everyone probably thought Susan and I would marry--but we didn't much like each other.

There I am, in the yard between our apartment and my Uncle Russel and Aunt Gladys' house, holding my 4th birthday cake. The grass needs cutting badly. I'm still blonde as I can be and, as always, smiling like only children do when you point a camera at them.

Then, there I am, my first or second grad picture, finally with glasses--thank God! I couldn't see worth a damn! and my teeth all different lengths and only the top of my hair blonde, in a wildly striped tea shirt and smiling less than in the other.

I could do this a hundred times--me in diapers feeding the chickens, me on the tire swing, me on the steps of my Grandma Jones' house, on and on and on.

But here's the point--I know that's me...I really KNOW it...but I feel very little connection to the 'me' in those photos. Sydney the Anglican Priest is right. Some of us change a lot during life. I did.

I love the photos, but the 'love' is more intellectual love than emotional love.

I don't know how else to say it.

And I'm still pondering what all I've just written means or matters....



There I am