Looking at Life, and Trees, from Both Sides

Pink 

on 

One

Side

Green 

on

the

Other

 Dear folks,

I’m gun-shy this morning.

I got into trouble last night.

It was with my blog carrier for “sensitive material.” 

 Hey, I’m a good Jo, and I still believe in free speech, but I overstepped their specifications, and they placed a warning on my blog.

I wasn’t sure which statement set off their bot.  I repeated information that wasn’t true, but I specified that it wasn’t, and it had tickled me before it went away. 

It wasn't the carrier who took it offline. It was me.

For those who read yesterday's post, April 29, I would appreciate any comments. Were you shocked, offended, disagreed, or agreed?

I know readers are reticent to comment on this blog; either it’s hard to do, or they are afraid I will snatch their email. I don’t know, I am just happy all you guys show up💖💗 and whether people put in likes or not doesn’t matter as long as they read my material. I appreciate your time in reading this.💗 I know you have many choices, so that you choose to look at these words warms my cockles. Thank you.💗💗💗💗💗

I am sure the powers that be didn’t object when I got off topic at the end of my post and talked about buying topsoil for the area in our backyard where the grass isn’t growing.

It struck me as my daughter was throwing the bags of dirt over the temporary fence I bought to keep the dogs off my intended new lawn, that our great-grandparents would exclaim, “Buying dirt in bags?! What in the world is the world coming to?”

What if they heard that in the 2000s, we would be buying water, and what about $5.00 cups of coffee?

See how we ease into such things, and soon they become commonplace? We adjust.

The area I am talking about is under the Maple tree where the roots are growing up through the ground. After the leaves covered the ground last fall, the rains came and added to the the lawn's demise.

Now we have a large patch of bare ground.  

I love that Maple tree. It is beautiful in the summer and provides delightfully calming shade—do you bask in shade? (When it is hot enough, we do.)

But can I convince the birds to leave some seeds to germinate, the seeds to sprout, and grass to grow where we once had a lawn?

We’ll see.

This is our life, folks: conditions change, we have at-home challenges, we have world challenges, and here we are trying to find joy in a chaotic world.

It’s probably not all that much different from earlier times.

At least we have indoor plumbing.

 

 

It Changed Me

 

 The Camino de Santiago,captured from a video. *

 

This morning, I sat on my bed with my head feeling as I used to tease my curly-haired daughter, “We had to let all those curls screw themselves through your scalp, if not the inside of your head would be filled with—imagine this, a curled-up wad of hair.”

That’s how my head felt—full, but not of hair, of inspiration, of thoughts, of memories. I was in a ratified zone. I wanted to stay there, all warm and toasty, after I read that a friend pulled a needle and thread through a hiker’s feet blisters, tied off the thread, left it as a wick, and plastered Band-Aids over the blisters. The hiker put on her shoes and continued hobbling on down the trail.

I thought of the author—I was jealous of her abilities, although I know we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, but when my head is ringing from their words, it’s hard not to wish I could sing like she does.

Laguna Beach, an old stomping ground. The author I’m speaking of, lives there, is an architect, has two restaurants, and writes best sellers, AUGH! And that’s where we used to go on Sunday afternoons driving from San Diego, to take in the art galleries, and where they had the best pottery shack, and a beach where my daughter took her first step, standing in the sand with a little body 100 times larger than the tiny feet she balanced on, weaving, swaying back and forth, concentrating with wrinkled brow, until finally she did it—took a step. And we caught it on film, with a movie camera—that’s what we had in those days.

But it wasn’t Laguna Beach that changed me, well maybe a little, during those years, they had a greeter, an old man, who had greeted motorists for so many years, they made him the official greeter, and at the beach there was an alcove eroded from the sea into the cliff abutting the beach that had so many shells my mother-in-law spent an afternoon sitting among those shells, sorting, and we could hardly pry her away.  

No, it wasn’t Laguna Beach or the memories that changed me today, it was Suzanne Redfearn’s novel, Call of the Camino.

I let others do the walking. I did the reading. After Redfearn’s two women protagonists completed the Camino, a 775 km, approximately 482-mile walk through Portugal, Spain, and France, I was left sprawled on the bed with thoughts curled inside my brain.  

Walking the Camino de Santiago began as a pilgrimage in the 9th century for medieval Christians to follow the Way of St James. It has become is a spiritual journey, a finding of oneself, of finding direction in life. For the pilgrims, it means their sins are forgiven, and any punishment related to them in this life or in the next is pardoned. For others, it’s a place to grieve, to spread ashes, and for some young guys to find girls. For all, it is an arduous walk, grueling and enlightening.  

You walk, you think, you put one foot in front of the other. You work through the pain, through the blisters, through the painful feet and aching joints. You endure the heat and the sun and the rain. You make friends, you lose some, you celebrate with coffee or a drink at a pub when a city presents itself.  You challenge yourself, face your fears, and demolish your demons. You become separated from the world, you attend to minimal daily tasks like washing your one of two outfits. You feed yourself, water yourself, and take a shower. You fall in love.

The Camino provides. There are hostels along the way and showers, dormitories, ‘The albergue,” with bunks that can house 150 stinking, smelly, snoring people. You pay if you can. it’s free if you cannot. “Buen Camino!” shouts a fellow traveler. In earlier times it was “Ultreia!!” “Onward.” And they never let a fellow pilgrim go hungry.

I wanted to run back to my office and let some thoughts leak from my brain before they evaporated. Already, the feeling is drifting away; it is not the tender Ahhhhh.

I was impacted by the fictional characters who walked the Camino. And there, snug in my bed, I thought of dreams I had had of following in the footsteps of writers who traveled and wrote folky slice-of-life stories, such as Charles Kuralt did with his books, On the Road with Charles Kuralt, and his Sunday morning TV program of the same name. He traveled the backroads of America and wrote about what he found there—a time when people were proud of America, and country fairs spouted such signs as, “See the Swimming Pig,” like he was the only one on earth, yet all pigs can swim.

And in San Diego, another writer, John Sinor, wrote a column for the local newspaper. I remember his story about the white doe, which occasionally gave a local an otherworldly experience. Sinor himself had come upon her one misty Sunday morning as the first light of the day illuminated the sky and the deer. Some society, for what reason I do not know, tried to capture her with a non-lethal tranquilizing dart, and it was too much for her.  I still grieve her, although she would be long gone by now, and her mate, a white buck, had passed before that story.

And I dream of renting a camper and taking a road trip with my dog, and seeing what I would find and who I would meet. It could be like John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charlie,” who said a truck is more reliable than a car, and his trip was at a time when camper shells were a rare sight. When he met a fellow to whom offering vodka was appropriate, the fellow was awed by his gift of iced vodka from his camper refrigerator.

I wonder if I could pay for my trip by writing about it, but my quibbling mind tells me people don’t want to pay for writing when they can get so much for free.

Yesterday, I declared, “I no longer want to live in doom and gloom.” My grandson wanted me to read a Steven King book, I told him I had “Steven King on Writing.” That didn’t wash. He meant a novel. How many pages did I read before I said, “F* that, I’m not going to read about a demented old bastard tormenting a little boy,” and stopped reading.

Why throw in bad thoughts!

It was enough after I read a real-life Substack writer, JoJoFromJerz…” (April 17, 2026)

“Just yesterday, Donald Trump referred to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims as 'victims… or whatever.”—JoJoFromJerz

“Or whatever.”

And if I’m being honest, that triggered the shit out of me.

…

“There’s a man who raped me, and he’s out there living his life without consequence, like what he did to me never mattered.

“He took my virginity when I was seventeen years old—violently, painfully, in a way that carved itself in and stayed—and when I tried, in that immediate aftermath, to tell the truth about what had happened, the people I trusted most didn’t believe me.”

Now I wonder, should I change the memoir I wrote three years ago, with inclusions and exclusions over the years? For now, I am a different person. We have all changed over the years. It’s hard to find joy. It’s hard to believe in truth, goodness, those sorts of things. But then I guess a memoir, I prefer to call it a Prairie Report, is the telling of what came before.

However, our responses to what happened have changed.

I was so anxious to get to my computer and pour out something. My computer, however, decided it needed an upgrade, and it was so slow I resorted to the old, tried-and-true method—writing by hand.

Last night, after discarding King’s book, I suggested to my grandson that he read some Ray Bradbury. I read Bradbury about 50 years ago, loved him, and now wonder how I would feel about his books. Bradbury never used a computer. All his works were typed on an Olympia typewriter, and he refused to have his books published in digital form. He was a futurist who held books sacred—to hold them, to smell them, he felt something was lost reading onscreen. In 2011, he reneged and allowed Fahrenheit 451 to be published as an ebook.

I went to the computer (see, now you can read an excerpt of Bradbury’s books online) and read the introduction to  Dandelion Wine, and was moved to an ethereal realm, where he gloried in being alive; basked in it, celebrated it, tussling with his brother and getting a fat lip didn’t faze him, blood trickling told him he was alive.

The couple of times I heard Bradbury speak (when he was in his prime), once on a college campus where he sat, like Socrates, on the lawn under a tree, and taught his students. I walked away from his talks on air two feet from the ground.

There were advantages to living in San Diego.

 

 

 

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbh2_XaT0Og 

 

Thursday

  

 

I was on a slippery slide from Tuesday (my declared blog day) until today Thursday.  But I had to chuckle when I titled this blog, for Natalie Goldberg, commented to her writing class that Thursday was one of the best titles. I think she likes titles that bare no resemblance to the material, but hey, this one does, it really is Thursday. 

But what happened below happened on Tuesday, and that day I found this quote from my daughter as I was cleaning a cupboard.

 

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight than knows neither victory nor defeat.”
--Theodore Roosevelt

 

As I drive down the street, tulips, like Cinco d Mayo table decorations, reds, yellows, and orange off top the side, grace one home’s pathway from the street to the front door, and at another house a Magnolia tree’s white/pink blossoms rain down like snow. Farther along, across a through street, there is a long driveway to a house set back from the street and alongside the road a sign reads: "Please excuse the weeds, we’re feeding the bees.”

All looks peaceful. The people are nice, going about their business. And I love spring.

I drive up to Bi Mart and a block away, parked along the street sits a huge, mondo bus—one of the biggest shiniest RV's I have ever seen, awash with right-wing slogans, and rude pictures of ex-presidents and their wives, that jars me back to reality. All is not peaceful.

Darn.

So where do we go from here?

We live in a time of contrasts and downright craziness.

Folks, we cannot let joy slip through our fingers.

 

Back home, I go to my computer to clean it up a bit, and find that in 2023 I wrote a blog titled “Coffee, Tea, You and Me,” about a group of 6 people coming to together in the summertime, under the spreading maple tree to discuss “truth” to tell of their lives, and to receive support or a kick in the pants if that is required. I see there isn’t much kicking, but there is a lot of sharing. 

 

 

I grew to love those people, and decided to open the group again. Maybe you will remember the content better than I do, and perhaps this rendition will morph into something different from the first. We might both be surprised.  

In 2023, a special friend followed me and the group, and would comment and feel that she was a part of it. She’s gone now, of the type of disease that nearly always kills its host, and that includes young people. I feel her watching from the sidelines. Perhaps that is one reason I feel nostalgic about this group.

Come along with us as we enter Ollie’s back yard and sit under the tree, pour coffee or tea and occasionally break out the wine in celebration. Someone brings a snack each week, and together we traverse life.

These meetings will not take up space on this blog. Next week, I will offer a link so you can read them or not, your choice. 

 

 Do I really want to do this? Do you think it's a good idea? 

 Here goes for Number One of “Coffee, tea, You and Me:” 

Once upon a time, there was a land where people had a precious device sitting in their homes, on the table, in their study, their office, in their kid's rooms, out on the porch—wherever they were.

A group of six people left their devices in their vehicles to gather outside Ollie's house and to sit under her maple tree. Ollie, the tree's supporter and waterer, popped the cork on a bottle of Vino, "Time to switch from coffee," she said, and filled six glasses on the tray atop the round coffee table before them. "To truth," she said.

The rest of the group chose a glass and clicked each other's. "To truth."

"But, how do we find the truth?" says Twinkie. "Hold on one minute," she jumped up, "I'll be right back," and disappeared into the house.

Shortly after, she appeared with a platter of cheese, crackers, and grapes. "Okay, guys, no feet on the table, food's here."

"We were on hold until you returned, Twinkie. Thanks for the snacks." Sally picked up a cracker and a slice of cheese and, while waving the cracker about, said, "Here we are drinking to something I have no clue about."

"Well," says Sid, "You know some things to be true, your dog there, us as friends, the weather, the kindness of people."

"Do you think people are kind?"

"Most are. Most want to assist their fellow man. Really, you see how boundaries drop in a crisis, or if someone has an accident, how they rush to help?"

"But we don't want a crisis to bring out the good in people."

"No, but we see it there. And most people want a better world; we just disagree on ways to do that.

"I believe Mr. X is accurate," says Harvey, leaning back in his chaise lounge and propping his wine glass on his belly.

"Really? I don't think so," says Twinkie, "He says the world is flat."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," chimes in Sally, "hasn't he ever traveled in an airplane--you can see the curvature of the Earth. And what about objects in space? Planets are round. Our sun is round. The moon is round. Why would the Earth not follow the pattern of round objects traveling in a circle around a round sun?

"It is illogical," says Sid, sounding like Star Trek's Spock.  Maybe Mr. X wants to be unique."

"Well, he's got that, and people listen to him, but he is spouting nonsense."

"I guess it's true for him," says Sid.

"So, what do we do with people who have influence, but are spouting garbage?" asks Sally.

"Some people like to ingest garbage."

"Oh, Sid, that's disgusting."

"Well, you know that  'What is one man's meat is another man's poison.'" says Harvey, popping a cracker into his mouth, then wiping the crumbs off his mustache.

"That goes way back to the 1500s," says Ollie, " so I guess they had the same problem then, but, whoa, do we just let people believe whatever they want?'

"Won't they?"

Ollie shrugs, "Yeah, Sal, I guess they will. I guess we have no control over that. But we should try to have factual information."

Sid refills her glass and offers to top off the others. "People don't want the facts. Facts are dry. They want sensationalism. It makes them feel."

"Then the problem lies in people's feelings," says Ollie.

"I guess so. That's why headlines are so alluring—Their writers want them read--private or commercial. You know the old adage, "If it bleeds, it leads." Sensationalism works. So does fear. Fear is built into us."

"Yeah, but we've had fear up to our eyeballs," said Ollie. "Our reptilian brain has become a raging crocodile. Hell's bells, we don't even know if what sets us off has been written by a person or a robot."

"You're right; it's funny when you really look at it," says Harvey. "Like Forrest Gump's run and his followers not knowing what to do when he stopped running."

"Yeah, like that."

"I don't think it's funny at all," says Sally, "we're being deceived, lied to, facts are distorted, and many are ignored."

"Yeah, I know. But look at it this way," says Sid, "we're adventuring beings. We like the unusual, the absurd, the outrageous. The blowhard gets attention."

"Ain't that the truth," says Ollie.

Hey, we found a truth," says Twinkie.

"Only Sid, "What do you think? Do we throw out all Mr. X says because he has some cuckoo ideas?"

"Well, it makes me question his judgment."

"What evidence does he have that makes him believe that way?"

"Maybe he lives on a flat planet."

"I get it," said Simad, who had remained quiet until now. "He's living by a different set of rules. If you don't throw in some absurdities, you're boring."

"Hey, that's a writer speaking. Simad, do you think it's hype? Could he have information he's withholding from us, or is he speaking allegorically? Maybe ‘plains of existence,’ or something like that.”

"I don't know. You will have to ask him. If aliens abducted you and you are here to tell of it, you might get some attention. If you've visited Mars, you might be listened to. If you have a brain anomaly and see everything as flat, we might cut you some slack."

“Some would. Others would think they should put you out of your misery," says Harvey.

"If you got rid of all the people who disagreed with you. You'd be alone on a lonely planet," says Twinkie.

"I will let you disagree with me. I want you here--the young ones are smart."

"Thanks, Sid."

"We all know that fear gets attention. More medical ads first ask if your toenails ache. And you think, yeah, my toenails are aching; what shall I take?"

"Your toenails are aching?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do. But our initial goal was to search for truth."

"Good luck with that," says Sid. "There are some universal truths, like gravity, which we can't explain, and some truths we agree to, like E = mc2, matter is neither made nor destroyed. But is that really true? I don't know. But it's accepted until proven wrong. We trusted Einstein."

"So, we believe people we trust?"

"Pretty much."

Many people didn't trust Darwin.

"No. His theory of evolution challenged the established view of a Creator. Like Copernicus telling people, the Earth isn't the center of our solar system. The sun is."

"Then they were thinking small. Instead of understanding that species change over time, they went to the bottom line. Darwin threatened the idea of the Bible's Creation story. Instead of saying that information came from the pantry of life, and I get to choose what goes into my pie, they think its going to jump in. And they try to keep everyone else from putting it into their pie."

"Well said, Sid. I get a little testy when someone challenges my thinking," said Sally.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"…we can't even agree to honor that."

"A lofty goal, though."

"Yeah, maybe we should reach for goals instead of searching for truths, for it seems that people have their own 'truths' of which there are many."

"I'll drink to that." Ollie holds up her glass to be filled.

"How about, instead of frustrating ourselves, such as, if we say gravity is real, someone will counter it with, 'There are places where it isn't, like in space.' If we say your dog is real, some will say, 'He is an illusion, as is all life.'"

You must choose what feels right and then be open to changing your opinion if data presents itself. Sid mentioned the pantry,  I think of it as a Smorgasbord where we can choose what to put on our plate."

"You're right, you like anchovies, I don't," said Harvey. You take them. I'll leave them."

"Wise choice."

"But," added Sid, “I don't want anyone to give me smelt under the guise that it's an anchovy. I want true anchovies."

"I guess it's for us to dig through the pile and see what rings true.”

"That is all well and good, Sal," but I want help finding the truth," Sally sighs.

"Well, we can't find it all in one day. Let's meet next week, same time, same station."

"Here, here."

Sid throws back the remainder of his wine and says, "Did you hear the one about two old couples walking down the street? The two ladies are in front with their husbands trailing behind them. "So," says one man to the other, "what have you done this week?

"We went to a new restaurant. The food was great, the prices good."

"What was the name of the restaurant?"

It was, uh, oh, like a flower."

"A rose?"

"Oh, Rose," he calls to his wife, "What was the name of that restaurant we went to last night?"

 

 

P.S. Listen to Dolly Parton sing Let It Be. It will move you to new realms. Paul McCartney is on the piano, and Ringo Starr on drums.

https://people.com/dolly-parton-covers-beatles-classic-let-it-be-7692894