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NauenThen

Fast away the old year passes

Not soon enough, however.

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║╔╗║╔╗║╔╣╔╩╗╔╝ ★ NEW YEAR ☆ 2017!!
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Hooray for 2017! We will survive, thrive, & stay alive. We will meet, eat, & wash our feet.

We will make plans & improve ourselves.

We will resist.

We will get out of the house once in a while.
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Tom & Johnny

Great meal, gross dessert.
Bessie & I only once have managed to take a photo of ourselves—we invariably are deep in conversation that excludes documentation. Even yesterday, when we and our husbands had lunch, I took photos of Tom & Johnny but none of Bessie & me. I love to see them laughing together, our two handsome men. They have boxing in common and— "What else did you guys talk about?" I just asked. Predictably his answer (in his irritated, why-are-you-even-asking voice) was: I don't know. That's male friendship, isn't it?  Read More 
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Found among my papers

(I miss typewriters.) (Typos corrected.)
Williams taught the same formal message at each ((college)): that the new poetry, esp. the new American poetry, would have to be "consonant—con-sonant—with our age and range of our physical understanding. It must sound with our age and sound new and vigorously." Alchemist of the word as he was, he was looking  Read More 
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Maybe

Maybe if the sun came out I wouldn't be sleepy all the time

Maybe if I wasn't ever hungry, I wouldn't be hungry all the time

Maybe if I fixed my office chair, I could sit here all day

Maybe coffee

Maybe Patty Loveless
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I heart my home

We don't get a lot of sunlight so when it's bright out back, it always stops me in pleasure. I love our little apartment, our cat, our quilt, our duvet, our books, the gate David Morrison made 30 years ago, the little bit of view we have.

Also, this is the one sunny day in a week.  Read More 
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Christmas

Wall on St. Mark's Place, Christmas Day.
The gym: closed.
The dojo: closed.
B&H: closed.
Downtown Bakery: closed.
Whole Foods: closed.

I go for a walk. I end up on 14th Street & the Sabbath security guard is out front of the synagogue. ? I ask. It's a Yiddish event, he tells me, & he didn't go home so he was happy to  Read More 
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25

We did our annual check-in:

How're we doing?

Good..... How're we doing?

Good.

Whew. And onwards into our 26th year married (33rd together, 37 since we met).
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Have we turned the corner?

It's finally winter but the days are getting longer. I have to say that being born in the winter (February) but during a time of increasing light feels like a fortunate thing.

My friend ("I'm a Republican but I voted straight Democratic") thinks it will be good to have businesspeople in the White House. He's a business guy, so maybe he's right. I can't see how, but I am trying to be willing to see where I"m wrong & change my mind if warranted, since I don't credit those t.Rump people with being willing or able to change their minds. And I don't want to be like them.  Read More 
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Macbeth: #notmyking

Saw a riveting and fast-moving (110 minutes!) Macbeth last night, at a small theater right around the corner on 4th St.

Tyranny. Ambition. The parallels to today are clear.

How did England survive all these centuries with rulers like that? Do monarchies survive when republics don't, thanks to a loyalty people feel to a king or queen that they don't to an institution or even a way of life? Would there be an England without the queen? I guess royalty is an institution but it's wrapped in a feeling.  Read More 
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Strangers in Their Own Land

Just finished Arlie Russell Hochschild's exhausting and eye-opening new book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and mourning on the American right, a journey to the heart of our political divide. She meets and talks at great length over many years with Tea Party–supporting residents of Louisiana.

Her central issue is  Read More 
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Question

Is it fair to say that the South finally won the Civil War?
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I heart my neighborhood (#14,528)

I fall into a conversation with a lady who has to be at least 80. She is cultured (mentions many places around the world she's visited, quotes Dante in beautiful Italian) & confesses that the place she most wants to visit but never has is England.

England? I repeat, thinking, it's not that hard to get to England.

England. My people are from there in fact, she tells me, although it turns out that was in the 1600s.

As a convert to Catholicism, she continues, I resent how Henry VIII treated the Church, so I've never gone.

You could go and spit on Cromwell's grave, like the Irish do, I wish I'd said.

 

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Hi, coup

Up till today I have scorned conspiracies & those who buy into them (for example, see my post of January 27, 2016; click the tag "conspiracy theories in the column to the left). I believed it to be a personality trait—a flaw, really—one I was too sensible to fall for.

Today something changed.

I'd been softened up by the Russia influence on the election, no doubt, but it's the blatant coup in North Carolina that has made me realize that things really have changed. You can have a conspiracy without hiding it. They can do whatever they want.

What am I going to do? How can this be stopped?

p.s. No blog yesterday because I was at death's door. I knocked & knocked, but I wasn't allowed in. Throw up like I did Tuesday night & you'd be begging to die. You'd be thinking it was imminent.  Read More 
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Gettin' it DONE

I feel energized for the first time in a long while. It's great to tick off the ol' to-dos, including a few (a lot!) I'd been procrastinating on. Hoping to get re-energized on this blog too. As with life in general, it's sometimes hard to tell where you are on the curve. Which makes me wonder whether Read More 
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Snow dance

Update: It's snowing! I added this photo. OK, it's not very much but it's glittering in the headlights. It's for real.
I'm doing my happy little snow begging, thumpety thump, a flake a flake over the lake, oh please please make me a flake.

No wait, not that kind of a flake.

My dad's immortal poem, delivered frequently & solemnly:

Snow snow snow
Ho ho ho

WillisWeather® aka my personal weathercaster aka Steve tells me it's on the way......  Read More 
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My neighborhood

In front of my building. The confetti is actually belts, all handmade by "James the belt guy."
I still live here, & the East Village will always resist.

It was so windy today I was riding my bike backwards down the street, practically.
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Men

This afternoon at karate I ran into a guy I like a lot, someone I hadn't seen in a while. We hugged & then halfway through listening to another friend talk about his housing issues, I threw my arms around X & said, I'm so glad to see you! I love you!

He said, I'm glad  Read More 
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A drag

I am having such a hard time being light-hearted here. It'll come back, I know, & I've been able to make myself do things like go to karate & make a dentist appointment, so I can feel my resolve/energy/enthusiasm coming back. But I don't want to be the person who fiddles while Rome burns.
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30 years

It was 30 years ago today that my dear dad, Hans Nauen, died.

I've thought a lot lately about his experiences as a Jew in Nazi Germany. He was sure nothing like Hitler could happen here—we're too heterogeneous, too big, & we have the example of Germany. I wonder....
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Which is worse?

That Agent Orange really won the election?

or

That the election was hacked/rigged/fraudulent/?
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Reve

So good to have a kitten in the house. Reve, short for Reverdy, is Maggie's 10-week-old new arrival. She's gone from hiding under the tub, to exploring everything to zoning out on my lap. Lucky for me, Maggie goes away a lot & I get Reve all to myself.
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If we can make it

If we can just make it through December, the rest of the year won't be so bad...

OK, I am thinking about fragile democracies & having just finished (hooray!) a big job, about conflict of interest & dinner with my posse, threats to freedom & Steve's late roses. "[C]aught in the maelstrom of historic upheavals, we  Read More 
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