Santa Fe, New Mexico
Year-end Letter December 2022
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, — but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dirge Without Music
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Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp. What is the message signaled by the hordes of diatoms, flashing their microscopic lights in the night sea? What truth is expressed by the legions of the barnacles, whitening the rocks with their habitations, each small creature within finding the necessities of its existence in the sweep of the surf? And what is the meaning of so tiny a being as the transparent wisp of protoplasm that is a sea lace, existing for some reason inscrutable to us – a reason that demands its presence by the trillion amid the rocks and weeds of the shore? The meaning haunts and ever eludes us, and in its very pursuit we approach the ultimate mystery of Life itself.
Rachel Carson, The Edge of the Sea (concluding paragraph)
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The bonds that unite another person to ourselves exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.
Marcel Proust, The Sweet Cheat Gone (In Search of Lost Time, volume 6)
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All real living hurts as well as fulfils. Happiness comes when we have lived and have a respite for sheer forgetting. Happiness, in the vulgar sense, is just a holiday experience. The life-long happiness lies in being used by life; hurt by life, driven and goaded by life, replenished and overjoyed with life, fighting for life’s sake. That is real happiness. In the undergoing, a large part of it is pain.
D H Lawrence
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Once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme
Séamus Heaney, from The Cure of Troy
A NOTE ON THE QUOTATIONS ABOVE
For a number of years now I have begun my Year-end letter with several quotes I read during the past year that particularly struck me. In recent years they have usually been about the nature of love and the impact of losing it. Why, this year, am I including so many quotations? It has to do with the fact that the older I get, the more the wisdom of others reverberates with me and it becomes so special that I want to make it available to my friends. The sense of shared experience amongst all of us intensifies with the passage of time and my life is so enriched by the reflections of others.
One quotation that I repeat each year since I first used it in my 2019 letter is the excerpt from a Séamus Heaney poem, The Cure of Troy. Why? Because with each passing year I am struck with what a rare thing it is to achieve any true justice in this world, so that in those infrequent instances when it occurs, we must savor it, as a most precious treasure. This has become such a fixture in my mind that I think it bears constant repeating. The comforting statement that in the end justice always triumphs is simply a fantasy, in my opinion.
BOB
As indicated in last year’s letter, Bob and I did get married on his birthday, December 24, 2021, Christmas Eve as well. It was a small ceremony with a few friends, followed by a cheerful round of drinks and the kind of wonderful meal that Bob is adept at preparing. Because it was a cold time of the year (in fact, it snowed that evening) and COVID was still raging we deferred a “proper” celebration until late April, when I was having a big birthday – 80. We threw a big weekend event, including dinner at a classic New Mexico restaurant for out-of-town friends, a big garden party for everyone on Saturday afternoon (my actual birthday, April 23) and a Sunday morning drop-in breakfast for out-of-town attendees. It all went off without a hitch despite some close calls, particularly some insane spring winds that fortunately died down before the garden party began.
It's been a great first year of marriage. I don’t think it would have been possible to find a kinder, gentler, more loving partner than Bob. When times are good, which is almost always, we laugh a lot and speak on the same wave-length. We are both modest in our tastes and flexible when plans don’t quite work out. He is non-judgmental, we virtually never argue and if he criticizes me it is always softly but nevertheless carries weight without sharpness. When times get rough for me, as they sometimes do, he is the ultimate caregiver and I always feel in the best of hands with him. He loves with all his being and doesn’t in any way hold back in expressing it, verbally and physically.
There is no one I enjoy spending time with more – be it a quiet evening at home, reading near each other, on a camping trip, or spending long hours together on a road trip. The word that always comes to mind first when I think about being with him is “easy.” It’s so easy being with him. He’s the same way with everyone – interesting and interested, but always non-threatening, non-confrontational.
I ask myself over and over, how does such an unlikely miracle occur as meeting someone as perfect as him? And ultimately, I have no answer. It seems somewhat analogous to the old religious concept of grace – for no good reason at all, something really good is bestowed upon one.
OTHER PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES
Each year I continue to work on certain undertakings – this letter, which is a significant investment in time, the wall calendar I create each year based on my photographs (with some travel destination as the theme - for 2023 it being Belize and Guatemala), maintaining on my Web site what is probably the most comprehensive listing of museums and non-commercial galleries in New York City. I also continue giving the occasional travel program at El Castillo and I am part of a precipitation tracking national program.
The Crested Butte Wildflower Festival continued this year and I was asked back as a wildflower hiking guide. Although summer 2021 was both unseasonably hot and hazy due to wildflowers, summer 2022 was much improved, with clear cool days and normal temperatures. The Festival administration was happy to have Bob serve as my backup guide, so he was able to come on all my official events and bring up the rear, where he was available to answer questions, so it all worked out well. And we had a few free days to go hiking on our own in the magnificently beautiful country surrounding Crested Butte.
Cultural life has resumed in Santa Fe and as a result I am active again as a volunteer with a number of performing organizations, handling ushering, will call, ticket taking, and even checking patrons’ vaccination status (now a past artifact of the pandemic). Everyone rejoices in the return of civic life and for me it is a wonderful way to both contribute my time and get the benefit of some stimulating music and dramatic events.
My small garden in the back of my apartment takes more effort than one might think from late winter until I plant the spring blooming bulbs in the fall and “put it to bed.” But it continues to give me much pleasure and is an indescribably wonderful addition to my quality of life at El Castillo. Many of the perennials and shrubs are settling in and so it is taking on a well-established, comfortable look. A great source of new plants is Bob’s garden where a number of perennials need dividing and in dividing them, I have a free source of new transplants.
I am still on the Board of the Friends of Folk Art, the main volunteer organization supporting the Museum of International Folk Art. I went off as Treasurer this year but took on the role of updating the membership mailing list in a format compatible with MailChimp, a widely used communications application.
My most stimulating new podcast this year has been America at a Crossroads, a series put on by the Los Angeles group, Jews United for Democracy and Community Advocates, Inc. It was introduced to me by my brother and sister-in-law. Each week one large theme is covered by a well-known moderator and interlocutor, both highly regarded and recognized as national experts.
GOOD READS
Reading remains a core aspect of my days, and given how much empty bloviating we are surrounded with all the time, especially on social media, which I avoid entirely, communing with just one intelligent writer is one of the most stimulating ways to remain engaged.
I get a weekly newsletter called The Marginalian, written by a woman, originally from Bulgaria who now lives in Brooklyn, named Maria Popova. It arrives in my InBox every Sunday morning and I find it a beautifully written set of reflections on love, loss, aging, and our capacity to seek answers to big questions. Each newsletter features several thinkers / writers / artists who have reflected on or grappled with the big questions. It takes about 45 minutes to read each issue, but I find it well worth it. It is chock full of links for further exploration and amply illustrated with relevant art work. If you care to give it a try, you can sign up for a free subscription by going to: https://www.themarginalian.org/ and looking in the left sidebar for the option for a free weekly subscription.
I read two very beautifully written natural history books this year. I had never read Rachel Carson before (I had heard Silent Spring when it first came out, read chapter by chapter on a radio program). This year I purchased the Library of America edition of Carson’s Sea Trilogy and read, specifically, The Edge of the Sea. Her observational acuity was only exceeded by the sheer poetic beauty of her writing, which was a really delightful discovery for me. No one has ever written about such tiny creatures in a way that opened one’s eyes to wonder in such an unexpected way. And with E. O. Wilson’s death this year, I also purchased the Library of America edition of three of his books, one of which is autobiographical, Naturalist. It is a fascinating story of growing up in pre-World War II Mississippi and how his life expanded out but was built up from his early childhood fascination with the living things all around him as a small boy. As a young scientist in evolutionary biology he was able to go on field trips to some of the most remote places before the entire world become commodified and globalized.
I also managed to read two less well-known novels by early 20th century American authors, which turned out to be very well written and to some degree a bit radical for their time, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and Martin Eden by Jack London.
I continued with my project to read Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, one novel in this magnum opus per year – this being my 6th year, I read The Sweet Cheat Gone. This means that if the Fates are willing, 2023 will allow me to complete this project, begun so many years ago. Are there any more Himalayan peaks to try to scale? The one biggie I have not dared take on is Ulysses by James Joyce, but perhaps I will screw up the courage to tackle it?
GETTING OLDER
Having now reached 80, there is no longer any denying that I am old. Mostly, within my own mind, I see myself as fit, trim and active, but even that is beginning to change. Certainly, to the world at large I present as an old man, which is always a shock. People on public transportation now regularly offer me a seat on a crowded bus or metro car. Recently, I was on a longish TSA Pre-Check line (go figure, but Pre-Check is becoming so popular it is sometimes longer than the regular line), minding my own business, and a TSA security person asked me if I was up to waiting on the long line! No denying it – I am now an old man.
But even within myself I am noticing some surprising (more accurately, shocking) changes. I am gravitating towards easier options. On foreign trips, I don’t wake up early and bolt out the door to explore a new city and knock myself out until late in the evening. I welcome opportunities to take breaks, sit at a café and watch the world go by for a while. At museums, I can go for long visits, but nothing like the 7 – 8-hour marathons I once did and even so, I often sit down for a while and just rest my weary legs. The upside of all this is that I am comfortable slowing down and letting the world permeate through my pores, not so intent any longer on stuffing in every possible experience and sensation.
While I continue to enjoy reasonably decent health, I am also aware that more and more small issues keep piling up. It is kind of like my old Toyota Camry (shortly to enter its 24th year!) – more and more little things keep falling apart, minor irritations I can live with, but I know one of these days a major problem will arise, one that has to be addressed, and the most likely answer is to “kill off” the old friend. I keep thinking that that is more or less how it goes with people, dogs, or any living system. In a strange way it is sort of comforting that one is part of a large universe of existence, and that everything more or less follows the same trajectory. As part of this understanding, there is the realization that while many pleasures of life remain, it is necessary to let go of some that just are not in the cards any longer, and that that’s ok.
THE NATIONAL AND GLOBAL SCENE
What is there to say any more about our national political environment that hasn’t been said countless times by others with far more insight into history and government than myself? I look at the situation through the lens of a lifetime of involved citizenship. Not an activist but simply a citizen who considers himself reasonably well informed.
I know a few things. In my entire lifetime I have never witnessed so many total unqualified individuals running for office and even if most of them don’t win, that they could even contemplate it is frightening to me. These are people with certifiably lunatic conspiracy theory outlooks, people who lie and whether indicated or not are, in essence, criminals. Not so long ago even a whiff of scandal kept one away from office. Now it appears a badge of honor.
The public dishonesty and lying is mind-boggling. Having grown up during the height of the Cold War, I would have to say that Soviet propaganda was closer to the truth than the kind of wild rantings of a major part of the Republican Party. I’ve reached the conclusion that if the voting public does not care, we are doomed to get a broken, dysfunctional and even authoritarian government. Citizens have to care, have to differentiate between bad and better, and if they don’t, which all too many don’t, then there is little hope for the country.
I wish we could get rid of one expression one still hears regular: “This isn’t who we are.” Well, unfortunately, an examination of current and past U.S. history tells us this is exactly who we are: widespread violence and genocidal racism are part and parcel – absolutely integral – to American life. And these days, with the elevation of gun ownership and presentation in every imaginable venue to an absolute right beyond any other – freedom of speech, life itself – we have entered a period where the “public square,” protests and speaking out, even voting, become fraught.
What is relatively new and which I am trying to get my arms around is that effectively we have only one political party that remains committed to the concept of democratic governance. The other party is totally in the grip of the authoritarian wave that is sweeping so many other parts of the world. This is a party of lies and conspiracy theories, of revenge and unbridled nastiness, of a war on science, health, history, the environment, minorities and the general welfare. For me – and I realize that this puts me in a minority – to vote Republican, regardless of the specific candidate, means to vote for authoritarianism, dishonesty, and oligarchic government. So how do we have so many American citizens who don’t care about the behavior displayed before them and go ahead and vote party members in? I’ve reached the point where it is entirely beyond my comprehension.
On the other hand, those of us steeped in history can see many parallels with the rise of authoritarianism and dictatorships in so-called civilized countries back in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Those who throw verbal explosives constantly either don’t understand, or don’t care to understand, that inflammatory speech can stir up vicious sleeping dragons thaat lie just under the surface of our polite veneer of societal order and stability.
What is the overall state of things in my view? Despite the somewhat brighter outcomes of the 2022 mid-term elections, all too many crazies were voted in. So I would have to say that not only are we nowhere “out of the woods” but democracy is overall, hanging by a thin thread in this country.
TRAVEL
This was the first year since the pandemic set in where I went on trips outside the U.S. The first foray was a late winter 3-week trip Bob and I made to Belize, including a one day venture into Guatemala to visit the great Mayan site of Tikal, which is extensive and imposing. Belize turned out to be a wonderful choice – unpretentious, English-speaking, friendly, inexpensive, environmentally committed, and with lots of wonderful things to see – great Mayan sites, extensive limestone caves to explore, rich bird and animal life, beaches, barrier reefs, snorkeling and marine preserves. We spent two weeks in the interior, based in San Ignacio and then a week on a funky, low key small reef, Caye Caulker, and both were thoroughly enjoyable experiences.
The big trip of the year was quite recent (mid-October – mid-November), an exploration of Madagascar (the 4th largest island in the world, but also, more sadly, the 4th poorest country in the world). On the way to Madagascar I made stops in the D.C. area to see a few friends and then Paris, since the flight we were asked to take to Madagascar originated in Paris. To my delight, Bob joined me through the Paris portion of the trip and Paris in mid-October was very pleasant indeed, gardens still in bloom and the nights still warm enough to eat dinner outside. My European traveling approached has changed in several ways. For one thing, despite a stack of clippings on restaurants, I did not refer to any of them. We sought out neighborhood restaurants where our sixth sense was it was popular with locals, busy, and likely to be a thoroughly delightful experience and that pretty much proved to be the case. Also, in exploring, we focused on out-of-the-way or little-known streets, institutions, parks. While we did visit a few well-known places (e.g., The Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle) we spent much of our time going off-track and making many serendipitous discoveries.
Madagascar had long fascinated me because of its geological and natural history and the fact that so many of the plant and animal species there are endemic to the island, most notably, of course, all species of lemurs.
The trip was advertised as demanding, and the tour operator, a small outfitter, was not pulling punches in warning of the trials and tribulations along the way. This definitely was the most demanding group trip I’ve been on since trekking in the Himalayas in the 1970’s. Most destinations required very long drives in a small bus (just for our group) or a caravan of Land Cruisers over absolutely abysmal roads. There is no decent long-distance road anywhere in Madagascar, and due to the early arrival of the rainy season in some areas, one important destination became unreachable due to flooding.
Nevertheless, the lemurs, the birds, the chameleons, geckos, lizards, weird insects, were an eye-popping experience. The Eastern highlands rain forest, with its Travelers palms and various pandanus species, birds nest ferns, wild begonias and blooming gingers, was fascinating. The spiny forest of the far south was something Lewis Carroll could not, in his wildest nightmares, have imagined, filled with strange euphorbias, didieraceae, kalanchoe, and pachypodium. To walk through it amounted to a quasi-hallucinogenic experience. Though most of us came for the animal and plant life, no less fascinating was observing people, village markets, burial sites, and how much of the country functions in a pre-modern environment (though one often saw simple reed shacks with a solar panel on the roof to charge a cell phone)!). Everyone was friendly and life unwound at a leisurely pace, so different from our world at home, where every moment and action is measured and used to control us or squeeze out the maximum profit.
Bob and I also made a 3-week road trip to California to visit friends and family from San Diego in the south to the Bay Area in the north, with camping to, along the way, and back from the West Coast. Weather was perfect and I was amazed at how little the Big Sur coast had changed in the 50 years since I was last there (I did a portion of my favorite coastal hike again and the decades evaporated, so little had changed since my last wondrous hike in the 70’s.)
I did my big spring and fall camping trips with my friend Jerry and they were as rewarding as ever. The spring trip was to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, which I hadn’t visited since the 1960’s, and the fall trip was to the Four Corners area of Utah and Colorado. This one we had to cut off a few days early when a monster storm blanketed the whole region for days, but up until that point, we explored remote pueblo ruins we had never visited before and realized what a wealth of little-known sites must exist all over the Southwest.
Bob and I went to New York in early June to stuff ourselves on its cultural riches, then took Amtrak down to Charleston. SC, for a destination wedding, a stay which allowed us time to explore the city and attend several events of the famous Spoleto Festival. We ended up in Durham, NC, to visit my brother and sister-in-law before heading home. Add in a few short camping trips with Bob in New Mexico and it turned into a fairly busy year of travel.
AND SO, IN SUM
At the personal level I am deeply grateful that Bob is in my life and offers me unstinting love, companionship and a considerably more positive outlook than I tend to gravitate to. It is so good to have his bright optimism to contrast against my tendency to darkness and gloom. Though perhaps hard to believe, day to day, I enjoy my life and take pleasure in the little delights – sunshine, warmth, a good cup of coffee and freshly baked bread! And with that, I close. Yours in the New Year,
Ken