El Castillo
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Year-end Letter December 2019
Red Pass on the rugged 4-wheel drive Titus Canyon Road
Spring Camping Trip, Death Valley National Park, California, April 2019
We were a religious sect consisting of two people, and now half the congregation was gone. There would be no closure, no healing. I would simply adjust myself to a new and severely depleted reality. The world would come to an end, as it always does, one world at a time.
James Marcus, Blood Relations,, on the final days of his father, The New Yorker, March 11, 2019
…that to love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you
Mohsin Hamit, from Exit West
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
She is a friend of my mine. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.
Toni Morrison, from Beloved
Dear Friend,
Once again, another year has come and almost gone, and while the passage of time seems forever to be speeding up, the one aspect of it I look forward to is the opportunity it affords to review and reflect on the year that is closing out.
OVERVIEW OF THE YEAR
This was an eventful year, significantly in one quite unexpected way. The first half of the year ran along the course followed in previous year – foreign and domestic travel, reasonably active local cultural life, etc. And then at the end of July, going in for a heart procedure (an ablation) to deal with persistent atrial fibrillation/flutter, it was discovered, quite by chance, that I had far more serious heart issues which were addressed right away (ventricular tachycardia, significant coronary arterial blockages) through the emplacement of stents and the implantation of a large defibrillator device in the upper chest (it noticeably protrudes and will be there for the rest of my life). The discovery of this situation was fortunate as I was primed for a fatal heart attack at any moment according to my cardiologist!
Recuperating from the effects of this implantation was the major issue for me in the late summer into fall and as a result I wound up cancelling a number of trips, including a fabulous adventure hiking trip to Montenegro (which was to be followed by wandering, on my own, around Bulgaria).
Instead, I had to commit myself to a slow-paced, low activity existence to allow myself to heal. I had to give up most physical activities (exercise, hiking, bicycling, camping) to allow my body to build up strength and eagerly accepted referral into a cardiac rehabilitation program.
While I would not have been thought to be a candidate for such serious heart problems – given good vitals, good diet, a physical active mode of living – it is a sobering realization that this can happen to any of us. My cardiologist has reminded me of some other patients of his who should not have had life-threatening heart conditions, but did. One is a guy of 56 years who puts on 7,000 miles of strenuous biking each year who was found to have a condition every bit as serious as mine, if not more so. In short, none of us are immune.
Also, beginning late last year, I developed radiating pain and weakness in my legs that affected my stamina for walking and hiking. A series of MRIs and X-rays revealed fairly typical lumbar area disc and spine deterioration that comes with aging and tends to be more severe the more physically active one has been. This comes and then it goes but the quiet message is that it is always there and any relief is a gift that can be taken away at any time. Then in late October the impact was so severe that even very short walking became extremely problematic.
So in the course of this year I transitioned from a physically active existence to one more akin to that of a semi-invalid. Needless to say, these experiences have been a dramatic reminder of one’s mortality. Combined with my age (even admitting I am not “that” old) one thinks about things differently. I, like many others getting on in years, only have to read the obituaries to appreciate how many highly accomplished “famous” individuals pass on at a younger age than my own. We are given no guarantees and are owed nothing. This is the first year when a sense of “oldness” has confronted me head on. While my great hope is that I will be able to return to my former level of physical activity, I actually have no idea what is in store for me.
To put it mildly, it has been a sobering year and that sense that one will not go on forever has come to me sooner than I anticipated. My immediate priority is, coordinating with medical personnel, to figure out what is causing my leg weakness and discomfort in walking and determine if it is resolvable. If the situation cannot be remedied it will have a dramatic impact, across the board, on my hitherto active life.
FURTHER MUSINGS ON GROWING OLDER
Aging creeps up on a person, unbeknownst, and then one day, you are strikingly aware that you really are “old” by the standard definition of old, even in our times. Throughout the decades I’ve been aware of a gradual slowing down, and that’s been okay. Even with such slowing down, my activity level still felt “high” and so my sense of myself did not change appreciably.
This was the year when I was hit with the realization that the infirmities of old age were finally knocking at my door. First there were the pains radiating down my legs and at times a sense of leaden ploddingness when walking that for me, a walker everywhere, was an entirely new experience. Then halfway through the year there was the discovery, quite by chance, that I could have had a fatal heart attack at any time, though none of my characteristics who have led anyone to believe such a threatening condition. So now I am dutifully in a cardiac rehab program – and grateful for it. You talk to some of the other participants and realize you are not alone in being taken by surprise that your heart wasn’t made of iron.
One of the ways you really start feeling your age is reading the obituary of someone who intersected with your own life years ago. I will give an example that occurred a few months ago. An obituary appeared of the noteworthy pianist, Paul Badura-Skoda, who was highly regarded for his interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert. He was musician-in-residence in the mid-sixties at the University of Wisconsin, when I was a graduate student there. I went numerous times to his talks and recitals.
So, while this is not something that dramatically impacts me, each of these little losses increases the gulf between one’s formative years and the present. This kind of closing down happens numerous times a year. One’s life is like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with many pieces. Random pieces, over time, keep dropping off – the image remains, even with missing pieces, for a long time, but when enough time goes by, it can no longer be recognized. It seems to me that that is an analogy for aging and one’s life gradually slipping away.
LEGACY PROJECTS RELATING TO DAVID
I completed, or almost completed, three major projects – I call them “legacy projects” relating to David’s accomplishments:
1. A book, Remembering David: Photos and Text of, by, and about David Jenness, is ready, created by me. It includes photographs of David (some just of him, some with others) over the entire span of his life) but as importantly, extended samples of his writing on many topics – music, art, architecture, politics, family, travel, poetry. For David, the written word was sacred and he loved writing as a way to take full advantage of the richness of the English language.
2. A CD of songs and some narration selected from David’s 10-year project, Forgotten Songs from Broadway and Hollywood. This is expected to be out in May 2020, produced by the Musical Theater Project and released on its Harbinger label, distributed through Naxos Records.
3. A large semi-circular bench dedicated to David’s memory in the new Piñon-Juniper Woodland section of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden. The Woodland is due to open in late fall 2019 or spring 2020. The bench will bear two plaques, one with a poem David wrote to me and one a dedication to his memory. It is situated in a spot with a magnificent view and given that David’s remains were cremated, will serve as a form of gravesite. Interestingly, the Botanic Garden has developed a comprehensive database not only of all the plants in the gardens but of features, such as benches, fountains, etc. When the bench is in place, there will be a photograph of it in situ and close-ups of the plaques, so anyone, anywhere in the world, can call it up.
The book can be ordered by contacting me (details in a separate announcement that will go out early in 2020 as the 3rd anniversary of David’s death approaches) for those who would like a copy. The CD, when available, will also be announced; once in distribution it will be for sale from Amazon.com and possibly directly from Naxos.
YEAR THREE POST-DAVID
Everyone handles deep loss differently. While the immediacy of David no longer being in my life has softened, what slips in is a deep deep sense of emptiness that nothing can replace. It is always there, when you stop to get in touch with it. Mostly I go about my affairs, day-to-day, but now and again something triggers a connection with that buried loss and then like the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb, there is this gigantic burst of the immensity of what is no longer there. The projects I have been involved in, described above, to keep me connected with David, do provide a measure of comfort and a sense that I am “doing right” by David.
READING
Reading continues to be a great comfort and pleasure. Perhaps even more importantly, as I may have alluded to in a year-end letter of a few years ago, reading is a true consolation, as it allows me to enter a (silent) dialogue with writers who have thought deeply about the human condition. Despite the countless wonderful conversational days and evenings with friends, there are times when only certain passages in a book take me to a place I could never have gone on my own. My feelings and thoughts are there but inchoate. A great writer has a way of putting the words together that finally give clarity to thoughts and sensations long buried within me. See my example below from my current year’s reading of Proust.
I cannot resist quoting from an opinion piece in the New York Times, July 12, called The World According to Mad Magazine, a reflection triggered by the demise of the magazine, which in the conformist 50’s was a wonderful antidote to the adult world. This short excerpt captures what it had meant for so many of us to transition from our teenage years to early adulthood – it certainly reflects what it was like for me:
By the time most of us hit adolescence and learn that the world is unfair, exploitative and brutal, and that most people in it live in shocking poverty and squalor, and that we’re all somehow implicated in this even though it wasn’t our idea, plus there’s no God and we’re all going to die and the grown-ups have been secretly having sex the whole time, you feel ripped off. You feel lied to.
The 1619 Project appeared as a collection of thoughtful and often disturbing articles in the New York Times. This year marked the 400th anniversary of the first ship carrying enslaved people from Africa to colonial America – Virginia specifically. To honor the occasion, the New York Times appointed an editor to assemble articles that largely addressed how that “first sin” has played out – in many ways – in contemporary American life, society, and culture. While I consider myself relatively well informed about our terrible, terrible history, these articles shed an even deeper understanding than I had imagined. Many readers strongly suggested that the collected articles become a book to be used in the schools to help educate future generations as to the real impact of our unimaginably barbaric racial history. (The articles are available online at
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
My objective to read all of Proust”s In Search of Lost Time, one novel a year (thus, a seven-year commitment) continued this year with my reading of Sodom and Gomorrah, the 4th in the series. Originally translated as Cities of the Plain (in an earlier, less explicit era), it now has the same name as in the original French). As this particular novel focuses heavily on homosexual characters and feelings, I decided to not stick with the classic Moncrieff translation but get, instead a highly regarded recent (and thus less reticent) translation.
In one section, Proust discusses the death of his grandmother, to whom he was very close. He spends a lot of time on how we apprehend such an overwhelming occurrence as the death of someone who meant everything to us. A few passages (amongst a number of them) particularly touched me on a very personal level:
I recalled how, an hour before the moment when my grandmother had thus leaned over, in her dressing gown, toward my boots, [Note: Proust’s leaning over to button his boots as a young adult is what has brought on this flood of memories.] wandering in the stiflingly hot street, in front of the pâtissier, I had thought I could never, such was the need I had to embrace her, wait for the hour I had still to spend without her. And now that this same need was reborn, I knew that I could wait for hour upon hour, that never again would she be beside me, I had made the discovery only now because I had just, on being aware of her for the first time, alive, real, swelling my heart to bursting, on meeting again, that is, realized that I had lost her forever….
But never again would I be able to erase that contraction from her face, [Note: Proust remembered when he had said something nasty to his grandmother that had caused her to grimace.] or that suffering from her heart, or, rather, from my own, for, since the dead exist only in us, it is ourselves that we strike unrelentingly when we persist in remembering the blows we have dealt them. I clung to these sorrows, however cruel they might be, with all my strength, for I felt that they were the effect of my memory of my grandmother, the proof that this memory which I had was indeed present in me, I felt that I truly remembered her only through sorrow, and would have wished the nails to be driven yet more firmly home that had riveted her memory inside me.
TRAVEL
This year involved some interesting trips, both domestic and international, despite my medical crisis causing the cancellation of one very exciting overseas trip, mentioned earlier along along with two interesting domestic trips.
At the end of January, I went to Mexico for the first time in eleven years. I had avoided the country because of the extreme violence and corruption, which is, unfortunately, still endemic. But I went to the Yucatan where I had never been and which has been largely spared the societal chaos of other regions of the country. My focus was a small colonial city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Campeche, on the west coast of the Yucatan, several hours south of Merida (where I began my visit). Campeche, capital of the state of Campeche, is quiet, but beautiful, with a delightful cultural life, and is blessedly somewhat off the tourist track. I went at the time when my leg problems had flared up and saw it as a place to just slow down and absorb the atmosphere. I did manage day trips to three very important Mayan sites – Uxmal, Edznà, and Calakmul, all very impressive in different ways. Interestingly, I came to realize I could go to a warm place in the winter months, somewhere like Campeche, exotic and foreign, for considerably less than Florida, and much more interesting! What I most enjoyed about my stay was not doing much of anything but letting the bright colors and strong shadows just work their way into my soul. I took deep pleasure in simple routines, such as a favorite very local, and popular place for a traditional Mexican breakfast, feeling no rush whatsoever, or simply sitting in the Piazza Principal, watching little children run and scream as they chased the pigeons. (see photos on next page)
In late April I left on a 6-week trip to Washington, New York (a week each) and then on to Ireland for a month, only returning in early June. Both Washington and New York were at the peak of the kind of incomparable East Coast spring we just do not have in New Mexico.
Street in Campeche’s historic district Mayan site of Uxmal
I had never visited Ireland but had always found its history, literary richness, music, and much else, endlessly fascinating. May was a good time to go – spring in its full glory, and fewer visitors. While it was a very chilly spring there, the weather was surprisingly good, with a fair bit of sun, which was fortunate, as I did quite a lot of hiking and walking. I decided to get around exclusively by bus and to try staying in hostels, and it all worked out far better than I anticipated. To some degree it was a throwback to my younger travel days, with backpack for luggage and finding my way around (though I almost always called ahead to the next hostel to be sure to have a bed). I found the countryside beautiful, the West Coast entrancingly wild, the live music at traditional pubs captivating, and most of all, the people friendly, helpful, kind, and extraordinarily generous.
Muckross House rhododendrons, Killarney Nat’l Park Cliffs of Moher with sea thrift blooming
County Kerry County Clare
Often at the hostels, I wound up getting a 4-bed room all to myself at a fraction of the cost of a hotel room. Two things surprised me: the number of non-Irish workers from every corner of the world (and seemingly no anti-immigrant sentiment) and how good the food was.
I finished up the year quite unexpectedly, given my medical crises, with a last minute opportunity to take a 15-day small yacht trip through all of the Galapagos Islands that can be visited. I was able to arrange a “bridge” on to Easter Island, where I have always wanted to go, and was one of only three clients of a small family-run touring outfit (who also provided the lovely lodgings surrounded by a lush sub-tropical garden), so it was a very special visit. I also had a chance to do a little wandering around Quito. Exploring the Galapagos on a small yacht with a knowledgeable naturalist-guide allowed me to fulfill a bird and wildlife experience I may not have the equal of again. Similarly, to see Easter Island before the statues tumble into the sea, which is a serious threat, is also something I am grateful for. The Galapagos Islands were truly extraordinary as none of the animals or birds are afraid of people and you can come up close and personal. They don’t move – it was the best opportunity I’ve ever had to take carefully composed wildlife photographs. In a way it felt like the Biblical description of the Garden of Eden or the Peaceable Kingdom (though of course Nature’s law of eat and be eaten prevails there as it does everywhere else).
Male Magnificent Frigatebirds in courtship display Moai (statues) at Ahu Tongariki
North Seymour Island, Galapagos Easter Island
While I am not yet ready for strenuous excursions, I am grateful I can still do many exciting adventures and hope it continues this way for a while. Meanwhile, until I figure out the outcome for my legs, I am not making travel plans for 2020.
PROJECTS, VOLUNTEERING, OTHER ACTIVITIES
I keep busy as a volunteer for 5 musical organizations, including this year, our main performing arts center, which, as an usher, gets me in to see some major programs and artists. Once again I was a wildflower guide this past summer at the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival in Colorado. They had had the snowiest winter in living memory and none of the alpine trails – where I had scheduled a number of hikes – were accessible by mid-July. I also led mountain hikes and an auto tour for the Santa Fe Botanic Garden. This year I was recruited for the Friends of Folk Art Board, the main voluntary support and fundraising group for our Museum of International Folk Art, perhaps the most important folk art museum in the U.S. Add to this such projects as the annual calendar I do, various David-related undertakings (book, CD described above), this letter, travel programs I do throughout the year, and it is not surprising how quickly the days fly by.
A major accomplishment for me was getting the landscaping done for my little very private backyard.
Two views of landscaped backyard
The space is small – a classically urban hideaway – but it required some very major work to transform it. The area had been in rather shabby shape as I found it. It turned out beautifully and in warmer weather, I eat breakfast and lunch outside and read in my comfortable outdoor sofa. While I planted the first set of bulbs this fall and put a small maple in, the main planting of perennials will occur in the spring. And though it is small, between the plant beds and the various pots filled with annuals and perennials, I have a chance to get my hands dirty again. A seed feeder is up in the colder weather and a hummingbird feeder in the warmer and I am happy as can be in my diminutive paradise!
THINKING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
For anyone concerned about the fate of the planet, this has had to be a troubling and depressing year. The massive burning of the Amazon rain forest, plus extensive burning of forests in Indonesia and many parts of Africa is a global issue. The oceans are warming, becoming acidic, and assaulted by our plastic waste and pollutants (fertilizer and pesticide run-off, plastic waste including trillions of micro-particles, oil spills), continued population growth, and the increasing pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As a subscriber to various environmental newsletters, magazines, and e-mail blasts, there are always positive stories about innovative approaches to water conservation, saving endangered species, restoring soil health and projects in many other important domains.
Nevertheless, I find myself increasingly hopeless that we as a species have the capacity to save ourselves and the other life forms with which we share the Earth. We all see what is happening, we all know that incalculably major efforts must be taken, that we must make great changes to our way of life, and yet each year we rush headlong to destroy the planet: to build more coal and other fossil fuel plants, to use the oceans as dumping grounds and at the same time, to overfish our limited supplies. We all know what this must inevitably lead to yet we seem completely unwilling and unable to take the kind of actions we so desperately need to take. While younger generations are waking up to the world they will inherit, from what I am seeing, the destructive changes are coming on so fast that I think in 10 years time we will face catastrophic situations completely beyond our ability to cope. I realize that every aging generation has prophesized “doom and gloom” and here I am doing the same. But the reports each day are not made up and there is no need to exaggerate their significance – they are bad enough as is. It is all really happening and is not just a figment of my fevered mind! I wish I saw some reason for hope but to date, I do not.
While all this makes me sound like a hopeless pessimist, I was validated, a bit, by going to a talk in Albuquerque, given by Elizabeth Kolbert, who has written extensively (Pulitzer Prize winning book, New Yorker Magazine) on the future of the world under the stress of climate change. In her talk she expressed her outlook that we will not be able to deal with the problem, so I have some good company. Others I have spoken with, more immersed in these issues than myself, appear to have come to a similar pessimistic conclusion.
THE POLITICAL CRISIS
There are many troubling developments and they seem to get more extreme over time, such as the role of the Internet and social media in fomenting hatred, violence, discrimination and similar societal ills. Two have particularly attracted my notice this year.
While I am making every effort here to avoid commenting on the present federal Administration, as it is discussed all the time and I have little to add, I will focus on one related issue. I have developed an increasingly visceral sense of how far apart large components of our society are. The divide is essentially unbridgeable between those totally behind Trump and those deeply troubled by him. Although I have been well aware of this, occasionally it is some small experience that really brings it home.
For me, it was a podcast – one episode of which followed one of the new, somewhat conservative Democratic Congresswomen elected in 2018, at a series of town hall meetings she set up in her district. Two were in urban / suburban areas and one was in a rural part. This was a representative who had worked for the CIA and was able to win over independent voters in a district that had gone for Trump in 2016. The rural town hall was heavily skewed to Trump supporters, and listening to the exchange, shortly after the impeachment inquiry began, was revealing.
It is clear we are at a point where hardcore Trump supporters – and there are many – follow him unwaveringly. These people made clear that Trump had no choice but to ask Ukraine for help because the FBI and the CIA cannot be trusted. In short, any entity – the media, our intelligence agencies, the military, the State Department, the Justice Department, whomever - that Trump goes after – bolstered by his propaganda arm (Fox News, which I think outdoes Radio Moscow at the apogee of the Cold War for pure propaganda) – lose all credibility. Not long ago it was agencies like the FBI and CIA that were amongst the only ones that “conservatives” admired in the government. Now loyal, dedicated public servants are dark state operatives. Trump can make any wild charge and smear any dedicated public servant in the most vile language, and whole classes of professions, agencies, etc., become “untrustworthy.”
There have been fanatical followers of other demagogues, but with Trump, it is an uncritical religious commitment – it is total, absolute, indissoluble. Despite countless highly admired individuals inside and outside the government who have expressed patriotic concern for what they see happening, these individuals are immediately dismissed and discounted. The only thing I can compare this fanaticism to is Jim Jones and his 900 followers who did literally “drink the Kool-Aid” in Guyana.
I have no idea how to bridge the divide and I fear that down the road a kind of civil war could break out. The representative holding the town hall meeting was polite but finally had to respond to some of her attendees (who turned out because rightwing media painted her as a far leftwing socialist) that they would have to agree to disagree.
Increasingly, I think of the 20th century as “The American Century” as the 19th was “The British Century” but I don’t think the 21st will be thought of that way. I do think our fundamental governmental structure has been seriously weakened. A book I recently read, The American Sphinx, by Joseph Ellis, explores the thought and contradictions of Thomas Jefferson but inevitably goes into many issues of the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary period that are equally applicable today. It is clear to me that our ability to resolve some of the serious problems the Founders anticipated, has collapsed.
The other concern that has come to the fore for me is the fact that in reality, we no longer have any privacy. Everything about us, and I mean EVERYTHING, is known, and whatever regulations exist, they, in fact, do not protect our privacy. The integration of a wide variety of information systems – governmental (at all levels) meshed with corporate – means that if you are in any way a part of our society, everything about you is known. Right now these capabilities are in full throttle to track down undocumented immigrants (the longer and the more stable their lives in the U.S. have been the easier to find), by using the systems that have the same data about all of us. We talk about “threats” to our privacy, the right to be left alone. This is all idle chatter, a fantasy, a complete illusion. There is no privacy and the technologies will only make it easier and faster to find us, manipulate us, compromise us, threaten us.
I would have to say that most of our Constitutional protections are in complete tatters. There is only one freedom I believe is in somewhat robust shape, and that is freedom of speech. How secure that is, I am not sure, but for now, it is the one saving grace of our present parlous times.
AND SO, IN SUM
I hope you were not expecting an upbeat year-end report. As always, it has been an interesting year, filled with surprises good and bad, rewarding moments and deeply sad moments. I do recognize my good fortune in having my basic needs met, feeling connected socially, and even though lonely, able to look out on a world that despite its horrors, offers beauty to all the senses and to the mind. For this I am truly grateful for I know that not everyone has it so good. And with that, I close. Yours in the New Year,
Ken