Year-end Report for 2012

El Castillo

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Year-end Letter December 2012

Dear Friend,

Another year is about to fly by and as I have for so many years now, I sit down and ponder the year exiting and what has gone on in my life and share it with you (As an aside, I also ponder how the year could possibly have slipped by so quickly, a sure sign of getting older!). Especially having turned 70 this year – and feeling quite incredulous about it – it seems a time to really look back with the longer perspective of accumulating years. As I have done in recent letters, I have organized this year-end missive into several main sections, both to help you navigate it and so you can skip any sections you are not particularly interested in.

READINGS

As always, I do far too little reading of books, good as my intentions are. What with so much traveling each year, I spend much of the time at home catching up with magazine subscriptions, and don’t seem able to kick the habit. The daily and Sunday New York Times take a lot of time, but bring the world to me, and help me understand how the world around me is changing (without totally leaving me behind). It’s longterm trends that interest me, scientific developments, the race of technology that is transforming our lives, that I find essential to stay in touch with. Reading a hardcopy newspaper is a very different experience from reading it online, and I dread the day when the only option will be electronic (though I do read some things in the paper that way, and the search functions are wonderful for back articles.) I won’t give up the New York Review of Books either, which for me is the most consistently interesting publication in the U.S. David regularly passes along pieces from The New Yorker that he tells me I simply must read, so I do (and they are almost always excellent recommendations). And there are a bunch of publications I find consistently interesting and/or personally useful. But the terrible price I pay is that I don’t focus on books as I should. However, traveling is often an excellent opportunity to take books along and really spend time with them. This year was no exception. (As an aside, I finally broke down and at year’s end ordered a Kindle Paperwhite – we shall see what impact this has on my approach to reading – stay tuned.)

I’d been meaning to read one of Henry James “late” period novels, considered his masterpieces, and I finally did it, though it sure took me a long, long time. I find Henry James very slow going, what with the convoluted sentences and the even more complex ideas embedded in them. I reread sentences countless times, trying to untangle the many pronouns, not sure whom they refer to! But I stuck with it and got through The Wings of the Dove. And though it was slow going, to read English so masterfully written is a rare treat – you get to know your native language in a whole new way. I wonder if those for whom English is not a first language ever really can appreciate Henry James? If I read another, it is likely to be an earlier masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady.

A very, very powerful book was This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust. Despite all the books written about the Civil War, apparently before this book, the subject of the horrific losses suffered by soldiers (and their families and friends) had not been covered in depth. The basic thesis of this book is that the unprecedented scale of death in the Civil War changed everyone’s idea of what the transition from life to death meant. When soldiers were blown to bits, the traditional idea of the resurrection of the body, the concept of the soul, was almost impossible to support. The book goes on to explore such topics as the lack of any method of accounting for the dead, of notifying next of kin, of veteran benefits and care, of memorialization of the dead, and that the Civil War, by its end, triggered a change to what we now recognize as our current approach. The Individual stories of loss, of families dealing with death, are extraordinary. The 19^th century was, I think, the high point of American use of the English language in all its glory in speech and writing, and reading some of the letters quoted in this book is a reminder of how beautiful American English could be in that era. Incidentally, the book became the basis for an excellent documentary by Rick Burns (brother of Ken Burns) seen on PBS recently.

On a somewhat related note, another great experience was listening to Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. As implied, I didn’t actually read it, but rather, took out all 36 CDs from the library, imported them into iTunes and then onto my iPod Touch, and over the course of four long driving trips, David and I listened to it. While Goodwin is a “popular” historian, this is an absolutely spellbinding story of Lincoln’s personal and political development. We were glued to every word, every development, extended quotations from all the well-spoken leading figures. Through all the important episodes – Lincoln’s various electoral races, including that for President, the growing division of the country (which, scarily, is all too reminiscent of what is happening within our country right now), the outbreak and conduct of the Civil War, the growing realization that the fundamental issue was slavery and freedom, the passage of the 13^th Amendment (outlawing slavery) - was Lincoln’s absolutely brilliant acumen, his ability to work with virtually anyone, to bring enemies around to his point of view, to not take vengeance on those who undermined or betrayed him. His story-telling skills and his sense of humor were incomparable. Goodwin really gives one a sense of what a unique figure Lincoln was in our national life. I think we all hunger for someone like him in these parlous times. To me Lincoln was, far and away, our greatest President.

Another highlight was reading Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding, his history of the early or “convict” years (the first 80 years or so) of Australia’s European settlement. This is one of those “large canvas” tales, and when Hughes wrote it, he felt there was still much shame amongst contemporary Australians concerning the origin story of their earliest settlers. This is a history filled with such stories of suffering and horror, it is truly beyond imagining. That anything good came of it – which ultimately it did – tests one’s capacity for belief. That anyone could survive the conditions of the transports, the convict labor system, and particularly the unimaginably harsh punishments for trivial acts tests all deep-seated beliefs that the human race has any capacity for good. Intensifying the horror of it all is that many of the convicts (though not all) were simple ordinary folk desperate to survive or keep their families alive, who were caught up in a massively unjust society, which England in the 18^th and 19^th centuries was. It is a haunting story and once again, one that is difficult to put down.

These were the highlights, but in addition to a classic like The Wings of the Dove, I also read the Roman poet Lucretius’ The Way Things Are (also known as On the Nature of Things), and several novels by authors I’d been wanting to get acquainted with for some time (e.g., China Men by Maxine Hong Kinston, Ironweed by William Kennedy, and Atonement by Ian McEwan), as well as, finally, To Kill a Mockingbird, after watching a wonderful PBS documentary about how the book came about and its subsequent influence.

PERSONAL GAINS & LOSSES

It is with great relief that I can say 2012 was a year when there was relatively little loss of those dear to me, unlike 2011, which was a rough year. It seems this kind of thing runs in cycles, and it was comforting that almost everyone I care about who was part of my life at the start of 2012 was still a part at the end of the year.

One observation relating to aging, failing health, loss, and death, that grows ever stronger in me, is the utter fragility of life. Nothing is a given. While I seem to have inherited pretty good genes, have always enjoyed good health, stay physically active, eat well, and keep my weight under control, it is clear to me that these may boost the odds a bit, but guarantee absolutely nothing. When you extend your thinking out further to the world at large, and see the massive suffering and loss of life – be it in the Congo, Pakistan, natural disasters, famines, earthquakes, bombings, wars -- you come to see that we are all little specks that can be extinguished in the flash of an instant. So each day is precious. There is no choice but to go on living and trying to enjoy as much as possible, until one day it all changes – either very quickly, or slowly, with whatever conscious recognition, if any, that one has passed a milestone and is on the way out of this life.

TRAVELS

Our daunting travel schedule continues, and this year was no exception. If anything, it was perhaps a bit more extreme, especially for me, as I did several trips that David did not participate in. Here’s a summary roundupIn what is becoming a tradition, we try to pick an interesting warm place to visit in mid-winter (generally January). For 2012, we went to the South Pacific, specifically, American Samoa, which we learned about through an article in Islands magazine. It looked spectacular and very definitely off the tourist path, and indeed, though not easy to get to (only one U.S. airline flies there, and only twice a week at that), once there it was wonderful. There is virtually no tourist infrastructure, but there is a reasonably well-preserved Samoan culture, and the least visited U.S. national park (the National Park of American Samoa, with units on three of the islands in the archipelago) with unbelievable beaches and healthy coral reefs teeming with colorful fish. As we almost always do when flying overseas from the West Coast, we took Amtrak to Los Angeles and flew from there. An additional benefit was that the biggest art extravaganza in L.A.’s history was going on and we got to experience some of it, both at the start and end of our trip. Called Pacific Standard Time, it was an exploration of the Los Angeles art scene from 1945 – 1980. Very multi-faceted, it was spread over 60 museums in the metropolitan area, and we were able to go to a number of the major shows.

In March, I went on a Sierra Club birding trip to Costa Rica, considered one of the true birding paradises anywhere in the world. I saw almost 300 species, most of them new for me, in a variety of locales. By my standards, it was a very luxurious trip, but what really made it superb was our lead birding guide, a Costa Rican man known as “Charlie” (he’d been called that by friends ever since he was a kid – it wasn’t a name dubbed by gringos who couldn’t say “Carlos”). As one hears of Native Americans of yore, Charlie was part bird in his soul – he had the most incredible ability to know, in a deep, deep way, where the birds were, know their habits, and bring them out. There are over 800 bird species in Costa Rica (more than in all of North America) and he knew the call of every one of them. One can’t even begin to imagine how someone embeds within himself such knowledge, but we all benefited from it. Once the formal Sierra Club trip ended, I and the friend from Washington, D.C. who joined me booked our own 5-day trip to the remote Osa Peninsula, where we saw a lot more interesting natural life.

In April a friend with whom I do a spring and fall camping trip each year, and I went to Big Bend National Park, as well as the very remote Big Bend State Park nearby, and the interesting art town of Marfa. At Big Bend I did my first backpacking in years, and though it was only a two-day, one-night trip, it involved a 2,000-foot straight-up climb, carrying our own water, so it was still a challenging trip. The rest of the time, we car-camped and did lots of day hikes, as April is a great time to be down in the Big Bend country. We could, sadly, see the effects of the historic drought that Texas has been experiencing for some years and the impact of air pollution blown to this remote place from Texas’ big cities, up from Mexico and over from the West Coast.

David and I did a brief trip to the Hopi mesas in northern Arizona in May, but high spring winds made this one of our less satisfying spring camping trips. We did end up fulfilling a small travel wish, by spending our last day at La Posada in Winslow, Arizona, one of the famous Fred Harvey hotels. Mary Coulter, now regarded as a fine regional architect of the 20’s and 30’s, who really captured the spirit of Indian Country, designed it. About 10 years ago, after being vacant for a long time, it was restored by new owners to its original glory, including all its courtyard gardens, fountains, etc. We got there early and just spent the day relaxing in the splendor of a former era.

Shortly after, we were off on one of the big trips of the year, to London and nearby parts of England to celebrate David’s 75^th birthday this year. We hadn’t been to London in ages (in part because it has become such an expensive city) but David decided he had to go there at least one more time. We visited shortly after the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and a few weeks before the start of the Olympics, so it was a perfect time. We spent some days with a dear friend in the London suburbs of Kent, then almost a week in London, then a week exploring East Anglia (Suffolk and Norfolk), and finally, another week in London. We went to some of the great music festivals (Glyndebourne, Aldeburgh), hiked portions of several walking paths that crisscross England, and had all kinds of memorable London experiences – neighborhood walks, great private gardens, some of the major museums, music and drama, wonderful food (including a blow-out dinner David hosted for a small group of hardy friends who came to London to celebrate with us). As an extra little benefit, we took Amtrak to upstate New York, to attend my 50^th college reunion at Cornell, before driving a rental car to Boston, where we spent a few days before flying on to London.

A long-time friend and I did a backpacking trip in early August on a segment of the Colorado Trail, which goes all the way from Denver to Durango, around 300 miles (though we did only 35 miles over 5 days). This was another component of celebrating turning 70: the challenge of seeing if I was still up for this kind of demanding experience. I felt very good about discovering that I was. The load was reasonably heavy (though at least in Colorado, we did not have to carry a lot of water), we took it at a measured pace, and kept the distances short compared to the many “youngsters” we met along the way – our longest day was 8 ½ miles. The one negative was the many forest fires in the Far West that made the air fairly hazy and smoky most of the time.

In late August and September, David and I did what we enjoy so much – a lengthy road trip. We got in the car, and camped for 8 days on our way to the Oregon coast, with stops including Lake Tahoe, the northern Sierras, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Crater Lake, and finally Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. We had booked a really funky “literary” hotel (no telephones, TV, Wi-Fi, etc.) in Newport, Oregon for four days (the Sylvia Beach Hotel, highly recommended), before proceeding to Portland to attend some of the events at the Time-Based Art Festival, the original inspiration for the trip. Time-Based Art is the new, fancy term for multi-media performance art; the festival is international in scope, and as we expected, we hated some of what we saw, some left us unmoved, but other performances challenged and stimulated us. As the events were usually at night, we had lots of time to re-explore Portland, which is one of the most satisfying cities in the U.S. It has, in abundance, everything that represents the good life – microbreweries, wonderful regional wines, terrific coffees and teas, and innovative cooking and baking, great parks, a progressive spirit, bicycle paths and on and on. The whole town has a comfortable, albeit scruffy, ambiance that makes one feel very relaxed and supercharged at the same time. Heading eastward for the return to Santa Fe, we drove through the Columbia River Gorge to Walla Walla, Washington, where we explored this hot new wine area (European winemakers are flocking there), and then on to Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho for a couple of days of exploring – this is easily the most varied, “open-book” volcanic natural museum I’ve ever been in, and I was utterly fascinated with what there was to see.

October/November saw us in Washington, D.C. and New York to see friends and immerse ourselves in some culture. We had the good timing to get up to New York from D.C. one day before Superstorm Sandy hit, so our New York experience was quite different from what we had planned on, though fortunately, staying in midtown Manhattan, we suffered hardly at all in a practical sense. It is just that transportation and cultural venues were shut down. We did manage to make a lot of lemonade from the lemon of our timing, and having brought along the new edition of the AIA Guide to New York, did a lot of delightful architectural walks on our own.

Finally, there was my fall camping trip with the same friend I went to Big Bend with in the spring. This time, given our dates were mid-November we headed to southern California. We camped and hiked at Mojave National Preserve, in southeastern California (we made it there from Santa Fe shortly before dark and in time to set up camp), which was surprisingly cold, and then went on to the main object of the trip, camping and hiking in Channel Islands National Park, in the Pacific off Ventura, California. There was a wonderful sense of isolation on Santa Cruz Island (largest island off the west coast of the U.S.), and even with the first winter storm of the season arriving shortly after we did, we had a wonderful time. Dramatic cliffs, some spectacular beaches, and most fascinating, any number of endemic bird, mammal and plant species. Three-quarters of the island is owned by The Nature Conservancy and is off-limits, but we were able to take a guided hike into that portion, with a small group, and learned a tremendous amount.

We are already well into the preparation and planning stages for some of our 2013 trips, leading off with a 5-week trip to Myanmar (again, taking Amtrak to Los Angeles and flying from there). With the country emerging from its years of dictatorial oppression, we want to get there before it is totally overrun with mass tourism. And David is in the early stages of planning a walking trip to southern France in May/June. We went to the Dordogne region in spring 2011. Now we are going nearby, into the Cathar country of the Départment of Languedoc-Roussillon (in southwestern France, curling around the Mediterranean) with plans to walk some of Le Sentier Cathar, the Cathar Path.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

David put on his wonderful Enduring American Popular Song program in March – this was the 7^th year of this popular production that he does with another singer and an instrumental jazz backup. The performance is at a popular club/restaurant on a Sunday afternoon, and he does it as a fundraiser for our local performing arts center. This year was one of his most successful renditions. Sadly, I missed it, since I was in Costa Rica, and for a variety of reasons, he could only schedule it for the time my trip was on.

Meanwhile, I continue with a number of volunteer activities. I still do some computer tutoring for those 50+ in a program run by the NM State Unemployment Office (now called “Workforce Solutions” of course) to assist those over 50 in finding jobs (no easy task). New this year, I took the training to be an ESL Tutor (English as a Second Language), and have been serving, sporadically (due to my insane travel schedule), as a sub, or assistant. I am not around enough to take on my own individual student or group, but fill in as needed. Lately, I have been assisting a teacher in one of the local elementary schools working with a large young adult class after hours. It is actually quite an inspiring experience. The students are serious and work reasonably hard to learn English. Then there have been other activities that are once a year – the garden tours of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, where I am a “plant expert” docent, Block Captain at the wonderful International Folk Art Market, and a return as a volunteer usher to the somewhat revived Santa Fe Film Festival as well as the occasional concert ushering for Santa Fe ProMusica. This year for the first time, I presented programs at a big weeklong gala on Northern New Mexico put on by the local office of Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel). I’ve been doing a great number of travel/photo programs in various venues – at El Castillo where we live, our local travel bookstore, the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, and more. I also lead a series of naturalist walks at a local state park that proved very popular, I suspect because the state park personnel finally did a good job of advertising it through local media.

Perhaps most interesting, I worked with a local organization that introduces visitors to the culture and natural history of New Mexico to put on a special two-day birding program in mid-December, primarily for El Castillo residents, exploring interesting birding sites in the Middle Rio Grande region around 100 miles south of Santa Fe. I helped plan the trip and served as Trip Leader. This might lead to putting on more excursions, which I love doing. Deep down I think I was born to be a trip leader and somehow wish that I had realized this early in life. (A few years ago, it also dawned on me that what I really should have become, professionally, was a field biologist but it is a little too late now!)

Maintaining and expanding the Resident Garden at El Castillo also absorbs a great deal of my time, but has been very satisfying. This fall, with the help of El Castillo’s landscaping company, the final phase of putting in the garden, namely, expanding it to our Dining Room outdoor patio, was begun, and it is now ready for initial planting come spring. When I have some free time to read, and not work in the garden, I am still out there, enjoying the very tranquil setting I have had a great hand in creating.

STATE OF THE NATION AND THE WORLD

The trends in the country are very, very troubling, increasingly so, it seems to me, in recent years. It is sad and frustrating that those who throw out the opprobrium “big government” never mean by it the same things I think of. I think our Constitution is very frayed in many areas designed to protect individual liberties – protection of unreasonable searches, freedom of (and from) religion, the right to vote, and perhaps, most troublesome, severe encroachments on the right to justice and protection of civil liberties. We countenance indefinite detention, and somehow have come to believe that if we can pin the label of “terrorist” on a person, it releases us from those protections the Founders built in to give the powerless individual a fighting chance against far more powerful forces. A very troubling review of where we are was a column by Chris Hedges in an online publication called Truthdig. I recommend reading it – you can find it at

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_won_--_for_now_20120917/

Besides the severe compromises to civil liberties and by extension the right to privacy, there are some other very serious threats to fundamental justice. Let me list those that figure most prominently in my concerns:

· The privatization of our prison and correctional system – there is strong evidence that to maintain profits, this whole nightmare concept of administering prisoners needs to feed on a constant supply of new blood (no pun intended), resulting in distortions of what constitutes a crime, lengthening sentences, reducing early release programs. Everything about our prison system is really scary – this is such a perversion of any concept of justice. In fact, I would say that everything about imprisonment and the running of prisons is shameful in a country that prides itself on being a beacon of freedom. Probably the most powerful indictment can be found in Michelle Alexander’s recent book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which has been getting a lot of attention recently (she spoke in Santa Fe this fall, part of the superb Lannan Foundation series of cultural and political programs that is one of the highlights of Santa Fe’s cultural season).

· The virtual elimination of trial by jury for most of those charged with crimes – plea bargaining is used in the vast majority of situations, with all power in the hands of the prosecutors and with innocent people agreeing to plea bargains because if they are not found innocent, the sentence they will be handed will be multiples upon multiples worse than the plea bargain sentence – what kind of justice is this? What has happened to the most fundamental protections we thought, as American citizens (and those who are not citizens but reside amongst us), we were guaranteed? Trial by our peers for serious crimes should be a fundamental part of what and who we are.

· Our election process is very broken for many reasons. The conduct of elections is highly politicized, unlike virtually any other democracy, where impartial, non-partisan bodies have oversight of the rules governing elections. We are now in an era when eliminating the vote for millions is the name of the game – any of us who lived through the Civil Rights era never dreamed we would return to the time of denying the vote, but we have. Where people aren’t being outright denied the vote, conditions of voting are being made so difficult (as evidenced by long, long lines on Election Day) as to discourage voters. It is clear to me that the vast majority of the problems have been intentionally created by Republicans. The obscene amounts of money involved in campaigns has seriously distorted the democratic process – we all say it can’t get much worse than it was in 2012, and yet we all fear it can get a lot worse in the years ahead.

· Similarly, popular election of judges at the state level and below, with the massive infusion of money into the campaign process, seriously threatens the concept that judges must be unbiased.

The anti-immigrant mania troubles me greatly. It is one thing to enforce the laws, but the lack of any humanity in understanding why people have crossed our borders really makes me wonder. The anti-immigrant laws in various states designed to make illegal immigrants feel like hunted rats, the making of anyone who shows fellow feeling into a criminal is getting too close to the Nazi persecutions of the Jews (before they moved on to outright extermination) to make this Jew feel comfortable. If you understand what was going on in Germany in the 1930’s, some of what is happening in the U.S. is getting much too close to that kind of mentality.

Our insane obsession with guns gets more and more extreme. There seems no one who should not carry around a gun, and you can take it anywhere (why keep them off airplanes?) Scariest of all are the “Stand Your Ground” laws which effectively allow someone to execute another person with little consequence. Invoking this law, you can murder someone if you think they are a threat in situations where the police could never get away it.

Perhaps the biggest looming issue is climate change – I need say little, since so much has been said already. The world, at large, is not willing to tackle it, the rate of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere is accelerating, and I see no future but one of a series of truly catastrophic impacts. Selfishly, my only comfort (but it isn’t much) is that I probably won’t be around for the worst of it.

In a very direct way, I am aware of climate change where I live. We have had a very dry year in Santa Fe, and there appears no end in sight. Long-range projections are that the Southwest will become an “arid” region, somewhat like the Sub-Saharan part of Africa. That is, we won’t talk about cycles of drought and “normal” years – the climate will simply become that of a desert region. How will Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tucson, El Paso, and Albuquerque support population growth as water supplies are exhausted and not replenished? Our winter climate keeps getting warmer and warmer. In this early winter temperatures have barely dipped below freezing, when they should regularly be going down into the teens. The future is worrisome and quite unpredictable, except that we know it will become very problematic.

One bright spot on the national scene is the progress on gay rights. It is picking up speed, and the vote outcomes in the November elections were very encouraging. As a younger generation grows into the voting majority, I have some cautious hope that I will actually have the right to marry and get the same respect and practical benefits for my relationship that those who marry a person of the opposite sex get immediately, and which we still don’t have after almost 30 years of a deep and loving connection. The key is finding DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) indefensible and unconstitutional. I am worried about the Supreme Court we have now, but I know it will happen if not this coming year, not that far off. The times, they are a’changin.

Despite the depressing political landscape overall, I am greatly relieved that Obama won the election. While we were unable to get many of the “changes” we were promised, given the general political landscape, there were some real victories, even if imperfect ones. Had Romney won, there would be no hope whatsoever for dealing with the deep inequality in our country, with a wide range of critical health issues such as contraception, abortion, the Affordable Care Act, and on and on. Gay rights would be slowed down, though not stopped. The environment, which was never discussed, would have been critically threatened. Paul Ryan and his radical ideas would have had powerful sway. Immigration reform that is humane would have had no chance. Important social, scientific, and infrastructure programs would have been wiped out. Regulation would have been seriously diminished when we need it more than ever. The powerless would have slipped into further invisibility. And perhaps worst of all, the appointment of judges, up to and including the Supreme Court, could have shifted decisions to the far right even further and for decades to come. This election truly had consequences, so I was very, very relieved.

Speaking of elections, I did serve, once again, as a Presiding Judge for my county’s Board of Elections. In New Mexico, a Presiding Judge is the lead person amongst poll workers for one precinct. The precinct I was assigned to encompasses a number of nursing homes, and it was an inspiring experience to see all the very elderly in their wheelchairs come in, determined to vote. There was a man who couldn’t speak any English, who was assisted by a stranger after he spoiled several ballots. There was a teenager who came with his mother and was voting for the first time. When we gave the mother her sticker saying “My Vote Counted” we asked him if he wanted one and he said, “Nah.” His mother didn’t waste a moment telling him this was his first time voting, and he damn well was going to stick it on his jacket. It was a long day (15 hours) but very satisfying, and the treat was that by the time I got home after 9:00 p.m. it wasn’t long before I learned the good news that Obama did far better than many of us had hoped.

Nevertheless, increasingly it feels like the U.S is two different countries – one is recognizably the country I grew up in and was taught to admire and love, despite some very serious problems and a troubled history. The other is somewhat recognizable at the level of personal interactions, but in terms of political, economic, social, and religious values, almost a different world. As I said above when discussing the book Team of Rivals, I am struck by how similar the years leading up to the Civil War, with the growing regional divisions about fundamental values, are to our present times. I have no idea if this fractionation can heal or not in the years ahead.

Despite all my concerns, noted above, I have to also say that I feel incredibly fortunate, as I look at horrors in other parts of the world (Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela, and even the Mediterranean basin of Europe). I am, knock on wood, in good health, lead a life of immeasurable freedom, have enough food, and despite feeling the pressure of “too much to do” also know that each day usually dawns filled with possibilities. We still live in a country that for all its deficiencies is a much better place than most countries in the world. I hope you are able to feel the same way.

Take the time to hear the birds, enjoy a good cup of coffee, dream of spring and new life, in short, savor each moment of an all too-fleeting life.

And on this note I will close. Be well, have a good 2013, and love,

Ken