Making it in Toledo

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

Almost every morning I sit/stand on my yoga mat in my home office to practice easy yoga stretches and twists.  Towards the end of the routine, there are a few moments of meditation (“sit in simple cross-legged pose”), and soon the view out the window through the slats of wooden blinds  reverses to look like those children’s blocks that stack to make a picture.  My picture is getting greener every day, with veins of light-red dogwood blosoms beginning in the forefront of the many shades of green and the grey which, for the last few cloudy days, makes up the background. Sometimes a bird flies through the path of my eyes, and everything flips back to trees and sky through the open blinds.

It’s a nice trick, that altered perception, and at this point in my life I much prefer Rodney Yee to Aldous Huxley as a companion and guide.  Sometimes the switch happens on its own.  Although despite my good intentions I can’t seem to avoid strong first impressions of the people I meet, sometimes a few words, a gesture, or an act can cause my feelings to reverse, just like the view through the window.  That annoying woman becomes insightful.  How could I have found that man attractive?  This situation offers an opportunity rather than a threat.

Being open to these kind of changes is one of the benefits of aging, I think.  I feel more able to let go of my own opinions, up to a point, and to let them re-form. It’s another kind of flexibility. It’s a kind of power.

One has not only an ability to perceive the world but an ability to alter one’s perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them.     — Tom Robbins

 

 

 

Pathway Fatherhood Initiative:  Brothers United:  For the last three years serving on the Pathway board has been my main volunteer activity. We’re one of only a few dozen in the country to have won this grant.  After months of planning, it will launch soon and will provide a pathway to a better life for thousands of young low-income Toledo fathers and their children.

River House Gallery – I have no space left on my walls, and I’m not likely to be making major art purchases, but this is such a cool addition to downtown Toledo! I look forward to future visits. Drinking a mojito while admiring the drawings and paintings by Cuban-American artist Augusto Bordelois was just what I needed yesterday.

Antivillains at the Ark –  So proud of these incredibly talentedToledo musicians for their first performance at one of my favorite venues.  Hoping to attend and to get to A2 early enough for dinner before the show.

Continuing My Birthmonth Celebrations:  Dinner parties.  Lunches with friends. Wearing my new earrings, a gift from my husband purchased at the Toledo Museum of Art.

What are you looking forward to?

 

I haven’t been eligible to vote in New York since 1972, but today I wish I could vote for Hillary.  Instead, I’ll pay some bills and balance the checkbook and do some other domestic chores, try to increase the number of steps I walk, and begin planning for a couple of weekend dinner parties.  I’ll re-start our annual doomed efforts to keep the deer away from the gardens.  Not very inspiring.  Not very inspired.

“Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
Jack London

I’m inspired by my husband, my children, my granddaughter, and a few friends.  I’m inspired by what is possible with flour, salt, water and yeast.  I’m inspired by the milkweed that is sprouting in my garden.  In most other things, I’ve been loafing and inviting inspiration.  Now I am looking for a club…  Ideas welcome.

I’ve been a Lucinda Williams fan for years, beginning when I first heard heard  “Joy.”  Like some of her former much-younger lovers Lucinda describes in this recent interview, I didn’t know how old she was, but I definitely thought of her as a young person.

Last night I saw Lucinda perform in Ann Arbor.  It was a great show, perhaps the best of the four I’ve attended.  In discussing her new album which, as many have noted, flirts with thoughts of death, she mentioned that she is 63, three years younger than I’ll be in a couple of weeks.  She also repeated a version the Bette Davis quote “Old age is no place for sissies.”  Double whammy!  Lucinda is almost as old as I am.  We’re both old.  Lucinda has been writing and singing all her life.  Her set list includes songs she wrote 30 years ago as well as brand new work.  She’s a master of her craft.  I can’t even articulate what my craft is, but I hope I’m getting better at it.  And I know I’m committed.

I’m fascinated by the whole concept of snake handling. When you read about the Pentecostal snake handlers, what strikes you the most is their commitment.

Lucinda Williams

 

What with presidential politics and global warming, lately I often feel the need to escape from real life for a while.  With few exceptions, televison doesn’t do it for me.  I read, and while I am reading I live in different worlds.  Not perfect, just different.  I have to be careful of what I read, because those worlds make a difference in this world.  I always bring something back with me.

Someimes I visit Venice with Vice Comissario Guido Brunetti and his wife Paola.  He solves crimes, she teaches English literature, and together they bemoan what Venice, and the world, have become.  Because of the Brunettis, my morning coffee is made in a Moka pot instead of the old Aero-Press (too plastic, too American).  The multi-course meals Paola serves her family (between her long sessions with Henry James) have inspired many ambitious meals at my house.  Venice, stinking and sinking but still glorious, is such a powerful metaphor!  The beauty and the rot.  The closest I’ve come to it here is New Orleans, another favorite escape.

I’ve spent a few hours in Three Pines with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.   In a recent book, in the middle of a tense investigation that involves the whole community, Gamache invites last-minute guests to dinner, knowing there will be enough.  He says of  his wife Reine-Marie:   “She was four courses upset and considering an amuse-bouche.”  That resonates.  Since I inadvertantly skipped from number one and number two in the series to number eleven, I expect that I’ll return to Three Pines often, a sanctuary that we all need from Donald Trump.  Three Pines is fictional, but the promise of Cape Breton is real.

Not that I’ve given up on real life.  But sometimes it’s nice to take a break from it.  Have to go now, the smell of butter and sugar and blueberries coming from my kitchen is irresistible.

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t hang out in bars a lot, and I don’t want to.  But there are exceptions.  Lately John has persuaded me to come with him to a few of the every-Friday night open mic/poetry sessions at a local club in the North End of Toledo.  I pride myself on being open to new experiences, and this fits the bill.  Stormi’s Trunk of Truth is at Franklin and Pearl.  The first few times we went the door was locked, which seemed like  a reasonable security precaution.  Since wine did not seem like a wise option, on my first visit I nursed a brandy.  The next time I failed to stop at the ATM and, despite the signage, we had to count out our change and small bills to cover a couple of beers.  Last night we went for a special show, a collaboration with some Michigan poets.  We were hungry and left at the break.  I was surprised that I kind of wanted to stay.

Clearly the building has been re-purposed from either a storefront or, more likely, somebody’s house. The floor is black and white tile.  The walls are paneled and hung with an assortment of posters. There’s a hand-painted mural (a tree, of course). The tables, chairs, and couches are frequently re-arranged to suit the crowd.  Last night the restrooms, framed in at the back of what may was once have been the living room, had inexplicably been switched, resulting in the curious presence of a condom dispenser in the ladies’.

John plays his guitar when we go, but mostly it’s poetry.  And with a couple of exceptions the poetry is wonderful.  My favorites have involved “Namaste,” written and read by Dan Denton and a long hilarious piece by Arnie Koester about a Bangkok sex show.  (I like a bit of humor with my poetry. ) I know I’m late to discover Bob Phillips, but I’m ready to listen  and read more.

I’ve lived in Toledo since 1972, minus a few years in the late 70’s.  It’s never boring.

 

 

“To be a good Jew, you need to believe in one God, or fewer.”

some Rabbi, somewhere

When I was growing up in upstate NY we were all alike.  A few kids were noticeable because they were Catholic.  One Mennonite classmate was downright exotic.  There was one doctor in town; he and the teachers were special because you knew they had gone to college.  Once every summer we had a visit from an old friend of my mother’s and when she married a Jew he was the only non-Christian I had ever met. That’s how I remember it.  It was only when  as a high-achieving high school student and spent a summer at Syracuse Universtiy studying geology (it was the only NSF program I was eligible for as a sophomore) and the summer after junior year at Cornell (my Math classes were interrupted when the professor returned to Israel for the 6-day war) that I experienced ethnic diversity.   My cousins and I were the first generation of our family to go away to college and I remember my grandfather warning my mother to be careful because I might meet “someone from Oklahoma” and never come back.  He was not wrong, and he even got the “O” right.

Reading about Bernie Sanders’ secular Jewishness (including this article) brings wonderful memories of the women on the paternal side of John’s family, role models for me since I met them in the early 70’s.  As Mensheviks, the family had left Russia in the early 20th century fleeing both the Czar and the Bolsheviks. His gradmother, widowed young, lived with her never-married sister.  Two other sisters, also long-time widows, lived together as well and were actively campaigning for left-wing causes well into their eighties.  I didn’t meet the men of that generation but I’ve been hearing stories about them for years. For both the women I knew and the men I did not, my impression is of  irreverance, humor, varying levels of commitment to leftist politics, and, above all, intelligence.

I loved the Larry Davis impression and the  “Sanderswitsky sketch on SNL.   I admire the way Bernie Sanders is balancing honesty and political good sense with regard to his faith.

 

Our kids have left, returning to Chicago and San Francisco. John and I have enjoyied a few last rays of Mexican sun and we’re waiting for the It’s been a good week.

One thing I like about vacation is the chance to reflect with few distractions. I’ve been reflecting on how offended I am by Bernie Sanders. Every time I get an e-mail beginning “brothers and sisters” and ending “in solidarity” while, Rubio-like, recasting a narrow loss as victory, my sense of the man’s enormous ego is reinforced.

But it’s worse; it’s affecting me in real life too. If a waiter seems amused that when the bill comes John hands it to me (because I can be relied on to carry a card and keep track of it) I am angry. If a man, however well-meaning, steps in uninvited  to help with a task I am perfectly capable of performing I seethe with a mixture of resentment and guilt. Somehow the constant media swipes at Hillary make me feel these small humiliations more keenly.

The Sanders challenge has moved the discussion to the left, for which I salute him. But I would not look forward to a President Bernie. I’m with her.

Still holding an extra bedroom for a Hillary Clinton volunteer…

 

 

 

 

 

When we turned off Highway 307 on Saturday and entered Akumal, I breathed a sigh of relief.  We’d left the craziness of Cancun and Playa del Carmen behind us, and I thought Akumal was unchanged.  I was wrong.  In the 8 years we’ve been coming here we’ve seen an ever-growing number of tour groups coming from resorts up and down the coast to snorkel in Akumal Bay.  The number of resorts is exploding too as the highway to Tulum, the next big vacation spot, is improved.

Akumal was founded in 1959 as a community of scuba divers attracted by a coral reef which also serves as home to giant sea turtles.  Part of the town is still owned by the family of one of its founders, Pablo Bush Romero. It’s a community of condos and hotels with a few shops and restaurants.  Ocean and the sunrise to the east and sunset over the jungle to the west.  Across the main highway is Akumal Pueblo, where the non-tourists (about 1300 people) live.  The first time we came we stayed on our own side of the highway, but an overpass has been built and we’ve visited a couple of the local restaurants on our last few visits.

This year, there’s trouble in Paradise.  Depending on your point of view, long-overdue efforts to protect the bay and the reef have necessitated steps to limit access to an appropriate number of visitors and legitimate tour operators OR Bush Romero’s family, which owns a couple of hotels and the nicest restaurant in town AND has invested in a new 400-room resort, had blocked beach access for locals. For several months, either a small group of rogue tour operators OR a legitimate group of Akumal citizens have organized protests and, occasionally, blocked vehicle access in and out of town. On Monday, fences were broken, a statue was overturned, and the main beach was (briefly) closed.  Since we’re staying further into town on a secondary beach, we missed it all.  Today, a blockade went up and at least one tourist couple walked out through the grounds of the new hotel to get a taxi to the airport, leaving their luggage behind.

This is so hard.  A few elites are trying to do the right thing and save the bay, but apparently the rules don’t apply to them. No help is forthcoming from the local or national governments.  It’s heartbreaking to see the the environmental consequences of growth as the “Riviera Maya” attracts more and more tourists.  We’ve faithfully purchased “turtle safe” sunblock for years, blah blah blah.  But we’re part of the problem.  We’ve also shopped at local stores, eaten at local restaurants, and tipped the staff generously wherever we have rented.  Who can blame the local people who see restricting access as limiting their income?  For years we’ve read about the influence of one family here, noted environmentalists who nevertheless seem to be making a lot of money by bringing in more tourists and tour groups but now feel it’s time for them to protect the reef and the local community by preventing anyone else from doing so.

Oh, Akumal.  I thought you were not part of the real world.  I was wrong.

It was 30 below in northern New York last night, and it was damn cold in northwest Ohio too.  We’ve chosen a good week to be in Akumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico.  It’s seventy four  degrees at 10 am, and our top-floor terrace is situated for a perfect view of the sunrise, ocean breezes (actually, today, strong ocean winds), early morning sun, and shade from about now throughout the day.

We’ve been coming to this little town since 2009, the whole family and occasional guests.  It’s right off Highway 307, about halfway between Cancun and Tulum.  On the drive south from the airport, we saw many changes, development that is the inevitable result of the development and promotion of Tulum.  Akumal, blessedly, seems much the same.

For the first time we experienced the stereotype when, just after pulling out of the car rental agency in Cancun,  Olivia braked to avoid someone running across the road, was pulled over and avoided going “downtown” to retrieve her drivers license by means of a (modest) cash bribe. Elio, the manager of our Akumal condo, seemed to feel that the $60 she paid was excessive.

Also for the first time, our family includes a baby.  I’m looking forward to watching her have her first experience of Akumal.