Kitchens

 I started a post a long time ago about kitchen renovations and remodeling but I haven't finished it and don't think it really gets to the point.

Our house was renovated fifteen years ago or so to make it habitable after five to ten years of abandonment. It took ten months, and everything that was done was... so so. Job came in under budget, so there was that, but many things that should have been done weren't. Now, fifteen years later, those undone things have caught up with us.

One of them being the kitchen. It's fine and yet, no. The cabinetry is original. The vinyl sheet flooring is wearing through in places. We had to replace the ceiling fan a few years ago because the one put in by the contractor died. I've replaced the sink and faucet a couple of times now -- hard water. There's no dishwasher. The refrigerator came with the house and is at least 25 years old -- horror stories about new ones though are rampant, and maybe we should consider ourselves lucky that we have an old one that works. The gas range was put in by the contractor, and though there's a hood over it, it doesn't vent to the outside. I think we need to do something about that. 

Perhaps the worst part though is that the kitchen floor has a definite slope toward the sink and south wall. Here's the problem: the kitchen, laundry room and entry hall were built within an enclosed front porch/portal. Part of the porch was built over an underground cellar that we found out about when we had a proper drain line installed for the washing machine. Part of the foundation for the kitchen is sinking into that cellar and critters have made their way into it as well. There is no access to the cellar unless you dig --- as the plumbers did as did the critters.

The entry hall is very small and the laundry room still shows evidence of work done to improve the drainage -- by putting in an actual drain line that connects with the sewer line -- and to replace the water heater. The washing machine is 8 years old, and is showing signs of age. So...

Here was my thought before I got sick and Chairman Powell decided that low interest rates were the cause of inflation: We would refinance the house with an inclusive mortgage/renovation loan, move out for the duration, and have the kitchen redone from the roof down. Relatively minor work needs doing in the rest of the house -- new flooring, remodel the bath, paint and paneling, maybe adding a bath on the west side along with a proper garage. Re-roof the whole house.

I figured it would cost $60-70,000 and the total financed would come in well under the valuation of the house after renovations, and our income would be more than sufficient to cover the extra mortgage cost.

Well, that went out the window when I got sick and we came under so many expenses that followed. Most of that extra income is now being spent to cover the cost of dental work and co pays for medical attention.

In other words, there's no extra right now for renovations, even if we could find a contractor to do it. One of the problems is that we live in the country, and many contractors don't like to work out here or outright refuse to. And our budget would not be big enough to make it worth their while. 

The other thing is that interest rates have gone up so much that even if we had the income, the amount we could borrow for renovation might be no more than half what is needed to do a good job. The Universe seems to conspiring to say "No!"

But then I've spent years looking at possible kitchen renovation designs online and in magazines.  and I'm sorry, the whole field is insane. Totally.

There are certain absolute requirements for a modern kitchen renovations starting with: one or more islands. I've seen as many as four islands in one kitchen remodel. One for prep, one for gathering, one for home schooling, one for misc. tasks.  Each island must have two or more (I've seen up to 16) "statement pendants" over them. These are preferably enormous but put out very little light. The next requirement is a "statement range". These are almost always gas, monster-sized, with multiple ovens, sous-vide, griddles and ten or so burners. They must be made in France or Italy. They usually cost between $35,000 and $100,000, but I'm sure there are models that cost way more, and installation must be as difficult as possible. 

"Smart" refrigerators are a necessity so you can check on supplies remotely with your phone. Or contrary-wise, you can get refrigerators and freezers in under counter drawers. Then there are the dishwashers. You need more than one. Two at a minimum, but up to four is gooder. Your dishes must be stored on open shelves, and because of dust and grease and such that the extractor fan in the overstove hood doesn't remove, they have to be washed every day. Well, that's assuming the kitchen is actually used for cooking and not solely for display.

I'm convinced many of these insane kitchens are really just for looks -- and "statements." There's probably a small kitchen in the back somewhere (I've seen them called pantries and whatnot) where actual cooking is done -- when it's done at all. The residents either have take-out, delivery or catering at home, but they probably eat out as frequently as possible and never use their statement kitchens for anything but display.

"Lookit what I have!" 

And the costs for one of these statement kitchens is upwards of $300,000. Far more than we can afford.

And unless we expand the kitchen, essentially doubling its size, we can't do an island at all, let alone multiple ones. Our current kitchen is essentially a corridor from the side door in the laundry room to the door to the living room. It's wide enough so that someone can work in the kitchen while others pass between doors, but it's not nearly wide enough for an island, too. Because of the adobe construction of the house, there's not a lot we can do to expand the kitchen or "open it up." I've thought about incorporating the current laundry room into the kitchen and building another laundry room and bathroom in part of a new garage. But adding the laundry room space to the current kitchen doesn't do anything about the width of the room, only the length. 

The whole process requires rebuilding the parts of the house that were once a porch and doing something about the cellar. Filling it in would probably be good.

I've thought about expanding the entry hall by eliminating the closet and moving the front door to the end of the tiny porch that's there now, then adding a 7' wide porch/portal across the front, about 32' long, that would provide shade and protection from the sun and rain and a place to sit and watch the world go by.

It would change the look of the house, but not radically. There was a porch across the front at one time after all.

What would really change the look of the house is removing the siding, repairing and restoring the stucco over adobe exterior, replacing the current black-framed windows with white ones with muntiins for a much more historic look.

That and a new metal roof would be an enormous change in the look of the house, and while it wouldn't be cheap, it wouldn't be all that expensive. Probably less than one of those "statement" ranges from Italy or France, no?

But all this and more of what we wanted to do depended on: availability of contractors (ify these days), low or moderate refinancing interest rates (nope!), and relatively inexpensive move out/alternate residence for the duration (we had one in mind, but it's no longer available.)

My ideas for the kitchen are more along historic lines, either mid-century (when the current kitchen was built) or going back to 1900 when the first part of the house was built. Either one would appeal to me. But we can't do it right now and will have to putter along with what we've got.

The more things change, the more they stay the same....😉

Not Taken For Granted

I've recently focused some thoughts on the fact that I can walk but not very well these days -- very unsteady on my feet and must use a walker outside the house or I'll fall down -- and I can't and don't take simple things like walking or sitting or standing on my own for granted. No, not much. In some ways, it's a reversion to infancy, come to think of it, when I was just learning to walk on my own, except I can't be sure that this time, I'll be able to.

It's a fascinating -- and scary -- situation to be in. I don't know that I'll get better... 

One of my Zen teachers, Kaz Tanahashi, is fond of pointing out that each moment is full and complete and miraculous. 

We don't know what the next moment holds, but it, too is full and complete and a miracle. So it goes throughout one's days and life. 

Not taking anything for granted is a key to open many doors.

Or...

Not...

More on this later.

"Death by Chocolate"

"Death by chocolate. Is that the one?" I asked Ms. Ché yesterday as we munched on the chocolate cake that I baked. She laughed and nodded "yes," and said, "Mmm. Mmm. Mmm." 

Every now and then, I bake a cake for a treat. Spice cake or carrot cake are my favorites, but Ms. Ché is fondest of chocolate by far and with the ganache frosting I put on it, she's just about in heaven. Makes me happy to see her so pleased.

She's been cooped up writing quite a bit since I've been home from the hospital, but she also does all the shopping, fetching water, feeding the cats, and so on. For the first couple of weeks I was back, she also did all the cooking and washing up. I could see her aging before my eyes and I felt terrible I couldn't do more to help myself. Physical therapy at least got me back on my feet and walking -- slowly and carefully -- but it took a while to get back into a useful routine. It's so frustrating when I can't do much even though I can get around (the house).  

So far, I haven't been doing so well outside the house. Even going outside at our own place has been infrequent. I've tried things. Cleaning up in the yard, moving various things around, thinking about planting veg and flowers once "winter" is over.

"Winter." Huh. We haven't really had one. Oh, there have been some cold days and overnights, hard freezes, and more to come. But there's been very little snow, maybe an inch total so far, most of which is gone by the next day. There's been rain instead, sometimes quite a lot, flooding the streets -- temporarily -- and making much mud. For the ten winters or so we've lived here permanently, this is very unusual, all but unheard of. Warm-ish days, close to or over 60 degrees, have come many times this "winter." I've remarked to friends that this has been much more like winter in California than what we're used to in New Mexico. Global warming, right? 

Well, I don't know. I suppose it could be. It might be just a wintery fluke, too. A one off. Usually, even in drought years, we have a fair amount of snow -- one to three feet -- over the course of a winter, no rain, and temps in the lowish double or single digits with occasional below zero readings that play havoc with the pipes. Yes, one or more frozen pipes is practically guaranteed every winter. 

This year, we had one overnight at close to zero (maybe 2 degrees?) and a drain pipe froze which has happened before due to a "dig" that the plumbers did to run a proper drain from the laundry room. The refill actually exposed a prior drain line from the kitchen and every time we've tried to bury it again, critters -- skunks and others -- dig it up. So, if the temp outside is low enough, it freezes, meaning we can't drain water from the kitchen or laundry except by bucket until it unfreezes, which is usually the next day, except once, it took a week. It took that long because temps never got above freezing outside. Despite much sunshine!

We can't fix it without spending around $4,000 -- which right now is not feasible. I'm still paying medical debt from treatments and hospitalization, although it's not nearly as much as I thought it would be. I expected something in the $3,000-$7,000 range but no. It so far is less than $2,000, not counting medications which can sometimes run to several hundred a month, though that's on the decline as I cut back on the number of drugs I'm taking. (Yay). No, the major expense right now is dental treatment which seems to be climbing into the stratosphere.

I've discovered my dental insurance is practically worthless. Of course, that's what many people discover when they need extensive dental repair and treatment. There are so many limitations, especially when a lot of work has to be done, and despite really high premiums -- I think mine is nearly doubling this year -- the coverage is actually declining. If all you need is cleaning and occasional filling, I guess it's OK, but I'm in late stage extraction and dentures and stuff, rebuilding jaw bones, all sorts of stuff, all of which costs a lot and is not fully covered or even partially in some cases. It's expensive. 

So that's the priority expense right now. 

Well, that and a new furnace. Oh, that. We figure it will cost about $2,500-$3,000 to replace the old one. Not that much, really, considering what people pay these days for new furnaces. Ours died a couple of days ago. It may be repairable, but it will fail again soon enough, so we may as well get a new one.

On the other hand, maybe we won't replace it but bite the bullet and do what I've thought of for years: get a mini-split system. 

Well, an update: I asked Ms. Ché to buy a new thermostat as a test. It seemed to me the problem was likely an old and bad thermostat, though the heater is pretty old too. She found one at the lumber store the next town over, and I installed it. Nothing happened. The furnace did not go on, and I thought the thermostat wasn't the problem. The next day I was about to re-install the old one when suddenly, the fire went on. Well, how about that?

The house heated to the set temperature and then the furnace went off. So it has been ever since. It works fine. Better than ever. I don't know why the new thermostat didn't seem to work at first. But if it now works and there's no need for a new furnace yet, so be it. As Ms Ché said, ¨We're blessed, you know?"

That's a much deeper sentiment than I want to go into in this post, but yes. 

So it was time to bake some gingerbread. Then chocolate. And not take it for granted. Or anything else.

On "Know Thyself"

IN Buddhism, the question of "knowing thyself" is fundamental because there is nothing knowable literally or figuratively outside oneself. Everything we think or think we know or perceive is purely a product of "ourself". And as we explore the Buddhist conception of "self" we come to realize there is no "self" or anything we consider real. It is all fundamentally illusion or delusion that we ourselves create out of... nothing. And the Buddhist insight -- which liberated Shakyamuni Buddha -- was that "nothing" was the ground of existence, that everything we perceive or think we know and everything beyond it arises from and ultimately is "nothing."Including we ourselves and Shakyamuni Buddha and all the Buddhas before him and all the Buddhas to come. And then, if this is true, and it is true, then everything, including oneself, is a unity, All arise from the same empty source; all partake of the same empty source. All is simultaneously the same empty source and the illusion/delusion of individuality and separateness. 

This is not actually a difficult concept to grasp and it has become a routine concept in scientific exploration. For example, the deeper scientists probe atomic structure, the less one finds; there is nothing there. No substance, no energy, nothing. And from this primal nothingness arises everything, which, on the deepest level, consists of... nothing. 

At the same time we perceive things as individually separate and distinct and we experience ourselves as not the same as the other. Buddhists will say this is an illusion created in our minds, but knowing as much does not in any way change the fact that this is how we perceive, and therefore understanding our perceptions of what "is" requires that we know ourselves as deeply and thoroughly as possible.

And that, as Shakyamuni Buddha in his time knew better than anyone, is difficult, almost impossible for most people. One tries practically any strategy not to know oneself fully. One recoils from that knowledge. 

One pretends that false knowledge, illusion/delusion, is real.

This happens over and over again throughout one's life and there is no easy way past it. It's simply a fact of being alive. 

One could ask, "Does a stone know itself?" Well, how can a stone not know itself? A stone, not being alive, has no illusion or delusion of "self." No pretense. A stone does not have to explore. A stone simply and fully is, which ultimately resolves to... nothing.

A living being like ourselves must let go of illusion/delusion in order to come to knowledge of oneself, and it is very hard, for most people, impossible to do.

And yet, we study and sit, and act in the world of illusion and some of us, over time, get to know ourselves deeply and fully. This was the World Honored One's insight and enlightenment. He got to know himself, and how his "self" created the "reality" of his experience in the world of illusion. He came to understand that he had a role in that world of illusion: to teach.

And this he did through the rest of his life, and this he continues to do through the sutras and practice of Buddhism and all its variations.

One of the first teachings I received was "Don't get caught up in the commentaries," of which there are many. In fact, most of the sutras are buried in commentary. Find the gem of the sutra, it's there, and follow its guidance. Don't worry about what anyone, even the ancient sage, has to say about it. 

I've stuck with this teaching ever since, generally ignoring the commentary. It's served me well, but as I get older, I'm more interested in what the sages and others have had to say about the sutras and the koans to compare and contrast with what I have learned from them.

Some of the commentary actually gets to the nub of things.

But most seems to be intellectualizing for its own sake, obscuring the point, hiding it. As if in fear of the consequences of knowledge.

For there are consequences.

The only knowledge one can truly gain is self-knowledge. And self-knowledge requires understanding our delusions of "self." Who we think we "are" is not who we are. The understanding is that we create an image of "self" that is not real. And our created image can be so far from what we truly are that there is little or nothing (ah, that word again!) that connects them.

Let go.

Oh, it takes time, so much time. Let it. Most of us won't have so much time, but don't fret. Our singular lives are not all there is. Our lives connect to all other lives, and if we have descendants, the connections are direct,  and time is ultimately infinite. So there is time enough to learn enough.

It just may not be your singular self that does it!

Self-knowledge often comes in a series of "moments." Satori in the Japanese terminology, "sudden enlightenment." Seeing ourselves momentarily from Outside ourselves. Sometimes seeing what others see but more often seeing more deeply into our own self, recognizing what others may or may not see.

So it goes. It takes as long as it does. It's unlikely that most of us will complete the task in a lifetime. 

Frustrating, yes?

Certainly. 

Yet we continue on.

In the Realm of the Planets

I haven't forgotten my long-time interest in the Planets and all things exploratory among them. I haven't followed as closely as I once did. in part because the field and the probes seem to have fossilized (maybe like I have...?) over the years, and the explorations seem to be off point and repetitive.

I could use what happened after the Viking landers (in 1976!) as an example. The Vikings couldn't move and could only explore what their cameras could see and their arms could reach. Nevertheless they did extraordinary explorations as the first landers on Mars and arguably they found evidence of active life on Mars as well as many discoveries about the surface and atmosphere of the Red Planet that overturned or could have overturned many of the prior conclusions of the planetary science community.

But what happened? There was no follow up, especially no follow up to the possible discovery of life on Mars, and no follow up to the conclusion that there was instead "exotic chemistry" that mimicked life signals. Nope. Nothing. Not for decades. And only recently have Mars landers and rovers begun to check up on some of the findings of the Vikings (such as potential surface ice/water sources, both historical and current) so very long ago.

Probe after probe was sent to Mars, but none of them actually tested for the supposed "superoxides" that were supposedly sterilizing the Martian surface, one of the conclusions derived from Viking experiments and one that was taught as fact for decades. None of the probes sent post-Vikings (until very recently) tested for the presence/absence of carbon compounds at the surface -- their absence being required for the Viking results conclusions. On and on. No follow up. Extraordinary conclusions with a paucity of evidence, and nothing done in the decades to follow to sustain or refute (or something in between) these conclusions.

Why? 

Much the same -- without the issue of is there/isn't there Life -- took place with regard to all the planetary explorations that took place between the 1970s and the 2000s. WTF? Had the whole field fossilized into a routine of dismissing clear (or murky!) evidence that contradicted or even expanded on expectations? I don't know. 

Some time back I intervened in a controversy between Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy and a young man who had had an insight about how the Solar System actually rotates and makes its way through the Galaxy and had made an animation of it which had become a YouTube sensation. It was a lovely illustration and more accurately showed solar and planetary motions than the standard versions we're all taught. 

Phil went batshit over it and excoriated the young man for his Errors, and worse for not belonging to the Planetary Science Community and for daring to come up with something so... beautiful... without credentials, without approval, and without consulting his betters. Even worse, according to Phil, the young man had come to his insight after the reading false and unacceptable planetary "science" of an East Indian mystic whose bullshit theories were dangerous to any serious examination of the facts.

I felt I had to intervene. Phil's attack was simply wrong. Ethically, morally, and scientifically. 

The young man had done something no one in the planetary science field had publicly tried in all the history of the field. He had illustrated in a very compelling way what he could of the actual movements of the Solar System through the Galaxy would look like to an observer. And it was beautiful. Compelling. There were errors, yes, in his initial illustration and animation, but they weren't fatal, and they could be corrected fairly easily. 

The claim was made that "science" had long known what the actual movements of the planets and the Solar System looked like from outside the system, and that scientific papers were published from time to time to describe it. Therefore, it was "known" widely -- which was simply false. 

No, what "science" had done was utilize a several hundred year old illustration of the Solar System -- that I called the "dinner plate model" -- to show and explain planetary movements and the Solar System's place in the Galaxy which was simply,,, wrong. I said so. Over and over again.

The young man, for his part, corrected his animation to make it more accurate and compelling and the corrected version was even more popular which seemed to drive the field nuts.

Someone, I forget who, but someone with credentials attempted to animate some version that derived from a published paper and to say the least, it was an effort, more than the field had bothered with in hundreds of years, but it was weak. Close enough, though. 

The controversy over an Outsider doing such a thing continued for several years. Eventually, an actual planetary scientist got involved and agreed to work with the young man to both educate him in the field and help him create even better illustrations and animations. That was nice, but this is what happened: the young man's work to animate and illustrate the exquisite movements of the planetary bodies and the Solar System through space literally stopped. I've heard from him but haven't seen anything since the corrected animation he did as a follow up to the criticisms he was slammed with. Becoming part of the scientific community -- or at least its periphery -- effectively shut him up.

Since that time, quite a few years ago now, I've seen both progress and reversion in the field. Lay people are now routinely included in the science to do all kinds of observational and illustrative efforts that more widely disseminate the exploratory work of the field. Some of it is accepted by the field as good science, too. I remember Greg Orme's observations of "spiders" on Mars that he worked for years finding and attempting to explain only to be dismissed or ignored until... suddenly... the field not only accepted his observations but praised him for his discoveries. 

In my own modest way, I presented evidence of geysers on Mars that was essentially rejected as all but impossible for decades until -- suddenly again -- they became standard scientific knowledge. Wow. How did that happen?

It was complicated. The field is largely the product of Big Men whose conclusions -- and speculations, sometimes -- become standard models. Goes back to Copernicus. Their errors continue on indefinitely. Like the bizarre conception that the outer planets are "Ice Giants." I'm not going to go into the whole Ice controversy and enforced belief, but it is a very old way of looking at the planets in the outer Solar System, it's wrong, grossly so, and the field knows it but keeps repeating it no matter. It's one of the many self-contradictory things the field does largely because of the continuing influence of and deference to the Big Men of the past.

But in recent years, the field has reached out to lay observers and offered them a role to play within the field  and has actually included their findings and illustrations in the process of planetary science. Years ago, that would never happen, as the field was literally a closed society that had no contact with or respect for the efforts of lay observers to understand and appreciate the wonders of the Universe.

That has changed somewhat and I think it is a good thing worthy of praise. But I no longer spend the kind of time and effort I once did as a lay observer of planetary (particularly Mars) discoveries. That time passed in part because of other discoveries that made Mars quite a difficult and likely impossible planet for human colonization and ultimately due to my questioning of the whole "colonization" enterprise. 

Is this something we should contemplate and do? Is there really a compulsion to colonize outside the Earth? And so on. 

Leave Mars be.

But I still have an interest. Oh my yes. It's just that the upshot has... changed.

🙏

Survival

Ms Ché and I are well into our seventies. Neither of us really thought we'd be around this long, especially given our wild youth. But her mother lived to be 89, and she would have lived longer if she'd been diagnosed and treated correctly for a couple of serious ailments that somehow the doctors missed -- over and over. Makes you wonder, I guess... Her father died when he was 84, I believe, in a board and care home where he was not well looked-after, but that's how that goes, isn't it? There are so many horror stories of what happens to the elderly in our society. I think he was an early victim of the System. Nevertheless, after his stroke, he held on for quite a while despite the deplorable conditions of the care home. 

I'm now and then in cahoots with the Winter Practice sangha, a Buddhist practice community of several hundred participants around the world who come together mostly online to share experience and insight and just be together for a period of sitting and study. Many -- most by far -- of the participants are elderly women, some of whom are not in the best of health, some bed-bound, a few alone. Maybe more than a few. And my heart goes out to them. They know how easy it is for things to fall to pieces when your health gives out and you're by yourself and you can't take care of any more than the simplest of things. You know how easy it is for small failings to pile up and multiply like locusts and to bury you in their debris. This is how most of the elderly single women on the "Hoarders" TV program wind up in that condition. Their health goes haywire and they can't physically or sometimes mentally take care of their residence anymore. The debris of living piles up and they can't get rid of it. They don't have the kind of help they need -- and sometimes they reject it if offered -- and eventually they give up trying. There's no point, right?

No point. Well, no, there is "no point," but that doesn't mean that your life or mine has no meaning, usefulness, or direction. You may take a Bodhisattva Vow and your life becomes dedicated to service.That can take many forms whether publicly and prominently or on a modest personal level. Many of the elders in the sangha have lived a Bodhisattva life but now near the end of it, they are set adrift. So many things that they want to do and feel they need to do both for themselves and for others they can't do without help or at all, and they're left feeling they've failed. A feeling that compounds. So the sangha serves to relieve some of that feeling, for in community, we're not alone. 

But still, it must be tough for those who can't get around very well, or in some cases at all. Doing takes mobility. Other problems include chronic pain. Our practice and training says "Lean into the pain." Welcome it, even learn to enjoy it., Well, maybe that's too strong a term, but the upshot is to use the power of your mind to overcome the pain or at least to control it. This works for some people, not for everyone. Pain manifests differently in different people and it may be controlled or overcome by different means depending on the individual. I've had to deal with so much pain over the years. "Making it go away" by mind power alone doesn't work for me, but it may work for others. Certainly worth giving it a try.

What surprises both Ms Ché and me about still being around at our now-advanced age is that we don't feel "old" -- except when physical limitations intervene, and we can't do what we used to or think we should be able to. Physically our age has begun to catch up with us. There are times when we just can't "do." And it's frustrating. 

For me of course, I was caught unaware by the growing infection in my spine, and I was initially undiagnosed and misdiagnosed when I sought medical care. So the infection had at least another month to develop. 

For a time in the hospital, I couldn't sit up, stand or walk. Pain was so great I was in agony. I lost control of my bowels and bladder. I was a wreck. Useless, right? Well, no. For half the time I was hospitalized, I had a roommate whose condition was considerably worse than mine. He'd had surgery for a blown-out knee, and something had clearly not gone right. He was in extreme pain, could not stand or walk, and not even morphine made his condition tolerable. I had my own problems, but I offered what I could -- mainly friendly listening and modest advice -- to help him feel a little better. Encourage him not to give up. Give him some psychological tools to cope with the pain if not overcome it. And so on. I don't feel I did much, but he sure thought so.

Ms Ché visited every day and she did what she could, too. Between us, we were tag-teaming help for Mike, letting him know we were there and cared and would help.

Bodhisattvas? Sure, why not? It was little enough, but it was something. When called, we don't say no.

I'm so glad to be home, but since I've been home, it's been quite a struggle. A month of physical therapy got me up off my back and moving, but once I finished the 12 week antibiotic treatment pain returned, initially just like the pain I felt prior to being correctly diagnosed and hospitalized. Sometimes the pain has been severe. I need to adjust my meds, but from experimenting, I've been able to mostly control the pain, but the downside is I have very limited mobility because of the numbness in my left leg and foot. As Ms Ché pointed out yesterday, "You can barely get around in the house; you're not going out on your own." I was planning on going to the grocery store to save her a trip, and she said "no." And she went on her own so cheerfully!

We've come this far. There's no telling when our time will be up, and it's really not an issue. We carry on. 

Survival is a strange thing. That we're still around is allowing us time for more service. As little as it might be.

Recovery

 I completed a 12 week course of antibiotic treatment for osteomyelitis in early December and thought that with enough physical therapy, I'd be more or less OK, at least well enough to get around and do most of my tasks,

Well, it hasn't worked out that way. Not quite. I've had some serious problems with pain. I cannot get around very well, both because of pain and a surprising amount of numbness in my left leg and foot. I limp. I drag my left foot when I walk, and I often have little idea where it is in space. I'm very unsteady on my feet and have nearly fallen many times. I have actually fallen twice since returning home from the hospital, both times acquiring some interesting bruises and fierce pains in one or both knees. 

Yesterday I got a call to set up an assessment appointment with a neurosurgeon. I am pretty well convinced that the problems I continue to have are due to nerve damage from the infection but I don't know whether there is any reasonable solution. We'll see.

And then there are dental issues. But that's for another time and place.

"What a drag it is getting older..."

Is A Fascist Future Inevitable?

Many of us have been losing hope for years that the slouch toward a Fascist future can be reversed or delayed. The West, as it were, has Fascism baked in in one form or another, and no amount of rebellion or resistance is enough to overcome it. We are on the path of descent and there's no way back.

And it may be true.

With the advent of Trump in the White House -- an existential mistake in my view -- we got a taste of what our Fascist future might look and feel like. Many of his defenders were ostensibly "progressive," but we found that their "progressivism" was limited to opposition to various individuals, personalities, and policies that were advocated, featured or implemented by The Government. There was and is no coherent ideology among these "progressives" except opposition a thing, person, or policy largely for the sake of opposition.

Trump upset a few apple carts, broke a few rice bowls, and introduced constant chaos into The System, and as such he was worthy of support and defense by people who should have known better -- and I believe did. But more important to them was shaking up The System, disrupting routines, and skewering ("pwning") institutional complacency.

Trump's behavior was one thing, but his intent was clearly to rule as an authoritarian, indeed Fascist, dictator, no less so than Nixon, and Bush I & II. They set the standard. Trump was too mentally deficient and chaotic to follow through very well, but he sure tried. And a good deal of what he set out to do is still in place, as are many of the people he put in office.

Our problem -- if we oppose Fascism -- is not so much Trump or his chaos as it is the sponsors who see their advantage in fostering this sort of thing. Their primary advantage is in keeping the masses (to the extent they are acknowledged at all) diverted and entertained. 

In other words, making it all but impossible for there to be an uprising against the corporate-fascist ruling clique, a ruling clique that intends to endure no matter which political party is ostensibly in power. Trump was great at keeping the hoi polloi outraged and entertained. So long as they were, they didn't have time or energy to do anything about their lot in life, and as it happened, in death as the COVID pandemic easily managed to eliminate something over a million "useless eaters" in the United States and God knows how many globally. That pandemic is ongoing, though the death rates have (temporarily?) declined. Other illnesses and wide-spread poverty exacerbate the problems of the masses.

Until recently, I was almost always optimistic about the future and about building a better future mostly via community. The individualism that was so heavily promoted by the libertarian right was in my view a passing phase not likely to outlast the numerous crises that seemed to be accumulating. It was only through community, I believed, that we as a society would be able to get through what was coming.

Well, I was wrong. 

The breaking point was the lawless interference of the Supreme Court in the presidential election of 2000. While I saw it then as a deeply erroneous ruling, almost worse was the acceptance of this monumental error by the Democratic Party and the electeds, including Al Gore who presided in the Senate over his own loss of the presidency. The only ones who objected were the Congressional Black Caucus. And they were promptly silenced -- by Al Gore. 

Something was very wrong at the very top of the governmental structure. It would lead -- inevitably? -- to the catastrophes of September 11, 2001, and the perpetual wars in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. All of a piece.

Yet I thought and believed that the American People, indeed the people of good will throughout the world, would be able to overcome the worst aspects of the ruling clique that included both political parties and seemed to be spreading internationally. 

The War Party seemed to be universal.

After a certain point there was no more Peace party. Code Pink seemed to be the only outspoken party for Peace in the United States and often it seemed its voice was faltering.

The horrors perpetrated by our rulers were atrocious and obvious, yet nothing was done. Obama was seen as the redemptive counterpoint to all that had been going wrong, particularly the economic meltdown of 2008, and yet he turned out to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

The fundamental problem was our reliance on a singular figure -- the President in the case of the United States -- to solve the problems that just kept building up. The President can't do it, and not only that, it's not appropriate to expect him (or her) to.

It takes a community, a community of communities, the society as a whole, to do it, and the society of 2000 and later was not capable. All the energy was going into fragmentation of society rather than cohesion. And it seemed to me that the internet and later social media was part of the problem.

We are now so far down that path, the only way back toward community is the fascist path.

 Yes, fascism is a rightist "community" strengthening ideology. There is nothing equivalent on the left any more. Socialism and communism once played that role, but no longer. 

There are a few leftish religious outfits that could-- maybe-- be the kind of counters to the slouch toward fascism that could slow or halt the current trends, but I don't see any of them becoming strong enough.

My former optimism for the future is pretty much gone.

The Trump experiment was bad, but it wasn't definitive or final. We'll face the elements of fascism again. 

And again and again until it becomes the default social organization for much of the West.

We've been on that path -- whether we want to be or not -- for a long time, and there may be no way back,

Is it inevitable? What is the upshot? I don't have an answer. 

We'll just have to see, won't we?

 

A Note or Two on The Election

I confess I did not vote this time around. Went to the MVD to get a handicapped parking permit -- finally; it's taken a month to do the paperwork -- and then across the street to the polling place at the community center. Well, I didn't see a line out the building, but once we got inside, it was packed and there was a long line snaking through the lobby. Man came in after we got in and said it was worse than when he tried to vote earlier. Election worker came out and said there would be a delay; they only had four booths, and there were so many in line, it would be a while... the line had stopped moving. I had to sit down on my walker -- as did a few other elders -- and so we waited.

Man who came in after me left. Others kept coming and the line didn't move. After a while, election worker came out and said that the lines were much shorter at other polling places, one about seven miles away, another about 20 miles.Some left to go to these other polling places. Most stayed and others arrived. 

After another 20 minutes or so with no movement in the line -- except it kept getting longer -- that was it. I said let's go. Not gonna vote this time.

I voted absentee last election, but didn't apply for an absentee ballot this time. Other things took priority. This is a heavily Republican county. I usually vote Democrat, but sometimes vote for alternative candidates if there are any on the ballot, and I'm still getting to know local candidates and will vote for Republicans if they're sane and competent. So far, that's been OK. 

This time around, the county results were interesting. They're usually about 70/30 Republican, but this time the results were closer to 74/22 with 4% going to the alternative candidate for governor, a Navajo woman who was running as an independent though she said she's Republican. I thought she'd take votes from the Republican candidate, but she didn't in this county. Nope. She took Democratic votes instead. Indeed, Republicans out performed their usual votes. Hmm. Makes me wonder. Is this county getting more Republican? Are Dems moving out? Possible I guess. I see people moving in all the time. Don't see people moving out.

One thing that bothers me. Trumpists have adopted displays of the US flag as their emblem after their displays of the Stars and Bars didn't go over so well. I don't consider the Trumpists patriotic. And their display of the flag is nothing if not hypocritical. That aside, the problem is that there is no counter to it. Nothing comparable on the so-called "left" that says "I'm a Patriot."

Patriotism exclusivity by one political faction is dangerous for it can easily lead to outrages like we have seen in our own history (genocide, lynchings, various "scares") and to horrors like the Nazi Holocaust during the mid 20th Century -- and has happened in other countries much closer to our own time.

What do we do about it? So far, nothing. It's as if this fragmentation, fracturing, is being allowed -- required? -- to happen as prelude to a "reset" or catastrophic failure of society.

Why? To whose benefit? We all need to think about these things, and I don't see much thought being applied to our broken political and institutional processes. I don't know where it leads in the end, but right now, it's not looking good.

Rohatsu 2022 -- The Day of the Buddha's Awakening

Kamakura Daibutsu from Wikimedia Commons

So I'll try to join a Rohatsu sesshin from December 1 through December 8 as a celebration of Shakyamuni's "awakening"under the Bodhi Tree oh so long ago. 

Our text for this sesshin is a translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra called "The Flower Ornament Scripture" that attempts to describe the Buddha's enlightenment. Oh well, good luck with that!

The initial descriptions actually parallel something I experienced -- was it Enlightenment? I don't know -- many years ago, nigh on fifty years back, I think. I may have mentioned it somewhere in these blog pages. I was sitting zazen in my apartment in San Francisco. Something happened. A Void opened up as it were and I was no longer a  sitter in a room in an apartment on Geary. I was no longer "I" but All. The Void was the ground of Being. Which encompassed Everything. The Void was not perception, could not be perceived, was not part of the Material World but spontaneously gave rise to it as well as many other Material Worlds simultaneously. The Void was Nothing -- No Thing -- but gave rise to Everything. All Things and much more besides.

Understanding, was this the Awakening that Buddhists yearn for? Oh, I don't know. No one can actually say, for when the Awakening comes, there are no words; it just Is. 

So this happened while I was sitting zazen in a semi-dark room in my apartment on Geary in San Francisco some fifty or so odd years ago -- I don't remember the year -- and when I ended the sit, my perceptions had changed in ways I had never encountered before. The semi-darkened room appeared to be glowing with crystalline light of many colors, not the drab gray I knew it to be. The main room to the apartment had a view to the garden behind the building where a jungle of plants and flowers flourished. I briefly glanced at the garden -- now glowing with an inner light as well --  as I passed by on the way to go outside.

As I went through the lobby, every step and wall and decoration including the wrought iron gate to the old building I lived in glowed with auras of many colors, and the sky outside was a color I'd never seen before, and the color changed as I walked down Geary toward Union Square a few blocks away. Every thing and every person on my way had multi-colored auras. 

I won't describe the whole experience because when I have tried to do so in the past, I've been accused of either "being on drugs" -- I wasn't and did not use drugs in those days (nor do I now) -- or reporting a dream, not something that actually happened.

"Not something that actually happened..." Well, wait. What does "actually happened" really mean?

What I experienced was an altered perception that grew out of Non-Perception, the Void as it were, and I saw it as a means to recognize the Illusion (or Delusion) of what our Minds tell us is Reality.

What we see and think we know in the Material World is all Illusion, a construct, we're told, of the Mind. And it has no real existence at all. 

Our thoughts and feelings and perceptions are all Mind-created, not Reality. By experiencing an altered perception I was able if only for a moment to recognize the Ground Truth both of the Mind and of the spontaneous arising from Nothing. 

And so it was. Is this what the Buddha experienced after sitting under the Bodhi Tree? I don't know, but it could be. Is it what the Avatamsaka Sutra is attempting to describe? I can't say for certain, but sure, why not?

Sparkling jewels figure heavily in the Sutra; fragrant flowers, multicolored silks, everything and more that an East Indian adept might treasure; all were revealed and made manifest after Enlightenment. Well, yes. Of course! But is that what Enlightenment is? Of course not!

No, I see it as a metaphor -- a long and beautiful metaphor -- for something ineffable that cannot be described in words written or spoken. Beyond the jewels and silks and fragrant flowers, beyond the multitude of universes which figure as prominently, there is... No Thing. Or...? What? No, the question is wrong. 

One of the principal tenets of Buddhism is that we are already Awakened. We are already Enlightened. It is our natural state of being. We don't have to go on a quest to find it -- as the Buddha did. We don't have to yearn for it. We already have it; we are already there. 

What we -- usually -- lack is recognition of the fact. Gaining recognition may take enormous effort and lead to many wrong turns along the way, or it may come in an instant with no effort at all. We all follow different paths. But once we gain the recognition, we're essentially unified on the same path, and in Zen and Mahayana Buddhism in general, it's a Bodhisattva path, then we're all chopping wood and carrying water together. Even as we go our own ways.

The translation I have of the Avatamsaka Sutra is over 1,600 pages long. Now that's absurd. 1100 pages is the Sutra itself, the rest is commentary.  

Buddhists love to speculate on Meaning and write commentary on the Sutras. Thus to possess and explain that which cannot be possessed or explained. 

Of course I'm doing it myself!

So Rohatsu is coming up shortly. I already have some scheduled events during that week, including doctors' appointments and possibly appearing at the trial of the man who assaulted me a year ago in July. I won't have any teeth, either, as all are scheduled to be pulled next week, and nothing is to replace them until January.

What fun. 

Since the Rohatsu is online, though, it will be possible to catch up. I suppose.

----------------------------------------------------------

Koan:

What did the Buddha perceive as he Awakened under the Bodhi Tree?

 

Time for an Update

 

I'm getting better! I think I'll go for a walk!

Welp, It's a little hard to describe what my recovery has been like. I am doing better. I can walk, usually without the assistance of a cane or a walker, but I'm pretty unsteady on my feet and weak on my right side. I've been doing physical therapy exercises, but it will be weeks/months before I get my strength back. Oh well!

Meanwhile, I'm having dental work done that will go into next year -- and cost me more out of pocket than hospitalization. This is kind of criminal of our health care System and I know it affects a lot of people and causes a lot of misery. We have dental insurance, too. As do many people. But the out of pocket costs for dental care with insurance can often be astronomical.

I checked the bill for the rehab hospital stay (10 days) and was surprised. It was over $92,000. All of it was paid by insurance. Wow. The initial hospitalization (13 days) was about $52,000 of which I owe about $1,500. Not too bad. There will be some follow up bills, maybe another $1,000 for ambulances and so on. But the dental work -- with what is considered "good" insurance -- will cost me almost $8,000 out of pocket. I can just about handle that, but what of people who can't? It's crazy.

Overall, I think I'm lucky in many ways and a fool in many ways. I neglect my health and dental care all the time, and yet so far I've been able to get through -- with a lot of help, including that of my wife for whom there is no comparison. It's a learning experience, an opportunity, here in my dottage, to still come to realization, "enlightenment" and greater compassion for those not so lucky -- or foolish as the case may be. 

Yes, I am getting better. But oh my goodness, this has been the toughest one yet. 

The Hospital 3

 So let's explore a little bit, okay? A tale to tell...

I started noticing back problems around the first week of July and went to the ER the first time on July 18 where I was treated primarily for constipation as I hadn't (at that time) had a bowel movement for 11 days. Too much information? Well, hang on, there's more. I listed lower back pain as part of the problem that brought me to the ER and I got an injection of some pain killer (torodol I think) that took care of it right away. But there was no effort to find out what was causing the back pain. Went home, cleared my bowel, got and got over Covid, continued to have back pain, went on about my business as best I could.

Come August, the pain was getting much worse and lasting much longer. I was self medicating with Tylenol and Motrin, each of which sort of worked some of the time and together proved to be a potent combination that pretty much utterly failed. I was on the phone periodically with advice nurses that didn't know what to do, and eventually called up for an appointment with my PCP which was essentially futile as his schedule was booked for weeks. I asked for someone sooner, and got someone via video visit much to my surprise, someone who prescribed what he said were the strongest non-narcotic pain killers he could. Well, much like Tylenol and Motrin, they sometimes worked but often didn't and I recognized that my condition was deteriorating rapidly. What to do?

Video doc said "go to the ER, stat." I hesitated, one because of cost, two because I was once again constipated -- this time for weeks -- and what if they only looked at that? Again?

Go anyway. So after waiting three more days, I called an ambulance as I couldn't sit in a car and I couldn't drive. Went to the nearest ER some 40 miles away where I've had bad experiences in the past. 

I was taken right to an exam room and seen by an NP (I think) within maybe 45 minutes. For some reason, he suspected something given the pain I was having and the duration of my condition (then for a month and a half and getting worse the whole time.) He sent me for an MRI and maybe an hour after the procedure, he came back with a diagnosis: osteomyelitis and discitis needing immediate hospitalization and treatment. There were more tests run in the ER, and then toward evening I was trundled by ambulance to the main hospital downtown (five miles or so) and put in a room on the 4th floor that resembled a nice hotel's "jr suite." It was large, private, quiet, had a comfortable seating area, a large bathroom, but sadly no view as the window looked onto an inner court that I couldn't see.

I was for all intents and purposes completely bedridden. I was given pain killers, laxatives, antibiotics, and who knows what other medications; I was taken for bone biopsies, xrays and other tests, and just before I was discharged from that hospital (after 13 or 14 days) a picc line was installed to make the IV medication at my new hospital easier to administer.

I was being transferred to a rehabilitation hospital nearby where I would continue to undergo treatment for osteomyelitis and discitis but also be subject to physical therapy and occupational therapy so I would be able to get around well enough to go home, likely in 10 days.

A non-emergency transport got me the few hundred yards to the rehab facility where I was put in a double room, not as nice, not as large and with less view than at the first hospital, but adequate for the needs of the moment. For the first few days, I didn't have a room mate.

Right away, the rigors of therapy began. They called it "evaluation."

I was very weak but very willing, and soon enough was at least partially ambulatory, though only with a walker. I was taken for exercise almost every day, usually twice a day, and gradually became able to get around though not without struggle and not without pain. In fact, despite the opiod pain medications, the pain was sometimes so bad I had to stop. The other issue was that my blood pressure would fall dangerously low during or just following exercise. It was a mystery and remains one, though medications and dehydration were/are the suspected culprits.

Many liters of normal saline were administered. I was admonished to drink more water. Still my BP would fluctuate wildly and sometimes reach dangerously low levels. Then it stabilized lower than my normal but not severely so. As long as it was relatively stable, it was considered good enough.

As it got closer to my discharge date, my progress seemed insufficient to release me. I could sit up, stand, walk, move my limbs with and without weights, could do simple tasks like getting in and out of a car, I could wash myself, dress myself, and so on, but I lacked stamina, and I frequently needed assistance. And if I went home, there was a question of how I would receive IV antibiotic treatments as it was suspected that we couldn't get a home health aide to come out to our place in the country.

Sure enough, that proved to be the case. For several days it wasn't clear whether I would be able to go home or would have to go to a skilled nursing facility. I continued working toward going home though, and had faith that the antibiotic problem would be resolved. It was. Ms. Ché would be trained to do it at home. 

Through all of this, I was boosted, cared for, helped, encouraged, "tortured," and inspired by an amazing staff wherever I was being treated, at both hospitals and the ER as well as another facility where I will have to go once a week to pick up IV supplies, have blood tests run, meet with the doctor, and be evaluated for progress.

I can't thank them enough. 

I'm still not well. Far from it. But bit by bit... getting there. Now to find something to eat...!

The Hospital 2

Just got home from three weeks+ in two hospitals being treated for osteomyelitis and discitis. I know there is a lot of chatter on the internet that heath care in the United States, especially since the advent of Covid 19, is a tragic joke. For some people, I know it is. I have seen or experienced some of the worst aspects of the industry -- shameful, tragic, and I'd go so far as to suggest evil. Something you can hardly imagine if you weren't witness.

And yet... welp, here I am after three weeks plus in two different hospitals being treated for serious bone infection and disc ruin in my lower spine, pain running wild, bedridden so long I could barely stand or walk when I was transferred to rehab, and truly I cannot thank the doctors and staffs at the ER and both hospitals enough for their kind and generous care, their quick admission to astonishingly nice room at the first hospital (quiet, too 😴) and extraordinary care at the second rehab hospital that got me back on my feet and able to get around, pain controlled, and set up to go home where antibiotic treatment continues with the lovely and talented Ms. Ché will be doing IV push daily. There's a lot more to the story, but I'm still processing it all. This experience is a counter to almost every single hospital experience I've had as a patient or advocate my whole life long. And counter, too, to so many horrid experiences we hear about so often. How? 

Astonishing.

The Hospital

I've been hospitalized since August 28 with a serious bone infection affecting my spine and hips. I've been essentially bedridden the entire time, although I can get up and out of bed for short periods with help. It's not so much getting up and about that's the problem as that my blood pressure plunges when I get up or do any exercise. Sometimes it's so low I practically pass out and would if I weren't able to lie down in bed promptly -- which so far, I've always been able to do.

I spent about a month at home attempting to wrangle with whatever was going on, but my condition kept worsening and it couldn't be accurately diagnosed without proper tests which could only be done at the hospital or ER. So finally I called an ambulance and made the 40 mile journey to the nearest ER where alarms started ringing right away. Something was wrong, bad wrong, and after the test results started coming in, they thought they knew what it was. An infection, possibly cancer, that would require extended treatment.

So, here I am, waiting for more tests scheduled for tomorrow, and eager to get out and be whole again. 

What a drag it is getting old.

Ah But That's Not The End of the Story

After lavishing praise on the staff at the ER, I got home only to wake up the next day with symptoms of Covid. I'd been exposed, I knew, to at least four people who announced they were positive. But there may have been more. 

Symptom # 1 was that very nasty taste in my mouth. It isn't a loss of taste, it's a constant taste of -- inside of litter box?, ashes soaked in bleach?, burnt straw?, Oh I don't know. Whatever it is, it's terrible, and it's constant. 

The next day, I started having other symptoms. Fever, cough, runny nose, dizzy, pains, sore throat. Huh. I got out one of the home tests and screwed it up. I did another one. Positive. Then I started calling about what to do. Not easy to find out, despite the fact that I'd been told months ago to call right away to get immediate treatment if  I tested positive. It was after hours so none of the nurses and such I talked to knew what to do or who I should get in touch with to get treatment, and one steered me in a completely wrong direction. Finally, though, one recognized that there was probably an on-call physician in rheumatology who could help. Why didn't I try. So I did, and behold, within an hour, I had a prescription for Paxlovid, the anti-viral treatment of choice. Picked it up an hour later. Took it for five days, and it cleared most of the symptoms. But... Ms Che got it, and we went through the whole routine again with her provider.

Ten days on, I tested negative, she still has vague positive tests, and her provider says she may have them for months. As long as she has no new symptoms she's good to go.

Of course this happened because I went to the Urgent Care and ER where I was exposed, as was everyone else, including staff. It's insane. Or rather deliberate.

It's why I tried to stay out of the hospital for as long as possible. 

But the time came and there you are. It eventually will get everyone.

A Day and A Night in the ER

 Welp, it's happened again. After waiting longer than I should have, I called the advice nurse about my increasingly uncomfortable condition. She said I needed to be "seen" within the next four hours; I should go to Urgent Care or the ER. Mkay? The nearest Urgent Care run by my HMO was 47 miles away. There is a Primary Care run by another outfit in my little town, and as it happens they take my insurance, so I've been able to go there for immediate care, but not this time. They wouldn't be able to see me for at least 24 hours. Low on staff, high on patients. Mkay? 

So the choice was the Urgent Care way out there. They could see me in a couple of hours.

I got there and was informed they were running behind, but they'd get to me as quickly as they could. It was only about an hour later (c. Noon) when I was called in to the examining room. BP and temp were OK; I was alert, coherent, ambulatory -- with some difficulty. Described symptoms and problems.

"Dude, you need to go to the ER, stat."

Oh fuck. I hate the ER. Nothing but turmoil, stress and strain, lack of care, waiting and waiting and waiting while the place fills up with more and more suffering, disease, madness and pain. What is the point. 

The nearest ER as it happened was another 15 miles or so away, and the Urgent Care said they would call over and let them know I was coming, and they said it would probably be less of a wait there because they would probably have fewer patients.

Mkay. We get to this ER, and truth was there were hardly any patients in the waiting room. Five, maybe six. Most had already been triaged. Some had been seen and were waiting for test results.

It was calm. Very little obvious suffering. Quite a few people came in while I was waiting for triage (c. 30 min). Nearly all were members of one family there to see their relative who was being treated inside. They were allowed in two by two. 

Triage was straightforward, and I was told to wait in the lobby. They'd see me inside as soon as they could. 

More patients came in while I waited. More visitors came to see the one special patient as well as other patients in treatment. Some of those who arrived were in really bad shape. Extreme pain, unable to walk, one couldn't even sit and her wheelchair ride was torture for her. Some appeared to be having strokes or heart attacks. 

And believe it or not, all of those I saw in serious distress were treated promptly and compassionately by the very young staff, none were left to linger unattended. Some were treated directly in the lobby, others were wheeled or ushered into the ER treatment areas, but none were neglected.

This was astonishing. I have never been in an ER where staff did not neglect the patients, ignored their suffering, even disparaged those who sought treatment. I have never been in an ER where prompt treatment of severe conditions was the rule. I have been in ERs where staff had no interest in or consideration of patients waiting, and where patients died while waiting without any care at all. The cynicism and contempt for patients in some ERs I've been in has been off the charts, and it's happened so often, in so many different ERs in California and New Mexico, I took it for granted as just the culture of these places. It's outrageous, but there you are.

This was an entirely different situation altogether. I didn't need immediate treatment, though I would have appreciated the pain medication I eventually received had it been administered while I waited. I got an xray within an hour of arrival, but had to wait to be "seen." My distress was minimal compared to some of the patients who sought care, and everyone who needed immediate care received it compassionately. Those of us who had to wait mostly did so with equanimity; so many others were in much worse shape than we were.

After about 5 hours waiting in the lobby, I was called in to the treatment area and assigned a room where I was introduced to the nurse and CNP who would be treating me. Both were kind and positive. As it turned out, the nursing staff would have a shift change in an hour, but the CNP stayed with me throughout. 

Treatment would take just about 8 hours.  During that time, I received a CT scan, pain medication, Ringer's lactate, anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory medication, and two different treatments for the condition I was there for. Neither was fully effective while I was there, but I was discharged with a prescription for another medication to take if the ER treatments didn't work within the next 6 hours or so.

When I read the after visit summary, I noticed that the CNP had missed a finding on the CT scan -- I had a hernia -- which which was probably a contributory or precipitating cause of the problems that sent me to the ER. Oh. I suspected the hernia, and I pointed out the odd swelling and pain in my groin, but it was not recognized by me or anyone else for what it was at the time. The CNP said it was "gas". And I saw on the CT scan report that there was considerable build up of "gas." But missing a hernia with obvious symptoms (I realized later) was odd. 

The treatments that were administered in the ER did work effectively the next day at home, so that part of the problem was taken care of, thankfully. The hernia has not been addressed yet, though the swelling and pain are not as severe.

It seems to me, I've had this condition before -- a hernia, that is -- and after several weeks, it self-repaired. We'll see. It's not fun, but it's bearable. Primarily it limits my movement. 

What I can say about the overall experience in the ER this time is that it was worlds better than any ER I've been in (for myself or on behalf of others). Even though part of my problem was missed by the staff, or perhaps not missed but dismissed as not that important, I was treated with consideration and respect, was given needed medications and treatment, was tested and imaged to a fare-thee-well, and discharged with explicit instructions and medication prescriptions with orders to return promptly to the ER if none of it worked.

Well, it did work, and I'm grateful.

Now to deal with the hernia... 🤪

Another Memory Exercise. Some Things About This House

There are lots more memory aids now than once there were. It's easier to remember but also easier to get confused. One of my memory aids for the house in the San Gabriel Valley I've posted about several times is Google Street View. It's become something of a historical record because it records the appearance of the house and neighborhood over time, in this case from 2008 to 2022. A major change -- to me -- took place after 2011. 

This is a screenshot of my house and the house next door (where the Vegas lived when I lived in the neighborhood) taken in October 2011:

 

Several things: The Vegas' house is light brown, which it was when I lived in the neighborhood. The house where I lived is painted yellow -- which it wasn't when I lived there. But it was yellow the last time I saw it in person in 1969. When I lived there, the house was painted white with dark green (Hunter Green) trim. 

There's a heavily cracked blacktop asphalt driveway, the only one still remaining in the neighborhood. That was put down some weeks or months after we moved in in 1954. All the driveways in the neighborhood were blacktop initially. Before the driveway was installed, it was just graded dirt which turned muddy when it rained. My mother was livid about it. But the house itself wasn't finished when we moved in. There were still parts needed stucco and plaster, some plumbing fixtures weren't installed in the shower, trim still needed to be applied on the interior and exterior, and the house hadn't been painted. 

Part of the problem was that our house was the last one on the street to be built and finished. This was the Post War housing boom, and houses were being built all over the Los Angeles Basin at a furious clip. This neighborhood was being developed so fast that Life Magazine did a feature on one family that moved from Connecticut to California and faced the dilemma of the New and Incomplete Reality of Los Angeles -- and this particular neighborhood --  at the time.

What had been essentially wild country -- hills and pasture, hills and oak forest, etc -- was turned into housing overnight. Initially, there were no curbs, gutters, sewers, or other amenities that would come later. Finishing the neighborhood, to the extent it ever would be finished took years. 

The curbing you see in the picture didn't arrive until long after we moved out in 1959. I'm not sure curbs were there in 1969. And I've noticed on Street View that the sections built on street extensions later (in the '60s and '70s) have street lights while the sections built in the '50s do not.

In the picture you see a rusty rural mailbox. That was put in by my mother after a dispute she had with the post office. It was probably 1956 or so. Initially, she'd mounted a fishing creel on the wall beside the front door to collect the mail. One day she got a notice stating that her mail receptacle was not regulation and must be replaced or US Mail would no longer be delivered to that address. If I recall correctly (ha!) there was no indication of what would be acceptable. So I suspect she marched down to the post office (I don't remember where it was) and demanded to see the regulations, and she found that a rural mailbox would be... fine. 

She went to the hardware store and bought one with a metal stand. She painted the box with flowers and vines and such, mounted it on the stand and put the whole apparatus in the ground (may have had help from a neighbor) beside the driveway. With a note that said, "Put Mail Here."

Later she found out that a rural mailbox in a suburban neighborhood like ours wasn't regulation either,  and she got a British iron letterbox at an antique store and mounted it where the fishing creel had been, and that was where the mail was deposited until we moved. I think she took that British letterbox with her when we moved, but I'm not entirely sure. I seem to remember it turning up in several later houses but it may have been another one.

There's a large tree next to the mailbox in the picture up top. That's an oak (madrone?) that I planted between 1956 and 1958. It was a seedling that sprouted up in the hills beyond the end of the street. I dug it up and carried it down the hill in a can of some sort and planted it in the front yard when I got home. It grew. It's somewhat unusual because oaks don't like being disturbed especially as seedlings. But this one did fine. It was maybe two-three feet tall when we left.  Sadly, the oak tree and the mailbox are now gone (a/o 05/22). But they had quite a long run.

The Odd Persistence and Absence of Memory

Note: there has been much editing since I first published this post. And a discovery or two.

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This goes back to that picture haul I was gifted with on Father's Day. One picture in particular sticks in my mind, but there were several taken on what I think was the same day in the summer of 1957 (I was 8 or 9), and while I focus on one, the others might be referred to from time to time for context.

The photo in question is one of me sitting on the couch in the living room of my house in the San Gabriel Valley of California on a sunny but probably smoggy day. There's a sort of misty quality to the photo which I find intriguing. It's probably due to a dirty lens, but when I think of that, I also wonder who took the picture. The picture appears to be taken from the level of the seating, and I suspect the camera was placed on the seat of a wing chair that faced the sofa (a sofa that was actually a sofa-sleeper.) I'm holding a fluffy cat whose name I don't remember. I don't recall the picture being taken -- nor do I recall ever seeing it before. This makes me wonder. 

I don't recall having a camera of my own at that time of my life, but maybe I did. There was a dual lens reflex camera I remember using frequently a few years later after moving to Northern California, and it is at least possible that I had it much earlier and that the picture in question was taken with it -- or one like it. I say that because I have a vague memory of more than one such camera.

But the problem of who took the picture -- or the series that day -- is vexing. I have the feeling that I took them with a shutter-timer. But I have no memory of having a camera with a shutter timer until much later in the '60s or even the '70s.

So I think the camera was placed on a chair, the timer was set, and I got in position -- with a cat -- before the shutter was tripped. If there was someone else there, who could it have been?

I had quite a few friends in the neighborhood, but they rarely came over to my house. I usually went to their houses, and I remember many games of canasta or Monopoly at friends' houses, but hardly any at mine, and when we did play cards or Monopoly at my house, we sat on the front porch, never that I recall in the house or backyard. The rarity had to do with the fact that I was there by myself while my mother was at work at the hospital, and she was quite clear that she didn't want me to bring other kids over to our house while she was not there. Could she have taken the pictures? Perhaps, but I don't think so.

These pictures were taken at my house in the living room and the back and side yards of me and my pets and there appears to be no one else there. Which would be right -- it would be very rare for one of my friends or another adult to be there when my mother wasn't.

This is one of the many oddities of memory, though. I could be misremembering. There were times, I know there were times, when a friend, a neighbor, or another adult came over when I was there alone, I just don't remember it happening as part of taking these pictures, nor do I remember my mother taking the pictures, and there is nothing in these pictures that indicates anyone else was there.

And I don't remember these pictures being taken or ever seeing them before Father's Day this year.

The sight of a much younger me sitting in my living room in 1957 holding a cat is somewhat jarring. I remember the room quite well and its furnishings. I remember what that couch upholstery felt like (rough) and look of the round oak table we used as a coffee table (it had been a tall mission style "center table" that my mother had cut down). I remember the antique mirror hanging above the couch and the Currier & Ives prints on either side. I remember the white cotton shag rug under the table -- and how glad I was when my mother bought it and brought it home. If I remember correctly -- and I may not -- the walls of the room were painted gray-green. There was a huge picture window at one end facing the mountains to the north and I remember the light from that window being very bright despite its northern exposure.

The story of the rugs in that house is kind of important to my memories of living there. The house was not quite finished when we moved in in 1954. There was still stucco-ing and painting going on and there were bits of trim being applied and plumbing fixtures being installed (if I recall correctly, the shower wasn't finished when we moved in). There was no landscaping; the lot was bare and dusty. There were no sewers, no curbs, no gutters. Initially the driveway wasn't finished, and one day the asphalt pavement was put down, but we had to be careful not to walk or drive on it for a time. The absence of sewers meant that the plumbing drained into a cesspool -- not even a septic tank -- in the front yard, and I remember it had to be pumped out from time to time. The sewer line was installed the year after we moved in.

We had a few braided rugs that had come with us from other houses, but they were small and didn't do much to muffle the echoes of footfalls in the house. Oh yes, I remember the house being very echoey due to the plaster walls and hardwood floors. The white cotton shag rug in the living room probably appeared some time in 1957 -- my mother also got a new car that year -- and even though it wasn't all that big (probably 6x9 though it may have been 9x12) it made a big difference because it was soft and sound absorbing, and I remember the echoey-ness of the house diminishing greatly once that rug was put down.

By the time these pictures were taken the back and side yards -- and the front, too but there were no pictures of that -- had been planted with grass and bougainvilleas and roses and there was a water feature in the backyard ringed with bricks and lattice fencing put up to hide the incinerator (which I think we couldn't use after 1956) and to mask the side yard where the clothes line was.

I had asthma and the smog was bad in the San Gabriel Valley, so being outside (or inside for that matter) could be difficult for me. I had attacks fairly often until we moved to Northern California in 1959. But oh well. It was what it was.

I remember the house was painted white with hunter green trim, quite different from other houses in the neighborhood which were mostly brown, beige or gray with white trim. I remember my mother insisted on white and dark green trim. She said there was a reason, but I don't remember what it was.

I'm 8 or 9 years old in these pictures, and I'm surprised at how skinny I was. I don't remember being skinny until I was a teenager. In fact, I remember being kind of pudgy up until the age of 14 or 15 when I started getting taller. So seeing how skinny I was at 8 or 9 is a revelation.

There's an exercise I'm supposed to do prior to a Zen workshop coming up: describe yourself from the point of view of the Earth.

From the point of view of the Earth, of course, these descriptions of myself as skinny or chubby or alone or with friends or my age in these pictures or really anything are silly, irrelevant, laughable. From the point of view of the Earth, I don't exist as an individual at all. The minuteness of humans in the context of the whole wide world -- which itself is minute in the context of the Solar System -- is striking. There is no "me" in that context; there is no "we." Less than a mote of dust. 

And yet from the point of view of the Earth, I and the aggregate of humanity of which I am a infinitesimal part are in the process of "killing the planet." Perhaps like a disease organism might do to me or someone else at human scale.

The planet, the Earth, is responding. Cranking up an immune response against which I and the aggregate of humanity have no real response.

In thinking about these matters of scale and existence/non-existence, past and future, I recall the teachings of Vimalakirti  and all the Buddha-realms beyond our ken. Perspective is hard to obtain. Once obtained, it may be hard to maintain, and memory may fade. But what is is no matter whether we see or know it or not. 

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Silly me. I looked on the back of the photo and found a note written in my mother's handwriting stating that the "we" took the picture in the house, and the flash didn't work. Note says, "How was I to know it needed batteries!" 

A Most Astonishing Thing

For Father's Day, my wife gave me a photo album of pictures she came across a day or two before, she said in a K-Mart photo envelope. They must have been randomly put there for safekeeping or something, and it must have been thirty or even forty years ago, maybe even fifty years ago, since we hadn't used K-Mart photo processing any later than the early '70s.

These pictures were far older than that.

The oldest one probably dates to 1910 or so and I think it is a picture of Mamie or Maggie, the maid/nanny in my grandfather's house in Iowa. There's another old one of what looks like a town somewhere in the Midwest or West. Not any place in Iowa I'm familiar with. Based on a car in the picture, it was taken in the 1930's or '40s.

Then there are a lot of pictures of me taken between the ages of a few months to 16 or 17. There are some of my nephew from the time he was a few months old to the age four or five. One of my sister a year after my nephew's birth.

There are some pictures of household pets from the 1950s and 60s. I remember the dogs' names but not the cats.

Some pictures of my mother in the 1950s and '60s. 

And some Polaroids of a dog and a shopping center at Christmas time from the 1960s.

Some came as a shock because I don't remember ever seeing them before. 

I would say with some confidence that I haven't seen any of them in fifty years, and some I may never have seen before though I probably did and forgot.

I've spent some time putting them in more or less chronological order and making notes about what/who they are pictures of. But there are some I have no idea of. Or only the vaguest idea. 

It's fascinating and a little creepy.

Yet Another Massacre -- The Uvalde Thing

Nineteen kids and two teachers shot and killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX the other day. Just another day in the killing fields of the Good Ol' USofA. The number of injured is overlooked in most of these incidents so I'm not clear about how many were actually shot by the gunman -- who himself was supposedly shot and killed by an LEO marksman after more than an hour -- they now say -- "waiting."

For what?

Well, that's the question, isn't it? 

Massacres have been part and parcel of the (North) American Experience at least since the initiation of European, primarily British, settlement in the 1600s. The practice of massacring the previous residents -- Natives in the case of America -- so as to protect the newcomers seems to have come over from Britain as a sort of cultural marker. It's what they do. They were doing it in Britain and Ireland for hundreds of years before they came to America. Europeans in general seemed quite comfortable with massacres of their enemies -- or really anyone who got in their way. And of course the notorious Black Legend of the Spanish conquests in the New World was full of massacres of the Natives, sometimes simply because they could.

The bloodlust of the newcomers was insane. Is insane.

Because the massacres in this country have never really ceased -- although in most of Europe, Britain and Ireland, they've almost disappeared. The exception right now of course is in the Ukraine, where apparently "Slavs" and "Aryans" are having it out one more time, renewing a conflict from WWII.

Young men seem to be triggered time and again to go on killing sprees, generally of innocents, strangers they don't know going about their ordinary lives in schools, churches, shopping centers and markets, movie theaters and so on. Wherever ordinary people might gather, say at a concert as in Las Vegas a few years ago, some trigger-happy man (almost always a male, almost always white) will go on a shooting spree. 

A shooting spree made easier and more effective by the easy access to military style rifles and tons of ammunition -- access jealously guarded and made ever easier by politicians who seem to find the whole thing -- all the carnage, terror and bloodshed -- little more than a minor inconvenience in their quest for everlasting power over anyone they don't like.

It's so ingrained and the resistance to doing anything to curb it is so rigid that Americans in general are frustrated and bewildered. Angry and yet powerless to do anything about it.

Their lives and those of their children obviously mean nothing to their rulers, regardless of supposed political party. Even when members of the ruling class are targets (which is almost never) nothing is done to curb the killing; in fact, in many cases gun laws are loosened following a massacre on the bogus theory that "good guys with guns" will protect against the next massacre. 

Well, no. They don't.

But that seems to be the point. Proliferate firearms, make it ever easier for those on a quest to kill to do so and let the chips (and blood) fall where they may.

We can say it's a sickness, a mental illness, but that only goes so far. It's a cultural fault. One that isn't really seen as a problem by those who might do something about it.

It's like the Corona virus response. More than a million dead so far -- mostly met with a shrug by the Overclass who, since they are relatively well protected (as they are from mass murder) simply don't think about, and don't care about, what happens to the rest of us.

I've long said that our system of rule is the primary problem. It's a system that resists change for the better because the system itself is presumed to be best. When change comes on behalf of the downtrodden, it may be only after hundreds of years of constant agitation, and it is always beset with efforts to backslide, some of which will be successful.

In other words, it's a constant struggle to be better, a struggle that often fails.

That's built in. It's systemic.

So we'll go through the usual posturing over this massacre; soon enough there will be another, and the ritual of nothing will repeat ad infinitum. Something from outside may change the cycle, but what that will be, who can say.

The Genocide(s) on the Horizon

I made a comment on another site recently that it appears a good deal of the "left" of this country is working itself up into a genocidal rage at Russia for crimes real and imagined and not limited to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an earlier comment, I suggested that Russia's invasion, aka "Putin's War", may indeed prove to be his fatal error.

Marching to Moscow, burning the Kremlin and hanging Putin seems to be one of the animating fantasies of the Azov-Nazis defending Ukraine-Kiev. Where does this come from? Well, of course, Hitler failed in his great march across the steppe to Moscow as did Napoleon before him. The Grand Imperialists never seem to be able to conquer Mother Russia, but the urge to do so seems implacable among a certain sort, and so, apparently, here we go again.

The Ukie-Nazis are doing the fighting and largely losing against Russia, but all the USandNato players are doing their part to fund them and supply them and keep the fighting going "to the last Ukrainian." So then my question is "what is the purpose of depopulating and destroying much of Ukraine? Cui bono as it were?

I've noted that the Ukrainian population declined some 30% after the fall of the Soviet Union, and since the invasion, another 25% or so have fled to other parts of Eastern Europe, and some back to Mother Russia itself. Parts of cities and villages have been destroyed. Planting and harvesting has been disrupted. There is no going back to the status quo ante, and it is my suspicion that many of those who have fled the fighting won't go back to Ukraine, either. 

In the meantime, genocidal forces are let loose. Zelensky claims (constantly) that the Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine. There is no evidence that this is the case. On the other hand, Putin has made the claim that Ukraine has committed genocide against Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. The eight year Ukrainian war against the Donbas oblasts (and now republics) is cited as evidence, together with the appalling massacres in Odessa and Mariupol in 2014 following the coup against the government of Viktor Yanukovych. Russia, on the other hand, has vowed to "denazify" Ukraine, with particular emphasis on liquidating the Azov Regiment and other neo-nazi elements  of the Ukrainian state. The threat is not to Ukrainians per se, but to groups within the Ukraine who espouse Nazi and neo-Nazi ideology -- and presumably who take action to violently enforce their will.

Which then leads to revenge.

A good many of our overlords seem to like it that way.

We see genocidal rage building in many other areas of the world as well. The United States is no exception. The urge to kill The Other in the US has long been paramount. One could say it is foundational. Now we have a situation where practically everyone is The Other to someone else, a level of alienation and lack of community that may be unprecedented. The internet provides a refuge of sorts, and the simulation of community, which has, from time to time led to extraordinary acts of violence int the real world, acts that by their nature can be characterized as genocidal -- and would be considered so but for the relatively small numbers of targeted groups murdered by the killers.

The internal stresses and tensions could metastasize at any time into generalized mayhem. What then? It seems we've been conditioned to accept it. "Nothing can be done." And our lords and masters are fine with it. So long as it doesn't touch them.

For now, crises compound without much mitigation. Society pretty much everywhere is enduring a stress test. Some will survive. Many won't -- possibly including our own. 

"Longtermism"

 So let's ponder this arising cult of "Longtermism". Haven't heard of it? Well, I think we've been living with the consequences for some time now.

Apparently, "Longtermism" is a philosophical belief system, an ideology if you will, manifest widely among our overlords and their minions, particularly in Silicon Valley and its offshoots and in higher order academia. It's an ideology that posits human value in the Future, distant Future in many cases, and effectively devalues humanity in the present. One's vision, supposedly, should be on the Future, longterm benefit, wherein, it is thought/believed that there will be trillions of humans living all over the Universe, happy and wise, and descended from the Good People of today.

Those Good People, of course, are the few and favored oligarchs and their closest servants. They and only they are to be protected at all costs no matter what happens in the present and near future, because they and only they will be the progenitors of the Wonderful World of Tomorrow, filled with joy and ease and Happiness.

There are far too many people on the earth today and thus their cull through disease and war and the effects of climate change and so many other crises is meet and just and should not be effectively interfered with -- so long as the overclass is protected from the consequences of these crises. 

Whatever happens in the political realm is irrelevant; the economy is irrelevant. What's relevant right now is holding on to power over the safety of the overlord class. So long as they -- and only they -- survive, Future Joy will be assured for their trillions of descendants.

Which is the sole point of "Longtermism."

Maintaining a polite distance from the rabble of today helps maintain the power of the overclass. This process was worked out long ago by royalty and the stars of the entertainment world. CEOs and such have a long history of rudeness toward the masses, but in the Brave New World of libertarian freaks who actually have power these days, polite indifference combines with exploitative interest to assure an unbroken continuation of power.

According to Longtermists, there won't be any rabble to contend with, exploit or oppress in the Wonderful World of Tomorrow. All the struggles we see today will be over. Everyone will be happy and content and will be as gods -- or would be in the context of today. In their own context, the very concept of "gods" would be unknown. Everyone would be a god, so no one would necessarily be better than any other.

We could go on all day filling out their fantasy, but let's instead focus on the consequences right now.

Why are we living in such bizarre, chaotic, and for many of us deadly times? What's going on? How did things get so badly out of whack?

The ideology of "Longtermism" provides at least a hint of an answer.

The question really is, "What can we do about it?"

Check it out:

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/30/elon-musk-twitter-and-the-future-his-long-term-vision-is-even-weirder-than-you-think/

https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo

Odessa Massacre -- May 2, 2014

It's an event seared in my memory. On May 2, 2014, I was able to watch several livestreams from Odessa covering what was expected to be "something interesting" in Ukraine following the February Euromaidan coup in Kiev. 

Apparently two competing rallies were planned in the center of the city, one in favor of the Euromaidan coup and one opposed, and both were attracting young hooligans and soccer fans. Or so it seemed. One of the livestreamers at the rallies filmed the preparation of Molotov cocktails and showed some of the participants armed with pipes, bats and at least in one case a pistol. Militia members were part of the crowd. Police momentarily tried to keep the opposing groups apart, and then seemed to melt away, allowing -- encouraging? -- the groups to brawl in the streets.  

Some distance away, at the Trades Union House, a protest encampment had been built on a broad plaza in front of the building. It had been there for some time, occupied mostly by middle age and older Russian speaking opponents of the Kiev regime. At the time, Odessa had a majority Russian speaking population, and many were deeply opposed to what they saw as an American inspired and funded fascist/Nazi takeover of their country. 

This opposition was widespread in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, and it wasn't unknown in Kiev and other parts of the country. Most of the country had long been part of the Tsarist Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union. Bits and pieces had been added over time, taken from Austria-Hungary and Poland-Lithuania. During WWII, the Ukraine had been overrun and occupied by Nazis, and Ukrainian collaborators especially in the West of the country were commonplace. Ukrainians participated in numerous massacres of Jews, Communists, Gypsies and other undesirables during the Nazi occupation, and notoriously volunteered as concentration camp guards. 

None of this history was mysterious prior to 2014, nor was it controversial in the West. Ukrainian Nazis and Nazi collaborators were a real thing. They survived after the War and became an internal destabilizing force against the restoration of Soviet power over the territory. As such they were apparently supported by covert forces in the West, much as former Nazis had been rehabilitated and been granted favors and asylum in the West including the United States.

Ethnic Russians and Russian speakers had deep roots and had long lived, worked and loved in Ukraine, primarily in what was called Novorossyia, New Russia, the region east of the Dnieper River absorbed by the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great (a German princess for what it is worth who married and later had assassinated the Russian Tsar... but that's another story...)

Russification was often ham-handed and could be brutal under both the Tsars and the Soviets. On the other hand, Ukrainians were included in the Imperial regime and were fundamental to the Soviet regime. Numerous Politburo members and even the Party Chairman Khrushchev were Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian SSR was a member of the United Nations even though it was at the time an integral part of the USSR.

Upon the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine along with many of the former Soviet republics and Eastern European satrapies became independent, left to fend for themselves without central control or support from Moscow -- with interesting results.

Some maintained close ties with Russia; others became fiercely anti-Russia and tied to the West. 

And from appearances and all accounts, the West has been trying to capture Ukraine, or at least cleave it off from Russian influence, since independence. 

It hasn't gone well. The 2014 Euromaidan occupation and protests in Kiev were part of a series of color revolutions that sought the elimination of ethnic Russian political influence and control within the Ukrainian government, and once the Yanukovych regime was overthrown, that objective seemed to be complete. 

Nazi-descendant militias roamed free and some were incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces with the upshot of the massacres in Odessa and Mariupol and the nearly total ethnic cleansing of Ukraine west of the Dnieper. Russians and Russian speakers were driven out or murdered. The objective was an ethno-state aligned with Nato and the US to act as a bulwark in opposition to Russia.

The point of a Nato cordon of allies along the western Russian border is the eventual dismemberment of the Russian Federation.

It's all very bizarre. 

The massacres were triggers for a civil war that has now become a general war in Ukraine between Russia and the West that has the potential to turn into a nuclear holocaust for no conceivable reason at all. The victims of the Odessa Massacre were among the first to feel the effects of the Nazi madness unleashed in Ukraine and by implication throughout Europe and soon, we can be sure, in North America and elsewhere. 

This truly may be the opening of Ragnarok. Longed for. Inevitable. Twilight of the Gods.