Prayers for Humanity

     One of the 75 repetitions of 75 things each that I did for my 75th year of life on this Earth, five years ago, was to write 75 prayers for humanity or the earth. (Item suggested by Mariposa Kerchival.) Last Thanksgiving I posted prayers for the earth. Today, in thankfulness for the many examples of beautiful, kind, life-responsible people in my life, I offer prayers for humanity.

    Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

May the children know laughter, love, song, and freedom from fear.

May all children know the joys of childhood.

May the balm of sleep and the calming touch of an adult ease the pains of childhood.

May the voice of reason and the aura of compassion prevail in all circumstances.

May women and men be treated with equal respect all over the world.

May communities thrive with compassion, respect, neighborliness, and conviviality.

May those with illness find relief from pain.

May we learn to tune our hearts to the aches of others.

May music resound everywhere in the world, always.

May the cities flourish with art, music, and the good works of the poets.

May we learn to trust again.

Memorial Services

    I am saddened by the recent death of a friend.

He looks stern, but behind in that closed mouth his glorious humor peeks out.   

We hardly ever saw each other and communicated seldom, but he was always dear in my heart. He lived on the other side of the continent, so I'm not sure I would have gone to his memorial service, but I know I would have wanted to so I could hear the stories people told of him and to know, in this way, more about him.

    It didn't matter. He didn't want a memorial service.

    This is something I don't understand. My late husband also didn't want a memorial service. My anger at these deaths can be displaced onto the dying person himself: how dare you tell us we can't come together to mourn, laugh, and feel a common love through our relationship with you? How dare you deprive us of ways we would like to mourn, remember, and celebrate? What difference does it make to you? The memorial service is not for you. It's for us.

    I knew my husband for only six years. Our years of exploring each other's pasts and personalities were cut short, so I was looking forward to a memorial service, where his family would talk about what Mike was like when he was a child, as his children were growing up, as a brother, uncle, father, employer. I was cheated of that greater depth because there was no memorial service, not because Mike had requested there be none (he had agreed to it by the time he died) but because COVID prevented that kind of gathering. My mourning felt incomplete, ragged, solitary.

From the last hike Mike and I made together.

   A memorial service elicits closure and completion. It is a communal gathering, fellowship displacing the individual mourning in each heart. Rituals at memorial services can be rich experiences—singing songs, releasing (eco-friendly) balloons, planting flowers, eating together. A sudden and tragic death—a young person's suicide—becomes easier to bear when many mourn together.

    Years ago, driving to the memorial service for a friend I didn't know well, I wondered why I was going, but at the service the stories from her sister and brother broadened the incomplete picture I had of this person. I was glad I had made the effort to be there. 

    At the reception after the service for my friend Maren, I was suddenly surrounded by five or six of Maren's students whom I had also taught at the University of Gothenburg.  They were there through their love for Maren; now that love surrounded me as well. 

    At the reception after my sister's service, person after person came up to me to thank me for the help Linda, an occupational therapist, had given their children. Through the memorial service and following reception, I learned more about Linda's life that made me respect and admire her even more.

    At my father's memorial service friends and family laughed and told stories and radiated such love I have felt its warmth in my heart all these years. 

    So, listen, this is what I want to say. Go to the memorial services. Take advantage of this one last chance to know, in many dimensions, this person you loved. 

    And by all means, when you are dying, don't say you don't want a memorial service. This is for us, not for you. 

Pipe Fork Not Saved (Not Yet)

     A few days ago I listened in disbelief as the chair of the meeting of the Josephine County Commissioners told us that the board would not accept the Williams Community Forest Project's offer of over two million dollars to buy the forests of Pipe Fork. 

    "I know you have worked hard to raise this money," he said, apologetically, "and I know the strong feelings you have about Pipe Fork. But you are more than $750,000 short of what we want for the land."

    Let's see. They originally said if we came up with $1.6 million, we could have the land. We looked and looked for an environmental philanthropic organization that would buy the land and turn it over to the Bureau of Land Management to add to the Resource Natural Area the BLM established on Pipe Fork decades ago. We found that buyer. We had an assessment made and came up with $2 million to meet the assessment price—more, as you see, than we were originally told we needed. Now the commissioners had raised the price. They would keep the land and sell the timber.

Imagine this scene, clearcut                         Photo by Kevin Peer

    "There are other people in the county who need what this money could bring," the commissioner said. "We will go ahead with our plans to clearcut Pipe Fork."

    It is to my credit that I didn't spit in his face as I left the building. 

    We are just a little local organization passionately attached to our local stream, Pipe Fork, for its beauty, the importance of it as a water source for the community, and its ecological importance. We are just a handful of people, yet we raised more than two million dollars.

    Those three years of work—and anxiety—came to a close at the commissioners' meeting on Tuesday, yet I cannot accept that reality. I cannot envision a clearcut Pipe Fork. It just should never happen. It just simply cannot happen.

    This environment depends on a forest canopy.        Photo by Kevin Peer

    If the commissioners are thinking, "Well, thank goodness that's over. Now we can get on with cutting the timber"—if they think we're going to have a little grieving ceremony for the trees and accept their fate—they're wrong. Cheryl Bruner, head of WCFP, said, "It's not over, and we will continue to fight." 

    Saying that there were places in the county where the money was needed strikes me as a myopia we can no longer indulge in. When will we begin to understand that saving any portion of the environment, this small area of Pipe Fork, for instance, is in the interest of us all? When will we start seeing that destroying our forests for a handful of bills now means devastation for everyone later? Pipe Fork is important for the groundwater of Williams, where all residences depend on wells. If our wells run dry, will the county supply our water? Isn't everyone better off if we can continue to irrigate our fields (important agricultural income for many Josephine County residents) and supply our domestic water from our watershed? The Conservation Fund was willing to pay more than $2 million dollars for Pipe Fork, not to appease a small group of passionate citizens but because, in the bigger picture, the land is more valuable intact than the timber is worth, cut.

    But the commissioners said no. 

    We all live on this planet. Every ecological destruction affects us all. Yes, we who live in Williams are most acutely affected by a potential, unimaginable clearcut on Pipe Fork, but, in the long haul, it should be unimaginable for everyone in the county. 

                                                                                        Photo by Kevin Peer

Go to williamscommunityforestproject.org/save-pipe-fork to see a video of Pipe Fork by renowned videographer Kevin Peer.

    For years a bone spur in my left foot would sometimes be so painful I would have to stop wherever I was and take off my shoe. It was a pain like a knife. It didn't last long, but it was bad when it hit.

    I also have hallux rigidus in the left foot, the arthritic condition I had surgery to correct in my right foot last year. (See posts on December 9 and 23, 2022.) Recovery from that surgery was three fairly difficult months—non-weight-bearing, no walking, no driving.  

    So this time, when the doctor suggested an easier surgery, just to get rid of the bone spur—one-month recovery, walk (in a boot), and drive—I said yes, yes, yes. I would put up with continued pain from hallux rigidus in exchange for a shorter, easier surgery and no bone spur.

    Surgery was last Wednesday at the Grants Pass Surgical Center. Everyone is so nice there they make the whole experience not exactly fun but certainly pleasant. The woman at the entrance desk greets patients with a broad smile and says, "Thank you; I appreciate that" every time you answer a question. The prep nurse chatted pleasantly and asked if I wanted something from Netflix on the TV screen, and when I said I didn't want to start a movie I couldn't finish, she found a wonderful video about mating dances among tropical birds that kept me entertained and my mind off what was going to be happening very shortly.

    The anesthesiologist remembered me from last year. He and the nurses joked about my age as they wheeled me into the operating room. "The form says she is 79, but I think there was a mistake," he said. "She can't be almost 80." The operating room nurse asked me what I was going to do for my 80th birthday. I remember saying I would be hiking 800 miles on 80 different trails. That was the last thing I remember.

    My friend who had taken me to the surgical center took me home again. Another friend came up to visit shortly after I got home and brought home-made tomato soup and pumpkin pie for my dinner. This weekend, my friend Bryan, who is an excellent cook, is bringing me dinner. Ibuprofen and Tylenol are keeping the pain under control. I'm doing fine.

    Just one month. Then no more bone spur pain. I can't wait for my next hike.