Author: frankisemptiness

October 2nd, 2017

The Peter Maurin Farm is easy to miss. We passed it by. Karin and I dutifully followed the GPS to Marlboro, New York, and we still got lost on the way to the farm. After we cruised past the correct exit, we finally turned around and drove to the end of Cemetery Road. The farm is tucked away behind the cemetery on the left and some houses on the right. There is no sign for the place. Even when we had parked the car in front of the white house, we weren’t sure if we were at the correct location.

I banged on the door at the White House (the farm has two houses: white and green). Heather came to the door. She is a woman from Virginia with big glasses, long hair, and a healthy sense of humor. She invited Karin and myself into the house. There wasn’t anything in there that struck me as being extraordinary. There was crucifix on the wall, but that is kind of standard for the Catholic Workers. A older man was shelling beans at the dining room table. In the back of the house was a large deck. A guy named Dan was sitting in one of the chairs on the deck, just soaking up the sun. He gave us a listless greeting.

Heather took us across the yard to the Green House. She led us into a tiny kitchen. It was crowded. An older woman, Monica, was there. So was her son, Tom. Tom’s father, also named Tom, painfully walked into the kitchen. Tom the elder is the pater familias of the farm. I had the impression that everyone else deferred to him.

Monica and the two Toms were deep into a serious discussion when we arrived. Apparently, Karin and I had stepped into the middle of a minor crisis. One of the residents of the white house was an elderly man who does not take good care of himself. Monica and Tom the Younger were waiting for a visiting nurse to make her visit. They didn’t have time right then to show Karin and myself the farm. Tom the Elder walked haltingly with a cane, and he obviously wasn’t going to lead a tour. Monica and Tom Jr. decided it would be a great idea if Karin and I sat in the drawing room, and conversed with the elder Tom until things settled down a bit. So, we did.

Tom Cornell Sr. is a man of eighty-three years. When we sat with him, it was obvious that he was in some pain. He mentioned that he had had shingles and that he was still hurting. Tom has had a full and active life. He has been in the Catholic Worker movement many years. He led the very first protest against the Vietnam War. He is a co-founder of Pax Christi, USA. Tom is a deacon of the Catholic Church. Tom has made working for peace and serving the poor his vocation.

Karin and I didn’t speak much. We spent most of our time listening to Tom. Tom had a continuous flow of stories. I occasionally had to interrupt him at times in order to ask him what he was meant. I think that Tom assumed that Karin and I knew all the legend and lore of the Catholic Worker movement. We don’t. So, when Tom would refer to people or events that were unfamiliar, I had to stop his monologue to get some clarification. I believe that Tom also assumed that we agreed with all of his opinions.  I don’t. Our lives have been radically different, so there are a few points where we don’t connect. Overall, Tom’s stories were fascinating. He’s lived in an entirely different world from me.

Tom insisted on showing us his office. It’s a small room, crammed with books and papers and pictures. Socks were hanging up to dry in one corner of the room. There was barely enough room on Tom’s desk to work, and there was barely enough space for us in the room for us to move. Tom pointed out some of his mementos from the past. He showed us his presidential pardon from Jimmy Carter (I believe it was for burning draft cards). He also told us about a letter he had framed in red on his wall. The letter was from Archbishop Oscar Romero, sent to Tom just a couple months before Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass in El Salvador. Tom’s office reminded me a lot of Dorothy Day’s office at Mary House in New York. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that.

Monica came back later, after the visiting nurse had visited. Monica was not a happy woman. The visiting nurse had requested an ambulance to take the elderly man to the hospital. The nurse clearly did not think that this man was doing well at all.

We had lunch at the Green House. Tom the Elder warmed up some vegetable soup, once he got the reluctant gas stove to stay lit. I ate a couple tomato sandwiches (we eat what’s there). I think that Karin ate the same. Tom Sr. had some soup, which he ate with gusto and exclamations of “Delicious!”.

Heather ate with us too. She talked about her community in Virginia (the name of which I have unfortunately forgotten). She emphasized that it was an “intentional community”, a group of people that choose to live together.

Being a smartass, I asked Heather, “I was in the Army for ten years. Does that count as an ‘intentional community’?”

Heather was silent for a moment. Then she said, “We have some really good Army people with us.”

I took that as a “yes”.

Enter Tom the Younger.

Once the drama with the visiting nurse was over, Tom Jr. was available to show us around. He did.

We walked from the Green House to the gardens on the hill slope. The Peter Maurin Farm is primarily concerned with gardens. There are chicken coops there, but those are peripheral to the main activity, which is vegetable farming. They occasionally move the chicken coops around. Then they use the soil that has been permeated with chicken dung for future gardens. There is a slight time lag between moving the birds and using the guano-filled soil. Tom told us that it takes some time for the chemicals in the chicken guano to be diluted by rain and snow. It has to “mellow”. After that, it’s all good.

Tom the Younger gave us a long and detailed tour of the gardens. It was obvious early on that Tom was an expert in his field. He told us many things. He showed us the rows where they had planted carrots, daikan radishes, and dill all together, seeing as they were all from the same family. The radishes helped with tillage; they break up the soil with their roots.

The farm uses soybean meal for fertilizer. The ground needs it. The soil there is of glacial origin: silt. The best thing to grow in the Catskill Mountains of New York is rocks. God knows they have plenty of granite stones in their fields. As Tom said, “Silt has none of the advantages of clay soil, but all of the drawbacks.”

Tom showed us the rows of tomato plants, some of them damaged by a blight. They grow chard and cylinder beets together. Tom mentioned that they grow vegetables at the farm that the folks at Mary House can’t get easily. It is a goal of the farm to provide healthy food for the Catholic Worker soup kitchen in New York.

We looked at a section of the garden that was full of garlic and potatoes. Tom said that portion would later be used for turnips and carrots. The soil would be ready for those plants. It was fascinating to me that so much was planned in advance. Other parts of the garden were set aside for cantaloupes, collard greens, horseradish, zucchini, and asparagus.

Heather was with us in the garden. She is a seed expert. Heather and Tom conversed in a technical language that was foreign to me. Heather wanted to harvest some of the string beans. They grow rattlesnake beans at the farm. Tom told her which ones to take, and which ones to leave until later. Both Tom and Heather know how to farm. They understand the process. I felt very much left out. I just don’t know this stuff.

At the time of our arrival, there were seventeen people living at the farm. Some were just visitors, some were more long term. Some of the folks there were making great contributions. Some of them weren’t running on all four cylinders. It didn’t matter. They were all doing what they could. Somehow, they all contribute what they can. Honestly, I would have to live there for a while to get a feel for the group dynamics. A few hours isn’t long enough to understand how it all works. However, I could see that this was a family of sorts. It was a family as dysfunctional as my own, but a family nonetheless. The Peter Maurin Farm really is a community, in the best sense of the word.

The farm was full of people, maybe overfull. Karin and I had hoped to spend the night there, but that was not possible. Monica showed us some floor space in the basement of the Green House, but that didn’t look good to us. We didn’t know where to spend the night. Tom the Younger had a plan.

There is a home, twenty minutes north of the farm, called Boughton Place. There is a connection between Boughton Place and the Peter Maurin Farm. At one time, there was  a Catholic Worker community at Boughton Place. That community collapsed after the woman who led the group died of cancer. Boughton Place also has a history as a home for psychotherapy. In the 1930’s, Jacob Moreno fled from the Nazis to start a psychotherapy facility in Beacon, New York. Later, his work moved to Boughton Place. Psychotherapy still goes on at this new site. There are rooms available at Boughton Place for patients to stay overnight. Tom found us a spare room at the house. He talked to the caretaker, and he got us a place for the night at Boughton Place.

It was kind of a weird feeling to sleep in an unknown house in an unknown town, based on the recommendation of a man who we had only known for maybe four hours. However, it was really nice. Boughton Place is an rural area. It was quiet and rather dark at night. Very peaceful. It was kind of cool. We gave the caretaker, Tom, a cash donation when we left in the morning. We said goodbye to his dog, Sasha. It felt strange, but somehow it all felt right.

Tom the Younger came to check on us before we went to bed that night. He brought us some information on other Catholic Worker farms, one of which is here in Wisconsin. That was good of him. He’s a good man. Everybody at Peter Maurin is good.

Thank God we met them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 24th, 2017

I had two interviews with Zen Master Ji Haeng during the last Zen retreat. I hadn’t had an interview for a long time, probably ten years or so. Previous Zen interviews had been underwhelming for me. I never got the point. Maybe I still don’t. As a Catholic, I always felt that visiting the Zen Master was a cross between going to confession and meeting the Great and Powerful Oz. Other people in the sangha were quite eager to spend time with Zen Master Ji Haeng. My response to their enthusiasm was, “Yeah, whatever.”

Both priests and Zen Masters possess some kind of spiritual authority, at least in an official sense. A priest is ordained and shares a lineage that goes back to the Apostles. A Zen Master has inka, and he or she can trace themselves back to Bodhidharma. They embody their respective traditions. They start off with some credibility and authority. How long those things last depends on how these persons preform their duties. Credibility is often fragile and short lived. Authority is likewise ephemeral.

Since my two recent interviews, I have revised my opinions on the value of the Zen interview. I have noticed some odd similarities between a Zen interview and the Sacrament of Confession. Now, I have been to confession with a priest many more times than I have spoken with a Zen Master, so my observations may be inaccurate. Also, there are many differences between the two processes that can’t be reconciled, but I tend to look for connections.

Both a confession and a Zen interview start with ritual. I’m not sure why that is. It might be to establish a clear delineation between the outside world and a sacred time/space. Both the priest and the Zen Master wait for somebody to come to them. They both have certain symbols of their office: the priest wears a stole, the Zen Master has his robes and his stick. There is a ritual greeting that the person making a confession gives to the priest. The sangha member bows to the Zen Master. All these things set the stage for the coming exchange.

One of the first things that a Catholic tells the priest during confession is how long it’s been since the last time he or she received the sacrament. Sometimes the priest asks that question at the very beginning. The first things that Zen Master Ji Haeng asked me were: “What is you name”, “How old are you?”, Where do you come from?”, and “Where are you going?” These questions give both the priest and the Zen Master a feel for where the person is. It’s a starting point.

To backtrack a bit, a Catholic preparing for the sacrament is required to make a ‘thorough examination of conscience”, that is, to take a hard look at recent thoughts, words, and actions. A Zen practitioner may be musing over the meaning of a kong-an prior to going into a Zen interview. Is there a similarity between pondering one’s mistakes and pondering a kong-an, an ambiguous riddle? Maybe not. If anything, both exercises force the person to be conscious. Both forms of meditation are invitations to wake up.

Sin. Confession is all about sin. It is about getting rid of sin. One of the Hebrew words in the Bible for sin is “chatta’ah”, which comes from the verb which means “to miss the mark”, as in archery. Using this word, sin then means to miss the target, which implies that the person is not seeing clearly. Sin is sort of a blindness that must be cured. What is the point of Zen? It is to see reality as it is, to see things clearly. Confession and a Zen interview share a common goal.

Traditionally, a person goes to confession with a laundry list of transgressions. That list may or may not be helpful. It can be useful if the priest can connect the dots and perceive a common theme behind the roster of sins. A Zen Master likewise should be able to find the source of attachments, and to recognize the blind spots of the person being interviewed. The person sitting across from the priest or the Zen Master cannot easily see the pattern. That is why that person is there. The priest or the Zen Master has to help them to understand.

Zen Master Ji Haeng told me something that resonated deeply with me.

He said, “People like us, we are attracted to Zen because we don’t like book answers.”

Right on, Brother.

A good priest, or a good Zen Master, cannot hand out ready made answers. They cannot be superficial. They usually don’t tell the other person what to to do. The person sitting in the other chair or on the other cushion knows what they need to do. Deep inside, that person knows what is broken, and they already have the answer. The Zen Master and the priest need to draw that answer out. That’s the challenge. There isn’t a book that teaches how to do that.

Dear Zen Master Ji Haeng,

Thank you for your teaching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 27th, 2017

I was standing on the shore a just few yards from the ocean. The sand felt cold under my feet. There was a stiff wind out of the west blowing at my back. It was still dark. The morning star hung over the restless water like a glowing jewel. Above me and to my left, I could look up to the sky and see Orion and Sirius.

I looked straight ahead at the waves that crashed against the shore. I could hear the breakers better than I could see them. In the distance I could make out the edge of the horizon. There was a dim, orange glow coming from there. The orange color wasn’t consistent. There were thin lines of darkness between the bands of orange light. It reminded me of a diffraction experiment.

Karin came up from behind me. She was still in her bed clothes. She looked at the eastern sky in awe. She shivered. She told me that she was cold, and that she needed to get dressed. She would be back soon to watch the sunrise.

Jules had been up and awake before I came out to the beach. I talked to him as I left the beach house. I told him,

“I’m going out to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic.”

Jules smiled, “Go ahead.”

“Well, I don’t know if I will ever see it again.”

Jules smiled again, “Yeah, you’re right. Go on out.”

The beach house wasn’t actually on the beach. It was one house way from it. It was a quick walk from the door of the cottage to the ocean. I heard and smelt the sea before I saw it.

Once I got to shore, I just stared out into the distance. My eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. I noticed that I was not alone. Other people were with me on the beach. One man held a rod and reel. A woman stood on the beach far to my left.

Karin came back out. She was excited. She started taking pictures with her phone. The orange light gradually grew brighter. There was the outline of a ship in the distance. Oddly enough, as the light grew stronger, the waves seemed darker. The water looked black except where there was foam.

I noticed clouds on the horizon. They were dark on top, and were illuminated pink underneath. The glow spread and turned slowly to a bright yellow.

The yellow spread and grew brighter. Then an intense light pierced the sky’s edge. It started as a small point and then it became a blinding semi-circle on the horizon.

The sun.

Soon it was a circle of dazzling light, white and yellow mixed. I couldn’t look at it directly. I gazed around and saw my surroundings take on form and shape. Seagulls were suddenly visible. Sounds were muted as my eyes became my dominant sense. Karin and I went from a dreamscape to a sharp reality.

Karin and I stood on the shore for a while longer. We savored the sunrise. We lingered there. Then we turned back to the beach house. Jules was making tofu eggs for breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 26th, 2017

Jules lives in Bergenfield, New Jersey. Bergenfield is close to the Hudson River, just a bit north and west of New York City. Jules’ hometown is just one of an seemingly endless parade of suburbs. As Jules mentioned to us, a person is hard-pressed to notice the end of one borough and the beginning of the next. Teaneck flows into Bergenfield which merges into Tenafly which blends into another enclave, ad infinitum.

Jules told us that Bergen County, where he lives, holds over a million people. I asked him if there were still any empty lots in the county. He said that there were a few. If there are empty pieces of land in his part of the world, I didn’t see them. My impression of Bergenfield and its environs was of compactness. Everything there is wedged in tight. True, there are trees and grass and small parks, but all the space is used in some manner. It is the opposite of Texas, where everything is absurdly spread out. In Bergen County many people and their activities are concentrated into a tiny area.

Jules’ house sits on Main Street in Bergenfield. I don’t think that Main Street is actually the main street in that town. Washington Avenue seems much busier. Jules’ house is on a residential street with mature trees and crumbling sidewalks. The homes seem to be mature too. I doubt that anything on that street was built during my lifetime.

I asked Jules what style of house he owned. He shrugged and said that he didn’t know. I am guessing it would be best described as a bungalow. I am not sure what the original structure looked like. Clearly, there have been various additions and renovations over the years. Jules estimates the the building is one hundred years old. He’s probably right.

A home usually reflects the personality of its occupant. This is the case with Jules’ house. When Karin and I first arrived at his address, we went up to his front door. Apparently, nobody ever does that. The front door leads directly into an enclosed porch. We rang the doorbell and Jules invited us in.

The porch was full of books. The living room was full of books. The dining room was full of books. There were stacks of books on the staircase. One bedroom was packed with books. Other rooms had bookcases or shelves overflowing with books. Jules had a bookcase set in front of his fireplace to hold yet more books.

It came as no surprise to learn that Jules had owned a bookstore for twenty years, and the contents of his house were the residue of that enterprise. Jules has thousands of books, in every conceivable style, and containing all types of subject matter. Jules lives in a library. He is selling his books online, a few copies each day. If he lived to be one hundred, he would still have plenty of reading material.

Jules isn’t yet one hundred years old, but he’s well on his way. His father was elderly when Jules was born, and a family legend says that the father was a soldier in the army of the Czar during his youth. Jules is spry for a man of seventy-nine. I would like to be as active and healthy as Jules when I hit that age, but I expect to be horizontal at that point. I met Jules on a peace walk a few years ago. He still moves along at a rapid pace. Jules is sharp in mind and tongue. He is obviously well-read.

Jules’ house is not merely a book depository. It is also a showcase for peace walk memorabilia. Most of Jules’ wall space is covered with posters and pictures. He has been on walks in Scotland, France, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Korea, and all over the U.S. He has a series of small paper peace cranes (origami) hanging from the ceiling. A person can read Jules’ history just by looking at the walls of his house.

In some ways, Jules’ house reminds me of our home. There are scarcely any open horizontal surfaces.  His tables hold books. Ours more often hold yarn, or half-finished knitting projects. Jules’ home has the appearance of disorder verging on chaos. So does our house. That just means that somebody lives there. Neat houses are the tombs of boring people.

We are not boring.

 

 

 

 

September 26th, 2017

Karin and I had been in Jules’ house for maybe an hour. It was mid-afternoon when we had arrived at his home. All our stuff was still in our car. We had just been talking and relaxing around his living room table.

He asked us, “Do you want to go to a beach house on the Jersey shore?”

I asked him, “When were you thinking of doing this?”

Jules laughed and said, “Right now.”

“Oooooookay. Let’s go.”

Karin and I got our bags out of the Toyota and threw them into the back of Jules’ minivan. Jules collected some pillows and bedding for the beach house. He also gathered some stuff out of his refrigerator to cook us supper when we got to the Jersey shore. Jules’ van has some miles on it. He has a peace sign on the back along with a sticker that says “War is Terrorism with a Bigger Budget”. True.

Jules drove from Bergenfield through Teaneck to the New Jersey Turnpike. At the entrance to the turnpike is a long row of toll booths. Once you get though the toll, it’s game on. The New Jersey Turnpike is glorious in a Mad Max, post-apocalyptic sort of way. There are seven lanes of traffic going either direction. That is amazing. Chicago isn’t like that. Even Los Angeles isn’t like that. The turnpike is in a class all its own.

We drove southwest for a while, past the Meadowlands, past the cranes of Jersey City on our left and the towers of Newark on our right. Eventually, Jules got on to the Garden State Parkway, which runs through a rural setting near the coast, and does not seem nearly as intense as the turnpike.

We had been on the road for maybe ninety minutes when Jules pointed out some cars ahead of us.

“Those are commuters from the City.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh yeah. Housing is much cheaper when you get far from New York. If you want a nice house, you have to put on some miles. Some people commute to the City from Pennsylvania.”

I tried to imagine that commute. I visualized having a lovely home on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania, and driving all the way across New Jersey to some high stress job in Manhattan. At the end of a long and frustrating day, fighting traffic on the expressway all the way back across New Jersey. I just couldn’t wrap my head around that. There is nothing worth that kind of abuse.

The next day Jules drove us to the Buddhist gathering in Queens. Rose came with us. We left Bergenfield and made our way to the Lincoln Tunnel. There are many lanes of traffic that go toward the Lincoln Tunnel, but only two lanes actually enter it. At a distance from the tunnel, there is a funnel effect. The traffic slowly condensing from multiple lanes to two. That is a sight to behold.

Jules was engaged in the funneling process and Rose was actively encouraging him in his efforts.

She said, “Okay, you’re doing great. Just move to the left, and get in front of that car. There you go! We’re in!”

Rose turned to Karin and myself and said, “Now we wave and smile at the people in the other car!” I’m not sure that they smiled back.

Rose went on, “You have to be aggressive around here. I know that from riding the bike. If you you just wait, nobody will ever let you in.”

She paused for a moment and said, “Maybe ‘aggressive’ isn’t the right word.”

She turned to her dad, “We’re nonviolent, right?”

Jules nodded.

I suggested, “How about ‘assertive’?”

Rose smiled. “Yeah, that’s it! We’re being assertive!”

New York drivers are ruthless. They don’t often use the blinker because it is pointless. The blinker is just a tease. Nobody cares about it.

No, a New York driver gently and calmly nudges his car into the next lane, and then cuts off the poor bastard who has left him a foot of room. Then the lane-changing driver waves and smiles. It’s brutally courteous.

The driver who prefers not have his lane space violated also has options. Rose pointed out a guy in a van near us. “See this guy? He’s pretending that he can’t see us trying to get over. He won’t give us room. That’s kind of polite in a New York sort of way.”

Indeed.

People sometimes use their horns. That was obvious when we were trying merge on to a street from the Jackie Robinson Parkway in Queens. Traffic was completely stalled. No movement. Lots of noise.

On the other hand, I have seen people on streets in New Jersey stop so that somebody coming from the other direction can make a left turn. This is an act of both kindness and necessity. Traffic is often so dense that there is an endless stream of cars going both ways on a road. If somebody doesn’t cut another driver a break, then that other driver will never get to make a left turn.

Overall, the drivers I saw were all competent.

They were just assertive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 30th, 2017

Karin and the kids have ADD. They can never find their keys. They sometimes forget appointments. They start doing something, and then get sidetracked for hours with something else. For years I have served as the family memory. I can’t tell you how many times somebody in our house has asked me, “Can you remind of this?”

I never really understood ADD…until we went to Manhattan.

New York City is one enormous distraction. A visit there guarantees sensory overload. There is simply too much happening at once. I found it very difficult to focus when Jules gave us the nickel tour of Manhattan. Of course, some of that could have been the residual effects of the previous evening’s activities.

We had been in Queens at a party with the Buddhists. It went late. A little after 11:00 PM, Jules started shepherding us toward the door. We were saying our goodbyes when Devo rushed out of the kitchen and pleaded for us to stay.

“You guys can’t go yet! I’ve only had one beer! We need to hang out, and talk for a while!”

Jules firmly told Devo that we really needed to be getting home. We had plans to participate in a demonstration at Union Square the next morning. We couldn’t hang around.

I found Devo’s offer to be extremely enticing. I thought, “Oh, hell yeah!” I told Devo that I would be glad to suck his beer and talk shit all night, as long as he could get me to Manhattan in the morning for the protest.

Devo shook his head, “Hey Man, I can’t do that.”

“Then I gots to go.”

The trip from Queens to Manhattan was uneventful. We had to drop off Tracy, Jules’ lady friend, at her apartment before we could go back to New Jersey. Just for the record, Tracy is one of the gentlest and sweetest women I have ever met. She is a wonderful person.

The traffic in Manhattan at midnight had subsided a bit. Rose, Jules’ daughter, saw a couple well-dressed, young women crossing the street in front of us. Rose said,

“They’re ready to go clubbing.”

I asked, “They are starting now?”

Rose turned around in the van and looked at me. “Yeah, why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. Never mind.”

By the way, Rose is a very interesting woman. She is a petite lady, fifty-ish. Rose speaks with a husky voice in a staccato fashion. Rose used to work in her father’s bookstore, and now she works as a teacher’s aide for autistic kids. Rose is also a Harley rider. Seeing as Rose is both a Jersey girl and a biker, I suspect that she has no trouble taking care of herself. She is married to guy named Iggy. Somehow it all fits.

We turned down some side street. I noted the piles of garbage on the curb.

Jules said, “That’s not bad. They might be a little behind picking up. Wait a couple hours for the rats to come out.”

After we dropped off Tracy at her apartment, we only had ten blocks to go before we hit the Lincoln Tunnel that goes under the Hudson River to Jersey. Those ten blocks took two hours to cover. I dozed during most of that time. We arrived home at Jules’ house promptly at 3:00 AM. Sweet.

I woke up at 7:30 or so. I shaved, took a shower, and tried to gather my thoughts. I considered wearing a red t-shirt to match my eyes. Karin got up shortly after that, and we met Jules in his kitchen. Rose showed up at 9:30, and we walked down Main Street to catch the 167T bus to Manhattan.

Jules had instructed me to get the senior’s round trip ticket when we got on the bus. The 167T pulled up to the stop, and Jules got in first. He apparently didn’t trust me to follow his guidance, so he told the bus driver that Karin and I needed senior tickets. The driver gave me a hard stare as she took my money. She gave me that look that says, “You are a fucking liar. You ain’t no goddamn senior.” Well, she gave us our round trip tickets, and we all got over it.

The 167T makes its way slowly from Bergenfield, through Teaneck, and then to the New Jersey Turnpike. From there it goes through the Lincoln Tunnel, and ends up at the Port Authority bus terminal in mid-Manhattan. I have some history with Port Authority. When I was a cadet at West Point, some forty years ago, I used to take the Mohawk bus from the school to New York (I can still smell the diesel fumes). Most of my memories of the Port Authority involve avoiding Hari Krishnas, and stepping over sleeping winos in the bathrooms.

There had been some minor changes to the terminal since I last was in Port Authority. I was shocked to see armed soldiers in the building.

Jules chuckled and asked me, “Doesn’t it make you feel safer?”

“Actually, no.”

Port Authority is a transportation nexus. It is composed of multiple levels of buses, subways, and taxis. There various kiosks and shops. The entire structure is designed to disorient the stranger. Fortunately, Rose and Jules were there to lead Karin and myself through the labyrinth.

Before we embarked on our journey, Karin was adamant that I have my phone on, just in case she lost me in the shuffle. At the time, I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Once we arrived in Manhattan, and descended into the maelstrom of humanity, I could see that Karin had a legitimate concern. It would be so easy to lose somebody in the crowd. Everything and everybody competed for our attention. Even a momentary lapse of attention would result in us becoming separated.

Rose and Jules got us on to the subway train that took us to 14th Street. We climbed up to street level, and even Rose and Jules suffered a moment of confusion regarding our next move. Coming up from the subway is a lot like swimming under water, and then surfacing in an unfamiliar place. Rose got her bearings and we walked along 14th Street toward Union Square. En route, Rose pointed out the Freedom Tower to Karin. The building soared up in the distance.

Union Square is a tiny oasis of green amidst mountains of concrete and stone. As we walked toward it, the first thing I noticed were old black men playing chess and backgammon. Then I heard a Jimi Hendrix wannabe playing electric guitar somewhere in the background. There were numerous kiosks set up around the perimeter of the square. Near the center was a giant equestrian statue of George Washington. There were also some of those strange things called trees.

We got to the park just as the demonstration was starting. The event was organized by the local Catholic Workers, and it was to protest Saudi (and U.S.) involvement in the Yemen civil war. The conflict there has caused famine and a severe cholera epidemic.  A couple people were unfurling a huge banner that said: “Yemen is Starving!”

Jules pointed out an older woman who was holding the banner. He told us, “That’s Martha Hennessey, Dorothy Day’s granddaughter.” Martha didn’t look in any way extraordinary, and I don’t think she would want to look extraordinary. She was just doing her job, following the Gospel as best she can. She put on a costume that made her look like a grieving mother holding a dead child. She walked back and forth in front of the banner.

Jules opened up a flag for Veterans for Peace (Jules is a vet). He stood with some people he knew at the front of the protest line. I moved up and took a spot holding up the banner. It was windy and they needed more bodies to keep the banner steady. Rose went out front to take photos. Tracy met us at the square. Karin wandered through the kiosks and found a yarn seller. Karin has an uncanny ability to find yarn and fiber wherever we go. It’s like a sixth sense.

I felt comfortable just standing there and holding on to the banner. I felt like I was in the eye of hurricane. A swirling mass of people passed before me and around me. It was calming to be motionless in a sea of random motion. All sorts of folks walked past: all ages, all races, all genders. Many of them took pictures. Eventually there were photographers taking pictures of people taking pictures.

Across street was a building with sign that had a series of numbers on it. I think there were twelve digits on the sign. Some numbers changed slowly, some rapidly. It seemed confusing to me. I asked the young man next to me what that was.

He looked at me and replied, “It’s a clock.”

“A clock?”

He laughed, “Yes, a clock. Some people think it’s a Doomsday clock, but it’s just a clock.”

It was only then that I noticed that the digits represented hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of seconds.

I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Basko.”

“How do you spell that?”

“B-A-S-K-O.”

Basko was from some place far away, but I couldn’t identify his accent. He was my height, with thick, black hair,and very dark eyes. He looked like he might be Indian, but not quite.

One of the Catholic Workers, Carmen, started talking to crowd standing in front of us. Carmen harangued the onlookers with facts about the Saudi bombing and blockade of Yemeni ports. He went on and on about the numerous civilian deaths from air attacks, lack of food, and lack of clean water. I’m not sure who was listening. I suspect that for many people we were just part of the show. We were a new distraction, a slightly different type of entertainment.

It was almost noon, and Karin wanted to get something to eat and drink. I left my post and walked with her to get a smoothie at a Walgreen’s. Then we stopped at one of the street side food stalls. These vendors were all over Manhattan. They all had a big sign on their carts that said, “Halal”. No pork products here. The vendor had kabobs, and he had sandwiches made with chicken or lamb. Karin wanted one of the humongous pretzels that the man was selling. They reminded me of the pretzels we bought many years ago in the Englischergarten of Munich.

When we got back to the banner, Carmen was still going strong. The man has enormous stamina. He was extremely hoarse at this point. People flowed past the banner. Carmen was talking to himself by then. At 1:00 PM the demonstration ended. Carmen gathered the various protesters together to thank everyone for their participation. We dispersed.

The five of us (Tracy, Rose, Jules, Karin, and myself) started walking south along Broadway. We were headed to Mary House, the original Catholic Worker House that sits on 3rd Street, not far from the Bowery. Basko walked with us. He told me that he sometimes helps out at the Catholic Worker House, but that he was going to be busy that afternoon. As we walked through town, we talked. I asked Basko where he was from.

“Nepal”, he replied.

“So, why are you here?”

“There was the civil war, and then the earthquake. We lost 30,000 people, and Nepal only has thirty million. I needed to go.”

I told Basko about how my wife’s father and his family had been refugees at the end of World War II. Basko then described the experience of his grandfather.  The man had been arrested in the Soviet Union back in 1944 for smuggling. Basko’s grandpa was then forced to serve in a penal battalion of the Soviet Army and fight against the Germans. At the end of the war, Basko’s grandfather was in Poland, and somehow he made his way back to Nepal.

Basko laughed, “He came home a dedicated Trotskyite.”

I asked him, “You have Maoists in Nepal, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“So, what exactly is a Maoist?”

Basko shook his head. “A few years ago, I probably would have given you a different answer, but Maoism is basically fascism with a socialist face.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Look at where the Maoists are: Nepal, India, any place where the Chinese have a strategic interest. The Maoists are just an arm of Chinese ultra-nationalism.”

We came to a small open area. Basko said, “My girlfriend goes to school here”, as he pointed at a building on our left.

He went on, “My girlfriend is Ukrainian. She studies art here. This is the Coopertown Union.”

“How old is she?”

“Nineteen.”

“How old are you?”

He smiled and said, “Twenty.”

We stopped for a moment. Basko said, “I need to wait for her here. I will come to Mary House around 5:30. Will you still be there?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of doubt it.”

We shook hands and said goodbye.

It is easy to miss Mary House. It has a small sign hanging in front of the door. It just looks like another brick building, surrounded by many other such buildings. We got there and tried the front door. It was locked. We found this to be more than a little disappointing.

A man opened the door for us. He wore a knit cap and a heavy coat. He totally had that homeless guy vibe. Apparently, he was the resident greeter/babbler. He spoke nonstop to us after we entered the house. At one point he started telling stories to Tracy, and he hung on to her like a leech.

Mary House looks like a dump. I am not being critical. This is just an observation. The paint is peeling. Everything is old and very well-used. It has a rundown appearance. However, when I think about it, how else should it look? This was Dorothy Day’s home base, and she identified completely with the poor and marginalized. She lived exactly like the people she served. The folks who work there now do the same thing. Mary House is a place that serves the destitute and the forgotten, day after day. It is a place where people live the Beatitudes.

We were escorted to the dining area. Martha was eating a quick lunch. She and Carmen had a meeting to attend in a few minutes. She greeted us and that was about it. Martha is a busy woman, and we showed up at an inopportune time.

Carmen was there too. He was also beginning to eat his meal. He told us to grab some coffee or cake or chocolate that they had on a side table. He decided that he had a few minutes available to show us around.

It was a quick tour. We got to see Dorothy Day’s office. It’s kind of working shrine. I think that people use the space, but it really has her energy there yet. The room has this cluttered appearance, kind of a barely controlled chaos. I suspect that some papers and books have been laying around for decades. For Karin and for me, this was like the end of a pilgrimage. We were in the home of a saint, a saint who was our contemporary.

Carmen also took to their chapel. It’s a small, windowless room. It has rough-looking furniture. The chapel has its own tabernacle for the Eucharist. Apparently, they received papal dispensation to keep it there. There are archives in the chapel. Carmen pulled out one of the original copies of the Catholic Worker newspaper from the 1930’s. It was literally crumbling in his hands as he showed it to us.

After we said goodbye to Carmen, we walked along 3rd Street toward 2nd Ave. There was a swap-and-shop going on nearby. Jules wanted to check it out. We also walked past the national headquarters of the Hell’s Angels. Jules joked with Rose about touching one of the bikes sitting at the curb. Rose told Jules, in no uncertain terms, that if he messed with their Harleys, he was on his own.

We wandered north on 2nd Avenue in search of food. It was mid-afternoon. Jules knew a place. It was the Ukraine East Village Restaurant. We went into a building and found the restaurant in a room partially hidden from view. The dining room had wood paneling all around, and was decorated with traditional, Ukrainian embroidered cloths. The tables and chairs were heavy and solid. It definitely had a European feel to it. The waitresses were dressed in black, and they looked like it would kill them to smile.

We sat down and browsed through the lunch menu. We made our selections, and a sturdy, middle-aged woman with black hair and narrow lips came to take our orders. She eyed us suspiciously. Then she proceeded to treat us to the very best of Soviet-style customer service.

“You, what do you want?” she said to Karin.

Karin said, “I would like the spinach pierogis.”

The waitress looked at Karin coldly, and asked, “Five or seven?”

“What?”

The waitress asked impatiently in her think accent, “Five or seven? Lunch or deener menu?”

Karin laughed nervously, “Oh, the lunch menu. Five.”

“Very guud”, replied the waitress.

She turned to stare at me.

“I’ll have the cheese blintzes.”

“Guud.”

“And you?” she asked Tracy.

“I’ll have the potato pancakes”.

The waitress sighed, and asked, “Five or seven?”

“Five”, answered Tracy quickly.

It went on like this through the rest of the meal. I think that Jules found it all somehow hilarious. I kept asking myself if this woman had learned her people skills in the gulag.

Now, I am myself a Slav. My people came from Slovenia, and I have inherited that dark moodiness that others find so attractive. It’s just weird to be on the receiving end of that.

To be honest, the food there was excellent, and efficiently served. I think that maybe I wouldn’t minded the harshness of the service if I had had a couple beers. There is a reason why Slavs drink.

Jules knew that Karin and I wanted to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He had originally suggested that we go there on Sunday. After lunch, he changed his mind and asked if wanted to go there on this excursion. Karin and I were good with that. Jules consulted with Tracy, and they found the subway to take us to 51st Street. The train was packed, absolutely packed full. We were shoe-horned into the car, and then we found out that this particular train was running late and would not stop at our destination. We got off at the next station and got on to the next overfilled train.

We were vomited forth from the train at the 51st Street terminal. We walked to Madison Avenue and entered the church. I will not spend time describing that experience now. Our time in St. Patrick’s deserves its very own essay. Suffice it to say that we attended the evening Mass and walked away from the cathedral in the New York twilight.

We worked our way south and west. We went past the New York Public Library, Bryant Park, and the diamond district. We made our way slowly toward Port Authority and the end of our tour.

But first we had to navigate Times Square. Holy fuck.

It was dark by the time we hit Times Square. We were greeted by three-story-tall images of Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, advertising Blade Runner 2049. Then it got weird. There were enough flashing lights to trigger an epileptic seizure. Mobs of people. Utter chaos. Madness.

Jules said, “It will be like this until 3:00 AM or so.”

Nice.

I was in Times Square once many years ago. It had that same extreme nervous energy. Spending time there is the equivalent of slamming a six pack of Monsters. And people like it there. They actually think it’s fun. People were taking selfies, and sending them back home to family and friends that probably live in sane environments.  I couldn’t get out of there soon enough.

We found Port Authority. We found our bus. We returned to the relative tranquility of northern New Jersey.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 29th, 2017

“And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls,
And tenement halls”
And whispered in the sounds of silence.”

The final lyrics from “The Sounds of Silence” by Paul Simon

We were in Queens at the Nipponzan Myo Hoji Temple. The folks there were having a get together to welcome Ishi Bashi Shonin, a priest from Tokyo, to New York City. The priest seldom left Japan, so this was a time to celebrate. This was a time to party. Now, generally, Buddhist gatherings are sedate and sober affairs. Usually, there is a lot of bowing and chanting and weak tea and healthy snacks. Buddhist festivities often resemble AA meetings with an Asian flavor.

Not this time.

The first inkling I had that this gathering would be different was when I asked Jules what Karin and I should bring to the party. He told me to bring some beer. He was going to pick up a couple bottles of wine.

I asked Jules, “What kind should I get?”

Jules smiled and said, “Get the kind of beer that you like to drink.”

“Hmmmmmm”, I thought.

Karin and I walked to the main street in Bergenfield, and I picked up a six pack of some local Belgian-style beer. That was our contribution to the party.

The temple is in a beautiful, old, three story house in Queens. The place is just gorgeous. There were already a number of people there when we arrived at 7:30 PM, after a grueling three hour drive from New Jersey through Manhattan and into Queens. Ishi Bashi was there, looking all Zen and shit. He had a shaved head and huge eyebrows.  He smiled at us benevolently. An older Japanese gentleman was there too. He told me his name was Kingyo, which translates to “Goldfish”. Some people from Tibet/Nepal were there too. In the kitchen Devo was getting the food ready. Devo is a local man who lives at the temple. He’s black and he has massive dreadlocks. Cool guy.

After we arrived, we had an official greeting with Ishi Bashi. We pulled out some cushions and knelt down in the sanctuary. We all bowed and chanted, “Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo!” The priest turned to face us, and we bowed to him, and he bowed to the Buddha in us. With the formalities completed, we ate and drank. There were low tables spread with food, and there were cushions for sitting.

Devo came out after a bit to check on the festivities. He said,

“All of you uncouth peoples, are you aware that there is a dish of virgin olive oil for you to dip your bread? Also, did you see the cooked eggplant?”

I asked him, “Is that baba ghanouzh?”

Devo shook his head. “No, not quite, but it’s good.”

Then he asked the room in general, “May I bring any of you some beer or wine, or perhaps a vodka-based beverage?”

Actually, we were all good.

A tall, young man entered the room. He wore glasses and a serious expression on his face. He found himself a place at one of the low tables. He seemed isolated, so I went over to greet him.

His name was Greg. He is a deaf-mute. Greg indicated to me that he could not read lips. However, he wanted to interact with me, so he pulled out a well-used notebook. We spent a couple hours conversing with each other.

I felt an immediate and strong connection with Greg. Maybe it was because we are both writers. Greg is a writer by necessity. I am a writer by choice. However, we both felt most comfortable scribbling our thoughts into his notebook.  We silently spoke of many things: family, books (Greg likes Kurt Vonnegut), hopes, and struggles.

I wrote to Greg, “You know, this is better than many of my spoken conversations.”

Greg smiled and wrote, “Others have told me the same thing.”

By conversing with Greg, I joined his peculiar sort of isolation. We could only talk to each other. We could not join in any of the wide-ranging conversations that surrounded us. We were forced to focus completely on the words of the other person. We had to be there.

One woman sat down near to me and tried to get my attention.

I said to her, “I don’t mean to blow you off, but I am talking with Greg, and that is all I can really do right now.”

The conversation with Greg was both intense and intimate. I could see his facial expressions and get his body language. The written words did the rest. I missed the vocal cues that normally are available. It was strange, but I liked it.

A written conversation requires a person to be concise and coherent. There is no room for small talk. As an introvert, I appreciate that. I suspect that Greg is also an introvert, perhaps due to his disability.

At one point, I wrote in his notebook, “I don’t know you at all, but I love you anyway.”

I’m not sure why I wrote that, and I don’t know how he took it. However, I meant it. I really did love him, like I love my sons.

I needed to get away for a while. I had drunk three beers, and the noise and commotion was getting to me. There is a shrine on the second floor of the house, so I went up there to pray for a while. I sat and thought and stared at the Buddha. I listened to the voices below. I grew calm.

Eventually, I went back down to the party. It was almost 11:00 PM. People had eaten. I went to Greg and asked if he wanted to meditate for a while. Greg shook his head, and he made signs to indicate that he wanted to go to bed. Greg lives at the temple. I told him that it was okay. I was just asking. He smiled. I made gassho (palms together), and so did he. We said goodbye.

I had given Greg my email address and my info on my blog. I don’t know if I will ever hear from him (in writing). It doesn’t matter. He has already taught me things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 25th, 2017

After many years of unnecessary delay, I finally participated in a full Zen retreat. I can tell because today most of my muscles hurt. That’s part of the deal. There are a lot of Buddhist aerobics involved in a Zen retreat.

Now that I have made it through a Zen weekend, I can compare the experience with making a Catholic retreat. It’s a bit like comparing apples with oranges. The differences are obvious. However, apples and oranges are both fruits, and they are all healthful. Catholic and Buddhist retreats are kind of like that too.

A retreat, by definition, implies that a person is getting away from their day-to-day world. The person is planning to leave behind work, and family, and Donald Trump raving about whatever he’s raving about today. A person going on retreat is going to turn off the cell phone, ignore the Internet, and focus on something else. The person may not even know what that something else is, but, by God, he or she is going to focus on it.

This temporary flight from the ordinary world has great value. All religious traditions caution against getting obsessed with “the world”, however you might define that. It is necessary at times for a person to pull back and take a couple deep breaths. It is far too easy to get sucked into the system, and live a desperate and largely unconscious life.

The Zen perspective on a retreat is that is a time for “hard practice”. It is a time of severe discipline. It is almost athletic in its stance. At a Zen retreat we sit/walk for hours at a time, meditating and trying to break through to reality. The emphasis is on work. It is a struggle. A person enters a Zen retreat in a warrior state of mind.

Catholic retreats are often based on a very different set of assumptions. I have been to far more Catholic retreats than Zen retreats. Catholic retreats start with the idea that the person coming to the session is wounded. The person walking into a Catholic retreat house (whether it be Redemptorist, Franciscan, or Jesuit) has had his or her ass kicked by life. That is why they are there. The folks running the retreat center are mostly interested in stopping the spiritual bleeding. They want to patch up the poor souls that limp in through the doors.

I have was told that by a nun recently that the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius (founder of the Jesuits) might bear more similarity to Zen practice than other types of Catholic retreats. My understanding is that these exercises are quite structured, and they usually take 30 days to complete. I have never gone on a retreat of that length, so I don’t know how much Ignation meditation actually resembles Zen practice. I can only speak from my own experiences.

Look at it this way: A Zen retreat center is a gymnasium. A Catholic retreat center is an emergency room.

I’ve spoken of the differences. Are there similarities? Of course, there are.

In a Catholic retreat there is a need to turn things over to Jesus. There is the requirement to let it all go. Well, what do we do in a Zen retreat? We try to let go of attachments.  What is the difference between giving it all to Jesus and opening our hearts to our essential Buddha nature? Not much. Actually, nothing at all.

The differences are mostly all words. Names. Concepts. Catholic and/or Buddhist, we all want freedom from suffering and we want a clear mind. We want healing. We might call that by different names, but we still all want the same thing.

Is there really a difference between striving and letting go? Are “hard practice” and finally “letting go” really the same? Do we all get to the same place?

 

 

 

September 22nd, 2017 (6:00 AM)

Stefan just spit into the kitchen sink.

This is nothing unusual.

We have a morning ritual. Actually, the process begins the previous evening. Karin owns a Nutribullet blender, solely designed for the purpose of making healthy, nutritious smoothies. Karin regularly puts together the ingredients for such a smoothie, and places the concoction into the refrigerator. When Stefan takes his shower in the morning, I dutifully blend the mixture with the Nutribullet, and place half of the contents into a Mason jar for Stefan’s consumption. Another jar is for Karin. Then I sit back and watch.

Healthy food and delicious food are not always the same thing. Stefan has discovered this fact. Karin likes to mix things that perhaps would best kept apart: strawberries and kale, ginger and bananas, peaches and spinach. Sometimes the end product actually tastes very good, but the texture is unpleasant. For instance, carrots give the drink a gritty feel. A gritty smoothie would seem to be an oxymoron. Stefan struggles to swallow any drink that is gritty or slimy. I do too.

Every morning Stefan picks up his jar and nervously smells the smoothie, like a dog sniffing road kill. He walks over to the sink. He starts sipping the smoothie, hoping that he won’t need to suppress the gag reflex. Usually, he gets through the ordeal, and occasionally he finds the experience to be pleasant. Sometimes not. I find those instances to be entertaining.

One time, Stefan spit forcefully into the sink, and I asked him, “So, how was the smoothie?”

He replied, “You’ll have to ask the drain.”

 

 

September 21st, 2017

“We have to be ready to die for the rights of others!”

Aaron Eick said that yesterday, or something very similar to it. This is not an exact quote.

Aaron is a teacher at Horlick High School in Racine, and he is a labor organizer. Aaron has dark, curly hair and dark, piercing eyes. He was speaking to us, a small group of people, standing in front of the office of Congressman Paul Ryan in Racine. We were all there with Voces de la Frontera, to demonstrate for the rights of DACA recipients. Aaron had started talking about DACA, and then he gave everybody a quick history of the struggle for workers/immigrants rights in the twentieth century. As he spoke, Aaron got increasingly passionate, and he ended at a fever pitch. That is when he suggested that we might have to sacrifice our lives for justice.

The immediate reaction in my mind to Aaron’s words was: “Who the fuck are we?!” I don’t remember signing up for for martyrdom.

In a way, Aaron’s words sounded a bit excessive. It is never wise to talk about death in a overly dramatic way. His comments seemed a little over the top because at this time, and in this place, we are not risking our lives for our beliefs. America isn’t Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. Not yet. 

I could be wrong. Remember Heather Heyer? She was the woman who died in Charlottesville last month when some right-wing fanatic ran her over with his car. She was a martyr. She died for her beliefs. It’s hard to tell if her death was a fluke or a harbinger of the future. Her death does bring up the question of what risks we run if we fight for our beliefs.

Valeria and Jose spoke before Aaron talked to us. Valeria and Jose are young people who are both DACA recipients, and they have justifiable fears about what might happen in six months when DACA is no more. These two came here to the United States from Mexico as very small children, and they do not know any other country besides the U.S. Because they are undocumented, they could possibly be deported back to Mexico, a land that is foreign to them. Their lives could be destroyed because of a draconian American immigration policy. This is scary stuff.

So, would I be willing to die for Valeria and Jose? That question ran through my head as Aaron spoke. I really don’t know. I’m not going to promise people something that I may not be able to deliver.

Being raised as a Catholic, I am familiar with the stories of the Christian martyrs. The stories all show the martyrs as being bold and fearless defenders of the faith. In stain glass windows, they always look noble and brave. I wonder if they were all like that. We only have the stories of the martyrs who had good PR. Were they all courageous to the end? Or did some go to their deaths in fear and trembling? Or did some of them look into the eyes of their killers, smirk, and say, “Fuck you, Asshole.” I don’t know what I would do, but I can imagine myself as being one of the smirkers.

There is no shortage of martyrs in our time. I don’t think that any of them sought out that particular career path. I don’t think that Martin Luther King or Malcolm X looked forward to stopping a bullet. I don’t think that Bishop Oscar Romero hoped for a martyr’s crown. I don’t think that Franz Jagerstatter or Dietrich Bonhoeffer ever dreamed of dying in a Nazi prison. They got caught up in events. They may have expected to die, but I don’t believe that they desired it.

Martyrs are by nature gamblers, risk takers. Even though the odds are against them, they still roll the dice and hope that they can live and work another day. They do it because the struggle is worth the risk. I think of Sophie Scholl and the Weisse Rose in Germany in 1942. They knew that they probably would die for fighting against the Nazis, but they also knew that they could do better work if they stayed alive. They didn’t want to get caught, but they pushed their luck as far as they could. Nobody wants to end up in a konzentrationslager or a gulag.

How does a person get to the point where they are willing to risk their lives for another person? I’m not sure. Maybe for some people it is intuitive, and it happens in a flash. I suspect that it might also be a slow, incremental process. A person may gradually become used to the idea of taking certain risks. Maybe, at some point the possibility of dying even becomes acceptable.

I look back on my own history of being an activist. I went to my first demonstration probably in 2001, when people were protesting against the execution of Timothy McVeigh. After that, I became more involved with protests. I wrote articles and letters.  I gradually got deeper and deeper into it. I went on peace walks that lasted two weeks. I tentatively stepped out of my comfort zone.

For many years I avoided getting arrested. I didn’t want to cross that line, not until this year. In April I took the plunge and I got busted for civil disobedience in Nevada. It was an in-the-moment decision. No prior planning there. It stung a little, but the experience didn’t actually cost me much. I saw and heard quite a bit. Did I learn my lesson? The cops would probably say “no”, because now I am more willing to be arrested for a cause. I crossed a threshold, and there really isn’t any turning back. I’m not a virgin any more.

Before I left home yesterday to go to the demonstration in Racine, I told my wife, Karin, that I was going. I told her about Voces and the DACA protest.

Karin nodded slowly. She was watching Netflix and knitting, and she didn’t even look up when I told her.

I put on my sandals and walked to the front door.

I yelled to her, “I’m going now!”

She replied from the bedroom, “Don’t get arrested!”

The new normal.