Winter Earthbeams

Not Sunbeams, Sy, just my own version-- Earthbeams. The clarity of the blue winter sky here in the outback urges me to consider what sort of clarity I might be capable of. Do make a note that after I read this morning's weather news, the clarity of the sky above me in Nevada is due change into the inpenetrable gray of clouds and snow later today. I better get to getting...

> The Venus-Jupiter-Moon conjunction was real, not staged or "photoshopped" (is this word now a verb?) for those of you who asked. Amazingly enough, it was visible to anyone anywhere on the planet, provided you had clear weather, from 26 Nov to 4 Dec. The catch, at least for me, was the when, because after 2100 the vision disappeared into the west and gone for the night. I used a picture from the National Geographic website because my own efforts proved crummy (wrong lens). NatGeo, as you know, does a far better job at this photo thing.

> The holidays are even more confusing this year than before. Not only is our prophet-teacher's birthday persistently and incorrectly celebrated during a pagan holiday, Saturnalia, and then mythologized with an unlikely visit from Zoroastrian scholars, a Turkish bishop named Agios Nikolaos, and 12 caribou, but now we are urged to spend to excess as our patriotic duty! Just pay no mind to the recession, staggering job loss, the imploding housing market, collapsing financial markets and world economies, bankrupt auto industries, deflationary prices, and the untold trillions of dollars in national debt! Just spend, spend, spend because you ain't American if you don't! But wait, could there be a catch? How exactly are you to perform this patriotic duty? You have to use your credit card because, like the rest of us, you're cash-strapped. However, your credit card has reduced your credit limit by as much as 75% AND raised without notice your APR as high as 30% on your existing balance AND reduced your grace period to as little as 15 days AND has received billions in "assitance" from TARP already and may seek further billions. Alas, you may just have to count yourself, what, a terrorist? We are baptized from birth to consume with religious fervor for we know true happiness is unattainable without the companionship of things and stuff. It is hard to become a non-believer and more difficult to develop atheistic habits. Aside from shopping for the necessary, I love spending. It is therapeutic. But this holiday season is no holiday and, against all patriotic urgings, I'm slowly discovering my capacity for enjoying what I already have. As the song says: It's not having what you want/It's wanting what you got.

> My mother has alzheimer's. She's been taking the medicine you see advertised on TV although I'm not convinced it fulfills its claim of "slowing" the disease. In my own slowness at recognizing if things be blessing or disaster, I'm now of the mind that, at least for mom, alzheimer's is something of a blessing. While in her younger years--my formative years--mom was a force to reckon with: of unattainable expectations for achievement, goal-frantic, power-networked, excessively world-travelled, and a catholic of the latin Mass. She also was, in hindsight, most certainly crippled by a well-disguised, never-acknowledged mental illness. My father accepted this, and was her prescription, therapy, and salvation. When a severe stroke caused him to pass over a few years back, it was the now obvious alzheimer's that saved mom from going over the edge. Nowadays, she'll occasionally ask if I've spoken to dad. I tell her yes, I spoke to dad the other day and sounds like he's doing a lot of travelling and keeping busy with his projects, but he misses us a lot just the same. Mom will always smile, pause for a long time, and then nod. Yes, he tells me the about same thing. And then she disappears once again, behind this disease's "curtain," safe and protected until she, too, needs to pass over.

> Lastly, do take a moment to enjoy one of the most enduring events (4.95 billion years and counting) in our solar system: our Earth's halfway point in its journey around the Sun. We reach that point tomorrow, 21 Dec at 0704 PDT. In ancestral times, this was considered a day of Good Magic, for now the days will lengthen and Persephone will return. Despite the perpetration of Christmas mythology and its so-called traditions on modern civilization, the Winter Solstice was a long series of celebrations for many civilizations. One of those celebrations was known as the Children's Day. Families would get together over a large feast table, in the center of which would be shrines to each of their living children, and give devoted thanks to the young. It was believed that our children are our only glimpse into the future we adults will not experience, and it reminded the family anew that the future was only as prosperous and healthy and as certain as us adults were attentive to the education and well-being of our children. This is a far more compelling way to celebrate than WalMart version we're supposed to patriotically support next Thursday.