A Funny Thing Happened...

On the way to the garden, a funny thing happened. I saw a lizard sunning itself on the large volcanic rock under the plum tree. One fat ripe plum splatted on the rock next to the startled lizard. He scuttled under the protective ledge of his formerly safe and cozy sunning place. A moment later, as I watched in fascination, he scuttled back up top - perhaps to get more sun, perhaps to satisfy his curiosity and sample the sweet juice now dripping down the surface of his rock. In either case, the lizard first did some push-ups, making sure all around knew he was king of this rock and nobody better mess with him!

I certainly wasn't planning on messing with the creature. His black striped back and blue belly reminded me of ones I'd caught as a child in and around the wood pile, back of the stand of bamboo in the open field adjacent our hillside home in Echo Park. We saw a lot of Blue-bellies there sans tails. I'm not saying it was always us kids, but maybe the plentiful cats who tried to catch the reptiles. Those crafty lizards knew well how to distract predators by leaving their tails behind, offering up a tasty snack to a wily cat, fox or kid. We marveled at the wriggly squiggly remains of a tail. We never thought of tasting one.

This current li'l blue belly is a welcome visitor in the garden. I'm glad the plum didn't hit him, though it would have been fun to see a tail left behind. How long does it take to grow a new one?

Dr. Robert O. Becker, Orthopedic Surgeon introduced the idea in his book,"The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life" (with Gary Selden) that using Direct Current electricity, we can help mammals regenerate bone, nerve, muscle, skin and fur - complete regeneration! Astounding as it sounds, his ideas have helped footballers and basketball players recover rapidly from injury. Direct current helps the body line itself up to replicate all the cells that got damaged. Becker watched a salamander in laboratory do that... which is not uncommon. What was uncommon was the complete regeneration of a rabbit's foot when it had been surgically removed from the unlucky rabbit. That caught the attention of the United States Government. That could offer huge benefits for soldiers in war. 

US Navy called Dr. Becker in to testify on another matter for the Department of Defense - namely, the safety of the radar screen buried under the state of Wisconsin as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, derisively dubbed 'Star Wars' by Teddy Kennedy during the Reagan Era. 

Dr. Becker testified that it was not a good idea to subject  humans or any other mammals to the high intensity of microwave emissions coming off radar cables- even underground. Further, he said that the arbitrary assignment of a number deemed 'safe' for emissions from radar and cell towers was a gross underestimation of the damage said emissions could do to our neurons, eyes, nervous systems, and individual cells. Our flesh can literally cook when exposed to microwave emissions. The huge increase in cataract surgeries is testament to the unsafe emissions to which we are exposed from our computer screens, televisions, sunlight, microwave ovens,  ambient electricity, and radio waves with which we're constantly surrounded. Time to build a Farraday Cage? Maybe so. The US Government did not like Becker's responses and, according to Dr. Becker, all funding for his research in bone regrowth was pulled.

Mr. Lizard has real soft plums falling on his sunny rock. Humans have invisible rays bombarding us unawares.  It's time we wake up to the invisible and take appropriate defensive actions, before we lose our tails!

Shift Happens? How Soon?

I'd like to see lots of change to the protocols we have in place for mamas and babies to give birth together. We seem, as a culture, to be missing the point of how soft-bellied mammals need to be supported in order to give birth successfully, blissfully, and safely. We have lost so much along the way from hunter-gatherers to agrarian cultures to where we find ourselves now: in a technocracy where we bar the door to keep Nature from entering. The most important part we lost was the trust we should have in Mother Nature. She knows that mammals need to feel safe in order to give birth. All mammals, including humans, will stop labor when they do not feel safe. Our systems secrete catecholamines (stress hormones) that counteract the oxytocin that stimulates contractions. What happens to many women in labor when they enter the hospital is that the stress of entering an unfamiliar space sends stress hormones into the blood stream which slows down or stops labor. Again, mammals have the capacity to stop labor when they do not feel safe. It is pro-survival to give birth in a safe, comfortable environment. We know how to stop contractions.  Asking our care providers to follow the hormone-aware protocols can go a long way toward letting Nature dictate the timing of all support during labor and delivery.* 

Sometimes the birthing couple or birthing triad, if the mother’s partner is there, need privacy and to be left alone to regroup, support one another, steel their resolve to let Nature dictate the pacing, rather than strict hospital protocols, as long as everything is going well. This means minimizing tests, exams, and giving plenty of space and time for contractions to do their job. Women’s bodies are designed to work well. 

When the baby begins her journey out, she has the capacity and is hard-wired to USE her legs to help the process, by pushing her feet against the top of the uterus (fundus) so as to propel herself toward the outlet.

When not given anesthetic, mom has more sensation and can participate more fully in helping her baby find her way out. If she is schooled in how normal it is to have big sensation during contractions, she will do much better than if she tenses up with every rush. Tension causes pain. Pain causes tension. It becomes a vicious circle of escalating pain and escalating tension. Understanding that the largest and strongest muscle in the human body is the uterus. These muscles combine strength, endurance, dynamic strength, and absolute strength. (The only other muscle that comes close to pounds of pressure per square inch is the massater muscle which yields more pressure per square inch every time we bite down on something than any other muscle in the human body. [55 pounds on the incisors or 200 pounds on the molars!])

I was fortunate to have been a dancer and to know how those large leg and gluteal muscles feel when they’re working hard. HARD is how they feel! As muscle fibers contract, the entire muscle gets more dense and it feels hard to the touch. 

A birth educator may be able to help her students understand in their body that it’s the job of the uterus to get hard in order to shorten and to push the baby towards the outlet. A good birth educator will also clue-in mom and dad that the baby has a job too. Ideally, baby is the one initiating labor… the powerful signal is given by the BABY’S release of a hormone that says: I’m ready for my entrance now. Please help me to get out. 

When contractions begin, and the fundus (the top of the uterus) gets hard, it is to the baby as the side of a swimming pool is to a swimmer. She can push off and it helps her to swim herself down toward the outlet. “Down” here is a relative word. When standing, mom’s cervix and vaginal opening are definitely down, below her navel. With gravity’s support, it’s a lot easier for babies to push themselves down toward the outlet rather than in an upward direction. When mom is lying down in classic hospital lithotomy position, flat on her back, (usually, with her feet in stirrups) baby is necessarily pushing uphill against gravity, and so is mom.

Breathing and focus can work well for mitigating pain.  Surrender is another big idea during birth. Surrendering to the powerful rushes that WILL bring that baby down the canal, is a useful and tricky trick.

Not saying it's easy for everyone. Just saying it's optimal to surrender to the flow of the rushes. Our bodies have been preparing to give birth since we were an egg inside our mother when she was a baby floating in the dark and quiet of HER mother. The process is meant to work well. Women's bodies were designed to carry and deliver babies. Learning as much as we can about how the process works is a good start. Unfamiliarity leads to surprise which leads to bracing which leads to pain. The unknown can make all of us cringe. 

While classic lithotomy position is easier for birth attendants to feel and see what is happening, it is harder on the birthing couple and often slows down the birth, thereby increasing the likelihood that the hospital will resort to other interventions, like forceps, suction bonnets and ultimately, Caesarean section, also called surgical delivery, or belly birth, which then increases recovery time and impedes the bonding process. 

Staying loose is a practice that can be cultivated. A good birth educator can help us to understand the process, learn to differentiate muscles, so only the uterus needs to work until it is time to push. She can also help us learn the benefits of relaxation and HOW to relax. Further, the role of the birth educator is to normalize many things that may come up during the birth or directly after. Few are worrisome. Most are not.

We are fortunate to live in an age when appropriate medical interventions are available. We can demand of our support staff that they do not use any of those spiffy interventions without good cause. 

Every intervention disrupts the birth dance; the threshold dance of a human child entering into the world. Every intervention has consequence that may lead to more interventions until the cascade separates mothers and babies from their own unique two-step. That separation itself is disempowering and perceived as life-threatening for the emerging being.

Ideally, s/he ought to be able to initiate labor, ought to be allowed to help push herself out (no anesthetic). Optimally, the birthing couple ought to be left to the rhythms of their singular dance music so they may complete it in their own time.

* A free download of a seventeen page booklet called (Pathway to a Healthy Birth may be found here: 

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/maternal-health/pathway-to-a-healthy-birth-booklet.pdf 

Age, Old, Garden

"M and M Always" is scrawled on the white side of a cardboard piece of a Lipton Tea Bag Economy size box. Costco's finest. Recycling are us! I found it smiling at me from the back of the refrigerator after he left early June to go to camp for a month. He's back now. The cardboard was damp and perhaps some indigo stains from the purple yam and black Forbidden Rice with coconut milk glormph I'm fond of making as a sweet treat had found their way onto the heart and smiley face.

M and M have, it seems, been together always. Since 1972 anyway... more than half my lifetime and of his. My little brother then nine, now fifty-six and a half, served M & Ms at our wedding. He thought it was the neatest thing that his big sister would marry a man whose name also began with M. 

So here we are 47 years later, leaving love notes for one another when work or volunteer gigs or writing conferences do us part. Not sure if he even found all the notes I packed into his shirt and pants pockets, socks and sleeping bag. Oh, well. Some were found. That matters. We don't want to be outdone in the showing love to one another department.

Why is that? 

A doe and her fawn peruse, browse, then careen away, when they see me watering this morning, to the other side of the street.

So sweet to see their heads - like pigeons do - thrusting forward with each step they take. I wonder what their heads do when they run? They love the grasses I've planted. One is totally gone, the dent in the earth shows where the tuft was. The other is nibbled down to the nubs, but still there, and this morning I see a new sprig escaping and pushing itself up, growing next to the original. 

I'm trying to craft an "S" shaped path from curb down the slight incline to the cement path that runs along the front of the house from driveway to the planter wall that runs parallel to the house, just outside the kitchen windows. Outlined in brick salvaged from a neighbors house, (they didn't want them), the first attempt was way too wide; the second too narrow. This morning's outline is closer to what I imagined. I think the deer approve.

Humming bird feeder has to be moved on account of ant attack. I hang it by its "S" hook from an upward thrusting twig of the plum tree instead of from the piece of recycled phone cord some distance away which is black with thirsty, gluttonous ants. We'll see if the hummers stop shaking their heads every time they take a sip on the wing or sit on the feeder for a longer drink these hot July days. Did I say hot? I meant to say June Gloom has not let go its grip. We're in the 50s these early mornings. I put on my winter coat over my pajamas to water this morning. Front yard at least. No one can see me in the back that I care about... so PJs work just fine. It's cold alright! The purple agapanthus and purple wisteria so beautiful against their dark green foliage. My lips, too, are purple. Summer? Hah! Wait 'til October.

This morning, I'm going in early to CCMP to help translate for a gentleman who had a run-in with a non-Spanish-speaking dentist paid by Medi-Cal to pull all his upper teeth. Not a one left. Medi-Cal pays for only HALF of a total set of chompers. One complete denture either upper or lower. So they pulled every one of this fellow's upper teeth, even though nearly all of them were of sound health. There were  two teeth that were abscessed  Why pull all the rest? Because it makes the Insurance Companies' CEOs rich. The fellow didn't understand what he was going to have done. They put him under general anesthetic and he couldn't complain until it was all over. Disgusting what our health care system has become. He's been without teeth up there for fourteen months! If you don't have the dough to pay for procedures and don't speak the language, and don't have an advocate, you are a target for malpractice of grand proportions - a pawn in the industry that's raking in money hand over tooth. Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals (CCMP) is lending a hand... all volunteer, not a penny of government monies, very grass roots, 43 years old.

Hands... My beloved is going to have thumb reconstruction surgery on his right hand sometime in August. The opposable digit dislocated while pressing the "on" button of the washing machine - a clear indication that housework may hurt you! Don't do it! (Actually, I hear him bustling in the kitchen right now, putting away the dishes - single-handedly - as I write.) He's such a thoughtful guy and has learned miraculously much about navigating without opposable thumbs and how to do so many things with his non-dominant hand. After the right hand heals, he'll have to have the left thumb reconstructed as well. Sigh. Old-Age ain't for sissies! That's for sure. At least we'll have a nice garden to sit in when we're old Old OLD! Will it be too cold, I wonder. 

One more thought this Tuesday writing of My Monday Muse... A gal from Church of Last Resort shared a technique that worked for her to ease acute grief she was feeling around the recent death of her mother. Her counselor said, this doesn't work for every one, but it works for many...

Take a piece of paper and fold it in half. With your dominant hand, write questions and statements to your lost person. Walk away. Sometime later, when you come back to it, use your non-dominant hand to "reply" as if you are the deceased. Most of us are pretty adept at channeling the voice of loved ones - or even family and "friends" of whom we were not so fond.  I'm going to give it a try.

Rowing Rhinos

In some fantasy I made a pact with Time. Time agreed to extend my moments of delight and to shorten the difficult ones. 

Proof of the pact showed up Friday afternoon wending my way back from an errand in Berkeley. My preferred main drag from Oakland to Berkeley and back is by way of The Warren Freeway also called "13."  Part of 13 is called Ashby Avenue. On the part of Ashby between College Avenue, which is a main drag for exotic shops and a variety of ethnic restaurants, and the iconic Claremont Hotel - all white and crystalline doing its best to imitate a Swiss ski chalet, there it is a rather magical strip of road. Both sides for a bit sport houses; further south there are collision shops and the Transcen-Dental office with a Transcen-Dentist! (Gotta love that, right?) 

While chug-chug-chugging up hill Friday through afternoon traffic which begins, I think, at 12:01, I spied something new on the fence of one of my favorite Craftsman Style dark redwood houses. It was a framed photo about four feet wide by three feet high of a human rowing a row boat with one unusual occupant: a Regal Rhino looking straight ahead. The voluptuousness of the rhino's armored flesh indicated that it was well cared for and not wanting for food. Oddly, the boat wasn't tipped toward the prow.

Friday was a turning point weather wise. We'd been enjoying June Gloom to its fullest with lows in the 50s.  Friday was also Summer Solstice, so I was already inclined to lean into the light and enjoy as much as I possibly could enjoy of this longest day. It was a very warm afternoon, with just enough breeze billowing out of the deep shade of stately redwoods in back yards, front yards and side yards to make it tolerable with the windows down. 

I sat gawking at the photo as it was directly in my line of sight. The background depicted a gray bay with monochromatic ice-covered hills - maybe a fjord the duo were rowing across. I was mesmerized with my head turned toward the cool picture on my left - even as I attended to the car in front of me which kept slipping backward a bit every few moments during the elongated red light - extended on account of my pact with time to extend delight. I took in every detail I could and marveled at the oddity of this human and ancient being engaged together in crossing a fjord. What were the circumstances of this event? What prompted the quest? Where was the photographer standing? 

Gregory Colbert presented to the world a marvelous collection of photos and movies called Ashes and Snow. This rowing rhino pic reminded me of Mr. Colbert's photos - odd pairings of people swimming with elephants, women petting jaguars, a child reading to a kneeling elephant. 

Is the photo on Ashby inviting all of us to be personal escorts a là Noah? Are we meant to pause and consider being personal saviors to animals which may go extinct as sea levels and temperatures rise round the globe? Shall we all build an ark or at least get a boat to row? (It does feel as if I'm getting a little dinghy!) 

I want to know more about the story behind this display of beauty that unexpectedly presented itself to me on the ride home. 

*.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  

The other sure fire way I'm certain my pact with Time is being honored is that my daily meditation feels like an hour long deep and refreshing rest when I'm only sitting for about fifteen minutes! Such a deal! What does Time require of me? 

Well... She said I must be absolutely present in every moment - a skill I'm cultivating but certainly have not yet mastered. 

Time is a feminine feature of the world, did you know? You can tell by her elasticity and ability to contract graciously during - say childbirth's hardest contractions. She must know of the feminine experience intimately to do that. How many women do you know who have said of something unpleasant, "Oh, it's just like labor, you'll forget it as soon as it's over?"

So, Time and I made this agreement and I'm practicing presence. I still wanna know what the heck that photo of rowing rhinos is meant to signify and why someone posted it on the fence. Was it just so I could enjoy it in traffic on Solstice? 

Thank you, Universe for the catchy-eye-candy of rowing rhinos. It's a catchy phrase. Thanks for that, too. And thank you, Time, for the long cycle of red light so I could enjoy it!

*.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  

Summers are meant for languid enjoyment of light filled days. 

In 1989 I became godmother to an eight-year-old young woman from the Cree Nation. Reina and her mother Peggy were in town from outside Edmonton, Canada to see my teacher Rosalyn Bruyere, renown healer.   Reina and I hit it off splendidly in the waiting room / reception area of the Healing Light Center in Glendale California. Our friendship blossomed and lasted over decades and through letters and frequent packages I sent her in the far north. Her descriptions via phone calls allowed me to see in my mind's eye the midnight sun in summer and the darkness of winter and the toll it takes when you do not have a speck of light or warmth for an exteeeeeeeeended period of time. 

Perhaps Reina would relate to the photo of the ginormous regal rhino, horn to the skies, being rowed across a nearly frozen fjord. I wish I knew what became of Reina. The last package came back. No trace of her. No new number no forwarding address. I'd like to think it is she who rows the rhino. 

To happier shores! Good Soulstice!

Tummy Troubles

Izzy first came to work with me when she was eight.

Diagnosed with Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis, she and her mother showed up at my office full of energy and bubbling with joy. Izzy had recently spent nearly two months in hospital, right through Valentine's Day and her birthday, so they were particularly delighted to be out and about.  The family was referred to me by another of my clients whose child had made significant progress on a similar journey.

One of the diagnoses we serve at The Painted Turtle Camp in Lake Hughes, California is Crohn's disease. It can be debilitating and embarrassing for young ones especially during adolescent years if a colostomy bag is required when part of the intestine has had to be removed or it's just taking a rest so the colon can heal from a surgery.

Izzy's hospitalization was difficult for the whole family, as mother, father and younger sister spent many, many hours there with her, but still had to feed pets at home, run carpools, go to school, and work.

One of the therapeutic techniques of particular import for children, well for anyone who's had a life-impacting event, is to create a coherent narrative. In Izzy's case, she was eager to dictate her story of the hospital experience and to illustrate the days spent there with wonderful pencil and later colored-pencil-filled-in drawings.

Rabbits figured big in her drawings... as if every family member was a bunny with long ears. She showed the doctors, nurses, dietitians, family, and visiting friends all as bunnies. The birthday and Valentine's Day drawings were particularly colorful and poignant. She drew herself lying down with lots of people all around her, but looking very alone and tiny in the middle of the bed. The words to that part of the story included her love for the chocolate candy someone brought her, but of which she was allowed only a nibble - like a bunny.

Over the course of our work, we employed many different games and self-help techniques - some of which were for sensory awareness. When the body hurts so awful much, there's a wisdom that kicks in. We vacate the premises. Part of the hospital stay was to try different medications to ascertain which drugs helped the pain abate and which ones were too numbing or stupefying. 

Our smart bodies are good at something called "localized dissociation." When the pain is localized and just too much to be with all day long, the body cleverly retracts awareness from the site - sometimes. Other times it seems as if we'll never be rid of the pain. Localized dissociation can be a good thing. It can also need support when we want that part to come back on line, or back into the mainstream of our ordinary awareness of body. Any part where consciousness cannot reach cannot be fully alive. Pain and all, our most healthful state is to be aware of all sensations.

Some of the games we used included exercises from Brain Gym by Gail and Paul Dennison. Standing with feet crossed, crossing arms thumbs down, interacting fingers and bringing the knuckles up under the chin, rolling the eyes back and curling the tongue to touch the top of the inner upper front teeth where they meet the gum line, and inhaling and exhaling deeply three times can recalibrate the connection between our left / right brain hemispheres, giving us an upper edge in focus and attention out, and leave us feeling refreshed. There are other games in the delightful book which are useful to kids of all ages - nine-month-olds to nonagenarians. (Babies and toddlers may need outside help.)

Games to listen to the body's sounds was an essential one for Izzy. When gurgles hurt, we tense up automatically hearing hunger pangs announce it's time to eat. Differentiating the good sounds from the painful ones was one of the most important interventions we got to do. She learned to mimic the sounds of her tum tum (her words) with her mouth as if to sing along with that part of the symphony.

The name of the book she wrote is called, "Tummy Troubles." The set of games in a box I sent home with her was called "Tummy Troubles To Go."

She chose one every time she was feeling edgy, nervous, tense or upset and also one at bedtime, just to help her go to sleep. Her Book was also part of her bedtime routine.

Overtime, Izzy was able to feel comfortable in her body even under conditions where she used to have tension, like school. Her book helped her to reintegrate when she shared her funny bunny pictures with her classmates and teachers who had really missed her when she was away. 

Tummy Troubles may always be a part of her story, but they do not have to be the central focus of her life. 

Trance-Ended

Jim Kwik is one of those fast-paced and brilliant marketers who has a wonderful program to offer us: HOW to LEARN more QUICKLY. (Kwikly?)

Because I cannot resist a PUN, one of his word-play offerings caught my eye. 

He broke down Transcend into Trance and End. I love the idea of ending the trance in which I and many of us find ourselves living that makes us repeat ad nauseam the put-down mantras of our past: I'll never be smart. I'm too dumb to understand this (your subject here). Maybe next lifetime I'll be good at (your wish here).

My personal trance seems to be: Nah... visibility is not for me. Publishing a book is dangerous. 

I'd like to end this trance, but fear what will happen if I DO complete my nemesis of a chapter: Chapter EIGHT! Chapter Eight has got me stumped, so, if I don't finish it, I won't have to struggle and get this dang book OUT, right? Seems a cosmic joke that I'm struggling to give birth to a book about getting stuck during the birth process that left me with an imprint of hopeless helplessness!

It's a losing proposition. As someone I love says: You miss 100% of the shots you don't try. (Don't ask me about those Warriors, please! I was knitting while watching Saturday's basketball game between the Dubs and the Raptors. From willing them to MAKE those three-pointer and free-through baskets they were trying for, my tension got SO inTENSE, I had to undo some of the knitting so the hat I'm making wouldn't end up being a head-ache band!)

The shots I'm not trying are Chapters 9-12. What would happen if I did walk away from the not great eight? Nothing. Except...  the incentive to finish the book might return. What a concept! 

EMERGENCE is a unique perspective on how our coming into the world marks us. Emergence shares simple tools for undoing the Fight, Flight, and Freeze that may have been locked into our nervous system when they couldn't be expressed. The bound energy of those Three Graces, F, F, and F can persist well into our adult years. Unresolved birth trauma can make navigating life much more difficult than need be.

I'm ready to emerge into the world as an author, but for the fact I've not yet ended the Trance; I've not yet Trance-ended the messages of helplessness I took to the marrow way back when I came into the world. 

Who's gonna guide me out of the trance? Who's gonna help me find the way past Chapter eight, which maybe is too close to my own birth story to be able to see my way through it. 

So many modalities. So many great results over decades! Finishing touches make the day. Where's the glitter? Where's the bow on the package? Just a little further... wait! I can see the light at the end of the proctoscope... and am hoping it's not the light of an on-coming train!

If it isn't one thing, it's your mother. 

Mom and I were up there on the ceiling of The Stork's Nest Lying In Hospital for Women in Inglewood, California on October 6, 1948 - looking for each other. Both of us out of our bodies looking down on the inert woman who'd been given morphine and ether and the bluish looking baby as she came out of the woman. Maybe our spirit selves shrugged our etheric shoulders. Maybe we made a Bee-Line for the bodies that we wanted to live in. Gee,  wonder if we got mixed up? So many times, it felt to me as if I was the mom to my mother and that she was my child. Hmmmmmm.... Nah... meant to be. I was the baby. She was the mom (most of the time).

Oh, dear, I'm getting so sleepy. Is it the conjuring of ether? SO sleepy as I write. wow!

Nodding off. wishing I could talk with her, now that she's gained a much broader perspective of the world. I do believe, that when we die to this world, we find ourselves in a world of pure consciousness... where there is no up/down, Left/Right.. Only awareness of concepts and directions. When my eyes close, I'm inside the computer and keys from an old Underwood Typewriter are striking me with all their metal arms. They are springing up on me randomly, without pattern or predictability. 

Awake now.  Perhaps 5 hours sleep is not enough for a groaning girl.

Noise and Mama's Back

Okay, google. 

That's what Mark says to his phone or tablet.

OKAY, Mark... when are you going to google how to turn the sound down on your phone? It beebs and chirps and squeaks and farts at random times when you're getting messages, emails, notifications and just because it's willful and rude and it's very L - O - U - D. 

I keep mine in silent mode during the day and put it in another room when retiring to bed for the night. I cannot stand the light of the screen, or the buzzing, or any other noises it makes, so I just put it out of sight, out of range of hearing, and out of mind for a full six to eight hours. Aaahhhhh. Silence.

Yours on the other hand, darling is in squawk mode 24/7.

Unaccustomed as I am to anger, I will NOT be angry about the noises that disturb my sleep, but I will be proactive to remind you that your office is a far superior place to park the noise-maker for the night.

Blowers. I hate them. 

Are you plagued by blowers in your neighborhood? Mercifully, we are not, but have seen gardeners using the infernal and ridiculous  machines on city streets, in parks, on parkways, and in front yards of homes in the hood slightly removed from ours. (No one on our street has the kind of yard that warrants that kind of maintenance, so it's a drive to find blowers in use.) Did I mention that I hate blowers?

When we lived in Studio City, our gardener of twelve years died of liver cancer. He was not a drinker. His liver gave out because he wore an infernal gasoline powered blower on his back and daily breathed in tetrahydrozaline, the compound that makes gasoline smelly. When Mike  died, and I found out the cause, I banned the use of blowers on any property where we lived. Period. Blowers only scatter dust, leaves, grass clippings and NOISE. They do not clean up anything. A decent broom and pan would be embarrassed to do their job so poorly. 

Blowers don't care. They barge in and take over an afternoon just wreaking havoc on quietly napping babies and seniors. A siesta is  sacred time. Hanging a "Please do not disturb" sign on the front door does no good. Blowers don't read and their wielders don't care or don't get close enough to heed the plea.  Gas powered motors pollute. Give a hoot. Don't pollute!

Another source of irritating noise is the motorcycle. Have you been dozing by a warm spot in your cozy home only to have your cozy dozy time blown to smithereens by the testosterosa trick of revving the engine whose muffler is hooked up to a megaphone? The caterwauling of a Harley Motor could wake the dead. Here's what I propose:

Choose electric. Electric engines are quiet. True, they only defer the burning of fossil fuels upstream, instead of in your very own engine, but maybe solar or wind will wend its way into our energy stream soon. But for now, the electric motors or even hybrids are much kinder to our ears. 

Harley Davidson says they will be promoting electric engines on their 2020 models. Staunch supporters of the old-fashioned way of doing things relating to motorcycles may squawk, but being kind to the environment is not a wussy thing to do. Anymore, those who ignore the signs of climate crises do so at their own and everyone else's peril. No longer can we pretend that taking the blood of The Mother out of her veins and burning it to make clouds of carbon that change weather patterns is a good idea. 

It is NOT nice to fool Mother Nature... said the sellers of New, New Nucoa, The Margarine larger in Vitamin A; New, New, Nucoa in one, two, three pats a day! (or was it Parque? Parkay?) That was the 1960s. Any way, even today, it's not nice to fool Mother Nature! Watch out. She's trying to get us Vermin Beings (or are we really human?) off her back! She's becoming the big bad wolf. She's huffing and puffing and trying to blow our houses down with wind gales that spin and pour water and create floods and drown as many of us and our unsuspecting fellow creatures on the planet as she can. Eerily, she hasn't (recently) shaken her back to be rid of us. I suspect when she does, it will be chalked up as San Andreas' Fault. Mother Earth... it's not nice to try to fool us either! Your'e the one who's trying to get rid of large swathes of the population. Don't point fingers at fault lines. They might get angry and become quite shaken up about things. So Please, Mama Earth, If we promise to be good and promise to reduce our carbon footprints and promise to reclaim as much of the carbon that is being released by the frozen tundra thawing as we can, will you, please, pretty please with carbon-eaters on top stop trying to shake us off your back? We'll be the best children you ever had. We'll try to curb our hubris, greed, and ignorance. Really we will. 

Noise reduction is just a start.

Thank you, Mama!