Many of us baby boomers rebelled against the bullshit we detected in our racist, sexist society. We rebelled against a war we knew was a brutal lie. We advocated for civil rights. We demanded equal rights for women. Now we’re getting old. What will we demand for the elderly before we are too feeble, too [...]
Category Archives: Healing Words
Focus on the Breast
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Okay – here goes the ubiquitous cancer blog I said I wouldn’t write. I suppose it was inevitable.
Last November I had a breast tumor removed which turned out to be a rare kind of cancer that doesn’t respond to chemo or radiation. At least I could skip that routine. Though the margins were clean, the [...]
LOVING WALDO AND HIS TURDS
Friday, January 29, 2010
I don’t think we need criminal behavior or sex scandals to ruin people’s reputation. All we have to do is tape them in their homes alone with their pets.
Just now I was talking to Waldo, my beloved Australian Shepherd, and I repeated this pithy question several times while rubbing his head: “Did you do-do outside, [...]
HORNED-TOADS AGAINST THE HEART
Friday, October 2, 2009
Frank is a 29 year old Navajo man who’s dying of AIDS. I spend time with him several days a week at the near by hospital. It’s part of my volunteer work, and I’ve been reading poetry and Coyote stories to him, coming to understand that he’s smart and funny, not to be toyed with [...]
April is the Cruelest Month
Sunday, April 5, 2009
My son died nine years ago, April 9. There’s some nine thing going on (this also being 2009). I’m not doing very well. Who knows why this year seems particularly bleak to me. Some years aren’t so bad.
The gory details, which are never far from my consciousness, [...]
New Magic in a Dusty World
Monday, May 5, 2008
My father said to me as we walked arm in arm, slowly down the hall of an upscale nursing home, “I’m a dead duck. I don’t have anything to live for, and I’m afraid to die.” He’d been widowed twice, had been too abusive a father for any of his children to take him into [...]