A rant about 2024, and the hopes for a better New Year

OK, 2025. Let's try a new theme this time around, OK?

If the caricaturistic Baby New Year arriving as the Old New Year troll departs is what springs to mind, let's give the new kid some steel-toed combat boots to use while 2024 empties his cosmic Depends undies into the commode of history.

War, everywhere. Terrorism abroad, and on New Year's Eve in New Orleans. 

Family homelessness up 40 percent under the soon-to-depart Democratic rule of the past four years.

Crime surged, especially among the tens of thousands of illegally arrived convicted criminals, narco-gang members, and human traffickers that flowed across our broken borders; inept and misdirected immigration law enforcement played no small role, as directed and crippled by "progressive" far-left Democratic Party policies.

Then there were gender identity debates that tossed reason and biology to the winds of emotions and manufactured civil rights diatribes. Too often lost in the vitriol was the idea that every human being is worth something, loved by God, and is, for various reasons and the vagaries of life, in need of individual respect.

Finally, the voters may have rejected the lemming-like rush to the abyss, but will the pendulum now swing too far toward over-zealous retribution?

Will enforcement of the consequences of the years of deteriorating values and the resulting hate and division end up not fulfilling promises to restore moral and civil sanity . . . but devolve into our species' all-too-familiar patterns of revenge and retribution?

So, there's that to mull over, from a societal, even global perspective. By this time next year, we might have a clearer, and I hope more encouraging perspective,

Personally? My 2024 was one of hearing loss, the remedies -- hearing aids adjustment, possible yet-to-explored medical options -- seemingly in a frustrating, inconclusive stalemate.

Heart problems continued, treated with new prescriptions when electrical shocks failed to reset irregularities, and then a couple weeks ago by "ablation" (zapping from inside the heart, via arterial catheter). 

So far, docs say, that last procedure worked; they seem confident (and I pray) that all this did indeed cure those stubborn atrial flutters.

So, may 2025 see me turning 72 feeling better than I have in several years, and building new memories of love with my wife and family and leave those worries behind.

As for family, we all suffered as 2024 wound down. Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers here were unavoidably derailed.

Thanksgiving turkey dinners went into the freezer, instead of the mouths of gathered family. Christmas was not filled with the delighted shrieks and laughter of family opening gifts with us, or of packing our condo with hugs.

The stockings, which lined the fireplace mantle, were unfilled, that Jolly Old Elf a no show.

But Facetime video visits helped, digitally uniting grandparents in Utah with children and children-in-law (?) both nearby (but sick), and grandsons newly moved to Arizona from Maryland, and our granddaughter still in Baltimore.

Gifts went from being under the tree here, to being UPSed to their recipients, arriving a couple days late, but still appreciated. Whew.

Barbara, my mate of 51 years, and I endured a flood of Christmas TV movies. There was holiday music enjoyed as it played from the stereo, as we watched the fireplace, and how  its flamelight reflected and flickered along green holiday wreaths and manger scene miniatures.

Barbara helped with the Christmas programs and celebrations for kids and adults alike at her Evangelical church in West Valley City; I found my peace, awe, and loving fellowship amid echoing chants, clouds of incense, bells, prayers, and a constellation of candles at my Eastern Orthodox church in downtown Salt Lake City.

Lessons? 

St. Paul put it this way:

"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead." -- (Philippians 3:13)

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If the Ford Edsel was human, I'd see it . . . in a mirror

Getting older is a lot like doing maintenance on a Ford Edsel, decades after Ford shuffled it off into discontinued models with the sincere hope it would soon become a fading memory.

But those who fell for the initial public relations and marketing hype were not amused. And while most of those buyers in the purported innovative, evolutionary motor vehicle of their dreams were just plane pissed—there were a few who stubbornly clung to the Edsel, willing to spend on the repairs, upgrades, and maintenance with hard-to-find parts needed to keep their "classic" vehicles shiny and with lines and looks that bely the sales and initial advertising disasters that followed the brand.

I have a lot to empathize with the Ford Edsel, B. 1957 D. 1959, but like the re-imagined "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, Edsel has survived, albeit as an obstinate, delusional proud automative cult flipping the middle gear to the motor vehicle historians.

But so much for "Edsel." It's metaphorical analogy (is there such a thing. If there is not, there should be). Anyway, I'm and Edsel.

 Twelve years ago, it was open heart surgery to replace a congenitally defective aortic valve with one made of metal, plastic, and bovine tissue. A year ago, it was a replacement, this time less dramatic surgically, implanted via femoral artery to the heart, in effect smashing the old artificial aortic valve with a new one.

In between those procedures, the cardiac heartbeat regulating nerves deteriorated—not an unusual side effect for open heart valve replacements—so I got a pacemaker stuffed into my chest.

Then, headaches and vision loss led eventually to a benign brain tumor diagnosis. Brain surgery excised a 7-centimeter menigioma. I recovered, cognitive functions intact, vision saved, but a persistent minor left-side weakness as a reminder.

In a week and a half, I get an "ablation." Seems an irregular heartbeat is now the cardiac "must do," to keep me going. 

Hey, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian convert (six years now), I've learned humility is an underappreciated gift.

And, of course, I go in tomorrow to make my periodic confession to my parish priest -- and ask his blessing for the upcoming procedure.

I've learned it's mostly ineffective to explain such things, especially in terms of faith, but it's who I am. Live with it; I do.

At least for now.

And if I do not, at some point, "live with it," well that's what faith is about. Don't try to figure out the rest, folks.

Our ramped up simian brains are remarkable, but they have a really hard time contemplating the cosmos, eternity, and the limitless essence of Love.

That latter part, it's a God thing.

The Donkey History Museum: something to bray about

 I don’t know about you, but my spouse has occasionally warned me, “Don’t make an ass of yourself.”

Now, visiting Mesquite, Nevada—and its quartet of casinos tempting Arizona, Utah and Nevada I-15 travelers to detour for a bit of gambling—might pay off or deplete that RVing gas and groceries budget.

Hence the risk, amigos. Dreams of fortune versus, in my case, the wrath of my wife, she of Norwegian ancestry and the dormant genes of the Valkyrie: DNA and ancestry best left to rest in Valhalla—trust me.

So, on an overnight stay in this Virgin River Valley town of 20,000 on the northeastern fringe of the Mojave Desert, I found the perfect—and an educational—compromise: the Donkey History Museum.

*to read more of this article and see more photos, click here:

Swansea Ghost Town: A rough road to faded desert dreams

Having set up camp alongside the Colorado River near Parker, Arizona, my adventurous wife, Barbara, decided to take our trusty “toad” compact car to see a real ghost town.

It was a pleasant and warm day, barely a cloud in the sky. But we did not take our 2019 Ford Fiesta to the Tombstone “ghost town,” where the Shootout at the O.K. Corral made Wyatt Earp famous in 1881, and where tourists today can see a tamer, bloodless reenactment of the same while sipping on a cold craft brew.

No, not Tombstone. We also passed on a slew of other deserted Old West settlements in Arizona. We chose the remote La Paz County ghost town mining community of Swansea, AZ, our surrender to serendipity becoming a bumpy, dusty, and rough 65-mile round trip odyssey.

*To read the rest of this article of mine, and see more photos click here

First visit to Red Butte Garden: a long glimpse at earthly paradise

 It was my first ever visit to Red Butte Garden, more than 100 acres of botanical and hiking bliss along the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains that provide the eastern boundaries of Salt Lake City.

I know. First visit for me, courtesy of my son, Rob, to a glimpse -- and long one -- of earthly paradise.

Yes, I repeat with chagrin, my first visit, and I've been in Utah since 1982, when my journalistic career brought me first to the Salt Lake City Bureau of the Associated Press, and later The Salt Lake Tribune.

Now 71, and retired, I finally made it.

Thanks, son.

Heat wave escape: In Utah, just a drive into the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains

The Wasatch Front is in the throes of a heat wave, as is much of the Great Basin and Intermountain West.

Escape is nearby, up into the 11,000-foot Wasatch Mountains, those snow-packed 11,000-foot offshoots of the Rockies.

Thank God.

So, my wife Barbara and I drove up Parleys Canyon, along a couple scenic switchbacks, and basked in cooler temperatures, the scent of mountain wildflowers, pine trees, and aspen.

It was a nice few hours together in the snowcapped Wasatch Range.

Let's call the experience “ Babsendipity,” since it was Barb at the wheel.

beauty, steps, breaths, and ancient prayers -- perspective, and peace

Here, I've learned, is what to do if you wake up in a funk today.

I recently did, and decided to follow my parish priest’s (Fr. Paul Truebenbach’s) recent prescriptions for depression: prayer, exercise, focus on needs of others.

So, there I was, in the early morning trek through the icons of nature, the words of the Trisagion and Creed on my lips, as I hiked through and around forest trails, flowers, wildlife, and streams around the Wheeler Farm Historic Site.

For me, the beauty, steps, breaths, and ancient prayers culminated in perspective, and peace.

About my 'big sister,' the times and seasons of life, and love eternal

 Her name is Carolyn.

She has always been my "big sister," being born three years before me.

But because of her oxygen deprivation in the womb, and the cerebral palsy she was born with, it was my role from a young age to be her "big brother."

She needed surgery to correct her crossed-eyes as an infant, and physical and often painful strap on leather and metal braces to hobble a few steps. I was five years old when Mom took me outside on a warm Norwalk, Calif., day and explained why my sis still could speak only short sentences, and then only with intensively exhausting stutters.

"Carolyn is what the doctors call 'mentally retarded,'" Mom said softly. "She won't be able to learn like you. And since she is crippled, people stare at how she walks, and some kids will even tease and try to hurt her."

There were tears forming in Mom's eyes. "You will be her 'big brother,' more and more as you grow," she said, trying to smile encouragingly.

And so, I tried to be just that. Protecting my sister from neighborhood bullies got me in my first fights as a young boy, and the violence escalated from a punch in the stomach for a kid who pushed her to the ground, to blood and chipped teeth for both me and one, sometimes more bullies as I grew into adolescence.

But I could not protect Carolyn from the emotional swings and physical tantrums that came as she grew, too, though physically handicapped but strong as an adult. Still, she had the cognitive limits of a 4-to–5-year-old.

Mom, barely 5-foot-2, would try to keep the larger Carolyn from biting chunks out of her own arms in self-destructive rages; and often, Mom, too, would end up with bruises and lumps from my sister's kicks and bleeding, whaling fists.

When the rage subsided, a confused Carolyn would see, but not understand injuries to herself and Mom. Sis would cry, "S-s-s-orry, Mom, S-s-orry!" Mom would wince, but always hug, whispering loving assurances, her own face wet with tears.

Half a century ago, there were limited choices to address this crisis. Special Education classes then were little more than dumping grounds for any and all mentally and physically handicapped kids. 

Group homes for their care did not yet exist where we lived in Eastern Washington. But the situation with my tortured sister could not continue, and eventually medical and social workers consulted advised placing Carolyn in institutional care -- a nearby state-funded dormitory facility where she would be cared for along with 80 others "like her."

Mom and Dad reluctantly agreed. I was 12 when my sister was moved to a multi-story, brick Lakeland Village. Oh, we visited her there often, and holidays she would join us at home -- for a night or two -- but then would come time for her to go back, and still sometimes, not peacefully.

Over the ensuing years, Lakeland Village gradually placed its charges in smaller group homes. Physicians would now prescribe medications to ease the mood swings, social workers arranged regular outings and crafts, exercise, trips to the movies and church services.

The years passed. Mom and Dad would regularly visit Carolyn, keeping track of her clothing, medical, bedding, and growing stuffed animals collection. But then came their own aging, dementia, assisted living and then nursing home care, finally ending with their deaths in 2019.

I could not qualify under Washington state law to myself serve as Carolyn's legal guardian, since I had lived and worked 800 miles away in Utah for several decades; my sister came under the care of professional state-appointed guardians.

I have been able to talk with her on the telephone often and visit her in person on several occasions over the past few years. I saw her health deteriorating, her mobility requiring first an aluminum walker, and then a wheelchair. Her breathing became increasingly labored, and then in the past few months, trips to the hospital and long-term nursing care before a brief return to her own room and belongings at her residential group home.

I have been able to talk with her on the telephone often and visit her in person on several occasions over the past few years. 

Her breathing became increasingly labored, and then in the past few months, trips to the hospital and long-term nursing care before a brief return to her own room and belongings at her residential group home.

Last night, the call came from the director of her home. My "big sister" may not make her 74th birthday in July. 

Again she was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found her unable to safely swallow, her blood oxygen levels in the low 80s. She was put on supplemental oxygen, and a feeding tube inserted to stabilize her.

Once that is done, it was hoped Carolyn could return to the comfort of her group home room, in her own bed, surrounded by those stuffed animals, and what had become her caregiving sisters and family.

"Comfort care," was the term. It was an echo for me, being the same words that had been used to govern the final journeys of our parents, before they passed away in their sleep, just months apart a few years ago.

Despite my lack of legal status in Carolyn's case, her caregivers have been willing to keep me regularly apprised of her status. The immediate future, and how it unfolds for her, and me, her distant "big brother," is known only to the God we both love.

And so, once again, I wait, and I pray. 

I ask for physical healing, knowing that even if it comes for her, it will be a brief reprieve. Rather, I pray, too, for her ultimate healing -- a peaceful, painless release when the time comes -- and a heavenly welcome and embraces from Mom and Dad.

Love, after all, is eternal.

A year of medical recovery cycles, and forced -- yet blessed -- contemplation

 

  This year doesn't end for several more months, but already it has been one of my toughest ever.

  That's saying something, As of June 9, I marked 70 of those trips around Ol' Sol. In March, it was brain surgery, several months of recovery from removal of a benign tumor. In August, it was heart surgery, a re-replacement of a failing aortic valve. More recovery ahead, a 12-week hospital-run exercise and dietary program.

  Barbara, my 68-year-old wife, has completed her cataract surgeries this year, too; now, doctors have decided they want to do some precautionary tests on her heart as well. The past year-plus has been especially tough for her, too -- her father died, the subsequent emotional rollercoaster of grief and unraveling his estate, my medical crises, the usual marital dramas of our kids, the inevitable growing pains of grandchildren, etc.

  Trying to decide whether to do so, and then make inquiries about writing/editing freelance work on my own part has been an on-and-off again endeavor. I get recruited to write or edit by a travel news outfit here, or invited to apply for freelance gigs at an Orthodox Christian media company there . . . and then ghosted by both.

  What has been the one consistent priority in my 2023 life has been my faith, even with illnesses also plaguing those at my parish, clergy and staff alike -- resulting in last-minute cancellations of services, meetings, studies.

  And so, I pray, finding continuity and solace in candles, incense, and venerating those people and events depicted on my corner wall of icons. For me, it is an experience enveloped by and daily taking spiritual flight within the recitation of ancient praises, petitions, and the words of communion, and my far inferior yet sincere outpourings of gratitude, pain, love, and anger, ignorance, and epiphany -- all punctuating a silent inner dialogue on behalf of human beings living and departed.

  I read and learn from those brothers and sisters of faith present, sharing thoughts and insights in audio, video, and other modern media . . . and from reading the millennia-old lives and wisdom of those St. Paul referred to as that "great cloud of witnesses" supporting us just beyond the veil.

  And you know what? Those glimpses are into the timeless, eternal, and immortal environment in which we live, and breathe, and move, and have our being.  

 There is beauty, even in this mad world of ours. It can be in the words of a poet, or the prose of a gifted writer (hey, see, I know at least a couple!) who weaves beautiful accounts of history, culture, heroism, and the artistic miracles of mortal men and women that transcends their creators' lifetimes.

Beyond words, there is music. Beyond instruments and sound, there is nature: a breeze-caressed forest, the lapping of ocean waves on a rocky beach, fireflies scattering on a warm, humid night, and the untainted delight on the faces and in the eyes of children who chase them.

In a way, all these other things are good, and if you see the glow or hear the whispers of the sacramental with them, even holy -- if they are embraced amid the cadence of our heart beats and breaths.

These, too, can be our fleeting tastes of eternity.

 My wife and I look forward to experiencing such moments by soon resurrecting our RVing plans so delayed this year by life's unexpected events.

 

 

 

 

On the medical Yellow Brick Road

 

So, my sweet wife’s second cataract surgery done, she is bright eyed. Bushy tailed? None of your business!🤣

Now comes my week. Next three days bring yet more scans, tests, and then re-replacement of my aortic heart valve.

Brain surgery to evict a benign tumor in March has been declared success; now, having saved/received a brain on my medical Yellow Brick Road, I’m doubling down on a heart! Move aside, Scarecrow and Tin Man. 

Courage? That’s action overcoming fear, and a choice… so, no worries Lion.

And beyond waxing metaphorical and/or analogical, on a more serious note I am at peace through my faith and trust in God. I embrace the grace of knowing that His Love is with us, and me, whether in mortal time or incomprehensible eternity.