Gratitude

November 24, 2016
Thanksgiving

The biggest challenge with a gratitude practice is being grateful for everything---the good and the bad, the positive and the negative, and the light and the dark. Gratitude is being aware and thankful for whatever is right in this moment.

     Gratitude arises from paying attention , from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within us and with out us.--David Whyte

Those words were read at our Thanksgiving table tonight by our friend and neighbor Jim. This year, we had a block party Thanksgiving and had so much fun. A lot of us were not traveling for the holiday nor had family coming to see us, so we threw our own turkey party.

We could of viewed a Thanksgiving without our children or any family around us as one giant downer. But we didn't. We had a great time with the people we see everyday from just living where we live. One neighbor, who has a large, lovely home, hosted. Great, no mess for me to clean up. Everybody brought a dish. Another positive, no one had to spend the whole day cooking an entire meal. There was lots of laughter and little drama, except for the dogs battling for a piece of the turkey that never dropped.

And out of this Thanksgiving holiday comes my intention to be grateful for ALL of it, because without the dark, why we would be so appreciative of the light?

 ELECTION  ECHOES

November 27, 2016

So what about Trump's election can I be grateful for? Well, for one thing it definitely woke me up.  Not like an alarm clock, but more like a freakin' four-alarm fire. Thank you,  Donald, for prompting me to take to the streets. Seriously, what it has done is inquire about why this country would elect someone who ran a hateful campaign and sees no problem combining the White House with Trump tower. I listen to others closely, trying to see and hear different perspectives.

There is my friend Natasha from Moscow. She's lived in this country for 15 years and is a citizen but has a thick Russian accent. Really thick. A deep-seated cynicism developed from growing up in Russia. "You wouldn't believe the shit I have seen," she says. "Here's what we say. Funeral or wedding, what's the difference. It's up to you to have fun."

She jabs a finger at my refrigerator magnet shrine that a photo of Hillary and a caption reading "I do believe in my lifetime I will see a woman president." I replied that she lost. Natasha gives me a withering look and tells me Democrats have a big problem, that the country is all red except the tiny blue slivers on the ends.

"What did they expect? Bushes, Clintons, Bushes, Clintons. Same people always in power. Trump's not a good guy but least he's not a Clinton or a Bush," she said. "Not so different than Russia."

She may have a point. Of course, I said there was a difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  And there was a difference between Russia and America. And that is when I realized I still believed in American exceptionalism; despite this election, despite Donald Trump ascending the presidency legally and despite the hate unleashed.

Castro, Cuba and Ice Cream

When I heard Fidel Castro passed away, I thought of ice cream. Ice cream was the closest contact I had with the Communist dictator during my recent visit to the island that he led for over 50 years. Some would call him a benevolent dictator, others would call him brutal. The interesting thing is not many people talked about Fidel at all when I was traveling Cuba. They mention his brother, Raul, who was given the reins by Fidel in 2012. But it was like Fidel had already died.

Except for the ice cream. Every restaurant in Cuba, north and south, serves ice cream. Good food in Cuba is hard to find because the distribution and agricultural systems are all messed up from years of Communism. Ice cream became my go-to food because is was available almost every lunch and dinner meal. And it was good ice cream, too!

People love their ice cream in Cuba as much as I did. Fidel loved ice cream too, and built a cathedral of ice cream in Havana called Coppelia's. Here the people can enjoy ice cream just like the elite, Fidel declared. My neighbor and friend who had visited Cuba several years ago told me we had to go there when in Havana.

Coppelia's was not far from the Malecon and our hotel, Hotel Nacional. The first day we arrived in Havana from Holguin province, the Castro brothers' birthplace, I went up La Ramp in the El Vedado neighborhood of Havana to see this monument to ice cream. It reminded me of the Space Needle in the Seattle Center with the Jetsons' style architecture and parklike grounds. Street cleaners,dressed in uniforms, were mopping up the sidewalk and tidying the grounds. In the morning sunlight, the place looked pristine.

When we went back later in the day to actually eat ice cream, people were streaming in for their scoops of deliciousness. I had my camera around my neck, wearing my ExOfficio gear and looking about as much as a tourista as possible so it's no surprise they stopped our group of four. We were a little startled to find security around an ice cream parlor. But this is Cuba, if you try to make sense out of everything, you will soon be making no sense.

The security guard asked if we were paying with pesos or kooks. Here's an example of why you just don't ask why too much in Cuba. The island economy has two currencies-pesos for the people, and kooks for the tourists. They are called kooks because the abbreviation of Cuban Convertible Peso in Spanish is CUC. And it's kooky and not a good deal---for anyone! Local pesos are used by locals to purchase staples but anything else requires the kooks, which is worth 25x the local peso. And kooks are not a bargain for tourists. A dollar is worth .87 kooks. We are ripped off equally.

But the equality stops there. When we said we were paying with kooks, we were ushered away from the crowds enjoying scoops and scoops of ice cream, some of them had ten scoops lined up in front of them. We were brought upstairs to a windowless room. A man behind the counter and wearing another uniform, asked if he could help us in English.  We had a limited selection of flavors and our scoops were served in a traditional glass ice cream dish. Each scoop cost approximately one kook. Downstairs, where the people enjoyed the fresh air and warmth, each scoop cost less than one local pesos.

Now, I am not one to complain about paying more because I'm a tourist. I get it. Tourism is the biggest industry on the island. Cuban people are paid only $25 (local) pesos a month, no matter what they do for a job-be it janitor or doctor. Castro wanted to make sure everyone could afford ice cream. It is actually quite endearing and a little strange that about the luxury Castro offered to the Cuban people was ice cream.

So it was NOT the price that bother me. It was the fact that we could not eat outside but had to stay in the windowless, cinderblock room that was beginning to feel like a cell. I went up to the man serving ice cream. "Please, couldn't we eat outside? I don't understand why we are kept up here? It's a beautiful evening."

He looked at me with annoyance and said no, eat up here. And I responded with a direct "Why?" in an insistent voice.  "No," he retorted. "I feel like we are segregated because we are American tourists," I responded. People don't get straight to the point in Cuba, especially in the tourism realm. I am sure I shocked him with my directness.

He looked at me like I was crazy. "People wait hours, on weekends-- three to four hours for this ice cream. If you could just walk in here and get your ice cream ahead of everyone else there would be riots."

"Now I understand.  Thank you," I said.  I sat down and ate my ice cream with my  friends. It was sweet and delicious but it would have been even sweeter if I had eaten outside with the Cubans. In Castro's Cuba, nothing is straightforward or easy, whether you are Cuban or American. Next time, I am going to score local pesos, one of those mysterious exchanges locals know but don't divulge, and eat my ice cream outside.

I hope that day comes. Fidel is gone. Trump is president. Coppelia, a national institution
immortalized in so many Cubans' memories, probably will survive without its guiding inspiration. The question remains if Americans will be able to enjoy the creamy sweetness of the island.

Cuba has a cult of personality with the Castros and Che Guevara. Let's hope we don't go there.

 It's two weeks to the day since the 2016 presidential election and life has NOT been normal. No one in my blue circle of friends, in my blue city of Seattle, in my blue state of Washington is quite recovered from the shock of Donald J. Trump being the president-elect.

I'd returned from Cuba days before the election and was looking forward to writing blog posts about the trip. But then the election came. I realized before I write about Cuba, I had to write about my own country.  It's not like the election changed the United States, it's the same country it was before I left for Cuba. The election changed me and my delusions about how this country has come together with the Obama presidency.

 Trump ran a campaign based on fear, ignorance and anger; and he won. Since he's been elected, he certainly has not risen to the office.  What crazy thing has Trump done now is now the question of the day.  Dissed the British?  Off and on meeting with New York Times? Lambasted SNL and the cast of "Hamilton"?  Yes, and that's just this week.  Friday, he settled the fraud case against Trump University for $25 million, a fraction of what students paid to attend the bogus school.  It wasn't a loss, it was a settlement, Trump tweets.

Most of this bile comes from Trump's own  thumbs. But don't fear, it's trending in the right direction.  According to a Politico/MorningCount poll, more people approve of Trump now than before the election. To paraphrase David Byrne: "How did we get here?"

There were warning signs but I was too ensconced in my blue bubble.  The young woman from Iowa who I worked with this summer said "Trump is going to win. People are tired of having the elite tell them what to do and Hillary is part of the elite." My uncle in Las Vegas is a big Trump supporter because "he says what he thinks. You want me to get you a hat?" My sister said she would never vote for a candidate who supported abortion like Hillary.

But the most telling instance happened in 2010 in Wisconsin at my brother-in-law's wedding. The reception at the country club was full of middle-aged white people.  Granted, my husband and I fit right in, so much so that people came up to my husband and complimented him on looking like Glen Beck. "Am I acting like a nut job?" he asked me.  I shook my head and he headed for the bar.

There was a sit-down dinner served on linen-covered tables with an entourage of glasses for each sparkling, white and red wine served.  The man next to me chatted for a minute about the country club and then he launched into politics.  How Obama was ruining the country, how healthcare was going to bankrupt business and how the soul of this country was lost.  And then it was onto Nancy Pelosi. Why, he was too polite to express how he truly felt about that woman, he spat.  Then another woman across from us chimed in "about how terrible it is now.  Just look around." So I did.

I saw people eating cake and drinking wine, out the window was a parking lot full of new cars surrounded by a lush golf course.  What I didn't see was how the recession slammed  retirement funds or the closing of paper mills or the rising toll of drug addictions. Even if all these people didn't appear to be in hardship, they certainly felt like it. In 2010, Wisconsin elected Scott Walker and the Republicans swept Congress.

Many years ago, this same Wisconsin family came to California for a visit.  The little girl climbed up to one of our friends, James, and started rubbing his dark cheek.  She then looked at her palm.  "No, honey, it doesn't come off," he chuckled.  The parents laughed it off, saying "Even the garbagemen are white where we live."

 It sounds terrible. But these are not evil people. They are people I know and love.  It's easy to fear and objectify what you have never known. But I know these people. What I don't understand is how they succumbed to a message of fear and loathing.  I'm not going there. The best shield I have is speaking up and shining bright. It's going to take courage.

#Love trumps hate.