Days of Awe and Oy Vey!

I'm all for "do overs", Yenta.  I think this is one of the best pieces I've read about Jewish holy days; Thank you ... Ironically, I just wrote elsewhere today in the Forums about why it is people with low energy and illness might find the ability to do something they enjoy and not something that's a 'drag' to them; I'll point them this way to read about the open hut and looking at the sky.  My oh my .... "... bare those things in mind when someone questions how ill you are.... ".  Your words are SUCH a gift to us at Lumigrate.  Thank you.  I am humbled by your writings and teachings and so very GRATE-full! 

Skol as they would say in my adoptive Norwegian ancestry which shared some 'cultural' foods with your people.  ~~ Mardy 

PS - I wrote long ago on Lumigrate about the garden project in Grand Junction for the soup kitchen; it was the insistance of the sister (of the Catholic nun variety) in charge that there be no fence around the downtown garden so people could come and take food if they needed it.  I would like to think a copy of this will make it's way to her and every other person concerned and doing whatever they can to be sure our people in this country are eating.  It makes me wonder about the best wisdom of the great religions and traditions over history and how much we have to gain by looking at those literal 'pearls of wisdom' and focusing on them as solutions and keep an awareness but not 'focus upon' the problems.  

Here is the link to the piece I was working on when you were writing this one, Yenta -- it has photos of me camping, though I didn't take a picture of what I slept in, which was the back of my SUV with a moonroof!  Does that count!  Your way sounds a LOT neater, though it was a really good time to hang with Karen and her husband and friends from Pagosa.  There was much talk about foods and the enjoyment of such, as she is a very good cook and hostess; her husband does an excellent job cooking over a campfire as well; he's a retired fireman and so I think that has something to do with it somehow. He also took a great photo of Willie Nelson performing and I go into quite a discussion about marijuana and drugged driving crackdowns in Colorado as a result of marijuana being legalized here recently, for medical purposes.  It all seems so very similar to Prohibiltion, and I write about that as well, since it was JUST on PBS this week.  I'd say between the two of us, we've covered a lot of bases this week here at Lumigrate!  GRINS

 www.lumigrate.com/forum/why-people-chronic-fatiguepain-seem-able-do-things-they-want-vs-need-do

Mardy Bubeleh, I didn't know you were Norwegian! We should kibbitz some more, dawlink!  We didn't share just esn, albeit I don't mind talking about esn, but we have some other traditions that are similar as well.  You see, Libling, this is what your Yenta never understood; in all my life, the sit-ins, the peace marches, the gatherings, the "camping" trips, no matter how different we were from one another, we enjoyed each other's company.  Out side of the common cause, we still greeted one another with warmth no matter how long it had been to this very day, dawlink.  None of us are that removed from one another that a simple smile can't be given to a stranger, a warm "Hi" might escape one's lips to a passer-by.  It might actually lift your spirits, bring a new friend, or at the very least; brighten your day just because.  Give it a try, It couldn't hurt!

Your

Yenta

Yes, my father was adopted in Chicago by a most fascinating family who immigrated from Norway on his adopted mother's side, for a variety of reasons. He became a fairly well known artist; sculptures were his specialty as was, apparently, spending the money he made in commissions at the bar.  A wing of a Norwegian-American art museum in Iowa was just named for him, after a generous donation from the estate of his last genetic descendant was made. She also became an alcoholic but controlled the quantity and was always quite "functional" in terms of outside appearances. She'd had an outstanding career, made good investments, and inherited her parents money and had good advisors helping her with estate planning and investing.

Many people were in the will/estate. One donated their portion to a softball stadium at their alma mater, and I received an equal share and started Lumigrate with it; I'm sure everyone who received put the money where they saw value.  The art, education, athletic and medical worlds at least, are better today because of the family from Norway who came many years ago to the United States with a dream of a better life.  The generous and wealthy woman also made it a point to visit with those of us who would be living on and able to pass on the traditions; potato pancakes, potato break roll up pinwheels, fish balls, etc.  I truly believe there's something related to genes and since I wasn't genetically connected to the generations who ate those things, they really didn't appeal to me, but I certainly appreciated the history lesson and the time spent together and the direct and indirect lessons provided.  Like many families and systems, it was not so straightforward sometimes.  But I believe it was meant to be; my personal spiritual belief system teaches that one picks the family their soul comes to this time on Earth and I picked this one for ALL the things it brought -- good, bad and indifferent! It is what you 'do with what ya' got' that brings you what you have in life and go on from it with.  Only to do it over again, when you're ready.    

So back to this family's history; the man's only son went to work helping a lady in her house making candy in her washing machine -- her name was Brach.  He got stock as part of his compensation package and gave his sisters financial planning advise.  His sister married to a Norwegian took stock (pun intended) of the advise; my father's adopted father, however, was from a German-immigrant family and had some bias about the intelligence of Norwegians and didn't take his brother-in-law's advise.  

So there was  a HUGE disparity as the years went by related to money in that side of my family which I will just suffice to call 'dramady'.  They all moved down there by where you snowbird to as well, Yenta -- I cannot imagine the stories behind the scenes of all those people living in Florida.  I was given the task and opportunity (depending upon how you look at it) to go once a year in the summer typically, to make the quarterly obligatory visit to check in with them.  

I mostly have enormous respect for the sense of duty my father had to the ending days of his parents lives; his adoptive mother was not well mentally and he was unable to see that it was mental health issues and not take it personally.  He then transferred a lot of that on and as he developed a progressive neurological/dementia condition, I essentially spent the majority of my time being the sounding board for him to go over and over in his mind the various irritations from her or from my mother.  It was a blessing when his mind finally jumped to other perseverations, such as thyroid, water shortage, R-values of insulation and 'therms' for heating his house, nutrition/supplements (of which he refused to take anything that wasn't RDA).  It was, to me, a blessing when he passed on and was, for the first time in his whole life, out of the pain that life brought him.  I hope his soul rests and has a wonderful payoff for a life he worked hard at getting through for almost 90 years, including military service in World War II.  

My mother's side of the family was from Germany and also lived in Chicago, though my parents met in Albuquerque New Mexico in the early 1950's -- there was quite a lot going on there at the time related to the nuclear boom/era.   When it comes to German food for me .... now you're talking!  I just went to Oktoberfest and enjoyed a bratwurst with kraut on a wonderful pretzelly bun and a nice Sam Adams beer.  Two actually.   

I've watched the PBS documentary series by Ken Burns this week titled Prohibition and found it fascinating!  For one thing, it's so similar to what is going on today in the United States related to marijuana, and the generations it took with alcohol, as I'm seeing occur in my lifetime related to 'weed' or cannabis as some of the more experienced states refer to it.  While my father's family was on the north/more affluent side of Chicago, my mothers was on the south side, which is where Al Capone and all that mob gangland stuff was going on.  She related some stories of being in the city related to what children were finding to do for 'fun' -- animal cruelty, which had been a trauma to her young soul. One of the men interviewed in the documentary related living in a farmhouse outside the city in New Jersey/New York and his father's income being supplemented by the still in the basement.  As part of the reversal of the movement for prohibition, they made it illegal to NOT report your neighbors if you knew of them being involved in alcohol, and one day when he was eight two big strapping men in suits came to the door and told the father he had to destroy the still.  They couldn't afford to live there anymore and moved to the city and as he said 'the world closed in around me there' -- he tried not to tear up as he said that.  It was something I saw a lot from my mother as well.  These things, Yenta, have helped me form my conclusions over the years about how to related to relations and the world, how to find your path in life and 'stop the cycles' that have occurred with dysfunction historically in many families.  

Her grandfather was a physician, who was a hero apparently in Chicago during the Spanish Influenza epidemic/pandemic of 1918/19, as Chicago was very hard hit by it and yet all his patients lived!  He had prescribed 'poison cocktails', something that is written about in The Denver Post article about alternatives to influenza which leads off with my name and talking about him and that story.  I hope that it served to make another good dent in the thinking about health in the United States; if, as a population today, we're deficient in vitamin D and iodine and many other important nutrients for immunity, then let's get to those functional solutions and stop this corporate pocket lining caused by scaring everyone into thinking immunizations are the only thing that can be done for reducing your risk of being sick or dying.  It's too expensive in human suffering to not.  I speak from experience and I'm so very glad I have the experience AND was gifted the funds I was at the same time that I got REALLY ticked off about what was going on in health care, so that Lumigrate is here today as a result.  Maybe someday YOUR descendants will be talking about Yenta and the history of Lumigrate's influence on health care.  

Apparently, he was a great physician and not inclined to require payment, and so many people could not pay him for their services he had to turn his large family home into a boarding house; my mother didn't get to crawl as an infant because she was shoved into one of those walker things for babies.  Her mother had to work in the boarding house, and that is where her family lived.  Her father was in college to become an engineer and went on to have an amazing life being project manager for a large steel company, building plants in Canada, Mexico and Columbia.  She spent her high school years in Canada, befriending a 'Mountie' who told her that her father was under close watch by the Canadian government as he was a member of the KKK.  My mother did not tell me that until I was an adult and I cannot tell you how upsetting that was to know one of my relatives was involved in that kind of thing!  To my parents' credit, they knew they had been taught discrimination and that it was not right, so they made a conscious effort to not talk about anything racial just as they made a conscious effort to raise us without any religious information so that we could be like human 'tabula rasas'.  

Since I was being raised in the middle of the mountains, literally in the same community the Comedy Central show South Park is about (one of the creators went to the same junior high I did) you might see why it was I asked you to be part of things at Lumigrate, Yenta.  It is through finding our similarities within our differences and uniqueness that we're going to be able to continue to move forward in the future history of this country related to health and well-being and flourish!  This is why I share so openly my personal history, in hopes readers will see something in the details that makes them have a  about their own life.  I know that was the case for me as a facilitator of a discussion with Dr Chris Young (see videos, podcasts and forums) related to Adverse Childhood Experiences and the connection to chronic illness in adulthood.  I'd always thought of my family as 'entertaining and dysfunctional' and one of my patient's wives asked a question of Dr Young and his answer made her  ... and it was so similar to my family that then I also .  

Ironically, when you were writing about this 'camping' with your people with the spiritual retreats you have, I was writing about my version, with Karen's Korner writer Karen Richardson and her husband Don.  I have a groovey picture her husband snapped of me in my best camping sleeping gear and one I cannot WAIT to get your feedback on.  Someday, Yenta, I hope we can kibbitz in person similarly.  I promise, I'll dress as entertainingly as ever!  

I'll come back and put a link here for that piece, I have yet to put the photos into it.  That's because I don't have the photos and need to get them sent to me as the ones on facebook aren't typically very high resolution.  ~~ Mardy

PS - Matzos for breakfast -- my favorite!  Since I now know I'm allergic to wheat, I do it with corn tortillas.  I think somewhere in my genetics I'm Mexican or Native American, I swear!