One thing I love about my life today: waking up early and watching the sunrise. I could hear the sound of the channel entrance buoy, which is at least a mile away, along with all the birds.
What's one thing you love about your life today?
Where? When?
Q: Where are you now?
A: Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina
Q: How long will you be there?
A: We have to be north of the Chesapeake by June 1st for insurance reasons (hurricane season). Otherwise, we have no agenda except to sail whenever/wherever we feel like sailing. It's really nice here right now, not too hot, not too cold, not too many biting bugs, and the day sailing and paddle boarding has been great this week. So.... maybe until mid May, or whenever it seems right to get sailing north.
Q: Where will you go next?
A: Most likely Maine for the summer. Looking at marinas there so maybe we can do some boat AirBNB. We might sail mostly offshore to get up to Maine.
Other questions?
attention to detail
Looks like we will be in the Wilmington area for another little while, waiting for yet another version of my new contact lens. The very lovely eye doctor that I am seeing here is not happy with the fit of any of the lenses that have been created so far.In each case she has measured, ordered, and waited for them to be delivered. When the lens arrives, I go in to her office and she looks at how it fits.All of them have touched the graft from my corneal transplant (2007) and in each case a slightly steeper lens was ordered. Today, a fourth lens was ordered and she also ordered one from a different company.
We had planned to be in Wilmington for less than a week. It's coming up on a month now.
The good news is my eye doctor really cares about the health of my eye. If I leave here wearing a contact lens that is touching my graft, it could create a scar in the long run and that would compromise my vision badly. With some things perfect is the enemy of good enough, but in this case it's worth the time it takes to get it right.
In other news, boat interior decorating is happening.
to do list
explore one word descriptions in foreign languages
listen carefully, and carelessly
wonder
------
* learn guitar & Uke
* learn to spell ukulele
* reread sociology textbook
* find that one radiolab episode and share it
* reread the chapter involving Andrew Jackson from The People's History of the United States, & also the part about WWII
* reread the Fall part of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
* get a yoga mat
* get a guitar strap & a book about learning classical guitar
* get a sensor brush for the camera
* learn how to sell photos and writing
* learn how to write a book
* get Neil Gaiman's book: The View from the Cheap Seats
* listen to classical guitar songs
* practice juggling
* tree pose, chair pose, plank & side plank
* make a video for Jasmine
* get that YouTube channel in order
* make a link from circumdance dot com to the YouTube channel
* read your email
* send photos to Jamie Lynn & Coach Andre from the boxing gym
* figure out how to use Lyft to get back to the boat
* practice knot tying
* learn celestial navigation
* get rid of several items from aft stateroom to make more room for guests
* clean the bilge again
* brush up conversational Spanish
* find out the rules about going to Cuba
* subscribe to New Yorker, Yes! Magazine, High County News, & ?, as soon as we have some income (submit photos / writing to ...?)
* figure out where would be best to AirBNB the boat for a couple or few months
* make a boat AirBNB listing
* boat registration / documentation
* travelers health insurance?
* read Outline and In Transit, by Rachel Cusk
* Seven Seas Cruising Association membership
* reread everything at Indivisible dot com
* get a better / deeper / broader understanding of why the US & Russian both can't keep their militaries out of Afghanistan
* call Mom
* call Jordan
* send that book to Kaysha
* thank you cards
* love letters
* conversations with elected representatives
* learn how to read newspaper and magazine subscriptions on kindle
* reread Beautiful Trouble
* read something by Helen Keller
Breathe. Love. Play. Sing. Dance. Laugh.
How do you respond to fear?
How do you respond to fear?
I have recently learned, again, that when I experience real fear, like the kind of fear that occurs when I am in a life threatening situation, my fear can quickly turn to anger and from there I am likely to lash out at the nearest potential scapegoat. Yeah. Not proud of it. But it’s real. I’ve noticed a pattern.
I’ve noticed said pattern because I have had more opportunities than usual in the past year to experience serious fear. Being in the Atlantic Ocean during a storm, even a mild one by the standards of seasoned sailors, can be a terrifying experience for someone who has never been on a smallish boat in a storm out on the ocean before. And then there is the other kind of fear, the long term anxiety, which I began experiencing soon after we bought the boat. I feared that we had made a terrible mistake in choosing to sell our house, quit our jobs, and attempt to sail around the world. i feared that we had underestimated the financial challenges we would face (we had underestimated). I feared that we wouldn’t be able to make the boat attractive enough to guests to be able to charter it after we acquire Captains’ licenses (this fear has dissipated). I feared that my homesickness would remain as intense as it was the first summer away from Colorado (I still miss my friends and family, but the grieving seems to have mostly run it’s course).
And then there was the election. Fear has been a constant companion since the election. Fear that our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change will be undone. Fear for the safety of loved ones who are on the receiving end of racism and bigotry. Fear for the safety of young women in my life. Fear for the safety of my gay, lesbian and transgender friends, that they might lose their rights. Fear for the people of Standing Rock and indigenous peoples everywhere. Fear for loved ones who count on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security and for other loved ones whose lives were literally saved by Obamacare. Fear, fear, fear. Legitimate fear. Not overblown or exaggerated. The people now in power vowed to undo the progress we’ve made and they have already started to implement their regressive agenda.
If you are a progressive and you know how to read, you understand my fear. If you voted for Trump, you have fear too. You may believe that your fear is more legitimate than mine, but nonetheless, it is fear that is motivating you. Fear of the Other. Muslims, immigrants, atheists, gay or transgender people, powerful, outspoken women. Fear of Change. Fear that environmental regulations will put your employer out of business or fear that new taxes will put you out of business. Fear that you will not have enough to provide for yourself and your family. You want to go back to a time when you felt safer, less challenged by diversity of religion, color, gender, thought, or a changing planet.
The thing is, whether we are progressive or regressive in our hopes and fears or our politics, we can still benefit from looking at our own reactions or responses to fear.
Unacknowledged, unprocessed fear shuts down our access to our higher reasoning capacity and our centers of creativity. This is a real phenomenon. Pick up any book on neuroscience to learn about the triune brain, the prefrontal cortex, the reptilian brain. When we are experiencing acute or chronic fear, we are not at our best. We are not as able to come up with creative, out of the box solutions to problems. We fight or flee or freeze. What does that look like in you? Have you observed your own patterns?
My pattern, recently, seems to be to want to go somewhere safe and curl up in a little ball and hide. In the absence of being able to do so (my safe place was a sunbeam in a certain kitchen or porch on a certain hillside in Colorado), I lash out at whomever I think is responsible for my inability to feel safe. Guess who is usually standing or sitting right next to me in those moments and who had the idea to go live on a sailboat? Yeah, Adam. The guy I married because I felt more safe with him than anyone else in the world (not to mention he is super handsome and super smart and super generous and kind and I love him). So, in the past 6 months, I’ve noticed that I often lash out at Adam when I am feeling helpless or trapped. It’s not fair and I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. And I want to stop doing that. I don’t want to live in a place of fight or flight or freeze. So, what am I going to do about it?
#1 - Connect. My first priority every day is to Give Love. To myself. To Adam. and to anyone else who crosses my path, online or off. I have a list of people I want to write Love Letters to, a list of people I want to send Thank you cards to. Connection is incredibly important. It’s difficult to measure and matters immeasurably. I want to always remember and never forget that Love is a force, like gravity, that can transcend spacetime. and I want to remember that Love is a verb, too. A verb related to listening. Love is patient. Love is kind.
#2 - Practice guitar, uke, meditation, and yoga. Walk on a beach or run. or bicycle. Not perform. Practice. Play. I don’t know why, I don’t know the science behind it, but making pretty sounds on the guitar or uke calms me down. and yoga and meditation. or long walks on the beach without fb. There is so much science out there about these things. Breathing, grounding, centering, orienting. Nature bathing. These things are good for our brains and our bodies. When we are in fight or flight mode and we simply take some breaths, feel our feet on the ground, or in our shoes, and look around, and notice our own body’s experiences and name them and name our emotions, we can take our brains from the fight or flight or the lower, reptilian brain, and reclaim access to our prefrontal cortex where logic and creativity live. If we practice doing these things when we are not in crisis, we are more likely to remember to do them when we do face real fear.
#3 - Count my blessings, and pay them forward. Gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude. it is incredibly difficult to feel fear and gratitude at the same time. Gratitude has a measurable affect on the brain, as does Lovingkindness meditation.
Human beings are incredibly complex and resilient and resourceful. And right now, worldwide, we face some unprecedented challenges. We need all of us to be at our best. We need to be able to see these huge challenges not only as existential threats, but as extra hard creative challenges and apply our best, most skillful thinking to them.
What do you fear?
How do you react or respond to those fears?
What does your self-care look like?
How do you take care of yourself?
We cannot give from empty cups. How do you fill your own cup while not emptying someone else’s?
It is my firm belief that there is enough to go around if no one is greedy.
The Women’s Marches reminded me that there are so many people out there who are willing to stand up for each other and that they are incredibly diverse and courageous and creative. And that being around them brings me so much elemental joy.
My fear became a little more manageable last weekend and it has spiked again in the past couple of days. It has been an emotional roller coaster ride of a year for me and for so many of you, too.
My question is, how can we all ride the highs and lows and also take time to nurture ourselves so that we can nurture each other and the ecosystems that we all depend on for life?
How do we lift each other up?
What does fear look like in you? What does it look like in your loved ones? Your neighbors?
How do we disarm each other?
What do you fear? How do you transform that fear into creative solutions?
I know that I need to acknowledge and name my own fears in order to transform them into activism.
I vow to take the time to get my prefrontal cortex back online and highly functioning before I take action.
Action without vision is a nightmare. Vision without action is a daydream.
Let’s put vision and action together.
Please use the comments to answer any or all of these questions and to share any or all of your Beautiful Visions for Action.
And if you’re reading this, a humble request: please leave a word or two in the comments so I know about the connection. I ache for it these days.
Pema Chodron on cultivating compassion.
"In cultivating compassion we draw from the whole of our experience - our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be that way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It is a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others." ~Pema Chodron
Agree or disagree? Why?
It takes a global village.
I just ate an organic orange and it was so yummy that I wish I could hug all of the people that made it possible. I can barely keep a jade plant alive, let alone grow an orange tree. Imagine the work that had to go into growing that orange and picking it and getting it to market. It's complicated. Really think about it. Think of all the things that had to happen for that orange to get on a shelf at Trader Joe's in Wilmington, NC where I bought it. Fields and sun and rain and not freezing and the right amount of water and roads and trucks and gas stations and oil refineries. And think of all the magic that happens from seed to fruit in the life of an orange tree.
That's all for now. Just doing my part for scurvy and interconnectivity awareness.
Vision before action... for real.
On the day that we left Oriental, North Carolina, toward the end of the day, I thought I had an eyelash or something under my contact lens. I went down below, took it out, rinsed it with saline solution, and was going to put it back in when it broke in half.
Broken contact lens.
I wear scleral contact lenses. They are rigid, not soft. And they are large, the contact edges sit on the white part of the eye, the sclera. This is because I had a corneal transplant in 2007 in my right eye and because my left eye has a condition that causes an uneven thinning of the cornea. So - special contact lenses. Glasses don't cut it for me because the cornea is the lens of the eye and my corneas need the shape of contacts to be able to see. Glasses can't do it.
All of this to say, a broken contact is a major inconvenience. It has stopped our southerly progress. I saw an eye doctor in Wilmington last Friday, the day after the contact broke. After that appointment, new lenses were ordered and now we wait for the call to say they are ready.
You may wonder why I didn't have a backup pair on board. The answer is that they are very expensive. They were $700 each last January. Not per pair. Each. Out of pocket. And my prescription changes pretty dramatically year by year. However, we've discovered that my glasses which were my only-for-emergencies back-up plan, are quite inadequate for being at sea. So, we are going to bite the bullet and spend the money on two new right contacts and one new left one so that I'll have two pair. It's been another expensive week of not making southerly progress. All eye doc and contact lens costs were out-of-pocket. No vision coverage.
The upside? We got to spend some really quality time with our friend Jamie Lynn, who moved to Wilmington from Aspen a couple of years ago.
Love!
And we've gotten a few small boat projects done.
More plants! Now Colorado Jade won't be so lonely.
And we are going to Trader Joe's and the laundromat. And the marina is relatively inexpensive and has some wifi (slow is better than none).
As soon as I can see properly, we'll start sailing south again.
Dolphins in North Carolina
After being there for nearly a week, we left the small town of Oriental, NC this morning. We had only planned to stay one or two nights, but when we were invited to be a central part of the New Year's Eve festivities by having our boat's mast be the one to "drop the Croaker" at midnight, our curiosity was piqued and we decided to stay at least until New Year's Day. Then, the first three days of the New Year were pretty rainy and lightning was predicted along our planned route, so we decided to stay put for a bit longer. It gave us longer to enjoy time with our new friends. We simply had a wonderful time and will always have fond memories of our visit to Oriental. Already we miss Nicola & Marc who are waiting for an engine part before continuing their journey south aboard their Bristol 41.1, Averi. And already we miss Ann & Neville.
So many good stories. So many belly laughs.
Just an hour or so from Oriental we were motoring into Adam's Creek Canal when we saw dolphins. I dived below to grab the camera, raced to change lenses (wanted the zoom), scrambled back up into the cockpit and started clicking away. I was very pleased to be getting some good shots when I noticed the light in the corner of the viewfinder that said, "No Card". Ugh.
I spent the next half hour emptying my camera bag, computer bag, & checking coat pockets, but alas, no SD card was found. Realizing I must have dropped it in the coffee shop when I was loading photos onto my computer on New Year's Day, I waited til I had some cell service and called them. And they had it! Yay!
Thanks to the lovely people at The Bean and dear, dear Nicola, and I'll have my SD card back soon.
The Bean on New Year's Eve, 2016, just before midnight.
Sorry, no dolphin pics this post. 🙄
Note to self: get a backup SD card and make sure there is always one IN the camera.
the Croaker - Oriental, North Carolina - sailing tales - human connection
We arrived in the delightful town of Oriental, North Carolina two days ago. We were greeted on the dock by friends of friends who scooped us up and took us all to their house for dinner. There we were regaled with sailing tales from around the world. Our hosts were Ann and Neville Clement. 25 years ago, at the age of 47, Ann sailed alone across the Atlantic Ocean, from Rhode Island to Ireland, in a 28 foot Shannon named Peace. (Our boat is a 43 foot Shannon named Deep Peace). We had the delight of meeting Ann and Neville because we were Introduced to them by our friends, Nicola and Marc, who we met in person for the first time just less than a week ago at Dowry Creek Marina. Nicola & Marc are seasoned sailors themselves and they have been very generous with their time and expertise. We have had the great pleasure of their company and mentoring because of my friend and former boss, Brent. Brent kindly introduced Nicola and I to each other, via fb, earlier this year and she has been a wonderful mentor into the sailing / livaboard life ever since. Little did I know, back in 1997, when I applied for a job at the 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Center in Aspen, Colorado and was offered a job by Brent who was the Director at the time, that it would still be impacting my life positively so many years and so many miles away. AND... Ann is very connected here in Oriental. Tonight, our boat, Deep Peace, will be at the center of the New Year's Eve celebration. Our mast is being used for the dropping of the Croaker. I'm not even sure what that means, but stay tuned for photos.... I'm told it's sort of like the equivalent to the Apple in NYC. .....
Update: the below photo is the Croaker that was lowered from the top of our mast during the last few seconds of 2016: 1/1/17, 8:10 am
Dowry creek marina, bel haven, nc
12/29/16, 7:09 AM, Dowry Creek Marina, Belhaven, North Carolina
Lewes, Delaware (The first town in the first state?)
We've been in Lewes, Delaware for 7 days. S/V Deep Peace has been tied up at the town dock which is just one block from the downtown shopping street. During the past week we've had the great good fortune to get to know Mary & Judy (my friend Stephanie's wonderful Moms), Dick & Shirley (Dick was born and raised in Lewes and shared his favorite places and much area history with us and he'll be coming sailing with us for the next leg of our journey.), Alex (who works two jobs and is putting himself through flight school. He already has his private pilot's license and is now working on his commercial one and he took us flying with him yesterday. He had already scheduled the airplane rental, but his friend that was going to go with him cancelled and he invited us and well, how often do you get invited to go flying? We said yes and had a great time!), Jen (the delightful owner of a used bookstore named Biblion, who had me doubled over in laughter), Bob (who offered to take our photo when we were out to dinner and who we later saw in the library), and many other wonderfully friendly people.
Little did we know when we first tied up to the dock that we would be here for a week and that the week would be such an interesting one. Besides ordering and installing a new whole boat heater, we've simply had a wonderful time. Oh yes, and the heater works!! Tomorrow we say goodbye to Lewes (the first town in the first state).
Speaking of history, I have put together a book discussion group on fb for A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. The first chapter starts out in what is now called the Bahamas when a sailing ship from Spain encounters the native people. (It took 33 days to cross the Atlantic from the Canary Islands off the Atlantic Coast of Africa - did you know?). I'll post a link in the comments and also a link where you can read the book online for free.
Thanks for the flight, the photo, and the really fun day, Alex!
See the red roofs? S/V Deep Peace is right across the canal from them. If you can zoom in, you might be able to see it.
If I had a magic wand...
If I had a magic wand, I would use it to transform all bombs into trees and grasslands, all guns into songs.
If I had a magic wand, I would give every refugee a home and every soldier a righted wrong and a bicycle and send him out to play.
I don't have a magic wand today, but I do have a heart, a mind, and an internet connection. With them I offer these:
Meditation tools. Grounding. Centering. Breathing. Orienting (Noticing).
* Feel your feet. Feel any part of you that is touching the ground or the chair. (Grounding)
* Look around and notice where you are. Look up. Look down. All around. Simply notice what is around you. (Orienting)
* Then close your eyes and notice the sounds around you. Notice how many channels of sounds you can hear. Allow yourself to be there with the sounds. (Orienting)
* Take one deep breath to settle yourself and then begin to follow your breath, from the moment the air touches your nostrils with your inhale. Feel it fill up your chest and belly, and feel it as it leaves your body with your exhale. Notice if the air feels warmer or colder. Repeat for four breaths, lengthening each exhale. (Breathing. Centering.)
* Notice how your whole body feels. Check in with each part of your body, one at a time and then your whole body. (Orienting)
Anytime you deliberately notice the present (the here and now) without reaction, you are meditating.
And this: Soul friend, John O'Donohue, interviewed for On Being: http://www.onbeing.org/program/john-o-donohue-the-inner-landscape-beauty/203
Seen while walking to the public library in Lewes, Delaware yesterday.
How did you do it?
Seen on the Highline in NYC.
People have asked me, both online and off, how did you do it? They want to know how we went from being hourly wage earners to living and sailing around on our own boat. The short answer is, We got lucky. Yes, we worked hard, and we kept our eye on the ball, but mostly, we got lucky.
How so?
Well, being born with risk taker genes could be part of our luck. Too esoteric for you? How about the luck of being born to middle/working class white parents in the United States in the 1970s? As compared to being born in say, Vietnam in the early 1970s?
More recently though, we were lucky enough to get a bank loan to buy a house that seemed pretty far out of our financial reach. It was 2011. We both worked in public safety, I worked at the 9-1-1 Center in Aspen and Adam worked at the Sheriff’s Office. Friends in the area who worked in the construction business had lost everything when the real estate bubble popped. We were lucky to have the jobs we had, in that our income remained steady even in the face of the highs and lows of the market. Adam had been wanting to move out of our double wide trailer that we had been remodeling since we bought it in 2004. He had been shopping for a house for a long while, so when he wanted me to go look at one, I didn’t get too worked up. But we both really liked it. It had been sitting empty for some time. It needed some work, but nothing we didn’t think we could handle. The asking price was so far out of our reach, however. It seemed almost ridiculous to ask for a bank loan, but we went ahead and asked some banks to prequalify us. When we found out how much we could get a loan for, we were pleasantly surprised, but it was nowhere near the asking price. Thinking, what’s the worst that could happen if we make a low offer, we went ahead and made one. Shockingly, the seller accepted our offer that was around half of what she had initially bought the house for a few years ago. Adam knew I wouldn’t accept looking at foreclosed houses. I had seen too many loved ones lose their homes in the crash. This house was owned by a very wealthy person. It was a tax write-off type of loss for her. She had several houses in Aspen and this Carbondale area house was one that she had intended to be her “little down valley getaway”. (Imagine needing a vacation from your Aspen houses?) Turns out she didn’t end up spending a single night in the house and after a few years she decided to sell it. She had apparently received higher offers than ours, but ours was the offer she decided to take. So… luck. We didn’t have a bunch of savings for a downpayment. We were lucky enough to be eligible for some special loan programs that allowed us to get loans to buy this house and we were lucky enough that the seller chose to accept our offer instead of someone else’s.
Adam is the son of a construction contractor and had the skills and experience to be able to fix up the house, including remodeling the studio apartment. My mom had been a housekeeper in Aspen when I was a child. I had learned from my mom to be exceedingly particular about cleanliness in rental units. So we remodeled the studio apartment and rented it out on AirBNB. Again, luckily for us, our area was quite attractive to people who were looking for a rural getaway. With Adam’s building maintenance skills and my ability to keep the place sparkling and pretty for guests, we were quite successful with our AirBNB endeavor. But that work was not the whole story. We benefitted from the innovators who created the AirBNB platform, from the people who worked so hard to protect the pristine wilderness areas that people from all over the world want to visit in Colorado, and from the many people who worked to make the Carbondale area so attractive to visitors with it’s focus on the arts, outdoor recreation, healthy lifestyles, and farm to table food. All those factors went in to our ability to sell the house in 2016. The real estate market had recovered, we had done a lot of work to the house, the Carbondale area had become very attractive, and when we were ready to sell the house, it sold ( to former AirBNB guests) without even putting it on the market. It sold for enough to pay off our bank loan, buy a boat, and have a sailing fund for about a year if we are lucky AND frugal. Something that could be perceived as unlucky is that we have had quite a few unexpected expenses and our sailing fund is getting depleted significantly faster than we had hoped. A very big risk on our part is that we will be able to earn Captain's licenses and start chartering the boat to earn some income before we run out of funds. We are already trying to come up with some contingency plans. Maybe a Patreon account? Maybe AirBNB of the master stateroom on the boat once we get to warmer waters? Maybe sell some photos or some travel writing?
A lot of you might be tired of reading the word luck at this point. Some of you might argue that we aren’t lucky, that instead we are “blessed”. I take issue with that. I cannot stomach the idea of a God that picks and chooses favorites. Friends and family members that are just as kind and generous and smart and hard working, have not been similarly “blessed”.
One friend said, “You’ve worked hard, you deserve this.” While I appreciate being thought of as a hard worker and a good person, I have to object to the idea that we somehow have worked harder or behaved better throughout our lives than any number of friends and family members. I, most certainly, am not more devout and I can be exceptionally lazy.
Another friend said, “You are a powerful manifester.” While I do believe that having a vision is an important aspect of getting things done and I don’t discount the studies that have found that prayer has a measurable effect, I just… I think it’s too pat an explanation. I don’t think there is a recipe for attainting ones’ dreams that can be guaranteed to work and I think that anyone who says otherwise is selling snake oil.
So how did we do it? Adam had an idea. We said, why not try? We planned out some baby steps. We took them. Then planned some more. We worked hard and we took some calculated risks (ones that could easily have gone wrong for us). We asked for what we wanted even when it seemed far fetched. We ran into some obstacles and set backs and dusted ourselves off and tried again. We had a completely irrational belief that we would one day live on a sailboat and sail around the world. We had two very, very lucky real estate transactions. And very recently, we had a incredibly lucky boat buying transaction.
It has taken courage and hard work and faith in each other and patience and …. yes, for lack of a more satisfactory explanation, a whole lot of luck.
I have been thinking deeply about the inequality we have seen both back at home in Colorado and during our travels and I have been ruminating on the myth of hard work. If hard work is the guarantee of success then I know a lot of people who are just getting by who should be way richer than some notorious million/billionaires.
How have you accomplished your dreams and goals? Do you think I am wrong? Do you believe there really is a recipe? Do you believe God or the Universe rewards some and punishes others?
Just in the past week, inequality has been super in my face. The difference in quality of life of the people of Lewes, Delaware and the people of the parts of Atlantic City that Adam & I walked through are stark. Even the two libraries are dramatically different. I have no answers to this puzzle yet. Only more and more unsettling questions.
Seen on the Highline in NYC.
Thanks for taking our photo, Bob!
A very nice man named Bob offered to take our photo when we were at A Taste of Italy (and such an astonishingly good taste of Italy it was!) in Lewes, DE. We had a wonderful chat with Bob and his friend Nick, including a couple of good belly laughs.
(We had to go out to eat, we can't do dishes on the boat until we get the watermaker fixed.).
Long time since we had a photo of the two of us that I felt almost pretty in. Thanks, Bob! I love this one.
Nick and Bob. They are neighbors in Lewes. And quite neighborly too! 🙂
tour of Lewes area, courtesy of our new friend, Dick
Our new friend, Dick, met us and took us for a tour of some of his favorite areas around Lewes today. Here are a few of the images that resulted. I want to type more, but although I have wifi in this coffee shop, I do not have an outlet and my computer battery is almost dead.
Thanks for the tour, Dick! Beautiful!
Slow. Like Honey.
I am sitting in the corner of the most delicious, delectable, delightful cafe & juice bar in Lewes, Delaware. It is called Nectar. It is warm and bright and cheerful. I had Avocado Toast and a green drink called "Smarty Pants" for breakfast. This is the second day in a row that I have had this wonderful nourishment to start my day. Yesterday we came here with Mary and Judy. They live here. They are the Moms of my friend and former coworker from my 9-1-1 days in Aspen, Stephanie. When Stephanie saw one of my facebook posts about sailing south from Staten Island she offered to connect us with her Moms. I often feel shy about meeting friends or family of friends, but I'm never sorry when I overcome that shyness and connect. Mary & Judy have been so very generous since we arrived. They gave me a ride to West Marine to exchange some defective binoculars the first day we were here. The next day, they met us for brunch and introduced us to Nectar.
They said that it was their first time coming to this little cafe, too. One of their daughters had been recommending it. They were as pleased with their first experience here as we were and they told us great stories and we all had some great belly laughs with breakfast. What a treat! After brunch we walked over to our boat, just a block away on the Lewes (pronounced Lewis) City Dock. Mary & Judy again offered to chauffeur us to do any errands we might need to do. I mentioned laundry and they insisted I bring the laundry to their house and use their wifi while it was washing. How could I say no to that? So Adam stayed at the boat to work on the water maker (more on that later) and I went over to Mary & Judy's house with them. Now I have clean clothes, clean cozy pajamas, and clean long underwear! If you have easy access to a clothes washer and dryer, you might not find these things as exciting as I currently do. Then again, I have long been "entertaining" Adam with my very bad songs about how much I love my pajamas, so maybe it's just me. Oh, and I don't want to forget to mention the bonus KITTEN at Mary & Judy's house. Kittens are even more therapeutic than kitten videos.
After Mary & Judy brought me and the clean laundry back to the boat Adam & I went for a little walk and got dinner. When we returned to the boat after dinner, we found a little package waiting for us on the companionway. It was from Dick & Shirley, a package of homemade cookies and a sweet note. We met Dick & Shirley on the dock, between brunch and laundry. They are sailors. They've had their fair share of sailing adventures and were able to offer some advice about the possible routes from here. It is so difficult to put into words how it feels to find a gift waiting for you on your boat when you are far from home.
So many highs and lows have happened since last time I sat down to type a proper update. It is really easy to assume that everyone sees what I post on fb and knows what we're up to because of those posts, but I realize, from looking at friend's fb pages, that its actually hard to piece together a big picture of what is going on in my loved ones' lives from the series of short updates on fb. It's really easy to miss things.
With this post, I'll attempt to paint the big picture and also answer some questions that people have asked us both online and off. Here goes:
What are you doing so far north, on a sailboat, in December? This is a big one, yeah? Well, we bought the boat in late July, I honestly don't know where August and September went.... We replaced both head (toilet) systems on the boat, twice. We had the rigging inspected. We had to get a new dinghy. We had to take everything out of every nook and cranny in the boat and clean it. We (Adam) did some work on the engine. We cleaned the bilges. We had a bent bracket repaired. We visited Boston a couple of times with our wonderful friends, Neil and Nina, and they came sailing with us a couple of times. We went sailing with the lovely Bob & Darcy a couple of times. We met them on the dock in Tiverton and they were so generous and kind to share their stories and expertise and to take us sailing on their boat and introduce us to their friends in the area. We replaced the mattresses in both of the staterooms (bedrooms). We cleaned and scrubbed and repaired and organized and tried to learn all about our boat and upgrade our sailing skills. We went to the boat show in Newport, Rhode Island. I took a sailing lesson specifically for women at the Herreshoff Museum in Bristol and met the fabulous Mary MacDonald who became a fast friend and later sailed with us to Block Island on the first leg of our journey south. Brent, who hired me to work at the Aspen 9-1-1 Center in 1997, connected me, via fb, with a sailing friend of his, Nicola, who has been generously sharing her knowledge of sailing ever since. Nicola then added me to an incredibly helpful fb group called Women Who Sail, which led to an in person meet up where I met several amazing women (who sail) -- Lisa, Clive, Meghan T. We ended up spending the rest of the day with Meghan and meeting her sweetheart, Chris, a tattoo artist, and having such a great time. Every one of these stories of meeting people deserves it's own blog post. They all seem touched by magic, serendipity or synchronicity, or maybe those things are just the magic of authentic human connection. These connections are the nectar of life to me. And they require me to show up, to reach out, even when I feel vulnerable and/or shy.
A longtime friend of mine, Gabriel, recently expressed surprise when I told him I felt shy about meeting a friend of his in NYC. He said, "I was unaware that emotion was in your repertoire." Yes, I experience shyness and since we sold our house and started traveling around, it seems to be magnified. Just this morning, the internet told me that anxiety can be exacerbated by perimenopause. Thanks hormones. Thanks internet. So, where was I? Oh yeah, authentic human connections, serendipity, synchronicity, magic... these things require me to show up even when I feel social anxiety. I had to say yes to invitations and yes to offers to be introduced and yes to offers of assistance. If I had said, politely, no thank you, because I didn't want to be a burden or I didn't feel I could overcome the anxiety, I would have deprived myself of a lot of soul food.
I seem to have digressed from the question... Why are you still so far north, on a sailboat in December? Let me try again, to answer it. Boat maintenance. More boat maintenance. More boat maintenance. Learning. Organizing. Cleaning. Replacing. Sailing a bit. Hours and hours on the phone and internet trying to procure boat insurance. Quite a bit of time waiting for boat registration stuff too. Oh yeah, and then my Granddaughter was born! And we had to go back to Colorado to meet her and bring our RV and Jeep back there. That took up a couple of weeks in October. Once back in Rhode Island at the end of October, we prepared in earnest to sail south -- provisioning, stowing things, restowing things, waiting for the right weather to sail.
While waiting for the right weather to sail to Block Island from Tiverton, Rhode Island, we met Seth and Tracy on the dock. Like us, they had recently bought a boat. They were provisioning, doing the last bits of things to sail south to Norfolk, VA. We went to see their boat, we all had coffee together on our boat, we went to the boat stuff consignment store together, then lunch, we talked and talked and talked and somehow discovered that Seth's daughter is the girlfriend of Tim DeChristopher, a person I have admired from afar for years. Back in 2011 I wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to pardon Tim who had just been sentenced to prison for a valiant act of civil disobedience. (Want to know more about that story? See the documentary Bidder 70.) The next day, Seth, called to say that his daughter, Meghan K., & Tim were on their way down to visit him. We invited them all for spaghetti on board our boat. I was so anxious about meeting Tim. I talked too much and too fast. Meghan & Tim & Seth were delightful guests and Adam was a perfect host, as usual. I played the entire evening over and over again in my head after everyone left, horrified by my chatterbox tendencies. I wished I had been a better listener and asked good questions instead of nervously making small talk. The next time we saw Seth, however, he didn't seem to have noticed my lack of social graces, instead he told us how great that evening had been for his relationship with his daughter. Wow.
Oops, I did it again, I strayed from the facts of our journey off into human connection land. Sorry. I'll try again.
On November 4th, 2016, we got up and got ready to sail. We dinghied over to collect Mary M. and Meghan T. from the dock and drop off the trash and recycling. We said Bon Voyage to Seth and Tracy and their crew. They were heading out to Norfolk, VA that very moment. Meghan came out to see the boat and wish us a good journey. She & Chris will be starting their own journey on their own boat soon. After dropping Meghan back at the dock in the dinghy, I encountered dinghy engine problems and had to row myself back to the boat. So, we got a later start than we'd have liked to. But it all turned out well. Mary, Adam & I had a great, beautiful sail over to Block Island and a fun evening on board. Mary brought wine and we had a respectable dinner. Next morning we took Mary to shore where she caught a ferry back to the mainland. It was another bittersweet moment in a year that has been so full of them. It is exciting to be on our way, but so hard to say goodby to friends when you aren't sure when you will see them again.
On November 5th, we sailed to the opposite side of Block Island to a larger and more protected anchorage where we waited for a couple of days for the best weather to sail toward Long Island Sound. I was so excited to ride our bikes around to explore Block Island, but Adam's had a flat. It had happened in Boston on the day that we explored the Harvard Natural History Museum. That reminds me of meeting up with Tracy and brings such a smile to my face....
to be continued because my Mom called as I was in the middle of writing this. and I answered. and then my son called. and I answered. and the waiter, Alex, from Belarus, who works two restaurant jobs here in Delaware, and has also earned his private pilot's license, and is working toward his commercial pilot's license, and has worked through a very expensive lawyer to become a US citizen and loves to travel, stopped by to chat. and.... well... we are still trying to go south. It's very slow progress, because.... weather... and sailboats travel at a different pace. and while we are waiting for the right weather, there are such interesting people. and I want to know their stories. I want to know what is it like to be them, to live their lives. I want to know how they got to this here now and where they want to go. and so often when I ask them, they tell me. and then so often, we become friends. and when they ask me about where we've been and where we're going, it all comes tumbling out in a chaos of words, I can't seem to hold any parts in.
..... a couple more facts:
We are waiting in Lewes to get a new heater delivered for the boat. One that can heat the cabin while we are underway. This seems perhaps like an unnecessary expense if you are going to stay in the warmth of southern waters, but Adam would really like to sail Alaska's Inside Passage one day. And with that in mind, a proper boat heater seems like a very good investment. Also, who knows how long it will take us to get to the warm waters of the Florida Keys or Puerto Rico. We certainly don't know.
Also, Adam put in a new intake pump for the water maker back in Rhode Island and it has been working really well since then, up until a couple of days ago. Yesterday he tried to fix it and decided he needed to order another new pump, so that's ordered and we have to wait for it to arrive.
When will we sail again? After the heater and water maker are functioning properly and the wind is blowing at 25 knots or less. Which way will we go? We are most likely going to sail up Delaware Bay, through the C & D canal (Chesapeake & Delaware), and down the Chesapeake. But there is a small chance, with the right crew and the right conditions, that we could sail straight south to Norfolk. We haven't decided for sure yet.
...
more soon.
wherever you are, may your days be filled with authentic human connection. may you be surrounded by deep love, deep joy, and deep peace. (also, I wish you fresh air, clean water, nourishing food, comforting shelter, rewarding work, access to lifelong education .... and a clothes washing machine and warmth.)
Port Jefferson to Port Washington, November 13th, 2016
The night before the super Super Moon. Adam at the helm. NYC skyline at sunset ahead, giant moonrise behind. Our first time navigating into a strange anchorage in the dark, how nice to have the help of a giant moon. I was so excited because my friend, Molly, was going to come and meet us in Port Washington. After sunset, it was amazing to see the number of planes in the sky. I remember telling Adam that they looked like strange, drugged or drunken lightning bugs.
Sailing Through The Election (actually written Nov. 11, 2016 - took me a great long while to add photos and captions. better late than never?)
The dark dot in the center of the photo is a turtle. You'll have to take my word for it. I don't have a better photo. Long Island Sound. November 9th, 2016
This is political. This started as a blog post about sailing. You might think sailing isn't political. I disagree. I think LIFE is political. It's also a very long post. Some stories are better that way.
Note: We voted by mail before setting sail.
On Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, I thought I was starting to get the hang of this sailboat life. I thought I was even starting to “get” sailing pretty well. I actually thought things were going pretty darn well. We went to bed early on Tuesday night. On the anchor in a harbor in Long Island Sound. We wanted to get up early and get sailing early, to make more progress southwestward in the next day’s predicted very light winds from the West. On the phone that evening my son asked, “Where are you guys going to watch the election results?” He must have wondered what strange apolitical person was impersonating his historically election-night manic Mom when I told him we weren’t going to watch them at all, that we were going to go to bed early. I gave him permission to text me the results, said I’d turn my phone to “do not disturb” while sleeping and see his text in the morning.
On Wednesday morning (November 9th, 2016 - in case it’s not etched in your consciousness like 9/11) Adam and I awakened not quite as early as we’d hoped to do. Before we got out of bed he reached for his iPad and I asked, “Who is going to be President?” His reply made me think he was joking. I said something like, “Are you kidding?” I grabbed his iPad and looked. I still couldn’t believe it. I had to check the source. Was he looking at Borowitz? The Onion? It was CBS news. That’s when the ohmygod’s started. I must have said, “oh my god” about oh, I don’t know, 20 to 50 times. Somewhere during my ohmygod mantra Adam slipped in the news that the Republicans had won the Senate and the House as well. The ohmygod’s intensified. Then we read my son’s text on my phone, “It’s Trump. I’m scared for everyone.” My reply to him, later that day, “Me too, sweetie. Me too. Now we have to be extra loving and kind. We have to help each other.”
Part of readying ourselves and the boat for sailing is turning on the VHF radio. We listen to Channel 16, the “hailing” channel. It’s the channel to use if you need to call the Coast Guard or a Sea Tow or to hail another boat that is nearby. You call them and then go to another channel to say what you need, keeping the hailing channel free for anyone who might need it in an emergency. On the day after 25.6 percent of eligible U.S. voters said that they wanted Donald Trump to become our next President, some yahoo was using the hailing channel to crow about how happy he was about the election results. Adam asked me to promise him something. “What?” I replied. “Promise me you won’t get on the radio today.” He didn’t need to worry. I had no desire to tangle with any Trump supporters. I was as sad for them as for anyone else.
It was a grey day and very cold. The wind direction was super challenging; coming from pretty much exactly where we didn't need it to come from. And hardly enough wind to sail at all. I snapped at Adam several times. He was steady and patient, as he is almost all of the time. He wanted me to acknowledge that I was upset about the election results, not about the things I was snapping about. He may have been right since I can’t remember what those things were, just a few days later. That night, once we’d anchored, I sat down and cried.
The next morning (Thursday, November 10th) I cried some more. I dragged my feet about getting ready to sail. Adam wanted to know what was wrong. I felt homesick. I felt tired, heavy. I wanted to be in the place where I felt safest, surrounded by lovely and loving people. I wanted to go drink chai at Dandelion Market with my friend who had so graciously accepted the results of her failed bid to be Mayor, offering free chai to the whole community, even her opponent. I wanted to hug my sister, my mom, my niece, my nephews, my son, my granddaughter, so many of my friends who were hurting. I didn’t want to do something hard, something new. I didn’t want to sail. I didn’t want to be cold. I didn’t want to be isolated from people. I reminded Adam that I hadn’t set foot on land since Monday night and that I need vigorous cardio exercise to be my best self. I knew I needed some exercise. I was not the best sailing companion on Thursday.
But sail we did. We sailed our hearts out. But it wasn’t enough to get from the anchorage in New Haven, Connecticut’s harbor across Long Island Sound to Port Jefferson before dark. We had to motor too. We motorsailed a good bit of the way. Motorsailing is when you are using the combined efforts of the engine and sails. At 1800 RPMs our boat burns about 1 gallon of diesel per hour and in Thursday’s wind conditions we could go about twice as fast with the engine as using the sails alone. Whenever the engine is on, I am calculating how much fossil fuel we are burning. We want to use as little fuel as possible. The point of having a sailboat after all, is to sail. We try to only use the engine when going into or out of narrow channels. We haven’t had to fill our diesel tanks since we bought the boat, but we’d rather have full tanks than empty ones, for safety’s sake. Toward the end of Thursday afternoon, Adam started calling around, asking if various fuel docks in the area were open. None in Port Jefferson were, so we changed course to a fishing marina just 2 and a half miles east.
We arrived at the fuel dock in the most beautiful little harbor near Brookhaven, NY around 3 pm (15:00 for my public safety, aviation, and military friends). Knowing that sunset was less than an hour and a half away, we decided to pay the $100 to stay at the dock overnight. Plus, Adam acknowledged how much I need those long walks punctuated by running intervals on the beach in order to be a more resilient person. We filled the fuel tanks, paid the fuel and docking bill, grabbed our sneakers and the camera and headed for the beach, getting there right at sunset. It was a stunningly beautiful sunset. I ran some intervals, feeling really warm, warm in my bones, for the first time since my last beach run on Monday evening. I picked up some trash while wearing my invisible super hero cape. I’m the kind of super hero that saves baby sea turtles’ lives by keeping plastic trash out of the ocean. I was feeling really quite good and alive. I made a goofy sea bird video for my six year old nephew and my granddaughter. I was smiling and laughing and just breathing in the beauty.
Adam decided to make my evening even better by finding a restaurant that we could walk to. 1.5 miles away was an Italian restaurant called, Sevino’s Hideaway. We started walking from the beach near the marina to the restaurant around 5 pm. The road skirted a marshy part of the little harbor. There was this gorgeous giant marsh grass, taller than Adam, silhouetted against the sunset with the water behind it. It was a narrow road in an upscale neighborhood with houses facing the water (one of them was for sale: $1.5 million according to the real estate app). Expensive cars were going by every few minutes, pretty fast. It wasn’t a particularly pedestrian friendly street. OK, it was a very unpleasant street to walk along. Not much room to step off the road. But we were managing, stepping off the road whenever cars approached. As I paused to take a photo of the marsh grass, the sunset, and some swans, a car went by and one of the male occupants yelled out, “Fuck you.” I was jarred. I asked Adam, “Were we too close to the road? Did they have to leave their lane to go around us?” “No,” he said, “it was probably just teenagers being assholes.” Earlier, I’d read that exit polls had shown that it was a myth that low income white people were Trump’s biggest group of supporters. It was actually high income white people who had supported him most. Suddenly, this neighborhood seemed ugly and scary.
We arrived at the restaurant. All of the cars in the parking lot were expensive and gleaming. We were in our grungy sailing clothes. I had gotten too warm while walking with my fleece hoody on and was actually wearing the smart wool long underwear top that I had slept in the night before. We were not dressed for dinner, to say the least. I was self-conscious, sure everyone was judging us. But the restaurant staff were professional and welcoming. I wanted to sit in the bar because it was so lively and bright. Our bartender / waiter turned out to be the owner. He had left his Manhattan life to come back to Brookhaven to “rescue” the restaurant from the people who had bought it from his Dad. It had been his Dad’s “baby” and he didn’t want it to close. We really enjoyed chatting with him. When he found out about our adventure, he asked, “How do you keep from killing each other?” Ha! An occasional evening off of the boat is surely the answer.
Walking back to the marina, in the dark, with expensive cars whizzing by now and then, tired, but mostly pretty happy, we saw a “Hillary for Prison” sticker on the back of a stop sign. When presented with a walking path we opted to get away from the road, hoping not to be run down by privileged teens in their fancy cars. After not too long, we found our way back to the boat.
Even though we wanted to go straight to bed, we decided to top off the water tanks, plug into the shore power, and take out the trash and recycling. Adam was filling the tanks as I made a couple of trips to the trash and recycling receptacles. As I approached, I heard men talking, perhaps just a little intoxicated. Their dogs raced toward me, barking fiercely. Being a dog person, though a little scared, I kept my voice soothing and said, “Don’t worry puppies, I won’t hurt you.” They called the dogs to them and all was fine. When I came back with a bag of recyclables, again the dogs ran barking fiercely at me. This time no one called them off. But I stayed calm, “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” They calmed. The men came over with their beer cans in hand. They asked if I was on “that really big sailboat”. Yep. They wanted to know our ultimate destination. “Maybe Puerto Rico.” They were shocked to hear we had walked to Sevino’s. Apparently a 3 mile roundtrip walk for a beer and a burger is a crazy thing to do around here. They said, “That boat is big enough, you could have your very own restaurant in there. Is it really just the two of you on that boat?” I became wary. I made some jokes and tried to find a way to excuse myself from the conversation. A Mini Cooper arrived in the parking lot. We talked about cars briefly. One of the men said, “You could fit that car on your boat.” Me: “Wouldn’t that be great? Then we wouldn’t have to walk to Sevino’s.” The car driver was the wife of one of the men. I excused myself. “It was nice talking to you guys. Got to get some sleep. We want to sail out early.”
When I got back to the boat, Adam was finishing up with the water tanks, “Who were you laughing with up there?” “The drunk marina owner and his friend,” I whispered. I didn’t want them to think I was rude or to have any reason to resent me. I didn’t want them to feel “rejected”. I was cautious when the men approached me, and a little scared when they asked if it was just the two of us on the boat, and a little more scared when one told me that the other was the marina owner and the marina owner shook his head, irritated at his friend for naming him. Maybe he was just modest. Probably. Were those men dangerous? Maybe not. Probably not. But the election of Donald Trump, a man with little regard for a woman’s consent, has put me in mind of all those times that men didn’t care what I wanted, only what they wanted. That night, two nights after the election, was the first night since we moved onto the boat, that I wanted to lock the companionway hatch when we went to sleep.
In my lifetime I have awakened to a man sitting on my bedside, petting my hair, drunk, uninvited. It was the man who lived across the street, whose children I had babysat. One of my roommates had left the front door unlocked. It hadn’t ever been a problem before. We lived in a “safe” neighborhood. I haven’t thought of that for many years. Listening to Donald Trump’s words during the campaign brought up a lot of unpleasant memories. Knowing that a lot of people voted for him, despite his ugly words, has me looking at my fellow humans more warily.
Words, Dawn. They are just words. This is what someone on facebook said to me. Let’s consider. Do words matter? What does it mean to say that someone is as good as their word? What does it mean to keep your word? Or to walk your talk?
A dear friend and former teacher of mine, Jack Green, recently wrote about an experiment he has used in the classroom to demonstrate the power of words. Don’t take my word for it, try it. One person, the receiver, holds their arm out to the side, parallel to the floor. The other, the speaker, presses down on their arm. The receiver’s job is to hear the words said by the speaker and then keep the speaker from pushing their arm down. First, the speaker says something sincerely kind, something like, “You know I love you and this is just an experiment,” then presses the receiver’s arm down, all noting how hard or easy it is. Then after a brief rest of the arms, the speaker says something mean, something like, “I hate you. You are stupid and ugly.” (Don’t smile and laugh, be serious about the experiment.) and again tries to push the receiver’s arm down. Did you try the experiment? What were the results? Do you think words can have repercussions in the physical world? I do. I think they matter a lot.
Someone else, who I love and respect a lot, posted that “we will all be ok” even if we are upset right now. I hope very much that we will ALL be OK. But it’s easy to say we’ll all be fine if we are the ones in the nice cars, in the homogenous white neighborhoods, surrounded by people who look just like us, who pray just like us, who are not under attack. What if you were Muslim, of Mexican heritage, or a rape victim seeking an abortion? Would you think you were going to be OK then? A Muslim student was killed in Wisconsin in the days leading up to the election. A middle school child filmed other students in the lunch room chanting, “Build the wall.” on election day. In a high school in Western Colorado, after the election, some students put cinder blocks in front of the door to the music room with a sign that said, “The Wall Starts Here.”
Fear is sometimes an appropriate response to external stimuli and can keep us safe. I have a very healthy fear of high velocity winds and heavy seas when I am on a sailboat. When the winds are too hard and the waves are too high, we don’t sail. This is an appropriate response to fear. All healthy human beings experience fear. It is healthy to fear a person who has said menacing things to you or your peers and has the power to hurt you. It is healthy to fear a person who is driving a car in your general direction and yelling, “Fuck you.” It is healthy to fear unknown dogs that are running at you and barking. It is healthy to fear intoxicated, leering men, when you are alone and far from home. These fears can potentially help you stay safe. How we choose to respond to fear is what matters. I lashed out at Adam on several occasions on Wednesday. Not the right response, admittedly. I apologized and I’m working on processing my feelings in a more productive way. If we don’t acknowledge our fears and anxieties and process them, they can become misdirected.
The thing is, it’s hard to see persecution if you are a member of the privileged group. So what can we do about it, if we aren’t experiencing it, if we aren’t seeing it? We can BELIEVE the stories of the harassed and the persecuted. We can LISTEN and BELIEVE THEM and CARE enough to do something about it. We can LEARN how to confront bullies. We can have discussions about what bullying looks like, what harassment looks like, and how to stand up to it. We can roll play with our loved ones so that we are better prepared to confront hateful behavior when we see it. We can refuse to downplay or excuse the behavior of bullies with words like “boys will be boys”, “just locker room talk”, “just teenagers blowing off steam”. We can refuse to belittle people in our community when they say they are afraid, telling them to buck up. We can instead say, “I’m here for you.” “You can count on me to stand up for you and stand up with you.” If you see someone being harassed or intimidated you can go over and talk to them, ask them “Are you OK?”, “Can I sit with you or walk with you?”
Why would we put ourselves at risk in this way? Well…
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” ~ Martin Niemöller
And what about those who are expressing hateful or hurtful sentiments? They are part of our community, part of our country. How do we deal with them in a loving way, while still having healthy boundaries, while NEVER condoning hate speech or harassment? First, it is OK to set healthy boundaries. You are not attacking anyone by simply saying, I won’t be around people who advocate hurting others or discriminating against others. Be that at Thanksgiving dinner or “in the locker room”. After acknowledging that it is absolutely OK to honor your own boundaries, maybe consider my friend, Jack’s, idea:
"Parent teacher conference……If I was teaching now I would call a parent teacher conference with all the students that are being inappropriate, unkind, and mean. The conference would be under the cottonwood tree, down by the roaring fork river. At this conference we would call him, the teacher, the person offended, and the parents. Under the tree I would ask the student why did you say that ? Why were you mean? And why did you want to hurt to win a point? I would let the student talk and explain himself in front of me, The offended, the group and to himself. They could talk as long as they wished and we would listen to them. We would serve A cup of tea…under the tree,
Until we could see
We would talk into the night and build a fire sit up till the morning light. Let's do that, let's call a parent teacher conference, And bring love back." ~ Jack Green
Jack’s approach could really help someone who is misdirecting some unexamined anxieties and lashing out inappropriately to understand themselves and to find better ways of addressing their own feelings. It’s a form of Restorative Justice. It can only happen in a setting that is safe for all parties involved. Can you think of any ways to heal a wrong or even a wariness between you and someone you interact with regularly, who voted differently than you? It’s a challenging problem.
The outcome of this election is one of those things I can’t change, like the wind speed or the weather.
How I respond to my fellow human beings’ behavior, especially when it causes me unease, is something I can choose, just like I can choose whether to raise the sails or head for safe harbor.
Wisdom and level headedness is desired in both situations. Someday, we might be caught out in an unexpected storm on the sailboat. Then, I’ll need courage. I’ll need to be able to stay calm enough to do the right things to get us safely back to shore. I, like many others, have been blindsided by my fellow voters’ choices. Now we must find the courage and tools to help ourselves and others stay safe in this storm. More than ever before, I am challenged to remember, “There is no them, there is only us.”
If you know some tools and/or skill sets that help people come together and deescalate feelings of resentment, please share them in the comments. If you have stories that need hearing, please share here or add a link or send me an email. If you just need a virtual hug, I’m here for you, just let me know.
Wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever your skin color, whatever your gender, whatever your sexual orientation, whatever your religion or lack thereof, whoever you voted for or even if you didn’t… May you be well. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. I wish you deep joy, deep love, and deep peace. (Those who experience these things have very little room left for hate.)
~ dawn on a sailboat, Friday, November 11th, 2016
Long Island Sound, November 8th, 2016
The only other sailboat we saw on on Election Day. I wish I could figure out how to contact the owner and give them the great pics of their boat that I got.
Adam and S/V Deep Peace, Sunset (5 pm), November 8th, 2016
Light wind sailing on Long Island Sound, November 10th, 2016
We spend very, very few nights on a dock. Usually, we anchor. This is S/V Deep Peace docked in Mt Sinai Harbor,. NY. November 10th, 2016
I love to make the dock lines look pretty.
Pretty rocks make me happy.
Someone forgot to put their trash in the receptacle. I'll just help them out. Plastic is forever.
Seen while walking to the restaurant.
The beautiful view I was admiring just as a car went by and the occupants yelled, "Fuck you."
The lovely, lovely Italian restaurant.
Seen while walking back from the restaurant, hoping not to be yelled at again, or run down by a car.
First, do no harm.
Of all the places I could be in the world, of all the things I could be doing, in the face of all the things and people that need love and attention in the world, sitting onboard a sailboat, typing, seems like one of the least important and perhaps most self-indulgent. And yet here I sit.
Since I last posted on this blog, we have driven our RV, towing our jeep, back to Colorado. We visited friends and family. I got to hug my niece and nephews, my mom, my sister, & my son. I got to meet my granddaughter. While in Colorado, we decided not to sell the RV, but to keep it in storage, and that decision seems to have eased my homesickness to the point that I feel like my old self again. When I close my eyes and see the RV and jeep at their storage place in Colorado, I know that I can go home. The knowledge that my favorite quilt and slippers are waiting for me, so near to so many beloved people and places, in our old, but familiar RV, makes traveling indefinitely completely doable and gives me back the feeling of excitement toward what lies ahead as we begin our sailing adventure in earnest.
So, a week ago we left our land transportation in Colorado and flew back to Boston, rented a car for a few days, provisioned the boat and now we are just days from sailing south (we sail on Friday, Nov. 4, if the weather remains favorable).
Writing about sailing and slaying the three headed monster of homesickness, bad boat smells, and fear of the unknown seems too small next to the news of Standing Rock, every horrible thing Donald Trump has said and done, climate change, war, refugees, earthquakes, pipeline spills and explosions, and the list goes on and on.
All the wisdom traditions that I know of (and some recent scientific studies, too) say that humans need to feel that their lives matter in order to thrive. We need to feel necessary or we wilt. I’m still struggling to see how this sailboat life can matter in the big scheme of things.
There’s also a bit of wisdom floating through my head that says, when we don’t know what the next right step is, it’s time to pause - to listen, look around, observe.
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. I’m pausing now, in order to allow my vision to come into focus.
What do you see, from your vantage point? When you think about the unique challenges of this spacetime, what vision arises? Once that vision becomes clear, that’s when we need to summon the courage to take the steps toward it.
Adam and I have been taking baby steps and huge leaps toward this sailboat life for the past 5 years or so. Now we’re here. Now what? Each day reveals a bit more. Our future remains blurry, even to the point that I don’t know where we will be or what we will be doing one week from today.
In our old lives, working in public safety, a commonly uttered catchphrase was “First, do no harm.” For today, this is where I’ll start. I’ll limit the harm I do by skipping the single use plastic, by using as little fossil fuel as possible, and by uttering no ugliness. And I’ll do a little good picking up some trash. I call picking up trash, “Saving baby sea turtles.”
Today my best good deed might be picking up trash and being the best boatmate (and sassy, but loving, wifey) to Adam that I can be. But I fiercely believe that the small things matter. There are more than 7 billion human beings on Planet Earth. If each and every one of us does the small good things and if each and every one of us does our best to First, Do No Harm, how would that be?
November 2nd, 2016 - 500 words into a 50,000 words monthlong commitment.