Essay Archives - Paths I Have Walked

October 27, 2025

Stronger Than Hate

Today is the 7th anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, PA. I’ve lived in the South Hills of Pittsburgh all my life. I’ve long recognized our city’s and region’s shortcomings in integrating and welcoming people of other races, ethnicities and religions though for two centuries we’ve been settled by people from nearly every country and faith on the globe to find jobs in our industries: mining, steel production, glassmaking and more, establish farms, open businesses and add their part to our big small town/little big city. Still, I have personally heard and witnessed and called people out for their anti-semitism, even today,

But a shooting this horrific, walking into a synagogue with open doors on Shabbat, looking senior and geriatric worshippers, some of them Holocaust-era survivors, in the eye and shooting them with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic pistol, all over the buildingfor about 20 minutes…but you never think this will happen in your community, until it does. It still shocks me today, in 2025.

We should always be shocked at even anti-semitic remarks. We would hope that a shooting this horrific would cause some to think twice when they deny anti-semitism in this country. Instead it’s only increased nationwide, worldwide, in the past seven years. I don’t have an answer for how to stop it, except that I will always call someone out for anti-semitic remarks or dumb jokes, which some jagoffs use to get their hateful opinion out there while telling you they’re just joking. They are not.

Here is what I wrote seven years ago after the shooting…

Many of you may know I live in Pittsburgh. This weekend our community suffered a horrible traumatic mass shooting at a synagogue in a city neighborhood, killing mostly elders at Saturday Shabbat. I am not Jewish, nor do I live in that neighborhood, but I am crushed by this hatred. As a city we are still reeling from the shooting in the Tree of Life Synagogue, about 20 minutes from where I live.

Squirrel Hill is a vibrant and diverse neighborhood but its inclusivity was patterned by the Jewish immigrants who settled here generations ago. It is as one reporter called it, literally “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” because this was where Rogers lived.

Pittsburgh is a big small town and for all the various segregation we’ve suffered in the past this one neighborhood was like magic in its diversity, seeing families walk to Shabbat in long skirts or hats without fear of retribution, and buildings with Hebrew text, as well as find Vietnamese restaurants, a real French bakery run by a person from France, a gallery with African art and more services for many ethnicities, mixed with national and international students from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh who live in rented apartments there.

On the street you can hear any language at any time. Children walk to school, and play in the parks. People are out on the streets walking to and from the last movie at the Manor Theater. Everyone talked to everyone else. I am not a city person, but I enjoyed this neighborhood with its quiet neighborhoods of tree-lined streets and beautiful houses, galleries, performance spaces, shops.

Vigils have brought us together, all races and religions; we are right at the door in times of need.

Hearing the news

I was trapping kittens in a TNR project on Saturday when this happened, with moderate to heavy rain all day I was in and out of my car as I set and checked traps and got back in to warm up and dry off. Any news I heard was disjointed until three of the four kittens were trapped and moved inside, and I settled into my car for a snack while watching the last trap. Finally hearing the full story, shocked, I forgot my food and got on my phone to look up the news. I did manage to get that last kitten trapped and inside while the group of us working on this shook our heads and tried to express how we felt about this, the fear of knowing someone like the shooter had been in our midst.

The next day, full of local and national and international news, I posted this on Facebook:

Look at the ages of the victims of the Tree of Life shooting—the youngest 54, the oldest 97—Rose Mallinger, who lived in Europe during the Holocaust, to be killed in this country known for freedom, in a neighborhood where generations had known safety in worship, this elderly worship community ripped apart, their daily security, and no doubt several long-time friends, gone, children and grandchildren losing a generation in a way that will always be a painful memory, another chapter in their family’s history. Remember these people, never forget that the fingers of hatred grip and strangle more than those who died here.

Complacency is complicity, never let hatred take hold, even in a single word.

Joyce Fienberg, 75, of Oakland

Richard Gottfried, 65, of Ross Township

Rose Mallinger, 97, of Squirrel Hill

Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, of Edgewood

Cecil Rosenthal, 59, of Squirrel Hill

David Rosenthal, 54, of Squirrel Hill
(Cecil and David Rosenthal are brothers)

Bernice Simon, 84, of Wilkinsburg

Sylvan Simon, 87, of Wilkinsburg
(Bernice and Sylvan are husband and wife)

Daniel Stein , 71, of Squirrel Hill

Melvin Wax, 88, of Squirrel Hill

Irving Younger, 69, of Mt. Washington

The memory today, Stronger Than Hate

I still see the signs in people’s yards, and we still talk about it, especially now. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison. Jewish congregants in Squirrel Hill went back to services in synagogues other than Tree of Life long ago, but synagogues and other Jewish facilities all over the area increased security and have maintained that since then. I still hear intentionally provocative anti-semitic remarks and the dumb jokes the jagoffs think makes them clever. Tree of Life has largely rebuilt, determined to reopen.

Be that candle in the darkness. It’s a small move but something we can all do is let others know that anti-semitism isn’t cute or clever, and it’s not accepted. It may not change that person in that moment, but enough countering of remarks, signs, graffiti and more personal acts on a personal level can only help to cast doubt in the perpetrator’s mind. Do your part, call it out, don’t let anyone get away with even a simple act. Put your support behind your community to help stop radicalized people like the shooter before they get started.

Here are a few articles from 2018 about the neighborhood, and fundraisers, which also tell a story:

A Massacre in the Heart of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

Iconic Pittsburgh Steelers Logo Gets Jewish Star After Synagogue Shooting

Slain Pittsburgh Doctor Jerry Rabinowitz Held AIDS Patients’ Hands As Disease Spread

(Read more articles in The Forward)

Student Helps Raise $540K For Synagogue Shooting Victims

Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue

And current coverage:

Sidewalk Stories: Compassionate Responses to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting from Tree of Life

New podcast explores how 2018 synagogue attack affected the Jewish community—and every Pittsburgher

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October 14, 2025

Overcast: Essay in Progress

The Last Bale, pastel, 7" x 16", 2000 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

It’s a cool and dark and undecided day and I am unsettled.

It’s trying to be 72° and sunny in October, obedient to the forecast. Yesterday was just as undecided, starting clear and sunny and heading toward warm but heavy overcast unexpectedly slid across the entire bowl of blue sky as if some unseen hand had pulled a blanket over us. Though the sun tried to peek around and through the clouds the overcast was absolute. The light dimmed, the leaves no longer fluttered in dappled sun, the birds no longer sang to each other from tree to tree, the temperature cooled at the beginning of what had been forecast to be a perfectly sunny and mild October week. No storms, not even rain, just a low gray sky and dank light. Today dawned just as dim and dark as the evening had ended yesterday.

A distant Nor’easter rolling up the east coast pushed the edges of its cloud cover all the way to Western Pennsylvania to dim these precious days. I feel unsettled because of it, because I have more energy on sunny days, I have much to do that I will enjoy doing, instead I am left with all my sunny day energy in this uninspiring weather, unable to do what I’d planned. And the second day of it felt foreboding, an unwelcome change that might be permanent.

But now I see lighter areas in the overcast, even bright areas, which means the clouds are thinning. Hazy areas of blue open up above me, with the promise of more to come. One wan beam of sunshine has reached down to my garden and briefly touched some scarlet and orange Virginia creeper leaves and changed everything.

When I decided to start recording my thoughts ten minutes ago all the sky that I could see was completely overcast, my back yard just as dark and still as it was yesterday. I had been moved to bring my coffee out to the garden and walk around the brick paths and look at my vegetables, something I do for necessity, fun and self-calming. The words came and started to form sentences so I decided to record my thoughts into voice to text.

But during the minutes I recorded my draft of the essay above the brighter areas in the clouds appeared and I looked up to see a spot of blue above my head. Over the next hour the overcast dissipated and all trace of clouds disappeared entirely, the temperature rising to a sweet 72, birds singing again, trees lightly swaying with the breeze, sounding like distant waves.

Changes come, in their own time.

“In Progress”

I’m calling this an “essay in progress” because, rather than waiting until I had the chance to work it over a few times, I would give it my best rewrite while the experience was still fresh. I like to do that with poems and a quick, brief essay can have the same treatment. It’s part of what I do to encourage myself to write, not trying to make everything perfect before I present it but giving the drafts themselves attention.

Here is the draft I recorded into my phone, saved as a text file. I like the simplicity of it but I didn’t think it caught my perceptions and reactions in a way that made the point about indecision, which was what inspired me to explore why I felt so unsettled. I may change my mind about that and edit:

It’s a cool and dark and undecided day. It’s trying to be 72° and sunny in October. Yesterday was the same, the bigger surprise because it was to be a perfectly sunny and mild October week. Instead a distant Nor’easter on the east coast has pushed the edges of its cloud cover all the way to Western Pennsylvania to dim this wonderful day. I feel unsettled because of it, because I have more energy on sunny days, I have much to do that I will enjoy doing, instead this weather has made me decide to do other things. Yesterday was a nearly uniform gray low cover of clouds, still, even the birds were quiet. Today I see some very light areas in the clouds which means they are thinning, and there are some hazy areas of blue moving in above me. One wan beam of sunshine has reached down to my garden and briefly touched some scarlet and orange Virginia creeper leaves and changed everything.

When I decided to start recording my thoughts just now, this guy was completely overcast, and my backyard just as dark as it was yesterday, but in the 5 minutes during which I recorded the paragraph above the brighter areas in the clouds moved in and I looked up to see a spot of blue above my head. Change is come, in their own time.

The painting is “The Last Bale, pastel, 7″ x 16″, 1996” by me. It is not my back yard, I painted it en plein air, standing in the field at a friend’s farm on a sunny and warm November afternoon in 1996 when, once again, a heavy overcast came from nowhere and blanketed everything. It wasn’t the sparkling afternoon I’d enjoyed with photography, but I decided to make something of it anyway. That sort of overcast doesn’t always make me feel unsettled—often I like it, and in this case catching that uncertain light and skies when the fields are spent, most leaves have fallen, and one round bale was left out in the field was more descriptive of that time of year, of the end of a year of farming, than a bright sunny day.

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September 11, 2025September 11, 2025

September 11, and September 12

The mornings this September have had that particular autumnal cool with a little mist and I thought the spell might have been broken. But the morning this September 11 is sunny, blue, and warm, and eerily quiet, so much like that morning 24 years ago when I was painting a couple of wooden chairs with white paint, dressed in shorts and a tank top, after picking a basket of tomatoes from the garden.

No painting this morning but gardening for sure, and I stood for a moment and let that day come back to me, listening to NPR and hearing about the first plane about 8:50 a.m., and paying close attention after that wondering if, feeling that, there would be more to the story. Twenty minutes later I got my answer, and suddenly the beautiful morning and painting the chairs was far less important than it had been.

September 11

Aside from being in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, I am nowhere near New York or Washington DC. I am, however, barely an hour away from Shanksville. On the hot sunny morning of September 11, 2001, I was just finishing work outdoors in my back yard when I heard on the radio that a plane had the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Thinking it was an unfortunate accident I continued listening to the radio for details and 20 minutes later heard that a second plane had hit the South Tower and knew instinctively, as I’m sure we all did, that it was no accident.

My radar for tragedy was sensitized; just a few months before my mother had unexpectedly nearly died after lung cancer surgery, held on for six weeks then miraculously awakened from a near-coma one day and gone on to recover, rehabilitate and return home, though weak and fragile, needing my constant support. The previous year my brother had suffered a traumatic brain injury in an accident and at that time lived in a nursing home 30 miles away. I was integral to their recoveries and care and was legal guardian and power of attorney, and my carefully-planned self-employment was unraveling.

When I heard the news, I was out on my garden patio by the basement door, putting another coat of paint on some vintage wooden chairs I used on my deck before winter would peel the last of it off. Garden cat Moses was dozing on the warm bricks, soaking in the sun, the tip of her tail gently tapping the bricks in contentment. I always worked in my garden and did small projects early in the day to make sure they got done before I hit my computer, and to make sure I didn’t hit the computer as soon as I got up and stayed on it all day long. It was a hot, sticky late summer morning, my verdant garden a green jungle, birds twittering everywhere stocking up for migration and winter, and work waiting for me indoors. The first report that it was likely an accident, planes had hit buildings in the past, staved off some worry. Then the second plane hit when everyone in Manhattan was looking at the towers and saw the direction, the turn, the increase in speed prior to hitting the tower, and suddenly a perfect morning had turned unreal.

Jets fly overhead all the time. I have lived in the flight path for Pittsburgh International Airport all my life, and just as close to an Air Force base, and not only do they fly overhead, they circle and slow down and make noise and fly at crazy angles as they come in for a landing. A noisy plane flying low overhead is something I didn’t even notice. But two planes had just hit the two towers of the World Trade Center and a third had hit the Pentagon. I suddenly noticed that the sky was very quiet for that time of the morning.

After the plane hit the Pentagon, I put Moses inside the basement, much to her consternation, as if she needed to be protected from what might be happening, and I suddenly felt exposed under the clarity of that blue sky. As the story grew I thought of my mother and brother and if I should get them and put them somewhere just to make sure they were safe too. Everything seemed suddenly slightly askew.

Then in the increasing quiet as traffic cleared the roads, in that empty perfect clear blue September sky, a single plane went overhead and my hackles rose, a cold tingle running to my fingers on that warm morning as I watched it seeming to struggle through the sky overhead. Shortly thereafter we heard about the crash in Shanksville and I imagined the comforting familiarity of perfect green rolling hills of my Western Pennsylvania home bathed in morning sun, now wrenched open and strewn with the wreckage of violence.

I hurried inside, no longer feeling safe under that warm blue sky. I thought of my mother in her home about a mile and a half away, still weak and needing daily assistance for most activities, many prescriptions and home oxygen. If all this was suddenly disrupted, what would I do? Should I go to her house now? Should I try to get her to a more secure place, like a hospital?

And my brother in the nursing home 30 miles north of me, continuing his recovery from a traumatic brain injury the previous year, also requiring a lot of daily care, medications and supervision. Should I try to move him closer? What if I couldn’t get to him?

And my sister a few miles away with her younger daughter and grandchild? And my niece and her three babies, one of them just six days old, a few miles in the other direction? Should we all find a place to go?

Anyone else would have run for the television, but I didn’t have one then, and I don’t have one now, so I never got to see the very first images that showed up on CNN that morning, heard the fear in the newscasters’ voices. I listened to the familiar voices of the local and NPR reporters describing the events on my radio, feeling calmer listening to their words and being able to move around my house than I would have being trapped in front of a television. I called my mother and later went to her house and watched there.

Did any of us know what to do in those first hours and days, even those of us so far from the terrible scenes of death and destruction more horrible than we could imagine?

It wasn’t until the gentle, perfect beauty of September 12 that the effects of what had happened became reality for me. Not only do I live very near Pittsburgh International Airport, I am also at the intersection of two interstates right outside of Pittsburgh and hear the noises of all this traffic every day, especially in the morning. The next day, with travel restricted on land and in the air, was so eerily quiet. The beauty of the warm sun and clear blue sky, the peaceful twitters of birds and hum of bees we could rarely hear with traffic and daily noises, the clear views of the tree-covered hills made the morning seem like paradise at first, as if everything would be okay after all. But the clear stillness became unnerving as the hours of daylight passed and we had no more of our questions answered, nor knew the extent of the damage and death as it was still unfolding in all three areas.

Perhaps those perfect September days were given to calm us before we learned how our lives had changed.

September 12

Today looks no different from yesterday
but forever against the backdrop of a blue September sky
we will now remember the loss of our innocence.

September 11 was a blur of images and fears and unknowns, and for me it wasn’t until September 12 dawned and brightened into another seemingly perfect September day, blue sky and all, that what had happened, and the permanent change it brought, really settled in.

poem September 12 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

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June 29, 2025

Change in the Weather

How Small Beneath the Sky, pastel, 16 x 20, 2020 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

When I was about 10 years old I observed after a few summers of experience that the hotter the heat wave the worse the storm that came after, but the change next day was so incredibly clear and beautiful, it was like you wanted every single day to be. As the thunder and lightning rumbled and crashed around me and the rain fell like a waterfall the other day, a metaphor built itself on my observations.

I always called the maples and spruces around my house “my air conditioning units” because they kept the house and soil around it shaded which contributed immensely to how cool the house could be. I grew up without air conditioning and I don’t have air conditioning today—it’s expensive, it dries out my eyes, we didn’t always have this many days with excessive heat—but a few years ago I did concede to a portable unit that keeps my first floor, two rooms, tolerable when it’s in the 90s.

We’ve just finished off a whopper of a heat wave over most of the country. Here in southwestern Pennsylvania they rarely last six days. Our hilly region seemed to cool things down and slow the violent weather as it entered the region. It actually took three storm systems to shove that heat wave across the state and into the sea. And we haven’t yet reached that beautiful day.

From those summers in the 1960s our heat waves have been extended by several degrees and several days. The succeeding storms have reached a higher pitch of fury with straight-line winds and sending tornadoes our way—though we are on the edge of the midwestern weather region and we call the counties north of us toward Lake Erie “tornado alley,” they have always been such a rarity down here they weren’t even considered possible. Now nearly every thunderstorm is severe and many contain one or more F0 or F1 tornadoes.

A metaphor for today

I see a strong metaphor and many connections between the worsening weather conditions, the heat wave and its ending in today’s political and social climate. The heat wave is extreme, relentlessly hotter than it used to be, more difficult to temper with cooling down and providing a series of barriers to slow it.

And the cold front’s new-found ferocity will use all the mechanisms it has to avail and chase that heat wave off the east coast and out of this country, out to sea.

So as the move toward authoritarianism continues to raise the heat and violence of its force, it will be met with an equally strong cold front of opposition comprised of we the people using our strength in numbers everywhere in as many ways as are available to us to build up our strength to knock that heat wave down and out in one effort, and to keep those heat waves on the run.

Of course, we will only reach that perfectly clear and beautiful next day if we manage to keep climate change actions and a lot of other government actions and programs active and working for the people who live here and around the world.

We can imitate that change in the weather and be the change for our times, and we need to, if we want not only our Democracy to survive, but if we want our people to survive—and thrive in a system built for everyone.

About the artwork

I took the photo in 2011 and shared it on my photo website with a narrative, but the image stayed with me. In 2016 I looked it up again and wrote a poem and later named my painting after that poem. Now as a painting it’s hit the major categories of my creative efforts.

Here is the narrative:

Rain had fallen intermittently all day, but the day had been steadily dark and cold even without falling rain. But as often happens on long rainy days, the clouds broke at about sunset to give a view of faded blue sky trimmed along the edges with heavy clouds, offering reflected light but no direct sunlight. Suddenly the autumn leaves shone again even in the cooler light. I carefully watched the light, deciding that when my errand was done, or as soon as I could, whichever came first, I’d head for my favorite ridge to photograph what there was of the sunset, hoping for lots of red from the humidity in the air and sunrays from the layers of clouds breaking up, but I’d take what I could get.

No such dramatics were in the plan for this evening, but I felt the valley settle into night as I watched the clouds march steadily from the north, hearing only the wind as it swept from far beyond the horizon across my face, tugging at my hair and skirt on the hilltop where I stood, one tiny dot of a figure in this complicated and beautiful landscape, chilling my fingers with the first real cold of winter in its direct and determined path. In the center is Carnegie, somewhere in there is my house, and all of the familiar streets and scenes of my days reduced to a few amorphous blots of color, light and shadow.

In just minutes the north wind had carried the cloud cover over the valley once again like a blanket, leaving the valley in deep shadow but for the dots of light collected in the velvet darkness, small shreds of red showing through at the horizon; the sun has not given over yet, there is still some fire in its day.

And here is the poem from 2016:

How Small Beneath the Sky

Tiny toy buildings,
fluttering ribbons of roads,
arcs of light that illuminate our night are but pinpoints in the velvet earth below;
How small beneath the sky.

Poem © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

The original painting is available, as are prints.

The framed original painting is still available and I have prints on paper and canvas in the post for this painting on Portraits of Animals.

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October 4, 2022

Still We Dance

Though our garments be tattered still we dance until the end of our season, and the next remove our memory from this place.

Not a quote from another’s writing, just what came to mind as I walked the trail enjoying the sprinkle of wildflowers along the edge. These two sunflowers looked as if they were holding hands and dancing and I thought of young girls in pretty dresses at a festival centuries ago. Then I noticed the flowers were more than a little ragged, missing petals, missing parts of petals, yet still they danced. It was not lost on me that I saw the joy first, and if I hadn’t stopped to photograph these two, as looking through the lens gives me a more literally focused look, I would probably not have noticed the ragged dress. But, indeed, soon they will be gone, with the first frost, or the second, and the memory of their moment be all that is left. Am I the only one who will remember them?

And what of the metaphor for me, for us?

I guess autumn is the time for such thoughts.

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May 30, 2022

The Aftereffects

Alfons J Kazmarski, Army of the United States Technician Fourth Grade, 115th Quartermaster Bakery Company, Asiatic Pacific Theater, India, enlisted 11 May 1942, discharged 21 Mar 1946.

My father and I were in the kitchen of the house where I grew up one morning in 1987, having a nice conversation. This was not a typical event because I’d never had a substantial conversation with my father before that, nothing more than one-word answers or brief sentences.

I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, but I think it was just chit chat, something about the weather, maybe a news story or something. Winter morning sun streamed through the windows over the table and in the back door and diffused through the white sheers on the dining room window in the tiny ranch house as we stood there exchanging words. He spoke with some animation, responding to what I’d said, asking questions of what I thought about something.

I was 25 and don’t remember ever hearing his natural conversational voice aside from the subdued, minimal answers he gave to questions and occasional brief comments. Just a year before he had injured himself in the small bakery where he worked, a very unusual circumstance for all the years since his childhood working in the family bakery, through service in WWII and then in other family and otherwise small bakeries after the war to that point. He was treated for the injury to his hand but the wise emergency room doctors and nurses had noticed some respiratory and cognitive issues. He was diagnosed with lung cancer the day before the Challenger shuttle broke up over the watching nation of students and teachers and citizens, and I think I cried hard for that tragedy in large part because the shock of the diagnosis had just begun to wear off. The mass was right at the point where his lungs separated from his trachea and impacted both lungs. The surgery was long and difficult, but when he was healing well physically and was not returning to a full mental state they realized his cognitive issues may not have been entirely due to the cancer.

After tests and trials of a few medications doctors determined he had parkinsonism or Parkinson Syndrome, evidencing the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease like the fixed, unblinking gaze, shuffling gait, rigidity and slow movements. The cause is usually unknown but is usually induced by certain drugs or environmental toxins, head trauma or brain damage. The doctors traced it back to a nearly fatal malarial fever my father had had while serving in India in the Asian-Pacific theater of WWII that likely caused mild brain damage at the time, but may have unknowingly caused enough damage in the right areas that he slowly produced progressively less dopamine and more symptoms over a period of decades. This concurred with what others had seen—one of his Army buddies visiting said he’d never been the same after he was sick.

By the time I remember him he was the silent, stone-faced person at the dinner table, or driving the car, or sleeping on the couch before he went to work in the bakery in the middle of the night, the person holding me in the photo.

My father and me, spring 1964. — A Conversation with My Father

Apparently the current medications and treatments were somewhat effective considering his comparative ease of movement and his conversational ability. The conversation continued for a while and then he left the kitchen to talk to my mother who was in my old bedroom at her vanity getting ready to leave the house.

“She’s a really nice girl,” I heard him say. “Who is she?”

I didn’t hear my mother’s response.

My mother was getting ready to leave the house because my father was going to the hospital for tests and observation and I was there to drive them and help them through admissions. The medications and treatments had indeed loosened up his body enabling him to move and speak as he hadn’t in years, but it wasn’t consistent. His mind was quickly becoming fragmented and he was developing frequent pneumonia and had also had prostate surgery. Because he hadn’t driven since his surgery I had arrived at the house in the morning ready to take them to many appointments during the previous year.

My father would not return from this one. After an extended hospital stay it was determined that skilled nursing care was necessary to manage all his conditions.

I was the youngest. I was the first family member my father “forgot” as his mind marched backward in time through the next four years and he seemed to relive his life in reverse, slipped deeper into dementia, and lost speech entirely along with any control over his body.

Even though my father had no idea who I was, the person he was in that moment found that I was a nice person. I’ll take that. I’d discovered with my mother under medical circumstances that the person underneath the mask of lifelong undiagnosed issues sometimes surfaces with great clarity at odd moments. I got to see for just a moment who that relaxed, broadly smiling person was in a photo I found in my brother’s baby book taken just four years earlier than the still-faced photo of him holding me. And I found out where my deep dimples came from.

My father smiling and laughing, summer 1960

How many other families also lost a family member slowly over decades after military service? Some conditions are recognized for long-standing emotional aftereffects, like PTSD, and some for physical aftereffects, like Agent Orange and other chemical pollutants service members encountered during service. How many other children wondered who this person was, how many spouses wondered who was the person who came back, or who changed fundamentally years later?

On Memorial Day I listen to the stories of others whose loved one died in service, that horrible reality. I also remember my father whose life was fundamentally changed, and the aftereffects on the group of us, my mother, sister and brother, whose lives were very different from what they would have been otherwise.

~~~

Read an essay about the photo of that smiling man, Father’s Day.

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May 25, 2022

Innocent

“Belly up to the salad bar!” a vigilant mother goose seems to say as the five goslings line up to enjoy some mixed grasses and clover. As I photographed I couldn’t believe they actually lined up like this. It’s a joy to watch such curious innocent creatures, like children exploring and playing outdoors at recess.

On my walk back from the dentist I saw a very large group of goslings, 14 at the highest count, being escorted along the edge of a parking lot by four or five adult geese. I decided to take a detour to stroll the sidewalk between that edge of the parking lot and the street, with the idea of photos in mind, of course, as well as simply enjoying the geese.

I took some wider angle photos to get the scope of this field trip, causing the goslings and the adult geese to move away from the sidewalk and into the parking lot. I changed to my telephoto lens so that I could get detail photos while I stayed far enough away from the little ones that the adults wouldn’t have to hiss a warning at me. Don’t mess with an angry gander.

The goslings were so happy. I don’t usually ascribe human emotions to animals, but each clump of wood sorrel they encountered growing though the cracks in the parking lot and sidewalks caused them to race toward it and bibble and dance a little as they surrounded it then began quickly nibbling with those little beaks. In all that, I simply sensed more than contentment from filling their bellies. “Look! Wood sorrel! It’s wood sorrel! My favorite! Come on, let’s race! It’s the best wood sorrel ever!” as they nipped all the yellow flowers and bits of the stems. “Look! It’s grass! Let’s go have some grass! I love grass!” The grass grew from a rectangular opening in the concrete sidewalk as if something set into it had been removed. The goslings hurried over, bibbling, and ran into the grass with innocent abandon, pushing through it, nipping a few pieces, then turning around to do it again as if they enjoyed the feeling of grass on their bodies as much as the taste of the grass.

In time the goslings grouped off with adults and each group went in a different direction, as if the parents had organized an afternoon walk, and now they were all heading home to enjoy a rest before a later meal. I followed one group of three littles and a male and a female as they moved across the parking lot in the direction I had come from.

We have quite a large flock of geese in this town who seem secure and content in where they live. They nest along the creek, and their little puffball children pop into the water from the greenery on the steep banks, bobbing up and down between two parents, growing, strengthening, evolving in their colors, and learning to be geese. Most pairs start out with six goslings or more by my observations and years of photos, but this family with only three goslings by this age is not unusual. There are predators, foxes and raccoons along the creek, there are high-water flows on the creek after storms strong enough to wash away small trees. Living outdoors in the wild fluctuations of a Western Pennsylvania spring in itself can be hazardous, and they cross the streets, oddly enough almost always at an intersection, and impatient or oblivious drivers run them over. Their parents’ vigilance is no match for outside factors.

This is the reality for geese living in the wild every day, and no doubt sometimes for domestic geese as well. Though they are protected by the Migratory Bird Conservation Act they are still hunted in season, not here, but not far from here. They are part of the food chain and their parents can’t protect them from that, or accidents.

And in this country today our human children are just as innocent and vulnerable as the goslings, even as their parents stand by and accept the fact they may be shot and killed while at school. At least the geese have laws protecting them as wild animals with punishments for persons who kills geese out of season, and in that way they have more protection than our children if someone with a gun decides to act out a mass murder, targeting the place where they gather, in school.

It seems children in school are always in season for mass shooters. Today was not a good day for 19 children who lost their lives, at last reporting, and all the children who witnessed and somehow survived the attack. We can stop this, but just as I can’t fully grasp the violent deaths of 19 innocent children in their school, neither can I fully grasp the motivations of those who will not work to control guns so that the possibility of this happening is at least reduced, or turn down the foul and angry rhetoric that intentionally depersonifies whole groups of people and infects and grows like a cancer in some minds. So again we give thoughts and prayers to the grieving families and the traumatized children, until tomorrow when we do it all again somewhere else in this country. Because we just did it three days ago with African-Americans in a grocery store.

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May 8, 2022May 8, 2022

Mothers Day

My mother died on January 25, 2011, and each year around that date I remember her in a post and share the poem I wrote for her the day she died.

She had been ill for years, and this last time she’d gone to the hospital in congestive heart failure it was clear she would not recover. Kept comfortable by the hospital staff, we waited around her bed for her last breaths.

Later, after clearing out her room at the nursing home, all the necessary phone calls, a visit from a friend and more calls, I had my time alone and was up quite late. As I sat outside in the quiet of the January night watching the snow gently fill the air and fall whispering in a soft blanket on all around me, the poem came to me in nearly one complete piece. So that I would not distract myself from the flowing words in my head I carefully went inside and tiptoed to my desk for a tablet and pen, quietly went back outside to the swing and wrote it down slowly, line for line, all as if I was afraid I’d scare it away, all the beautiful words I’d been thinking, or maybe I’d break it, like a bubble. I changed very little in a rewrite.

I read this poem at her memorial. And I had decided I would go through with my poetry reading scheduled for just two days after my mother died, because it was an opportunity to share her with others and to read the new poem.

I could never encapsulate 86 years of a life into one blog post or one photo or one poem. The photo above is the one we placed in our mother’s casket, her wedding photo from 1946 when she was 21 years old. The little scrap of red in the lower left corner is the red blouse she wore, the one she loved best, and I knew she’d want to be remembered in it; our mother was one who could wear a red chiffon blouse in her casket and be proud.

About My Mother

Regardless of the many outstanding qualities any person may have
we are essentially remembered for only one of them.
In my mother, all would agree
this one would be her remarkable beauty.

All through her life the compliments trailed her
as she carefully maintained “the look”, her look, so glamorous,
from tailored suits to taffeta dresses to palazzo pants,
hair perfectly styled, nails manicured and painted
a collar set just so, cuffs casually turned back,
hair worn long, past the age of 50,
a dark, even tan and shorts into her 80s,
lipstick always perfectly applied,
and even at 84
people marveled on her perfect skin,
dark curly hair,
and big bright smile.

I see that smile
when I see my sister smile,
and I see my mother’s active, athletic bearing
when I look at my brother,
and her gray eyes are mine.
In each of her grandchildren
and great-grandchildren
I see her round face,
graceful hands, pert nose,
proud upright posture
and a million other of her features and habits
and in all of us
her wild curly hair
is part of her legacy to us.

When we look at each other from now on
we will see the part of her she gave to each of us,
this little cluster of people who came from her
and who were her greatest treasure,
and when she looks at us from wherever she is
she will know that
she cannot be forgotten.

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March 9, 2022March 9, 2022

Someday They Will Sing

This is what happens when I wake up and the snow is enchanting and I hear that a maternity hospital in Ukraine was bombed by Russia and I have to do something with all of it.

Someday They Will Sing

where have all the flowers gone,
long time passing,
young ones have picked them,
every one of them
gone for soldiers,
returned to graveyards
everyone,
and graveyards gone to flowers,
long time ago,
and again and again
and again
when will they ever learn,
why did they never learn

(#SlavaUkraini, and for all other people oppressed by war.)

I drafted the poem on the trail on Saturday, what happens when I come face to face with nature on a trail feeling the earth beneath my feet and the sun and breeze filling my head and my thoughts. I have been singing the song since the invasion began and was singing as I walked along, and every so often wrote another line of my thoughts.

The song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” was inspired by a traditional song of the Cossacks, Slavic peoples who lived in rural regions of both Ukraine and Russia, though the source of the song is Ukrainian. Pete Seeger adapted some of the lyrics and wrote the first three verses in 1955, Joe Hickerson wrote the rest in 1960.

It once was that men marched off to war while women stayed behind and tended the flowers in the graveyards, but I have heard a few folk singers (can’t remember) who have sung lyrics updated to reflect that young women become soldiers as well as young men, in fact, young people of all sorts become soldiers. With both society’s norms and folkways and beloved folk songs, breaking the mold can be difficult, but I could finally feel an update was natural.

I watch the creative soul of Ukrainians in this fight, so many musicians, artists, poets, writers, playing piano at the borders, making art to describe the conflict and their opposition, making Molotov cocktails instead of beer, a brass band of soldiers standing in fatigues to play the Ukrainian national anthem around the spot where a Russian missile hit, and the least I can do is awaken my own, possibly my inheritance from my Ukrainian ancestors, to reflect my support.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Have_All_the_Flowers_Gone%3F

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March 6, 2022March 6, 2022

Barefootin’

Barefoot on the trail six months after my hip replacement.

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

My mother told the story that, when I was a baby, she just couldn’t get any shoes on my feet. Whether the baby shoes or the knitted booties, I would kick and curl my toes. Eventually she got them on, but as soon as I could, I took them off. I apparently learned this wasn’t a good thing soon enough since I wasn’t arriving barefoot at school or when visiting relatives.

But I clearly remember going out the back door to the yard and taking off my shoes on the porch when I was young enough I had to stay in the back yard. Later, I can picture myself taking off my shoes and stuffing them into my pockets or leaving them somewhere I could retrieve them before heading out on one of my “hikes”, day-long walks I’d take alone, feeling the cool earth and grasses in the abandoned pasture near our house in the morning, steaming pavement under my feet on roads in mid-summer, the cool tickling of the water in our shallow local creek as I walked down the center of the channel, though it was so polluted I’m surprised it didn’t strip off my skin.

I always managed to keep my shoes on at my workplaces, unless I worked late and happened to be the only person there. Around the house, unless it’s cold, and even sometimes then, I am barefoot, or I’ll put on a pair of socks if my bunions start to hurt from the cold. Except for cutting the grass, or if I’m working in a particularly rough area of the yard…barefoot in my own back yard.

When I started walking and biking public trails, I tended to keep my shoes in cooler weather, but even now, when temperate weather arrives, my shoes are once again tucked into pockets or backpack or even my camera bag. I even ride my bike barefoot, except if I’m on a public street.

Mist remained among the trees like an unworded thought.

So it was yesterday, as early as March 5, when the temperature hit 72 degrees locally. I took two hours in the afternoon to walk some of my favorite trails up and down hills along the Panhandle Trail, not far from me. The sun was bright, the trees still bare, the shadows misty and mysterious. Chickadees chick-a-dee-deed among the branches and blue jay screeches echoed up and down the hills, woodpecker hammerings heard like distant construction and I found the litter of wood chips they’d left behind. The leaves that had fallen last autumn were flattened against the earth, but fluttering in little circles just above the packed clay of the trail as breezes whistled down from the sky and around and past me.

Woodpecker chips.

The woodpeckers’ work.

The trail had been a railroad line and at some points is very deep in a valley. I walked up and up and up a north-facing hill, then across, then up, then around, following a trail that pulled my feet to it, tracking bright green mossy logs and trickles of water, all the while feeling the soles of my feet press against the earth and bounce back up, feeling the energy seep into my feet and legs, feeling a long week spent in a chair at my computer relax out of my back and shoulders, hips and calves, in a way that walking in shoes can never do.

I feel fully a part of all that is around me, I am not an observer but am as essential to the day as the birds and their songs, the sun and wind, the trickling water, and even the laughter of children, the muted conversations, the barking of dogs on their leashes rising up from the trail far below and drifting through the woods around me. Though I am alone, I am part of of all that is this life, and contribute my part just by existing within it.

Some people, not necessarily scientists, insist there is a positive return for humans to walk barefoot, that it helps your immunity to come in contact with all that’s on the earth, that the earth itself has an energy we absorb that contributes to our general wellness, that walking on the earth makes us literally “grounded”, firm in our selves, our needs, our own truth.

I’m not concerned if there is scientific proof for this one. Apparently it works very well for me, and I’ll continue as long as I can. If you haven’t, give it a try sometime. I understand it can be uncomfortable if you are accustomed to shoes, but in time the joy of feeling the earth beneath your feet is as good as feeling the warm sun on your face in spring.

Have to clean my feet before I get in the car.

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.” ~Thich Nhat Hahn, Teaching Peace

NOTE: at this time of fear and sadness in Ukraine, I will add that I am of Ukrainian heritage, and though I never knew that country, never even knew the grandparents who came from there, I feel that my connection with the earth, my love of nature and animals, and my creative spirit all derive from this heritage. I am so sad to see these people crushed by autocratic terrorism. No one on this Earth deserves to suffer in this way. I am putting my heart and my hope with the strength and independent spirit of the Ukrainian people, as well as the rest of the world, as we pull together to oppose this war, and hopefully, all wars.

Resources to read a little more about walking barefoot:

“Walking Barefoot Can Make You Happier & Healthier”, https://www.consumerhealthdigest.com/general-health/walking-barefoot.html

“Going Barefoot Is Good for the Sole”, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/going-barefoot-is-good-for-the-sole/

“What is ‘Earthing’ and can it improve your health?” https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wellbeing/a30992559/what-is-earthing/

Celebrate barefoot walking

Here are two paintings I’ve done, and added text to prints as well.

Running Throught the Woods: Kahlil Gibran — Running Through the Woods: Kahlil Gibran

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