branches up, roots down

" These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. " – Thomas Paine, published 12/23/1776 Two nights ago there was a vigil in downtown San Francisco organized by the Veterans for Peace to mark the U.S. death count in Iraq reaching 4000. Last week was the fifth anniversary of the war. As this war progresses, there will be a growing number of those in the military who turn against it and realize that they can not in good conscience keep fighting. In times where war is waged for unjust reasons, there are always those who do not shrink from speaking out and resisting. During the Vietnam War, once that resistance came from within the military itself, the war drew closer to its end. In a brilliant twist on Thomas Paine's term "summer soldier" those veterans who did not shrin...

I've just come back from driving my son and his best friend to South San Francisco to go to a party. All the way there the full moon held our attention, big and brilliant in the sky. We all longed to capture the moment, all wishing we had a camera. For teenagers, they were suitably awed and amazed. It's a spectacular moon on a spectacular night. It's exactly one moon cycle since I came home from the hospital. I am settling into acceptance of the diagnosis of diabetes. There has been grief for my old self and my old ways. I miss potatoes. I miss margaritas. There also has been gratitude for the healthy changes the diagnosis has wrought. Would I ever have changed my eating habits in such a dramatic way or stepped up the exercise to such a degree? Probably not. I am proud that I am managing the disease without medication and that my blood sugar is now on the low side of the completely normal range. Eating a low glycemic diet - which means eating only foods which slow...

A week ago I received a phone call from a friend of a client. She had found my card in his wallet and she remembered him talking about his “shrink”. She called to let me know he had died of a sudden heart attack. I had seen J. once a week like clockwork for well over seven years. He turned fifty a few months back, and we had spent some time reviewing all the events of his forties that had been so difficult, both of us imagining that the fifties would be better. He had worked hard in therapy, and for the last two years he’d been sober. J. was a big man who tried to move thru the world taking up as little space as possible. He was quiet, shy, and uncomfortable being the focus of attention. The very fact that he could tolerate therapy at all was a miracle. Early on, I learned to draw out and encourage his dark sense of humor. He could come across as dour, but laughing, he became a different being. J. had come from the kind of twisted Christian home where almost anything en...

Two weeks ago there was a notable eclipse. I won’t be forgetting it, as that was the day I came home and began a new phase of life. I had spent four days and three nights in the underworld of institutionalized western medicine, a shamanic immersion if there ever was one. I'd walked into the emergency room with what I thought was a small matter that would be taken care of with antibiotics. I walked out several days later with the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, armed with insulin, syringes, a glucometer, and yes, antibiotics too. In between the going in and coming out, I was treated for diabetic ketoacidosis , as well as the virulent and resistant MRSA staph that is plaguing this city. Thankfully, the staph culture eventually came back negative. Ketoacidosis has a high enough mortality rate as it is. Teamed with staph, my chances of survival would have been uncomfortably dicey. Interpreting the dream of those few days was rather easy. I started out worried about a skin eru...