Sirius Black & Roana

A Facebook friend posted this photo of her dog Sirius Black being nanny to one of her goats, Roana. My friend works at my vet's office; I got to know her when she brought one of her goats to work one day.

Mary and I had goats back in the day. They rivaled our children in being both incredibly appealing and unendingly mischievous. During the infamous Valentine's Day storm in the mid-80s, Mary decamped to a motel with the babies due to lack of water and power, Jason and I stayed behind to look after things. One of her goats chose to deliver kids in the middle of the night. I stood in calf-deep icy water with a light strapped to my head while the goat loudly blamed me for the whole mess.

Courtesy Fort Lewis Preservation Farm

Salt and Light

The Sermon on the Mount uses salt and light to talk about promises and expectations. The phrase is used widely, for everything from a TV network to the upcoming worldwide Quaker meeting in Kenya. But for me these days, promises and expectations are all about the unfolding of new life in spring.

It's been less than 48 hours since our last snow. Jan, who is able to find beauty no matter what, took this in his back yard at high tide. It helps me remember why I love winter here in Maine, even though I'm happy to see it leave:

Speaking of Jan, if you read this blog from time to time you've seen Jan's wonderful pictures of blue birds that I've never seen down here on the marsh, just 1/4 mile from Jan. Yesterday the first one perched on one of my bird feeder poles, looking in the window at me. I jumped for my camera and it was gone, leaving a portrait of Jimmy, deep in thought:

Jimmy notwithstanding, the cats have been acting like Red Sox fans with dugout seats at the explosion of birds around here - the gold finches are back and various LBB (little brown birds) variations. The geese have for some reason stepped right up to the house, making an incredible ruckus.

There was one particularly loud fight right near that feeder pole between this very serious-looking guy:

And this fellow, who limped away. My theory is that he was faking an injury to escape his attacker, but I'm keeping an eye out today and many people around the marsh look out for the geese, don't worry.

I'm not all nature boy. Last week I got actual cable TV installed. The installer was a very nice young man. Installing helps pay bills - his girlfriend is a 7th generation Maine dairy farmer, and dairy people work hard for such a small return. I'm astonished at what's on TV. I've been enjoying a reality show about a small cargo airline in the Yukon, I watch it for the 1940's era C-46s and DC-3's airplanes. I loved flying around in them in Southeast Asia 40 years ago, a few of them still had canvas skins. I was once in a DC-3 flying over Laos when the door blew off at 10,000 feet. It was one of several times in my life - so far - when I was pretty sure I was about to die.

Jimmy is fascinated by my viewing TV. He turns his back to the screen that you can see over his shoulder and stands on my lap watching me as I watch old airplanes:

Again, the Suffering of My Lai

The media has focused our attention on the murder of civilians in Kandahar Province of Afghanistan by an American soldier. Today I’d like to ask a few questions about this event and what it means.

Sheepscot Rainbow Courtesy of Jan

Forty-four years ago today, American soldiers on the Batangan Peninsula in Viet Nam killed about 500 civilians and dumped most of them in irrigation ditches.

The Viet Nam event went down into history as the My Lai Massacre, and in some historical accounts is seen as a pivotal factor in turning the US public against the Viet Nam war.

The survivors of the slaughter were placed in a camp called My Lai 2. Four years after the event, the media reported that the camp had been over-run by the communist insurgency and totally destroyed. I happened to be in Quang Ngai Province at around that time. The Quaker Rehabilitation Center had patients out on the peninsula, including in the My Lai 2 concentration camp.

Based on reports from our patients, the US and UK staff were skeptical of media stories that a second My Lai massacre had been perpetrated by the other side. So we drove out to see for ourselves. The camp was entirely destroyed. We searched for one of our patients, an above-knee amputee who was over-due for his appointment. There was no sign of him except for the artificial leg we had made, lying partly burned in the rubble. The US staff, who spoke Vietnamese, interviewed all the people in the area we could find. They told a different story.

Wikipedia says this:

In the spring of 1972, the camp (at Mỹ Lai 2) where the survivors of the Mỹ Lai Massacre had been relocated was largely destroyed by Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) artillery and aerial bombardment. The destruction was officially attributed to "Viet Cong terrorists". However, the truth was revealed by Quaker service workers in the area through testimony (in May 1972) by Martin Teitel at hearings before the Congressional Subcommittee to Investigate Problems Connected with Refugees and Escapees. In June 1972, Teitel's account of the events was published in the New York Times.

The Times op ed is from June 6, 1972. It was called, “Again, The Suffering of Mylai.” When I was invited before Ted Kennedy’s committee, I brought along the partially burned prosthetic leg to illustrate my testimony.

I'd like to use the My Lai anniversary and its juxtaposition with the murders in Kandahar to mention three issues.

1. Are these civilian massacres unique or rare?

One of the problems with the media frenzy about the Kandahar killings is the impression that what happened is an abnormality. I can’t agree. Massacres of innocent people by all sides are routine in wars, and I’ve not known or been in one without them. Certainly there has been reporting on such massacres perpetrated by both sides in Afghanistan.

In Viet Nam and other wars I've been in, I heard many stories of these sorts of atrocities, and they were usually not disputed, except by diplomats in the presence of cameras. When we allow our country into a war, we have to assume that civilian horrors will ensue. A variation on the uniqueness story is the incessant hinting from our media that the perpetrator must be insane. This point sounds good, but it’s somewhat without significance, and it runs the risk of letting the politicians and military brass off the hook.

You can’t send tens of thousands of women and men anywhere without knowing that a predictable percentage of them will be nuts, and another knowable fraction will become so. So if you’re honest, and responsible, you’ll have mechanisms in place to lessen armed individuals doing terrible things. I’m pretty sure our military does try to decrease these slaughters. They are not doing it well enough; the proof is in the pudding. This mass murdering second lieutenant will no doubt be punished. Those who created the circumstances that made this and other outrages possible and inevitable, will likely escape accountability, as happened with My Lai.

2. What about the drones?

The Kandahar mass murder is being portrayed as different from drone-caused slaughters. We have a huge fleet of drones in Afghanistan, and the rate of civilian deaths – those that have been admitted to – seems to far exceed the number of people shot dead in their beds.

I’m not making morality from body count statistics: killing a civilian is individually and uniquely wrong. Yet there’s not doubt that deliberate shooting is creating more revulsion.

This distinction may come from the idea that the soldier went out and just killed people, they were not “collateral damage” in any way. He came very close to them and pulled his trigger, and then set them on fire. It was up close and personal.

But the military collects detailed statistics about the “effectiveness” of their weapons. They know how many collateral people they’ve killed, and they can predict how many more will die in this way. If I know someone is going to die because of something I want to do, and I do it anyway, I’m responsible. Any watcher of TV cop shows knows that.

I have two purposes in raising this point. One is to diminish the false distinction between allegedly purposeful murder and fabricated accidents. The other is to mention that the military is keenly aware of the American public's much smaller amount of revulsion about drone strikes. The US public is probably more tolerant of blowing things up without our own people being in harm’s way, and I suspect many people buy into the ethical fabrication of collateral damage.

If you follow the development of military hardware, you can learn a whole lot about what’s in store for us. These days the military is positively tripping over itself, along with universities and aerospace companies, to develop a wide array of drones to keep an eye on us, and in some instances mete out punishment.

Boeing is doing runway testing of the Phantom Eye, pictured here, a hydrogen powered drone that will stay up for four days at a time (no humans means no food or bathroom breaks are needed), flying up to 65,000 feet – in some respects, acting as a replacement for satellites, should they get disabled in a war with China. And these planes provide high altitude surveillance that is beyond our awareness - literally.

More down to earth, the Guardian has been covering the run up to the London Olympics, showing us how it will be illegal to hang posters critical of the Olympics in your own home, how certain roads in London will be closed to everyone but corporate sponsors – and – how the skies over London will be buzzing with an armada of drones. Police use of drones to control civilians sounds like science fiction TV. In actuality, it's more of a reality show.

The Kandahar killings are being sold as more of an unique aberration than is supported by the facts. Further, this event will be made wide use of in the selling of a more drone-centric military. And police departments all over the US are buying drones. Right now.

I grew up hearing about the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and how in retrospect, that conflict was a testing ground of new weapons for WWII. In the future, I suspect we’re going look back to Afghanistan the same way.

3. What about jurisdiction?

When I first went to Viet Nam, I was astonished to discover I didn’t need a visa, all I had to do was show a US passport to Vietnamese officials as I entered their country, and they had to let me in. This is standard US exceptionalism – we defended their sovereignty by ignoring it. You might recall that a major sticking point in our final withdrawal from Iraq was over jurisdiction, the zeal of the US to shield our soldiers and our civilian contractors from accountability in the legal system of the country where they were running around armed, drunk, and scared.

I don’t support turning over the murdering lieutenant to the Taliban for their interpretation of Koran-based punishment. But any one of several respectable human rights tribunals could well take up such a case. The problem is, the US tends not to join or participate in most of the appropriate fora – precisely because our country and military insist that only we can hold our own people accountable, and that we do it very well.

So well in fact that one soldier served three and a half years for the killing of more than 500 people at My Lai. Everyone else got off – except the three soldiers who had attempted to blow the whistle on what happened. They were denounced in Congress and persecuted and threatened for 30 years.

When I visited My Lai 40 years ago, there was a haze of tension in the air on that peninsula. Even with our big Quaker star on the side of the vehicle, we were stared at with a loathing I had never experienced from normally outgoing Vietnamese country people, even in North Viet Nam. The shattered trees and acres of bulldozed moonscape, the concertina wire confining entire villages to stinking, crowded camps, and the constant pressure of frowning Saigon soldiers behind mirrored sunglasses, all gave me a lightheaded, sick feeling.

I was torn between wanting to bolt out of that toxic place as fast as I could, and wanting to remain to show a few more moments of sympathy and solidarity. When we finally did drive away, I promised myself that I’d never forget those traumatized people crouched in the mud in the blazing sun, and that’s one promise I’ve kept, for all these years.

Do Dogs Pray?

Late one night in the early 80’s, I was crammed into the front seat of a car between two large men, who were chatting with the three equally big guys in the back seat. We were speeding along twisty roads high up in the mountains of Colorado. During a lull in the conversation, the guy next to me said, “What are we going to do about the little guy?” Saying this, he squeezed me even closer into the bulge of the driver. A voice from the back seat said, “We have to kill him. He’s heard too much.”

I giggled.

These five men were spiritual leaders from native communities; outside their culture we call them medicine men. They had been swapping stories, talking through a wide range of topics ranging from the current activities of spirits with animal names, to difficulties with wives and girlfriends. Some of the talk seemed like gossip to me.

Humanity has often had a tradition of tricksters, people who push past boundaries of decorum to get through boundaries that hem in belief. They’re found in Africa, Asia and in the practices of Russia and elsewhere. In recent Western culture, tricksters have been put into Jungian archetypes and Joseph Campbell myth schemes – too bad for us, if you ask me, too confining and analytical. And there’s a deep history of the trickster or coyote in the indigenous nations of North America and adjacent areas. Two of the guys in the car that night were from Lakota peoples of the upper Midwest, where this kind of healer is called Heyoka.

These people are not indigenous John Stewarts. They are highly trained healers, who use jokes, and standing ideas on their heads, and shocking behavior to focus people’s attention. They don’t have an exact equivalent in the non-native American world, but rather are spiritual and religious leaders, political strategists, doctors, psychotherapists, keepers of memories, and enforcers of rules.

Our tradition likes to keep a sharp line between the secular and the sacred, a distinction that doesn’t have as much significance in indigenous traditions. By the time I had been invited to ride along with that reunion of colleagues, I knew that in suggesting I had heard too much of their secrets and had to be killed, they were confirming among themselves and telling me the precise opposite: I was trusted, and I was included. I was being offered a real compliment.

Maybe one of the reasons I fit in with these men was that I didn’t have my own religious hang-ups to block what they were offering. I had been raised in a Jewish tradition by a Marxist married to a scientist – not a recipe for much participation in the numinous. I wasn’t an atheist as much as a non-theist. My early family life excluded the transcendent and the immanent: anything that was seen as non-rational.

The engagement of the healers in the world around them was electrifying but not immediately apparent. They loved playing the fat sleepy Indian, but behind their sagging lids they missed nothing. They would recount meetings we had been in together and peel away layer after layer, making fun of everyone, no detail unnoticed. There was no division between healing sick people and healing sick worlds – that was the first point to capture my interest. In fact I knew several of them were active in AIM, the American Indian Movement, which was a kind of native liberation and sovereignty effort, including direct confrontation with their oppressors. I knew AIM people who slept with pistols under their pillows.

The healers were less interested in shooting than they were in transforming. For the first time, I began to engage a world outside of my immediate senses – these guys wouldn’t allow me to not commit.

My own Western culture includes a subset of people who put their attention to controverting and disproving the existence of god and other aspects of a world they can’t see or touch. Some are professional skeptics, captured by a need to obliterate beliefs in others because they don’t have it themselves. They base their aggressive disbelief on what they feel are violations of logic, as well as on the horrible excesses of religions. Some scientists have this hobby too, because their religious beliefs (in science) feel threatened by what they fear are competing belief systems.

It’s hard for me to not conclude that pugnacious and truculent antitheists like the late Christopher Hitchens or Bill Maher doth protest way too much. Wallowing in stories of institutional excess, they proclaim a set of rules that they call the Enlightenment or rationality, and then knock down the systems of belief that don’t measure up to their personal version of the world. It’s a schoolboy trick by smart articulate people, but it’s also a form of domination and control, more than the devastating rebuttal they think it is.

Scientists sometimes also use this circular reasoning: they complain that religion isn’t scientific. Religious belief isn’t a lot of things it doesn’t claim to be, including scientific. I’m a critic of scientific mistakes, excess, and arrogance. But I don’t condemn the idea of science itself just because some people misapply it. It’s equally silly to condemn beliefs in the transcendent because Queen Isabella banished my relatives from Spain in 1492.

OK so what do I believe? Answering this brings us to praying dogs.

Little Jimmy recognizes the squeak of the refrigerator drawer that holds the cheese, his favorite food. He rushes into the kitchen and sits still, nearby. He stares at me with his ears back, beseeching. As the omnipotent and omniscient Supreme Being that I am in Jimmy’s universe, he petitions and supplicates, he engages in actions that are not easily distinguishable from what I’d call prayer. Sometimes his prayers are answered, sometimes not. But he always prays to the Cheese God.

What does Jimmy know of me? Is there any room in his tiny mind for understanding my ideas about hegemony, the need to change the oil in my Jeep, the love I feel for my children, or what I’m doing when I sit for hours with this flat object on my lap and stab it rapidly with my fingers? My actions and concerns are unknown, and unknowable by him. But his belief in me and his adoration of my every action are indisputable.

Jimmy gets to lick the hand of his god, and to jam his ten pounds into the crook of my arm at night to sleep safe and warm. My god is not nearly as accessible as Jimmy’s. But I like to hold the idea that just as Jimmy cannot think about his god's concerns and actions – the actual content of my existence – this is true for me too. My indigenous healer friends find the holy everywhere the world around them, in the rustling grasses and buzzing bugs, and in the colors and smells of the entire physical world: Black Elk said, “The holy land is everywhere.” This is the starting point for everything that I’ve been gradually learning to believe in.

I bring this mindset to the salt marsh. Staring out over it, smelling it and feeling it under my feet, my attention is drawn away from the mechanical and mechanistic world to something that feels bigger and safer – and mostly unknowable. I no more surmise a white male god up in the sky standing at the pearly gates with a big book of my sins than I accept the choleric fulminations of atheists who fervently believe in the wrongness of fervent beliefs.

I’ve had wonderful help over my lifetime, from my wife the Rev Mary, from my healer friends, from a prayerful Jimmy and many others, in pushing over the iron fence of rationalism that obstructs me from the intensely complex and somewhat unknowable world tapestry all around. I don’t really understand it; I don’t even try very hard to understand. But I love it, and as Jimmy will tell you – that’s enough.

What a Crock

This past weekend I logged onto Johnny’s http://www.johnnyseeds.com/ and ordered some seeds for organic Northern Pickling cukes. Johnny’s is an employee-owned seed grower and merchant here in Maine. Since plants like The Northern cuke were developed in a northern climate, they might stand a better chance of surviving my care.

Great Northerns from Johnny's

I ordered the cukes – and a packet of dill seeds for obvious reasons – because on Saturday I started a batch of fermented pickles using supermarket pickling cukes. It seems like a shame to make something with care by hand, but use old fruit of questionable origin. So this summer my little raised bed will look like an exploded Jewish deli counter – all cukes and dill, plus whatever horseradish I put in last year that may have survived the winter.

I love canning things, including pickles – it’s a combination of art and science, accompanied by an underlying feeling of danger as the big canning pressure cooker hisses and shakes ominously.

This is a Gartdorpf
Spelled Gairtdorpf on Amazon

But the joy of making fermented  - not canned - pickles is unbeatable. First of all, if you’ll excuse me, my fermented pickles are cosmic, as good if not better than Jewish deli pickles in barrels I remember from my childhood. Second, anyone can make these pickles: if you have just a little equipment, all you do is assemble the ingredients and wait a week. Unlike their canned cousins, fermented pickles need to be kept in the fridge, and only last 4-6 weeks - not that mine go uneaten that long.

Before I share my recipe, I want to mention that the price of admission for making fermented pickles is the need to ferment the them in something that won't react chemically with the fermentation and also won't let it get out of control. I have a glorious German Gartopf fermenting pot. They used to be hard to come by, but now Amazon has them. If you search for "pickle crock" on Amazon.com or elsewhere, you'll find several brands. My little crock is a fine work of craftsman-era design, and it makes the production of pickles really easy. The fermenter even eliminates the possibility of explosion, because it uses an ingenious water trap to let the gas out, just like home beer outfits. In the crocks pictured here, you can see the flared shape the lid sits on - you just pour water into it to make the trap.

If you don’t have a crock or don't like the steep price of an imported crock, you can ferment fine pickles without one. You should do this in glass or ceramic, not plastic or metal. And you need to provide for the escape of the gas. The Internet is full of instructions for fermenting without a crock. Also a mortar and pestle is a great help in making pickles, they cost a few bucks and the ceramic ones last forever.

Another Nice Crock

This recipe for half-sour dill pickles, which quite a few people have asked me for – all but two are folks who actually ate the pickles – evolved from recipes I’ve tried as well as from my own trials. Not trial and error, since variations in ingredients (within reason) produces a range of results from great to fabulous, nothing less.

My little crock is 5 liters, so the recipe is for ¾ gallon, give or take. If your home water is lousy, you may wish to consider buying some. The water needs to be salt water, the ratio is:

One tablespoon salt to two cups water

This is one measurement you ought to stick with: my 12 cups of water use 6 tablespoons of pickling salt. I think kosher salt is ok too, since after all, the pickles are Jewish.

Ingredients:

For about a gallon, use 3-4 pounds of pickling cukes (only pickling cukes). Scrub each one and cut off the blossom end.

1 ½ teaspoons of coriander seeds, crushed with your pestle. I often use 2 tsp because I love these seeds.

1 ½ teaspoons of black peppercorns, crushed.

4 cloves of garlic, chopped but not minced. I’m not a huge garlic fan, you might go with more cloves and like it.

3 or 4 bay leaves leaves, whole.

Dill heads – or as much of a dill plant as you can get; at least four, but I’m very happy if I have a few more.

2 or 3 long, mildish peppers. I often use supermarket cubanelles when I can get them, but other fairly peaceable peppers are fine. I don’t think the pickles will be subtle enough if you use peppers with Fukushima levels of hotness. Anyway cut off the ends, cut them in half and seed them, then cut them into pieces roughly the length and width of your little finger.

As mentioned above, you need pickling salt in water, at the ratio of 1 tbsp salt to two cups of water, I use 6 tbsp for 12 cups.

To make the pickles:

1. Put on appropriate music; I used the Ditty Bops this week.

The Ceramic Weights

2. Rinse out your crock or fermenting container, which I think should be about 20% larger than the total of water and pickles. Take the weights that keep the ingredients from floating (my crock came with form-fitting unglazed ceramic ones; anything heavy and impervious will do – maybe you can find a Republican), and if the weight material is porous, wrap it in cheesecloth.

3. Put the coriander seeds, peppercorns, bay leaves and garlic into the crock.

4. Now add a layer of cukes, then a layer of dill and peppers, repeat for another layer or even two if you have enough. The order isn't really that important.

5. Dissolve the salt in the water, then add the salted water to the crock.

6. Put the wrapped weights on top, then the water trap or whatever lid arrangement you’ve found to let the gasses that result from fermentation out, while not letting air in to spoil the fermentation. This step is the difference between success and failure.

7. It takes about a week with my crock to transform cukes into "half sour" pickles. Within reason, it’s ok to open things up and check, just put it all back the right way.

8. When the pickles are done, finish weeping with joy at the taste of your sample, and decant the pickles into canning jars. Fill them right up, cover, and put them in the fridge.

9. This step is the only difficult part of the recipe: let the pickles rest in the fridge for three days. Really, you have to leave them alone. Ok, two days, that’s my final offer.

10. After the resting period, start eating and giving away jars to friends you want to impress. The pickles should last about a month in the fridge.

Greedy About Spring

Today's Photos Courtesy of Jan

I'm compelled to interrupt the flow of the blog to say something about what many of us are experiencing, the seeming arrival of spring. Most likely anyone living north of the Mason Dixon line is thinking: Oh, don't be so sure, and people in Maine are going to send me emails about the April Fools snowstorm. I remember it well.

Nevertheless, yesterday some organic switch was thrown. Part of it may be a change in my focus - driving around, I saw the gleam of buckets hanging on sugar maples where I don't think they were the day before. In the morning I was outside attaching an antenna to the tall bird feeder, and I heard a  lusty chorus of songbirds. I know they weren't there a day earlier. All winter the marsh's soundtrack is a shruti-box of crows, gulls and geese. In one day, non-internet tweets have arrived, I hope to stay for the next six months.

Inside, the cats returned on Monday to the window seat over the dining room table, which they've been boycotting since the beginning of November, presumably because the glass was cold.

This transition is not just a function of temperature - it was warmer here last week, and there were no songbirds or window cats then. This week, nature seems to have committed to a spring path. I've made a pledge to encounter the early part of spring with something more than greedy yearning for more. Spring is 25% of the seasons, and I want to savor all of it, relish the strange winds sailing down the Dyer River that seem to be chilly and warm at the same time, the sluggish bugs in the mud, even the first poor stupid wasp to invade the living room and meet its maker courtesy of Norby.

Across the Great Divide, Part 2 of 2

Harvest moon shinin’ down from the sky, a weary sign for all

I’m gonna leave this one horse town, had to stall till the fall

Now I’m gonna crawl, across the great Divide

- Across the Great Divide, (The Band version)

Yesterday’s post mentioned the sharp lines of understanding that divide our usually heterogeneous species – differences that put us either on one side of a critical experience or the other.

Today's Photos Continue Yesterday's
Taken Recently By My Friend Gordon

I believe I’ve learned a few things about the great divide. First of all, these dividing lines tend to be one-way. From yesterday’s examples, you either have lost your spouse or you haven’t, you’re either a picked-on Jewish kid or you’re not. And the exception proves the rule – I was deeply moved by my friend’s description of joining the multitude of people at the moment of their death, because he is a rare person who lived to tell that tale, like dying people who describe seeing their body on the operating table or the famous tunnel of light.

These sharp divisions are usually one way because once you’ve crossed a line, you can see both sides in a way that was impossible before. I thought I was sensitive to the rights of “the disabled.” Then I thought I really knew a thing or two about coping with disability during the years I spent trying to get Mary, as her health declined, around Europe, then around the US, then around town, and finally just around our house.

In reality, I was a piker, I knew very little. When I contracted myasthenia gravis and hung the blue and white disabled parking tag on my rearview mirror, I learned two things. First, when I thought I was an expert but before I was disabled, I knew lots of facts - but no feelings. I didn’t understand the combination of fear, humiliation, and outrage that was a relentless feature of Mary’s life for years.

Furthermore, I now have a new perspective on Mary's life, because now I know I still won’t ever fully understand what it was like for her – my own disability has opened a door into her experience, but I can’t step through that door. Around town or out shopping, I see people with greater disability in powered chairs and I know most of all that I don’t really know. As a consequence of this lesson I only park in handicap spaces when my illness and the distance force it – otherwise, the next person with a disabled tag could very well need the spot more. This is the precious gift of beginning to understand my lack of understanding.

The one-way nature of these lines of intrinsic difference, like the inability to see across the sunrise marsh that I described yesterday, creates a few obligations. One is that phrase I learned from the people of Not Dead Yet: “Nothing about us, without us.” Divided by circumstance from a slice of humanity, you cannot speak for them.

I can’t tell you how many people who had evidently never lost more than a pet hamster felt welcome to instruct me about grief and loss of a spouse, after Mary died. Anxious to appear empathetic and “sensitive,” whites tell African Americans about blackness, straights assure gays they know how it is – and you can add on to the list, we all can.

I think it's a good idea to be respectful, to work on being sensitive to those who are different from you. But it’s a bad idea to speak as if you know how it is for them, or to speak for others, or to read a couple of articles and a Wikipedia entry - and then tell us all about it.

The second lesson for me has been, if the line that divides us is one-way, there’s a responsibility for those who have in some sense crossed, to reach back and grasp the hands of those on the other side. Not to pull them across, but to lessen the alienation and loneliness on both sides; to recover and restore mutuality; to seek and give understanding, and comfort.

When Mary was diagnosed with ALS, a certain number of people, when confronted with that horrifying news, stepped back from the great divide, not to be heard from again. When Mary died, more fell away – just as others, by the way, stepped up smartly. The one way-ness of the great divide of Mary's suffering and death has become prominent for me in recent months, as I seek to understand my share of responsibility for the disappearance of certain people from my life. If people are frightened at Mary’s unembellished reminder of their own inevitable extinction, that’s up to them. To the extent that I am a dark emotional vortex that taxes others – that’s on me. And, I can do something about it.

Finally, I want to say why it’s worth paying attention to the great divides, aside from the fact that lord knows, humanity is divided up enough as it is.

The seeming impenetrability of great human emotional divides leads to the creation of victims and also to feelings of superiority. When you hold exclusive or arcane knowledge, you may conclude that you’re better, or at least advantaged. You might want to say, well friend, if you could only understand what it’s like to be Jewish or gay or undocumented or widowed – but since you can’t, you’re just not a member of my club.

It's just as useless to obtain superiority through victimhood. I can use misfortune to separate myself from others due to special status as Jewish or gay or undocumented or widowed. In either case - superiority or victimhood - you invite people who don't share your characteristics to give up on empathy, to back away from the brink that separates you. And so we all end up more isolated, more hurt, more lonely.

It’s not easy pushing past some of the deep gulfs when the barriers appear to create a refuge. I never told my mom about the crowds of grammar school kids who took turns kicking me – I never told anyone. It’s hard to talk about my wife’s suffering and death, and not fear that people will wish I'd just go away.

I’m pretty sure that every person encounters these unbridgeable differences in life, how could they not? That makes for a glorious truth: one feature of human existence that isn’t ever divided, in which we all share, is that we will at times find ourselves alone and scared, unavoidably separated from the people around us. It's a comfort to know that we all have to sometimes navigate what we can’t share - the great divide unites us all. This understanding can help any of us survive the inevitable trials of life.

I woke up this morning to one of those glorious salt marsh sunrises, the water rapidly turning purple then red then pink and then turquoise. I looked at the line of black trees to the east and thought of the days of Mary’s dying, when I looked at the same sunrise and couldn’t imagine what this very day would feel like. This morning I reached back over my shoulder to that frightened and lonely guy from two years ago – and we embraced at last.