Padraic O Tuama / "It is in the shelter of each other that people live" (an Irish saying) / "... for the rest of my life ..."

When this came up on my YouTube suggestions early this morning, I was reminded of Pádraig Ó Tuama's book that I learned about at Alive On All Channels.  It is a heartening book I hope to read again.

And then this arrived in my email:

I lived in divided Berlin in my 20s. And after the Wall in that city fell in 1989, I never imagined that there would be another event in my lifetime which would so clearly signify a Before and an After for the whole world. But the murder of George Floyd, in the context of the last year, was such a turning point and Minneapolis a new kind of ground zero. 

What happened here rippled out across this city and then across the world. What happened here was about our world. And what was world-changing is, in large part, what started to happen inside many of us. 

Ever after, when I use the word “we” or “us,” I understand in a whole new way that I do so in a White body. I will be walking and living and working with that understanding for the rest of my life. And — both/and — I hold that knowledge together with my clarity that when time becomes history, the generations for whom we are the ancestors will see an “us.” 

-- Krista Tippett

Winter Solstice / Nisse / Tomte / Blue Herons

In December, when I was 11 or 12 years old, in the very early 1960s, my family flew from San Francisco back to Minnesota, which is where both of my parents were born and where all my aunts and uncles and cousins on my father's side lived in Minneapolis.  My mother had no living relatives in Minnesota, but we visited with her best friend from childhood who lived in St. Paul and with some elderly people, living near Hastings, who had been friends of her parents.  The elderly people lived on a farm and had an old Victrola in their icy cold attic.

Before Christmas, my father brought my sisters and me to a German department store he remembered from his childhood.  We were each asked to choose a toy.  I was drawn to a little man with a white beard, a tall pointed pale blue hat, and a yellow tunic over a plaid tunic.  He is over 50 years old now.

A few days ago, I moved him from the place he had been on my bedside bookshelf for years to a spot next to a book about trees on the top of the bookshelf.  Coincidentally, soon after that, a book I was reading happened to mention"tomte," and I realized that he could be some kind of "tomte," except that his hat is blue.

Looking through Google images of "nisse" and "tomte," I didn't find any that were like him, but I was delighted to find a photo of a "nisse" with a cat who looks a little bit like my Oboe.

There has been a heavy cloud cover all day today for winter solstice. Snow is not predicted in the lowlands, but from my porch I can see snow at higher elevations.

A few days ago, I noticed two large birds high in the sky, flying north.  Or are they flying south? Although the photo is blurry, I think they are Blue Herons.