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WoodWorks

An occasional blog for mos

I've dumped Wordpress because they seem to have stripped all photos from my blog posts, and cluttered up my formatting with HTML tags. One advantage of using Wordpress, however, was that you, my faithful reader, could "follow" me, receiving an email alert any time I put up a new post. I have yet to find any such utility here on Wix. But I'm working on it. Watch this space.

The Weather

Always a safe topic to start a conversation with. Here in Colorado Springs, I've seen more hail during this past summer than ever before in my entire life. It's kind of exciting when those big lumps of ice come barreling down out of the sky, but then I don't have a garden to worry about. If it damages my roof, I'm not the one who'll get stuck with the bill. And it seems my car, the fabulous 1999 Cadillac DeVille, was built during an era when cars were designed to be more durable than a beer can. So although body shops all over town sport big signs promising hail damage repair, and every other car you see on the road is well dimpled, good old Cady—despite living outside in an uncovered parking lot—remains unperturbed and undented.

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Colorado Springs is dotted with microclimates. On the day I took these photos of hail in my neighborhood, softball-sized hailstones fell at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, killing five animals and sending several people to hospital. My friend Jacquie is having to replace several skylights and windows damaged during that storm. David and Sarah's roof was damaged, he had to buy a new car, and—most painful—their fabulous garden of prayer flags was brought low. Candace's garden, however, was pretty much spared the destruction other gardeners experienced that day. Just today, she brought me some of the last of her impressive and delicious chard, cucumbers, and lettuce.

Today I woke up to our first snow of the season. This means (a) exchanging summer clothes for winter drag; (b) making an appointment to get snow tires on the Caddy; and (c) seeking out a decent pair of used snowshoes, so I can indulge again at last in one of my all-time favorite activities. Last year, there wasn't enough snow for it. In fact, I donned my snow boots only twice the entire season. We're hoping for more moisture this year, whether in the form of snow or rain.

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Hikes I Have Known

Right. Here's another relatively uncontroversial topic to get on with. Candace drove me up to a place called The Crags. It's on the other side of the very Pike's Peak I can see from my office window, and it's gorgeous. We passed some amazing natural wood art on our way up, and I promised myself I'd photograph several examples on our way back down. Unhappily, however, we missed a fork and returned through a peculiarly boring and artless Mennonite campsite. 

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When Candace's daughter Kirsten was in town, the three of us went for a gentle hike around Rampart Lake. A few hours after we got back down to the Springs, we heard that a wildfire was raging right in the very place we'd just been.

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Wildfires have been going pretty much nonstop all summer. The smoke, even from fires at the other end of the state, has made the air in the Springs hazy. 

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Candace did take a photo of me by one lovely old tree trunk, though.

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A different day, a different hike—but apparently, this is my hiking outfit.

Kirsten lives in southern New Mexico, and her sister in Switzerland, so it was a rare treat for Candace to have one of her kids in town .

 

We're planning to drive down to spend a week with Kirsten over Thanksgiving (my fave rave American holiday)—unless the puppy Candace has pledged to take into her heart and home needs to be picked up earlier.

The Dissertation

I'd really rather not talk about it, but since you asked: a miscommunication with my supervisor threw me into a major neurotic meltdown that lasted a month. By the time I got a handle on relative sanity, so many other seductive distractions had flooded in to fill the gap that … well, I've only recently started getting back into it. I'm still hoping to graduate by the end of next year.

The Jail

One of those distractions comprised everything it took to realize my long-time aspiration of teaching meditation in a prison. I quickly learned that there's a difference between a prison and a jail, the former being where people go after they're sentenced, and the latter where they wait to learn their fate. The El Paso County Jail is where I had an in, and I grabbed it with both hands. 

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Before I could be allowed to enter the jail without the accompaniment of a credentialed volunteer, I had to go through two background checks, shadow another volunteer for several sessions, attend an orientation session, and acquire a magic ID that opens the door from the parking lot. At every other door—and there are many—I have to press a button under a speaker and wait until I hear the static that signals someone's listening at the other end. Then I say "Wood, meditation" and the door clicks or slides open. Sometimes they make me show my ID to the camera trained on the door.

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I can't show you any photos of the jail, except maybe just the outside of the building, which is so boring as to convey no useful information whatever. Inside, I teach two hour-long meditation classes: one for men, one for women. The jail is currently at overflow capacity, with about 1700 inmates. Around a quarter of these are women. Inmates have to sign up for the class; depending on whether the deputy in charge of the ward where the classroom is situated is having a bad hair day, others on the waiting list may be allowed to join us. On any given day, there may be anywhere from three to twelve people at a class. We sit on plastic chairs. Only one woman and one man have routinely come to every class; the others come and go, with at least one person at each class who has never meditated before.

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The first class I taught, one of the men told me he was there because he wanted to learn astral travel in order to escape his life in jail. Happily, this gentleman has shown up at almost every class since. One woman came several times, but when I ran into her on my way to the classroom one day, she told me she was a Christian, and didn't want to hear all that Buddhist stuff. Fair enough. I've been very clear, though, that my main aim is to convey the meditation technique. I do give a short dharma talk, on some topic I think might be helpful under the circumstances. I do this for two reasons: one, every time I've asked whether people want to hear the dharma, I've gotten an enthusiastic yes; and two, many consider it grueling to sit for even as long as fifteen minutes. I have to fill in the time somehow.

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There wasn't a single dharma book in the jail library when I started out there. Then my friend Jackie donated some, which are being eagerly read by some of the more interested students. Just about every storage space in that entire building is stuffed with Bibles: English, Spanish, Catholic, Mormon, hymnbooks, prayer books … I'll bet there are at least a thousand of them in that jail; probably more. When I sign in, there are typically a number of chaplains already on the list. But there's no space to store meditation cushions. Fortunately, my friend David—he of the ruined prayer flags—is a lawyer who has clients at the jail and knows the mindset of management. He has also, astonishingly, offered to fund supplies I can use to support my classes. So we have a scheme going to start with a few humble zafus and a bunch of books.

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I'll tell you what: jail is a horrible, horrible place to be. You sleep in a wedge-shaped pod with seven others, clearly visible at all times to the deputy sitting at a desk in the middle—classic panopticon design. You're woken up at 3 AM for breakfast at 4. Why? I wasn't able to find any reason. Some go back to bed after breakfast. I've seen the leftovers from lunch, and the food is revolting. When I ask people if they've been able to practice in between classes, they tell me there's no privacy, and seldom any silence. During daily lockdowns—during deputies' shift changes or when anything untoward happens (like the day a man hanged himself with his bed sheet), inmates have to be on their bunks for an hour or more. Why don't you just meditate then? I asked. Because that marks you out as weird, and you don't want to be marked out as weird in jail …

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I recently got an offer to go teach at the women's prison in southern Colorado. Whether I can do that will depend on a number of factors, including the cost of gas (the Caddy has champagne tastes and limited MPG). But I've long been interested in working as a chaplain in a women's prison, so pulling this off would be a good networking/resumé move for my late-life new career—in addition, of course, to being a good thing to do for its own sake. I'll keep you posted.

Opinions and Instructions

And now for our regular feature: strange, interesting, and quirky signs and bumper stickers spotted about town.

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An intriguing instruction, spotted in a Denver coffeeshop.

 

I just report what I see; mine is not to question why.

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Some people are exceptionally clear regarding their preferences.

In case you had any doubts about the intensity—and impunity—of the misogyny rampant in this country (not to mention the gun problem) …

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Some bumper stickers worth contemplating:

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Including the one on my very own car:

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Puppies …

Because why not?

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Last Words

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Some friends fostered a pregnant mama dog and we went over to see the pups. They were so new, we weren't allowed to touch them for fear of infecting them with something their little immune systems weren't ready for. I miss having a dog …

I dumped WordPress because of certain limits and bugs that were making it too difficult to continue blogging there. For all I know, I'll hit similar walls with Wix. One function I'll miss is WordPress's "follower" utility, which sends notifications to anyone who signs up whenever I put up a new post. Wix's version of this is a "shout out" feature, which lets me send out emails to interested parties. I haven't used it yet, but I'm guessing I'll need your email address in order to add it to the list. 

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Watch this space.

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