Unsung Heroes

The Butcher Shop

By Herbert W. Piekow

My Guadalajara neighborhood is typical, twenty blocks either way are sixty-year-old two-story houses one built against the other, each neighbor sharing a common wall.

Some have businesses on the ground floor with a residence above. Once my house had a street level warehouse while the owners resided upstairs. Today Gustavo and I live on the remodeled ground floor and rent out the three-bedroom, two bath second story. The renters and we both have small private rooftop patios where we do our laundry, enjoy a meal and I have my office. Our colonia is typical, a variety of small businesses, printers, corner grocery stores, evening taco stands mixed with family restaurants. A few blocks away is a large Catholic church and the ubiquitous Farmacia Guadalajara and OXXO. Within this twenty-block radius are parks, schools, bus routes, and a couple of small glorietas. My western boarder is the Jalisco Stadium and Plaza de Toros.

Thirteen years ago Jesùs Cervantes opened his carniceria, El Huracán III which is named after his father and brother´s El Huracán and El Huracán II, the name which is in honor of a bull the family had years ago. Jesús known as Chuy is my neighborhood butcher. He serves his clientele with a smile. Like all Guadalajara colonias our neighborhood is more than good citizens and small merchants. El Huracán III is a local business providing a needed commodity, but it is the personal attention of Chuy and his family that make this butcher shop the place, over others, to purchase our fresh meats and groceries.

Chuy says, “I like my work a lot, although, it is having my family helping me that makes this such a joy.” His wife Patricia Aguilera is the official greeter and cashier, Chuy, visits with his customers while he sharpens his butchers’ knives between each order. His broad smile and jokes make each customer feel they are the most important client of the day, no matter how small their order. Eighteen-year-old Maria Fernanda, who hopes to one day go into aviation, takes phone orders while doing her homework. Javier, who is fourteen, is either doing homework or making home deliveries on his sturdy bicycle. Shy Adrian, the youngest, when not doing homework greets customers with a smile or sweeps up around the shop. Each of these children seems to have a responsibility and when not helping out in the shop they are usually doing homework, even this past year when education has been remote they would sit over a notebook, pencil in hand. Recently home deliveries nearly ended when a young man came into the butcher´s shop, visited a few moments asking random questions and on his way out grabbed the mountain bike and began to pedal off with his stolen delivery vehicle. Chuy, whose shop has two rolling metal doors to allow in fresh air and natural light, spied the action and ran to the small street side patio shouting, “Ladron, ladron, detenganlo.” Within moments several neighbors corralled the would-be thief and returned the bicycle to the shop. After a stern, short lecture Chuy asked his neighbors to release the trembling young man who promised to look for work and refrain from stealing.

Like so many small businesses his has changed over the years. In the beginning El Huracán III was solely a butcher shop. However, Chuy realized that his customers needed chicken, sausages, cheese, fresh vegetables, dried beans and canned goods; slowly he began to incorporate these items into his establishment until today it is a family corner business supplying most household grocery items, where a smile and sometimes a joke is a plus. Chuy and I talked about the importance of family and the joy of having good friends. “Although my business provides my family economic security, it is more important for me to have a happy family and to live amongst so many friends.” One day I mentioned how I used to bake a whole stuffed boneless chicken until my arthritic fingers can no longer debone a chicken. Chuy, who had never boned a chicken asked me to return on Saturday when he presented me with a whole chicken sans bones. His smile told me how much he enjoyed the challenge and when I roasted this stuffed bird it was better than any I could ever recall. I think the pride and love that Chuy put into serving me, or any customer, made the chicken even tastier.

Dr. Lorin Swinehart

This is a story of three groups of elephants, one in Thailand, one in Bo-

tswana and a third in the US. The elephant in Thailand, along with his fellows, has been rescued from a life of hard work and cruelty by local humanitarians. The Botswana elephant and another member of his herd were reduced to target practice by a pair of cruel egotists. The third majestic animal continues to be forced to entertain clueless mobs by performing unnatural tricks.

A gory video has recently been released by New Yorker magazine of Wayne LaPierre, President of the National Rifle Association, brutally shooting three times but failing to kill a majestic African savannah elephant. A guide finally had to put the suffering animal out of its misery. This incident occurred back in 2013. It took eight years for the video to be released. One suspects that the delay had much less to do with LaPierre’s desire to cover up his shameless act as it did fear of embarrassment when it is learned by his followers that the president of the NRA is such a pathetically poor shot.

To date, the NRA has only issued a whiny response that New Yorker Magazine leaked the story and the accompanying video in order to embarrass Mr. LaPierre. If one does not engage in embarrassing behavior, one need not fear embarrassment.

Mrs. Lapierre, not to be outdone by her husband, shot a second elephant between its eyes. The Guides instructed her to shoot it again, this time between the legs, to affirm that it was dead. If only Sigmund Freud were still around to explain that to us. To her credit, she had at least dispatched her victim with a single head shot, proving herself to be a better marksman than Mr. LaPierre. She then severed her victim’s tail and paraded around with it as a sort of gruesome trophy, while proclaiming, “Victory! That’s my elephant tail. Way cool!”

The family that slays together stays together, or so one presumes.

The LaPierre’s have received richly deserved condemnation for their heinous actions. The question always looms as to what motivates such persons as Mr. and Mrs. LaPierre to cause such suffering and destruction to an innocent creature. Does killing a large animal provide a sort of emotional aphrodisiac for one who experiences some insecurity with regard to his masculinity. Perhaps, but that does not explain Mrs. LaPierre’s behavior. Without a doubt, the two of them suffer some dark abyss within their souls, a vacancy that they imagine can only be assuaged by the destruction of beautiful, innocent creatures.

At a time when the survival of wild elephants, as well as that of many other species, is imperiled, when the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has placed the savannah elephant, the very same variety that the LaPierre’s targeted, on the endangered list, what would motivate two people to kill them. Mr. and Mrs. Lapierre exhibit no hint of any ethic one would associate with true sportsmen. Rather, they bear a resemblance to butchers, lacking in courage, sensitivity, empathy or compassion. They would be more comfortable, perhaps, laboring in a slaughterhouse among squealing pigs and bellowing cattle, all protesting their upcoming bloody deaths.

The defenses of elephant hunting come across as, at best, lame. The government of Zimbabwe, for instance, has recently authorized the hunting and killing of up to 500 elephants, arguing that such butchery is necessary to heal a national economy ravaged by the COVID pandemic. It is more likely that Zimbabwe’s economy suffers from decades of incompetence and corruption under the governance of the late President Robert Mugabe than it does the ravages of COVID.

Another argument is that elephant hunting provides meat for malnourished local villagers. Those same

unfortunate villagers will need to secure another protein source once the last wild elephant has been devoured.

On the same day that LaPierre’s bloody act became public, another story appeared in the press. Paul Barton, a retired British concert pianist now living in Thailand, has discovered that rescued elephants that are now safely sequestered inside a sanctuary named Elephants World love music, in fact, love Beethoven. And so this good man sits out beneath the trees playing Beethoven’s compositions to the joyous ears of the rescued pachyderms who crowd around to listen. You can bring him up on the internet, a kindly man playing for friendly elephants. His listeners have endured lives of misery, pain and mistreatment at the hands of humans. Many were worked pitifully in the logging industry. Some have even had their tusks removed in procedures too torturous to imagine. And yet, having every reason to mistrust, even hate, humans, they crowd around to find solace in the tunes of one of the greatest of composers brought to them by a kindly piano player.

So, there we have it, a perfect metaphor for the human condition. One man exemplifying kindness and another concerned only with the destruction of an innocent creature in order to satisfy some empty headed craving for bragging rights. A woman eagerly flaunting her destruction of life by triumphantly waving her victim’s severed tail. Humanity revealed, the good guys and the bad guys.

However, the metaphor is incomplete. The two stories brought to mind another memory from a few years back. The scene was the annual county fair back in my hometown in Ohio. According to reliable eyewitnesses, a man had trained an adult elephant to stand with all four feet bunched together atop a small stool. No one in the audience seems to have given a thought to the discomfort of the elephant. Then, to make matters worse, the trainer forced the sad-eyed beast to stand balanced on one foot with its trunk outstretched. This final act sent the audience into paroxysms of glee. Not a soul protested.

What purpose did this pathetic scene serve. Perhaps, like the LaPierre’s, the trainer possessed some dark impulse to exhibit dominance. Maybe his actions may have provided some momentary sick entertainment for the unthinking audience. All too often, people find entertainment in perverse ways, as when throngs cheered the bloody exhibitions in the Roman colosseum or during the feeding of Madam la Guillotine in the streets of Paris during the Reign of Terror. Many, it seems, take sadistic delight in the barbaric displays inside the world’s bull rings.

It is well known that elephants are highly sensitive creatures and that all too many live torturous lives at the hands of humans only interested in profit. Elephants spend years in captivity, tethered to chains and forced to perform exhausting work, even to do tricks for the delight of clueless audiences.

Humanity, it so often seems, falls into three categories. The first, those like the LaPierre’s, are the perpetrators of cruelty, destruction, crime and vandalism. The second are the healers, the humanitarians, those who spend their lives, their energies, their treasure while attempting to assuage the acts of the perpetrators. In between lurks the great mass of humanity, going about their lives unconcerned, indifferent, uninformed, ignorant of all the cruelties and injustices at their doorstep. To fain ignorance of evil is to acquiesce in evil. To acquiesce is to be complicit.

I once knew a man who presented such a rosy optimism to the world that I suspected he would have walked among the heaps of corpses at Auschwitz and assured all within earshot, “Oh, I am sure no one would ever do anything like this.”

Each of us must ask ourselves which category of humanity we choose to represent: Like the LaPierre’s; a perpetrator of foul deeds; like Paul Barton, a healer or protector of the victims; like the crowd at the county fair, an indifferent automaton among the masses, indifferent to the pain and injustice at our doorstep.

Lorin Swinehart

By Robert Bruce Drynan

Closed Senate Hearing- Armed Services Committee

“For the record, will you please state your name and present occupation?”

“Lt. Coronel JoAnne Rae Hazlet, United States Army. I have recently returned from Iraq and I have received orders to report to the Military Police Training Command at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.”

“Ms. Hazlet, you have been called here before this committee in response to your public statement that female soldiers and marines have been actively engaged in combat in Iraq.“ The senator from a southeastern state pronounced it “EYE-RAK”. That is in direct contravention of the rules imposed by the Congress of the United States in 1994 that women were not to serve in a combat role. What brought about this impertinent public statement?”

“First sir, I am normally addressed as ‘Colonel’ or ‘Lieutenant Colonel Hazlet’ and I have earned that rank. I will not accept sneering or patronization, as your tone of voice implied. Secondly, I was on post-deployment le…”

The chairman interrupted, “Lieutenant Colonel Hazlet, I am not in the habit of answering to anyone for my, as you stated it, tone of voice, but your tone-ofvoice and attitude could provoke a Contempt of Congress citation.”

Colonel Hazlet continued without acknowledgement of the chairman’s interjection, “I was on post-deployment leave with my mother and father in the town where I was born and raised. My father, who is a decorated marine veteran of World War Two and the Korean conflict and an officer of the local American Legion Post, organized a public gathering in my honor.

One of my high school mates, we shared a mutual dislike, stood up and disparaged my service as a soldier, stating that women had no place in combat, that they don’t have the strength, the aggressiveness or the courage to engage in combat. That last set me off. My reaction hit AP from our regional newspaper and . . . at first I regretted my spontaneous outburst, but later, after I cooled down and discussed it with my father, who told me how proud he was of my response, I’m glad I made the statement I did.”

A second senator requested the floor. He was one of the few war veterans in the congress, he had been awarded two purple hearts in Vietnam, “Colonel Hazlet, I’ve read the AP article, but would you please paraphrase your public statement for the record?”

“‘Courage,’ I said, ‘are you aware that over one hundred women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and several hundred more have received wounds, many permanently debilitating?’ He interrupted me, ‘That has nothing to do with courage, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, probably sticking their nose in where they didn’t belong, collateral damage,’ he scoffed.

“I hadn’t seen him since I went away to college, so I can’t image what got into him, but later my father told me he was an important player in the state legislature and had bigger ambitions. He had gone to great lengths to avoid service in Vietnam. In any case my response apparently did little good for his political ambitions.”

“Please forget the editorializing Colonel and elaborate on your response, it is important to this inquiry.”

“Please forgive my digression, Senator. I asked the man if he was aware that two women, one a medic in Afghanistan and a woman from my own unit, Sgt Leigh Ann Hester, had been awarded silver stars for valor under fire. As far as aggressiveness is concerned, Sgt Hester was part of a supply convoy escort when it was ambushed by insurgents in Iraq.

She was in command of her vehicle. Instead of taking cover this timorous . . . sorry sir, more editorializing . . . she ordered her driver to move into a flanking position that would prevent the attackers from withdrawing and with her team assaulted and killed 27, wounded six and captured one of them. She personally accounted for three of the dead attackers.

Finally, I told him, ‘That accounts for

your aspersions related to courage and aggressiveness, now as for strength,’ I told him and the audience, ‘there are many forms of strength, one would be weight carrying.

An infantryman goes into battle, carrying an 83 lb assault load, then for example you might account for the weight of M-19 machinegun, 83 lbs or its tripod, 44 lbs. Standard body armor weighs 43 lbs. And consider that the average soldier, soaking wet weighs 165 lbs and if he were wounded and required assistance out of the line-of-fire, with or without wounded man’s combat load, he would be moving about 300 pounds.

I agree that a 120 lb woman would be unlikely to handle that. But another form of strength would be carrying the weight of responsibility which certainly Sgt, Hester demonstrated, but to my way of thinking the most important would be strength of character.”

Hazlet paused for effect, then finished with, “Mr. Chairman, of the qualifications listed by my critic, which would you consider the most important?”

“You are not here to question my viewpoint, but to respond to our questions.”

“The question was rhetorical, sir.”

The only woman senator on the panel broke in, “Mister Chairman, I would like to address an inquiry to the colonel.”

First she addressed her fellow panel members, “Colonel Hazlet is not here as the enemy, but as a friend of the court so to speak. Wouldn’t you agree Mr. Chairman?”

The man shifted uncomfortably and frowned, but said nothing.

She continued, “I believe this panel has gotten off on the wrong track. As I understand it, the colonel herself has been decorated for valor under fire, during the same tour of duty with Sgt Hester; Bronze Star with “V” device, if I’m not mistaken.” She directed her attention to Hazlet.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Colonel, I am most interested in your response to the underlying issue, the one we have yet to address this morning. Why were you and later Sgt. Hester ordered to missions that would take you in harm’s way?

“Considering the clearly stated congressional policy of keeping women out of combat roles and even zones of combat, and taking into account the general masculine bias in the military against tasking women into hazardous duties, why didn’t you refuse orders contradictive to established policy and custom?”

“Ma’am, there are several factors. I was a captain at the time. I was not being ordered to do something inimical to the rules of land warfare, nor against the basic moral tenets of our society. In fact I was ordered to fill a need that otherwise could not be met.”

“Please amplify, Colonel.”

“You are asking me to walk into a professional minefield . . . but at this moment I have decided to take the first step, so please forgive me if I falter occasionally. I have not mentally prepared myself for this and it’s far above my pay grade. But from the ground up I have a point of view based on experience and I’m angry enough state it.”

Hazlet paused gathering her thoughts and the panel gave her the benefit of time to reflect. The chairman, clearly unhappy with the direction of the inquiry, fidgeted and huffed.

“Many of you will remember when army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki strongly and publicly differed with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz on the numbers of troops that would be required to invade and secure Iraq. The assault on Shinseki was vigorous and in my view as a soldier vicious. They thought they could have their war on the cheap. It hasn’t turned out cheap and you and the American public have no idea yet what the true cost will be, but it can’t be hidden much longer.”

The chairman sat forward, clearly angered, “You’ll address what this panel wants you to address. Address the senator’s question and nothing more.”

“Yes sir. Our combat units were plunging into Iraq, toward Baghdad at mind boggling pace, but our support units, short of personnel and rolling stock couldn’t keep pace: our supply train was desperate to keep our combat troops in ammunition, food and of course, medical supplies.”

She glared at the chairman, “We were critically shorthanded.” Military police were drawn into service as escorts, manning fifty-cal machineguns on humvees, driving trucks and even riding shotgun. Women medics were drawn from field hospitals and put on the line with forward combat units.

“PFC Monica Brown, a medic assigned to a combat unit of the 82nd Airborne that was ambushed in Afghanistan, under fire rescued wounded and dragged them to nearby arroyo. When the arroyo came under fire she prostrated her own body over the injured men to protect them. If there had been sufficient boots on the ground, we women would have been kept out of the combat zone.”

Without a glance at the chairman, the woman senator shot back, “But you were still violating official rules of engagement and established policy, yet you went without protest?”

“Ma’am, I know you are being rhetorical, but I will answer. The simplest answer is Duty, Honor and Country, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. We in

Continued on page 48

the army, or the marines, and special ops folks, notwithstanding all the bad press about sexual abuse by a minority in the services, we are a family, a team. Up country they desperately needed what we could bring. Later after the initial victory it got worse, not better. How could we have done otherwise?”

The woman senator smiled with satisfaction, and the Vietnam veteran clapped. The red faced chairman growled and gaveled. “I think we have just about exhausted this matter . . .”

“A senator, a man of the same party as the chairman who had remained silent throughout the hearing, spoke out, “Mister Chairman, I have a question before we adjourn.”

The chairman peered down to that end of the panel and likely concluding that the man wanted to put his stamp on the transcript and would follow party line. He gestured with his hand.

“Colonel Hazlet, you made reference to a hidden cost in this war that cannot remain hidden much longer. What is being hidden and what do you mean by cost?”

“Hazlet, if you answer this, you could put paid to your career,” the chairman interjected.

She didn’t even glance at him, and fixing her eyes on the questioner, “Sir, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have escalated into a guerrilla war employing IEDs, improvised explosive devices.”

“We know what they are,” growled the chairman, “get on with it if you must.”

“I’m not going to report my source, he also has much to lose,” she glared at the chairman. At this point in the two wars we have over 300 men and women suffering from PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, over a base of 1.9 million deployed that seems a small percentage.

It is labeled as a psychiatric disorder that can be treated, and macho soldiers won’t admit to the problem and as they say, soldier on. That is the tip of the iceberg. Medical researchers have been investigating the effects concussive brain damage, TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury.

Several professional football players have committed suicide, willing their brains to medical science. A disproportionate number of professional contact sport athletes have suffered degenerative mental capabilities, mimicking, some doctors say, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.” The concussive force waves of newly employed IEDs are at least 4 times greater than the highest wind generated by Caribbean hurricane. The brain is battered inside the skull, like Mexican jumping bean.

Hazlet’s gaze passed to and held the eyes of each of the panel, with exception of the chairman, and continued, “This month suicide deaths among young troopers on deployment, awaiting deployment or no longer on active service but with a history of severe or frequent exposure to IEDs exceed the total number of actual combat deaths since the initial invasion of Iraq. Most are young men, but with rising numbers of women who have been exposed while on convoy duty. And now we are seeing older personnel, senior NCOs in particular who have also been exposed and affected.

“The Pentagon knows about this . . . at the highest level. They have thrown a tight wrap over the whole matter and have made difficult or impossible to conduct autopsies of the suicides over which military command has control, and gone to some lengths to impede similar research of those outside of their immediate reach. A directive has been circulated from the very top of DOD prohibiting any discussion of the issue, particularly with representatives of the press, but also any other persons not directly under the control of the military.

“What this means is, that at the expense of so many heroic, patriotic young men and women, the Pentagon and the White House have sold a spurious, cheap war, as a noble mission to bring Democracy to the benighted Iraqis and Afghans. The downstream economic costs to the nation of caring for these poor damaged human beings, and the public moral soul searching are a price that defies calculation. Thank you for asking,” directing her attention to the man who floated the question.

“Do you have any more questions? Mr. Chairman.”

“I have one last question for Colonel Hazlet, the woman senator interjected, “Why did you do this, commit career suicide, and possibly worse considering the attitude of our committee chairman, not to mention the powers in the Pentagon?”

“Ma’am, in the officers’ corps of the United States military we are faced with the necessity of sending those who rely on us into harms’ way. We are imbued over and over with the litany that our responsibility is to see to their well-being in small and large ways, before we see to our own needs. But above all, not to spend their lives on spurious missions, as too often our politicians do.

To answer your question, ma’am, all they can take from me is my career. They’ve squandered the lives and health of our nation’s most precious asset, our selfless youth.”

“Don’t count on it just being your career, Colonel,” growled the chairman.

Robert Bruce Drynan

The Ginger on the Hill

By Leslie Johansen Nack

There are gems hidden in every city—people with amazing educations and experiences who are filled with wisdom they might be reluctant to share

or even acknowledge. One of those people in the lakeside community is my landlady Elizabeth Sellars—an unassuming, sometimes nervous, thin, curlyhaired woman living a quiet life of contemplation and gratitude here in Ajijic. She fell in love with Mexico when she was eighteen years old, studying Art History and Spanish at the University of the Americas in Mexico City and Cholula. Her passionate hobby was photography, and she developed her own black and white film as she travelled all over Mexico to photograph archaeological sites from the pyramid of Cholula to the Mayan ruins in Chiapas and the Yucatan

Elizabeth Sellars

Peninsula. As she traveled, she practiced her Spanish, finding loving and kind people in every community she visited, whether photographing sites or in Acapulco partying with her friends.

At twenty-one years old, she won a scholarship to do a “Photographic Study of the English Cathedral,” living in a squatter’s flat in Chelsea near King’s Road. She traveled all over England taking pictures of the great cathedrals, her favorites being Canterbury, Durham, Exeter and Wells. During that month of January, 1972, she had everything she loved: freedom, art, history, photography, and of course music. At sixteen she had seen the Beatles at Dodger Stadium and was in love with Neil Young, Judy Collins, and Van Morrison, but listened to Joni Mitchell that summer in England.

Receiving her B.A. in Art History with a minor in Spanish in 1973 from Hollins College, a small prestigious women’s college in Virginia, she immediately enrolled in Columbia University to begin her master’s studies, working on a thesis using a copy of a 16th century Mexican “codex”, or painted deerskin scroll. Love was in the air when she met law student, Jim Frush. When both graduated in 1975, they were married immediately, choosing to stay in New York City where Jim practiced law and Liz found a job with fashion designer Halston and met Liz Taylor and Liza Minelli.

Eventually moving west to her birth place in the Seattle area, Liz and Jim were happy at first working and enjoying mountain sports. Her maternal great-grandfather had built a flour mill in the port of Seattle in 1911, making Fisher flour the only flour to buy in Seattle for most of the 20th century, and she was proud of her heritage as a Fisher descendant.

Living on Mercer Island and Index over the next six years, Jim rose to Assistant U.S. Attorney and Liz rose to Corporate Auditor at Rainier Bank, continuing her love of photography. The marriage fell apart in 1981 and Liz headed to the University of Virginia where she got her M.A. in Spanish Language and Literature.

Over the next eight years she taught Spanish in the USA, traveled to Europe, but ultimately returned to her beloved Mexico. She traveled extensively through Mexico including significant time in Guatemala but returned to Seattle once again after giving birth in Guadalajara in late 1989 to Sarah, a healthy baby girl. Never marrying the father, Liz raised Sarah with her family in Washington for the next two years.

In the spring of 1991, Liz moved back to Ajijic where her mother Sally bought a home at Constitucion 67 where she lived for the next ten years with Sarah, enjoying equestrian sports with her daughter and teaching English for five years at Oak Hill/Instituto Loyola and Instituto Terranova.

In 1996 she bought a plot of land above the highway in Ajijic and designed and built a house which was completed in 1998, moving into it in 2002, when her mother, Sally, moved back to the States. Sarah graduated high school and was accepted at NYU, leaving Liz alone in her beloved Mexico to study Buddhism with the Heart of Awareness Buddhist sangha in Ajijic, helping in their foundation and development, and participating in meditations and book study groups for many years.

Her work as a linguist was not done because in 2006 she worked as a translator for Jose Amador, a Mexican writer who lived in Guadalajara, and who, in 2007, published her translation of his short stories, called “Mexican Memories.” In 2011, Amador published Liz’s translation of his novel, “Twin Gates”, and in 2012, he published her translation of his second novel, “Blood Cry”.

In 2009, Elizabeth became a naturalized Mexican citizen. In 2013, she translated several children’s books by a Canadian author, M. Headley, from English to Spanish, and has done a variety of translation jobs since then.

With Sarah graduated from college and happily living in the Netherlands where she works for Adidas, Liz spends her days reading, practicing Buddhism, learning Dutch, and getting together with her many friends. She may be reached at esellars51@gmail.com.

Leslie Johansen

By Susa Silvamarie

We’re dressed in all our decades, in rich brocades of life well-worn, and regularly mended. Vivid restoration patches— the hip, the shoulder, the knee-make us into living art! Our tatty brains save us from the trivial forgotten things, spare us for what matters. Delightfully scuffed by life’s great dance, we’re rubbed, at circle’s end, to the luster of original wonder. In the spacious present called aging, we rouse and wake, more alive than we have ever been. ©Susa Silvermarie from Poems for Flourishing