208. Halloween

 Halloween isn’t a particularly American holiday, but here in the US it’s celebrated in a unique way unlike any other place in the world. When I wrote my entry about autumn I mentioned that autumn is the time when we recognize the brevity of life but also the abundance of life. On the church calendar November 1 is All Saints Day, so October 31 becomes All Saints Evening or Hallowed Evening or Hallowe’en. I don’t think the average American does much thinking about Halloween as a religious holiday, but it is and it is filled with all of the superstitions that often accompany any of our ancient Christian thought. If the day of remembering the saints is November 1, it naturally follows that the spirits of evil will want to do all they can to interfere with that. The jack-o-lantern is one of the things to ward off those evil spirits. So, we carve pumpkins into scary faces and put candles in them to frighten away evil spirits. Children dress up as all kinds of things—perhaps representing those evil spirits, so to ward off their evil “tricks” we give them candy or trinkets, hence the game of “trick or treat.” It’s a ton of fun and we get all kinds of candy out of the deal, but clearly, we haven’t thought it all out or we wouldn’t want our children parading around as evil spirits. It’s a charade. (Though after teaching for 35 years it does seem appropriate to me. 😉)

Adults have also taken hold of the trick or treating and dress up. It can be a time of overt sexuality—a kind of suppressed desire party time where we can acknowledge our own sense of being “evil spirits.” The timing of the holiday with the weather and the falling leaves is perfect. We also pull a lot of our southern Mexican neighbors Day of the Dead—dio de los Muertos—traditions into our Halloween. They are, of course, both fully a part of All Saints Day.

I like all of that duality of human nature—the idea of spirituality on the brink of evil. I like that we celebrate it in the fall at the end of October when all that life in the trees is falling to the ground in a display of colors. I love taking my recently harvested pumpkins and carving silly faces into them and using them as lanterns around my house—inside and out. I love raking the leaves from the lawn and stuffing them into jack-o-lantern leaf bags to decorate my lawn even more. There’s an impossibly strewn recklessness about the yard with corn stalks tied to posts, leaves all over the place, and the scent of harvested pumpkins and apples blended with spices. For me it’s also the time for coaching my cross-country runners and taking some of them to the state meet, this year in Boise. My youngest son was also born on the 30^th so it’s just a big celebration for my family around Halloween. And I love all the blend of colors in real life and their representation in the ideas of the “quick and the dead,” how we’re all connected through the cyclical nature of life—birth and death. We’re just running around in a flurry of fallen leaves and composting into a rich pumpkin spice or apple cider. I know some people get a little creeped out by all of the supposed evil in it, but I love that it is a true recognition of what we are: a mixed bag of tricks and treats. That’s what I love about the American celebration of Halloween.

 

207. Water

I love water. I know that’s not a particularly American thing, but an earthly thing by which I am haunted. I was born on the shores of Payette Lake in McCall, Idaho and raised on the banks of the Salmon and Little Salmon rivers. The water in Idaho has always had a purity that as I age is gradually being muddied by politics. That makes me angry and I do what I can to prevent it.

The waters where I have lived sometimes bubble forth from the ground in hot springs. In winter as a child I had the privilege of being able to soak in hot baths that were naturally heated in the earth. In summer I was able to swim in lakes and rivers. We used to take tire inner tubes and float down the Salmon and Little Salmon rivers. Sometimes, on trips to Boise, we would float the Boise River as it slowly drifted through all the parks as if we were in a wilderness. Water and the waterways around me have always been akin to freedom of want or worry away from the craziness of human strife. I have spent hours drifting on Payette Lake, Lake Coeur d’Alene, Lake Pend O’Reille, Priest Lake and countless alpine lakes in the mountains of the Northwest and western Canada. A good vacation for me is to go anywhere there is a large body of water.

Of course, I also love to drink water and I find it maddening that anywhere in the United States there would be municipal waters unfit for drinking. What happened in Flint, Michigan is simply criminal and enrages me that such a thing would happen out of negligence or greed in this country.  Yet I am certain it does happen in small towns across the country on a daily basis, not just a one-off boil order that one might not be surprised by after a flood or natural disaster.

I believe in protecting our waters. It amazes me the stories of people in the mining district of North Idaho and their outbreaks of cholera in the early 20^th century. People have known forever that you don’t ingest your own feces, yet they would drink the water downstream from where they knew the privies dropped right into the river? We still do stupid stuff like that to our water only now big corporations or municipal governments hide it because we all know that it is dangerous. So, I try to stay apprised of what is going on with water here in Idaho. I want it to stay clean. While I seldom fish anymore, I still want others to be able to do so. I still want to camp on the shores of Priest Lake and watch for trout. I want Redfish Lake to again turn red with the annual return of Sockeye salmon.

Water in my part of the world is a precious resource because the western part of North America is largely desert and the mountains serve to scrape off the moisture of Pacific storms, preserving it in snow pack and glaciers that thaw in summer to green our otherwise barren lands. I love that. I don’t want to lose that for myself, for my children, or for any of my descendants. I want to be taken to the north shore of Payette Lake during a full moon and swim in the moonlit waters. I want to canoe from the north shores of lower Priest Lake to the upper Priest and watch for bear and moose on the shores. I want to stand on the edge of the Snake River Canyon and feel the mist of Shoshone falls wetting my face. American waters, Northwestern waters, Idaho waters provide me life and haunt my being. I love that. 

206. American Movies

 

American movies are the best. I love going to a big screen cinema, dishing out more money than I should, and being captivated by an entirely different world. That’s something I have missed terribly over the past year and a half, having only attended one movie in all that time. It was Minari and it was really good in spite of all the subtitles.

Movies are funny, terrifying, heartwarming, or intensely sorrowful. Marlon Brando is the most handsome, captivating Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar Named Desire as he screams out Stella’s name on the streets of New Orleans. Meg Ryan is hilarious as she mimics an orgasm for Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. Who doesn’t get teary when Liam Neeson, as Oskar Schindler feels terrible that he couldn’t save more people at the end of Schindler’s List? Sure, they’re milking emotions with not only the acting, but the cinematography, but that’s what you’re paying for, never mind that you paid more than four times the amount of money that you should have for the greasy over-salted popcorn. You are sobbing when Bradley Cooper’s character is shot by one of the very PTSD victims he’s trying to help in the more realistic American Sniper. Chris Kyle’s book is more real than ever when you see and hear the emotions of someone torn apart by war. And yes, maybe too many of us are gullible enough to believe some of the hype added by cinema—certainly we all are in the viewing moment. But thank you for letting us escape the underlying fears of pandemics to be escorted with a Korean immigrant family to 1970’s Arkansas.

There are a lot of things in the world that can overwhelm and depress us, but just a few bucks, a dark room, and a flickering screen can momentarily let us forget all that. The movies can be thought provoking, helping us to approach daily life a little better. So many of them are just visual love letters to the world and we are their recipients. Some movies really stand out to me. I love certain actors also. Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Dustin Hoffman always make me laugh. Meryl Streep and Glenn Close make me think. Marlon Brando, Brad Pitt and Robert Redford have a way of making me simultaneously envious and enthralled. I love A River Runs Through It. It brings my own childhood and life into perspective. Franco Zefferelli has always been able to make Shakespeare seem like a close friend with his films Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. I already told you I love Elia Kazan’s Streetcar Named Desire. I don’t think Stephen Spielberg has ever gone wrong with any move he’s ever made from ET to Schindler’s List.

I’ve made do with my TV and DVD player over the past year and revisited some favorites but the small screen in the living room isn’t quite the same. I look forward to movie releases on the big screen because I’m not one to subscribe to every streaming service that comes out with a new movie that I’d like to see. There are so many old ones out there that I don’t need to be paying extra money for movies I’d prefer to see on the big screen. I really do love the cinema and American movies.

205. Fall

Fall in the US is a favorite season of mine. The thing that makes it different from other places in the world is how we elevate it in stature. All the seasons here are wonderful and when you live in the northern part of the country there are four very distinct seasons, but fall is set aside differently here even in name. Every other country calls it autumn, but we call it either.

Here we get very excited about the change from summer to fall with all of our back to school things that mainly go with our consumer tendencies, most of which I have found very annoying (mostly because I was a teacher and not at all ready for school, let alone clothing and school supply sales). But plenty of other things that I relish come up with the autumnal equinox. Rain and/or snow usually come some time with the equinox to moisten the parched western lands of the US putting out wild fires and clearing the air. You can buy all things pumpkin spice in the stores and coffee shops. The leaves begin to turn into the brilliant golds and reds. The nights get longer and people start to get excited about the unknown spiritual world by promoting Halloween and the Day of the Dead celebrations. And I’m no different. I love all of that.

As a gardener, I begin the final harvest. I decorate my yard and patio with corn stalks and leaves gathered in pumpkin bags. I bake more cakes and cookies with pumpkin, carrots, and squash. I mull cider. I celebrate the hunt that I don’t partake in, but so many of my friends and family do.

Fall is the season of cross country when I coach teen athletes to run their best. It’s when I get in my best shape as a runner and often run my own races. We typically have beautiful Indian Summers here at the end of September and beginning of October when the nights are crisp and cold and the days are sunny and warm. Those sorts of days are made more intensely beautiful by the deep blue skies and the rich autumn foliage. That perfect weather with the fullness of harvest and the hunt makes you want to run and celebrate life.

And celebrating life against the contrast of death is really what an American fall is all about. We recognize the brevity of life in the rituals of Halloween and our Hispanic heritage of Deo de los Muertos, yet we enjoy its fullness in our Thanksgiving celebrations when we roast a turkey and create a gathering of families thankful for the harvest, for food, for each other, for life.

Those are the reasons I love fall. It’s the apex of life and death contrasted deeply by the colors all around and the cold nights and warm days. The contrast brings about a rich celebration that makes me want to get up with the sunrise and stay up into the cold night around a blazing fire with a cup of mulled cider. And American fall just seems like an extended celebration of everything we have with a deep recognition of its brevity. I think it’s the beauty of all of those deep contrasts and the way we recognize them in America that makes me love fall.

 

204. Family

Of course it goes without saying that most Americans love their families. That’s absolutely true for me. Obviously our whole lives revolve around our families, no matter how they function—and it’s different for every one of us. I don’t really believe the term dysfunctional should apply to a family because that would assume an ideal exists which is impossible because each of us is so incredibly different. Those unique quirks we share with our families are what make us stick together as a unit. I have family members that I hardly know and yet the few times we’ve even met it’s like we have an entire lifetime in common.

Case in point: I have lived in this part of Idaho for all of my life with a few meanderings that have introduced me to different regions of the country and world. My family has lived here for four generations before me, so I have relatives all over this part of the state. We might not immediately know we’re related but if we strike up a conversation we know we’ll have common people we know, then we’ll hear names and that’s it: we just know. Suddenly I will note resemblances in eyes, height, hair, or who knows what. I told my great aunt the other day at a family celebration of her sister’s 90^th birthday that I know I’m going blind because I have macular degeneration. She told me I got that from her side of the family and we spent ten minutes talking about her aunt that I remember was blind as a bat when I was just a little boy. We told a few jokes at that aunt’s expense and it oddly enough brought comfort to my own aging process and what I can expect and how I might handle all of that.

My dad is from Connecticut but he grew up here in Idaho. When I was going to graduate school in Vermont it only made sense that I would go visit my dad’s brother in Connecticut whom I had only met once before. Of course I wasn’t surprised that he looked exactly like my dad except for being a few inches shorter, but I was amazed that they had the same wood stove, similar recliners and napping routines yet very different accents. All I could do for the time I was there was talk about those comparisons so I could tell my dad who really didn’t know his brother much better than I did.

I know families are never perfect. Everyone has felt the intense judgement of relatives, sometimes to the point of needing to escape. Everyone has felt the familial punishment and shame. But hopefully most of us have felt the forgiveness and understanding that comes from our family, the intense familiarity. I know my family has a love hate relationship with alcohol and few of us have achieved balance with it (though I hope I have). Some family members have died quite young due to alcoholism and there have been intense family interventions that have brought deep shame and sorrow. We also seem to suffer depression and have felt a great amount of pain at the number of us who have committed suicide. I have no doubt that my family has helped that terrible statistic of gun deaths for Idaho. But while we are here, we understand each other, love each other and try to be around for each other even if it’s only holidays, family reunions, and weddings and funerals. I feel so fortunate to have the great extended family that I do.

203. Coaching

The only thing I’ve ever done longer than teach school has been to coach. I was going to say the only thing that pays, but the salary for coaching high school or junior high school has mainly been a reimbursement for costs associated with the job that I have incurred. But I don’t complain about that because I still love to coach. I know that when I was in school I had some coaches that I really loved and others that I liked well enough but didn’t feel overly inspired by. I suspect I have had kids of both those persuasions under my tutelage.

Of course, the thing I loved in school and the thing I still love to coach is running. I have always loved teaching kids skills that I know, many of which I still practice but obviously not all. I’m pretty worthless at high jumping, shot putting or throwing a discus. I have never been able to pole vault, yet I coached kids based on what I observed and what I knew about jumping and that vicarious knowledge, their trust in me, and their own skills made them successful. That’s what I really love about coaching. It’s very much the same as teaching, except as a coach you almost immediately expect your athletes to exceed your abilities and to rely on you more for your observation skills to guide rather than innate abilities and knowledge. Unlike teaching you expect your tutors to be better at what they are doing than you are at doing it. You expect that almost immediately. That’s what makes it so exciting and challenging.

While coaching is very much the same as teaching, it is a little different in that a coach can’t really be expected to be able to do everything they ask of their athlete. A teacher is supposed to know what they are teaching and be able to do it while a coach may only know how to suggest something, not actually do it. Coaching requires subtly different skills. The coach must know the ins and outs of the athlete as well as the activity they are coaching. The coach is playing a chess game with living, breathing chess pieces. Because of that, coaching is very fascinating. Of course, a good coach loves not only the sport but their athletes as well. That’s how they get the best out of them and that is also why athletes admire their coaches so much. So, of course, some coaches and athletes sync up better than others because of their personal connections. While this is somewhat true of the student teacher relationship, it doesn’t need to be. A student or teacher can be completely indifferent to the other yet learning can occur. It’s very difficult to get the best out of an athlete if there is no sense of personal admiration and investment.

Also, coaches can be odd ducks with one another. There are many who are condescending and not people I would care to spend much time with. I suppose much of that comes from the fact that coaches are somewhat in competition with one another. Teachers, on the other hand, are almost always people that I would enjoy spending time with because they are innately able and willing to accept you as you are. A coach is probably looking for something quite specific and will have no problem giving you a cold shoulder. Not that a teacher can’t do that as well, they have a severe time limitation and might brush you off out of self-preservation rather than a competitive nudge. My experience with coaches has taught me that we can be a different sort, but that’s not a bad thing at all. I might not like every coach I meet, but I love the job of coaching.