Month: October 2024

Maine Deer

October 3, 2024
May be an image of deer

I guess deer hunting season here in Maine started September 7. I have been seeing people (men, primarily) wearing the ubiquitous orange hats and orange vests, a sign that hunting season has begun.

I am a meat eater and particular in terms of the types of cuts and the quality of the meat. While I don’t like to think how that delicious steak came to come onto my dinner plate, I am also not averse to the idea of eating an animal because of the slaughter involved. Harsh, I know. But I grew up in the land of the best “asados”.

I don’t really care for venison, except for the “filet mignon-style cut”. My Mother-in-Law liked to prepare a venison chili, but, as much as I tried, I did not like it, even though I enjoy chili (I drew the line, though, in South Africa, where I was offered crocodile meat chili and elephant meat chili.).

However, a wonderful gentleman hunter (he turned a dilapidated garden shed into my little office) once brought me moose. I was trepidatious. But I felt obliged to at least give it a try. He told me how it ought to be prepared. And, to my delight, I found that it tastes like the most tender fat-free mignon. I can eat it any time.

Today, as I was leaving a friend’s home to go back home, I noticed the same mamma I have seen with 2 Bambis these last few weeks. (I am assuming it is the mamma, because the fawns stick to her like glue). She is not afraid of humans, because there is no hunter on the property and no hunting is allowed. She lifted her head to stare at me in a quite lackadaisical manner, while her Bambis frolicked nearby (too far for me to take a photo).

And I thought: I hope she keeps on grazing in this hunt-free zone. She is too pretty. Maybe she is protected (there are rules after all). I don’t know. But I like the way she carries herself and I don’t want her gone.

Now, based on my personal experience, where I subscribe to the philosophy that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, she may very well prance across the busy street nearby and be hit by a car. Kind of like a Seinfeld episode.

But, but…I sincerely hope she has many more seasons to produce more Bambis.

Autumn in Maine Can Bring a Flash of Great Joy.

October 3, 2024

Today I reunited with old friends here in Maine, something that gave me a flash of great joy. Driving home, looking at the myriad of red, orange and yellow leaves, I reflected on why I felt so happy.

Autumn is a special time here, not only because of the beauty of the landscape, but because it is the beginning of “nesting” time, or rather, the anticipation of what is to come after the leaf peepers leave:  the start of what I call the Andrew Wyathesque period of the area:  the grasses will turn yellow and there will soon be a calming down, that may bring sadness or contentment.  It depends.

The weather has an underlying chill.  My good friend, the horse, can’t wait for the first frost that will finally put an end to the pesky flies that pullulate around him.  I am not ready for that first frost, but am resigned to it.  

I have my winter clothes and am prepared.  I hope I will opt for contentment and not sadness.  One of the things I feared most about moving to Maine full time was the sadness I would feel, not because of the cold, but because of the short dark days.

I discovered that weather played a pivotal role in my life when I first lived in Moscow, gazillion years ago, in the late 1980’s.  It wasn’t until I visited Rome, on a beautiful sojourn early one spring to escape the darkness of the USSR, that I realized how the Moscow weather (and lack of sunlight) affected my soul.  In those days, only a rare few had identified this condition as “SAD”:  seasonal affective disorder.  

In the end, it was thanks to my SAD condition that I finally understood why there was only a Tchaikovsky, or a Dostoevsky, or any one of those profound Russian musicians, artists and writers.  I realized that weather and lack of light can affect your outlook on life, especially if you are missing something or are experiencing a longing of sorts.  There is an emotional dislocation. 

I resorted to music and my children, who were very young then, can attest to that.  I bombarded them with songs.  To this day, they tell me, they remember most of the music scores I played in the car, wherever we went, and they have a soft spot in their hearts for them.

Funny how old age can change things around.  I know I will be sad and melancholic when we lose the leaves and the grasses turn yellow.  However, I am anticipating spending cold days ahead with warm and kind friends and acquaintances who understand that we all go through that misplacement of emotions that comes from living life.

I leave you to listen to one of my favorite ballads that captures my heart, my love for my home, and best explains my sentiments nowadays.

Terezin: The Paradise Ghetto

October 3, 2024

PROLOGUE: Because I thrive on music and philosophy and an insatiable curiosity (my own Balm of Gilead), and am trying to make sense of the river of life, I discovered a little slice of what I wrote in my now defunct blog on July 19, 2010, which I thought I would share. Am re-constructing my blog, which used to be a repository of things that maybe some of my friends and family and colleagues would have found of interest. So, here it goes, with a couple of updates:

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What a lovely way to perpetuate the legacy of a young musician and composer, Gideon Klein, whose life was destroyed in the German concentration camps of World War II. Thrice he wrote in a letter smuggled out of Auschwitz, “Don’t Forget About Me.” How many of us have had this thought?

Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, is where all the Jews from the Terezin Ghetto were sent. Terezin is also known for the devastating loss of children… Among the many who perished in Auschwitz and other extermination camps after having “transited” in Terezin was Peter Ginz, an 11-year old boy, who drew his vision of travel in space in the early 1940’s. Ironically, his drawing survived him; it eventually ended up in the national museum in Israel.

It was a replica of this particular drawing that Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died in the Columbia shuttle accident, took with him on his fateful journey. More than 50 years after this boy’s life was snuffed, this replica was destroyed in an overwhelmingly dramatic accident, a terribly sad tribute to the boy’s violent death! Amazingly, the shuttle flight happened on February 1, 2003: Peter Ginz would have celebrated his 75th birthday.

If you like to go down rabbit holes like I do, here is a great read on Gideon Klein.

Below is a short video from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that attests that despite his short life, Gideon Klein was never forgotten. Watch this special short story – it is so poignant:.

“Terezin’s Musical Legacy: A recent Prague Spring concert honored musicians and artists in the Terezin concentration camp who died in the Holocaust. Terezin Music Foundation founder Mark Ludwig pays special homage to composer Gideon Klein, who died aged 26.”

Of Judas Goats

October 3, 2024
May be an image of grass

One of the salient bilingual refrains I recall hearing growing up was how it takes one bad apple to spoil the bushel or “una manzana podrida pudre a las demás”. I hated the connotation because it was always used in reference to that “one friend” who could lead everyone astray, and you just had to get rid of that “friend”.

At the time, I resented my teachers, grandparents, parents, priests, nuns all pointing out to the importance of dumping that “rotten apple”, because sometimes fingers were pointed towards someone I knew and liked. And, of course, I knew better!

Lately, though, I have been engaging in retrospection trying to understand why some people whom one considers friends – who one might have spent time sharing a meal, a warm home, indulging in “old stories” and caring about “old woes”, the ails and ailments and deaths of other friends and children – can perversely aid and abet lies and treacherous behavior, and actually eagerly encourage the ruination of entire families of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc., just because. There seems to be a sadistic pleasure in this indulgence…and no compassion for any one of the victims.

Of course, this treachery is as old as the Bible and literature is chock full of these unsavory characters. So, as I am indulging in research for a narrative about this despicable behavior, lo and behold, I discovered a new thing: the “Judas goat”! I had never heard of it.

A Judas goat is raised with the sheep so that it will eventually gain their trust and when the time comes the Judas goat will lead the sheep to the slaughterhouse itself.

So now I need to study this phenomenon more, because I realize that “friends” who act in such a dishonest way, are truly Judas goats who operate because of their dark and rotten ulterior motives, whether they dislike the person/persons they are betraying, or whether they have misbehaved and need to cover their own tracks…that is, tit-for-tat.

However, the irony of ironies is that the Judas goat’s service is finite, and eventually it exhausts its usefulness. And then? Ah, their own masters end up sending them off to their miserable end.

I feel sorry for the Judas goat. After all, it is just a goat that has been trained to fulfill an animal husbandry purpose. However, the human Judas goat, well…now that is another story!

(A journal entry – September 10, 2024).