Welcome to 2019!

In 2019, I will be more mindful, contemplative, grateful, and kind.

Mindfulness? Hitting a tennis ball, I know to keep my head down as long as possible. Driving, I try to be aware of everything around me, and how fast it's moving. 

Can I manage that same mindfulness in all that I do? Be as wholly present washing dishes or watering the vegetables as I am playing ball? 

Contemplation is good, both for itself and for its results – although best when I neither seek nor even envision “results.” The gift is to stop for a moment: stop doing, saying, planning, resenting. Just be. Breathe. Stopping the rush, externally and internally, creates space for an insight, a memory, even a poem to wander in. It frees me to appreciate what I really like or enjoy, or hear what may be crying out for change, inside or around me.

Gratitude is important. That dawned on me even before the current slew of books, articles, and studies telling us gratitude is good for us. In 2019 I will be more grateful – even “blessed,” without feeling any particular need to figure out by whom or by what. Not just because feeling and expressing gratitude is healthy, but because so much demands my gratitude.

I am grateful for – well, above all, my wife. I lack space to list all that we share and laugh about, and all that she teaches me.

I am grateful for: the Organ Mountains, especially at sunset or in snow; our caring, thoughtful Congresswoman, Xochitl Torres-Small; many wonderful coffee houses and other local businesses that deserve our support; the more tolerant spirit I hope to feel among us, perhaps because we are seeing clearly where acrimony and hyper-partisanship lead; the surprising courtesy Las Cruces drivers extend to us as we bicycle about town; KTAL 101.5 FM (Las Cruces Community Radio) and KRWG; our deep well of talented artists, poets, and musicians; our community; Arturo Flores, 100, a WWII vet and courageous labor leader, who died this week (I'm grateful that we had him so long, and for his fine family and his influence on his many friends); people who read and respond to these columns; my invigorating poetry workshop; Bob Diven and Mark Medoff; the talented, tireless growers and craftspeople at the Saturday Farmers' Market; Camp Hope; our longstanding local theater groups, movies at the Fountain, and the Las Cruces Symphony; good health; and the abandoned Doña Ana County Courthouse, haunted by memories of this long-haired young newspaper reporter. (With its adobe walls, it looked great in this week's snow.)

I'm also grateful for a sense of wonder, which children (like great-grandson Teddy) and snow restore to me when I misplace it. 

If I were making real “Resolutions” they'd include being more kind (doing some unexpected good turn for someone each day), of course, but also: wonder often; and do only what I can do with joy. That last is tough. But I guess if I can't choose only activities that spark joy, I need to find what joy there is in all that I must do. And, last, I will not judge others, let alone complain about the speck in their eye without first dealing with the beam in mine. 

Finally, gratitude to Bear, our esteemed cat, who helps me sit up straight by occupying most of the chair from which I scribble this.

Happy New Year!

                                                 -30- 

[The above column appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 6 January 2019, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website and here.  During the week a spoken version will air on KRWG (Wednesday and Saturday) and KTAL-LP 101.5 FM, streamable at www.lccommunityradio.org (Thursday).  

Someone asked me about this yesterday: the spoken version is shorter and re-edited to be heard rather than read. It's shorter because reading the entire 570-word column would take a longer time than the radio station wants; and minor changes improve it for being heard: for example, if there's no reason not to, I'll change "difficult" to "hard" because whereas each counts a word in the column, one's three times as many syllables as the other; I'll rewrite a long sentences, or one that has a long dependent clause at the start, to be two simple, declarative sentences; and there are a few things that just sound better than they read.  Then too, sometimes as I've reflected on the column during the days after sending it in, or there have been new developments if the column concerns a breaking story about Donald Trump or the sheriff's department, I may change the column to reflect those.]

[Arturo Flores died after I'd drafted the column but before I sent it in.  I'd wanted to write a column about him at the time of his 100th birthday, in October; but that was also right in the middle of election season, so I delayed it.  I'll hope to write one on him next week.    

I knew him; and I knew his story -- grew up in New Mexico, served in World War II,  returned to the U.S. to face the kind of ethnic discrimination that showed this country's hypocrisy, and was a courageous labor leader in the situation over near Silver City best shown in the classic film, Salt of the Earth (1954).  He wasn't in the film because he was too busy dealing with some other urgent labor situation.  I learned at his birthday celebration that many of his friends and family-members were in that film -- including, I think, Emily Guerra, then a small child.  I'll hope to write a column on him next week.  He was a good, smart, and courageous man whom our community should honor.]