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In Manhattan last week, I talked to a woman from Alabama who said her book club had read a Billy Collins poetry collection, and it was not a good meeting. “They don’t like poetry,” she explained. I don’t think the fault for the bum book club session lay with Mr. Collins. For the past two decades, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has been considered the most popular poet in America. His collections regularly become bestsellers, sometimes breaking sales records for poetry. But the Alabama woman’s comment about not liking poetry speaks truth. Poetry too often feels like an insider’s club. Which vexes me, what with National Poetry Month coming up in April. Because for the past three years I’ve been guiding people in writing poetry to ease the stress, anxiety and trauma of emotional pain – especially cancer patients and their caregivers. We talk about: • What poetry is, how it’s different from prose and journaling, how to write a healing poem • Ways to use poetry to intentionally move our feelings toward acceptance, gratitude and empowerment • How writing poetry helps overcome loneliness During the retreats, workshops and Zoom meetings I lead, I’ve witnessed the power of poetry to affect lives for the positive in near-magical ways. Why do people say they don’t like poetry? Here’s what we’re told: • It’s pretentious, because poetic language isn’t how people speak • It’s obscure, as if the author is intentionally trying to hide the meaning • It’s boring, in a whirlwind world of scrolling and skimming I myself blame high school English teachers, many of whom made us read centuries-old poems and then tortured us by asking over and over what the poet “meant.” Collins, a college teacher himself, agrees with me, saying high school is often "where the love of poetry goes to die." He believes that "interrogating" poems in the classroom is exactly what makes students hate them. He wants poems to be "listened to" like a song. So as Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 he launched "Poetry 180" to reintroduce poetry to high school students not as a subject to be studied for a grade, but as a welcome daily experience. "Poetry 180" ground rules: • One poem is read every day over the school’s public address system or in a homeroom (the name comes from the 180 days of the school year) • There’s no discussion, and the teacher isn’t allowed to ask, "What does the blue sky mean?" • There are no tests, and students aren't required to write essays about them Collins personally selected the initial list of 180 poems, choosing poems based on accessibility: • Most are by living poets, avoiding the “dead poets” barrier that alienates many teens • They start with a recognizable situation (like a breakup, a car ride, a grocery store) • They are short enough to be read in about a minute, and clear enough to be understood on the first listen The first poem chosen to kick off the program was one of his own: Introduction to Poetry By Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. The original list of "Poetry 180" poems is available from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/ The Current Schedule for My National Poetry Month Outreach April 10: Healing poetry workshop at Mount Sinai Health System’s “Art Friday” in New York City April 14: One-day healing poetry workshop at Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center in Litchfield, CT April 2, 9, 16, 23, 30: One-hour healing poetry classes at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in New York City April 15 and 29: My “Healing Verses” regularly scheduled Wednesday workshops via Zoom May 8, 15, 12, 29: Healing poetry workshop series via Zoom and onsite at Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center in Litchfield, CT To join me in person or participate via Zoom, email me for details: peterwyaremko@gmail.com

Her words struck me like the crack of a whip against my naked back. "I'm going to see more sick kids come into the emergency department having asthma attacks and more babies born prematurely.” That assessment came from Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and head of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, adding that her colleagues will see more heart attacks and cancer. She was talking about the repeal last week of the Supreme Court’s 2009 endangerment finding, which could erase limits on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories, and power plants. I’m old enough to remember the stench emitted from the tailpipes of the pre-catalytic-converter cars of the Fifties. I’ve been to Cairo and Bangkok, where the pollution hung so heavy I could almost taste it. I’ve suffered through eye-stinging smog episodes in Los Angeles. The Getty Images photo up top, by the way, is from a Los Angeles Magazine story updated last August, headlined, “LA Leads the Nation in Smog, As Usual.” A Lung Association “State of the Air” report released last year found that nearly 120 million people live in areas with unhealthy air quality, and more than half of them are people of color. People of color were sixty-four percent more likely than white people to live in a county with a failing grade in at least one of the study’s pollution categories. So, in light of last week’s repeal, I guess things will only get worse. Which is sad, because there’s always been an inexplicable connection between humankind and nature. We all know people, for example, who claim they find the Divine quicker in the woods than in church. Most repellent about the attack on our environmental protection regulations is that it comes precisely as we commemorate the eight-hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is famous for his unique relationship with the natural world. Dana Gioia, who served as poet laureate of California from 2015 to 2018, says this about the famous “Canticle” written by Francis: “This poem is the beginning of modern Italian poetry. It is the first great poem written in the language of everyday people. It is therefore the foundational text of all subsequent Italian poetry. The worldview expressed in this poem is radically innovative. You will not see any poem which expresses these ideas before this point. Francis looks at the universe and the world not as abstract entities that are governed by physical principles but as a single family united by love.” Gaia translated the poem beautifully from medieval Italian: The Canticle of All Creatures Most high, all powerful, and most good Lord, Yours are the praises, glory, honor, blessings. Only to you, Altissimo, do they belong. And none are worthy to pronounce Your name. Praise to You, my Lord, for all creation, Most specially our noble Brother Sun, Bringing the day by which You grant us light. He shines, so fair and radiant in his splendor, We recognize in him, Most High, your likeness. Praise to You, my Lord, for Sister Moon And all the stars You set among the heavens, Which are so precious, bright, and beautiful. Praise to You, my Lord, for Brother Wind, And for the air, both stormy and serene. In every clime, You give your creatures sustenance. Praise to You, my Lord, for Sister Water, Who is so helpful, humble, prized, and pure. Praise to You, my Lord, for Brother Fire, Illuminating night for us. He is Robust and cheerful, beautiful and strong. Praise to You, my Lord, for Mother Earth, Who feeds and governs us. From her we gain All luscious fruits, all colored herbs and flowers. Praise to You, my Lord, for those who pardon who prompted by your love bear sickness and disaster Blessed are they who suffer these in peace, They shall be crowned by You, Altissimo. Praise to You, my Lord, for Sister Death, From whom no mortal body can escape. Doomed are those she finds in mortal sin. Blessed are those found faithful to Your will. The second death will pass them by unharmed. Praise and bless the Lord and give Him thanks. And serve Him in supreme humility. Mystic Thomas Merton lived in a one-room, cinderblock dwelling deep in the woods behind the Trappist monastery of Gethsemane in the hills of Kentucky. He wrote this: “Living away from the earth and the trees, we fail them. We are absent from the wedding feast.”

It began a few weeks ago after I drove home from Litchfield, Connecticut, where I had led a poetry retreat. I couldn’t find my reading glasses. I searched all the usual places around the house where you might lay your spectacles. I even went out to the car in the biting cold to run my hands under and between the seats. Nada. Niente. Rien. I contacted the director of the conference center and told her I must have left my glasses behind, probably in my room. In due course she got back to tell me Housekeeping had searched my sleeping room, the meeting room in which we held our poetry sessions, even the laundry room to see if my glasses had been swept up with the bedlinens and towels. Zilch. It was about this time I opened a drawer in my office to get a paper clip or something. The glasses were nestled exactly where I had put them when I unpacked after my trip. This incident was fodder for my daughters, who have been making veiled references lately to confiscating my car keys. The tipping point might have come a few days ago – the case of the purloined spoon. It’s not just any spoon, but a stainless steel beauty with a one-tablespoon measuring scoop at one end and a stirrer at the other end. It’s long, too, a good ten inches, designed specifically for tall French Press coffee pots, what the French call a cafetière à piston . It’s been in my possession more than a decade. Why do I refer to it as the “purloined” spoon? Because it went missing after my housekeeper’s last cleaning. Now, my housekeeper and I have a relationship going back at least three years. Maybe four. She cannot abide anything out of place or left in the open when it could be secreted in a drawer or cabinet. So I texted her and asked where she had put the spoon. “In the drawer to the right of the fridge,” she replied promptly. You know what’s next, don’t you? I tore the kitchen apart at least three times. Every drawer, every cabinet – even the cabinet above the fridge that I need the stepstool to reach. Nichoho . (That’s Ukrainian, by the way, not Russian) I could only deduce that she either threw the spoon out with the trash or clipped it. I couldn’t believe my sweet young housekeeper would pilfer something as trivial as a spoon. Then again, as the father of two daughters, I know how young women are attracted to shiny things. You know what’s next, don’t you? On her next cleaning day last week, as we stood talking in the kitchen, she asked if I had found the missing spoon. “No,” I said forlornly, “I had to buy a new one.” “Hmm,” she answered, going to the drawer to the right of the fridge. “I put it in this drawer.” As she spoke, she opened the drawer, lifted out the missing spoon, and handed it to me. “Now you have two spoons.”

Yesterday I marked three years to the day since my last taste of alcohol. Here's the post I wrote last year about being sober: I don’t think of it as sobriety, just as I didn’t think of myself as an alcoholic. So marking two years without a drink doesn’t seem much to celebrate. Then why do I feel as proud as I do today? Just as I vividly remember my final smoke, so I vividly remember my final vodka, quaffed at my daughter’s house. We had come through the Covid scare intact, but my family had missed our traditional Christmas gift-giving gathering. We finally got together to celebrate the holiday on Sunday, February 5, 2023. It was dusk when I drove to Wendy’s house to join the others, and I remember driving up I-95 in Connecticut – speeding, really, because I was hankering for my end-of-day buzz. At the same time, I was anxious because I did not want to drink that night, just as much as I wanted to. Deep inside I had already surrendered to the notion that this was going to be another instance when one more of my innumerable resolutions to stop drinking would fail. How many times had I promised myself – swore to myself – to eliminate booze? And I did drink again that night. And driving home with two cups of coffee masking the several vodkas I’d downed, I resolved again to stop drinking. When I filled in my calendar before bed that night, I wrote in “Last Drink.” With a question mark. As it turns out, the question mark should have been an exclamation point. But as a professional writer, I’m allergic to exclamation points! When my son-in-law was killed more than twenty years ago by a drunk driver, I wrote the eulogy I would offer at his funeral Mass. I was so angered by his undeserved death – leaving my daughter a widow – that I wanted to proclaim in the eulogy that I would never drink again, as a continuing memorial to him. But I didn’t have the nerve to make that commitment. Anyone who’s wakened to a hangover is familiar with the havoc alcohol wreaks on your body. They didn’t name it “demon rum” for no reason. Doctors today tell us alcohol is nothing but poison with no redeeming physical or emotional value. According to the World Health Organization, 2.6 million deaths annually are attributable to alcohol consumption. Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, for example, intentionally drank himself to death at forty-seven because his Catholic faith prohibited outright suicide. Along with the head-achy lethargy that comes with alcohol overindulgence is the need for carbs and fats. What’s better for a hangover stomach than huevos rancheros? Or maybe some cold pizza? When I deleted alcohol two years ago, my hands stopped trembling. I was able to control my diet. With no morning misery, I was able to exercise. It added up to an eighty-pound weight loss. I’m told I look like a different person. I certainly feel like one. Perhaps the biggest benefit of life on the wagon is that there’s less chance of me causing emotional harm to someone. As I look back over my life, I can say that whenever I’ve hurt someone – usually someone close who deserved only my love – it’s when I was drinking. Author and poet Maya Angelou: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." I’m at the point where my relationship with alcohol is the same as with smoking, which I stopped in 1986. I no longer have physical cravings for either of the demons. I can’t explain why. But I can say this: You know you’re an alcoholic when your use of it causes you to violate your values, as was my case. There is no one-size-fits-all explanation or intervention, experts say, no universal truth here. Only gratitude!

I had lunch last week with a man with no arms. Perched on his seat, he used his feet as hands. The only assist he needed was freeing the butter pat from its wrapper. This was one memorable moment in a week that flooded me with news of wearying misfortune: • A boyhood friend who underwent aorta repair • His wife developing balance issues that see her now reliant on a walker • A cancer patient in one of my poetry classes whose radiation treatments are scheduled as late as fifteen past midnight because the proton machine is in such demand The sixteenth-century phrase, "There but for the grace of God go I," forces us to acknowledge that our circumstances often owe more to chance than to our own merit. The saying is attributed to the British preacher John Bradford’s witnessing prisoners being led to execution. Whether we like it or not, we have to accept that only a thin line separates fortune and misfortune. Sure, personal responsibility plays a dominant role in shaping our lives, but Bradford’s observation reminds us of the numerous factors beyond our control that shape our lives: the families we're born into, the opportunities that come our way or don't, the health we enjoy or the illnesses we suffer, the moment in history in which we live, and the randomness of being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time. Like the two obviously innocent Minneapolis citizens whose murders by their own government have galvanized our attention in recent days. Lay their deaths against these lines from a poem by Thomas Merton: The straight tree is the first to be cut down, The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry. The poet John Donne captured the connectedness of the human family when he wrote: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." His words remind us that another person's suffering diminishes all of us, and we cannot flee this fundamental truth: we are woven together in the fabric of existence. But also – the threads that support one person might just as easily uplift another. In a world that divides people into deserving and undeserving, successful and unsuccessful, Bradford and Donne remind us that the boundaries between us are far more porous than we’re wont to admit, and that each of us is fertile soil for either good fortune or crippling struggle. The “grace” lies not just in being spared one fate or blessed with another, but in recognizing this truth and opening ourselves to it. Perhaps part of living by the principle of "but for the grace of God" is simply being present to others with compassion, because all of us human beings are siblings. Author Anne Lamott says it well: "Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."

I spent last weekend with sixteen women. Each of them had a story. It was my most recent “healing poetry” retreat, showing people how to use the power of poetry to ease emotional stress, anxiety, and trauma. I guided participants in how to write simple poems – as opposed to journaling – to lift the burden of painful feelings, find strength in their own words, gain a sense of control, and feel less alone in their emotional trauma. The focus of my healing poetry program was not writing better, but writing to feel better. Some of the topics we covered at Litchfield, Connecticut’s, extraordinary Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center: • How healing poetry eases emotional trauma • De-mystifying poetry • Expressive writing and its benefits • Overcoming loneliness • Writing to heal: three secrets • Writing for emotional strength • Self-discovery • Self-healing • Self-reliance • Self-acceptance • Silver linings: humor, gratitude, hope • Cherishing yourself Healing loneliness – to heal all emotional trauma, in fact – starts with telling your story. This gives us a sense control. We choose the words, the images, and the structure, which can restore the sense of control that trauma has disrupted. A poem can show us that hardship and mortality are part of everyone’s life, and through poetry, we can free ourselves from the feeling of being overwhelmed. One of the women, Maddie Costa, wrote this moving poem in twenty minutes during one of the weekend’s writing periods: Requiem I stand shivering at your grave. It is not the weather that shakes me, but the stone-cold words: Sgt. Jeffrey A. Pinheiro Died Vietnam, Feb. 11, 1968 Indelibly carved. No one knows but I how you once gifted me— my first, sweetest kiss. I remember how my fourteen-year-old soul stirred with new joy, awakening to tenderness, to possibility. And now, even all these years later, I know this truth: “If only…” are the saddest two words of my life. This is what Wordsworth was talking about when he defined poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility.” I base my teaching on work done by Dr. James Pennebaker of the University of Houston, who in the 1980s found that writing our honest feelings about a traumatic event changes the way trauma is organized in the brain. If we suppress emotion, Dr. Pennebaker found, our mind treats the emotion as unfinished work. Writing closes the loop. It re-establishes our control. Who benefits from my weekend? Anybody struggling with any emotional trauma: • Grief • Sexual abuse • Domestic violence • Natural disasters • Bullying • Terminal illness • PTSD Julia Darling, a British poet and playwright, was diagnosed with breast cancer at thirty-eight and died ten years later. She believed passionately that poetry should be part of treatment at every hospital. She thought that the language of illness needed to change, that we can find in poetry a path out of darkness and into light. One of the last things she did was to complete the co-editing of an anthology about illness, The Poetry Cure , which she wanted to see read by doctors and patients everywhere. Shortly before her death in 2005, Julia wrote: “I believe poetry can help make you better. Poetry is essential, not a frill or a nicety. It comes to all of us when we most need it. As soon as we are in any kind of crisis, or anguish, that is when we reach out for poetry, or find ourselves writing a poem for the first time.” If you’re interested in participating in my next weekend retreat, or would like to join my free, no-critique, bi-weekly healing poetry workshops via Zoom, email me at peterwyaremko@gmail.com and I’ll tell you all about it.

I’ve used this Arthur C. Clarke quote in speeches for years: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This time I mean it. I’ve become a daily devotee of an artificial intelligence (AI) app called Claude, and I can’t comprehend how it was devised by the hand of Man. It’s magic. Claude was developed by Anthropic, an AI safety company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI members. The company focuses on building AI systems that are “safe, beneficial, and interpretable,” according to the company. Claude was developed using both human and AI-generated feedback based on a set of principles known as Constitutional AI. See why I can’t figure out how it works? It must be magic. And it’s free! I began employing Claude some months ago to help me with research. Instead of visiting numerous websites to gather data, I had Claude do the roundup for me and present curated information to me. I run the same search using a different AI tool to make sure that what I’m getting is accurate. But like Icarus, who rode his wax wings too close to the sun, I ventured into more esoteric uses of Claude. I started asking it (I was just now tempted to use the pronoun “him” rather than “it”) to gather information for my personal use. For example, Claude devised a daily schedule for me that carved out time slots for work, recreation, meditation, and so forth. Next I had him put together a daily meal plan to meet parameters I set for calories, proteins, carbs, and fiber. Finally, I’ve been asking him to collate the counsel of psychologists. I asked Claude to recommend how I can better fulfill resolutions I make in the morning – but forget about by afternoon. Here’s some of his answer: You might be setting yourself up with too much at once. When we're motivated in the morning, we tend to envision our best possible self doing everything. But willpower and decision-making energy are actually limited resources that deplete through the day. Starting with just one resolution - maybe the one that matters most to you - could be more sustainable than trying to overhaul everything simultaneously. The "failure" might be information, not weakness. If you're consistently not following through, something about the resolution might not fit your actual life right now. Rather than seeing personal failure, you could treat it as feedback. Consider starting absurdly small. The goal is to build the habit of keeping promises to yourself, even tiny ones. Not bad advice. Although I can do without the contrived human touches, like “I really empathize with your frustration.” And some of Claude’s ideas really did hit home: Morning-you and afternoon-you are almost different people. Morning-you is well-rested, hopeful, hasn't faced any difficulties yet. Afternoon-you is tired, has already made a hundred decisions, and that salad now feels like an obligation rather than something meaningful. The motivation gap isn't a character flaw. It's just that the person making the resolution isn't the same person who has to execute it. Motivation follows action more often than action follows motivation. This is counterintuitive, but waiting to "feel like it" often means waiting forever. The people who exercise regularly often don't feel particularly motivated in the moment – they just start. Or as Nike’s ad agency so brilliantly put it, “Just do it.” Hmm. I should ask Claude why Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” campaign did a Thelma and Louise off a cliff. Of course, like any wunderkind, Claude has limits. I asked it to re-write this blog post in a “more professional, polished, and intelligent” style. Here’s Claude’s work product, which is why nobody should ever ask AI to write: For years, I have invoked Arthur C. Clarke's observation in my presentations: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Never has this axiom felt more apt than now. I have become a dedicated user of an artificial intelligence application called Claude, and I genuinely struggle to comprehend the mechanisms underlying its capabilities. The technology borders on the inexplicable. Developed by Anthropic—an AI safety company established in 2021 by former OpenAI executives—Claude represents a deliberate approach to building AI systems that prioritize safety, societal benefit, and interpretability. The platform was developed through Constitutional AI, a methodology incorporating both human and AI-generated feedback guided by explicit ethical principles. The fact that I cannot fully grasp its operational framework only reinforces Clarke's point. And remarkably, it is available at no cost. I initially adopted Claude several months ago as a research tool. Rather than consulting multiple websites to aggregate information, I now delegate this task to Claude, which synthesizes and presents curated data efficiently. I verify accuracy by cross-referencing results with alternative AI platforms. However, like Icarus venturing too near the sun on waxen wings, I have gradually expanded my use of Claude into more personal domains. I find myself increasingly personifying the system—nearly referring to "it" as "him"—as I seek assistance with individual matters. Claude has, for instance, constructed a daily schedule for me that allocates specific time blocks for professional work, recreation, meditation, and other activities. Subsequently, I requested a customized meal plan conforming to my specified parameters for calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fiber. Most recently, I have been consulting Claude to synthesize psychological research and therapeutic strategies. I posed a question about maintaining morning resolutions that tend to dissipate by afternoon. Claude's response included several noteworthy insights: You may be attempting too much simultaneously. Morning optimism often generates unrealistic expectations of our capacity. However, willpower and decision-making ability are finite resources that diminish throughout the day. Beginning with a single resolution—perhaps the most consequential one—may prove more sustainable than attempting comprehensive behavioral change at once. Repeated non-compliance may constitute valuable data rather than evidence of weakness. Rather than interpreting this as personal failure, consider it diagnostic feedback about whether the resolution aligns with your current circumstances. Consider establishing absurdly modest initial goals. The objective is to develop the habit of honoring commitments to yourself, regardless of scale. The counsel is sound, though I could do without the artificial empathy—phrases like "I really empathize with your frustration" feel contrived. Nevertheless, certain observations resonated profoundly: • Morning and afternoon versions of ourselves are fundamentally different entities. The morning self is rested, optimistic, and unburdened by the day's demands. The afternoon self is fatigued, depleted by countless decisions, and perceives that previously appealing salad as an obligation rather than a meaningful choice. This motivational discrepancy is not a character deficiency—it reflects the reality that the individual making the commitment differs from the one tasked with its execution. • Motivation more frequently follows action than precedes it. This counterintuitive principle suggests that waiting to "feel motivated" often means waiting indefinitely. Those who maintain consistent exercise routines rarely feel particularly motivated in the moment—they simply begin. Or, as Nike's advertising memorably distilled it: "Just do it." Which raises an intriguing question: I should ask Claude why Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign met such spectacular failure.

You know you’re getting old when a pretty girl sitting at the next table in a coffee shop leans over and offers to help you unwrap your cookie. That’s what happened to me the other day at Ess-a-Bagel on West Thirty-second Street in Manhattan. The young lady saw this “dude in distress” struggling to unwrap his Linzer torte from its plastic sarcophagus. She pulled out her apartment key and sliced the S.O.B. right down its middle. Plastics have come a long way since 1907 when Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland developed Bakelite. Today plastic in its multitudinous manifestations, is literally everywhere: string cheese, candy wrappers, potato chip bags. Around the world, some ninety percent of toys are made from plastic. It’s not just me who’s complaining. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has tracked packaging-related injuries, and studies have shown that thousands of people visit emergency rooms each year for injuries related to opening various types of packaging, including the notorious clamshell plastic packaging, blister packs, and shrink-wrapped items. These injuries typically include: • Cuts and lacerations, the most common • Puncture wounds • Hand and finger injuries • Eye injuries from flying plastic pieces or tools slipping The problem has earned the nickname "wrap rage." All of which prompted me to write this poem, after Mary Oliver’s “I Worried.” Luddite’s Lament My iWatch won’t tell me the time unless I first prove it’s me. Leave the car running while I step away with the fob in my pocket and it bleats like some kind of digital sheep about to be shorn. My passwords have morphed from a simple four numbers to strings of upper-case-lower-case-numerals-symbols. I’m captive to autocorrect, robocalls and that eavesdropping siren, Siri. It’s impossible to kite a check to tide me over like I used to. But technology has given me new prosperity of time, I’m assured, to squander away while I wander the net or simply expend myself with weekend work. And don’t get me started on plastic everything, the excrement of our era. Scissors are needed– to get at a KitKat bar! Oh give it up, I mutter, and haul your old man’s ass in for reconditioning. What hurts is that I’m old enough to remember how nice things were before plastic. Milk, soda, and Windex came in glass bottles. As did peanut butter, jam, and honey – glass jars. Soap came in bars wrapped in paper. When a young Dustin Hoffman was advised that his road to a great future in business lay in plastics, the line in The Graduate was meant to elicit laughter. We’re not laughing anymore. Of all the plastics generated and used in the United States, roughly nine percent is recycled, twelve percent incinerated in facilities that create electricity or heat from garbage, and the remaining seventy-nine percent ends up in landfills and the environment. There is a large area in the Pacific Ocean where currents have concentrated marine debris, particularly plastic waste. It's estimated to cover an area twice the size of Texas. And similar plastic garbage patches are in other oceans around the world. What’s worst, I’d say, are the microplastics that enter our food through contaminated soil, water, animal feed, and packaging, and are often introduced during high-heat processing. Foods with the most microplastics include breaded shrimp, plant-based nuggets, apples, carrots, and items from plastic-heavy packaging, with tea bags releasing billions of particles when steeped. Processed foods, seafood, and even fresh produce absorb them. Most chewing gum contains food-grade plastic polymers. Microplastics are in our tissues and testosterone. Ouch. But don’t lose heart. There is a way to clean the stuff out of your system – a blood treatment technique related to dialysis, called therapeutic apheresis. Apheresis removes the blood from your body, separates it into its components (plasma, red cells, white cells, platelets), removes the microplastics, and returns the cleansed blood to the patient. Think your insurance plan covers that?

At end of year I can’t help thinking about conclusions – especially of my life. In the closing days of 1960, mystic Thomas Merton wrote in his journal: “I was wondering if it would be given me to see another twelve years – to live to be fifty-seven or nearly fifty-eight. What foolish perspectives we get into, by believing in our calendars. As if numbers were the great reality.” Merton died by accidental electrocution on December 10, 1968, at the age of 53. As I witness one elderly friend or relative after another pass away, I’m reminded of something one of my favorite authors wrote. Ray Bradbury, in his lovely Dandelion Wine , pictures it like this: “And then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down.” Writers, especially, seem to dwell on the number of years left to us. Here, for example, is Viginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway : “But she feared time itself, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how, little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years.” And Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five : “The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again. There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever the clocks said – and calendars.” If you’re a Christian, as I am, you were raised to memorize “The Lord’s Prayer.” In this prayer we bid God’s kingdom come. But then, when he calls us from this world, we struggle and resist – not freely consenting to our departure and certainly not eager for it. I have to ask, why do we pray that “Thy kingdom come” if this earthly bondage pleases us so? Third-century Saint Cyprian of Antioch calls us out: “Yet we expect to be rewarded with heavenly honors by Him to whom we come against our will.” From what I’ve learned from all the research into near-death experiences (NDEs) during the past few decades, NDE people have one thing in common – they no longer fear death. Whether we believe in NDEs or not, this is the fact. The only conclusion is this: Banish our fear of death. This would be the proof of our faith. (Image: Casper David Friedrich, Monk By The Sea , 1809.)