Local voices chime in on a variety of topics.
Lately, I have known a few people who have had to utilize the “social safety net” because of sudden job loss or other situations where the ability to afford basic necessities for their families became a major struggle. (It doesn’t help that the cost of living has increased across the board).
It’s that time of year again – I did another check presentation, this time at my home, to help benefit “children without parents.” I always promised 100% of my book sales to help kids in some way, and to date, this will make $8,500 given from the last four years of book sales! I am very proud, thanks to all of you who bought my book and a love that will never die!
We hear a lot about arguing and infighting among members of the NH House, especially across party lines. However, that is not always the case. I am writing today to publicly praise Steve Pearson, who is not the same political party as I am. However, when I needed help, he immediately came to my aid.
It’s inconsequential that you still own a push mower well into your middle age. It’s inconsequential that your yard seems to expand every spring, along with the addition of more patches of dead grass.
Extroverts draw energy from others, losing energy when alone. Introverts, contrariwise, charge our batteries when alone and steadily use them up with others. As a boy, I envied Superman his Fortress of Solitude, and regularly escaped to a crawl space or basement room or tree house or spot in the woods. I liked people, or at least most of them, but I needed to be alone.
On my computer desktop, I’ve got a folder called “To Be Finished” containing more than a hundred files of ideas I thought I wanted to write about. Some of these are a few thousand words, others a few sentences. Today is Sunday. I’ve spent the day hiking in the Todra Gorge—as beautiful as anything in Arizona—and poking around the city of Tinghir. I am tired, too tired to move more files into that graveyard of a folder. Instead of writing a full piece today, I’m copying and pasting the things I’ve started this week, then abandoned. Thank you.
Five hours of silent driving today. Just as one can wake from a dream and examine it all morning, I spent today pondering last night in the desert. Nothing has formed, I have no lesson or, God forbid, moral to offer, but I’d like to share some of the thoughts that came to me last night and today. They may eventually combine to form a wonderful mental meal, but for now they’re just ingredients sitting on the counter.
After making local arrangements, I’m being driven by 4X4 into the desert with a tent, sleeping bag, food and water. I’ll get dropped off around 7:30, pitch my tent and experience the nighttime alone. In the desert. Until midday tomorrow. If my driver remembers, he’ll pick me up. If not, I’ll waste away slowly, the sun cooking me, evaporating every last bit of moisture, until, after a week or two, I’m just Keith jerky.
Lately, in some of my idle mental space, I’ve been thinking about people from my past, and for some reason, I keep thinking about Closet Pete.
Eva and I also talked about the cultural differences among Europe, England, the US and Morocco. She asked what I did for a living. When I told her I work with folks in recovery from drug and alcohol, she got a very inquisitive look in her eye.
Today I opened an email no parent wants to read: disaster behavioral health counselors would be at my children’s school to help process an untimely student death.
I’ve been accurately accused of being a lot of things—a drunk, a junkie, a weirdo, a pompous clown and just plain crazy, to list just a few of the charges. One particular adjective has been universally true, at least since I got into recovery—I am annoyingly optimistic, believing anything that needs to be done CAN be done, given enough focus and effort. The universe always has more solutions than it does problems.
After five hours in the Sahara Desert, or at least Merzouga’s Erg Chebbi dunes, I’ve found what I expected to have been completely wrong. I’m not being self-critical here. I’ve just learned my view of the world is different from normal people’s.
At 10, she moved to Durham when my grandfather was asked to start and be the first president of the Thompson School at UNH. In Durham she made new friends, who were also lifelong, including a girl named Jane Abell. Jane was whip-saw smart and she and Bev were inseparable until Jane left town for boarding school.
Even before the annual report of top names for 2022 was released by the Social Security Administration, I had been hearing names of youngsters that harkened back many decades: Evelyn, Hazel, Agnes, Dahlia, Lisbeth and Mae. Or Abraham, Archie, Bruno, Clark, Hunter. What goes around comes around, I guess.
I’m now a bit more than halfway from Marrakesh to my destination, Merzouga, on the edge of the Sahara. The trip has unfolded beautifully, with time to sit beside riad pools and walk through the rocky and arid landscape, experiencing the vast indifference of heaven.
Driving alone through hard but beautiful land with no distractions, I was comfortable—with me, with my life, with the universe. This ease, this peace did not come early or easily to me. In my previous life, every time I drank and drugged, I did so to get out of me, to break the bonds that tethered me to me.
I came to Morocco to find a desert. Instead, I found an overflowing spring of humanity. In particular, I met Younes Krimane. Let me explain.
Trump frequently interrupted or spoke over Ms. Collins, making sexist gestures and jabs that the audience applauded and hawed at. At one point, he referred to Ms. Collins as “a nasty person” for refusing to cede the stage to his lies, and the audience applauded him for that as well.