Moscow Airport Bombing

Opening my laptop on Monday morning, I read the news on CNN, "Russian Authorities: Terrorist Bombing at Moscow Airport Kills 35." I hurriedly dial my husband, Drew's, mobile number in Moscow, hear his voice and breathe.  Not that he had any reason to be at Domodedovo that afternoon, but my imagination didn't know that and proceeded to conjure up all kinds of possible scenarios.
"What about AAS families, staff, employees?" I ask.
"All accounted for, so far," the relief evident in his voice.

We had this same conversation 10 months ago.  I was in Arkansas.  He was in Russia.  Two women blew themselves up along with 41 others at Lubyanka and Park Kultury metro stations.

As a writer, someone who searches for words, just the right words to express thoughts and feelings, I find my storehouse of words empty as I contemplate yet another terrorist attack.  How many more times must the word, "Why?" pass our lips  as we shake our heads at the pictures of dead bodies?  How many more times must we repeat the worn-out words tragic, senseless, outrageous, horrific, desperate to voice our outrage?

The impact of the bombing doesn't fully touch me until I read stories of the victims.

- Ukrainian dramatist and poet, Anna Yablonskaya, age 29, arriving in Moscow to receive a prize for her play, "Pagans"; wife and mother of a 3-year-old-daughter.
- 39-year-old Gordon Cousland, property consultant from Britain, scheduled to marry this spring; father of a six-month-old daughter
-Kirill Bodrashov, 38, businessman based in London; his girlfriend, Elvira Muratova, seriously injured; father of their 1-year-old son.

Three of thirty-five, each with his or her own story, a life now randomly ended.

In my blog posting following the metro bombings last March, I wrote of riding the metro, often changing trains at Park Kultury, joining strangers as we journeyed.  I wondered about the bombers, wondered about the humanity of one person to another, wondered about the violence against innocents.  I repeat the final two paragraphs here, unable to dredge up more fitting words from my empty storehouse.  I do, however, add one word to the ending.

"We become a community for minutes only, a chance collection of people, inhabiting a common space.  The women bombers stepped into such a gathering of travelers and detonated their explosives, not knowing any of their victims.  As I hopelessly try to understand this senseless violence, I can’t help but wonder whether the bombers, even briefly, glanced at the person sitting or standing beside them.  Did they notice the face of the baby, the grandmother, the man by the door who might have reminded them of someone at home?

 For the sake of a hopeful world, I like to think that the humanity of one person connecting with the humanity in another, would spark something, at least a momentary hesitation or questioning. The results of their deadly actions, however, perpetuate the harsh reality that history has taught us. . . it’s easier to kill strangers, whom we hate unseen, unknown."  

  

To Connect or Not to Connect

"Who doesn't check their email every 5 minutes?" she asked someone on the other end of her phone, while speeding past me down the sidewalk in knee-length black boots, each footstep stomping out her frustrations.  That was all the conversation I caught as I walked at my own brisk pace in the opposite direction.  As if she had turned and asked the question directly to me, I mumbled an answer into the purple scarf cinched around my neck, "Not me," to which I felt like adding, "and I'm still a good person!"

It all snowballed with the new phone, this feeling of technological inadequacy.  We had been back in Arkansas for about a week when Drew decided to buy a Verizon Droid.  I was o.k. with my clam shell version but was eligible for an upgrade, so I looked around for a sleeker style.  Then I heard about The Deal, "Buy a Droid, Get a Droid."  What veteran shopper, like me, could ever pass up the alluring words, Buy One, Get One FREE?  So I  left the store with a phone I had no clue how to use, and poor Clamshell had been disconnected, was dead, was no longer the reliable "friend" in my pocket. Two days later, tapping the little white receiver on the front of the phone with no results, tapping it again, and AGAIN, still with no results, I flung the phone across the sofa, buried it under the pillow and muttered,  "Rest in peace."  Could Clamshell be resurrected?

But the Droid allows me to be connected to my email and the Internet, everywhere I go.  I actually could check my email every 5 minutes.  Would that make me a cooler person?  Well, it might get me closer to that hallowed goal in the realm of technology, except for one glaring omission. Except for my blog page,  I don't have a Facebook account.  I feel like whispering that confession, as if asking for forgiveness from the 600 million people on the other side of the Facebook wall.  A world of connections, just a quick "sign up" away, yet invisible to me as a self-imposed outsider.

I've wrestled with this issue of being more or less connected for months now, and even recently read a book dealing with one man's journey to come to peace with what he terms the "conundrum of connectedness."

  Hamlet's Blackberry - A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age - by William Powers, researches periods in history when people such as Shakespeare, Thoreau, Gutenberg, and Ben Franklin struggled with major changes in communication, in transmission and organization of information, looking for ideas of how to find balance in his own life.

Mr. Powers states, "If we're constantly toggling between people on Facebook and texts and all these new ways of connecting all day long, and we never have a sustained connection, it's not really connectedness.  It's sort of the opposite of connectedness."  Powers finds value in our digital devices, but states that "overconnectedness"can adversely affect our relationships, unless we intentionally aim for balance.

Last Saturday I took our grandson, Luke, to the park.  As I was watching him play, I observed five parents on the fringes of the jungle gym, three of whom were engaged with their smartphones.  Mine was in my pocket, still a stranger, but becoming more familiar every day.  I resisted the temptation to pull it out, but instead ran over to climb up a pole behind Luke.  The other connections could wait.  The one right in front of me was quickly getting away.

As I continue contemplating Facebook and the prospect of spending more time digitally, I'd appreciate hearing comments from any of you as to how you achieve balance between "screen time" and "non-screen time." Thanks.  

     

 

The Gift of a Day

I'm reading The Barn at the End of the World, The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O'Reilly.  It was referred to me by a good friend; otherwise, I might have passed it up on the bookstore shelf wondering what it was all about, but not interested enough to decipher the title.  The author is at a mid-life junction, much like many of my friends and I, searching for an answer to her question, "How should I spend the second half of my life?"  To help discern her direction, she attends a retreat at Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in France, founded by Thich N'hat Hanh, a well-known and respected Zen  master.

One day, after working in the kitchen with another retreatant, preparing squash soup with apples, black-eyed peas and greens, Mary says, "I had no expectation that this would be a happy day.  I have never been one to anticipate a sunny wedding or a birthday party; the best days come without expectation."  The best days come without expectation. . .  I underlined the quote, placed the bookmark on page 175 and fell asleep pondering that thought and an unexpected day of my own.

Monday, January 10

A winter storm was forecast to begin on Sunday afternoon and by that evening, our yard was covered with about 3 inches of powdery whiteness.  With snow plows almost as alien in Arkansas as an actual UFO, the state shuts down until a thaw sets in.  I was alone in our house, at the end of a hilly, icy, rural road, with the nearest neighbor's houses only vaguely visible through snowy branches.  Silence surrounded me.  No cars starting, no dogs barking, no school children chatting along the bus route, not even a rooster cock-a-doodle-dooing.  The weather had sequestered us like a jury huddled behind doors closed to the world. 

I loved it!  My To Do List was filled from top to bottom with errands. . . 

  1. Take coat to cleaners

  2. Check out book from library

  3. Mail packages at post office

  4. Return shoes to Penny's

  5. Get new driver's license

           etc.

But, I tossed it to the winds, joyfully unable to do a single one.

Instead, I piled on hat, coat, scarf, gloves, boots and went for a walk, snapping pictures of one beautiful scene after another. 

Footprints in the snow alerted me to the fact that I was not as alone as I might have imagined. Rabbits and deer had hopped and pranced by sometime during the night, leaving their imprints for me to find.
Gray squirrels jumped from branch to branch then scampered down tree trunks, pawing their way through snow drifts to treasure troves of buried nuts.

A flitting blur of red caught my eye and perched on a nearby branch, appearing as a brilliant ruby on a white canvas.  He took my breath away!

(Look carefully in the center of the picture for a red dot -- the cardinal!)

Coming inside, I brewed a pot of chai tea and sat in my favorite writing spot, the red couch in the upstairs study, and continued my poem, "Light in Arctic Darkness."  Pausing to gaze out the window or warm my cooled cup, I spent the rest of the day in hours of silence, which perhaps only a writer can fully embrace.    

An unexpected day.
A day filled with pleasures as simple as Mary's squash soup with apples, black-eyed peas and greens.
A gift for my soul.

 


 

Blackbirds, Just Passing By

Of course, I must write about the falling blackbirds.  The event has put Arkansas on the map and on the tongues of people who may have only uttered the name of the state when asking the question, "Why isn't it pronounced "Ar-KANSAS?"  When Drew and I were in New York City this week, we were asked more questions about the dead fish and birds than about the Clintons and Razorbacks, subjects which most people seem to associate with the state. (With limited knowledge of more states than I care to admit, I totally understand this, especially with places like Wisconsin where my only association is with the "Wisconsin Cheeseman.")

Our news of the birds reached us via Moscow (yes, Russia) on New Year's Day morning.  Drew's administrative assistant, Zhenya Ivanova, at the Anglo American School of Moscow emailed, "Are you in the part of Arkansas where birds are falling from the sky?"

"What birds?  What sky?"  I asked.

We quickly googled "birds falling Arkansas" and found the tragic story.  Thousands of blackbirds, some reports up to 5000, had showered down the night before upon Beebe, a town roughly 45 miles east of our house, a short distance for birds, especially on a slow traffic day.  I started to wonder. . . 

"Were those the same birds that perched in our trees yesterday afternoon?"

                                                    Artist: Edward Lear (1818 - 1888)

                                                           Public domain

I had been in our upstairs bedroom folding clothes when I heard sudden chattering, like scores of  neighbors from miles around were conversing at the base of our driveway.  The only thing I could vaguely imagine was that they had heard about Drew's delicious homemade eggnog and were rushing to grab a cup before it was all gone.  The high-pitched sound grew louder by the second.  I dashed to the window in time to see the bare, gray branches of the hundred or so oaks in our front yard turning black. Birds, black birds, thousands of them, stopping for a rest.  I ran downstairs and told Drew, "You've got to see this!  Look outside.  I've never seen so many birds!"

With places to go and people to see, the noisy congregation was gone in less than two minutes, and we were left in the silence of the setting sun.  Did they move on to a tempting field for a foray of pecking then practice their synchronized flying stunts before heading towards Beebe hours later?  Or was this a flock of distant cousins lucky enough to fly in the opposite direction from the exploding fireworks, to which scientists are attributing the deaths?

Red-wing blackbirds ranked high in the casualty count.  They are one of my favorite birds, with the males concealing a smudge of red among their wing feathers, which pops out like a surprise as they take flight or aim to charm a female onlooker.  On warmer days, when they hang out alone rather than with a thousand or so friends, I often see one sunning on a fence post during my morning walk.  

                                   Source: Alan D. Wilson, www.naturespicsonline.com

                                                                                          

I am saddened by the death of so many.  I will welcome the next one I see with much joy.