Ed Gavagan, one of the Saturday guests on The Moth, was retelling the years immediately after being nearly stabbed to death by a gang of teens. Through his painful narrative we learned how this attack affected him so deeply that he consequently lost his job and his home, all the while acutely suffering from PTSD. His story got me, I mean really got me. I sat spellbound to every word, but it was late and shops were closing, so I redirected back to my errands and tried to turn off the anguish as I left my car. But later that evening I was flooded again with trauma, for every station was working overtime with news of the release of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, who, after years in captivity, had just made their life-saving escape. Minute by minute networks were scratching every possible source to uncover the secrets that bound these women to their hell in that house in Cleveland… Quickly, through the 24/7 media blitz, their joyous release was overshadowed with far more tantalizing tidbits of their nightmarish existence.

It was then that I linked the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) story which I heard earlier on NPR, to many of the horrific experiences people face in our world. (Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you’ve seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death). At that moment I questioned whether our media, our music industry and video games, our mainstream movies and TV dramas, even our newspaper rags and glossy magazines only amplify our sense of fear? Does the brutality that haunts our everyday lives in the form of entertainment cause us to experience some level of PTSD? And what of those who stand in harms way day after day, how are they faring with our culturally accepted terror as amusement?

According to a recent USA Today article, “Government and private researchers estimate that PTSD is present in 5%-20% of the 1.6 million veterans who served since 9/11. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which has treated about 56% of those veterans, reports 117,000 diagnosed cases. Even among those who have the disorder, their conditions are no better or worse than the estimated 7.7 million Americans suffering from the illness as the result of non-combat trauma, such as car accidents or sexual assault.” With further investigation I found the information connecting our Veterans and PTSD grim:

• 8 veterans commit suicide each day. 126 each week. 6,552 each year.
• PTSD can often lead to alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence.
• Soldiers with PTSD are more likely to be divorced, be a single parent or become homeless.
• 200,000 veterans go homeless each night. 45% suffer from PTSD or mental illness.
• Many women suffer from PTSD, but fewer receive help because they weren’t in “direct combat”.
• Female service members also experience PTSD from sexual trauma while in service.  (Expedia Balance)

Sadly, once home, our troops still face tremendous battles. Our troops need to come home to safety; don’t we owe them that?

As I continued to read more about PTSD I uncovered the most unsettling fact of all: just hearing about a traumatic event can cause a person to experience PTSD symptoms (anxiety, sleep disturbances or depression). Nightly we are attacked by graphic and violent images on small and large screens in our living rooms, through virtually every film coming out of Hollywood, and our news broadcast shows are no different. We appear to be a world thirsty for gore. Yet, the stark pain I heard in Ed Gavagan’s voice screams for a different response. In his story he recalled three responses that he was given shortly after his attack, all from well-meaning folks, advice that proved ineffective at best.

1. “Everything happens for a reason”
2. “You’ve just got to get over it”
3. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”

Seems to me this advice only proves the point that not only have we become a nation of insensitive bullies, we don’t know how to heal those who fall victim around us.

I don’t care about the NRA-lobbied-Senate debate on gun control or ammo-rounds, I only want to return this world to safety. For our children, for ourselves, for real. If it means laying down our weapons, if it means spending money on education, if it means our churches shift from being anti-abortion to supporting the living, if it means truly addressing the abject poverty strangling the majority of the world’s population, if it means we each lend a hand to those struggling in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, no matter the measures, so be it. We need to create a safe world. From what I can gather curing PTSD is impossible unless a person is removed from their traumatic environment, and therefore can heal in a safe place. Can we even imagine that world? Is that possible as long as violence is the game that drives us?

Can we instead, like these brave few, this Ed Gavagan, who fought the odds to love and live anew, or the courageous women who broke free from their monstrous servitude, can we too rescue ourselves? Perhaps, if we celebrate the heroics rather than the barbaric…

Seems like a lifetime ago when Nine Cent Girl was born… The fiery hues of autumn had just subsided into a monochromatic black and white across my Vermont landscape, fickle sunlight and arctic air drove me indoors; it was during this introspective time of the seasonal circle that my blog became a trusty beacon, illuminating my direction through what dark days lay ahead as well as brightening the unforeseen surprises dropped along my path.

100 posts later I find myself once again at a crossroads, shedding the last of the winter chill and embracing the new warmth ahead. How perfect then for me to don pieces of the recent Prabal Gurung’s “Love” collection from Target to comprise my Spring Shoot! My 4 looks are inspired by this fascinating designer, the kaleidoscope of colors he uses contrasts the detail in his styling; but I also tried to uncover the dichotomy between the blooming right out my doorway and the remnants of what is dying away, to capture this elusive and complex season of Spring. For while we regal in all the newness Spring brings, we must also acknowledge the sometimes difficult letting go of the worn and comfortable. Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us, “There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile,” while Philip Larkin echoes this sentiment in his short poem, “The Trees.”

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

In the full embrace of these opposing emotions visible in the Spring, when we shed ourselves of our old selves, I took to grove and hedge, adorned with nature’s bounty and Prabal Gurung’s collection, and danced with sunbeams, daring the light to make me new again!

“In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit…Life is a series of surprises…” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles”).

Rising out of the old, into this new day, one in which we perhaps have less control than we wish, I invite you all to join me for the next 100 posts as I continue to question, stumble and stand. As Prabal Gurung’s collection suggests, Love is undeniably worth all the energy we can devote; perhaps love is the only constant we can offer each other… xxoo

*** photo credit goes to my darling MJ, who always catches me in the right light…

We are backyard maple syrup makers… we tap the five maple trees in our yard with a total of seven taps. Taught by an old timer over a decade ago, we know just enough to share the fun with guests if they happen to arrive at spring time. Drilling the small hole with a hand crank is step number one, then getting the tap in place, nice and sturdy, is step two.

This year we bought a different style tap, one with a wider spout and a bigger hook for the bucket. Large sugaring operations run plastic tubing from the thousand of taps to large containers to collect the sap, but for us, and those who boil for their own consumption, the individual bucket system works perfectly. For the few weeks that the sap is running we empty the buckets once or twice a day and boil furiously for several hours in the evening.

Most people boil outside, in makeshift shacks in their yard, to state of the art producers who invite you in to see the whole production process in their large sugar houses. We have a hefty six-burner Garland stove, with a powerful overhead fan, so we boil right in our kitchen. On a productive day we might need to have four or five tall pots on the flame at once; slowly consolidating into a flat wide pan as the final step. Not sure how this roasting pan became our syrup pan, but it works like a charm.

When we first asked our neighbor for advice, she said, “When it goes, it goes quick!” At first we didn’t quite understand the value of her directive, but it became our creed immediately! After hours of boiling, sap becomes syrup in one moment, and like sugar, crystallizes directly afterwards. You need to watch and be ready. We use this spatula to gauge the drips… hard to describe, but there is a moment when the syrup sheets just so as it drips off; it is this precise moment we know to pour it into the nearby bottles.

See this dark color? This batch went just a bit too far, but we added some water, boiled a bit more, and voila it’s delicious!

Each season we boil several grades of syrup, from fancy to dark amber. This year we invested in some maple leaf bottles to give as gifts to family members who live on the other side of the country yet are quite fond of our sweet stuff.

Maple syrup, a true nectar, is a gift from the trees, fleeting and fabulous! It demands attention, but it’s worth every sweet second…!! Pancakes anyone?

Looking around my home now, there is a stark contrast to even one decade ago, never mind two… or three! This New Jersey girl moved as far north as possible and still be a US citizen living on the East Coast: I settled in rural Vermont. Here my children played all four seasons in their large yard, built snowmen and snow-forts and snowballs in winter, sailed bark boats in the cold river in spring, strolled to the general store with two quarters to get the biggest creemee imaginable in summer and hiked up the dirt road to feed the pony some apples in fall. Idyllic for little ones. Mud-pie creations occupied our afternoons and starry skies lit our nights; but once they reached double digits, they each in turn wanted an urban life and all that commerce might afford them in terms of education and career.

Over the years we went from a house with no TV to a home where now we all have a laptop or two, smartphones, iPads, iPods… we joined Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, have several Gmail accounts, maintain active blogs, and the list goes on… We have indeed fully embraced the digital world. We see our children thanks to FaceTime; we watch videos they post thanks to Facebook; we are part of their professional network thanks to LinkedIn; we laugh at their candid photos thanks to Instagram. Oh, did I mention that each one, upon receiving their college diploma, took the fast track to the opposite coast and are happy Los Angeles residents now? Technology is exactly how we stay a family. Often a text from any one of them is there when I wake or throughout the day to garner news and is often how I say goodnight. Despite the miles, as the Obama’s say, we are “family, first.”

But media sites and technology is bigger than just communication: revolutions are credited to modern communications. Paul Revere’s ride wasn’t any different if you think about it; his midnight run sounded an alarm far beyond his cloistered neighborhood, just as the 2011 uprising in Egypt alerted first a nation and then the world that change was in the air. Who didn’t watch as Pope Francis I first greeted the world via live streaming? Thanks to technology history is happening right now during every moment on this spinning small globe, and consequently we have evolved into members of a global community; as we ponder the planetary challenges of clean food and fresh water needed to sustain ourselves, these social media sites address real pressing concerns.

Facebook stirred a revolution of its own, with 800 million world-wide users, this networking site has united estranged childhood friends and made it possible to stay in touch countless ways, from forming group pages to private chats. Facebook is now how we organize events, share our vacation photos, and reveal our thoughts for the day. Before you think that there is something totally wrong with this fascination with the mundane I ask you to consider my friend’s status last week:

A friend said to me I don’t like Facebook because I don’t really care what my friends are eating for breakfast. I am finding that I actually do like to know. In fact it seems just as important as anything else. I prefer to think of this fascination as forming part of a tradition going back to Flaubert or Joyce that celebrates the ordinary or democratizes the stage, but am not sure this reading is still available to us. I fear my interest has to be seen more in terms of Foucauldian spaces and reality TV (the merging of the spectacle and the participatory) or just as yet another manifestation of the consumption that characterizes late stage capitalism. But then, who really cares? (Ed Pepe).

Yeah, what he said… but seriously, community has expanded, we have moved into the digital age, just ask all the parents of our active military, whose sons and daughters are overseas, yet who find via Facebook or Skype an avenue to know they are okay. More than simply a capitalistic urge, is the desire for community, the longing to make connection. Through this blog I read responses from folks clear around the globe who find meaning in my words, or delight in my photos, or unity in our shared vision. Quite remarkable. Celebrating the ordinary reminds us that each and every life is precious. Perhaps even divine.

Certainly the concern of children (and adults for that matter) not engaging with others isn’t new. According to Ozlem Ayduk, an associate professor in the Relationship and Social Cognition Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, said children sitting at the dinner table with a print book or crayons were not as engaged with the people around them, either. “There are value-based lessons for children to talk to the people during a meal,” she said. “It’s not so much about the iPad versus nonelectronics” (Bilton, New York Times), 31 March 2013). The New York Times essay voices concerns that many of us harbor, in terms of how young should we introduce these devices to children, and what are the long term effects; I think the same common sense that our parents used, that books be banned from the dinner table, that time was allowed for meaningful conversation, that children were given time to daydream, and perhaps even be bored, then electronics will only add to our sense of community.

Can our use of technology go too far? Can our devices take us away from our present lives and instead isolate us further? Well, the family I spied in the restaurant might want to reconsider mealtime; in fact, all of us might want to check in with our close friends and family members the old fashion way from time to time, face to face, learning from each other with our eyes and ears and heart. But let us also consider the power available in our present technology. Interestingly, when my dinner friends all arrived at the restaurant the other night, I asked the waitress to take a photo using my phone. I quickly uploaded to Facebook, tagged the individuals, and before we finished our meal, several others saw on the site that we were there and popped in to say a quick hello.

My sophomores first read Homer’s Odyssey. This epic poem fills their summer: meeting the Cyclops, the Sirens, and Calypso, and experience one man’s journey to return home to his family and his rightful place. Come September they step back into our school and read about what Elle Wiesel has called the most important event of the 20^th century, the Holocaust, but seen through the symbolism of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. We ponder the unanswerable question with this short yet powerful novel: is man inherently evil? As innocent citizens became casualties of WWII, Golding reminds us of how easily one can forget one’s humanity. Macbeth is next. Once again, the broad startling faults of mankind, of ambition gone too far, of the false face, unravel in our central character and all those within his reach. This frightening look into a man’s soul is not lessened by Shakespeare’s use of his supernatural witches. From this rather dismal vantage, we go forward in time to Victor Hugo’s redemptive Les Miserables where the sweeping triumphs and sacrifice needed for a successful revolution are made personal through the tender and short lives of Gavroche, Eponine and Fantine. Hugo shows us that through love alone will we find fulfillment. Not a bad place to end your 10^th grade semester in Literature.

My seniors’ literary journey is similar in questioning the inner workings of mankind. Summer: Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. This foray into magical realism jolts them to question everything as they navigate their individual path and venture out on their own. Nothing is solid with Marquez: time travels in a circular motion, personality traits are born anew in each generation confusing identity, the innocent ascend to Heaven while others simply fade into ghosts: Marquez moves students to ask where do we fit into this wider version of reality? Continuing on this shifting ground, we journey to the equally questionable world of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Stream of consciousness forces us between splintered time periods, between character’s inner angst and placid demeanor, into the emotional destruction war brings to family and country alike. At her novel’s end, Woolf brings us the satisfaction of completion, just as my seniors finalize their college essays. As they continue along to finish applications, collect transcripts and letters of recommendation, we begin Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment. As tangible and graphic as crime is, this author delves into the deepest recesses of mind within the grime and poverty of a city on the verge of monumental change. Russia is painted with a dirty blackness that covers the windows, mirroring my students’ anxiety as they await spring letters of admission.

What better place to go now than straight into Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “To Be or Not To Be” could not resonate with a better audience as they wait and wait along with this anguished Prince. Every scene forces them to see the insufferable agony of inactivity, yet they also respond to his contemplation, and understand being between a rock and a hard place. As we leave the stage peopled with victims of their own making, we pick up Ellison’s Invisible Man. The search for identity, the young man striking out on his own to find that illusive piece of himself, the trickery used multiple times trapping him until finally he has only himself to rely on, here is where we pause, exactly when letters arrive. Decision time for all. Seniors begin to come to school dressed in their new identity, wearing the garb of their chosen college. Spring. Hope. Ellison brings us there, quite cautiously, but standing on two feet.

Each year I pepper these classics with a few new titles, poetry and essays too. Each provocative and challenging text allows us to glimpse the Heavens and return with a deeper understanding of the possibilities…