Mike Takes a Walk

1/19/2022

Photo by Mike From NW Queens

(Mike From NW Queens is a regular reader of this little therapy website, and an occasional commentator. He's been saving it up. The other night, Mike took a health walk and snapped a photo of the moon, and got to thinking, and later he wrote a poem, except he didn't think it was a poem, just the musings of a guy taking a walk. Here it is, unchanged, but arranged in stanzas. Maybe you noticed, this is a New Jersey moon, not a NW Queens moon. They have a different moon in New Jersey. Thanks, Mike. GV.)

Yes, It Is Still There

I took a walk early tonight
Cold? A bit, so what?
As I finished the loop, I noticed
the crystal clear moon in the sky.

Yes, still there.
Still beautiful, our natural satellite
(thank you, Wikipedia)
A site for sore eyes tonight, too.
Moonstruck!
(Couldn't resist)

Sometimes the doldrums set in.
Covid, this or that,
Whatever.
May be more mental than anything.

Golf clubs.
I know where they are,
but they are dormant, for now.
You heard it, for now.

But the moon caught my eye
and made me grateful,
pushed the cold weather aside,
put the other noise aside for a bit.

Someday, normalcy will be
what normal was.
Who knows?

What’s my point?
Enjoy the moment,
enjoy what is in front of you.
Who you are with.
Your job, a warm house,
a turkey burger on an english muffin!

The little things.......
Not all gifts come wrapped....
20/20 vision,
being able to choose to take a walk,
headphones, and tonight,
listening to the Rolling Stones’ greatest hits,
tomorrow, free to choose something else.
Sounds normal.

I am rambling.
Thanks for being my friend.

One day at a time.
--- Mike From NW Queens

Jim Henneman link

1/19/2022 03:58:12 pm

So many great lines here. Enjoy the moment, the surroundings, the friends...etc, etc. At least it helped me get through my "writer's block" long enough to pen these lines! Carry on!

George

1/19/2022 04:07:17 pm

Jim, funny coincidence. The other day on a Zoom call, my niece's daughter, age 11, asked me what to do about writer's block.
You and I know, from our deadline days, that you just type something anyway. then you take a short break....and then you go back and keep writing. She seemed to get it....GV

Steve Jellinek

1/19/2022 04:02:39 pm

Wonderful, Mike from NW Queens. Thanks for passing this on, George.

Steve formerly of Queens

Alan D. Levine

1/19/2022 04:17:15 pm

Really nice poem, Mike. But turkey burgers???

Tom Jolly

1/19/2022 04:43:27 pm

Jersey moons can be inspiring, but Mike can be even more so! Thanks for sharing these thoughts in such poetic style, Mike. (And George!)

Wayne from NJ

1/21/2022 08:11:05 am

Poetic, Mike!

Altenir Silva

1/19/2022 06:53:05 pm

George: Beautiful poem. If the moon has eyes, she's looking for our planet with sweet despair. By the way, Mike did a great poem, very inspirational.
Be well/Altenir

Randolph

1/19/2022 08:03:47 pm

Mike and George,
Thanks for the nice poem.
It is a wolf moon. The first full moon of January.
Your poem reminded me of a haiku from the Zen monk, Ryōkan.
It is said that Ryōkan lived as a hermit in a small hut in the woods.
He had very few possessions.
He returned one night to his home to find that he had been robbed. This led him to write a haiku:

The thieves,
They forgot,
The moon at the window.

Thanks again,
RF

1/19/2022 09:25:47 pm

Randy, thanks so much. Perfect haiku.
And speaking of the moon, I can't help but include the beautiful "Song to the Moon," from "Rusalka," by Dvorak, sung by Frederika Von Stade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwVYFpY3VL4

Mike From NW Queens

1/19/2022 11:29:25 pm

I cannot thank everyone enough for all the kind words and more. Another gift.
Alan, I ran out of boars head bologna!! Turkey Burger in from the bullpen!
Altenir, gracias!!
Tom, Steve, Tom, Randolph (loved the haiku!).
George, I speak for us all, THANK YOU!!

Be well everyone, safe, and enjoy the moments.

Ed Martin

1/19/2022 11:32:15 pm

“Crystal Clear moon.” What a fine image, and I’m not sure I ever heard it used before. It also carries a sense of icy cold with it.

Because I have what Psychologist call “Loose Associations,” it also summoned up the ridiculous to go with the sublime.

“Moon in the sky, like a big pizza pie…”

Phyllis Rosenthal

1/20/2022 08:10:36 am

Yes, we have to be touched by everyday miracles,, and have faith that we stay well enough to KEEP appreciating them!

George Vecsey

1/20/2022 09:29:35 am

Cunningham Park, baby, Cunningham Park.
Spring will come.
Stay safe.
GV

Randolph

1/20/2022 08:15:21 am

Ed,
“Moon in the sky, like a big pizza pie….”
Thanks Ed.
That reminded me of the great movie, Moonstruck…..
RF

weiss

1/20/2022 09:23:36 am

kaiku 5-7-5 I love to struggle with

Josh Rubin

1/20/2022 12:35:32 pm

That's some really nice found poetry!

It put me in mind of one of the greats of found poetry, Phil Rizzuto. Two writers at the Voice published Rizzuto's poetry in the Voice's sports section (they did have one for a while) and then later put them into a book. Here's a particularly poignant one that also involved the moon:

The Man in the Moon

The Yankees have had a traumatic four days.
Actually five days.
That terrible crash with Thurman Munson.
To go through all that agony,
And then today,
You and I along with the rest of the team
Flew to Canton for the services,
And the family....
Very upset.

You know, it might,
It might sound corny.
But we have the most beautiful full moon tonight.
And the crowd,
Enjoying whatever is going on right now.
They say it might sound corny,
But to me it's some kind of a,
Like an omen.

Both the moon and Thurman Munson,
Both ascending up into heaven.
I just can't get it out of my mind.
I just saw that full moon,
And it just reminded me of Thurman.
And that's it.

August 6, 1979
Baltimore at New York
Ron Guidry pitching to Lee May
Fifth inning, bases empty, no outs
Orioles lead 1-0

Judith Fishkin

1/21/2022 10:33:52 am

Talk about mind fullness. this poem is a gift

George

1/21/2022 08:43:06 pm

Josh, well done. Oddly enough, I wrote about that book when it came out.
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/sports/sports-of-the-sports-holy-cow-seaver-they-made-me-a-poet.html
And you would have loved when Rizzuto was the keynote speaker at Hofstra's Babe Ruth Academic Conference decades back, but he didn't know he had to talk. I told him, "Pretend I'm White, and answer the questions." He did fine. best, GV

Letty Cottin Pogrebin link

1/21/2022 06:48:09 pm

I enjoyed both the poetry and colloquy immensely. Thank you George for sharing it with us.

George

1/21/2022 08:47:12 pm

Letty, thanks, you make five Jamaica High grads in the respondents. Three from JHS 157. Birds of a feather. Be well. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Mike Takes a Walk

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