All the ill-informed
Etiquette lessons
From privileged experts,
The fashion do’s and don’ts,
The tips on being
Better than the rest
Fall away
At a certain age.
I’ve tried on lots of things
Over the years.
Only a few stuck
And are tattooed
to my inner skin.
I like it that way.
Mostly, though,
I’ve schooled myself to stop
Looking at others’ reactions
as a mirror.
I don’t really give a damn.
Being a critic merely
doesn’t make you right.
No need to go full-blown
Curmudgeon, either.
Getting older shouldn’t be
A stiffness.
It’s about opening.
Acknowledging.
Clear-sighted seeing
What’s good, what’s not,
And what’s inbetween.
Above all, what is me.
It’s a fluid movement,
A flexibility
That stretches broadly
(if awkwardly),
Swirls and dances, yelling,
“I’ve got nothing to prove—
I’m past caring.
You can keep your favorites.”
Time to be my own favorite, for a while.
- Meredith Alexander Kunz
Category: Uncategorized
Poem: Casting Stones
Alone, casting stones
At my own empty glass houses,
I play both creator and critic
Inside my too-full head.
I catch myself in conversation
With that part of me
That will always
Leave a negative review.
And no matter how many times
The management responds
With apologies, promises, flowers,
That voice keeps up its unsettling braying,
Flaying what’s left of me
Until the lifeforce is gone...
Diminished to a wannabe
Too fearful to even try out
For an also-ran.
Now, I sit and wait for that
Mythical, perfect appreciator
To magically come my way,
Linger at the threshold,
Taking it all in…
And to pronounce
All this to be good,
To be just
What it should.
- Meredith Alexander Kunz
Poem: Shelter in Place
Heads and bodies in sync, We sit quietly on our sofa as a loud wind smashes into the house, deflecting into a dozen paths. Inside, we stay “sheltering in place,” As if we've avoided something, And yet. The air we breathe is shared air. The water and plants and sky, shared. The streets and paths and yards, The power lines, the storm drains. When I venture out to take a walk I see a neighborhood alive With couples walking dogs, Dads pushing strollers, Grandmas weeding, Kids riding scooters. A rootedness has set in that mimics a community. But when I pass they shift away from me— And then I remember again. Together, apart— Letting the wind blow a barrier between us In this strangest of strange times. - Meredith Alexander Kunz, April 2020
Poem: A Balance
Take one breath after the other Make one move after the other Say one word after the other Life is a series of repetitions Some brilliant Some simple Some mindful Some unknown, uncounted (As the length of a life can be Measured in breaths, heartbeats) And in abundance, These repeats make Powerful drumbeats, Rhythms that, together, Break the great silence And fan out across space, The mysterious ripple of us On this large uncertain planet - Meredith Alexander Kunz (Written in January 2020)
Poem: Pandemic Moon
Looking down at us From an enormous distance A cold piece of stone Dust-covered, desert, barren— Yet from where I sit, a beacon. A nightlight of comfort For those of us Up all night, Too tired to fall asleep— Too wakeful to stop moving, Moment to moment Unable to cease, Our minds awhirl, We look up— Past windy branches And threads of cloud, fog, A bright circle in the sky. Up there: truly alone. A paradise in time of pandemic. But: it is an inhuman place, Designed to kill visitors. No, it’s a dream (or nightmare) To believe that humans, No matter the risk they pose, Hate they bring, anger they provoke, Can live without each other. And so we look up, from down below. A friend once said I must be a perfectionist Because I loved round things And wore, in school, a round ring Filled with a large orb of stone. She traced it with her finger, And said, “You see? It never stops. It represents Infinity.” - Meredith Alexander Kunz, April 2020
Poem: My Monarchy
My Monarchy A queenly mood has overtaken me As I reign over this suburban street corner Sweeping my coat past a passing dog And encircling my hair in a silk scarf I channel a woman who gets her way— Yet for a long, long while, I didn’t have a “way” It’s taken my own internal coup A revolution against the ancien régime To find this unexpected monarch-in-waiting And draw her gracefully to the surface Now, no place is too mundane to show her off, Even this damp intersection on a drab street— It’s nowhere, but I’ll dress it up with a feeling Of knowing as I stride along— almost nobly - Meredith Alexander Kunz © 2019
New Writing Coming
My writing blog has been left alone in cyberspace far too long. I’m working on some new pieces to add–and some older material that I’d like to publish, too. I plan to devote more space to my creative work going back a number of years that I’ve been revising in the past few months.
More to come soon!
Double-Dip
There was a time when the words “double-dip” made me think of my all-time favorite TV show, Seinfeld. The show popularized this description of using a single chip to dip twice into a communal bowl of salsa. Double-dipping a chip was a no-no because it could spread germs from the half-eaten chip into the salsa bowl, potentially infecting all other comers. “That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” someone yells at George during a party.
(More recently, the Discovery Channel show MythBusters tested this idea. The “myth” that double-dipping spreads germs was “busted” by episode’s end: apparently, the chip and dip were already coated in microbes to begin with, and double-dipping only added “negligible” amount. But I still teach my kids not to double-dip, because some microbes might be nastier than others!)
In an earlier, even more innocent era, double-dip made people think of candy or ice cream – in the UK, there’s a popular sweet by this name, and some may recall double-dip ice cream cones from the 1950s or earlier.
Well, times have changed, my friends, and there’s no clearer indication than the fact that now, the phrase “double-dip” has taken on a far more sinister meaning.
I put on MSNBC to catch up on a few headlines and the screen screamed at me: “DOUBLE DIP FEARED” – in this case, a so-called “double-dip recession.” That is, a recession that began after the investment banks imploded and bad mortgage debt went sky high could now begin all over again, creating a second “dip” in our economic well-being.
According to Investopedia, here’s the definition of a double-dip recession:
“When gross domestic product (GDP) growth slides back to negative after a quarter or two of positive growth. A double-dip recession refers to a recession followed by a short-lived recovery, followed by another recession.”
Dip is a terrific word in this sense. You can picture the “dip” in gross domestic product as graphed on a simple chart. This is clearly the origin of the term: the image of two dips in a line charting the economy’s growth and health. And as a short, well-defined, peppy little phrase it adds an emotional feel that a “negative quarter of growth” just can’t convey.
Fingers crossed that a “double-dip” won’t nip us this time around. How about we come up with an equally lively term for a slow but steady recovery that brings back investment and jobs?
Health Care: A Business Perspective
How do we get health care costs down, while still maintaining high-quality medical care for as many people as possible?
It’s a question that politicians have been dwelling on for months, culminating in yesterday’s historic passage of new health care legislation.
Stefanos Zenios, a professor at Stanford Business School, has made it his life’s work.
A Cypriot math major who is now an operations professor, he’s researched new ways to coordinate doctors, patients, and healthcare systems to improve health outcomes. His mathematical models have helped revamp the kidney transplant waiting list and introduced more affordable HIV testing for developing countries. Now he’s looking into ways that hospitals serving under-insured patients could become more efficient–allowing them to treat more people each day.
Read more about it in my article on Zenios in Stanford Business magazine.
Paying for College– New Ideas Apply Here
Today’s financial woes have created a new crisis in student lending at a time when college costs have risen up to 40 percent in the last five years. The average college grad owes around $19,000.
Higher education creates opportunity. But we need new ideas on how to pay for it.
Read more on this topic in my op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/11/EDI912RKK6.DTL&hw=kunz&sn=001&sc=1000
MeredithInk 