I was feeling close to retirement last year. I got bogged down with some of the less-than-sexy-details of working within a non-profit organization. Occasionally, it has its challenges. I also got overly involved in thinking about my age. My wise adult children refused to consider it. “You’re not retiring!” one daughter angrily insisted. “What, are you…
Category: life
Caught in the Crosshairs
As Mother’s Day approached this year, I began to recall the long-ago “words to live by” that were oft quoted by my Mom. I half-listened to her warnings and guidelines because they never quite fit. I have since realised that she was the product of a post-Victorian upbringing, passing through the “liberation” of the 1920’s and…
Today I Wept
I’ve become an observer. A person who is witnessing what she once believed was unimaginable in her country of birth. A person whose eyes and ears are open, but whose feet are frozen to the ground. A person whose ears listen in disbelief to distortions and lies; whose eyes are repelled by the sights she…
Happy Birthday, Dianne!
The Allure of Birthdays Just about every part of a birthday celebration is designed to please. What’s not to like, especially as a child, before you begin to understand the deeper meaning of those higher numbers? The vintage birthday cards I remember from the early 50’s late 40’s were charming and fanciful. The cards portrayed a…
The Message of Rainbows
The words “Bad news” jumped out at me in my messages. It came just as we were preparing to go on vacation in Hawaii. Life intruded to inform me of a friend’s untimely and sudden death. Shocked, I let the news pass through me and busied myself with packing. News of death is becoming a…
The Day the Earth Shifted
Did the earth just shift? After looking over my Facebook feed yesterday morning, I could only imagine millions of us Hillary supporters simultaneously reacting in the same way, at the same time, when we learned that DT had won the electoral college and was now destined to become the next president of the United States….
Confession
The urge to show off comes from a primitive, childish part of me that I don’t like too much. I sometimes volunteer information while in Japan that no one has asked for, partly to be helpful, but also partly to show my expertise. As limited as that knowledge really is, it’s always more than a…
The Days of Our Lives
Where do you place yourself on those oft over-used metaphors relating the span of our lives to the time of day or the season of the year? Spring, summer, fall, winter? The lyrics to September Song sounded so poignant and far away when I sang them in my 20’s and could easily disengage from their implications. Yesterday,…
Moon Watch
Such a hullabaloo about the moon in recent years. Until recently, a person only needed to know rhyming words such as moon, June, swoon, etc. inserted in insipid songs. Now, to be fashionable means being knowledgeable about how often a blue moon comes along, knowing the characteristics of a super moon as well as when and where to…
the Big D
The words of a Tibetan monk, “Remember you’re dying,” were a revelation to me.
My Magnificent Obsession
Japan has become a magnificent obsession in my life, beginning from the first visit in the early 1980’s.
How to Respond?
Like many of us, I suppose, I have more questions about the world we live in than answers. In fact, I have only questions. The majority of answers provided by the experts are unsatisfying and incomplete to me, because they don’t appear to “know” either. From where I stand, no one seems to get the big picture. This recent round of violence is a complex, fucked up mess.
