Entries 580
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When will the storm be over?
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you co...
Sharing the beauty and wonder of Nature
It’s a quiet and very relaxing Labor Day, a holiday I as a single person and wannabe-hermit never in my life cared about. For me Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend are merely symbolic: the begin...
The other side of depression
I often think back over my life to a particular year that that was so life-shattering and life-altering that I was cast into a pit of despair like nothing I’ve ever known. And later, that same ...
Old man’s fantasy
Just about every evening now during this unending Age of the Coronavirus, I emerge from my cozy sanctuary, get in the car, and drive a short distance to a park along the Ashley River. For years...
Survey time: “To dream the impossible dream” or not?
Note: The pandemic does strange things to you. I’ve only done a couple of surveys, but a global disease conflagration makes me more likely to want to do them here because I have a lot of time...
Depression and mental health in the Age of the Pandemic. Part 1
Despite glimmers of hope for a vaccine during this pandemic season, and the fact that the economy seems to be crawling back ever so slightly from the precipice of its five-month free fall of lost...
Let Your Light Shine
It’s been seven months now since Mom passed. I still feel the loss very deeply. The last few months were very hard on me, but despite her dementia she held onto her faith. This is what carried...
Caregiving 101: when patience is pushed to the limit
After caring for my mother for ten years , I learned many important lessons about diabetes, dementia and the extreme amounts of love, forbearance and patience that are required. I had a lot of pa...
Songs for terrible times
The year 1969 was one of those pivotal years in my life. I graduated from high school for one thing. The first half of the year was the best time I had ever had in because I was on the staff of...
A YouTube hit makes you feel so good
Okay, all you YouTubers out there. Buckle your seatbelts. The latest phenomenon to rocket to fame are two twin 21-year-old brothers from Gary, Indiana — Tim and Fred Williams. This is a classi...
Aging gracefully? No, realistically
Warning! This is entry is not for the faint of of heart, or for those who look in the mirror and turn away with a twinge of horror from the sight of wrinkles and sagging skin. Nor is it for tho...
Music immortals
For the first time in many years I finally have a lot of that that precious commodity called “time.” I worked full -time until I retired in 2017 and continued on taking care of my mother who suf...
“The Green, Green Grass of Home”
I was going my afternoon ritual of surfing though YouTube this afternoon, and just happened upon a clip from a U.K. TV station about Tom Jones on the occasion of his 80th birthday (two months ago...
Revisiting the old mill pond of my youth
This is a follow-up entry to my previous posting on memory, wherein I dug far back into my online journal archives, as well as my old print journals, to retrieve writing on this most fascinating ...
Gazing into the deep pool of memory
It’s puzzling how one remembers many of the things that of happened to them in the past. It is even more strange how some of these things are so small and unimportant. Yet, you seem to want to...
The Sixties and the Songs of Our Lives
I have a theory about getting old. First you’re a teenager, and then you’re in your 20s feeling big. Then things get a bit blurry, and the next thing you know you’re 70 and wondering where it...
When I was taking of care of Mom as her dementia and physical infirmity grew worse year by year, I had a number of shields that, looking back now, protected me from succumbing to depression and d...
Queen of the Southern Garden
It’s July 18, but there’s more than a calendar date to tell me the middle of summer is here with all its furnace-like heat and humidity. There are also summer’s uniquely timeless and mood-evokin...
No one is safe from Covid-19
…Worst of all, too many Americans seem not to understand that the novel coronavirus is still very much with the U.S. - and people are dying every day because too many people are ignoring the simp...
In the afternoons lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, sitting on the big sofa in the den in a quiet empty house day after day. My thoughts constantly keep coming back to the Covid crisis,...
To teach is to unlock the doors to knowledge and wisdom
Once upon a time in a land not so far away, I was an English teacher, and I loved it. It didn’t last long, that career I thought I might have, but I spent three of the best years of my life i...
White peacock
Just when the news about the pandemic, the economy, and the sad state of our country keep getting worse and worse, someone sends me something to remind me of the truly spectacular and wondrous ...
Caregiving’s ultimate reward
Last year, the actor Rob Lowe wrote an impassioned opinion piece in USA Today about the urgent need to assist the millions of Americans who are caregivers for loved ones, a third of whom do it al...
Maps of the known and unknown
My fascination with maps goes back a very long time. In fact, I can trace the exact year — it was 1959, and we lived in a suburb of New Orleans in a small two-bedroom apartment. I was nine year...
Stages of grief — loneliness
I get up late. I have my bowl of oatmeal, fruit, orange juice and coffee. Strong coffee. I need it. I’m sitting on the sofa in the den, the same sofa Mom spent all her waking hours on in her ...
Book Description
Short essays from the interior of my life.
