Lots of Bits

The dome at the Minnesota State Capitol 

It's been a long several days. I started penning this out Friday night in our hotel room in Rochester, Minnesota (yes, the Emerald City). Over the weekend I added more bits. It is now Tuesday evening and I am finishing this back home in Ohio.

We spent more time than usual in Minnesota because of the way my Mayo appointments fell. The longer time, encompassing a weekend, allowed for some great moments.

So, I have lots of bits.

You cannot drive this distance (660 miles one way) without gas prices hitting you in the face, especially as we skirted around Chicago. Regular gas is how much? We did fine, as we have done this jaunt so many times we know not to fill up in Chicago or, indeed, Illinois at all, but my heart hurt for people who live there and have no choice.

At my blood draw, the nurse, the assistant, and I talked money: the price of gasoline, the price of groceries, the expenses of everyday life. The nurse's husband was coming home from being away on the family farm (it's harvest time) and she said that in his phone calls home he was just stunned with the diesel costs, even though he knew they'd be high.

I walked a lot on Saturday morning before we headed north to the Twin Cities for a full day. There is a massive Mayo expansion going on and even as a pedestrian, I at times had to thread my way very deliberately to avoid street and sidewalk closures. Warren and I walked Sunday and ran into more of the same.

The saddest thing I saw in Rochester on my limited walks? Almost all of the Little Free Libraries that I have stopped at over the years are empty. 

We spent most of Saturday in or near the Twin Cities. We had an early lunch with a blogger friend, Sandy, who blogs as Sam at Sam Squared. You ever "know" someone, then get to meet them in real life and the real person is even warmer, funnier, more thoughtful? That was Sandy and we had a great lunch. We then headed to the Minnesota Capitol Building (Warren and I both enjoy touring capitol buildings) for a great tour where I think I walked up and down at least 5000 stairs (okay, okay, 4999), then headed to the Minneapolis side of the Twins to see longtime dear friends Tom and Tani before heading back to Rochester.

Plans to meet up with family on Sunday in a nearby community did not pan out, so we hung out in Rochester, walking, reading, and such. I saw my wonderful oncologist late Monday morning, then we barreled back to Ohio, arriving a little bit after 1:00 a.m. this morning.

Yeah, it was a lot. And yeah, I'm tired. 

I spent a lot of Sunday afternoon rereading various years of my blog. (I had brought along Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier but finished it Sunday midday). As I read, I was a bit taken aback at how much I've let go of (activities) and how even THAT MANY YEARS AGO I was dealing with health issues, exhaustion, and yes, my old friend depression. Not to mention overcrowded schedules. Yes, sometimes this household still has full days, but I am so grateful that I can afford not to work. 

I have spent the day catching up: laundry, sorting receipts, catching up. Our county fair is this week and today is Senior Day (free admission for someone in my age bracket). I'd hoped that we'd head over late afternoon and see the sights and enjoy some fair food. But it has rained all weekend and turned the fairgrounds into a muddy mess, to quote my friend Cindy, who is exhibiting. Muddy fairgrounds, damp chill weather, and my being tired make for a combination that shouts "Stay home!" So we are. There is bean soup on the stove, I'm about to go make some cornbread, and life is good.

On the Far Side of Summer

We are in the last few weeks of summer and I am conscious of the changes. Our weather has (most blessedly) started cooling. Yes, we have had a lot of rain, but our community did not get the brutal rains, tornadoes, and flooding that Indiana, parts of Ohio (including Columbus 25 miles south of us), and Kentucky did.

The days are getting shorter. I don't notice the change from day to day, but I can tell it week by week. As I pen this out Tuesday night, it is already dark at 8:40 p.m. and probably was dark earlier than that. I just did not notice. 

No surprise given the time of year, there has been a lot going on on the garden. Tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes. In an experiment for the winter, I slow-roasted trays of tomato slices (brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with herbs and kosher salt), packing them in containers to freeze. My hope is to be able to pull them out this winter, thaw them slightly, and put them on a homemade pizza.

There are lots and lots of peppers to do...something with.

Last week Warren and I did a second basil cutting. We had done one back in mid-July that I turned into pesto: some for our freezer, some for friends. Some five weeks after the first, let's just say there was a lot of basil. I grow several types (and pay no attention to what types I plant) so the cut collection was wildly varied in size of leaves, texture of leaves, and color of leaves. Several has large curly leaves, like a garden fairy had gotten to them with a crimping iron. I made more pesto with about half of it on Sunday. On Tuesday, I washed and de-stemmed and dried the rest of it, then very slow-baked the individual leaves for a fresh jar of dried basil for cooking.

Crumbling the dried leaves was an olfactory gift.

As for the pesto, I had in mind where it would head. The next door neighbors on the south had been away on an extended trip and were coming home Monday night. They both love my pesto. I was cat-sitting for them while they were away, so on the last evening of my cat duties, I slipped a small container of fresh pesto in their fridge to welcome them back.

A larger container went to our next door neighbors on the north side, Adam and Maura and their girls, Alice and Margaux. Our two households share lots back and forth—baked goods, vegetables, pesto, fruit, books, laughter, and more. Alice and Margaux, Alice just shy of 11 and Margaux 7, are already skilled bakers and had brought over on Saturday some to-die-for homemade cinnamon rolls. Later on Sunday Margaux and Maura delivered some sweet corn as both homes look for farm stands with it this time of year. 

When I carried the container of pesto next door, Margaux, playing outside with another neighbor, jumped up. "Is that the pesto?!" She is a huge pesto fan.

Yep, that's the pesto. I hope she shared.

There was something else I did with the pesto this Sunday—something long overdue. I shared two small containers with our neighbors who live directly across the street from us. We are all on a smiling and waving basis (and remember, I have lived in this house now for almost 18 years) but seeing Joan out that morning made me walk across and ask if they would like some pesto.

Joan had heard of pesto, but had not had it before. We talked about it, and Ed, her husband, joined us. (Warren was busy loading steel, so he was not in on the conversation.) We talked about their house, the torrential rains several days ago and the water damage, about cooking (Ed is the head cook of the two), about this and that. They told me what they were cooking that night; it sounded like a perfect match with the pesto. Then Joan said "I'd love to share what we're making with you and Warren. Would that be okay?"

Oh yes.

So mid-afternoon I walked the pesto over to their house. In the early evening, Joan knocked on our door with two servings of their main dish: roasted chicken breast/tomato/spinach/onion. We had already husked some of the sweet corn that had arrived earlier in the afternoon. The sweet corn delivery had also included two freshly baked blueberry muffins (I'm telling you: the girls bake a lot!), so we had quite a feast, finishing the dessert muffins on our front porch. Ed and Joan were arriving home from walking their dog, and we all four waved and called out appreciation for the shared food.

As we savored the muffins, I started laughing.

"This meal was entirely free. How's that for being frugal?"

The meal was wonderful.The sense of community, of connecting with others, was the special sauce, the deluxe icing, that made it even better.

A Mid-August Garden Report

Let's face it: I have not been a good gardener this year.

At all.

I have occasionally weeded the garden. Very occasionally. During the heat dome and the heat waves (hot but not a heat dome), I kinda sorta kept it watered. In fact, my dear husband has been more attentive to watering and weeding it than I have this year. (And his pet project is deadheading the marigolds that march around the border, so Warren gets credit for that too.)

But, as I have noted more than once over the years, plants tend to know what to do, regardless of my actions. 

There are tomatoes:

And peppers:

There have been so many peppers so far that, as I did last summer and the summer before, I made pepper-onion relish; hot packed so we can enjoy it through the winter. There was one casualty during the hot bath (I couldn't figure out why there was suddenly bits of chopped onions and peppers in the bath: had a lid come off? Nope!):

but everything else came through with flying colors:

The beautiful cabbage head that leads off this post? Coleslaw for supper tonight. (And for several more days to come, of course.) Not unlike last summer and fall, when I found great satisfaction and focus in performing little things, concentrating on making the slaw today was most satisfying. 

There are more (many, many more) tomatoes to come, and still quite a few peppers as well. The basil is about ready for a second picking; I may make more pesto or I may dry the leave for cooking herbs or both. After that, I will let the basil go to flower so the bees can enjoy the fragrant bed. Besides, given my trying to get my internal rhythms reset, I could totally use some bee therapy.

Some bee therapy? Who am I kidding? I could use a lot (A. Lot.) of bee therapy. It is interesting just now, as I looked back to catch the link to last year's post, that last October I was—guess what?—dealing with some of the very same issues that I am struggling with now. I'll just leave that on the table for now. 

I am grateful that the garden decided to do what it does best: grow. And produce food for our table (and other tables too) and food for my soul. If that's not a win, I don't know what is. 

Another Garden Update

The first one: not great.

It is hot. We are entering (maybe in already?) another heat dome—not as vicious as the one at the end of June (at least not yet) but still nothing to mess with. And, of course, I hate heat. 

BUT to keep my mind off the heat, here is a garden update!

The first cherry tomato, at the top of this post, was an ehhhh. Ripe but not ripe, A little hard. A little lacking. But a few days later the first Early Girl came in (which I ate promptly) and now I have THREE of them waiting to be enjoyed! (And remember, I am the only person in this household who eats fresh tomatoes.)

Yum! 

On the other side of the garden, the basil, after its weedy start, was ready to pick. So yesterday morning, while it was still cool, I got out there with shears and cut most of it, filling a huge pan. I stuffed it into a garbage bag, put it in the refrigerator, and this morning I turned my attention to making the first pesto of 2026.

Just waiting for me to dive in

This photo shows my work area before the pesto making commenced. Nice, neat, clean. The hammer? That's to smash (okay, hit firmly) garlic so I can get the skin off and throw it into the food processor. No wasting time with a garlic press for me! 

Ready to go!

I did not take a photo of my work area after I finished the pesto, but trust me, it was not nice, it was not neat.

But there IS pesto!

As I told Warren and then shared with my friend David, it was harder making the pesto this year. Age does take its toll, and my "real" age is more than the 70 years shown on my birth certificate. But I made it to the other side. Tonight I will put the pesto into containers, carry some to our neighbors on both sides, and then sit down and smile.

And maybe, just maybe, enjoy one of those tomatoes! 

Pesto! 

An Early July Garden Update

The tiger lilies are just starting to bloom

Well, let's just say the news is mixed. Not bad, mind you, just mixed.

Like many of the midwestern and eastern states, we had a massive heat dome last week. High temperatures here (in the mid to upper 90s) and higher heat index numbers—102, 105—those kind of numbers. For the garden, that meant watering it at, oh, 6:00 a.m. or so before the heat got too intense to be outside. 

Despite that battering, the garden came through. My biggest surprise is that the lettuce bed did not throw its hands up and surrender. That day is coming, but for now this household and our neighbors are still eating fresh lettuce.

From an earlier picking

We've had a few peppers already too.

The first tomato is almost ready to pick. (The rest are lagging behind.)

And the zinnias are starting to open up too. 

Trust me, there are more. 

The biggest obstacle with the garden this year? Yours truly. While never a strong weeder, this year I am downright pathetic. The basil has suffered the most from the neglect, although I did get enough weeded out that the basil pushed up and over the weeds. They have done well enough that I can probably make the first batch of pesto.

And an update on that earlier update: the basil seeds that I bought and sowed? Warren did not know I had sowed a small bed, saw pigweed coming up in that area, and hacked the "new" basil bed up to get rid of the weeds. Those seeds never had a chance. 

I almost hesitate to write this, but might as well throw it out here: gardening this year from my viewpoint has been difficult. Not just the weeding: everything. I have even had the heretical thought that next year, we have even a smaller garden. Fewer tomatoes (this year there were 5), fewer peppers (this year there were 14). I know, I know. It is only July. And some (many?) of the physical challenges I am dealing with this spring/summer may improve or even resolve.

Time will tell, both for me and for this year's garden. Here's to more tomatoes! 

The Rest of the Story

A work in progress

Last week, I gave an update of our vegetable garden and showed the ignored and neglected basil bed. After embarrassing myself by admitting my lack of attention, I decided I needed to address the issue head on.

So I did.

Over the weekend, I waded into the basil (well, I sat on my gardening seat and bent over) and started pulling out weeds.

Did I get every weed out? No? Did I make progress? You bet. Is the basil grateful? Absolutely. Some of the seedlings, freed from their weedy caverns, grew overnight!

Look at me! 

It was clear that a sizable portion of the seeds I had sown did not germinate or, more likely, were smothered before they could get up past the soil. Too dark, too weedy. Fortunately, a local nursery still has seed packets and I was able to find some basil packs among the dwindling stock.

Heading soon into the garden

So all is not lost and I hope there will be a good basil crop this year. I still have more weeding to do to get the bed in better shape and I intend to follow through. After all, I am looking forward to bees in the basil and bee therapy later this summer! 

Many of us in my age bracket (i.e., old) remember legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, who, in addition to his news broadcasts, also had a weekday radio show, "The Rest of the Story." Harvey would tell a story about a historical event or individual that everyone thought they knew. He'd introduce and set the stage at the start of the broadcast, then at the end tell listeners the quirky twist or surprise facts that he had dug out. His tagline was "And now you know...the rest of the story."

I'm no Paul Harvey. But I thought the basil situation deserved an update. And now you indeed know the rest of the story. 

What the Garden Looks Like After One Month

Two of three deck planters, the largest not in the photo! 

Back in mid-May, I wrote about how Warren and I had labored to get our basic vegetable garden in and done. After that post, we spent another weekend putting together the Big Flower Pots that we set out on the deck. They are all annuals; we do for color and variety. 

And that is about it.

I wrote last year about giving up the Hej Garden in the rear of the property and how we both decided it was okay to let it go.We made some similar decisions this year about extra "stuff" we had on hand, ranging from more tomato cages than I will ever use in my life again to more (MORE) planters ranging from medium small to BIG. Warren and I reached agreement very quickly: let them go. So they ended up on our curb—the cages on a Saturday, the planters the next day—and guess what? They went to new homes in no time!

So what do we have?

This:

Our vegetable garden, June 2026

The peppers, cabbage, and tomatoes are coming on. With luck, I might have a tomato by end of the month. Time will tell.

Maybe?

The lettuce, in the lower lefthand corner of the garden, came on like gangbusters and I picked some this morning to add to our salads later today. We are having a series of hot days, so I do not know how much longer the lettuce will last. I told my neighbor to please pick some for her and her husband to enjoy.

Salad! 

The basil is struggling to get through the weeds. Yes, I know; I should have been WEEDING. I have decided that if I go out very early in the morning with my gardening stool and a fork (yes, a fork, as in "out of our silverware drawer"), I may be able to knock down the weeds and give the basil a chance.

Yes, there is basil in that mess! 

Stay tuned on that one.

And finally, in a nod to our bees and pollinators, I am delighted to see that the milkweed I curate (I say "curate" because our yard is not a butterfly garden and I limit the milkweed I let grow to maturity) has begun blooming. No bees in this photo, but I have seen them burrowing headfirst into the blooms already.

Milkweed blossoming

While I was visiting my dad earlier today. one of the workers and I talked about gardening: what did I grow? I told her, then focused on the basil, explaining that I had not weeded but needed to do so, because I make a lot (A. Lot.) of pesto in the late summer. I then told her how I let the basil go to flower for the bees, adding that last year I decided one of the best things I could do for myself was sit and listen to them, my own bee therapy. She nodded approvingly. 

"We could all use that, I think," she said. 

Indeed we could. 

Losing the Inches

I sat down last night, pen and legal pad in hand, and wrote out this post. Originally, it was titled "Inch Fourteen: Inching Along," and I started out by writing about thinking of titling it "Losing the Inches," explaining that I am not talking about dieting but about abandoning my announcement back in early March to write a post, an inch so to speak, a week. I penned out most of it, then went to sleep, knowing I would get up this morning and turn to my keyboard.

When I woke up this morning, I thought, "I need that original title. And my original story," So I sat back down earlier this morning (it's now 8:30 a.m.), added some lines, and here we are.

Good morning!

First things first: I am not turning my back on writing. No, no, no. I am turning my back on the framework of weekly inches.

Why? Because I want to write more than once a week.

Well, duh, April, then write more than once a week. Yes, I know. I think I just felt boxed in with the notion of one inch a week. How boxed in? Look at my "off schedule" post, titled "Inch Eleven and a Half," so titled because I thought I was breaking the rules. Whose rules? My own rules. (Which of course brings to mind that beautiful moment in the movie, "Field of Dreams," where James Earl Ray says to Kevin Costner, "There are rules here? Oh no, there are no rules here.")

There are no rules here. 

So why the change? After all my complaining and whining and kicking my toe against an imaginary brick wall (with my foot issues, no way I am kicking a real brick wall!), I have felt something shift in me where I suddenly feel I can write more.

Can? 

I want to write more.

So my new approach is telling myself to write at least one post a week, and let everything else flow from there. 

I have just started reading The Glorians by Terry Tempest Williams. I have admired her writing and thoughts for a long time, and this is no exception. Subtitled Visitations From the Holy Ordinary, Williams reminds the reader that "Holy," however one defines it, is as close as an ant carrying a petal across her deck.

Or a bee in the spiderwort. 

Let me see what summer brings.

Inch Thirteen: Old Friends

Getting soft-serve ice cream at the local Dairy Depot

Old friends, literally and figuratively. 

Katrina and I were matched 52 summers ago as freshman roommates at the University of Chicago. Margaret Perry, the member of the administration who made roommate matches, was a friend of Katrina's mother, June. Katrina remembers that Margaret told June that she had made a very good match for her daughter,

Understatement.

Katrina and I corresponded over the summer to get to know one another better. We exchanged letters and bits of information. I was recovering from a knee injury and I know I alarmed her (she told me this years later) when I said I would be arriving with a bucket and loose weights to do the mandated physical therapy of lifting the bucket several times a day with my leg extended. (Yes, I arrived with the bucket and loose weights. No, I did not continue the therapy.) I was intimidated not by anything she shared with me, but by the older student helping the freshmen find their rooms when she said to me, "Oh! Your roommate is already here! She is tall and has gorgeous long blonde hair!"

Gorgeous blonde hair. Okay.

Katrina was tall. And she did have gorgeous long blonde hair. But even more important, she had a great sense of humor and an open heart and a welcoming smile.

52 years.

Over those years, we have stayed close despite our lives spiraling in sometimes very different directions, staying connected through letters mailed back and forth. We even now rarely if ever text, email, or talk on the phone. But the letters and postcards have flowed back and forth, east to west, north to south, this way and that way, for 52 years.

But not this week. Oh no, not this week.

Not this week because Katrina and her husband Ed were in Cincinnati for a family wedding last weekend. When Katrina let me know she was coming to Cincinnati and asked whether I thought we could meet up somewhere in between here and there, I let her know she was about two and a half hours away. Her immediate response was "I'm coming!"

Katrina arrived Sunday (her husband flew back to Miami on Sunday). She is staying into tomorrow, so she will get to watch and help and see our monthly Justice Bus in action. And during this precious week, we have talked and talked and talked and talked.

What a gift.

On the door of my study is a quote attributed to Aristotle: "Without friends, no one would choose to live though he had all other goods."

That about sums it up. Here's to 52 years of friendship, my friend! 

Inch Twelve: On Writing, On Time

Why this photo (one of my own)? Just because I like it! 

There have recently been some changes in the online writing world with some bloggers stepping away. temporarily or otherwise, and some others changing platforms and formats. Writer John Patrick Weiss, whose works I have been reading for several years, recently announced that he was moving his blog off of Substack, which if memory serves me, he had moved to from Medium before that, because he now feels that Substack is "more like social media than a home" for his writing. There are other bloggers I have followed whose sites have become increasingly bogged down with ads, making it harder to scroll through their words. I get having ads to help garner some income; I regret how much it interferes with the real product: the writing. 

In recently rereading some of my older posts, I came across an entry from 2019, in which I noted that the writer of the blog Plough Monday, was closing it because he wanted to redirect his writing efforts to publication. I go on in my post, noting that I had been blogging since 2009, to wonder aloud about my own writing (or the lack thereof). And here I am seven years later, still not giving my "serious" writing enough time or focus. Heck, I wasn't even giving this blog that much time or focus. Although, as I write that, I think, defiantly, "hey, THIS is also serious writing!" 

I have written repeatedly about the time crunch around here, about feeling as if I am shortchanging myself because of other "things" (stretch that word as wide as you wish) that take time and attention. Last week, we had a rocket trip to Mayo, at which yet again Mayo Clinic staff demonstrated that the core vision of the Mayo brothers—"the needs of the patient come first"—is indeed woven into the fabric of that institution and not just words to be mouthed routinely. We saw longtime friends in Chicago, we traveled blue highways to reach a client of Warren's in Iowa, and our last day, encompassing my medical visit (I am stable) and the drive back home, was roughly 19 hours. Let's just say that it drove home (no pun intended) the point that I am indeed 70 and cross-country road trips are a lot harder now than even a decade ago. 

I will confess, however, that I have been sounding this note of not enough time, not enough taking care of my own needs, being on overload—whatever and however I phrase it—has also been a thread through this blog since, well, probably since the beginning. That tells me a lot right there about my own sometimes conscious, more often unconscious (or at least subconscious) tendency to heap far more on my plate than is good for me. (I know, something else to work on!) 

And now, to tie it back to where this started, I am trying to write more, starting with the weekly "Inch" post. (I posted one last Saturday, designating it a half inch. And yes, there is an update to that story. Stay tuned!) And I am trying to spend more time looking through the lens of a camera, be it my Canon or my phone. (I share my photography on Instagram; you can find me @tovadawn.) To quote my good friend and photography companion, Brandon, the "very best camera ever is the one you have with you. Every single time." He's right. (And if you want to see his stunning work, you can find him on Instagram @framesandgrainphotgraphy.) For me, photography is another way to write, to think through my life and my thoughts, and to try to capture them, written or otherwise.

We are on the cusp of summer. Gardening, writing, photography, the Justice Bus: let's see what summer holds. 

Inch Ten: The 2026 Garden Season Begins

How about a pot of tomatoes? 

And what a beginning it was!

Between all the "stuff" going on around here (which I have described from time to time) and concerts and visitors and anything else we had going on, I didn't have a whole lot of bandwidth for gardening. Yes, I'd bought some seeds, yes, we'd gone out to our very favorite locally owned farm center (Miller's Country Gardens) and bought pepper, tomato, and red cabbage starts several days back, but...yeah. That was about all the farther we had gotten, with the exception of Warren tilling the kitchen garden, the 10 x 16 plot that will be THE garden this year. 

The plants from Miller's waiting for their time

Last weekend Warren gently nudged me. "Maybe this is a good weekend to get the garden going."

Yeah, it probably was. And so we did, first going to our local Meijer for potting soil (more for flower pots, but needed all the same) and compost. 

And marigolds, of course, for bordering the garden.

In keeping with discoveries (and lessons learned) of years past, I did NOT indulge in tomatoes. Three Early Girl and two Husky Cherries, one of which is in a pot. In they went, nice and quiet.

Tomatoes in (except for the pot; you can see it above)

The peppers and cabbages followed suit. Three cabbages, all in a row; 13 peppers, all sweet. Warren then raked off a bed for lettuce on the far side, and one for basil. These are on the left side as you look at the photo below.

Saturday's efforts

The very back of the garden, with a metal pole temporarily marking the area, we (I) reserved for flowers: zinnias and bee/pollinator mixes. But after Saturday's efforts, I looked at Warren and said, "I can't do anything more today."

And I couldn't. I was exhausted. I was feeling every minute of 70 years old and then some. I was sad a bit about that, but also realistic. Yeah, I'm 70 chronologically, but closer to my early 80s physiologically thanks to 22 years of cancer. And yes, that makes me disabled to boot! 

How disabled? I got those plants in using a gardening stool to sit on, because kneeling or bending over 20 times was 20 times too many.

That being said, I finished it off in fine style on Sunday. 40 marigolds planted along the border, and the flower seeds hand-sown with joy. Again, I had to sit on the gardening stool to get those marigolds in, but it was with great pleasure I tamped No. 40 down and announced "Done!" 

Warren and I did some more yard-related work on Sunday, which resulted in a new holly bush being planted in the front of the house (a sentimental favorite for Warren; the one that died over the winter had been planted by his mother, Ellen, decades ago). Both of us hit Sunday early evening worn out but satisfied. 

There are still seeds, including a hefty amount of cosmos seeds I collected last fall. We will get the cosmos broadcast; Warren wants to move them to a backyard flower bed where we can see their brilliant colors easily from the house. As for the other seeds...well, they may wait until next year's garden.

But the vegetable garden is in. The plants look happy and are standing up straight. Yes, there is more work to be done in the other flower/plant beds, but the vegetable garden is in.

And that is enough for now! 

Waiting to grow

Inch Nine: Music To My Ears

"Jupiter" at the Hannover Proms 2014

As I have written about a lot over the last several weeks (months?), I have a lot on my plate. A lot? At times, it is as if food is dropping off my plate onto the floor, while a smiling server ladles on more food. That being stated, I think I am doing better at taking time—not as much as I need and never as much as I want—for me me me.

One way I am doing this is that I have added a short (and very simple) yoga routine to my mornings and have added a longer (and still very simple) tai chi routine to my evenings. The morning yoga helps me pull myself together before diving into my day, and the evening tai chi (which I absolutely love and will never be able to thank my friend Tani enough for suggesting it) helps me put the day behind me. 

Another way I let go? I listen to "Jupiter" from Gustav Holst's work, The Planets. But I just don't listen to the piece; I watch it on YouTube. And, to be more precise, I watch/listen to one specific performance of it: the 2014 (yes, a lifetime ago) performance by the NDR Radiophilharmonie, conducted by Andrew Manze. 

Yes, I know, I know. There are lots of recordings of "Jupiter" out there, including by some Big Names. But this is the one I return to daily at least once, sometimes more. I love watching the musicians lean into the music; I love seeing Manze's sheer joy on the podium. 

Listening to this helps center me. I play it in my head when I walk. I play it in my head when I go to bed. It is playing in my head right now as I type these words.

For a household where one of us has made and continues to make a living in music for 50 years, we don't have a lot of music playing. If Warren is preparing for a concert, he will listen to the works while studying his score, and when he was preparing his classes, he would listen to short excerpts of this or that, but otherwise, he does not listen to music. And I never listened to a lot of music myself. So for me to listen to "Jupiter" repeatedly has been a seismic shift in the home. 

Maybe because of my listening to Jupiter, maybe because of the weight of some of the days, I have let a little bit more music into my ears and into my life. What, you ask? About anything that David Byrne just performed at Coachella (excellent music for peeling and dicing a boatload of apples last week) and "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. Why those selections? Byrne is because I always liked Talking Heads and, after seeing a brief reference to Byrne's Coachella performance, I had to try one song. And then another. And then another. And Queen? Queen is because way back in my past, another lifetime ago, I used to write a monthly article for our then local paper on downtown architecture. I was in private practice, I was supporting two households, I was (no surprise) overextended on too many fronts, and often the only time I had to write (my articles ran 2200+ words) was after 11:00 p.m. Never (NEVER) a night owl, but with too much on my plate (hmmn, that sounds familiar) to get up early to write, I would put on headphones, pop in and turn up Queen's Greatest Hits (recommended by my son Ben), and crank out the article. Those songs, while probably doing significant damage to my hearing, were the stimulant I needed. Those tunes are undoubtedly hardwired into my memory and something last week triggered "Don't Stop Me Now." I found it, I listened to it, and I am now pulling it up every now and then.

"Jupiter," Byrne, and Queen. Music to my ears, indeed. 

Inch Eight: Poetry Month and a G.O.A.T.

One of my Sandburg books; yes, I own others

Warren has been teaching Music Appreciation for Non-Music Majors at Ohio Wesleyan this past year; the last class was yesterday. He has enjoyed it immensely and has already been asked back to teach again next year. And, as a true teacher who understands that students may teach the teacher, Warren has learned much from his young students. One of the things he learned this semester was G.O.A.T. when one student called Mozart a G.O.A.T. 

Warren was baffled. "Mozart is a goat?," he asked, thinking of the barnyard animal. "No!" the student replied, and then explained the acronym. (Warren loved it and then incorporated it into his slides: "Beethoven: Another G.O.A.T." and (my favorite): "Rite of Spring: A G.R.O.A.T.") (The R stands for "Riot.")

With a nod to Warren's experience, I am paying homage to a poet I consider a G.O.A.T. as we close out National Poetry Month. (In looking back, I realize I used to give much more writing time and depth to National Poetry Month; I have unintentionally left it by the wayside.)

My G.O.A.T. in poetry? Carl Sandburg. Sandburg was a contemporary of Robert Frost (no small poet there either) and the two of them, more on Frost's side than Sandburg's, had a running competition throughout their careers. Frost achieved four Pulitzers, all for poetry, and remains the only poet to do so, but Sandburg irked him by, in addition to winning two for poetry, by winning one for his four-volume history, Lincoln: The War Years. 

Me? I love Sandburg for his voice. I love him for seeing and capturing this country in his words. The Lincoln work is monumental. His poetry is monumental. I even own (newly acquired from a Little Free Library in our community) Rootabaga Stories, his creation and telling of American fairy tales instead of retelling European ones.

An amazing LFL find! 

We have been to Sandburg's grave in 2020; his ashes are under a rock at his childhood home in Galesburg, Illinois. And, as I noted in a long ago blog, even though I knew Sandburg had died in 1967, I burst into tears when I finished the Penelope Niven biography of him back in 2014. 

Sandburg and Frost are part of the deep past. Given changes in curriculum nationwide, I would be stunned if either is still read in high school. (I wrote in 2014 about the 2007 vandalization of Frost's home by teens and none of them knowing who Frost was.) And I understand that: poetry does not stand still and there have been decades of great poets since their era. But I also understand that when poetry is cut to the bare bone in curricula, we all are poorer. 

But I am old enough that I know who those poets are and what they gave us. And so here's to Carl Sandburg—okay, and Robert Frost too—for giving us the poetry that stirred them to stir us. 

And that is a good thing to remember—the power of poetry to stir us—as we close out National Poetry Month. 

Inch Two: A Whole Lot of Spillage

All over the floor

Starting with my sewing box. I set it down on the edge of the  coffee table, ready to mend a pocket, pretty sure it was secure.

Not.

And then there was the routine blood draw yesterday at my doctor's office. The needle went in smoothly (I have great veins), Anthony, the nurse, attached the tube to draw the blood, and...the blood, my blood, went spilling out. All over my arm, down on the armrest, all over his glove. 

Anthony quickly grabbed a gauze pad and clamped it on the puncture to stop the flood. He then stared at the spillage.

"I've never seen that happen before," he said, still staring.

Me neither. It wasn't him, it wasn't the needle, it was just my blood deciding it had its own plan.

Spillage seems to be the theme this week.

This is Concert Week, which always makes for a full schedule around here. Even without Warren being the Executive Director (a decision for which I am daily, sometimes hourly, grateful), there is still a lot with moving in the timpani and other percussion equipment (today), rehearsals (tonight, Friday night, Saturday morning), the concert (Sunday afternoon), breaking down the section after the concert, and move-out (Monday). In short, a lot going on. Not to mention his business, his teaching, the national composing consortium he is leading, and...and...and...

Yeah. His time is spilled all over the place.

As for me. things are much better on the Dad front: he is out of rehab and back in his apartment, walking with steadier and firmer steps by the day. That being said, there are still more extra tasks than usual and, no surprise, they fall on me.  I am still running on fumes way too much. 

An example? The other day, walking home from my dad's apartment (a whopping .86 miles, just to put it in perspective), I found myself wishing for the first time ever that I had a car. Forget a room of one's own (sorry, Virginia Woolf). I just wanted a car of one's own—so much so that it said it out loud as I trudged along.

Yesterday was the 17th anniversary of my starting this blog. I think (I hope) it remains true to its title: small moments. With each passing day, I find myself seeking out and finding comfort in such small moments, even if it's just putting away the dry dishes. (We still wash and dry dishes by hand; they then set for a bit on the table.)

In a few weeks, I will turn 70. That is an age I never expected to reach, given my incurable cancer of the last 21+ years, not to mention the non-cancer hospitalizations of 2023 and 2025. (My goal this year? No hospitalizations in 2026.) And yet, I am still here. 

My sewing box that spilled all over? I picked it up and put it back to rights. My blood that spilled all over? Anthony got it all mopped up. The wish for a car that spilled out of my mouth? It fizzled out before I reached home. The crunches on my/our schedules? They will play out (no pun intended on the Symphony front). 

My small moments? I hope they continue to come and I continue to cherish them for what they are: bits of joy, bits of light. 

Starting From Scratch

Even the houseplants are out of sync this winter

Well, not quite. How about starting from almost scratch?

For many reasons, some of them significant, I have been pretty quiet on the blogging front. Forget my not posting; hell, I am weeks (still) behind on reading the blogs I regularly follow. The events and issues of the last several months have commandeered my time, my concentration, my own tasks—you fill in the blank. And, to be clear, I am not talking about the national and international scenes (horrific though they are): I am talking about family/personal events and issues.

And I have missed my other life: my personal time, my time with my dear Warren, my ability to focus on a task or a project. I have missed writing. I have missed taking photos. I have missed...me.

But after snuffling around (yeah, I had a major pity party a few days ago; that's a pretty rare thing for me) and staring into space way too much, I remembered that I had a solution in my back pocket to get back into my own blogging. Back in 2014, I wrote about Anne Lamott and a exercise she talked about in her book Bird By Bird. She kept (maybe still does) a one-inch square frame on her writing desk. Why? 

"It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being." 

Using that quote as an inspiration, I wrote a figurative square inch a week for the next 180 weeks. 

180 weeks: that's over three years. Whoa. 

So I am going to try the one square inch method to see if that will help jumpstart my writing again. 

Here's hoping. 

Reading Over the Decades

February has been a hard month so far both on the weather front and on the family front. As I wrote in late January, we were hit with snow and way cold temperatures. And while I rejoiced over being able to walk again in early February, between the remaining icy mounds and then the family matter, I did not walk from February 5 until the 12th, causing me to write where I keep track of my time/distance: FINALLY—A WALK! (Frankly, I'm surprised I only gave that note one exclamation point.)

The family matter was that on the 8th, while making his bed in his apartment, my dad caught his foot in the blankets he'd placed on the floor and went down, breaking his left femur in the fall. If you have to break a leg, Dad did it in the best possible way: one clean, sharp break in his upper femur and not his hip. Surgery was the next day, and a few days later he was released to the Rehab Center at the complex he lives at: all good. Assuming all goes well, he has several weeks of rehab ahead of him before he regains independent mobility (he uses a rollator) and moves back into his apartment. But, as the adult child in the area, I spent most of last week at the hospital by myself or with my sister-in-law Kate, and have been at Rehab every day since then while Dad gets acclimated and settled in. Let's just say a lot (A. Lot.) of my last 8 days has been away from home. I am grateful I still have a father (he will be 93 this August) and do not resent the time one bit. I am also exhausted. 

So while I have been so occupied, other things have gone by the wayside. I was starting to do more photography, and that got sidelined. My reading has been hit and miss, to say the least, both reading blogs (Laurie! Kim! Sam!) of friends and books. And my writing, which I really, really want to delve back into, took a huge hit.

I'm tired right now. And there are chores to do. But by golly, this post has been circling in my head for DAYS and I am going to get it done and posted! 

In recent months, I reread the two books shown above: My name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. And out of the gate, I will say both of those books read way different at age 70 (well, almost 70!) than they did when I first read them in my teens. 

Like many younger people, I first read All Quiet when I was high school. A. W. Wheen was the original translator and the version I just read was his translation. (Maybe it is THE English translation.) I think I read it again in my 20s, but then did not pick it up until this winter when it popped up in a Little Free Library.

The cover says "THE GREATEST WAR NOVEL OF ALL TIME." Perhaps the version I read decades ago did too, but I don't remember reading it and thinking that. Good? Sure. The greatest? I don't know if I thought that then or not. 

But I sure do now. At my age, with way more life in the rearview mirror, I am stunned at how Remarque paints the absolute meaninglessness and hopelessness of war. And maybe because I was just finishing the Auden book, in which the author paints a vivid picture of how, for the English, World War I was the war that forever defined England, I was more acutely aware of what that war meant to those who fought in it and those who would have fought had it not ended. As I shared with a friend after reading the Auden, I now realize why World War I was the defining war for my beloved Grandmother Skatzes, despite her sons and grandsons fighting in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

And the last lines are heartbreaking and beautiful: 

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was quiet and still on the whole front that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Wester Front. 

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come. 

And then there's Asher Lev. As I have mentioned before (and more than one time), Asher Lev was put into my hands by one of my English teachers in high school, wanting to make sure I did not stop writing the poetry I wanted to write rather than write "nice" poems. Unbeknownst to her, she kicked open the door to Judaism to me, a comment I made at her memorial service this fall, causing her very devout Christian younger daughter (who I'd been in school with in our teen years) to whirl around in the front pew to stare at me. 

Chaim Potok helped shape my beliefs and spiritual leanings, and truly his memory is blessed. Asher Lev is where it all started. Rereading it now in these times, especially with the sharp rise of antisemitism in this country, impacted me even more. 

I last read Asher Lev in 2018, apparently. Not as long a gap as All Quiet, but long enough. But still, it reads way different at my age than it did before (and that 2018 read may have been a quick read). This time, the conflict that Asher works through as he pursues his artistic calling, in direct conflict with his Chasidic community, his father, and his ancestors, made me all but tremble. It made me think of the different choices and turns my life has held, including those that were in direct conflict with family and others, made me feel the emptiness when I don't write or shoot, and made me grateful that Barb Humphreys took me aside all those decades ago and put Asher Lev in my hands.

I don't know what the next several weeks hold on the Dad front. Continued improvement, I hope. I know there will be time commitments and that just is what it is. Warren is very supportive and that helps me beyond words. 

But I also want the coming days and weeks to hold reading. And photography. And writing.

May it be so.