Archives

Category: Personal Reflections
  • One year, four ways, forty eight photos

    One year, four ways, forty eight photos

    If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this post is over 48,000 words. A novella. I’ve collected one photo per month of 2020 in four categories. I tried to do a collage of cats, but it was too emotionally painful to look at all the photos and I stopped.  Here is the year…

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  • Christmas 2020

    Christmas 2020

    Maura presides over the decor This year, I was able to release all expectations for Christmas. I bought gifts from my family and friends’ small businesses, baked some cookies to share with neighbors, decorated my office for Zoom calls, listened to Christmas playlists on Spotify. A recognition of the season that was mostly neutral. We…

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  • Yoga for Election Uncertainty and Democracy in Action

    Yoga for Election Uncertainty and Democracy in Action

    Yoga is a big part of my life, though I don’t write about it much here. I’ve been leading a daily morning yoga class for more than a year – first in person after the big 2019 typhoon and then on Zoom after the start of the 2020 pandemic. Some days I get creative and…

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  • In memory of Futatsuyama

    In memory of Futatsuyama

    2 April 2019 – 8 Sep 2020 I am grieved to report that I found Futatsuyama on the side of the road this morning. He had been hit by a car and crossed the rainbow bridge without me knowing. We buried him next to Foreground Cat. I write this through tears. Futatsuyama was the second…

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  • 2020 Staycation: 24 ideas to create SE Asia in your home

    2020 Staycation: 24 ideas to create SE Asia in your home

    We all want to have a fun and happy summer but with the coronavirus running rampant, a trip to a distant tropical island in southeast Asia is not on the calendar. It’s time for a staycation to fake the experience at home. Start off by thinking about the things you want to do on tropical…

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  • Make Music Day 2020

    Make Music Day 2020

    Last year on the summer solstice, The Hill Sisters played some shows as part of Make Music Upper Perk. This year, we are separated by travel restrictions. But I decided I needed to perform anyway – the HILL SISTER Plays Alone – and set up a one woman show for cats and passersby. Maura grabbed…

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  • On shortages & what we need

    While the medical world needs more personal protection equipment (PPE) like masks and gloves and surgical gowns to work safely treating the Covid-19 patients, the rest of us are seeing shortages, too. Panic buying wiped out all the toilet paper and disinfectant products pretty much around the world. Here it happened in mid-March, when there…

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  • Getting a-feared

    Getting a-feared

    Up ’til now, the Covid-19 pandemic has stressed me out mostly with data and graphs (damned lies and statistics) that can’t possibly be true because of under-testing, under-reporting, and the chaos of collecting data in-the-moment. I’ve been self-isolating for the sake of other people and the medical system’s capacity to treat its patients. For my…

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