My Blog’s 10th Anniversary

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I started my blog 10 years ago this month. It was part of my transition from being career focused for more than 40 years. And I’ve kept it going – it’s an enjoyable daily rhythm for me. I’m savoring my history of the past decade in this post.

The blog posts from 2011 included a trip to Longwood Gardens and a long road trip to Tucson, Arizona (with photos of rest stops along the way) where my daughter was in graduate school. I stated the gleanings of the week and enjoyed posting recipes and photographs of places I was visiting. The new technology was a Kindle Fire; I was making the transition from physical to digital books…it would take several more years to complete the transition and I’d graduated from the Kindle Fire to an iPad, Smartphone (and laptop) for reading. Some of my favorite posts form 2011 include: Recipe of the Week: Homemade Soup for a Cold Day, Water Lily Pictures, and 10 Cosmetics from the Kitchen.

In 2012, I started the monthly ‘10 days of little celebrations’ and experienced the trauma of my parents getting older…beginning to experience substantial health problems. We added a bird feeder on our deck – visible from my office window and I started enjoying birdwatching through the window. Some of my favorite posts include: Birds from my Office Window, Gray Day Reflections, Yucca Seed Pods, and Ten Days of Little Celebrations - November 2012.

The next year I started the zooming and free eBooks posts. Over the years my camera’s optical zoom capabilities have improved dramatically and I enjoy using it to get better images. By this time, I was almost completely transitioned to digital books too. We made a road trip to Florida for a satellite launch at Cape Canaveral and I got my first close view of Sandhill Cranes in the Orlando airport cell phone lot waiting for my daughter to arrive. Some of my favorite posts close to that anniversary include: 3 Free eBooks - December 2013, Sandhill Cranes in Florida - November 2013, Herons in Florida - November 2013, and Zooming - December 2013.

In 2014, I started my effort to reduce the ‘stuff’ we had accumulated from living for more than 25 years in our house. My volunteer work has gradually increased…and would be easily sustained until the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of my favorite posts from the end of 2014 include: The Grand Cleanout - December 2014, December Sunrise, and Fall Field Trips.

The big event at the end of 2015 was our travel to the big island of Hawaii…including a day trip to the top of Maunakea. It was an wonderful experience but I find myself wondering if I ever want to take a long flight like that again.

2016 was our first birding festival – the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache. We also discovered the Bald Eagles at Conowingo Dam, closer to home. I started my monthly Zentangle posts. Here are some sample posts: Highlights of 2016, Conowingo - December 2016, Zentangle® – November 2016, and First Day at Bosque del Apache.

I started the monthly eBotantical Prints posts in November 2017. I’d been browsing historical botanical books in the last decade of my career and was beginning to figure out a way to share my list. At the time I thought that I had about exhausted the supply, but I’ve continued to add 20 or so books every month until there are now over 2,200 books on the list!

In 2018 we attended our second Festival of the Cranes in New Mexico then enjoyed the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival early in 2019.

In the last few months of 2019, there was a last road trip with my parents at Thanksgiving. We enjoyed the Christmas lights near home and planned for a birding festival in Laredo, TX in the early part of 2020.

As we were coming back from the Laredo birding festival, COVID-19 was in the news and soon we were ‘staying at home as much as possible’. By November 2020, we were anticipating that a vaccine was going to become available and the pandemic would end. We were doing virtual birding festivals and otherwise keeping ourselves happy at or close to home.

And here I am in November 2021, still not like I was pre-pandemic. I enjoy many of the same things I have in the past 10 years, but I am not out venturing into crowds…not flying. I am facing a health challenge of my own (cancer). My parents are home bound in Texas, and I have made visiting them my rationale for 3 road trips since the spring when I became fully vaccinated. At this point, it is not the pandemic that causes most of my anxiety, but the changed behavior (sometimes abrasive and violent) of people under stress that has become so apparent over the past year.

The blog continues…it’s a way to document my present….and notice the subtle changes in the way I am ‘living well.’

19 Months in COVID-19 pandemic

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19 months into the pandemic: the wave of infections from the delta variant is beginning to decline although the US is still experiencing more than 1,000 deaths per day; vaccine mandates are beginning to come into effect; schools are in-person, sometimes finding it challenging to keep outbreaks at bay; booster shots for high-risk Pfizer recipients were approved; it appears that approval for vaccination of children under 12 may be coming soon. So – it is still problematic but there are positive trends.

I am planning another road trip to Missouri and Texas later this month – expecting the trends to continue…the situation to improve along my route from Maryland. The KF-94 masks have protected me so far and I have a good supply for the trip. My concern has shifted away from contracting Covid-19 and toward the ‘what if’ concerns along the way. My road trips so far have been without incident, but I understand that if an accident occurred that required medical attention, the hospitals along my route might be overwhelmed with COVID patients…and that at least some people are so stressed by the ongoing situation that they become angry very quickly. So – I’ll be doing my usual careful driving and limiting my interactions…keeping the interactions I do have to cheerful greetings and checking in/out of the hotel.

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I have enjoyed the volunteering I’ve done this month with 6th and 9th graders. They are old enough to wear their masks as well as I do! And they seemed pleased to be in school and having a field trip experience – more so that pre-pandemic years.

The idea of future pandemics is something I have been thinking about and how we have a new dimension of inequality: people that are vaccinated and people that are not. Most of the people dying from COVID-19 now are unvaccinated. And some percentage of people will recover from the initial infection but with long term health issues that will have health and economic impacts on the individuals and the country. Will that happen with other diseases that are prevented – or made milder – with vaccines: measles, chickenpox, mumps, shingles, pneumonia, whopping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, etc.? Some of those diseases might not kill people but there are sometimes long-term health issues that are expensive to treat and a continuing burden on our health care system. However good the system becomes to quickly produce effective vaccines – it won’t help as much as it should if people refuse the shot!

Even with that concern for the long term – I am thinking positive about the trends for this pandemic and hope that many more people will shift their attention to the present and looming impact of climate change….taking aggressive action to reduce and mitigate as fast as we can.

Near the Little Patuxent River

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On a recent morning – I headed out to the stream that flows under Broken Land Parkway from Lake Elkhorn just before it joins the Little Patuxent River for a volunteer gig – guiding a stream survey done by high school students. Near the bridge that crosses the stream on the Patuxent Branch Trail, there was muddy trail (poison ivy on each side…glad I had on long pants and high boots) to allow access down to stream. We set up our gear around three tables. There was not much dry area to set them up but the water was shallow. A partner and I guided 10 students to collect and ID macroinvertebrates from one of the tables while other volunteers did the same at two others. We had about 45 minutes….and then we got another group of 10 to do it again.

I took some pictures before and after the students arrived. The steam has a lot of vegetation on the banks but the stream has been eroded  - with some trees toppling over from being undercut by rapidly moving water. It is in an area where there is a lot of impervious surface. When it rains – the water rushes down to the stream where it carries away anything in the eroded channel; there is no connection to a flood plain that to slow down the water. It doesn’t take long for it to run off further downstream because we are in the Pediment rather than the Coastal Plain (i.e. there is always an incline for the water to follow).

The water quality was ‘very poor’ based on the types of macroinvertebrates that we found…however – we found quite a few of the types we found. The stream is not dead. Life holds on tight in this suburban stream.

18 months in COVID-19 Pandemic

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18 months into the pandemic and the US is experiencing high rates of delta variant infections. The number of new cases is higher than it was in September 2020 and the number of new deaths is a higher too although not as much as the new cases; the vaccines and early treatments are reducing the number of deaths somewhat. The most people in the hospital and dying are unvaccinated. More schools are opening this fall – mostly with mask mandates. There is a lot of concern for the children under 12 since there is not a vaccine approved for them yet.

On a personal level, I am glad I am fully vaccinated, and that the KF-94 masks protect me as well as others. The availability of higher quality masks is one of the differences from last year when I was still wearing cloth masks (2 of them) that were protection for others – not necessarily for myself. I wear my mask anytime I am not at home indoors (like the grocery store) and outdoors when I am near other people (like at the Farmers Market). We are not eating in restaurants…but getting takeout occasionally. I haven’t done another road trip in the past month.

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I am attending training for volunteer gigs coming the fall – ones that are primarily outdoors. Those will start in a few weeks if the local schools manage to avoid major COVID outbreaks that would force them to close. There are some places where it appears the delta variant has already peaked (like Springfield MO) but I’m glad I am not planning another road trip until mid-October when (maybe) the overall infection rate will be lower that it is right now on my route to and from Texas.

I wish I could see an clear end of the pandemic, but it may just be wave after wave of variants…some that the vaccine might not be effective against. I’m glad that masks are effective against respiratory spread in general and have grown accustomed to wearing one.

It is frustrating that COVID is still demanding so much of our attention at a time when we need to focus more on actions to address the larger rolling disasters of climate change.

Taking a Day off

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What does ‘taking a day off’ mean when one is post-career? Next year it will be a decade since I left my career – my formal ‘work’ - behind. I’ve filled my days with a wide variety of activities that vary from day to day, season to season…evolving over the years. For some reason, I’ve been thinking about what is means now to ‘take a day off’ --- I still do it occasionally. There are some characteristics of those days:

  • I clear the day of other commitments. For example – I write my daily blog for the ‘day off’ ahead of time and post it so that it gets released at the appropriate time without anything more from me.

  • The day is filled with activities that are different than my normal…maybe it is spent traveling or in a special class or on a field trip…or maybe it is simply a pajama day at home, being lazy.

  • The normal daily goals I have for myself (books browsed, steps, Zentangle tiles, calorie limit, yoga time) become optional. I might still achieve some of them….but they are not required.

I don’t take a day off completely very often because I enjoy every day so much. There is no equivalent to the surge of activity that used to happen during my career that would exhaust me emotionally and physically…. necessitating a day off to recover. A partial day off does happen with some regularity because achieving some of the daily metrics takes enough time that I can’t achieve them all with the other unique activities of the day. There is so much to enjoy every day!

New Computer Glasses

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I had noticed over the past few months that I was able to see the birds and cicadas fluttering in our backyard maple with my computer glasses…and my vision was not as great for the computer screen distance. So - it was not a big surprise that I needed new computer glasses when I finally got my eyes checked recently. It turned out that my eyes had gotten better since my last checkup(back in May 2019) – at least when it comes to distance vision.

I’d gotten brown plastic frames previously – thinking they were only glasses to wear around the house. Almost as soon as I got them, I realized I should have gotten more colorful frames, so I had already thought about colors before my appointment…just in case I needed a new prescription; red or turquoise were the top contenders. The technician showed me frames in both colors and the red ones appealed to me the most. Here they are with last summer’s straw flowers.

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I’m savoring crisp computer-screen-distance vision….and the color of my frames every time I see myself in the mirror!

Summer Plans

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My theme for this summer is catching up….and consciously maintaining practices that sustained my wellbeing during the pandemic. Being at home right now is such a pleasure: there are mornings cool enough to comfortably work in the yard or go for a hike, there are fabulous seasonal veggies and fruits available from the farmers market…and I am catching up on all the health-related checkups I put off for over a year. My husband organized our house’s heating/cooling system check up, asphalt driveway sealing, and deck re-staining. And I am continuing my high-volume book browsing (Internet Archive is like a candy store for books!), Zentangle making, getting 12,000 steps per day, a bit of yoga, writing down what I am celebrating/thankful for, writing blog posts….days are full…never boring!

Being able to go to Texas to see my aging parents in May was an important milestone…a relief from the time we had to stay at home where I could only see/hear them virtually. I’ve already planned another trip for July and will see more of the family then at a wedding. The big event for my parents after I left was a large mulberry tree being cut down in their yard. It had been ailing for some time and finally the rot around an old spilt was significant enough that the big trunks could crack apart at any time with the potential to damage three houses! My sister sent me a picture midway through the cleanup. I found myself wishing I would have been there for the drama! There is grief for the old tree….but also relief that it didn’t fall and cause a lot of damage.

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Being vaccinated gives me confidence to make the plan to drive to Texas in July and then again in September. I had anticipated that I would be more confident in July that I was back in April just after I was fully vaccinated…but the delta variant has reduced my confidence and I’ll keep wearing a mask when I am not sure everyone I am encountering has been vaccinated. I’ll be making the drive over 3 days with a stop in Springfield MO to visit my daughter where they are having a surge of cases due to the variant. I am glad she got moved to her new house during the lull in cases in late May. She is back to curbside pickup rather than going into any store.

I have opted to not volunteer this summer…waiting until the fall to get back into those activities…but the decision isn’t because of the pandemic.  The type of volunteering I enjoy the most is outdoors; in the summer it tends to be in the hotter part of the day which is sometimes problematic for me; I don’t want to cancel at the last minute because the temperature is too high or the air quality is not good. Toward the end of the summer there will be training for the new fall programs – I’m sure the pandemic has changed them a bit – and then I’ll get back into the fray.

Overall summer 2021 has been enjoyable so far and I am looking forward to the rest of it!

30 years ago – June 1991

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Looking back at June 1991 – it seems that life had a faster pace…almost an unsustainable pace but common in families where the adults work and the child is less than two years old. We had company for 2 weeks out of the month. The first was a visit from a sister that had recently moved into a new house and needed a break for the flurry of that activity; we enjoyed several outings to the park and Ladew Topiary Gardens…discovered that McDonalds was an excellent place for lunch with a 21-month-old.

The second visit was a sister’s family – that included their daughter (a week older than my daughter). We prepared the girls prior to the visit by showing them pictures and videos of each other; it worked…they were immediate buddies. We went to parks and several museums (one was The Cloisters which was a children’s museum then and is now a wedding venue, another was Rose Hill Manor Park & Museums)…read books, splashed in the small pool on hot days, and enjoyed every inch of our house and yard. One was talking more…the other seemed to enjoy more complex books. We all had ‘Maryland is for Crabs’ t-shirts! In the picture below my daughter is hugging a tree along the Cunningham Falls State Park boardwalk – one of the outdoor places that was enjoyable for everyone in our group.

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Being outdoors…doing something with water…was one of my daughter’s favorite activities. We had tomato plants and gladiolus getting ready to bloom in the garden around the oak tree.

A summer cold made the rounds. My daughter had it for a few days…mine lingered and I eventually went to the doctor – got medicine for ear and eye infections.

In world news – children in Iraq were dying of cholera and other water borne disease…the Kuwait fires were slowly being extinguished.

Overall – it was a month full of juggling work with home life. I can’t say that it was a balancing act…it was more of a blending and using every minute optimally…exhausting but rewarding.

By the end of the month, I already had plane tickets to visit Texas in July. My husband would be with us on the flight down then continue to San Diego for a conference…the blending rather than balancing strategy again.

Sandwiched

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I am sandwiched between elderly parents and an early career daughter. Many of the articles about being in this situation seem to focus on the stress of being pulled between the two generations. My perception of it – so far – is how lucky I am…not the stress it might cause from time to time. Yes – I can’t be everywhere at once – but I am not the only one involved. I am married and have three sisters…all in the situation with me!

The distance between Maryland (me) and Texas (my parents) requires a two day drive…it’s slightly shorter but still 2 days to Missouri (my daughter’s). Flying is easier between my home and my parents since both are major cities; the flights to my daughters all require at least one stop.  Overall – it is a challenge to get to them fast. Virtual is helpful but not the same as being there in person.

I was fortunate that neither generation of my sandwich had an emergency during the pandemic. Traveling the distance quickly (driving or flying) is already a challenge…it would have been incredibly traumatic to not be able to travel at all; I’m glad we are all vaccinated now so the travel restriction is lifting.

The pandemic year has probably increased the need to travel to my parents more frequently. Maybe I will feel the pull more acutely…or not. I going to stay with the idea of savoring the time with both generations!

14 Months in COVID-19 Pandemic

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I celebrated my vaccine becoming fully effective (2 weeks following my second shot of the Moderna vaccine) during the 14th month of the pandemic. It was a significant milestone. The big change was feeling safe enough to set off on a road trip to see my parents; I hadn’t seen them since the January before the pandemic was declared.

There are non-critical appointments that are being scheduled now – dentist, eye doctor, haircuts. My parents may be mostly caught up on those types of appointments before I go back to Maryland; I’ll start catching up for myself by June.

What a difference from May 2020 when the news was dire – hospitals overflowing in some areas of the country and many deaths were in senior living/nursing homes. We know a lot more about the virus now and there are effective vaccines. It surprises me that we may not reach herd immunity for COVID-19 because there are too many people that are reluctant to get the vaccine. I remember in the 1960s with the roll out of the polio vaccine…everyone going to the local school for the sugar cube. It made polio an extremely rare occurrence very quickly. It is frustrating and sad that there is a segment of US society in 2021 that is seems to be focused on their right to not get vaccinated rather than their health and the health of others.

Trying to end on a more positive note….

I have gone back to carrying a purse rather than carrying minimal essentials (car key, credit card, id) in a wrist band. The purse has room for my mask although I still tend to put my mask on in the car before I walk across the parking lot into the store. I like to not be in a rush to put the mask on or do it while I am walking.

It’s hard to know how crowded a park will be so I generally carry the mask with me….and put it on if there are too many people sharing the trails. I am conscious of probably wearing the mask more than the new CDC guidance. As it gets hotter, I’ll pay close attention to the guidance and be keen to take the mask off whenever I can!

Filling time at the Hospital – Zentangle® Tiles

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One of the ways I filled the hours of inactivity at the hospital was making Zentangle tiles. Their creation was easily interrupted and then continued…..fitting around conversations with nurses and doctors and varying interactions with my mother as she improved. There was a feeling of accomplishment and optimism when a tile was finished.

Being creative in times of stress has always been a good coping mechanism for me. Making a Zentangle tile is a form of respite…a little art that makes it easier for my mind to be creative in other ways too…coming up with solutions to whatever happens in the next hours at the hospital.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Hospital Experience

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Most of my experiences at hospitals is associated with my parents getting older and needing support during hospitalization. A week ago, another one was history. My sister and I organized 24-hour shifts to support a 4 day stay in the hospital (we each had 2 shifts) and now are supporting follow up appointments and at-home PT. It’s a time requiring focus - overcoming a lot of emotion, anxiety, sleeping on somewhat uncomfortable converted couches, and boredom during long waits. My favorite activities to keep the boredom at bay are making Zentangle tiles, reading, and making notes about what is happening/what I was thinking about. I’ll post the tiles I made at the hospital in another post.

Vaccination makes quite a difference in our anxiety about COVID-19; the hospital allowed limited visitors. Mask wearing (except when eating) was required. My KF-94 mask was comfortable for the long hours of wear, but my ears were increasingly tender by the second 24 hours. I was relieved that there was no need for another long duration round of mask wearing. The only time I took my mask off for more than a few minutes in the hospital was once to eat a sandwich in an outdoor picnic area (lots of grackle calls…very windy).

I also took pictures from the hospital room and nearby lobby. There were two rooms last week. The first was in the ICU and on the 7th floor of the hospital. The roof below the window was somewhat decorative and the front of the hospital with the two columns of water was also visible.

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We moved out of the ICU in the middle of the night – up to the 10th floor and to the other end of the hospital. Note the different orientation of the two columns of water.

We had just settled into the new room…drifted off to sleep…when I heard a big noise and realized it was a helicopter. I sat up and saw it landing…noted that it was 2:10 AM…went back to sleep…the patient slept through everything. In the daylight – it was easy to see that the room looked down on the helipad for the hospital!

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The height of the windows provided a good view of the Dallas skyline. I wondered how long it would take for the neat rows of trees planted at the front of the hospital to get big enough to be more forest like.

On my rare forays down to the 1st floor lobby for food – I realized that my favorite art along the long hall was a work that depicts wildflowers of Texas. Many of them have such distinctive shapes that they are identifiable in silhouette.

Overall – the pandemic protocols did make this hospital stay a bit different (masks, limited visitors, less ‘stuff’ coming home) than our previous experience. The fundamental goal happened - the patient got better and came home. That is success.

30 years ago – April 1991

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After the flurry of guests that we had in March 1991, we were back to being on our own in April….new challenges. My daughter was at a temporary family day care during the day for most of the month; it seemed to be working well but I rejoiced that not only did she remember her original day care provider after several weeks away, but she seemed thrilled to be back in that situation by the end of the month.

My husband was in the process of moving from Johns Hopkins to Applied Physics Lab for his work. It was a big ‘win’ in terms of work and a much shorter commute for him. We made a weekend trip to his Johns Hopkins office to move some items like plants and files. The heavier books were already on the way to the new office. We might have been the only people in the building. My daughter enjoyed pushing her stroller unimpeded in the hallways.

I was traveling to Atlanta frequently for work and by the end of the month was quickly getting to a stopping point on that project so that I could start the next one which would involve a longer commute. There was an announcement about a ‘work from home’ pilot and I wondered if I would be able to participate to avoid the long commute at least one day a week.

The trips to Atlanta – sometimes done in a long day (intense meetings in the middle) – were the first travel I’d done for work since my daughter was born. It felt odd to be so far away from her. At the same time – I savored the quiet time on the plane - enjoying good books. I was using a card I’d received from my Grandmother as a bookmark. It took some effort to carry enough reading material with me on those trips….it made the briefcase heavy since this was well before electronic books!

It also seemed like there were more letters exchanged that April – mostly with family. Everyone seemed to have a busy month – travel to San Francisco for a class, 2 people moving, another getting pregnant, ducklings escaping their enclosure to make friends with dogs, and birthday celebrations. Reading about the flurry of activity was quite a contrast with our lives this year during the pandemic and, to a lesser extent, without the challenge of careers. There were lots of comments about how pretty the spring trees and flowers were; that hasn’t changed.

Zooming – March 2021

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The sunny March days have been so pleasant – great times to be outdoors and photographing what I see. I’ve been venturing out from home a bit more too – Brookside Gardens, Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant, and Centennial Park. There are still zoomed images taken through my office window (birds and the moon framed by tree branches); the sunrise and daffodils are from my house as well. Overall - this is just the beginning of the season for spring flowers. Can you find:

  • Skunk cabbage (Mt Pleasant)

  • Mourning Dove (my house)

  • Shelf fungus (2 of them - Mt Pleasant and my house)

  • Witch Hazel (Brookside)

  • Gingko tree trunk and branches (Centennial)

  • Blue jays (my house)

  • Dried hydrangea flowers (Brookside)

Enjoy the slideshow for March 2021!

Getting outdoors on these spring days is a mood boosting activity as well as good exercise. I’ve gotten comfortable enough wearing a mask that I just keep it on if I’ve in a place where I might encounter someone else on the trail. I enjoy it in the moment and then again when I view the images on my bigger screen monitor…and formulate the blog post. The activity is a bright core with tendrils of benefit that are longer lasting.

Daffodils in the Brush Pile

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Looking out my office window - I noticed a clump of daffodils was blooming in the brush pile at the back of our yard and went downstairs (inside and then from the deck) to get some pictures. Our neighbors have always had daffodils around the base of one of their trees and I had planted some bulbs slightly in front of the tree line in our yard several years ago to establish a similar stand in our yard. The plants come up and bloom well before the leaves are on the trees. My subsequent project to gradually extend the ‘forest’ into our yard by putting small brush piles over the areas where the grass does not well (too much shade) covered the place where I planted the bulbs…but they are hardy enough to come up and bloom anyway! And they provide a marker for how much I have extended the forest leaf mulch area into our yard….probably at least 6 feet. It’s much better than having thin grass/soil showing in that area.

I also noticed that one of the larger branches in the brush pile had some shelf fungus growing --- decomposition and nature recycling itself in action!

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As I walked back up the incline toward the deck stairs, I notice a leaf from last year with some neatly drilled holes. I wondered if the holes were already made before the leaf fell.

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Overall – a very satisfying short photo shoot in our yard!

30 years ago – March 1991

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The event of March 1991 that I remember without looking back at my notes of the month was my dad turning 60 years old. My notes helped fill in the details. He and my mother flew from Texas to Maryland to spend a week with us; 6 red balloons, a pair of Rockport dress shoes and a pecan praline ice cream cake were some ‘special’ things for the celebration. My 18-month-old daughter thoroughly enjoyed the week with them and the addition of the turtle sandbox to her ‘things to do outside.’ She enjoyed it just after it was purchased while it was still indoors – getting face to face with it (also note – one bare foot…the other with the shoe still on in the picture).

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My husband and I benefited from the emotional support from that week. Both of us were going through work and health anxieties that improved over the next few months but peaked in March.

My daughter was facing challenges from us encouraging her to walk more on her own (even up and down stairs) and the beginning of ‘potty training.’ She wanted to be outside as much as possible. She still liked to pick up leaves to carry around while she explored.

She was not talking well but increasingly more opinionated about what she wanted (and didn’t). She enjoyed carrying around her toys and dancing. The family day care provider commented that she enjoyed dancing so much that once she started…all the other children danced with her.

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Near the end of the month – while my parents were visiting, my family day care provider let me know that her mother who had been with her for the past 6 months had died and that the day care would be closed for the next few weeks. I quickly found other day care for the interim; the visit of my parents helped the temporary transition to the other day care. I’ll always be glad that my daughter had the attention of the older woman for those few months…extra attention and cuddles are so important for young children (and often an joy of older adult to provide). When I arrived to get my daughter in the afternoons, it always seemed like she was either being held by or standing close to the older woman; when they made eye contact it was obvious: they had a special bond.

And now – moving ahead 30 years – my dad will be celebrating his 90th birthday! Hopefully, the pandemic situation will improve with more vaccinations and I’ll be able to see him soon.

Japan in old Books

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The ‘subject’ metadata in Internet Archive can be used to find clusters of books on the same topic. Earlier this year I used a simple search to look at books about Japan using the subject “Japan – Description and Travel” and then sorting by the date published since I was mostly interested in books old enough for the copyright to be expired. I browsed the search results for books that included illustrations and am featuring my favorite ‘finds’ from this search in this weeks’ book post.

Every-day Japan by Arthur Lloyd (1909)

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Since my success with books about Japan – I’ve used the same type search for China, Algeria, Peru, Sweden, and Ireland….and am now browsing books from the Greece version of the search! I enjoy exploring books in the Internet Archive using the digital equivalent of walking through the stacks of a library…selecting a book and leafing through its pages (using thumbnail views)…pausing when something looks interesting. The big difference is the huge number of books available via Internet Archive and that I can do it anywhere/anytime there is a good internet connection! What a boon it is….particularly during this pandemic year.

New Swopper Chair

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My Swopper chair, that was more than a decade old, broke back in December; the base separated from the pedestal and seat. It could function as a stool that could tilt but had lost connection to the mechanism that enabled the bouncing motion. The new limitation impacted my goal to keep my activity level up all during the day (i.e. minimize completely sedentary time). I tried to shift to a new activity pattern; moving was more clumped than before because it included getting up from my computer to move every hour then having some times that were completely sedentary except some side to side moving on the broken Swopper. I found that I sometimes felt achy even after 30 or 40 minutes of not moving! The Swopper chair had allowed me to move more frequently without breaking my activity at the computer without me even being conscious I was moving…and I opted to buy a new Swopper.

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Now my office is back to the old ‘normal’ with the new chair and my aches are dramatically reduced.

The chair comes in 3 pieces in a big box: the base, the pedestal with spring, and the seat. Once they are put together…they don’t come apart. Its are expensive but will last a long time. I figure I bounced more than a million times on the old one before it broke, and I hope this new one is a durable.

Staying active every day is a lifestyle choice….one that helps me sustain the ability to do things I want to do for as long as possible.

Stephen Lucius Gwynn Books about Ireland

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I’ve enjoyed 5 books with pictures of Ireland published in the same decade as World War I. The author – Stephen Lucius Gwynn – was an Irish MP and writer with close links to the Iris literary revival; he had a long and varied career (I always browse the Wikipedia entry for the authors/illustrators of books I enjoy).  These books were illustrated by Irish illustrators of the time; many are in color; I selected one or two for each book. I find the illustrations of this period – just before color photography took over for books like this – very appealing. They capture the places as they were…also representing the history of book illustration.  

The Famous Cities of Ireland (1915) with illustrations by Hugh Thomson

Leinster (1911) with illustrations by Alexander Williams

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The Fair Hills of Ireland (1914) with illustrations by Hugh Thomson

Munster (1912) with illustrations by Alexander Williams

Ulster (1911) with illustrations by Alexander Williams

It is interesting to think about the time it took to produce these illustrations compared to photography. Do as many people make their living as artists today?

Technology has changed our work and the way we live in so many ways. I’ve changed almost entirely from physical to digital books over the past decade! I don’t need to go anywhere to obtain my books these days and there is always a huge number of books readily available to me. I find myself savoring the illustrations – painting and photographs - in books/website more than ever. What a boon during this pandemic year!

Cheshire Cat Moon

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Earlier this week, I glanced out my office window just after 9 PM and saw the Cheshire Cat moon in the treetops. It is the ‘grin without the cat’ of Alice in Wonderland fame. I took a picture, of course. It was a fun way to end the day – a little spice to the routine of shutting down screens and turning off the light…to do some reading before bedtime.

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The routine of my days is like a comfortable base…that increases my notice and appreciation of little things like the moon in the treetops. The mix of mundane and serendipity makes every day a good one!