InMotion

  Check out this temp graph (you have to scroll down to the figure), remembering that Mardi Gras was Feb. 16! This year, the Year of the COVID, featured many challenges and disasters.   Deaths and indignities and a New Orleans Mardi Gras that was the coldest on record since 1899, when it was ONE DEGREE colder.   What the fuck does this mean?   Well, in a time of intense challenges: the “uncovering” and widespread acknowledgment of systemic racism and persistent white supremacist attitudes, persistent beliefs and behaviors promoting climate change, widening polarity and animosity between political partisans, and a shocking display of willingness to subvert democracy on the part of millions and millions of Americans, it means that we need to chill and get clear about what “the next right thing” is.   Click on that link to find an episode of the podcast Invisibilia   that I found especially inspiring last year, which dropped in late March just as SARS-CoV...

  A few months ago, a friend and I were discussing the the speed with which the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was invented, tested, manufactured, and licensed for use. She was contemplating holding back and waiting rather than getting a dose as soon as her turn came. That we have a vaccine for a disease we only started being concerned about less than a year ago is unheard of. Remarkable, amazing, spectacular, revolutionary. But is it also scary?   Does the happiness associated with such a miracle give way to doubt, suspicion, and anxiety? I had been following the vaccine for COVID-19 story closely, and although I always have some suspicions when it comes to organized medicine and drug manufacturers, I had very little such skepticism in this case. I noticed that after a couple minutes, I started feeling a bit angry. I wanted to share with my friend my joy about the end of this horrible plague being in sight, while my friend was manifesting anxiety that if shared widely could lead ...

  New Orleans!   It’s been home for my wife and I since late 2017, but we’re moving to Oregon, and that means decision time on possessions. We’ve got two big billowy down-alternative comforters at The Palace (our ironically ostentatious name for our condo) and Carol put one of them in the discard pile.   She wants to give away or toss most of what we have and reduce our belongings to only the essential and the dear, then outfit once again on arrival in Salem. She assumed Goodwill wouldn’t take it, and it was headed to the landfill.   I guess that would not be too heinous since it’ll break down easy, certainly compress down when wet. But I felt sorry for the thing, and wanted to find it a home, comforting nice people who shop at Goodwill.   A couple weeks ago when I took it there to attempt a drop-off, they said they’d take it but would much prefer it being washed first since someone (ahem) likes to keep his shoes on when watching TV from bed.   Thereby hang...