Category: Uncategorized
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Necessary Distractions, Before and After
8 November 2024 For several weeks leading up to Election Day, I was trying to find reasons to hope—or at least to calm the malaise made physically manifest in vague nausea, weakness, and occasional arrhythmia. I found many temporary reprieves, one in the accommodating generosity of the folks who tended to my lawnmower and others…
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Taking Stock
7 October 2024 On this the last morning of my 71st year, I asked the phlebotomist drawing blood (completely sans pain; she was really good at her job) whether my 71-year-old blood today would be any better than my 72-year old blood tomorrow. She replied that the 72-year-old blood would be even better, and asked…
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RIP Maggie Smith
28 December 1934 – 27 September 2024 I saw Maggie Smith star with her then-husband Robert Stephens in Noel Coward’s Private Lives when I was a stage-struck student studying in London in 1972, and secured both their autographs after the performance. When in 1974 at Furman University I was cast as Lady Bracknell, Algernon’s Aunt…
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Summer’s End
21 September 2024 Does the passage from one season to another account for my mercurial shifts of mood? I wonder. More tired than I’ve any right to be, I blame my fatigue on having been away from home three weekends in a row. As Earth was to Antaeus, Tara to Scarlett O’Hara, Gnawwood is to…
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Leaving / Not Leaving
9 September 2024 The sound that broke through my dream this morning seemed a cross between the coyotes’ eerie roll call I often hear at night and the honking of geese headed south. The dream—of a group effort to set up Christmas trees for an outside display; was one of us Alec Baldwin??—dissipated, slowly replaced…
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Labor Day Weekend Earth Yoga Retreat on Star Island
4 September 2024 The weekend just past was unique in my almost 72 years, decidedly NOT compromised by back-to-school jitters for this retiree now five Labor Days out from having to prepare opening lectures. Instead, I enjoyed the yoga retreat organized by the vastly experienced, world-traveling yogi Kacy Harnedy, with assistance and revelatory Thai massage…
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Time passing
17 August 2024 Today, 17 August 2024, marks the six-months anniversary of my sister Jane’s passing, and this morning I learned that my beloved friend and former colleague, Roberta White, died this morning in Danville, Kentucky, where “Bobbie” was and remained my mentor and model as an accomplished scholar; skilled and beloved Centre College professor;…
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Comfort and Joy
1 August 2024 Yowza. July was the month that was: first the terrible debate fallout, then the attempted assassination, then Democratic despair over Biden’s determination to continue campaigning, and THEN CrowdStrike’s global software meltdown, followed on Sunday, 21 July by President Biden’s astonishingly brave and patriotic announcement that he was standing down, Vice President Harris’s…
Georgeann Murphy 