With a mask on it's challenging to understand someone's feelings, reactions, age, etc.   Is the person smiling or scowling?   Are they chewing gum or trying to breath?   What if one of you has a hearing impairment?   So much of our personal interactions are based on seeing the other person's mouth. Without that I find myself staring at a peron's eyes and listening to the tone of their voice very intently.   And sometimes it hard to hear the other person. Try ordering an iced,...

In these weird, stressful, sometimes sureal, uncharted Covid 19 days Joanne and I find ourselves constantly saying two things to each other: Janis Joplin’s “Its all the same f...ing day, man!” and Kenny Rogers’ “What condition is your condition in?” Have a nice day and mind your condition!...

We’ve all been impacted over the last few months. Some routines and habits dropped and others formed.Most changes were imposed upon us by the shutdown and we adapted. Cardboard delivery boxes appeared at our doorstep in never-imagined numbers. Zoom replaced conference rooms, and on and on. But will these changes last?I often wonder what the new normal will be. A new normal for our society and, perhaps more significantly, a new normal for me. The meditation, the walks, the mor...

  When Bill and I met many, many moons ago he had a favorite chair. It was a big grey leather recliner that took up half of his then studio apartment. Rumor had it he spent a lot of time in that recliner and he and his chair became very attached. It moved with us through two apartments in NYC and then came along when we moved to suburbia. By that point (over 20 years ago), it was already showing its age. But there was a spot for the chair, nonetheless, in our basement in fro...

  A few weeks ago Corey wrote a blog in which he praised a rainy day. He asked for song titles mentioning rainy days. In my comments I wrote, “So I guess the song ‘Rainy days and Mondays’ does not apply to you."         But does it apply to you? In the past, on most Sunday nights I find myself thinking that the weekend went too quickly. Most often, I would have to try to find something to look forward in the week ahead to defeat the Monday morning blues.     Now that I'm ba...

As the daylight on the 4th ended Shelly noticed the full moon and pointed in out. It still hung low and later it moved me to take a shot as I sat out back watching an array of fireworks, likely less than legal blocks away, sometimes closer in every direction. I do not recall ever seeing such an investment by neighborhood folk in risky activity, no matter how attractive the results appear from the apparent safety of my yard. News reports this year certainly noted an unusual up...

Today we celebrate our Independence Day. Indepedence from tyranny, the right to free speech, the ability to believe in whatever religion we choose even if it's none at all. We are a pluralistic country and my wish, on this day, is that we can look out for each other, accept our differences without judgement, seek to understand what it truly means to be free, help those who have less than you, fight for equality, applaud truth, play fair...   I know these might be considered h...

I rarely, if ever repeat a blog, but I am compelled to do so because, although posted 6 weeks ago, it is even more relevant and poignant today.   The blog was entitled Typhoid Mary and went as follows:   "Her name was Mary Mallon and she was a rich man's cook in the early 20th century.   Trouble was that she was an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid Fever.   She denied being "sick" all her life, but she was caught up in the conflict between public health and individual r...

The current issue of The New Yorker arrived at our home the other morning. As is our practice, we allow our mail to “sit” for a day or so before handling it. The cover - see the picture - just stared at us from its perch on the floor.A picture we felt compelled to share.And when we picked up the magazine, we learned that thepainting on the cover is titled “Distant Summer” by the artist Gadir Nelson.As we anticipate this month of July - with its heat, displaced plans, and mult...

Picture this midwest evening.... 5 nieces and nephews, sitting in the back of my son’s pick-up truck, watching the sun go down; playing a little Kenny Chesney in the background, whilst the deep voices of the bullfrog weigh into the conversation. Sweet, right!? Evidence of a frisbee toss, badminton gone bad, and silly wiffle golf ball tosses, aimed at each other, admit our demonstration of family love and of our competitive nature with one another. Deep chats, belly laughte...

  One of my partners was in the office last week. I have to admit I was jealous. Seeing her on Zoom sitting at her desk made me want to be sitting in my office right next door. We have decided to reopen slowly and so I know that I will not have the experience of sitting next door for a little while – but still. She indulged me and toured around with her phone, showing us all of the new partitions and safety items. Then, because I asked her to, she walked right into my o...

  For months my husband and I have anticipated this. We have discussed this back and forth, imagining what it would look like. And, like everything else you anticipate as much as we have, it happened very differently than expected. I am talking about eating in a restaurant.       On Saturday night, we took a ride on our friend’s boat. It was just my husband and I and the couple who owned the boat, so we were able to stay socially distant. The plan was that we would head to a...

The title represents one of two relevant song titles I considered after deciding on this blog. You see I had another topic in mind – another discussion – perhaps another day, certainly another blog. When I retired for Friday eve, I opted to bring the laptop upstairs to leave on the dining room table for easy outside deployment yesterday. The laptop allows me to deploy the larger external monitor that, in many ways represents the outside office covered in some of my prior blog...

This past week marked my Mom's 90th birthday. My sister and I were so happy we could see her. Until that point, no one was allowed in the assisted living center where she resides so it was a game time decision whether we could see her or not. Thankfully, we were good to go.   I asked her how old she thought she was but she did not know. When I told her she was 90, she looked at me with that incredulous look I remember growing up. Every time I did something she didn't approve...

This blog is written with my wife Joanne’s permission because, at times, she is forgetful and relies on me to remind her of things. We good naturally refer to this practice as her short term Rent-A-Memory and it is my pleasure!I still have lots of room in my memory bank and I remember much. I awakened to Jackie Robinson’s earth shaking/game changing debut in 1947 and others that followed such as Mohammed Ali, Tommy Smith, Curt Flood and Colin Kaepernick. I remember the Brown ...