Meditations
Excellent conversation and correspondence about today’s issues
Memoir Writing
Once again I attended a writers workshop intended to help us write a memoir. It was a marvelous getaway in Brookneal Virginia, well below Charlottesville by nearly 2 hours. Staunton Hill is lovely. The sense of tranquility and rapturous peace surrounds the guests there. It would be so nice to spend a few weeks here, in great comfort and quiet. It would be possible to write uninterrupted for hours at a time. It was a charming weekend, and the company…
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Waiting on hold…
My web service provider is Web.com. It used to be Network Solutions which was a wonderful, responsive company. They answered the phone with live people. They listened and their prices were reasonable. I was happy with Network Solutions. I bought my very first Domaine name through that company on June 23rd 1999. Unbeknownst to me, they were acquired by Web.com. Web.com is a terrible company. It has none of the wonderful characteristics that Network Solutions had in the past. The…
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Hypocrisy
Sadly this country seems to have lost it’s mind. We are prisoners of our own ridiculous new rules. People seem to have forgotten common sense completely. Herd mentality and venal accusations against anyone on the other side of an argument fills the news.
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A trip to Mount Vernon
My cousins were visiting Washington DC, from Michigan along with their 5 children. They invited me to go with them out to see Mount Vernon. These days when you say you are going there, it is necessary to say “George Washingtons’ Mount Vernon”. That is because there is a school called Mount Vernon and shopping centers, housing developments and probably Fire Departments, Hospitals and Churches all using that name. So off we went today to visit George Washingtons’, Mount Vernon….
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Procrastination
I have let the whole week slip by without getting up a blog post. How did that happen? People say “Thank God it is Friday”, but I dread it because Friday comes and there is still so much to do. Perhaps that is because I am an entrepreneur at heart. I like being my own boss, but sometimes I disappoint myself when I don’t complete tasks that I certainly COULD have finished. Are you that way? I complete one task…
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Respect
There are so few celebrities left whom I respect. Years ago, there were so many. Perhaps that is part of getting older. Those heroes we once held in awe have grown old and died, or developed ‘feet of clay’. Today, many of the movie heroes of my youth are considered misogynistic bores. Clark Gable, John Wayne, and worst of all, Charlton Heston, all are from a different era. Their beliefs would not fly today. I think today’s men are often…
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Gratitude
Thursday, Feb 21, 2019 Gratitude I am spending a weekend in the country, at an adorable cottage on my daughter’s farm, near The Plains, VA. The weather has gone from a temperature of 67 degrees when I arrived on Friday, to a…
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Sadness and Solace
Sadness and Solace I don’t like writing about sadness. However, it is important to write about the things that we don’t want to write about. Maybe more important than anything else we write. Certainly, from a cathartic view, this is the case. Why does my body resist when I think of what makes me sad? Why not face those things? Why not try to sort out by importance and impact those things that are lurking in the shadows of my…
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The Journey Continues
Musings about the progress of parents aging over the last decades of their lives. It changes us, the caregivers just as they are also changed.
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Out with the Old, in with the New
As the new year begins, there is a new book cooking. This is an exciting time of year.
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Happy New Year 2019
My favorite day of the whole year, the day after Christmas tops them all. Perhaps it is only an illusion, but this day seems to be such a clean and fresh 24 hours. It is a reward for the frenetic pace that we are forced to keep right up until Christmas day, sometimes long after midnight, at the finish of Christmas Eve. As the mother of 5 and a real “Christmas lover” I threw myself into holiday preparations with my…
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Dinner at DeCarlos
We eat at DeCarlos all the time. It is a wonderful restaurant for local people. We love to go there because we feel completely comfortable. Low lighting and no steps to enter the place make it easy for anyone using a walker or a wheelchair.? The parking is easy, too.? There are a whole lot of neighbors who use DeCarlos as their “go to” dinner spot.? And it is to their credit, that the waiters learn what drinks their regular…
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Do you know many snowflakes?
I am curious about the way the world is changing. It seems like a different place much of the time. Megan Kelly got fired (more or less) for saying that she did not think wearing “blackface” as part of a Halloween costume was bad or racist. WHAT??? She lost her job over politically incorrect speech? I am truly horrified. What is the world coming to? And why do people believe it is better to try to be evenhanded in all…
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The Lesson of the Pear Trees
Years passed at Heathfield, happy years for the most part. My love for the house and everything in it grew a pace. The land and the trees and the bountiful flowering bushes, lilac and snowball and Japonica. I adored the place. That first summer I would walk around it just saying silently “This is OURS, this is MINE.” It was a dream come true. Why had I delayed moving to the country so long? I had been afraid. Afraid of…
