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Recently I’ve been having vivid, emotionally intense dreams. 

This is rare for me. 

A few nights ago I dreamed I was back in college.  It must have been my senior year because I had final classes to attend and papers due.  But I didn’t know where anything was, and there weren’t any familiar faces who might remind me what I needed to be doing.  On top of that, I had left my phone and notebook in my car (which happened to be our current red Prius).  But now I had forgotten where the parking lot was on campus.  When someone finally directed me to the main parking lot I found...

Near the end of March, there was a stretch of several days when I was feeling pretty blue, and I was acting that way. 

Although I do get blue now and then, it was unusual for me to stay in a funk for several days.

“Why are downcast, O my soul?” came to mind.  Psalm 42:5-6 (NRSV) says:

 

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

    and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,...

In these latter-day,
Degenerate times,
Cherry-blossoms everywhere!
-Kobayashi Issa

In early January, I lost my voice. At first I thought it would be temporary; I’d go through a few days of forced silence and then back to normal. A month in it was worse, not better, and then it disappeared entirely into a forced hissing. I am a stay-at-home dad, and parenting a six- and nine-year-old through hisses and gestures is a private sort of purgatory. When I reached the stage I’ve come to think of as “Silent Screaming Into the Void,” I gave up and...

When I signed up to write for the Connector I was still in the honeymoon phase of this whole mess. I was working full-time, doing continuing education (and taking notes), facetiming friends, cleaning my house, and in general feeling like I was going to come through this thing well-rested and improved as a person.

Then I accidently started a TV show on Netflix, and I watched a couple of episodes, and I figured it would be better to just get the show over so I could go back to learning how to paint with watercolors. So, I finished it in two days...

Ever since I moved from semi-retirement after a career as an Ohio labor economist to full-time “retirement” about 3 years ago, I have fallen into a ‘typical’ routine. That means getting up about 7:30 every morning, feeding the feral cats, breakfast, and the comics. Then I head out to ‘my’ Kosciuszko Park at Hard Road and Riverside for a 3-mile hike. Being of Polish heritage, I claim “The Peasant Prince” as one of my ancestors even though I am still trying to prove that genetic link. I’d been told that my Grandfather Leṡ had immigrated from Bialystok, Poland, which was...

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