Dreams
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 the spot where my car should have been, but there was a different red car there. So there I was, standing alone in the parking lot without a car, phone, notebook, or any clue where I was supposed to be
Daily Connector | Why Are You Sad, O My Soul? | Jim Leonard
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, my help and my God. (These words also appear verbatim in Psalm 42:11, and then again in Psalm 43:5.) Pondering the “why” question of the psalmist, I was pretty sure I knew the answer: I was very sad because everything I was learning about the pandemic was pointing to the reality that the nation’s and the world’s most vulnerable peoples will disproportionately bear the
Daily Connector | Silent screaming into the void | Jeff Lookabaugh
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 called the ENT’s office. Then, when they hung up because all they could hear was hissing, I had Britni call back for me. At the appointment a doctor put what looked like a foot-long metal worm through my nose and down my throat, then used its camera to discover that one of my vocal
Daily Connector | Oopsies! | David Emch
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. And, then some friends suggested a compelling documentary, that led to a rabbit hole for a couple of days, and then… well, you know. Add all of that to the fact that here in Thailand, mid-February until who knows when, is the burning season, and the air quality
Daily Connector | A new routine | Larry Less
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 only about 150 miles from where General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the last person buried with the Polish Kings in Krakow, lived. I feel that I have inherited his passion for social justice. I try not to do any ‘work’ until after lunch. That is
