tragedy

How Do You Measure Success These Days?

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Image by Manuel Darío Fuentes Hernández from Pixabay

From Emily Landon, chief infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Chicago:

“It’s really hard to feel like you’re saving the world when you’re watching Netflix from your couch. But if we do this right, nothing happens, A successful shelter in place means you’re going to feel like it was all for nothing, and you’d be right: Because nothing means nothing happened. And that’s what we’re going for here.” (“One doctor’s straight talk about the coronavirus strikes a chord with anxious Americans“)

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Another Life Lesson from PBS’s “Victoria”

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I wrote back during Season 1 of this fabulous series (are you watching it? Whyever not?) about how one scene made it so achingly clear how quickly time passes, with moments of utter joy being over in a . . . well, moment. Season 1 ended with the birth of Victoria and Albert’s first child, Vicky, and now we’re about two-thirds through Season 2, with three of their nine children having been born and two more episodes to go. Both Jenna Coleman (Victoria) and Tom Hughes (Albert) are continuing on for season 3, for which all of us fans are very grateful. Over all of the scenes looms the specter of Albert’s death, which we all know is coming when he’s only 42, after he and Victoria have been married for a little over 20 years. All that passion, all that rivalry and head-butting, all that love—all gone. And Victoria left to live on as a widow for 40 years, double the amount of time she spent as a wife.

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Savor this Fleeting Day–and All the Ones to Come

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Christmas lights at twilightI had every intention of getting this post written at least by yesterday, but the rush of company, outings, etc., got in the way. It’s Christmas morning. I’m up early because I couldn’t sleep, so here are the thoughts I wanted to get down, and I plan to get the newsletter out later today in between the biscotti-baking, the green-bean casserole making, and the last-minute gift-wrapping flurry.

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Forgiveness Growing out of the Sandy Hook Tragedy.

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Book cover for An Unseen Angel: A Mother's Story of Faith, Hope, and Healing after Sandy Hook, by Alissa ParkerAn Unseen Angel: A Mother’s Story of Faith, Hope and Healing after Sandy Hook by Alissa Parker, published by Shadow Mountain Publishers, 2017.  Available through many sources; cover image is from Deseret Book, the only website that allowed me to copy it. Visit the book website at An Unseen Angel.

I had this cute post I was going to write today, about how Wednesday at noon is the start of my “work at home” section of the week, and that I’d decided to institute a little treat to mark that point since I can then spray on some perfume. We’re asked not to wear “strong” fragrances to Bible Study Fellowship meetings, on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, and we are absolutely forbidden to wear any fragrances to Chorale rehearsals. Once I get home on Wednesdays, though, I can do what I want. Gretchen Rubin talks a lot about how we need to give ourselves treats, little indulgences that can add to our happiness but which won’t cause us more problems than they’re worth. (So my Reese’s peanut-butter cups don’t fit into this category.)

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A Sad but Uplifting Story

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Man's arms holding a babyI have a few cooking blogs to which I subscribe, Smitten Kitchen, Sally’s Baking Addiction, and Pinch of Yum.  So back at the end of December suddenly there was an e-mail from POY titled “An Urgent Baby Update.” Lindsay Ostrom, the author of the recipes, was expecting a baby in April. She and her husband, Bjork, run this fantastically successful and profitable blog. I wrote a post about it back when I first discovered it. Blogs such as this one are much more than recipe repositories; they invite the readers into the authors’ lives.

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Memories of an Auschwitz Survivor.

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Gateway of Auschwitz Death Camp: Work Makes You FreeThis morning I was driving across town listening to the radio and heard an interview with a Boulder man who survived Auschwitz. He was quite a character. No trace of self-pity at all. Flashes of very dry humor. Matter-of-fact accounting of incredibly horrible events, such as seeing his father beaten to death with a shovel for insulting a guard. Walter Plywaski was nine when Nazi soldiers came into his father’s pharmacy in Poland and told the Jewish family they had half an hour to leave.

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How Do I Exercise My Free Will?

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I said in my post last week on Joseph Luzzi’s new book In A Dark Wood that I’d be writing more posts about his ideas.  Here’s the first of those.

One of the most vexing topics we face, whether coming at it from a secular or a religious viewpoint, is the question of the limits, or even the possibility, of free will.  Modern scientists have postulated that there is no such thing; that the existence and location of every particle in the universe is the result of random chance and is therefore (somewhat counter-intuitively) preordained.  As I sit here writing this post, my ideas arise only from the purposeless chemical interactions that are occurring down there within my brain.  (There’s a great discussion of this concept in the book I wrote about back in the very first post on this blog.)

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An Affecting but Erudite Memoir

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What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love In a Dark Wood (Hardback) - CommonIn a Dark Wood:  What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love by Joseph Luzzi, HarperCollins, 2015.

Joseph Luzzi had just started teaching his mid-morning class at Bard College in November 2007 when he saw a security guard standing at his door.  “Are you Professor Luzzi?  Please come with me.”  As Luzzi reached the outside of the building, he heard the words that would forever change his world:  “Joe, your wife’s had a terrible accident.”  

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