This first appeared before the arrival of Covid-19 so I guess that most of our family members were a bit more prepared for these scaled back holidays. And, with the exception of limited opportunities to exercise volition, I’m feeling a lot of the same things. Opt Out of a Whole Bunch of Frantic? From giant Thanksgiving meals to champagne at midnight on the last day of the year and a whole bunch of frantic in between… ’tis the season. Fa-la-la. And if it’s true that time moves…
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Our Friend Oscar and His Inner Critic
Once upon a time we had a friend, a guy named Oscar. Like most — maybe all — of us, he had an inner critic. The problem was, he did not know that his inner critic could become an ally. Our friend struggled and stayed stuck — convinced that those ugly words the inner critic put into his head were, in fact, true. One day, somebody gave our friend a book. A very good book. An award-winning book. At first Oscar wasn’t sure why he had…
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Murmuration, Mozart and Mysteries
Murmuration. I’m not sure what caught my attention first — the word or the birds. It was probably the massive flocks of birds looping and swirling like leaves in the fall or, even better, meeting them when autumn breezes decide to tease the fallen. Their merger brings to mind the trompe l’oeil of an Escher drawing: initially simple in appearance but complex in execution. I’m always excited to discover special words like the ones for the smell of a good book or the earth following a rainstorm. There’s…