APRIL 18, 2020 – Daily for a fortnight I’ve been doing “deep breathing” exercises for meditative reprieve from anxiety. One of the exercises calls for sitting comfortably, eyes closed, and thinking of a word, five or six times, as you inhale, then another word, again repetitively, as you exhale. The selected words should relieve stress—like, …
QUARANTINE COACH
MARCH 18, 2020 – Yesterday, I enjoyed a long-distance conversation with Dean, one of my brothers-in-law. I introduced my blog-followers to Dean last September (see The Dean of Readers – 9/16). For newcomers, he’s wheelchair bound by multiple sclerosis. His mind, however, soars freely and far beyond his physical limitations. He and my oldest sister …
(MAY WE HAVE) THE (P)LUCK OF THE IRISH
MARCH 17, 2020 – As I sit in our “sitting room,” sipping coffee, distancing myself from the latest news (while my wife, on the other hand, reads it), and moving my fingers across the keyboard of my laptop, I realize that by chance I’m wearing my dark green sweatshirt—the one about which my wife often …