1. divergent
2. Nothing to see here
3. Mom & Me & Mom
4. As You Like it
5. Remember Me
6. If women rose rooted
7. dance of cloaks
8. Big sort
9. Reflections by Rosa parks
10. The Forgotten Daughter NF
11. Contagious Leadership NF
12. There is no cloud
13. John Dies at the end
14. burro genius
15. The Outsiders
16. wolf hall
17. the unbearable lightness of being
18. 2020 Democratic Party platform
19. the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
20. untamed
21. john woman
22. before the coffee gets cold
23. have spacesuit will travel
24. anything is possible
25. 7 dirty words the life and crimes of George carlin
26. #ask Gary V
27. Uncle Tom’s cabin
28. the henna artist
29. dignity
30. shay with me
31. never split the difference : negotiating as if your life depends upon it
32. creating a culture of tenderness
33. When
34. Tatoos on the heart
35. Censorship Now!
36. Autobiography of Malcolm X NF
37. pedagogy of the opperessed
38. emotional wisdom
39. long walk to freedom
40. journey to The west
41. The Jetsetters
42. why time flies
43. leaves of grass
44. emerson essays
45. alcoholics anonymous NF
46. rules of Prey
47. Olive Kitteridge
48. a court of thorns and roses
49. do over
50. drive
51. too soon old too late smart
52. Leviathan
53. indistractable
54. Why My third husband will be a dog
55. Insurgent
56. remnant population
57. nine nasty words
58. dandelion wine
59. Project management for AV professionals
60. Hero with a thousand faces
61. shadow prey
62. existential kink
63. the red badge of courage
64. unmasked
65. huckleberry finn
66. Circe
67. The emotion code
68. linchpin
69. The fighters mind
70. the hunting wives
71. get a life chloe brown
72. Six armies in normandy
73. the art of asking
74. Scrum Book of Knowledge
75. art & Fear
76. Death of the Artist
77. The girl with the dragon Tatoo
78. flow
79. Forty autumns
80. war of art
81. how the west was won
82. focus
83. The phantom of the opera
84. No More Mr. Nice guy
85. I am a cat
86. the giver
87. gathering blue
88. messenger
89. Son
90. Stranger in a strange land
91. catch 22
92. awakening
93. it ends with us
94. communist manifesto
95. tarot: unlocking the arcana
96. infinity blade redemption
97. as you like it
98. the art of political war
99. its not me it’s you
100. book of three
101. steal like an artist
102. show your work
103. keep going
104. Gravity’s Rainbow NF
105. woke inc
106. the black cauldron
107. Who’s that girl?
108. 10x

I bought a calendar for 2021. But I haven’t put it out yet. I have to say, I’m cautious about what this new year will hold.

I love making plans, but 2020 wadded up my plans and made me try again.

A surprise gift at the end of the year was taking up martial arts. The sensei asked us if we had the calendar for the new schedule starting January.

While we were all stretching, he admitted that the calendar he had created at the beginning of 2020 had to be changed pretty quickly. But that is no reason to leave the calendar empty.

I will miss every shot I don’t take. And I don’t want to give up.

My new age-y friends would say to set intentions. That’s plans with a lighter touch. I can plan to get a good nights’ sleep, but get derailed with family and pets. But my intention remains intact for me to try again the next night. It might be kinder to intend and see where it goes.

Plans are brittle, but intentions are resilient.

I do want things. Very much. I have ideas about what I can, should and will do. Often those come with expectations about how long it will take to get done and what it will look like when it’s finished.

Those plans can be very heavy to carry. Sometimes I disappoint myself when it doesn’t happen like I hoped.

Rather than lose energy carrying the plans AND the corresponding disappointment, I’m going to try for intentions.

That leaves room for surprises. Like I said, I was surprised by starting martial arts this fall. I almost didn’t start because I didn’t think I’d have the time for it. But after I came to terms with the fact that I had lots of time because I didn’t’ have a job YET, I realized I could enjoy my time now and learn something new.

I intend to find a job as soon as I can. But I want to stay flexible. I intend to put up the ’21 calendar this week.

I’m going to go slow, but I will fill up 2021 with good intentions. It will be marvelous to see what happens.

Not everyone celebrates Christmas. We are all learning not to be culturally myopic. Sometimes it’s a little forced, with Hannukah and the late comer Kwanzaa getting a lot of attention without having very many celebrants in a particular region. Still, I want to encourage everyone to celebrate in their own way to match their values and culture.

Everyone observes solstice though. You might forget it’s happening but the world turns with or without you.

All cultures from all times have observed it.

In fact, it’s because the of solstice winter observances that Christmas landed where it did.

Rome, as an empire, knew that it needed to build a big tent for its many conquered people. The Romans became Catholic and were working out the details when Pope Julius the first declared the date of Jesus birth as December 25^th. It was another layer of paint on the traditions that each conquered culture already celebrated. Also, it was a toe in the door for Christianity to be celebrated.

America was weird about it. The pilgrims wanted a NEW England, not the old crappy England with its church and holidays. They frowned upon Christmas, and Boston even outlawed it for a while. Those Puritans were no fun!

But not everyone came over on the Mayflower. Captain John Smith (was that his real name? Come ON!) came to America to have a good time. He was from Jamestown, a totally different kind of place and their New England included parties and servants (ahem..slaves) to support the festivities on any holiday they chose to celebrate.

Christmas was a personal choice.

But why let a good party go to waste? Washington Irving (pillar of American Literature) wrote a story about how England celebrated Christmas. America had swung around to liking England and these fictional reminisces made Christmas seem like a good time for Americans. An American minister wrote “Twas the night before Christmas” only a few years after Irving’s story. It took a little longer for marketing people to cast Santa as Jesus’ a co-star in this event. It was the Coca-Cola people who gave him THEIR color as his signature outfit a hundred years ago. He may have top billing now.

The long cold nights invite are asking to be lightened up by whatever we’ve got. My American traditions have borrowed from it all, and I’m happy to do the same.

I am glad to have traditions to share with my family and friends. It’s fun to know where they came from, learn new ones and tell stories about how things used to be.

It’s a cozy time of year. Happy Holidays everyone.

It has happened. Not often, but the pain is great. I’ve lost a book. Maybe on a bus or somewhere public and irretrievable. The story is lost.

What happened to those people? I was involved in their lives.
Did they fall in love?
Did they find what they were looking for?
Did they get the prize?
Did the boy finally notice her?

It matters to me. I know it’s just a book. They aren’t real people. But the author is taking me on a journey and it’s incomplete. When it’s cut off it feels like an amputation.

There are real people in my life too. That’s totally different, right?

Not really.

I’ve written before about the social contract. When I have become involved in a person’s life, I want to hear about the plot development.
How is your puppy’s house training going?
Did you decide to go back to school?
Is that neighbor still being creepy?
Did your kid try for the play/orchestra/beauty pageant? How did it go?

WHAT HAPPENED?

I want to know! I care about you and your life now. Sure, characters in a novel are more dramatic and the plot lines are usually spectacular. But I care about real people even more.

This is that time of year, when all the plot lines are updated.

‘Tis the season. A new season! All the Christmas letters come in. There are some with very thin updates.

Not much more than a signature. E. is still alive and she likes me enough to send me a card. That’s nice!

Others send pictures. Ooh. She has glasses now. My goodness! The kids are so tall!

K. got a dog. And she’s still at the same house. She loves that house.

Some send letters. The letters require some interpretation. Is the author a reliable narrator? Is there something between the lines? Are they happy? Are they happy with the facts of their life?

The classic look-at-my-successful-life tone for Christmas letters of yore spread easily into the social media environment: fabulous filtered selfies, vacations and accomplishments.

This year I’m behind on my Christmas letter. It’s 2020. Not a lot of fabulous to report.

My filters have never been that good anyway. My “wonder” is more about wondering than wonderful.

I have been wondering how everyone is doing. I am glad to see the faces, the ones I’ve known so long. It’s okay that most of us are grayer and chubbier. I don’t want to lose the story.

I’ll send my update soon. I don’t want to leave anyone hanging.

Christmas has come early this year, because there is nothing else to do. We’re listening to carols, and the same songs seem to be sung by everyone. My husband especially knows all the crooners. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Gene Autry, the old school voices that sound like Christmas.

They sing their version of the same songs.

But right now, I’m obsessed with some music by Bach. He wrote these Cello suites—at least we think he did—that only survive because of some music that one of his students saved a copy of. His wife had a copy too, and they were preserved.

Cello Music. Very sonorous and beautiful. Cello is a sparse music, because it is a melody line only. You can’t play five notes at once on a cello. Two notes can be done, and that’s about it.

That’s how cellos work.

I play keyboard, and I can play the piano. The piano is percussive, so I have to hit the key to make the noise. Bless that sustain pedal, I can get a soup of resonance going when I push the pedal. But I have to hit the keys.

Unlike the cello I can hit a lot of keys at the same time. I usually have an octave on the left and a chord on the right, and I’m rushing on to hit more keys to keep it going.
When I play an organ, it’s different because I can sustain the note by holding it down. It keeps singing. Not like the thin soup of the piano sustain pedal, the organ gives full voice to every key pressed. And there are so many keys to press! TWO keyboards, AND the foot pedals.

Organs have so much going on. No wonder they are the only instrument in a lot of churches. They can fill a room easy.

Pianos fill it up too, but it’s John Henry work to pound it out.

One cello in an auditorium—well, it could be loud enough but everybody better be quiet and listen. There is only the one melody to listen to. The empty space comes with.

Pay attention. It’s as plain as a vase on glass table. It’s right there.

The performance I am listening to is by Eleonor Bindman. She is a pianist and she taught her piano to speak cello.

I don’t think a cello could speak piano, and it certainly could not speak organ.

But Bindman taught herself to speak cello on the piano by translating the Bach music into something she could play on piano. It’s so different, so arresting. I can’t stop listening to it.

I am wondering what small changes I could make to lift up familiar things I’ve grown tired of.

Art can be as simple as trying things in a new way. If it is good to begin with, cleaning it off with a little twist will only make it better.

How many new Christmas albums do exactly that? And I can do the same.

It’s December! Have you done all your Christmas shopping yet?

At the start of the lockdown, me and everyone I knew was acting like depression era families. Saving margarine tubs and fostering a sourdough starter to ensure that we could have enough.

There might not be enough.

Now that Christmas is here, it could be that we are all ready to make our own O. Henry stories in which we fashion presents out of dirt and lumps of coal–gifts so perfect our loved ones preserve them and pass them on to multiple generations as the Christmas miracle of love.

Being poor is kind of a game, you know? I remember poor very well. I wasn’t unhappy. It can be a game. How will I piece together what I need from this restricted set of things?

This is the game they played in the depression. What can you substitute if you don’t have eggs? How much water can we add to the soup?

There is church in Russia built entirely without nails. They had nails 300 years ago. But over there in Kizhi they didn’t use them, and instead created what would become and international monument.

We’ll make up obstacles to make it more fun.

How good is your pig latin? EedNay ActicePray?

Christmas itself is a game we agree to. THIS day, we decided to surprise everyone with special gifts. Sneak around and figure out what people want. No peeking and no telling anyone else if you know what they are getting. It’s the Christmas spirit:

What will make people smile? Favorite traditions and new treats are all gathered and specially presented. It’s a good game, and we do everything we can to keep it going

I doubt that there will be very many new treats this year. But it’s an old Christmas tradition to find a way to make do and save Christmas no matter what.

The game’s afoot. How will I take this little supply of what we’ve got and make something fabulous?

Every American child gets the story of thanksgiving:

The pilgrims left England to find freedom in America, sailing over on the Mayflower. They suffered and could barely feed themselves, but a nice Indian man taught them how to grow plants. They made friends with some Indians and the next year, they had enough food after the harvest for a feast.

Kids make paper hats with the buckles, because that was the style at the time. That’s the story of America! Freedom and turkey.

Of course that is not the whole story. There is more.

I’ve been doing a review of American literature, and I revisited the famous “City on a Hill” sermon by John Winthrop. Clearly it had a lasting impact on America, but I wanted a point of comparison. What literature was being published in England?

From where I sat, England had the glory days of Shakespeare then literature fell off a cliff until Johnathan Swift came out with Gulliver’s Travels. And he wasn’t even English! Victorians brought literature roaring back to life, but there was this hole.

Looking into it, somehow, I didn’t realize that there were Puritans left behind in England. It turns out that the Puritans played a dramatic part in British history that had nothing to do with Americans.
For all the Puritans that left for America so many more stayed behind in England and caused trouble. Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan, heading an overthrow of the monarchy.

The first of many revolutions to come, Cromwell and the Puritans had a Civil War that executed King Charles the first.

News travelled to America about these developments. Some of our turkey-eating Puritans founders went back to England to support the revolution. Really, isn’t this what they were looking for? If the Puritan religion was the religion in power in England, why bother with the NEW England?

Winthrop’s sermon was preached in 1630. Charles the first was killed in 1649. Charles the second was reinstated in 1660. Those were some exciting years for Puritans.

Revolutions are dangerous times. Cromwell, and then Charles II had some harsh censorship in place. War and censorship put a damper on the creation of literature. Political tracts and sermons were just about it.

Taking a wider view of the world, I have some new perspective on America and what kinds of dinner conversations were happening. There was a lot going on.

I chose to listen to a Shakespeare play done by the Royal Shakespeare theater. I had my earphone in while I was cleaning the kitchen. I wanted to escape into the lovely dramatic enunciation of the THEATAH.

I am not the only one. It’s been a lot of being home. We have not gotten much art in our separation.

What we do have is a lot of screen time and zoom meetings.

And masks. Not the fun theater kind–the kind that makes you wonder if other people are mad at you from 6 feet away.

I wanted a little break. Royal Shakespeare company, a comforting bottle of pine sol and my earbuds. I was cleaning my kitchen with world class actors speaking the beautiful old-fashioned pentameter.

But wait…I wasn’t paying attention. Did I miss something? Is that queen actually sincere when she is planning her support of the step-daughter? I thought she didn’t like her.

I wasn’t going to rewind to make sure I understood the intention. But then I remembered:

Shakespeare is not subtle. If that queen is plotting a demise but saying sweet words, the bard will have her do a stage whisper aside. My face cracked in a smile. Good old Will. He puts in the reversals, but he leaves BIG CLUES to make sure we can follow along.

And I did pause the play at that point. He got it right. He is as true now as he was 500 years ago.

Zoom meetings are exhausting, right? Everyone says so.

I’ve heard that a good policy in these tiring meetings is, when you have a question? Repeat it three times.

One time
Two times

Got that? Everybody ready?
No?
Three times

There are a lot of things competing for our attention. It’s crazy out there. It takes a few tries to make sure the message is heard.

I need to do my Zooms like Shakespeare showed us. You can get through all kinds of twists, substitutions and mistaken identities if you keep stating the facts. We can get through it if we stick to this idea:

“Speak plain and to the purpose.”

I’ve seen enough change to know that more will come
-Gloria Steinem

I’m looking for work again. I am a lot calmer about it than I have been in the past, because I realize I have successfully found work so many times before I can trust myself to do it again.

There is a name for that:
Experience

I have a lot of experience now. I’m not entirely comfortable with that, because it would be very comforting to look over my shoulder and ask someone else how to do this. It’s just…I’m that someone now.

One thing I’m good at after all these years is working with people remotely. That’s another hot trend right now “working remote” It means everyone is on their homes.

But it also has another meaning. When I am in my employer’s office building in California and I need to work with a coworker who is in DC, I am assisting remotely. I’ve had to do this kind of cooperation for all kinds of global work.

My work has to do with physical equipment, network connection and audio and video signals on each side. And very few of those things can I check remotely, only the network and that only a little.

Across time zone and language barriers, with the stress of the High up Executives wanting this all to work, I have to talk to my colleagues in all the other sites at the other end of the meeting and get it working. I have to trust the person who is there.

I know the equipment. I know which lights blink and how it all is cabled together. But I am not there. They are. I have to hear what they are telling me.

Even when it seems impossible and wrong.

But if my colleague is on the phone with me, describing the lights and the cables, I have to believe he is sincere. I’ve talked janitors into re-cabling entire systems for me. If we stay on the phone and trust each other it comes out all right.

I have heard stories that sound impossible. I know for sure how these systems work!

But I learned to listen. To ask questions and hear what my colleagues are saying. To trust them and ask again and again until we figured it out.

And we always figured it out. Because I did know how the systems worked. And they were telling me what they heard and saw.

Sometimes there were very big language and communication barriers. But I learned to use better words and be more precise. And to get confirmation from the remote colleague that she understood what I was asking.

There were a lot of tense moments, but every single time we did it. We just had to keep talking.

I’m thinking about that right now in my country. We are very politically divided. I am at home without a job and I’m feeling discouraged.

But I have experience. I’ve experienced how it can work out. We just have to keep working it. We’ll get there.

“Why should I vote?” Olga said. “It doesn’t matter.

It was 1993 and I lived with Olga in Yakutsk Russia. When I first moved to Yakutsk to teach English-language kindergarten in a Christian school, Olga was the music teacher. She adopted me and persuaded me to move in with her.

I had my own bed in a two-room flat with the other teachers. There were four of us, but they were all so much older than me. I had just turned 20. Olga was 18 and like most Russians lived with her parents.

The other teacher whispered to me that she’d heard Olga was in the middle of a divorce. But this seemed unbelievable. I had to ask her was it true.

Yes, it was. She had gotten married at 16, she said. In fact, the single bed we shared—sleeping feet by head—had been the one she shared with her husband.

Why get married so young?

It was the thing to do, apparently. But he wasn’t nice to her. And after he went to prison for reasons unclear to me, she decided it was time to divorce. Except the church she had become part of seemed to want to give her advice about it—or at least gossip about it. She said the pastor said he would not give her advice one way or another.

But she and I spent all our time together and there was an election. And I wanted to go with her to see what it was like. She was not at all interested. “My vote doesn’t matter.”

The word for vote is Russian is the same word for voice. This still charms me. My American self was sure that it was her civic duty. And even if it hadn’t mattered during soviet times, surely things were getting better. That was more than a year ago! She should be part of the activism of voting.

Plus, I wanted to see what it looked like.

I persuaded her. We never had enough excitement anyway. She figured out the site to vote, and we took the bus to a section of the city I didn’t know. I went with her and saw the little stations. I had voted once right before I had, but I’d seen my parents vote. It looked very similar. I was happy for the new Russian Federation.

Yeltsin was president, but this was a local election. My Russian was not strong enough to follow it but there was not a lot of press about it anyway.

She came back from her booth and grabbed my arm, “I saw him!”

“What? Did you vote?”

Yes yes yes, she showed me her inked finger. This was a vote?

“But listen! I saw my ex!” She was nervous, clinging to me as we walked out.

He had been out of prison for a while, which I hadn’t known. She said he had a new woman in his life, and she had been with him. On the bus, Olga discussed her a little. She was so much older!

She had done it. She voted, even though she thought it didn’t matter. I told her I was very proud of her: “You used your voice.”

It is confusing and there are a lot of reasons not to bother. But I still believe my voice matters.