Directly contradicting the cultural “truth” that aging is a tragedy (for women, that is), I was presented with evidence to the contrary that proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that when executed well, aging can be a beautiful thing. Even for women.

My mom was a wonderful and fairly prolific poet. Through the years, I’ve read reams and reams of her poetry.. . .What she didn’t write about: me.

I have lost my sense of being a living thing surrounded by living things.

There’s no doubt about it: we live in an era definable by access to information about just about anything, from just about anywhere, to just about anyone. This can be a good thing.

But it isn’t always.

This July will mark the beginning of my 20th year living in Indiana. I’ve had something of a love/hate relationship with it for most of those years.

Not anymore.

(Photo: Fall Creek Meeting House)

I didn’t really welcome the request to stock a kitchen with groceries for a man and his pregnant wife, newly arrived in Muncie. I saw it as just a time-consuming thing that needed to be done. But it made me happy.

Like nearly all of us, from the time he was a toddler developing his awareness of the world, the concept of normality vs. abnormality was a primary distinction that ordered Dan’s ideas about himself and others. But at 18, newly disabled and forced to reevaluate himself in terms of normality/abnormality, it was clear where his new conditions placed him. His pre-accident goal of becoming a race-horse trainer was replaced by an array of goals determined by a single, overarching aim: becoming normal again.

In early 2021, following a fall in the shower, I was immobilized in bed for some weeks. There wasn’t much I could do. But I could still operate a TV remote, so I started watching favorite feel-good sitcoms from my youth. I was soon fascinated by the cultural milieu these shows portrayed—the one I grew up in. It was like stepping back in time, visiting the world I was born into. With some focus, the cultural messages that shaped my view of the world and myself became clear.

Dyke recently sent me a pleasurable video made by the YouTuber Scammer Payback. In fact, the pleasure it gave me led me to spend an hour or so more of my day watching more of his videos, in which he upends the phishing game. . . . And yet that pleasure may not be quite as simple as it seems.

The theme for last night’s UU Connections meeting was “Opening to Joy.” The topic seems so straightforward, but I had an unexpectedly complex, confusing, and even downhearted reaction to the subject materials.

Family and other social connections, or lack of connection, is not only a quality of life issue; it is, in fact, a matter of life and death.

In a time rife with celebrations of “blessings” and “gifts,” I, along with increasing numbers of white Americans, regard this season as a time of painful reflection.

Kurt Vonnegut urged everyone to produce art—a drawing, a poem—without worrying about who would see it or how it would be received by whoever might. I second his suggestion. Here’s what emerged for me:

I once heard UUs described as a group that “licks the sugar off the pill” of theistic religion. Not so. Living out my faith requires as much self-discipline as is required of anyone by faith in any deity.

There is layered injustice here. The insurrectionists are, indeed, guilty of treason. Many of their supporters are guilty of sedition. Almost 700 of them have been brought to answer, however lightly, for their crimes.

But what of those who spurred the attempted coup?

Had Dan been my father instead of my brother, and had I been eight years younger, would I have resented him? Would I have seen him only as the cause of my problems, without registering that he was, at least also, the bearer of his own?

The flood of interest in Project Hercules was heartening. I have to ask, however, had the venture been successful, what would have been the overall result had these dogs successfully “escaped” from Afghanistan?

I had never put into words, all at once, the qualities that drew and continue to draw me to my husband. I figured it couldn’t hurt to give the matter more thought.

As a child, I was fascinated by astronomy. When I was about eight years old, I read that the sun was going to burn out someday. I was desolate. I knew enough to know that the world without the sun would be unimaginably cold and dark. How would I bear it?