Ellen Morris Prewitt‘s new novel, When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women, launches today, so get your copy of what promises to be an imaginative, fun read!
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(Photo from Channel 12 News.)
Yesterday, spouse B, daughter T, and I attended the memorial service for our neighbor, Doug Rose.
Doug had lived a life of service, including being a police officer, but was known to most in our town for his fifty years of service with our volunteer fire department. He began volunteering at age 16, eventually becoming chief and training dozens of firefighters. The colon cancer that took his life was considered in the line of service, bringing to mind that firefighting is a hazardous endeavor with a lot of toxic exposure. Even during his illness when he could no longer go out on calls, Doug continued working for the department, doing planning, advising, and reports.
The fire department stood by Doug and his family, keeping vigil in his final days and helping with the memorials. Uniformed members of the department filled a third of the church at the memorial service, with emergency vehicles ready to be part of the cortege.
The most touching part of the service was when Doug’s daughter shared memories and stories of her dad. There were touches of humor, which were welcome at such a sad time. It was also a reminder of how we knew Doug and his family as neighbors. His children were a bit younger than ours but still close enough to play together and then be in school together. The whole family was service-oriented. Doug’s wife was a nurse until her retirement. His daughter now teaches at the same neighborhood elementary school that she, her brother, and our daughters attended. His son began volunteering with the fire department at 16, as Doug had, and now works as a dispatcher. Our neighborhood and town are safer and more cared-for because of Doug and his family.
A number of the stories shared involved Doug’s size. I remember the first time we met that he had to duck a bit to enter our house, his 7’2″ (220 cm) frame putting his head perilously close to the ceiling. B remembers seeing him directing traffic when he was a police officer, towering over the roof of his squad car. T recalls that, even though he was so big, she wasn’t afraid of him when she was a child. He was a dad looking out for the kids; she didn’t know that he was also well-known for his ability to break up bar fights.
Doug’s family was very important to him. He became a grandfather but his grandson, who was born early, only lived a few days. Because my faith tradition believes that we are reunited with our loved ones after death, I am imagining Doug now cradling his grandson and telling him stories about his family still on earth. As we were reminded by the reading of 1 Cor 13 at the memorial service, “Love never ends.”
Rest in peace, Doug.
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “portrait.”
The photo above is a new portrait of me today, dressed in honor of the third No Kings! Day held in the United States in Donald Trump’s second term.
There are over 3,300 marches, rallies, demonstrations, or other events planned across the country with a few being held in other countries in solidarity.
Due to my health issues, I won’t be able to be at any of them in person, so I am declaring my solidarity here on my blog.
I’m hoping to watch some of the coverage on television. This is the largest yet of the No Kings protests against the rising autocracy we are experiencing here in the US with Trump and his administration. The situation becomes more dire by the day, especially with the Iran war.
Of course, there are also the ongoing problems across many issues both domestically and internationally. The flagship protest for No Kings today is in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, where an alleged immigration crackdown early this year led to terror, including the deaths of two US citizen observers who were trying to assist their immigrant neighbors and other citizen observers.
There are also many organizations that are standing up for our Constitution, laws, ethics, values, and humanity and rights. Special shout-out to CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. They do a lot of legal work in trying to call attention to and file suits about the abuses of power in the nation’s capital. I ordered this shirt from them – in yellow, which is one of the colors associated with No Kings.
I also appreciate how the No Kings events are held. They are peaceful and designed for there to be safety and fun for participants. Some people even wear fun costumes, like inflatable animals.
Even while people are having fun, though, the cause is very serious.
Presidents are not Kings!
(Hearts by Angie Traverse)
Today is the 21st anniversary of the death of my friend Angie.
I’m thinking today about what is lost when a person dies at a younger-than-expected age. Angie was 54.
During one of her remissions, Angie and her spouse bought a second home on a lake that was special to their family. Angie told me she imagined grandchildren visiting there some day. I imagined visiting, perhaps with grandchildren of my own.
At the time, our children were tweens and teens.
Now, I have granddaughters, who are far away in London, UK.
I know that Angie’s children have children of their own, although I’m not sure how many or what their ages are. I imagine that they go visit the lake house sometimes. I imagine they tell stories about Angie so that her grandchildren have some inkling about who and how she was, even though she died long before they were born.
I imagine that there are still touches of Angie’s artistic and decorating skills on display.
I imagine that Angie’s spirit is still alive in her children.
Somehow.
After singing a gig with Madrigal Choir at a senior living complex last night, today is going to be a down day to recover to be ready for a big out-of-town medical appointment tomorrow and another gig on Friday.
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reading difficulties
While this post will be stream of consciousness for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday on the prompt “easy/hard,” it is also part of my occasional series JC’s Confessions, so I will open with the usual non-SoC opening for that series.
In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, then a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
Reading, which is something that was usually easy for me, is now often hard to do.
As someone who loves reading and who is trying to be a writer and poet, that’s a hard thing to admit.
This change is mostly related to what has recently been diagnosed as hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), an inherited connective tissue disorder that affects collagen. Because we have connective tissue throughout our bodies, many different body parts and systems are affected and the symptoms and their locations vary over time.
For these last couple of years, I’ve been having a lot of problems with my brain and with fatigue.
I often have brain fog, which makes it difficult to concentrate. This makes it hard to read anything that is long, like books. I do better with short things, so I do a lot of my reading these days in the forms of emails, so, given what is going on, I read commentary on political topics and environmental problems and some Catholic church/social justice news that lands in my inbox.
You would think that poems would be perfect for my length limitations, but, sadly, this isn’t the case. I’ve largely lost contact with the creative side of my thinking, making it hard for me to read poetry most of the time, as I am not able to really appreciate the art of the poet. I hadn’t realized how much of my own creativity is wrapped up in reading someone else’s work. I do still manage to do a bit of reading of poems, especially my poet-friends’ work, but it’s frustrating and sad for me, knowing that I can’t fully appreciate their artistry.
I also have severe limits on how long I can read, write, or concentrate. I’m writing this in the morning and hope to draft one other practical letter I need to write, but that will probably be about it for the day because I will be very tired afterward. In order to have energy to go to vigil mass at 4:00, I’ll most likely spend the early afternoon lying down and resting.
It’s really hard to deal with these limitations on my brain power and energy.
There are also some other problems caused by my hEDS that interfere with my reading. I’m having a couple of problems with my eyes. I have some level of visual disturbance going on, especially with my left eye, which causes some blurring that isn’t able to be corrected with glasses. The problem isn’t with the eye itself but with the brain in processing it – at least that is the current theory. It may be related to dysautonomia, where the regulation of all those things that our bodies ordinarily do without our thinking about them goes a bit haywire. On rare occasions, I can concentrate hard enough on what I am looking at that I can get the blurriness to clear, although only for a short amount of time and at risk of ramping up the fatigue.
The other connective tissue-related eye problem is dry eye, which I treat with prescription drops, artificial tears, and taking flaxseed oil. These help but don’t eliminate the problem, which, on top of everything else, makes reading, especially onscreen, more tiring.
Now that we know about the hEDS, we may be better able to address some of the problems underlying this struggle I’m having with reading.
Or not.
I have a bunch of referrals to new specialists pending. I’m most anxious to find help for the brain fog/fatigue symptoms so that I can think and feel like myself again.
Meanwhile, I feel sad – and, sometimes, guilty – that I can’t manage to read my friends’ work or keep up with the torrent of news and commentary that I would like to do.
I try to give myself grace, but it’s hard.
*****
You are invited to join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/03/20/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-21-2026/
As St. John Henry Newman said in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, “To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
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March 17th is observed by Catholics around the world – and everyone who is of Irish heritage or who just wants to join the celebration – as St. Patrick’s Day.
My late father-in-law was an elementary school principal in western Massachusetts for many years and observed March 17th as Evacuation Day, the day in 1776 when the British evacuated their soldiers, some loyalists, and their ships from Boston, ending a 332-day siege. This year marks the semiquincentennial of that event.
At school, he would announce the day over the intercom in morning announcements. As computers and dot matrix printers appeared later in his tenure as principal, he designed an Evacuation Day card.
He would also buy Evacuation Day flowers for his wife, a bit of an inside joke as she also was of Irish heritage so March 17th was St. Patrick’s Day for her. After he passed away in 2005, we took up the family tradition of Evacuation Day flowers, sending them to Grandma and also featuring them in our home.
Now, we give Evacuation Day flowers to our daughters, which is even more ironic now that one of them lives in London with daughters of her own who will, no doubt, have a different perspective on this history.
Wishing you all a great day, whether you observe St. Patrick’s Day, Evacuation Day, or just another Tuesday today!
About the photo: This is a picture of my dad, known here as Paco, taken in Ireland in 2019 when my sisters took him on his first-and-only trip there when he was 94. He was of Irish heritage and had wanted to visit but wouldn’t go without our mom who didn’t fly. The trip happened in October after her death in May and, though we couldn’t have known then, just months before COVID-19 became an international pandemic. Paco passed away in September, 2021, so it was indeed the “luck of the Irish” that he was able to see Ireland in the brief window in which it was possible.
Paco’s middle name was Patrick.
In honor of Pi Day (3/14), spouse B made a maple pecan pie in our special “pi” pie plate. If you can’t make it out from the photo, the rim has the value of pi printed out to a hundred or so decimal places.
Yes, we are just that geeky!
We actually have two pi pie plate because my sisters each saw them and thought of B and bought them for Christmas gifts. We use them often but lots of times the rim is covered by crust so you can’t see the numbers. Not a problem with the maple pecan pie, though!
Hoping that everyone has some pie today – or something as yummy!
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Joanne Corey 