Western music is like the sun. All over the world, the sunset is different, but the beauty is the same.
Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024), former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/02/14/one-liner-wednesday-and-chocolate/
(Photo: ABC’s bear wearing a Binghamton Rumble Ponies cap)
Spouse B, daughter T, and I are in London this week visiting daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG for half-term break. This first half of the week, both E and L are working, so our main goal is taking care of ABC and JG so they can do that.
The last time we were together in person was April when they came to our home in the US. Although we do video calls, they can’t really capture the changes that happen. JG, now 3 and attending full-day nursery school is chatting up a storm! She loves making puzzles, zooming around our rental house near their home, and following the lead of 6-year-old ABC, who likes or tolerates it most of the time. ABC, now in year 2 at school, is reading well and a master of make-believe. She can make up songs and lyrics on the spot, taking after her musically-and-literary-accomplished parents. ABC also enjoys dance and art.
I love watching B being Grandpa, playing games, reading stories, preparing meals and snacks, and dozing off during naptime. T is an involved auntie, playing endless games of hide-and-seek and whatever make-believe ABC has invented and giving gentle hugs, in deference to her still-healing shoulder.
My favorite thing is just being here as family. With the ocean between us, it’s a rare gift to snuggle on the couch, especially with JG who was born during the early part of the pandemic and whom we didn’t get to meet in person until she was a year old. Such a different grandparenting experience than with ABC who lived with us in the US until she was two.
For JG, I’m just Nana. ABC, though, remembers her Great-Nana, who passed away in 2019.
I miss my parents and wish I could be as good a grandparent as they were with E and T.
I like window seats.
Granted, I don’t often get to sit in one because we are most likely to be travelling as a group of three on a long flight, which usually puts us in the center of the plane and far from the windows.
This morning, though, I got to sit in the window seat of a small jet, flying from our home airport to Detroit, from which we will continue after a ten-ish hour layover to London to visit daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG.
Even though it was dark out, I enjoyed looking out the window. Town and city lights. Occasional wisps of clouds. A few stars visible above the wing.
As we flew west, it seemed we were trying to outrun dawn. We nearly succeeded, orange and pink blossoming on the eastern horizon as we made our descent.
The stars had disappeared but Venus shown brightly.
After diligently posting daily for Just Jot It January, I’ve been taking a break but hope to be back with some new posts in a few days, although some planned travel may get in the way…
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/02/07/one-liner-wednesday-so-that-happened/
To be compassionate is to have a heart that suffers from the misfortune of others because we think of it as our own.
Thomas Aquinas
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays and/or the last day of Just Jot It January ’24! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/31/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan24-the-31st-goals/
Whew! Launching into the last written post of Linda’s Just Jot It January ’24! There is one more day in January, but I’ll be posting a quote tomorrow for One-Liner Wednesday, which means no running on about things.
Thanks once again to author Linda G. Hill of Life in Progress for offering this opportunity to get the blogging year off to a good start by posting every day in January.
I’m grateful to have met this challenge again this year, although I can’t carry this posting pace into the rest of the months. I’m planning to spend a lot of time through mid-April revising my full-length poetry collection in preparation for work with a professional editor, which will probably be followed by another round of revisions before a decision point on next steps toward publication. I should probably also devote some time to doing single poem submissions. I tend to be diligent about that for a bit and then fall off the wagon and go for a few months without putting work out to journals and presses. The places that are still actively considering my work have dwindled so I guess it’s time to get back on that.
Thanks also to the other Just Jot It January bloggers and readers. I appreciate having a blogging community for support and inspiration.
Write on – in whatever way works best for you – and let’s all meet up at Linda’s for Just Jot It January ’25! Don’t forget, though, that Linda coordinates One-Liner Wednesdays and Stream of Consciousness Saturdays year-round. While I don’t manage those every week, I do them often so I hope to meet you there sometimes, too.
*****
You can find out more about Just Jot It January and join in here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/30/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-30th-2024/
Today’s prompt for Linda’s Just Jot It January is “family,” contributed by Kim of Twisted Trunk Travels. Check out their blogs!
Over these last ten-ish years of writing poetry and blogging here at Top of JC’s Mind, I have written way more often about my family than I thought I would. Of course, it made perfect sense to blog about visiting daughter E and son-in-law L in Hawai’i, as folks often blog about their travels, but as time and circumstances changed and I faced the challenges of caregiving for various generations of the family, posts about family became more frequent. I also used poetry as a way to process things that were going on with my family, most notably about my mother’s experiences living with and dying from heart disease, which became my first published chapbook, Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023).
I do try to protect my family members by referring to them with initials or nicknames rather than their given names. Nearly all of them use a different surname so only people who know us in real life are likely to recognize them from posts. Currently, spouse B and daughter T are most likely to appear as we are living in the same house, although we will soon be going to visit daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG in London. which may generate some posts. My daughters’ grandparents were called on the blog by the names they used for them, Nana and Paco for my parents and Grandma for B’s mom. (Sadly, B’s dad, known as Grandpa, passed away in 2005, before I was blogging and writing poetry, although his death was the subject of one of my earliest published poems.) If you are perusing the archives of Top of JC’s Mind, you’ll come across posts dealing with their final years and the grief following their deaths.
One thing that strikes me about my family posts and poems is how often they spark comments and conversations about people’s own experiences. Knowing that I offer that space for people to reflect on themselves and their own families is a big part of why I continue to write about my family.
What about you? Do you find it helpful to write about your family, either privately in a journal or in more public ways?
*****
It’s not too late to join in with #JusJoJan24! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/29/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-29th-2024/
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.
It’s been a hard few months.
More than a few?
Hard to keep track…
When I wrote this post at the end of October, I was re-organizing to structure my time for more poetry and less volunteering, but B’s COVID diagnosis in November, which turned into two weeks of him isolating in part of the house, leaving me responsible for keeping the household going, followed by daughter T’s shoulder surgery/aftermath in December left me with a lot to do, not a lot of holiday spirit, and very little creative brain availability. Thrown on top of this was the unexpected return of the threat of shale gas development, which we thought had ended with the New York State high-volume hydrofracking ban nine years ago, this time in the guise of an unproven scheme to use supercritical carbon dioxide to extract methane from shale and sequester carbon. This necessitated the reactivation of the coalition that won the fracking ban back then and hours of conference calls, research, and emails. Oh, and what I thought would be one or two local interviews for my alma mater turned into a series of zoom interviews across the region, taking a lot more time and energy than I had expected when I said yes to the opportunity. (There’s also some other personal and family health stuff going on, which I won’t go into here.)
I’ve been struggling with prioritizing and keeping my attention where it belongs to finish tasks. My best intentions to simplify have met with the reality tsunami and washed out to sea.
I am, though, not suffering as much as I was last January when I wrote JC’s Confessions #26. Then, I realized I was still grieving. I am in a different place in dealing with losses now.
We are spending a couple of weeks in February visiting our family in London, UK. This will get me away from most meetings. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a little bit of poetry time in the early mornings or late evenings to continue work on revision of my full-length manuscript. I’m attempting to line edit the whole thing and, perhaps, re-order it to prepare for work with a professional editor in April. It’s felt like fits and starts so far but I have worked on about 20% of the poems to this point.
I have followed through on my commitment to post daily for Just Jot It January but will be pulling back the post pace for February and trying to devote that time to poetry.
So, yes, organizing my time and following through on plans is still a work in progress.
And, come next January, there is a possibility that some version of this Confession will recur.
Or, maybe, I’ll finally stop feeling badly about having to re-vamp, re-adjust, postpone, and re-jigger my life so often.
I can hope.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/28/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-28th-2024/
At this point in my life, I’m not a big fan of the telephone.
It can take a lot of time and energy to convince myself to make the call, especially if I know I’m likely to have to work through endless phone menus or get put on hold multiple times and shuffled between service personnel.
(Yeah, looking at you insurance companies, utilities, etc.)
There were periods in my younger years when the phone was an important lifeline and source of connection – when B used to travel a lot on business, when I was away from my mom.
Even after my parents retired near us, I usually also spoke to them every day by phone, even on days when I also saw them in person.
Those calls were not hard to make. Or receive.
I still use my landline for calls whenever I can and still have an answering machine to pick up if I can’t – or if the caller ID suspects spam, which is most of the time these days. All three of us happened to be out together earlier this week and I went to check the machine for messages when we got home. I realized that since Paco (my father) died over two years ago I seldom get personal messages on my phone.
Actually, it’s longer ago than that because Paco forgot how to make phone calls in his last months.
Somehow, though, I keep checking for a call…
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday/Just Jot It January today is “make the call.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/26/the-friday-reminder-for-socs-jusjojan-2024-daily-prompt-jan-27th/
Back in September, I published a post about the age and health of President Biden and former President Trump. In it, I wrote:
On the other hand, when Donald Trump was president, he was not known to keep a very rigorous schedule of official duties. He didn’t seem to understand the complexities of the job, such as dealing with classified materials. He was volatile and resorted to bullying, name calling, and lying to try to get his way, regardless of facts, laws, or policies. Sometimes, when he is speaking without a teleprompter, he doesn’t seem able to construct cogent sentences. I don’t know if there is a medical diagnosis that elucidates these behaviors or not, but I don’t think his age is the salient factor.
While there are some in the media who have been talking about these things for years, Trump’s recent behavior has pushed these topics into the mainstream, both in the press and among some politicians. A few days ago, Trump repeatedly referred to his primary opponent, Nikki Haley, when he seemingly meant to say Nancy Pelosi. When campaigning, he has sometimes been confused about where he is. He has repeatedly said that he ran against President Obama, which he did not. He doesn’t seem to have much control over his emotional reactions and speech, for example, when he went on a rant at the New York trial over damages for fraud regarding his real estate businesses. His victory speech after the New Hampshire primary featured rambling, repetition, threats, and vitriol.
It seems that some of the tendencies he had during his presidency have heightened. What is even more alarming to me and to some observers is that Trump’s cognition and control seem to have slipped. I’ve been exposed to numerous people as dementia was developing and observed how their language skills eroded and how they struggled with self-control. It makes Trump’s recent behavior seem eerily familiar. That others are pointing it out confirms that it is not just a personal bias.
Donald Trump’s father, Fred, had dementia from Alzheimer’s disease for years before his death. Alzheimer’s disease is known to run in families and Donald’s age does become salient on this point, given that he is now 77 years old and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s increases with age. It’s also frequently not diagnosed in its early stages. While Fred Trump was diagnosed in his 80s, it’s likely that cognitive decline began years earlier, which would put Donald in the same age bracket as his father was when symptoms started to develop.
Despite all this, many Republican elected officials are currently endorsing Trump for the nomination and the presidency. They don’t seem to recognize the danger of having someone in cognitive decline and with poor impulse control exercising the powers of the presidency. Things could go very badly very quickly.
There is no health test to run for president. I do hope that, at the very least, there will be pressure for Trump to debate Nikki Haley so that potential voters can see how he answers questions and reacts to issues in real time. This would also reveal to other Republican party leaders what his current capabilities are so they could assess if he is fit to serve for the next presidential term. I don’t know whether or not they can set aside their own hunger for power or not but, perhaps, it will scare them enough to act to safeguard the country from the disaster of having a mentally incompetent person in charge.
Trump has been using increasingly authoritarian language and issuing threats against opponents and even other Republicans who disagree with him. He should not ever again be in a position where he can carry out these threats, many of which are illegal and would threaten the stability of our democratic institutions. Oh, and Trump is insisting a president should enjoy total immunity from prosecution, no matter what he does.
Please consider these things before you vote. Look at what each candidate says, does, and believes. Don’t just look at their party or family name.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/26/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-26th-2024/
Joanne Corey 