I’m sharing this with love for our Canadian neighbors; when the singer’s microphone developed problems, the hockey fans in Buffalo took over singing the Canadian national anthem and it’s so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes.
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“A vibrant, fair, and regenerative future is possible — not when thousands of people do climate justice activism perfectly but when millions of people do the best they can.”— Xiye Bastida
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Binghamton NY area folks are invited to Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church (opposite Binghamton High School) on Sunday, April 19, 2026, for a concert by the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton highlighting music of the Baltic region, beginning with the Fair Winds Quintet at 2:45 followed by the choral concert at 3:00.
This invitation brought to you through Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/04/15/one-liner-wednesday-id-rather-be/
While I’m grateful that a partial ceasefire was declared in the Middle East yesterday, I call on the United States Congress to immediately return to Washington to remove Trump from office because he publicly threatend destruction of a civilization, also known as genocide, in violation of international and United States law.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! While this particular post of mine is very serious, many of the posts in this series are more fun or have lovely photos. Learn more about the series here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/04/08/one-liner-wednesday-im-not-opening-up/
Binghamton, NY area folks, please plan to join the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton and our special guests, the Fair Winds Quintet, for a concert of music from the Baltic region at Trinity Episcopal across from Binghamton High on Sunday, April 19th with Fair Winds at 2:45 and MCOB at 3:00 (NOTE NEW START TIMES)!
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! I’m double-dipping today so that I can also spread the news of Ellen Morris Prewitt’s book launch today!
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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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!
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.
*****
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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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Joanne Corey 