Time to go back to the doctor

Pandemic sports safety starts behind scenes

Everyone has heard or used the phrase: "Logistical nightmare." Those words have added meaning in the high school sports world as many people, despite countless logistical nightmares, worked tirelessly and successfully behind the scenes the past three months to provide a safe, memorable winter experience for student-athletes during COVID-19. It was a nearly impossible task that these unsung, mostly unseen, sports ...

Rosie swims, but she doesn't bathe

Bill Cosby, back when he was just an up-and-coming comic who talked about the vicissitudes of family life, famously remarked on how 2-year-olds are happy to splash around in the toilet, but bawl their heads off when put into a bath. We experienced something similar recently with Rosie, our 9-month-old Cockapoo puppy. We took the dogs -- Rosie, and Cushla, the 5-year-old German Shepherd -- to our favorite nature ...

Green-up time

Walking around my yard this afternoon to see what might be poking up through the greening of the grass, I actually alerted my dog when I jumped and shouted: “Dandelions!” His head snapped up, ears alert and took off to run a reconnoiter of the yard. Seeing nothing suspicious, he trotted back and looked at me with a “What?” My daffodils are up about 8 inches and my lilies are poking up around my flower garden. ...

Reconsidering my TV snobbery

Limiting so-called screen time is hardly a new idea. When I was growing up, more than a few years ago, I was allowed to watch only so much TV. Staying up past my bedtime to watch a particular show I liked was a privilege that I did not take for granted. Homework was to be done before TV. My brothers and I were encouraged to read; we were not merely exhorted to read -- we had the example of our parents, both ...

The watch is on

It's time. The crocus are up, the peepers peeping, the brookies are biting, the geese and goldfinch are back — now the watch is on for dandelions and the “hummers.” The hummingbirds arrive on schedule, in May. We'll get reports from friends from down South and on up the coast on their progress. And then, here they are, on the same day. And they come straight to the spot of their last years' feeders. That always ...

Plants as testimony

"Look at all the plants!" is a common exclamation from the first-time visitors to my house. And it's usually followed by, "I love plants." My house does look somewhat like a miniature rain forest and I have been accused of being a latent greenhouse keeper, I admit. But plants in the house serve so many functions, necessary both physically and psyche-wise. One great function — and the primary reason for my ...

Transformed by love

Along with Christmas, Easter celebrates love. But if Christmas is about reclaiming innocence in order to make a home in our hearts for love, Easter is about faith, which gives us the strength to trust that love has the final word. Faith is not about beliefs, in the sense of ideas that one might subscribe to; it is about experience and trusting that experience, even when other people or circumstances contradict ...

Sick day: the upside of feeling down

I was sick with a cold during one of our recent colossal dumpings of snow, so I had a couple of sick/snow days. I was working from home -- the news waits for no one -- but I couldn't have gone into the office if I had wanted to. After two days of working through the coughing, nose-blowing, sinus headache, general awfulness, I took an actual sick day: the kind where you just let yourself be sick, rest and drink ...

Big yellow sleeping pills

I don't believe in reincarnation — coming back as another person or a cow or some such. I tend toward the genetic memory theory*, i.e., that when a person is hypnotized and starts speaking in past languages of past lives. I theorize it may just be one of our multimillion ancestral cells that we are made up off kicking in and running its memory tape. I can't conceive of a God who would condemn his children to do ...