2020 – The Year that Wasn’t Easy An Appreciative Lament I started out the year feeling kinda spiffy. Then I fell on my face Until I fell on my face Then I cut the very tip of my main guitar finger off. (Ever try to open and apply a band-aid when one hand is already bloody? You can’t. Passive-aggressive sadists have designed it so it can’t be used.) Which had barely healed when I smashed the tip of my second-most main guitar finger, which infected…
My December, 2020 involvement in On-line Forums (Cleantechnica and KOS, mostly) If interested, read these Reflections I contributed to on-line forums in December of 2020. Byrd on KOS in Response to Winter Rabbit’s Wounded Knee – 130-year Anniversary: Winter Rabbit jarringly reminds us – what we were told was glory was, in fact, gory. I stumbled upon the now-peaceful fields of Wounded Knee a year back. At the curio shop, a convivial mix of natives and western whites mingled. I picked up a copy of…
We worry for the worst. Wary gets scary. Relations grow reactionary. We're susceptible to this, but built for better. On the eve of the most important presidential election in American history, and in the spirit of a realistically scary 2020 Halloween, I slog through this dismal blog with a scary featured image, not to dishearten you, but rehearten you. We need to face realistic fears to move to practical hopes. It was an Innocent Halloween in 2019 Just a year ago we hadn't heard of…
Imagine how inept I seemed to myself having presented an entire Zoom video sermon to my Unitarian Universalist fellowship in Grants Pass, Oregon, only to discover I had moved the camera so that it wasn't on me. David, the Zoom administrator had tried to text me, alerting me to readjust it, but I, frazzled at trying to present it well, ignored the phone. Why? I got it in my head that it was various family texting with complications on how to get in. So, I…
Stretch is the only name that has emerged for my white cat. He's also gone by Little White Guy or Lank. Something Egyptian seems appropriate. He's majestic yet unpretentious. He likes it when I purr. Stretch wasn't always like this, comfortable on my lap. He was feral as a kitten. When I first got him he wouldn't be petted. He'd slink away from touch. But he's since figured things out. He even mimics the meows I make to him, trying to talk in my cat…
At home, sheltering in place, I've got some work done. Garden, new roof over firewood, new roof shunting rain water onto garden, new floor in the bath - that kind of stuff. Best of all was a five hour hike into the mountains behind town where son Tobias and I saw lots of pretty views and trees, and we came on a big black mother bear and two chubby black cubs. While out, I accidentally snapped the photo with this blog entry. At the last…
I recorded a video on this subject. You can see it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlw7q__tS4Y
A 52 minute recreation of a shorter sermon I presented 3-29-2020 via Zoom at the Unitarian Universalists of Grants Pass, posted to my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/TQhTe2_Vy_o
