All Day Long (Chloe Langford and Paul Langford)

[ Google Doodle for April 21. 2020:  "Stay home. Save lives. Help stop coronavirus." ]


Much to feel good about this week.  I gave Sarah authorization to use my Costco card, and she found everything on my list (got groceries for herself as well). Nancy gifted me with some cherry tomatoes, a container of antibacterial wipes (cherished currency), a loaf of vegan carrot-banana bread, and four ripe mangos (which I peeled, cut up, and put in the freezer to make sorbet).  I finally signed up for a Hulu account, mainly because of all the miniseries based on books (High Fidelity, Little Fires Everywhere, The Handmaid's Tale, Normal People), and have already binge-watched the first two...  :-)

So, as is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy!  


~ Tonight! (5/15/20), ElizaLive, Let's Get Political, Live Facebook Stream, 5:30 p.m. Central Time:  Over the years as things in the world and our country get more divided, I have been motivated to write socio-political songs. I’ve been slipping them into my records more and more confidently as I have slowly educated myself. This Friday on ELIZALIVE I will choose from my now fairly-long list and pick a variety of songs and perspectives. Please let me know any requests you have that fit the theme. ~ Eliza  


~ So You Had a Bad Day…  Here are some tips to pick yourself back up again, regain some dignity and soldier on after the lousiest of days.


~ Elmo's Dad Sends a PSA to Overwhelmed Parents at Home: "You Are Doing an Amazing Job":  Our beloved Sesame Street pals are social distancing right along with the rest of the world, which means Elmo's dad, Louie, can sympathize with all the families staying home. In a sweet PSA published on April 5, Louie applauded moms and dads for their tireless efforts to keep their kids healthy, safe, and entertained, but acknowledged this time can be "overwhelming." He encouraged parents to take a moment for themselves: listen to a favorite song, stretch, or just breathe.


~ Smash a Coronavirus Piñata. You’ll Feel Better.  If you cannot join, beat. Such is the resolve of creative people bashing piñatas to defeat a pandemic (or at least, excise some of their feelings about it).


~ Photographer Has Been Taking Free Family ‘Porchtraits’ to Capture SweetSilver Linings During Social Distancing:  Rather than letting social distancing keep him from his passion for photography, Dave Puente has found a way to join local families in celebrating the silver linings of quarantine.  The photographer from Minneapolis, Minnesota has been taking free family portraits that document the joyful part of community members being at home with their loved ones—and he does it all while simultaneously respecting social distancing guidelines.


SONG:  All Day Long by Chloe Langford and Paul Langford

BOOK:  A Mindful Year: 365 Ways to Find Connection and the Sacred in Everyday Life by Aria Campbell-Danesh, Seth J. Gillihan

POEM:  Japanese Aquarium Urges Public to Video-Chat Eels Who Are Forgetting Humans Exist by Sonia Greenfield

hey eels aka carpet of
writhing grass aka sinews
of sea floor aka silver speckled
& smiling sand spitters

the world has gone
bonkers & even humans
can forget humans exist like
that tiny grandmother whose

white hair looked like a moon
jelly bobbing in the dry
ocean on the other side of
your glass she’s gone now &

the nurse in subtidal scrubs
that soothing blue is gone too
hey eels we have a sickness
rippling through this sea

of humanity so I’m taking
a Zoom meeting with you can’t
roll up to your window & smile
back can’t be jostled by

a family of seven edging
me away from my vantage that’s
how we are we humans we’re
just like animals hey eels I like

how you duck into your home
in the sand how you suck
yourself into your safe space
and now humans are doing that

too sucking into our safe
spaces & shrinking away from
faces coming too close
which is to say I’m just like

you hey eels beyond your
invisible walls beyond the four
walls beyond your aquarium
beyond the teeming of Tokyo

I hear wildlife is reclaiming
its spaces that pumas wander
the streets that waterways are
becoming more uncluttered by

the detritus of human indifference
hey eels every time I would take
my son to see you he would sit
by your side & I think he saw

something of himself in the way
you’re alone in your hole & in
the fear that guides your hiding
hey eels it’s where we all are now

QUOTE:  “Think of a wave: it washes onto the shore, and then it rolls back. Likewise, each of your activities has a backside of stillness. To be with people, you must be alone. To listen, you need silence. To exercise, you need rest. You do not need to inflict rest, silence, or aloneness. You can simply surrender to your existing urges for these essential actions.” ~ Veronika Tugaleva

The Red Thread (Lucy Kaplansky)

From today's Writer's Almanac... about one of my favorite poets:

It's the birthday of the poet William Stafford, born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1914. He usually wrote poetry in the early morning. He sat down with a pen and paper, looked out the window, and waited for something to occur to him. He wrote about farms and winter, about the West and his parents and cottonwood trees.

He wrote,

In the winter, in the dark hours, when others

were asleep, I found these words and put them

together by their appetites and respect for

each other. In stillness, they jostled. They traded

meanings while pretending to have only one.

And about his own writing, Stafford said, "I have woven a parachute out of everything broken."

It's been an interesting (in the Chinese definition of the word) week - I already mentioned the full day of appointments for my friend on Tuesday... and Wednesday evening, Reba called and asked if I would come over Thursday to keep her company when the funeral home delivered Vic's cremains. We chatted while waiting, and went up to a local bagel place afterwards for an early lunch - I then picked up my friend for a follow-up doctor's appointment, at which point they removed her stitches and set up home physical therapy visits.

Somewhere along the way, I must have pulled something in my back (lifting her wheelchair in and out of my car), and I've been experiencing electrical twinges ever since - I did my walk yesterday which made it feel worse (and not better, as I had hoped), so I sat with the heating pad last night, took two ibuprofen last night before I went to bed and it does seem less painful this morning. Will do more stretching soon and walk again this afternoon - this cannot happen...

I've also been thinking about how wise the Universe is, in that every time I help someone else out, I'm paying it forward in semi-compensation and gratitude for those who are helping my mom - there are so many generous spirits in Georgia, doing what needs to be done to make her life easier... and I am glad I can be someone else's angel down here...

Speaking of my mom... I'll be leaving early Wednesday morning for a week-long visit with her, returning late Tuesday night - she was ecstatic when I called to tell her, especially after I emphasized it was spontaneous and not because of anything her doctors said (it's been full-disclosure all along, and will continue to be). I asked her to make a list of things she needs done around the house so I can help in that regard - I also want to do some cooking for her, and portion food out to freeze so she always has something healthy and easy on hand.

Then we'll just chill and chat and bond (oh my!)... with an evening reserved for a meeting with her, me, my sister and brother to discuss short- and long-term options - there are some tentative plans in the works I really can't divulge right now. I'm also bringing a few books and my walking shoes, so I can continue my vision of self-nurturing - as long as I'm still unemployed, I might as well take advantage of this opportunity to spend some quality time with mom...

P.S. SMM...

SONG: The Red Thread by Lucy Kaplansky

BOOK: Connections: The 5 Threads of Intuitive Wisdom by Gabrielle Roth

POEM: Ask Much, The Voice Suggested by Jane Hirshfield

Ask much, the voice suggested, and I startled.

Feeling my body like the trembling body of a horse

tied to its tree while the strange noise

passes over its ears.

I who in extremity had always wanted less,

even of eating, of sleeping.

Agile, the voice did not speak again, but waited.

"Want more" --

a cure for longing I had not thought of.

But that is how it is with wells.

Whatever is taken refills to the steady level.

The voice agreed, though softly, to quiet the feet of the horse:

a cup taken out, a cup reappears; a bucketful taken, a bucket.

QUOTE: "When you tug at a single thing in nature, you find it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

The One Thing I Know (Christine Kane)

SONG: The One Thing I Know by Christine Kane

BOOK: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

POEM: Summons by Robert Francis

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I'm half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.

QUOTE: "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer." ~ E. M. Forster