I went to an appointment at the University of Michigan Hospital the other day. Walking to my clinic, I noticed a couple of folks without a mask. Hmm.

Everyone in the neurology office wore masks.

In my long, little life I’ve dwelt in ten buildings.

First, my parents’ house in River Rouge where I lived for 18 years and one month.

Yep, I’m really writing about pee. Incontinence. Urine. Potty.

Why? Well, this week, Amazon delivered a discreetly packaged supply of pee pee pads. I chose the Poise brand. I bought a huge supply in order to reduce the price per pad.

Tuesday, I watched a YouTube video on blogging. I felt bereft of ideas that are not, well, gloomy. Serious. Somber. Dull?

The vlogger, supposedly an experienced blogger, told me that in order to have a successful blog, I needed to solve my readers’ problems. She said I can’t write it for myself.

Uh oh.

Last night, Hubby played a video on YouTube of Navy Seal Admiral William H. McRaven giving a commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin. He told the graduating class of just over 8000 students, that if each one of them changes ten people, and those ten change the lives of ten more people, in 125 years, 800 million people will be changed.

Last week’s post and continuing adventures in puppydom haven’t left me with essay writing time or energy, so my fellow earthlings, this week’s post is a collection of odds and ends, the flotsam and jetsam of my mind.

Mariah gazed across the wide sand beach. The dying colors of the day reflected orange and pink out to the calm ocean beyond.

Did her family, far to the west, still think of her?

Before February 15, 2023, I may have seen art created by Käthe Kollwitz, but I didn’t have any real awareness of her work and who she was. I say that because the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Toledo Museum of Art, both of which I visit regularly, own several of the German-born artist’s etchings and drawings.

Monday night, YouTube’s algorithms must have been haywire. In the “recommended” line of videos, it included one about Kim Kardashian. I haven’t a clue what in my on-line history could have made YouTube think I’d want to watch that video.

& THE STATE OF HUMANITY

Joy. Sorrow. Ecstasy. Despair. Triumph. Defeat. Comfort. Malaise.

Human existence encompasses an extreme range of experiences and emotional responses to them. Sometimes, like for me this week, we feel opposite emotions in nearly the same instant. Only nearly. One gives way to the other—there’s an image, a sound, a breath that brings a shift.

I open the lift-gate on the back of the van and pull out two heavy kitchen garbage bags packed to the max with clothing and lug them over to the donation bin. I return for a third.

My fellow earthlings, please forgive me. I have, in a sense, been lying to you.

My name is not Annie Herzog.

Snow sits heavy on the maples’ branches and bends the boughs of the spruces. The dark uplifted twigs of the smoke bush underline thick strokes of diamond-speckled white. Six inches of snowball-ready flakes fell yesterday.

YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD GIRL DOWN

Many Dunn Elementary School alumni remember Mrs. Sahulka as their beloved music teacher. From first to third grade, she plunked on the piano while my classmates and I crooned to the likes of Stephen Foster’s Oh Susannah.

Here we are again, reviewing the old, anticipating the new.

Only a few other years in my life brought as much personal change as did 2022 because I left the world of employed work on June 30 with no plans to return.

I…… am….fat.

Despite the body-positivity and body-normative memes in vogue these days, most women and many men still worry about how much they weigh.

Or what they will weigh if they are “bad.”

Wait, What? I never was one for making BIG goals like "lose a hundred pounds," or, "become a millionaire by age 30."

Nonetheless, for the past 50ish years, as January first, the Vernal equinox, the sixth of July (my birthday), or the Autumnal equinox approached, you would find me in planning and goal-setting mode.

At the end of May, my impending June 30th retirement date hit me with a wallop. A big life change, so long on the horizon, was now at hand.

For weeks I’ve been trying to write about going to see the exhibit, “By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800” at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) with my friend Ruth.

In 2019, Richard Powers won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Overstory. Although I really liked the novel and generally recommend it, I wouldn’t have awarded it the Pulitzer (not that anyone called me to serve on the jury).