165 Dec. 17 Thoughts on This Monday
165 Dec. 17, noonish Thoughts on This Morning (edited and sent the next day) This will probably be the second part of a 2-4-1, connected with what happened this morning. I wrote that earlier part pretty well as it happened, just correcting it a bit for clarification, for me as well as for others. I […]
The Trials of Shared Living
147 The Trials of Shared Living I’m often asked how we five people are getting along in our shared home. It’s not all a bed of roses, but this story tells a lot. Yesterday evening, Oct. 9, unusually, only Steven and I were sharing the evening meal. I had done chicken drum-sticks on […]
158 Dec. 3 2023 A Matter of Perspective: You Choose
Anthony Gifford Sun, 3 Dec, 09:45 (3 days ago) to bcc: me 158 Dec. 3, ’23 A Matter of Perspective: You Choose There are two lenses through which we view our existence. We are either worms or potential giants. In most of our experiences we are treated as the former. We are cogs in a […]
159 Dec. 4 The God of Bread or the God of Sword – Which?
Anthony Gifford Tue, 5 Dec, 10:22 (1 day ago) to bcc: me 159 Dec. 4 The God of Bread or the God of the Sword – Which? We’re a complicated and inconsistent bunch. We want to be coddled and taken care of, yet we yearn for freedom and independence. We seek to control others even though […]
150 (Oct. 22, 2023) Grandma’s Universal Secret to Survival
There’s a story in today’s paper about an Israeli grandmother who’s being hailed as a hero for fooling the Hamas invaders long enough that the army could to arrive and kill them. She had gone to the shelter with others in her small town but went back to her home for something. Upon […]
139. Thanks for being here, to share
It’s taken me along time to get here, over eighty-one years, to be precise. Sometimes it just takes a while before we smarten up. What’s the big lesson I’ve learned? It’s nothing new. In fact it’s one of the oldest truths we’ve heard: that if we value something and really want to get the most […]
137. I need You in order to become ‘Me’.
One of the most ancient and true statements about humans is that it is not good for us to be alone. (Genesis) We might ‘believe’ on our own and can certainly exist in near isolation, but we grow only with others. No matter the ‘field’ of our lives, without others, we become stagnant. That’s OK, […]
138. The Dangers of Good Memories
Judy and I were sitting on the front porch of her sister, Joan Simpson’s, farmhouse on Amherst Island, house sitting while she and husband Dan took a few days vacation. It’s a great day for sailing and we’re watching boats tack up and down the channel. We couldn’t help but remember our many years of […]
136. An Old-Fashioned Love Story?
As a senior, I’m well awareof how we are marginalized by most of our youth-fixated culture. When I heard mention of an article about a Golden-aged Bachelor TV series, I cheered – until I saw a picture of the ‘typical’ 71 year-old bachelor. The accompanying article about seniors was quite good, actually. It ignored the […]
135. Boney Fingers
I know it’s good to encourage each other, especially our children, but sometimes I get tired of hearing all the well-meaning advice from ‘champions’ and experts of all sorts who assure the kids that they can all be champs too, if they only work hard enough. ‘Just keep at it, with all your heart, and […]
