Anna Scott Graham's Blog, page 6

In my Humboldt opinion

Snapped a few days ago in our backyard. Spring is definitely in the air!

This morning my husband took me out to breakfast, an early Mother's Day treat. On our way back we chatted about the baby chicks we plan to get at the end of the month. Further conversation emerged, and I said, "Well, in my humble opinion...."

I can't recall to what I was referring because he immediately replied, "In your Humboldt opinion?"

I chuckled, he did too. If I didn't like the title of this blog, maybe I'd change it. But In A Bookish, Quilty Mood suits this space, although in my Humboldt opinion, a little more of where I dwell could be included.

It was cloudy when we left home, sunny upon our return. I hurriedly put bags of non-perishable food by the mailbox for the Stamp Out Hunger food drive, which were collected less than half an hour later. It's a quiet weekend for us; no protests planned or guests visiting. I am hoping to watch some playoff basketball later, if the New York Knicks can keep the Boston Celtics at bay. We're not sure about sitting through the Golden State Warriors game, might be too stressful. I have plenty of sewing to distract myself with, both in the living room and in the guest room, where I have finished tacking down the perimeter fabrics for the current Kawandi-inspired quilt. I also want to make split pea soup today, in that it's supposed to rain tomorrow and on Monday, and if I cook today, I won't have to tomorrow or on Monday, LOL.

Sometimes life is merely about the mundane, or keeping one's heartpeace focused on the mundane. Because being calm is better than being agitated, 'nuff said.

And maybe in Humboldt County, calm is allegedly what we're all about, cannabis not always necessary. Insert winking emoji HERE!

A world filled with colour

Done! And so much fun in the doing.

I finished the Lego rainbow puzzle. Another puzzle is on the table, edge pieces accumulated. It's more monotone, not sure how it's going to be.

I am SO PLEASED to have these in my stash and cannot WAIT to use them!

In fabric news, I've accumulated several prints from Guicy Guice's Entwine collection from 2021(???). I'd wanted to EPP these beauties into a quilt, then considered machine-piecing them instead. Then today I stacked up what I've gathered, some extra wovens included for good measure, and in doing so realized machine piecing is probably not the correct manner, or at least in stitching squares that would have measured three and a half inches once sewn. Instead I'm back to hand-sewing, or planning to hand-stitch once I've chosen an appropriate fabric for the center X, in white/light cream. As I was telling my husband, English paper piecing with low volume fabrics is tricky, as often the folded-in seam allowance shows through the fabric and that is NOT the look I want for the center of this quilt.

Of course, when I start this project also depends on when I finish the Mr. Carter heart EPP quilt, of which I plotted out the last six rows yesterday. Those hearts are bagged and labeled, rows A5, B5, C5, D5, A6, and B6 waiting patiently for me to sew them into long strips, then affix them to the ever-growing quilt top in progress. After that's completed, I'll use it as the back for a Kawandi-style quilt so the recipient will have a two-sided comforter, woo hoo! 

This is the picture I'll refer to when sewing just in case the bagged hearts somehow get jumbled into a wild heap on the floor. I really HOPE that doesn't happen, lol.

Meanwhile, speaking of Kawandi-style, I'm still working on the Kawandi WIP that currently usurps the guest bed. I need my husband's help to move it to the office work table so I can tackle the side that I can't reach in where it lays at the head of the bed. Maybe we'll get around to moving it tomorrow.

This is where I'm at right now, steeped in cloth-projects, all vibrantly hued. Spring is a perfect time to indulge in bright fabrics, be they woven or warm. I'm also dabbling in making summer placemats with some Kaffe Fassett fat quarter remnants. I have two done, several more waiting, and will stitch on one this evening while playoff basketball proffers the background noise. I will note it's not all sewing; I've been reformatting a novel released a few years ago. Once my Smashwords account is merged, I'll upload the new version of The Possibility of What If. Currently it's double-spaced, which I never do, yet I did for this series. Gracious Mysteries will be next, but I reformatted That Which Can Be Remembered last summer. I'm re-reading these books merely for my own enjoyment, during which I'm reminded that telling a story wholly unrelated to my life is a lot of fun.

No matter how tumultuous world events are, maintaining peace within one's heart is paramount. It's not easy; yes I am distracting myself from what is occurring within my nation by steeping my eyes and mind in gorgeous shinies that I can handle and ponder. Yet I also pray for peace in my nation and world, calm in my little corner of it too. Honestly, that's all I can do. My efforts won't change this planet, but they will keep me in a good humour, and with that, who knows what can happen?

The unexpected joy of not writing

When happily not writing, I manage some gardening. Or potting up marigold plants, placing them on the back steps.

It's a funny concept, that title. Yet I authentically felt that a day or two ago, like some kind of gift from heaven.

Because when I'm not writing, often I'm cross about it. Not in a spoil my day sort of magnitude, but in this niggly I should be accomplishing something related to writing. And no matter how busy I am with other agendas, no matter how happy I am, always (ALWAYS) there is a deficiency if I'm not writing something new or basking in the glow of new work recently completed.

If I wanted to analyze that, and I don't necessarily do, but if I CHOSE to analyze it, I'd say that for much of my adult life all I wanted as a personal goal was to write fiction. I didn't get started until I was forty, and for the last nineteen years (GULP), writing has been my.... Okay, first, since I haven't written anything new (and finished it) in well over a year, it hasn't been nineteen years, more like seventeen and a few months. Regardless of how many quilts I fashion in varying styles, first I am a writer.

I also planted some spider babies; they live in the mudroom for now, destined for the living room once they're thriving.

Okay, after Christian, wife, mum, abuela, etc. I am an author and for over a year I haven't written anything other than a couple of chapters which might be the beginning of my next book. The weight of that missing element colours how I perceive myself, not so much for the better, yet it has. Or it did until a day or two ago. Suddenly not writing didn't chafe, hurt, or aggravate. Because, guess what Present Me - not writing is OKAY.

Wow. Huh. Yup. Not writing is absolutely FINE.

I can feel Past Me twitching. Future Me smirks. Meanwhile Present Me sits on the sofa, typing out some fairly revelatory sentences. Not writing is part of my life too. And maybe, as I age, not writing might be more of the norm.

DUDE!

Yet it's true. Will not quilting also go the way of not writing? I'm not prepared to answer that. All I can say today is not writing doesn't....hurt. It's okay to be an author who isn't currently producing a single written word (because I don't count blogging as writing).

Why not, Future Me asks with a dose of snark in her tone.

Um..... Because it's not fiction, I reply in a voice almost that of a retort.

She nods, grips her upper body, then taps her foot. You blog a lot, you know.

Yeah, I know.

It's writing, you know.

It's real life, I answer.

She laughs, then snorts. It is, she begins, but it's still writing.

I glance her way. Am I going to start producing non-fiction?

Oh no, she smiles, again snorting. It's just that what you view as writing isn't merely the made-up stories. It's far wider than that.

Are you saying merely possessing the ideas for novels counts as writing?

She shrugs, then drops her arms to her sides. Just be aware that writing isn't wholly composed of sitting in front of your computer. It's more encompassing than that.

Huh. Really?

Really.

Huh. So, I say softly, does this mean I'm going to write something new soon?

Maybe, she grins.

More than these posts, I proffer.

Her smile is beatific, then she sighs. Just be aware this unexpected joy covers a gamut. All you think you need to do pales to what is most important.

I nod, because I'm pretty sure I know to what she's alluding. Stay the course, I say.

Yup.

I nod as she walks away.

Sewing (and doing) what I can manage

Having turned fifty-nine recently (AHEM), I'm stitching left-handed when I can, or as long as I have the patience to do so. My right shoulder is still niggly despite ibuprofen and being iced several times a day. Although I think it's getting better, but as I use a mouse with my left hand, perhaps sewing will also morph the same.

Aging is better than not, and other than that wonky shoulder I have few complaints. Daylight increases in a marvelous way, and the ground has dried out from our very wet winter. Marigold seeds sown over ten days ago didn't germinate, but the green beans and peas my husband planted are doing well. I have new fabric to use, and have decided it's time to turn a thrift store lap quilt my sister-in-law let me have become the filler for a new Kawandi quilt. That's a decision that needed to be made, because that poor EEP beauty just requires too many repairs, front and back. Now it will form the batting for something NEW, and that's not a bad thing.

This will become quite a heavy lap quilt, but I gave away one of a similar weight, and miss having a small but warm blanket.

I used my machine to fashion the back; I haven't used my sewing machine in many weeks! Which seems as odd as using my left hand to sew, lol. I actually have a machine-pieced quilt in mind, we'll see how that comes along. I'm into woven fabrics after reading this post by Lisa Silva, and while I am planning to make my own version of her GORGEOUS quilt, my aching shoulder requires some time with my butt in the sewing machine chair.

Often I think, "I'm not going to A, B, and C anymore because now I'm going to X, Y, and Z." This applies for novels as well as quilts, as once again I'm knee-deep in a lengthy saga, and after The Hawk, I thought I wouldn't write something so involved again. At the beginning of this year it was all Kawandi quilting, which I still LOVE. Or how nearly twenty years ago when we came back from England, I finished up a bunch of cross stitching projects, promising myself I wouldn't have so many different projects going at once. LOLOL! I won't count how many EPP quilts I have started, and what about the Quilt of Grace that lives on the sofa two feet from where I'm sitting? (With the Mr. Carter heart EPP quilt draped all over it....)

Lots of colour on my couch!

To my right are the books I'm currently reading, although I've finished Letters and Papers From Prison, but I'm using it as a reference to Love Letters From Cell 92, the collected correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer. That book was a birthday gift from my husband, bless him! I just finished Jubal Sackett by Louis L'Amour, which I picked up over a year ago from a thrift shop in honor of my dad, who LOVED Louis L'Amour. Jubal Sackett was pretty good, written in first person, not my favourite POV. I did skim a few sections, but overall I enjoyed it, and now it lives in my collection of books and will be kept forever. Or until I die.

Not that I'm at the end of my days. Hopefully I'm far from it. Still SO MUCH to sew, hahaha, and certainly plenty to write, um..... Yeah. Lots of novel ideas in my brain, maybe one of these days I'll eke out another installment of The Enran Chronicles. I have formatted the next books for The Hawk, and I'll start reading through it, well, one of these days. I'm feeling kinda flitty right now, from fabric project to project, from editing to wanting to write to lots of reading! The puzzle is nearly done, just need to finish the blue section. I don't lament the marigolds that didn't sprout, maybe I'll buy some plants this weekend. There's a May Day protest I want to attend as well. We'll see how everything fits together.

And of course I have chickens on my mind! In four weeks we'll get baby chicks, dude.... Lots to do before that happens, and I had entertained the notion that maybe I would have managed some writing by now. NOPE! I'm still waiting for my Smashwords account to be gobbled up by Draft2Digital. But that's been supplanted by all the sewing I want to accomplish, both in what I've already started and what I'm itching to begin.

Is it silly for me to have so many WIPs of all shapes and sizes going when I'm now a year from sixty? I don't know. Maybe all these commitments will keep me going. Perhaps I'll kick off with more storage totes than is right for one person, not that I'm a hoarder, but I do have several totes and most are, well, full. I don't want to have all these loose ends, I will say that. I have five hexie shirts to make for the granddaughters before the end of the month. I have so much in the way of gifts I wish to bestow, stories to write, cards to make, books to read..... But I'm not in my forties now, I haven't been that young in ages. Yes I'm wiser, or I hope I am. But lately a shiny flashes brightly and I'm off chasing it as fast my fifty-nine-year-old frame can go. Is that good? I don't know.

The Kawandi process has begun!

What I am sure of is that I am NOT BORED. I'm fifty-nine with plenty to do and decent health at my back. Left-handed sewing is slow and awkward, but it's better than not sewing. Editing isn't flashy, but I'm grateful to be dabbling in the writing lifestyle. Smashwords has been a fine gig, but it's time for something new. I might be getting older, but I ain't dead yet. Just need to remember my life doesn't belong to me. It's a cozy little roll in something far bigger. Have a lovely weekend and keep that heart-peace beating!

A deliberate slowness

Puzzle progress as of last night.

Kinda like semi-retirement, but not....

Sometimes life grinds to a halt; projects sputter, poor health intrudes, ideas meander as new shinies flex their muscles. Sometimes all of that is tangled together, sometimes separate. Sometimes the best laid plans simply go awry.

Right now life feels that way. My life, but perhaps others. Probably others. Maybe heaps of others. Today I finished the letters portion of Letters and Papers From Prison. Appendices remain, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his brother Klaus, and their brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rudiger Schleicher were executed for their roles in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Hindsight provides as much information as exists, yet for all their prayers and wishes, those men, and so many other people, did not survive that awful war.

My still aching shoulder precludes serious hand-sewing. Typing out journal entries from 2002 hinders new written work. Gray windy weather hampers my small gardening efforts. Other endeavors within my existence feel hemmed in by this, that, and another hurdle or three. It's as though I am severely curtailed on many fronts, other than the puzzle. The puzzle is coming together just fine.

That's quite the irony; a puzzle purchased on a whim a couple of weeks ago has turned into my daily focus. I'm not a puzzle aficionado, or I wasn't until a few days ago. Now that puzzle seems to own me, or at the very least I am seriously drawn to it. I'd rather be consumed with other hobbies; instead at this juncture of April, a puzzle is my focus.

Puzzles aren't for more than passing time, yet they harbor greedy tendancies. They take up space, so allowances must be made for their inclusion. They demand fierce concentration, otherwise why sit there and mull over myriad shapes and hues for just the right piece, one single piece of a large-ish THING to go precisely in one small spot. But maybe that's all we are, solitary parts of one ENORMOUS whole and if even one of us goes missing, the planet veers off kilter.

Maybe that's one truth of this life, maybe.

In reading a book like Letters and Papers From Prison, invariable I consider: What if Dietrich, etc, hadn't been imprisoned? What if Dietrich and his fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer had gotten their chance at happiness? What if the Nazis had been foiled far sooner than they had; what if, what if, what if? Millions wouldn't have died, etc, etc, etc. Yet that wasn't what their lives were destined to be. For over two years Bonhoeffer dwelled in captivity, hoping in vain to be released. Von Dohnanyi spent that same amount of time in jail, while Klaus and Rudiger were detained in autumn of 1944. All four men were murdered in April of 1945, literally at the war's end there in Europe.

Those four lives were slivers of existences when stacked against the vast catalogue of human loss in World War II. Eighty years has past since the end of that conflict; those years have not passed with deliberate slowness, but the rapidity that seems to only grow as I get older. And yet moments emerge as if the earth has stopped spinning, as though nothing matters more than completing a puzzle. In my realm, for whatever reason, all that seems vital is a Lego puzzle.

Perhaps so I can absorb more essential truths, learned in Dietrich's letters. Maybe to better pray for my beloveds and the rest currently living on this marvelous but frustrating world. Possibly to shore up my inner mettle for future curiosities and marvels; I won't hazard a guess, at least not consciously. All I will do is offer these musings and recommend Letters and Papers From Prison if you need something new to read. Something that benefits from a deliberate slowness, puzzle piecing at your own discretion.

The Draft2Digital migration process begins

A pretty apt photo for today's subject.

Over three years ago Smashwords and Draft2Digital became one company. Last night I received notice that it was my turn for the migration queue, and for the rest of the night I was...slightly pensive, nostalgic, and resigned to change. Lol. Change is often not nearly as traumatic as we think it will be, current American governmental coup notwithstanding. I chose not to do more than ponder this somewhat monumental to me alteration, instead working on a one thousand piece puzzle (see above) that will keep me occupied until I feel the shingles are truly GONE.

'Nuff said about that. Yet for Smashwords, my goodness! I independently published The War on Emily Dickinson on July 16th, 2011, that's coming on fourteen years ago! SO MUCH has changed in indie publishing, although this is not an analysis entry, more of a walk down memory lane while assuaging my mind and heart that ALL WILL BE FINE.

It truly will, ahem.

Since then, I've released MANY books, excising a few, while remaining true to my belief of how damn cool is it that finally writers can become publishing authors without all the traditional publishing decrees and limitations! A big WOOT WOOT for that, and for that I am EXCEEDINGLY GRATEFUL to Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, for running a company that put authors FIRST. Not agents or publishing houses or, lol, Amazon. It remains to be seen how thrilled I will be with his merging the company with D2D. I'll report as that process unfolds.

However, I won't be releasing any books imminently, so there will be plenty of time for me to get to grips with Draft2Digital. I am very appreciative of their books2read site, so if that's any indicator, all should be fine.

It truly will, ahem.

I guess this post is mostly to assure myself that indeed change is fine. Most change. A retrospective of my Smashwords experiences isn't necessary because those days are GONE, unlike my shingles, sigh. I have added my Smashwords Interview to the top of the blog because that element of one's profile page will no longer exist, although the Smashwords Store will continue, whew! The rest of what D2D offers will be time in coming; my next book is tentatively #3 for The Hawk, with #4 of The Enran Chronicles right after it, those slated for August and September respectively. That gives me all summer to play with a new interface. However, being it's nearly the end of April, I'll sneeze and suddenly it will be time to upload a new book, yikes! What will that be like???

For almost fourteen years I have comfortably used one distributor for my novels. That's pretty amazing, to be truthful. I don't go through Amazon, as they don't like freebies, so Smashwords has been my be-all, end-all. And now it's about to END. Lots to ponder for this author, mostly a heart filled with thankfulness that I've been able to release books for FREE without monetary cost to myself. That's AWESOME in this day and age.

Perhaps that's the takeaway; change is necessary, I preach often enough how life is NOT STATIC. While I've been happy in my distribution arena, something new doesn't mean something less worthy. I could be singing D2D's praises come August, and I surely hope that's the case! Meanwhile, there is a puzzle to piece, little sewing to be had until my shoulders are amenable, a birthday (lol) to consider, and laundry to throw in the washer. First I'll make a cup of Yorkshire tea, to honor where I wrote my initial novel Drop the Gauntlet and to celebrate the subsequent prose, all of it released independently. Thanks again Mark Coker, for making this writer's dream come true.

Juggling the joy

Youngest grandson's hexie shirt; more about that at the end of the post.

This morning as I watched the moon rise and Venus emerge, I was grateful for clear skies and warm tea and the quiet moments in which to appreciate these blessings.

A few hours later I learned one my beloveds is in hospital with a serious ailment. The trajectory of how I wanted to present the above treasures now takes a sharp twist, as sweet meets bitter, yet I am undaunted to recount the good while praying for the lesser element. Because this is often how life goes, joys hand in hand with sorrows. How we balance that is another issue altogether.

I'm nearing the end of Letters & Papers From Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's last two years of life documented in correspondence between him and those he loved. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, the letters dwindle, and I'm reaching that point in the book, but the truths exchanged between Bonhoeffer and his best friend Eberhard Bethge detail how life's richness depends on the way we absorb the good and bad, melding those into our existences, not merely steeping ourselves wholly in either. Bonhoeffer has been imprisoned for over a year while Bethge is now a solider in the German army, his wife and new baby left behind. The men discuss the necessary acceptance of distinct opposites within the human condition; Dietrich writes that many of his fellow inmates are consumed by their momentary moods - all happy, all greedy, all dejected, all despairing. Bethge notes the single-mindedness of those in his corps, and that a few view him with extreme disdain, perhaps thinking his pastoral background a hindrance, or some other aspect of his character that seems out of step with the Fuhrer's edicts. Bonhoeffer counsels Bethge, as he returns to his unit, to keep the joy of his wife and new baby within his grasp, and that the rancor he feels in leaving them will add to a greater appreciation for life in general, as Bonhoeffer himself attempts to make sense of being locked away from his family and fiancee, to whom he became betrothed just weeks before being arrested.

Moon rises and planet sightings vs hospitalizations and governmental coups; the framework of life cannot be completely slanted this or that way, instead spinning on a constantly rotating axis that knows the sun's light and the cool of darkness. I was also pleased this morning that for the first time in a long time I didn't lament watching the day begin, that I could observe nature and not fret what wasn't being written. This is a serious....problem or habit, I suppose, that I as a writer cling to unnecessarily. That it's been ages since I wrote a story grates on me, but not this morning, thank you Jesus! And in the light of my loved one in hospital, crafting fiction is far down the To Do list. More to matter was sending out prayer requests, making those prayers myself, then taking a shower finding my tingling upper back didn't appreciate hot water, so maybe the aftereffects of shingles remain.

The last few days my right shoulder has been niggly when I sew, but I haven't wanted to acknowledge it. I should completely stop hand-sewing for a few days (not the one day I managed on Monday, ahem), but there's SO MUCH I have going on in the stitching realm! Okay, that's fine, Future Me snorts, but how are you going to heal completely if you keep overdoing it?

Yeah, Past Me adds. I didn't sew AT ALL when we first had the shingles.

I grimace, because they are spot-on. For a month in spring 2019, I didn't do ANY hand sewing. My first case of shingles, while not TERRIBLE, was pretty acute, and I simply COULD NOT sew without pain. This go-round was barely a blip, except it's not fully healed. I just need to finish the hand-quilting aspect of one hexie shirt for our eldest grandson, I want to say. Or I have just said, not meeting the eyes of either part of who I was or will become.

Both are glaring at me, I can feel it like the niggles along my upper shoulders. I peer out, finding wide smirks. Fine, do what you like, Past Me huffs.

Future Me crosses her arms over herself. Well, I ask, what's your opinion?

You spent the morning lamenting how one you deeply love doesn't take the proper care of themselves and is now in hospital. Need I say more?

But how to juggle the joy, I want to respond, bringing this post's theme back into the fray.

Future Me smiles that all-knowing grin, shrugs, then walks away. Perhaps I know what happens to Bonhoeffer and Bethge, but they had no idea when sending those letters. They merely commended each other to God's care while being right where they were. Which is all I can do as well. And with that said, have a beautiful Wednesday!

Blogging or Bluesky

 

A hunk from my Lavender EPP quilt, currently in progress.

Around the first of March, I took an early Lenten sabbatical from Bluesky Social. My account with that form of social media is only from last November, after the election. I didn't abandon a Twitter handle for it, as that type of social media had never been my preferred method of outreach. As you can imagine, I like a LONG manner in which to share my thoughts, smiley face inserted HERE.

Yet I was happy to create the account, and enjoyed the camaraderie I met. Giving up Bluesky was in part a Lenten sacrifice, as well as a need to distance myself from the weight of what was happening in America. I fully expected to rejoin the banter once Easter was over.

That plan has been discarded, as I will continue my absence from Skeets and a three hundred character limit for posts. That was certainly a hindrance, as often I have far more on my mind, LOL. But what I found most interesting was how I didn't miss that level of social media within my life. Probably not having had a similar account figures into it; Bluesky was a brief dip into a form of social media I have firmly avoided since, well, since I became an indie author/when Twitter was unveiled. It's not only preferring a longer form to express my views; I had an Instagram account that I deleted after the election, and that platform permitted lengthy entries. My decision is mostly based on the desire to keep social media at arm's length, even to the detriment of marketing my novels.

I didn't sign up for Bluesky to blow that horn; I merely wanted to add a voice to an alternative. At the time I entered the fray, the site had thirteen million users. It now boasts over thirty-five million. My absence won't be noticed, nor do I plan to deactivate my account. Yet I felt it necessary to note why I am stepping away. I will link to this on my Bluesky profile because I like to close chapters. Bluesky was a fascinating experience and I wish everyone there well!

Easter 2025

Our back garden in Yorkshire from the date I began writing the journal entries.

It's a quiet start to the day; I went to bed early last night after being on my feet for two hours at a protest at the Courthouse. While I slept eight hours thereabouts, if you hit the hay before eight thirty, that means rising before five the next morning.

Which is fine, smiley face inserted here. It feels a little incorrect to use more than that on Easter, not sure why. On my Ukrainian flag yesterday I had the names of Josiah Lawson and Freddie Gray. While Love Thy Neighbor and Remember flew off the flag, those names remained. My prayers for those family continue.

My husband just woke, I'll finish this later....

So.... I threw blankets in the washer, will change out the sheets. A gray start to our day, but sun is forecast for later. I typed out the first of a series of...journal entries or devotional entries or whatever will come of several months of entries written in 2002. I truly don't recall doing them, other than I have them in two UK notebooks, yet their purpose isn't for me to micromanage. Just type them out and see what happens.

A strange Easter, maybe mostly in my mind. Protests and government unrest right alongside the greatest gift the world was ever given. I'm far from family, not for the first time nor the last, yet something else tethers me to them, perhaps Christ's gift showers us in myriad ways that cannot be tallied or predicted. Which is part of the beauty of this at times painful and distressing existence; life is full of sorrows, heaped with joys! They mesh together in a manner that could barely resemble the agony and grace Jesus endured hanging on a cross to die.

He died to give us life. He suffered to bring us home to him. He rose to release us from bondage and separation and sin. I hope Josiah and Freddie are with Christ today, with my beloveds near. I pray for guidance for these twenty-three-year-old entries devoted to God's love for us. I want to plant marigold seeds later today, and while I'd LOVE to EPP, I might give my right shoulder a few more days, or at least one more day. It's shingle-achy, but no blisters appear. Again, life is a mystery.

And it's good. Despite the sorrows, life is indeed VERY GOOD!

Pray for more love

Latest Mandolin block completed last night.

I'm feeling a mixed bag today; it's Maundy Thursday, the day when Jesus celebrated The Last Supper with his disciples and also washed their feet. 

Colonel Nicole Malachowski's achievements as the first woman Thunderbirds pilot are being erased from official military websites. I wrote an email to family and friends denoting this, including the names and Washington D.C. phone numbers for Republican women senators. Here they are, if you're interested in letting them know your views. (All are currently on holiday until 28 April, but you can leave a message for each one.)

Marsha Blackburn        202-224-3344 Tennessee
Katie Boyd Britt             202-224-5744  Alabama
Shelley Moore Capito    202-224-6472   West Virginia
Susan Collins                202-224-2523  Maine
Joni Ernst                      202-224-3254   Iowa
Deb Fischer                   202-224-6551   Nebraska
Cindy Hyde-Smith          202-224-5054   Mississippi
Cynthia Lummis             202-224-3424   Wyoming
Ashley Moody                 202-224-3041   Florida
Lisa Murkowski              202-224-6665   Alaska I'm at a loss for what to put on my Ukrainian flag for this Saturday's protest. I'd been thinking that since it will be Easter Saturday, LOVE THY NEIGHBOR was appropriate. Do I add: ESPECIALLY IF SHE'S A WOMAN. Or: WHAT HAPPENED TO WOMEN IN HISTORY? Or:.... I'm grateful it's only Thursday, Maundy Thursday. Much to contemplate. A daily reading I incorporate recently admonished to pray for more love. I took that with all due gravity and generosity of spirit. Why the exclusion of Colonel Malachowski seems to have set me off, I'm not sure. Partly due to the SAVE Act, yes; that members of congress, women among them, want to make it harder for women and others to vote is INFURIATING! But then women plantation owners kept slaves during my nation's history, I guess some people simply live to wield power over others. That doesn't make them very LOVING, merely consumed with obtaining as much influence as possible. Christ implored his disciples to NOT be like those in power. To act humbly, to turn the other cheek. To LOVE. In loving another, we set aside much of ourselves. In loving others, we choose their betterment over our own. In loving our neighbor, we seek to connect in a manner wholly concerned with goodness, kindness, compassion, peace. Jesus knew which disciple would betray him, yet he didn't condemn that man, but told him to do what he needed to do and do it with haste (John 13:27). After Judas left, Christ then said, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34) In love, erasing people from history wouldn't happen. In love, sending people to El Salvadorian prisons wouldn't occur. In love, I wouldn't need to go to a protest in two days. Yet love feels very diluted in America. Love seems like a hazard or a line spouted by hypocrites. Simon Peter goes from asking Jesus to wash all of him to denying him THREE TIMES. How many times have I turned away when evil persists, how many times have I denied my Lord? Do with this what you will. Just needed to get it off my chest and in a place less harmful, as well as easier to consider. None of us are perfect. Yet I will pray for more love.