“Day 27!

I’m a bit surprised to be in the home stretch of this challenge already. I guess they say that time flies when you’re having fun. Today was spent finishing up getting my taxes ready for my accountant, which involved combing through every transaction of 2020, and sorting them into expense categories…”

“Day 24.

It’s interesting to me that as I enter the home stretch of this exercise in daily posting, this is the most challenging part. Each day, I push my writing time later and later, as if I am doing my best to miss a day…”

“As the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus lockdown in the United States passes us by this week, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people discussing where we were a year ago, reminiscing about how little we seemed to know and the strange things everyone was doing as the world…”

“Are you beginning to feel like we might finally be emerging from this very long, dark, viral winter? I am beginning to have some seedlings of hope feel as if they are tentatively beginning to sprout…”

“Today was an exceptionally beautiful California day, the kind for which we can feel extra grateful during this pandemic: ideal weather to be outside, allowing us to ease our covid isolation with a socially distanced soaking in of the sun…”

In the spirit of mourning those who are lost, Myra and I offer this Benjamin Britten arrangement of a song by Charles Dibdin called Tom Bowling…Whatever the truth of the story behind the song, it’s a beautiful remembrance of a lost friend, colleague and family member who was clearly beloved by many. Thinking of the song in the context of today, there is something about it that feels like a sort of musical Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – a memorial to those who have died, but haven’t been identified.

Writing the other day, I noted that one of the most trying aspects of this extraordinary time of pandemic is not knowing when this period of sheltering in place will end. The not-knowing when we can resume outside life as a society and when it will be safe again to gather with loved ones can make this time feel as if it is suspended…