Sidetracked Charley

  I ventured on to social networking after my head injury. I was told to practice what I did not want to lose. It was a short list: writing, painting, and photography. I suffered the CBT while teaching skiing; something I had done for more than ten years. But it was almost immediately clear I had skied my last day. But skiing was just a love I did almost like aerobics. It was exercise for my otherwise sedentary occupations; freelance writing and making Mardi Gras Masks. My injured brain was having issues with the masks. Writing, however, was easy to practice on a computer. And I already had editors willing to assist me to continue writing. It was Y!360 then. For me it was therapy. But I made friends while making progress. And when Y!360 crumbled because of an unstable platform I followed my friends to other platforms. Facebook seemed to be where people I knew went. Sure it was not perfect. You had to keep your posts to 140 characters at first and then to 400. But I compromised by k...

Has it occurred to anyone yet that we are at that special time when Trump said it would just go away? It is even worse than that. We are at that part of the calendar when most viruses seem to go dormant. And we are having infection rates of 70,000 a day. If this is the lull before the fall second peak what will that look like? And heaven forbid flu season this winter. Wondering, if we survive, if this time will go down in history as the second dark ages. We seem to be denying science and throwing truth sayers under the bus, calling out the troops on those demanding a hearing on their grievances. Can we be very far away from burning witches. Okay, I admit we seldom burned them. Joan of Arc maybe. We drowned them, hung drawn and quartered them, stoned them, pressed them, tortured them to death. And at one time in England, during the Black Death, we locked them in the house with all their relatives sick or well and waited for them to all die. Then landlords could rent the pro...

Spring break is over early. All the ski areas in my state were urged to close after Colorado, our neighbor to the north, shut down and every skier seemed to be heading south to invade our state for more skiing. To say that residents here panicked might be overstating it. But it isn't far from the truth. There was definitely a shift in our attitude to the negative. And got worse after reports were that all the visitors were emptying our grocery store and loading their SUV's to go back to Texas. I found hope later when a post on social media said to limit personal contact to those you know and are familiar with. And with all the strangers leaving it meant my community was back. And it was as if someone gave me permission to meet with friends mana y mana.  And soon one friend emailed me to say her cell phone service had been erroneously shut off. Could she come and use my phone? Yes. And then another wondered if I had butcher paper. Yes. And the sun came out and we stood on ...

May Basket by Andrew Wythe A tisket a tasket A green and yellow basket I wrote a letter to my mom And on the way I dropped it. Author and source beyond memory unknown. I have gone from pandemics to Mayday Baskets in a blink. I warned everyone that Sidetracked Charley was going to be a bumpy ride. So hold on. Yesterday I began to feel better and suddenly I had to strip the bed of all things and pop them into the wash. Hanging them out on my new clothes line I was reminded of my mother doing the same thing after one of us was sick. I told myself I might be doing too much to be just out of the sick bed or that modern research shows viruses live on surfaces for only six hours but I just felt compelled to open windows, and wash or at least air in the spring sun everything I had been in close contact with (including the dogs which were given a play day with the neighbors) over my illness. As I went about my airing out chores my mind traipsed down memory lane from Mother doing the bed clothes...