While I’m an elder, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to dying, that is until my brother, who’s 20 months younger, announced in...
Thinking About Death
While I’m an elder, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to dying, that is until my brother, who’s 20 months younger, announced in a recent late-night phone call that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. (To preserve my brother’s [...]
Pat Taub
7
Notable American Women of 2020
While most of us struggled to stay afloat during 2020, there were women who didn’t take a back seat, who stayed focused on making a contribution for a better world. They were the light that pierced the darkness. Nurses on the Covid Frontlines Nurses treating Covid patients worked under impossible conditions: risking exposure for themselves [...]
Pat Taub
My Soul-Full Family Holiday
GUEST POST by CAROLE LESKIN This is how I imagined it. Once Upon a Time, long, long ago, there was nothing but Darkness. A color so black it has never been seen again. And there was silence. It had been that way forever. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, millions of tiny lights, brighter than the brightest diamonds appeared. They danced in the [...]
Pat Taub
Snow, Deb Haaland, Xmas Memories & More!
SNOW! My city of Portland, Maine was on track to receive 6” of snow but we got 17!” This morning I took one look at my buried car and went back inside. Once it warms up, I will tackle all the snow covering it. My heart goes out to all the unhoused in this bitter weather. I learned of two unhoused who died this week. It makes my heart [...]
Pat Taub
Ferocious Love: An Interview with Joanne Arnold, Photographer
When Joanne Arnold turned 50 her life felt empty. After raising three children, she suddenly had time on her hands. She was without direction, without meaning and purpose. Ever since she was a child, the one place where she felt alive was in “first light,” or the time right before dawn. This remembering prompted her to get up early, [...]
Pat Taub
My Xmas Tree, “Caste,” A Great Crime Series & More!
My Christmas Tree Although I’ll be alone this Christmas, I’m not eliminating holiday décor, although it’s been greatly reduced from former years. As a young wife and mother, I went crazy, stringing garlands all over the house, baking gingerbread cookies for the tree, and even sending out homemade gift baskets to relatives. Decades later, [...]
Pat Taub
How Gratitude Can Chase Away the Blues
It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. —Brother David Seindl-Rast In an effort to tackle my Covid blues, which have intensified at the prospect of another solo holiday, I was drawn to the concept that a gratitude practice could make me happier. As I plunged into the gratitude literature, [...]
Pat Taub
A Very COVID Christmas
GUEST POST By JANET WEIL “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” – popular song by Donald Yetter Gardner, 1944 All I want for this Hanukah/Christmas season is two injections of COVID vaccine. Well, not all – I want the vaccine for my son the paramedic, my 99-year-old father-in-law, my husband about to turn 70, [...]
Pat Taub