A Mindful Life

The day was mild and breezy. Husband ran off to climb the Fort Casey battery and explore. My mother-in-law took her camera in search of interesting perspectives to capture. And I lay down in the field, closed my eyes, and basked in the musky perfume of grass and warm earth while a noonday sun enveloped [...]

I’m not in the mood to write. The last couple weeks have been a little challenging. First I could have no contact with Husband until he proved immune to chicken pox, since I am not. And of course the blood test took time, so we avoided each other for a week. My wrists are sore, [...]

Peering upward in a grove on the Avenue of the Giants; part of Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California.

A couple of months ago I was invited to participate in a “blog tour” interviewing Eric Maisel on his latest book. Since I was offered a copy of the book to review and the opportunity to ask a couple of questions tailored to my interests, I decided to join in. (Who can resist a book?) [...]

I had about 10 seconds to snap just one shot, because the lighthouse was jammed with tourists. It is the inside of a working third-order Fresnel lens at Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Oregon. (More information on the science of the lens can be found at How Stuff Works.)

Liora wrote a post about letting go of certain possessions and at the end, she asked her readers if anyone had ever done a massive unloading of keepsakes and if so, was that decision regretted. An excellent question. My relationship with “stuff” has long been ambivalent. When I was an adolescent, sometimes I received gifts [...]

On Sunday afternoon I was lying down trying to nap, when the bed and the room shook vigorously. It was very brief, as though someone had slammed a huge door shut. Yep, it was an earthquake. The epicenter was about 20 miles away and the magnitude 3.4, which is probably why the tremor felt so [...]

Religion raises the stakes of human conflict much higher than tribalism, racisim, or politics ever can, as it is the only form of in-group/out-group thinking that casts the differences between people in terms of eternal rewards and punishments. –Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

Husband may have been exposed to a coworker with chicken pox. Although he had it as a child and has immunity, if he was exposed he may be shedding the virus. I had chicken pox — barely — at five months of age. I’ve always assumed I had immunity. I had a two-part blood test [...]