MaryAlice Musings and More

 I started writing this blog on the morning after the election.   I am in a stillness, shrouded by a deep sadness, wondering how we mend the wounds of our country.  How we will care for all of those who have been targeted. Wondering how do we co-exist as people continue to dehumanize other human beings. The thing that has been unspeakable or unimaginable has happened.   I am conscious that when i wake in the morning, I have to tend to the spinning anxiety within my heart and soul.  My mind is somehow playing back, remembering the first time, and now this.   I have made a conscious effort to watch the sunrise, I seem to not be able to sleep in like I did last week.  I can sense the hyper-alert already kicking in and I can feel the mood swings and the little bit of snarkiness which is seeping out through my pores.   I have glimpses of being stopped cold during my day.  The amazing green of the parsley that is still growing in their big pots on my porch.  The guy who had his very modern p

            It is 9 a.m. EDT and on FB there was a memory that came up from ten years ago today.  In my house on Benjamin Street in NE Minneapolis, Minnesota I was yep, canning tomatoes.  As I type 7 quarts of tomatoes have been canned and are cooling, and 6 pints of tomato juice are bubbling away in the water bath.  So much has changed in these ten years, and yet here I am still canning in my kitchen in Patten, Maine.  My house is full of jams and salsa's and summer squash and herbs from my container garden.  The past ten days have been gloriously sunny, warm and a reminder that summer had not yet finished its show. Yesterday, the winds changed.  The breeze which has been mostly absent of late returned, and with it more than a hint of fall.   The colors are beginning, and the talk everywhere is if we will have a vibrant fall color season, or if the dry spells we have had will dull out the color.  Whatever it is, the nights are cool and getting cooler, the sun has shifted so very f

HOPE  FREEDOM  JOY WE ARE NOT GOING BACK!     It is the day after the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.   I was just miles away from the Convention Site in Chicago in 1968.  I had just graduated from college and I did not have big dreams.  My Mother's biggest stated dream for me was graduating from High School, I do believe that both my Grandmother and my Mother had bigger dreams for me, but life circumstances, the times, and their own conflicted hopes and fears could not allow them to say them out loud.  I sat in the living room of my house, watching what was happening outside of the convention.  I had friends that had gone, and in those moments something stirred deeply in me.  I had been slowly opening my eyes and heart to what was happening in my world - the conflicts within our own  country, the conflicts around the world, Vietnam, Civil Rights, who held power, who took it away.  Questioning what stories we were told and who thought they had a monoply on the truth

  It is the day after my 74th Birthday.  I am now almost one full day into my 75th year and I am still smiling, still soaking in all the good wishes, the fun emoji's, the funny cards, the sweet sweet words that were sent by phone, in person, by mail, on Facebook and in those many many texts.   I have not yet reached out to everyone to express my appreciation and joy in your care.  I feel so appreciated, so seen and so loved thank you thank you thank you. My birthday started in the dark of the morning, getting up to see if the clouds had given way to that beautiful full moon.  I could not see the clouds but the sky was lit by the glow and I felt basked in a subtle behind the veil moonlight.  I had not poured my first cup of coffee when the phone rang.  I had still not read the texts that had come in on my phone in the hours before I woke, being the "firsts" to wish me a happy birthday.  Oh my, each call shared deeply.  How amazingly wonderful to be able to receive and to g

It had been a warm night in Sackville, NB, and this was the second morning that we woke up not in Newfoundland.  Marshlands Inn had been a wonderful stop but after a cup of coffee on their beautiful wrap around porch we decided to head for home and would find a place to eat along the way.  We were less than five hours to Patten.  The pull to get home had increased and we were ready to go.  This would be the last day that bags and oxygen would be put in the car.  We would have one day in Patten, my friend Margaret, who was visiting in Brewer,  was arriving the next day with lobster rolls to welcome us back to Maine, and to take Marcia to the airport.   The drive was uneventful, and we almost laughed out loud, not quite, when we once again found ourselves hungry and needed to use a restroom, and no continue exits for either one.  Marcia for the last time on this trip tried to locate some place to eat that wasn't a fast food chain.  We got off just south of Fredrickton, having thought

     The crossing from Channel Port Aux Basque to North Sydney, Nova Scotia is approximately 7 hours.  How different it felt this time around, there was a familiarity.  I could easily navigate to the observation deck, the inside views from the bow of the ship,  the way to and from our cabin.  We both had gotten a good amount of sleep when the announcement came that we would be docking in about thirty minutes.  We knew that our motel for the remainder of the night was only about 10 minutes away.   We embarked and after some glitches with the GPS and Marcia's navigation we found ourselves in a kind of classic mid-century Canadian motel.  It had seen better days, but it was clean and quiet.  Overnight bags, oxygen and cpap machine all got carried in, we were on the first floor and close to an outdoor door.   There were no outdoor chairs or tables that I could see in the dark, so I sat on the curb and phoned the hospital.  My brother was stable, still intubated and on a ventilator, but