¡Mira!

I'm writing this because today would have been Hanarobi's birthday. I'm sure you all knew Hanarobi, who passed away July 18, 2025. I think of her almost every day, in part because her face regularly appears on our digital frame but also because we Zoomed once a month for several years.

Just in case you didn't know Hanarobi, let me tell you a little about her. She was an award-winning philosophy professor. She loved her subject and she loved her students. I taught briefly at a few different universities, and I quickly learned that teaching wasn't my strength. I was much better at the administrative part so when she became the department chair I was able to offer suggestions. But her brilliance lay in her teaching and I loved listening to her talk about her subject, her strategies, and her students.

Not that we spent hours discussing Hegel (though he did come up at least once). We discussed her painting classes (as a student; she didn't teach that subject), reupholstering old chairs, cats, gardens, books, TV shows, movies, the minutiae of our lives.

I miss her, and I miss those conversations. It's hard (super hard) to find friends as adults; that's a cliche because it's true. I live far, far away from most of my friends so we communicate by email, letters and cards, and of course Zoom/FaceTime/Signal/WhatsApp.

And not only do I live far away, but Hanarobi is not my only friend who has died. I'm 73, so perhaps not surprising, but I'm losing more and more friends, either to death or to dementia. My favorite teacher in the world is now lost in dementia and can no longer live in her own home. I spent so many hours with her in her beautiful home, often cooking for her, talking talking talking, and that's all gone. I have tears in my eyes thinking of her brilliance (she has a PhD in medieval English literature) now rarely observable. I can't even talk to her by phone anymore; she no longer remembers me and in-person visits agitate her too much.

I spend a lot of my time at this age missing people. Far away, dead, demented -- no longer available to be the friend they once were.

Anyway, blah blah blah. Hanarobi died last year and I really miss her. I work hard to keep in touch with my friends no matter how far away they are, but I can't help but remember my mother's situation: she was the last woman standing, dying at 94 after all of her generation and my dad's generation were gone. All her friends were gone. Even though we spent so much time with her, she missed her friends and she hated watching them die off.

Is there a moral to this story? Figure out who is your family, whether by blood or by friendship, and try to stay in touch? Who doesn't already know that?

I miss everybody. Happy birthday, dearest Hanarobi.


PS: Okay, this is weird. I had just finished drafting this paean to friendship and keeping in touch when Kottke.org linked to this essay, which rang so true. I'm going to link to it by using a sentence from it that spoke to me: Sociologists have long argued that human relationships are sustained less by intensity and more by regularity. Your assignment: call or text a friend right now!

Today is MSilverstar's birthday. Dear friend, I've been remembering all those years ago when LOTR first hit fandom, and remembering your generosity. I don't know if you recall, but Webster was going through a very difficult time back then. You opened your home to Bay Area fans (and beyond!) one Sunday a month, and those Sundays were heaven for me. An escape from my fear and worry about Webster, a chance to meet people I developed such fondness for, and a time to revel in fannish love of LOTR and Lotrips. Also eat yummy stuff. Oh my gosh.

You really saved me, and I bet a few others, with your hospitality and kindness. I'll never forget the sense of freedom I had driving across the Bay Bridge en route to your home, to warmth and friends.

Anyway. Thank you. Happy birthday to you. I think of you often and wish you all the best.

And the others who also attended your salons? Hello! I miss you all! Thank you for helping me through a bad time.

Gosh, fandom is awesome. How's that for profound? But true.

First, thank you, Shirebound -- so far, clicking the little "stay logged in box" appears to be working for me again. Maybe it was just a glitch? At any rate, I haven't had to log in again in four days, whereas before it was every other way.

Second, help? On July 19, in the early morning, I got this email from Meta about my Instagram account:

Your account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, does not follow our Terms of Use.

If you think we made a mistake, you have until January 15, 2024 to appeal.

This completely bewilders me. I loved my Instagram account, even though I literally never posted a single thing. I followed friends, my sister-in-law, and a bunch of fun accounts, like Cats of Yore, Jean and Jorts, Qualified Captain, and Overheard in LA. How could I have violated their TOS?

I followed the instructions, which were weird: they texted me a code and took a selfie of my face and hand holding a piece of paper with the code on it. So far: silence.

Do I have to create a new account, under a different name, email, and phone? Has this happened to you? I'm feeling both irritated and sad, because I'm missing cool Insta posts.

In other news, my backyard actually reached 123°F the other day! I think a couple of years ago it reached 124, and to be honest, I think it will again. Thank goodness for air conditioning. The forecast is still hot but next week clouds are forecast and even a chance of rain, so maybe that will cool things down.

So mostly I'm hoping: that my DW doesn't start logging me out again; that Instagram will un-suspend me; that the weather will change. And I hope you are all doing all right.



Exciting update! By a weird coincidence, not long after I posted this, Instagram emailed me to say they had un-suspended me. Yay! Now I can catch up with my favorite accounts.

Yes, I'm still hanging around, reading your posts, commenting occasionally. The usual.

Today is Mother's Day in the States (and Canada?? and elsewhere???) so I went to the cemetery early this morning to clean off Mother and Dad's headstones. Several times a year I bring a trowel, a brush, a scrub brush, some cleaner, some paper towels, but this time they didn't need much work. The cemetery was crowded! And to my delight, there was a mariachi band playing and singing, dressed in beautiful maroon and gold outfits. That was a real highlight.

Our elderly next door neighbor disappeared a few weeks ago. I was afraid to call her, afraid that she had passed away. Suddenly her house was swarming with vehicles but I never caught anyone I could ask. Finally, as we were driving home we came around the corner and there was a person! I asked her if my neighbor was all right; after some hesitation she said she was a health care worker and couldn't say anything specific but that I should call. Which I did. Turned out she had fallen and broken her hip! Oh my gosh. But she has a large family, both locally and in Alaska, and they all turned out for her. I sent her a card and promised to call again. She's in her late eighties and starting to forget things but I hope she can stay in her home for a long time; she's a terrific neighbor.

I finally gathered my courage and made an appointment with a Spanish teacher through iTalki. It was so much fun! She's a professional flautist living in Veracruz but also teaches Spanish and English. She also plays an instrument new to me, a jarana jarocha, which is a bit like a ukulele, so that was fun. I've made two more appointments, just for conversation. I can read pretty fluently (with a dictionary nearby) but I get so nervous when I try to speak that all the Spanish flies from my head, and understanding spoken Spanish is still super difficult, though I will say I had no problem understanding her. Anyway, that's a recommendation for Duolingo and iTalki, I guess.

And I'm still playing piano and ukulele! I insist that I do three of the four things every single day: exercise, piano, ukulele, and Spanish. Well, exercise and Spanish and non-negotiable, so really it's either piano or ukulele or, what's best, both. Thank god for Youtube videos on piano; I've learned Für Elise and Gimnopédie no. 1 with Youtube's help. I'd love a real teacher but I don't know how to find a good one on Zoom.

We got another booster! Another Moderna, so that makes two Moderna, two Pfizer, and another Moderna. I ran a little fever and felt punk for a day but then I was fine; Webster had no symptoms at all this time. I'm looking forward to the fall booster because I'm pretty sure it'll be a new formulation for more variants. Speaking of Covid, I found a lot of this article from the LA Times useful. In case you can't read it, the most cheerful points were:

****
The virus’ genetic evolution also appears to have nudged it in a tamer direction.

But a large study published in February suggested that by the time the Omicron variant had spread across the globe, its case fatality rate was 0.239%. In short, by the time the pandemic’s third year came to a close, the virus that causes COVID-19 had lost roughly two-thirds of its initial killing power, and possibly as much as 92%.

But there’s growing evidence that most cases of long COVID resolve themselves after a few months, and that new cases of long COVID are becoming less common. In the most recent Household Pulse Survey, only 11.2% of U.S. adults said they were currently experiencing long COVID symptoms.

As long as the Omicron variant dominates, he said, “our results should provide reassurance” that people are now unlikely to develop long COVID.
****

Those happy points are cherry-picked from the article; there's lots of worrying stuff, too, but we already know them.

Hmm, I guess that's all for now. Happy Mother's Day to those who celebrate and happy day to everyone. ¡Adiós y nos vemos!

Hello! I hope you are safe and having a good holiday season, if this is your holiday season, and finding joy in life. We are still here, still hunkered down and staying home as much as possible. I am anxiously awaiting a longer-lasting vaccine or better yet one that simply prevents any cross-infection. I'm so sick of wearing masks when we go out. Oh well. I'm grateful we have the ability to stay home, and in a house I love.

We had a great Christmas, with my friends and especially my sister sending far too many gifts. Look at our tree!



Oh my goodness. What a Christmas. We FaceTimed with my sister and her wife in the afternoon, and I had emails from so many people. We might have been alone but we didn't feel lonely.

We woke up today to rain! We both love the rain and of course it's so desperately needed here. It's been a nice steady rain, too. I took my coffee out and sat under the ramada listening to it when I got up. That's still my habit, to spend my coffee time outdoors while it's still cool enough.

The big excitement of the fall is we finally got rid of that enormous broken hot tub. It worked the first couple of years after we moved in, and I loved it in winter, but the water stopped flowing through the pipes and the heater kept breaking, so I finally emptied it and turned it off. We had to have a huge crane haul it over the roof to get it out!

Back in mid-October we'd had a terrific hail storm that chipped paint and stucco of the back walls so after the hot tub was removed, we had the walls patched and repainted, and Webster helped me move some of our outdoor furniture around. I'm really pleased with the result; I call this my reading nook, even though it obviously isn't a nook:



And now it's the new year and we're deciding what to do. We hope to visit Tucson in February or March; even though it's less than a hundred miles away, we've only driven through it. I would love to go back to Sonoma County but I'm super uncomfortable being around people there because I want to hug them and share meals with them and I just don't think it's safe yet.

But I'll keep doing all the things I listed in my last entry: Spanish, piano, ukulele, exercise, cooking, watching movies, listening to podcasts, reading and listening to books . . .

Anyway, that's my year end round up and hopes for the new year: that we will all be healthy and happy and maybe, if we're lucky, I can see some of you again. If not in 2023, then definitely in 2024.

We're having a dust storm! Not a haboob*, fortunately, but it's pretty dusty out there. We've put down the shutters though I keep peeking out to be sure nothing has blown into the pool. The pool was finally crystal clear, which took more than a week after the roofers left. I pulled out three nails from the bottom of the pool! And roofing nails are nasty. But now the crystal clear pool will be dusty and, if it gets bad enough, muddy. Oh well. It's happened before.

*I know I've shared this before but I find it so compelling: Mike Olbinski's "Haboob: A Decade of Dust".

But last night I swam! First time this year. It was wonderful. The water was around 87°/30° and it's only April. I really enjoyed myself, and dear Webster went into the garage and dug out the pool floats and paddle boards for me. So much fun.

This morning I was up early for a Heygo.com tour of Guernsey, the part of the UK closest to France. I learned it's only twenty miles from France and eighty from England! The focus was on Bluebell Wood, which was hazy with bluebells:



Isn't that beautiful? I took more photos of that tour than any other Heygo.com tour I've taken so far. I don't feel safe traveling yet (if I ever will again, hmm), so Heygo.com is a perfect way to see the world, especially parts of the worlds I don't know if I'll ever get to, like Guernsey.

Speaking of not feeling safe, I feel compelled to share this Twitter thread with you, by a theatre historian, Debra Caplan: In 1959, Eugene Ionesco wrote the absurdist play Rhinoceros in which one by one, an entire town of people suddenly transform into rhinos. At first, people are horrified but as the contagion spreads, (almost) everyone comes to accept that turning into a rhinoceros is fine..

And Andy Slavitt has finally recognized long covid as the profound, if not existential, threat that I believe it to be: COVID may not be remembered primarily for the full hospitals, unpredictable variants, mask & vaccine controversies, or even the massive loss of life.

It may be thought of primarily as chronic disease affecting 10s of millions.

This is exactly why I have no plans to travel, let alone take off my mask. I'm fully vaccinated and have had two boosters, but that won't prevent me from catching the virus. I have no doubt if I did, it would be mild. The problem is long covid, or LC as it's sometimes called. I firmly believe that we will eventually see our friends and neighbors and family suffering from mysterious medical ailments that no one, NO ONE, knows how to treat yet. I am going to do everything I can to avoid this.

That's too sad. How about this cool website, BirdCast Migration Dashboard. The new BirdCast Migration Dashboard provides summaries of radar-based measurements of nocturnal bird migration, including estimates of the total number of birds migrating, their directions, speeds, and altitudes.

It isn't detailed enough for me -- I currently live in Maricopa County, the fourth largest county in the United States, so zillions of birds have flown over, whereas Sonoma County, which is under the Pacific Flyway, shows many fewer birds because it's a much smaller county (though not a small county by any measure). But still! It was fun seeing which birds are crossing over us. To my embarrassment (though I'm not a birder) most of them I've never heard of, let alone seen. And Sandpipers flying over us? So so cool. See what birds are flying over your head!

This morning we got our second booster. Since the first three vaccinations were Moderna, we got Pfizer today and I must say, it seems to be much gentler on our systems. So far so good.

I also had a conference call with our computer person, who is in Sonoma County. He was great and helped with two computers I'd been unsuccessfully trying to re-configure. Now all is well, and I wrote up my notes so I hope not to make those mistakes again.

Tomorrow morning the solar guy will be out to replace the panels and pipes on the roof, plus the roofing company's liaison will be out at roughly the same time to walk around and get paid the second half. At 9:15 I have my Zoom aerobics so I hope they are all gone by then; I had to miss Monday's class due to a doctor appointment.

And I made two phones calls: one to the company who installed the mini-split on the roof of the den, for them to replace the floppy hose that let the condensate pool on the roof with a pipe that will run to the rain gutter, and another to a landscaper whom I hope will help get my poor holey backyard in shape.

That is enough! I have to admit, I'm starting to feel better. I hadn't realized how much the booster and the computer were weighing on me until they were over and done. I hope I feel even better after tomorrow.

I'm seeing more and more articles about Our Flag Means Death in bigger publications, like the LA Times and The Atlantic. Now if only HBOMax would grant them a second season.

We had a lot of wind today and the air quality is horrible -- particulate matter, they call it, and it's very bad for the lungs. I tried to sit out back but the air just didn't feel good, and knowing it was full of dust and who knows what else, I gave up and came inside. It'll be too hot pretty soon so I'm trying to get as much time outside as I can.

I hope you are all well and, if you need one, boosted.

Oh, has anyone seen OFMD icons? I've love one.

Well, I woke up at 4am and that is too early. I fixed myself a cup of tea and sat in bed listening to my book; fortunately, I fell back asleep and woke around 6. I jumped up and exercised on my stationary bike, then worked on the pool, sweeping and skimming, and backwashed it again (third time this week). Webster was up by then so we visited and then it was time for intermediate ukulele.

As so often for me, we're working on a song that I don't particularly care for but which is teaching me a lot, A LOT. So that's good. And we did some other songs that I found more fun. After that we had brunch and by the time we cleaned up, it was time for the Zoom Baby Boomer Sing-along. Now that was fun. Just singing for an hour. Plus four or five people from my Zoom aerobics class are on and it's fun to visit with them.

I wrote several emails after that: one to my sister, one to Kayleigh Cohen to thank her for her exercise videos, and one to my yachties, Followtheboat.com, to thank them for their sailing videos and podcast. So many people seem to be going back out into the world but so many people are now catching Covid so my podcasts and videos and books and Zoom classes are keeping me sane while I try to stay healthy.

I tried a new Smitten Kitchen recipe for dinner, soy-glazed chicken, and it was good but not good enough to keep the recipe. I also made a loaf of bread, King Arthur's dried fruit bread with cinnamon-sugar topping. Now that is good.

I've done my piano and ukulele so now it's time for my Spanish, and then I think I'll lie in bed and listen to podcasts. It's been a full day.

Here are two links for you. First, an incredibly sad history lesson: How Stalin Starved Ukraine. Have you ever heard of the Holodomor? I hadn't. It's horrible. No wonder the Ukrainians are fighting so hard against the Russians. Look what today's Stalin is doing to Bucha and Borodyanka.

This video is a lot more fun. Haboob: a Decade of Dust. Four minutes of dust and rain and music. Amazing. Fingers crossed no haboobs this summer.

And of course the best news is that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed. That was announced in my ukulele class and everyone burst into applause. It was a lovely moment.

So the roof still isn't done. Tuesday's rain threw everyone off, I guess. Friday to our surprise no roofers showed up and when I called the office I got their voicemail. That freaked me out, but around 9am two men showed up to work on the flat roof. I knew they had different teams for the tiled roof and the flat roof, so that was cool. They power-washed the flat roof and will be back after the tiled roof is complete, which I dearly hope will be Monday. Then they'll paint the flat roof with that elastomeric stuff. By doing it after the tilers are gone, they don't have to worry that someone will walk over it while it's drying.

So fingers crossed for Monday.

In other news, there is so much shit in the pool! I have swept and skimmed multiple times a day but what happens is the filter gets clogged with the pieces of whatever it is. I have to stop the vacuum, open the filter, scoop out all the crap, and then start everything up again at least four times a day. This morning I backwashed the pool and that also helped. I'll backwash it again tomorrow.

I also have been texting with a pool professional who will come out and clean the pool for me, with his equipment. Or so I hope.

More fingers crossed.

So let's see: it's Saturday so I was up early and on the bike watching Kayleigh Cohen's live ride. I cannot do an entire hour but I do get in 35-40 minutes of pretty hard riding. Showered and washed my hair, and only then remembered to backwash the pool. Oh well. I'll shower again before bed.

Webster was hungry today so in addition to breakfast, I made him midday waffles -- King Arthur's best ever waffles, and they really are good. I make the entire batch and freeze the leftovers so next time I can just toast them. For dinner I fixed one of my all-time favorite recipes, which I found in the Guardian ages ago, a version of a Korean seafood pancake.. SO GOOD.

I've done my Spanish and am now about to play some piano. Then I'm going to shower and lie in bed listening to podcasts. Why has no one made a podcast for Our Flag Means Death? At least there are several about Disney+ and Marvel so I can listen to people talk enthusiastically about Moon Knight.

Oh, almost forgot: I followed this amazing thread on Twitter about an Englishman who took trains for twenty-four hours to see how far he could get from St Pancras. I've taken the Eurostar to Paris so I knew the first part of his journey, and I love trains, so the whole thing was a delight. In case you also love trains, or Europe, or traveling, or silly people, here you go.

Dear Shirebound, I'm pretty sure it's your birthday today; I hope it was a good one and you had some CAKE. Or whatever it is you enjoy for birthdays. But I would like some CAKE.

Today was the first day of the re-roofing project and do you know what? It's raining. Fortunately it didn't start until after they left but I called the office and learned that because it's supposed to rain tomorrow, no roofers will be out. Which totally makes sense: slippery tiles, chance of lightning. Still, I hope the work gets done by the end of this week.

I had a super busy day: Monday is my laundry day, so I got three loads done. Zoom aerobics in the morning and Zoom beginning ukulele lesson. Swept and mopped the floors. Skimmed and swept the pool, twice, because of all the stuff from the wind and the roof. Made a batch of Voraciously's Mex-Tex bowl, but with rice instead of quinoa. Wrote a couple emails. And finally am sitting down wishing my friend happy birthday and resting my feet. Or as a friend used to say: oh, my barking dogs!

I'm going to re-watch Our Flag Means Death; it was just so, so good, as soon as I finish watching Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. I've never watched reality TV but I had heard so many good things about it that I decided to try it. I've actually cried a couple of times, and there's one gal I'd like to punch. I'm still not a fan of reality TV but I think I'm glad I watched this. I love Lizzo so much.

Hmm, I think that's all. No roofers tomorrow but we do have several errands to run, and I love being out in the rain. Now: feet up, headphones on, relax.