Blog Archives - A Cottage by the Sea

Secret solitude moments~

2/27/2017

I hope you all are getting a little solitude time. It isn’t easy if you’re in the midst of parenting or working, and yet, I know that’s what makes time alone so very precious and desired. Nothing to be taken for granted. Here are a few secrets revealed to me lately. A friend cherished the one hour lunch he enjoyed all by himself while in Florence with his family. Another friend loved her weekend home alone while the family was skiing. Someone else I know went to the library to read.
Being retired, I have plenty of solitude. I’m not asking you to wish your current life away; just enjoy those secret moments.

Change happens, including baseball rules!

2/24/2017

Here’s the latest in the saga of major league baseball’s drive to shorted the game. I guess this one I can live with (but don’t like), although even it changes the ethos of the game. Beginning this season, intentional walks need only be called; the pitcher will not throw the four pitches. The batter will be told something to the effect of ‘Take your base!’ I know I’m not explaining this well, but if you know baseball, you’ll understand, and if you don’t know baseball, you won’t care.
Change happens all the time. So be it. For me, however, these baseball rule changes remind me of happenings in my changing world that I have little control over, or interest in doing anything about. The good news is that I’m not sad about it. I just want to walk, travel and read my books. And that is what I will do. Oh, I’ll still watch a baseball game.

A nine inning baseball game~

2/21/2017

I hope I don’t live long enough to see Major League Baseball change the game from nine innings to seven. Can you imagine what that will do to all the statistics? I gather that people aren’t staying until the end of the game anymore. The stands empty out after the seventh inning stretch. People go to take a few selfies and post on Face Book. “The game is too long,” they say. What? When I went to Ebbets field we stayed to the bitter end, and often, bitter it was. I love being involved in all nine innings. The game was never too long. Now everything is too long because it is not about the present moment but about being on the move to the next thing.

Pondering my 2017 Goodreads Challenge

2/17/2017

     I have been pondering the birthday gift of book titles I received from Face Book friends and from those of you who read this blog. What began as my participation in the 2017 Goodreads Reading Challenge, quickly morphed into an antidote to political negativity, accompanied by my desire to read for compassion. What I am pondering today, a month and a half into the project, is the effect it is having on me, my gift-giving friends, and, dare I believe, the wider world.
     My reading began as intellectual learning--different lifestyles, points of view, periods in history--but then expanded to include feelings of compassion, first for the particular characters and situations, and then to something more universal--a feeling without words deep in my heart.
I know very little of the effect this gift has had on my friends. I am sure that those who sent a suggestions spent time thinking about perfect book for me. I have thanked a few personally, and made a few general post on FB and here, but that’s about it. And yet, I still feel a personal connection with each of them.
     As far as the effect in the wider world, I am certain this project is making a difference; after all, I believe the world is always a more faithful, hopeful, and loving place when we live from compassion. Reading these books enables me participate in just that.

   (You can read how this got started on my posts at the end of December 2016 and i January 2017.)

Snow days are for helping~

2/13/2017

The snow is ending. I thought I could create another snow day for myself until I realized that not everyone has the leisure to lay on the couch and read all day. So out I went to take a friend to chemo, and in a bit I’ll visit a friend in a nursing home. I tell you this to reminder myself to continually move out of my privileged life. Excuses don’t hold. “Dangerous driving, I’d better stay home.” The truth is that the roads are clear, both of snow and cars.

Snow days are for reading~

2/9/2017

View of the library from my front door.

     There is nothing quite like a snow day when you are not teaching. I have no obligations, and no place to go even if I wanted to. I can’t get out of the driveway. I’m stuck, which means I can’t go to the supermarket, take a walk, or visit a friend. If I could make it across the street to the library, I’d find it closed, but I have books.
     When I was teaching, a snow day gave me a chance to I’d catch up on household chores and plan for the next day in the classroom. I had books, professional books. Now I have books suggested to me by friends on Face Book. I just finished The Street Sweeper, by Elliot Perlman—one of the best novels I have ever read.
     I’ve glanced at the news, but I don’t find myself drawn into the details of what’s going on in Washington. I’m still committed to my reading for compassion program, and am considering joining other teachers at the Rally & Speakout Against Billionaire Betsy DeVos in Boston on the 25th.

Remembering Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2/8/2017

     Whenever I am asked if I miss going to my cottage-by-the-sea, I say, “Yes, I miss it; it was a special time, but a not-forever-time. My home routine is right.”
     When I spent those four or five days in the middle of the winter weeks at the cottage I felt calm, centered, and in the moment. Internet access was weak and unreliable, I ate sparingly and intentionally, I never had a glass of wine, I walked every day, I did jigsaw puzzles, I read, prayed, and watched the sunrise even when it was too cloudy to see, I talked to no one, and I never watched TV or listened to the news or read a newspaper.
     Now that I am home, some of those routines have remained—the walking, reading, praying, jigsaw puzzle, no wine, the eating. I talk more, but I lead a quite life. I am on the internet more, although recently I have chosen to check Face Book only twice a day.
     However, even with so much cottage behavior that has become part of my routine, lately I have felt the return of the cottage presence in my life. What is the common denominator? It has to be no TV no news, which gave me peace and time to stay centered at the cottage, and now gives me peace and time to stay centered at home.

P.S. I wrote this post a few days ago. Alas, I wish it could stand as is, but after the DeVos vote and the sanction of my senator, Elizabeth Warren, I cannot return to the cottage. As a Christian, I cannot erase Dietrich Bonhoeffer and The Confession Church in Nazi Germany from my mind and heart.

A winter's walk~

2/4/2017

Silence, solitude and simplicity. No words needed.

January reading

2/1/2017

My favorite.

In January I read seventeen books for compassion. I am so very grateful for all the authors who open their hearts through the printed word. (See "Compassionate Reading" for details.)

The Glass Castle, Annette Walls
Half Broken Horses, Annette Walls
The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van, Alan Bennett
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett
Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance
The Space Between Us, by Thrity Umrigar
Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
Astrid & Veronika, Linda Olsson
Tolystoy and the Purble Chair, by Nina Sankovitch
Eleven Hours, by Pamela Erens
The Lake, by Banana Yoshimoto
Books for Living, by Will Schwalbe
The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah
Letters from Rifka, by Karen Hess
Upstream, by Mary Oliver