Featured Refresh
Text & Image
Talk about what brings you happiness these days.
I'm usually an upbeat, happy person and feel lucky almost everyday to have a happy family, good friends, an interesting job, a nice house, a car that works, and to live where I do in the world. My optimism has certainly been tested since COVID began and like everyone else in the country, I've been experiencing a lot more downs than ups. I've tried to purposely spend time doing things that take my mind off all the crazy news and disordered state of our country and the world. One of these activities has been butterfly cocoon hatching. I had visited Magic Wings Butterfly Sanctuary in Deerfield Mass back in February, before the virus arrived here, and found out they sell native butterfly and beneficial insect cocoons for you to hatch and release at home. I started ordering them online in April and have hatched almost 20 this summer -- different varieties of Swallowtails, Luna moths, and Polyphemus moths. The photo I've uploaded is of one of the Spicebush Swallowtails -- after her wings had unfolded and pumped up, she crawled onto my hand and sat there for about 5 minutes before flying away. I garden with native plants and flowers in order to attract and support wildlife, jokingly referring to it as my "wildlife habitat" rather than my garden, but I was thrilled when she flew directly across my yard and landed on the Spicebush I had planted which, as her name implies, is one of the plants on which they lay eggs. Its been incredibly joyful to come down some mornings to find that another has hatched and I will soon get to release them into my garden. Its one of my happy projects! Of course not all of the cocoons are viable so that has been an important lesson too, that nature can be pretty cruel. About four of the moths and butterflies (out of the 20) seem unable to get out of their cocoons properly or their wings never fully open so they can't fly. I've read that for every viable cocoon there are several that aren't and will not hatch correctly -- Mother Nature's way of keeping down the butterfly and moth population I guess. I just wish she would apply the same logic to all the damn slugs who are munching on my garden plants every night! But my garden has been and remains one of my happy places and when it's not too hot I spend at least an hour or more after work each day in my garden -- watering, planting, weeding and deadheading. ...
July 29, 2020
Text Only
How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
According to my internal counter, it's day 355 of the pandemic and there are some signs of returning to normalcy. But, returning to normalcy is filled with anxiety for me. I've wanted for so long to do normal things like go to a concert or just the neighborhood bar or sit INSIDE a restaurant for dinner - the thought that these things are possible now fill me with dread. This past week there were multiple announcements - the lifting the of the mask mandate in Texas, Eater LA indicating that indoor dining may begin as early as next week in Los Angeles and Disneyland reopening next month. I should be happy, I should be thrilled. Those are all signs of a NORMAL life. But I'm not. I'm terrified in fact. I am nervous of re-entering society - entering a world that I may not even know what it looks like it anymore. Especially as an unvaccinated person. I look at the world so differently now. I feel distrust of others and what they do in their life. Take for example today - I went out for brunch with two friends. I usually love people watching but while sitting at the restaurant, all I could think about was my proximity with the next person and if they already had coronavirus. I hate being that person. Yet here I find myself. Perhaps I'm struggling the most with the fact that the very same politicians who blew my life up last year - the ones who told me that I shouldn't be closer than six feet, that I should wear a mask and I should not go see loved ones for the holidays are now telling me it's okay to go to a theme park or fly on an airplane or sit inside a restaurant. To be honest, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Why is right now different? What has fundamentally changed in the last sixty days to make this permissible? How is today, Saturday, March 6th safer than January 6th? I worry that decisions being made right now are political ones, not public health ones. And I worry that the fallout from these decisions will be horrific. That's the problem with hope - it can be so easily taken away - case in point is 2020.
March 8, 2021