Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Nothing Fits Friday Round-Up
The people of Ukraine refuse to sit down. We have not seen this kind of thing in a long time and we don’t know what to do with it, it being so foreign to how we are as a country right now. So, we admire the Ukrainians’ unified resistance like we might admire the Northern Lights or Haley’s Comet. Remarkable and rare. And otherworldly. Would that we could be that way, we think, as if it would take some extraordinary galactic bending to make us link arms.
Last night on homeless outreach started out being depressing and never flipped to happy stories. Of course, one is a true fool to think folks are merrily homeless in early spring in Milwaukee. There are reasons people are homeless and they involve injury and addiction and loss and a hundred other pieces of hard luck and worse times. I stared out the back window of the outreach bus as two outreach workers carried food and supplies to a very distressed woman living outside a drug store. On a busy street. Among everyone going to and fro. It was surreal.
The mask situation is making me crazy. Right now, I am living in an area with a very low risk of Covid. For that reason, I didn’t wear a mask last night on the homeless outreach bus in which I spent four hours with three other people, no one wearing a mask. Then today, I wore a mask in the pet supplies store. Why? I so clearly don’t know what I’m doing. Meanwhile, I feel my forehead with the back of my hand about every thirty seconds.
We’ve added where’s the cat to our daily worry pile. We are keeping our son’s beloved cat while he is between apartments. We are terrified of losing the cat since he was lost once before in his short life and it was very distressing. Last night, on homeless outreach, we passed a house where there were two cats sitting side by side on the porch watching the traffic. There was nothing keeping them from taking off and running down the street but they seemed perfectly happy watching the cars go by. A glimpse of what might be possible.
Lately, I am wearing my age like a team t-shirt. The lead-up to my birthday is always like this, especially since I started hitting the really jaw-dropping numbers. I feel ancient and withered. This is not a good feeling so I am hoping it will pass. “I need a more robust life,” I say, and my husband nods, disinterested, listening to sports talk radio in the car. So what’s keeping you from having that, he doesn’t say but I hear anyway. It’s a good question.
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3 Comments on “Nothing Fits Friday Round-Up”
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Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Red's Wrap 
Well I think we would have a hard time convincing all those demonstrating against masks, primary school curriculum and the election results that there are actually causes worth fighting for.
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Here in Europe it does not seem ‘other worldy’ at all, of course. We are not exactly living in fear, but talking to friends here, it would appear we all feel the same: the open, desolate heartache and a certain low-level cloud of distress permeating our lives.
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the Ukrainians continue to amaze us all with their strength and sheer will.
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