Daily writing prompt

What were your parents doing at your age?

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It’s a bit tough to sort out, since there was a 6-year difference between Mom and Dad. Until Dad started experiencing the vicissitudes of advancing age in his late 70s/early 80s, they were relatively active.

My Dad had been retired for a few years by the time he was 72, but my Mom was still working as a part-time music person at our church’s nursery school, and she would fill in as organist on occasion. She still had a few piano students.

They’d visit family in Connecticut, make an occasional trek to Maine or Florida, spend a week at the church camp in New Hampshire, or, more infrequently, visit my brothers and families in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Dad loved to golf, so he would get out at least once a week with a few guys from church. When she wasn’t at church, Mom was content to stick around the house, always ready to welcome folks who would stop by and have a cup of coffee and shoot the breeze.

When they were my age, they were both still quite active.

Daily writing prompt

If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?

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I would revisit the balance of power, in hopes of keeping the Executive branch in check. The current officeholder at the top, and those around him, are always looking for loopholes, benefitting from a predatory reading of things and making a shambles of the role of Congress– basically ignoring laws whose intent has always been to maintain a certain order and keep the fabric of society from fraying to the point of chaos and anarchy.

A close second would be a crusade for changing the current tax structure to be more equitable across income levels– since federal funding has always mattered when it comes to programs focused on infrastructure and health maintenance and improvement, along with research grants and a spectrum of societal needs that benefit from a dependable financial shot in the arm.

Daily writing prompt

Write about your dream home.

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The dream hasn’t changed much since I wrote about this last year. My dream home would be modest by most standards, but well-conceived and functional. Energy-wise, it would draw upon geothermal heating and cooling and solar panels, with a gas fireplace for added warmth and a certain redundancy. The house would be laid out in a thoughtful manner, with a large kitchen, sunken living room with ample seating, a baby grand piano, a dining area with seating for 14. Three or four bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, a sewing room, a finished basement with a TV/audio room. There would be an attached woodshop, maybe an acre and a half to two acres of well-drained land, mostly level, on high ground. Plenty of room for a patio and pergola, space for outdoor activities, a couple of large shade trees and lots of garden space, along with a bit of grass to mow.

Unlikely to ever happen, but fun to think about. I guess that’s what makes it a dream home.

Daily writing prompt

Are there any activities or hobbies you’ve outgrown or lost interest in over time?

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Church attendance comes to mind, and it’s more a matter of losing interest than outgrowing it. This has created an interesting dynamic, because a part of me misses the ritual and cyclical routine– the seasonal markers that delineate any given year.

But something else has emerged, which is characterized by doubt and fatigue. When we do attend somewhere, the liturgy and message are mostly uninspiring anymore, as if I’ve heard it all before, nothing changes, and its relevance is lost. Certain elements are timeless, but this origin story is relatively ancient, in some respects not aging very well.

And it didn’t help to read Sapiens.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite candy?

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Candy is not often part of the diet anymore, but if there’s any dark chocolate around, I’d enjoy a piece of that. On occasion, Aldi will carry a package of delights that look like dark chocolate Pringles with Rice Krispie-like crunchy bits mixed in. So good.

Sweet Tarts are a distant second.

Daily writing prompt

Do you need a break? From what?

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Funny you should ask.

Yes, from winter. We’ve actually had one this time around, and it’s getting old. Especially the wind, which just adds insult to injury, rubs salt in the wound. Fifty years ago, I would have made lemonade, but not anymore.

I’m thankful for electricity and a warm place out of the elements. And for diamond art, my new vice.

Daily writing prompt

The most important invention in your lifetime is…

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I asked one of the AI bots about consequential inventions since 1954, and its first response had technological innovations at the top of the list– the more widespread use of transistors, integrated circuits, and the laser were the top 3, in order.

I then asked where the polio vaccine fit, and it placed third in a revised list, behind the transistor and IC. The polio vaccine was the first thing to come to mind, though I realize it was how I phrased my first question that left it out entirely in the first list generated.

In one sense, transistors and integrated circuits deserve their place at the top of a list of important inventions, but the polio vaccine, to me, is in a class by itself.

Daily writing prompt

Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.

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Get up at 5, pour myself some cold brew, come downstairs and write a boffo blog post that receives 100 likes, make breakfast, clean up, get a workout in at the Y, come home and take a shower, get dressed, and then engage in some fruitful, satisfying woodturning project that will provide a bit of income. There would be time, if conditions are good, for a walk with my wife, maybe a serendipitous encounter with an eagle or something that makes me glad that, for once, I decided to take my camera with me. We’d top off the day with supper out at a go-to local eating establishment, then come home and settle in with a bowl of popcorn and the latest episode of a favorite TV show. Bed by 10, if not before.

Daily writing prompt

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

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Certain realities dawn– that if altruism and caring are “woke,” then so be it; that self-improvement, like so much else, has become cliché and marketable, yolo…; that there is often a price to be paid for standing up to injustice, that there will always be room for gratitude and humility, that our earthly existence is relatively short and no one has an endless amount of time in which to grow wiser, or to stay still long enough to listen, or travel and educate oneself or otherwise experience this amazing life– amazing if you’re lucky enough to be born into a stable, nurturing family and given opportunities to blossom and grow along the way.

And since it is difficult to ignore the elephant in the room, I will offer that the human species is slow to evolve beyond tribalism and pecking orders and privilege and a drive for self-preservation and dominance. It seems there will be, for the foreseeable future, a relative handful of lazy, fearful, cold-hearted monsters drunk on power, who take a dim view of humanity, who keep a foot on the throat of self-determination, who utilize their own brokenness as fuel, who think it’s their way or the highway and think nothing of invoking the name of God and inflicting immense pain and suffering in the name of some cockamamie “vision” or because they have a death grip on the past.

I’ve grown skeptical of how God fits into all this.

Daily writing prompt

Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

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It would have to be going through boxes of things that have traveled with us in our moves, are taking up space, and really need to be gone through. This includes pictures and slides that should be archived somehow– saved in a photo album or digital format– along with souvenirs, journals, etc.

It is an undertaking easily ignored, put off, and otherwise disregarded. I can think of a hundred other things I’d rather be doing.