February 23, 2022

I’ve always considered the definition of a traditional February as being the month of bitter sub-zeros and too much snow. With less than a full week left of this deeply wintry month, I can report that February of 2022 has been exceedingly traditional.

With the freeze-thaw-freeze cycle we’ve been in the last week or so, I haven’t ventured outside. I have to be very careful moving when it’s snowy and icy, of course, and it just seems unnecessary to go out just for the sake of getting fresh air.

I open the front door, as well as the back one, at least twice a week. I stick my head out and I breath in, and deeply too, at least three times! That’s fresh air, and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it—at least until we get a few warmer days.

As soon as we have couple of days where the mercury climbs to forty, then of course I will open my doors and windows and air this house out. It never gets really stale in here anyway, because we do have several little places where the seals between the doors and windows of this place and the outside world are not what anyone would call airtight.

David tried to replace the weatherstripping on the back door last week, but quickly realized that it’s a project best saved for the spring. He also has proposed installing screen doors, front and back, and actually, I like that idea. Not because I think that the extra door will keep the cold out in winter, though I suppose it might help. But because I can then have the doors open to the air in the summer, but not open for the bugs to come in.

There’s nothing I hate more than when flies get in my house. And we don’t even want to mention the occasional wasp, do we? I think having screen doors will be a great way to combat that habit he has of leaving the inside door wide open. And yes, I will suggest, strongly, that the screen doors he acquires have glass that can be raised or lowered as the need arises.

Wish me luck with that one.

Our renovation in the bathroom is complete, and I am now almost exclusively using the door that opens between it and our bedroom. The new closet is still in the planning stage, and that’s fine. David will be getting to work on that soon. I’ve done my part, as I have given away nearly a half of all the clothing I had prior to this renovation. That wasn’t as hard as I had feared it would be, because I gave myself permission to keep anything I felt really attached to.

I know I didn’t do a good job of explaining myself when my husband asked me why I was so upset over his original dictate – “that you have too many clothes, and they just have to go!” Fortunately for the cause of world peace and security, my beloved will never be a member of Canada’s diplomatic corps.

As I get older, I often reflect on the days of raising kids. I used to joke that once you become a parent, you no longer have the right to own anything, because those kids were capable of breaking, borrowing, or losing anything and everything, on a regular basis. And not necessarily but also, as I get older, I feel less secure, just generally speaking.

My relationship with clothing has always been…different. While raising our kids, what money was available for clothing went to buy clothing for them. I still recall the day I was taking our middle child, the one no longer here, to the mall to buy him a pair of really good athletic shoes. They cost a mint, but he needed them. As I was walking down the mall toward the store, I was glad I was wearing slacks, because the elastic in my undies chose that moment to let go. If I’d been wearing a skirt, my undies might have hit the floor. At the time, I found it really funny that I was about to spend more than a hundred dollars on shoes for my son, when I didn’t have decent underwear for myself.

Now, I have no kids to raise, and since, oh, about the last twenty years or so, I’ve felt relatively free to ensure I have good underwear, and all manner of other necessary clothing, whatever I’ve needed and occasionally, I even felt free to buy something that was pretty, that I wanted, but didn’t necessarily need.

So, when David told me I must rid myself of most of my clothing as if it was nothing more than unnecessary flotsam and jetsam, it just kind of pissed me off.

But I went through everything that had been hanging in my closet and not worn for a long time and managed to fill three large bags for donation. And when my husband seemed pleased with my effort, I simply shrugged.

And I assured him that if I did start leaving the house again on a regular basis, my first few trips out would most likely be to buy new clothes.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 February 16, 2022

Life has a rhythm, and for the most part, that rhythm is as familiar as our own reflections. And when we can move to it, when we can function within it, it’s a blanket of comfort that covers us with a sense of security, that feeling that all’s right with the world.

The last couple of years have shaken that sense of comfort, so that we are all of us together, in this moment in time, looking for our new familiar rhythm. I don’t know about you? But I am grateful to know it’s not just me hitting discordant notes as we bump along this Covid-lined path that life since 2020 has become.

I read somewhere once that the only people who like change are wet babies. I think for the most part, that saying is true. Most of us like a little bit a programmed change, as in, “oh, let’s do that on Saturday. That will be different, and fun!” But the kind of change that makes us feel afraid and powerless? The kind of change that upsets all of our patterns, that more or less unmoors us from the security that we need? That’s tough for most of us to deal with.

Friends, we humans need constancy, and we need to know the boundaries. Once we have those boundaries, we make ourselves happy (or not) within them. We understand the norms, the rules, and we can work with them.

But when the rules and the norms change, and change and change….that’s when we have a problem. Also, because of the ease of survival in these modern times, our stamina for stressful situations is very limited.

If we’re students of history, then we know there have been times through the ages when humans had no guarantees of living even into their fifties. There were wars and famine, there were harsh living conditions. There were plagues in medieval times for which there was no cure, no vaccine, no medication, and no escape. There were no day spas to sooth the pampered souls that too many of us, in this day and age, have become.

You’ve heard the term “snowflake”? There’s a reason that is a term, and that reason is a lot of us. Has there ever been a generation alive on this planet that is more wimpy? I think not.

During my first full time job, just after David and I got married (nearly 50 years ago!) I had a co-worker who had been born in England. She told me that after a couple of years of war, the people got used to all sorts of upheaval. During those fraught years, she went to work in London, a young woman doing the best she could to do a job and live her life. One day while she was working away, an explosion happened nearby, and a lightweight light fixture fell from the ceiling above her onto the chap working across from her. And the old woman beside her didn’t even jump, she just looked over at him, slumped over as he was, and said, “he’ll be fine in a moment.”

Some would call that being tough, and some would call it being totally insensitive, but what that old woman’s behavior was, was adaptive.

During the Spanish Flu pandemic of the last century, people didn’t have the wealth of knowledge that we have now, and didn’t understand the science, which was really still in infancy. As a result, many more people died, world-wide than have died in this pandemic.

None of us can control the world around us. We can’t make our neighbors wear a mask or take the vaccine; we can’t make people see things the way we see them. Everyone has their own point of view, forms their own beliefs, and rare is the time when someone who hangs onto those beliefs with both fists can be convinced that their “truth” isn’t “truth” at all.

The only thing we can control, in fact, is ourselves, and what we do. David and I have understood as the scientists have learned more about this virus (it was called a novel coronavirus because it was brand new, after all), that what they understood about it would change, it would evolve, which also changed the knowledge of how best to deal with it. We understood that part of the equation and don’t consider that evolution to be “flip-flopping”. It’s not politics, it’s science and it evolves.

Just recently the Ontario government has announced that the restrictions are being lifted. In our opinion, they are being lifted not because the danger of infection is past, but because people have decided that we do have to learn how to live with this in our lives—since it’s not going to go away anytime soon. And they are being lifted because a sufficient number of people have cried, “enough, already!”

Therefore, for our part, we’ve decided that we’re going to limit where we go and we’ll wear our masks when we go there. We’re going to monitor the suggestions with regard to a possible fourth shot. If our local health officials say we should have it, we’re rolling up our sleeves.

And that will form the basis of our new rhythm. And since it’s not an overly complicated one, I’m sure we’ll do just fine.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 February 9, 2022

The Olympics are on again. It seems like just last summer that we were watching Olympic updates…..oh, wait. It was just last summer that we had the summer games on our televisions.

And now here we are again with the Winter Olympics – which is actually a kind of a throw back salute to the past.  I say kind of, because it used to be that the winter and summer Olympics were always in the same year, with the winter first, and the summer second.

1992 was the last year to have both winter (Albertville) and summer (Barcelona) Olympic games in the same year.

Then, two years later, in 1994, the Winter Olympics were held again, in Lillehammer, Norway. This was a decision made by the International Olympic Committee in 1986. As one who’s always watched the Olympics, I thought it was a good idea, even if it felt weird to have the winter games again so soon that first time.

Now, of course, it just feels normal, and I would imagine that from an organizational standpoint it was a good decision. This way, you’re not taxing the officials to be super busy in one year only out of four.

David and I tend to watch more of the winter games than we do of the summer ones. Looking at our lives, that doesn’t make any sense, really. I did skate as a kid, but living out in a rural area, with only two friends close by, there was never any opportunity to go sledding or tobogganing—and no hills whatsoever close by that were available for that purpose.

And really, while I loved skating and would skate on the frozen pond-slash-marshy area that was across the road from our house back in the day, I wasn’t ever the athletic type. Activity was never really encouraged when I was a kid, and, not living in a town, there weren’t any organized local sports in my area. Or at least, there were never any that I knew of.

For David’s part, he never had any interest in hockey. He did live in a town, but he told me years ago that his father didn’t want him to participate in little league baseball or any other organized sport, because it would interfere with his golf trips with his buds and his week every summer at a cottage.

My mother did arrange for me to have dance classes and to be a majorette when I was about twelve, but I didn’t excel at either of those activities. I did twirl my baton in a few parades, but after a couple of years, we agreed—my mother and I—that I had gleaned all I could from that particular experience.

Despite our lack of athleticism, David and I both do love to watch the winter games! Monday night we watched some women’s freestyle skiing, I think its subtitle was “big air”? We also watched the mixed team ski jumping. We are looking forward to catching some curling in the coming week. Not the mixed teams, but the regular men’s and then women’s team event. There are the round robin portion that will lead into the semi-finals. And then of course, the bronze medal game, followed by the gold medal game.  

The first year that curling was reinstated as a medal sport at the Olympics (1998) was the first time we’d ever watched the sport, and we were both into it.

We also have watched a lot of figure skating in the past. We liked the pairs and the ice dancing, especially. We were yacking back and forth as we watched that freestyle event, and we both agree that these athletes make their sports look so easy. And we marveled as those women in the freestyle event went down the huge drop, some backwards, and then leapt and spun in the air, then landed and again, some backwards. We thought it wasn’t just toned muscles one would need to compete in that event, but nerves of steel.

I confessed, and David agreed, we would both be shaking on our skis and feeling ill just standing at the top of that hill, envisioning hurling ourselves down.

I suppose that one could class our viewing of the winter games as a kind of passive patriotism. We always cheer team Canada on, of course. But we also cheer on all the young women and men who have worked hard, and who strive to be stronger, higher, faster, to be the best that they can be.

The Olympics have served as a vehicle for worldwide friendships. They also provide us with the chance, for a brief time, for us to come together as people, our focus on something not egocentric, something that, at its heart and soul, is not connected to politics.

It’s a time to celebrate those who’ve had a dream, who’ve set goals, and who’ve dedicated themselves to a course of action. It’s a time to cheer on those who leave it all out there and lay it all down in the trying. Winning is of course the north star, but it isn’t the only benefit to be had from the process. Yes, the glory of the gold belongs to the winners, and I’m certain serves to motivate them.

But I also believe that those who have given their all but, in the end, fall short can still stand tall, and for one very important reason.

The odds were against them, and there were no guarantees, and it did indeed take long, tough hours over years where much would be sacrificed again, and again, and again just to reach the point where they earned the privilege to compete at the Olympics. Yet, despite all of that, they stepped up and gave it their best, anyway.

Or, to paraphrase the immortal words of Theodore Roosevelt, at least they failed by daring greatly, thus distinguishing themselves from those who never find the gumption to even try.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 February 2, 2022

For the next two days we’re supposed to get more snow—anywhere from 8 to 10 inches more, in fact. A significant winter storm, the forecast said. Most of what we’ve already received is still on the ground, though a tiny bit has melted from the few times the sun shone down. Before I went to bed last night the temperature outside had begun to rise. It was 40 at eleven last night. According to the weather network, when the storm began it would be with rain. I’ve seen this movie before. The rain looks like a friend as it melts some of the old snow, then the temperature drops, the rain on the snow freezes, and then is covered with a ton of new snow. I’ve seen that movie, and I hate that movie.

But last night as I took in this information, my most pressing concern as I thought about this scenario playing out once more was this: how on earth is the groundhog supposed to emerge from his burrow, let alone see his shadow when he, like the rest of us, could be covered in ice and snowed in tomorrow morning?

Well, imagine my surprise (not) when I awoke this morning to….nothing. No ice. No new snow. I shook my head and checked the weather network dot com again, and of course, the hourly forecast show this latest rendition of snowmageddon beginning at ten a.m. today.

We’ll see if they have it right this time.

Meanwhile, today is February second, Groundhog Day. We here in the Ashbury household have always celebrated the day. You may recall that my husband David, before he retired, worked at an open pit mine. A quarry, which was an outdoor job all year round.

The great hope of Groundhog Day was always the possibility of an early spring. He loved that job but outside in the winter could be brutal. By the first of February, his craving for spring was a real thing.

In the United States, the most famous groundhog is Punxsutawney Phil. But there’s also Staten Island Chuck, and Milltown Mel (New Jersey), Buckeye Chuck, in Ohio, Woodstock Willie in Illinois, Potomac Phil, in Washington, D.C., Birmingham Bill in Alabama, and Sir Walter Wally in Raleigh, North Carolina.

We have a couple of groundhogs in Eastern Canada, too—Shubenacadie Sam in Nova Scotia, and of course, Wiarton Willie, here in Ontario.

Despite the fact that I have touched on the subject of Groundhog Day in more than one of these essays, I always have to look up to see how this prognosticating thing goes. So here it is, straight from the authentic academic accreditations of Wikipedia: If a groundhog emerging from its burrow in this day sees its shadow due to clear weather, it will retreat to its den and winter will go on for six more weeks; if it does not see its shadow because of cloudiness, spring will arrive early.

Or as I explained it to my kids, either way, it’s six weeks more weeks, because Groundhogs cannot really predict the arrival of spring.

Our oldest never truly cared one way or another, until he left school to work with his father at the quarry. Now, all these years later, he’s still in the same industry, a manager, and usually gets a few weeks off in the winter. When the forecast from Wiarton Willy wasn’t a good one, he would joke aloud, wondering if anyone would get angry enough to go groundhog hunting.

I had to tell him of that old saying: don’t shoot the messenger.

Now, in the interests of clarity, and brevity, I will reveal two American and two Canadian results of this year’s rodent climate prognosticators: Both Punxsutawney Phil and Shubenacadie Sam declare six more weeks of winter. Staten Island Chuck and Wiarton Willie have proclaimed an early spring.

And I think, as I usually do, that we’ll get spring-like weather beginning on April 1, 2022—following the six months of winter that by then will have played out from October to March, inclusive.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 January 26, 2022

To quote a well-know cartoon character from my long-ago Saturday morning TV watching days, shiver me timbers!

Yes, it’s true, I have lived within about forty miles of this house I now call home for all of my life. And yes, I do know that winter is one of the four seasons that we get here, every single year. I even acknowledge that it is the one season that appears to have the most days in it despite what the calendar may indicate about season parity. As you know, the calendar says winter begins December 21 and ends March 21. I say it’s October to March, inclusive. That’s how it’s been in my mind since reaching adulthood, and I accept that as being a reasonable analysis.

But holy moly, Batman! I have to tell you that these “sub-zero days” as we’ve always called them never get any easier to handle (and yes that is about minus 10 Fahrenheit which was the measuring system that was in place when my brain’s synapses finished forming).

Two days this past week it took our relatively new furnace several hours to heat the house sufficiently for the thermostat in the living room to read 72 degrees. I awoke and then got out of bed at nine a.m. one day and saw that the temperature was 67 degrees. The furnace begins to work toward 72 (from an overnight setting of 65) at about 6:30 am. Now, one is not going to freeze to death in a room that is 67 degrees, Fahrenheit no matter what our inner whining imp wants to claim. By just after noon hour that day, the room was finally at 72. But it wasn’t a “warm” 72. It was, my inner whining imp insisted, a “chilly” 72.

The next day was a repeat performance, except the house was at 72 by ten-thirty. Our poor old house is missing some insulation in some outside walls and needs new weatherstripping for the back door. Now, as we’ve been renovating, we’ve done what we can about that. Also, the plans are in place to, at some point this year, finish insulating, and sheeting, our upstairs. That alone will make a heck of a difference in the building’s ability to retain heat.

In the meantime, however, we have an electric heater in my office, and plenty of blankets and heating pads, otherwise. I have sweaters, and fuzzy socks, and I still have several pairs of “leg warmers”. We even have an electric blanket which is big enough to share, which we haven’t yet resorted to but will, if needs be. We’ll survive just fine. I don’t deal well with being cold, so you can be sure I’ll do whatever is necessary to ensure I’m not cold for any longer than necessary.

However, as much as I truly do not like winter, it is a very good time of year for making comfort food—meatloaf, pot roast, and of course, home made soups, which are staples here these days. It’s good to warm up on the inside as well as on the outside. On Sunday, I created a nice cream of mushroom soup, and that made everyone very toasty and content on the inside.

The numbers of current Covid infections have been coming down slowly in our area, but they are still higher than they were for all of the pandemic prior to December 28, 2021, when this latest surge exploded. They’re still in triple digits and that is just way too high for our not very populated area.

Ontario ended in-restaurant dining a few weeks ago, and I could only shake my head that at that time all other indoor gatherings,  meaning private gatherings, were limited to five people. The reason for my reaction? Well, do you recall that a year ago I mentioned to you that we were going to have a small, very small gathering on the day after Christmas? And then, that was squashed when December 26, 2020 became the day that a long lockdown began here in Ontario. Well, this year, again due to the girls’ work schedules, family Christmas of 2021 was to be celebrated at Sonja’s on January 18^th – which ended up being just into the time during which these latest, new restrictions came into force.

What can you do?  Really, just go with the flow. There won’t be a large crowd that will gather for this, only 7 adults and 1 toddler. All but the baby have been double vaccinated, and 2 are awaiting reaching the six month mark in order to get their boosters. We don’t yet have a revised date for our small celebration, but it’s looking—at this point—like it’ll be sometime in February.

I should note here that the latest we’ve held our “family Christmas” was in April, and that was a few years before anyone had ever heard of Covid-19.

We’re expecting another few inches of snow on the ground before the week’s end. I’m just hoping that it doesn’t all come at once. The last snowfall delayed the pickup of our garbage, to the point that I was asked on Friday by my fellow residents to call the county office about it. I was polite, of course, and I can report that the next day, the problem was resolved satisfactorily.

Lately I’ve been musing that time doesn’t seem to work the same as it used to, and I think that’s because some of the solid, heretofore non-changing elements in all our lives have indeed changed. A friend recently said to me that she’d read an article that claimed we were all suffering, due to the pandemic and to one degree or another, from PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I think she’s absolutely right.

It may get worse before it gets better, but one thing is certain: we are all absolutely in this thing, together. Let’s take some comfort in that.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 January 19, 2022

I know I’ve often waxed damn near rhapsodically about the “good old days”, when the snow was so deep in the wintertime that driving down a plowed country road, one couldn’t see any of the passing scenery because the snowbanks were higher than the car’s windows.

Well, it wasn’t quite that bad on this past Monday morning, but it was close. By the time the plow went down the road clearing off the foot and a bit of snow we received during the night and into the morning, the cold white stuff was piled to a height that came to just at the bottom of the car windows. Fortunately, Monday was our daughter’s regular day off, and she hadn’t planned to go anywhere.

Our grandson had hoped to come by and give us a hand with the snow removal. Unfortunately, his car was snowed in as badly as ours were. David got the snow blower out of the basement mid-morning and slowly began to go to work on the sidewalk and our small walkway. He used the shovel for the porch and the porch steps, as well as a bathroom path in the back yard because the snow was deeper than a couple of our dogs are tall. A friend who also has small dogs coined the phrase, “a path to pee-dom”. Kind of cute.

This snow blower is the only one we’ve ever owned. We bought it several years ago, and while it is electric, it is not self-propelled. It’s large and can be nearly unwieldly if the snow is deep and heavy enough. Using the blower is a bit better than having to use a shovel, but honestly? Neither are easy for my beloved anymore.

The work took a lot out of him, but I could see he felt good that he was able to do that much. He’d planned to wait for our grandson to come and dig out the cars—but that didn’t happen. In the end, since this is house stands on a corner lot, after supper time David used that snow blower once more to clear the area between the side street and the front of our daughter’s car. Hers was parked ahead of ours, so once that area was relatively clean, she was able to drive it out, and park on the plowed side street. Then she did the same with the car that we use as our own. The snow work and car moving was done by about seven in the evening.

Then the next morning, the plow came down early, about six in the morning, and cleared the snow that had been piled up next to our vehicles. When daughter came home at around one yesterday afternoon, she parked in her usual spot and then brought my car back to its place in front of our house (and behind hers). I had been told by both my daughter and my husband that I was not going out in the snow, because it was still deep in a lot of places and really, I would likely have ended up on my ass if I had tried. Since falls are to be avoided at all costs, I gave in to their wishes.

There are times when I want to just say, bugger this getting older crap. In my thirties and forties—before my heart attack—I was quite adept at cleaning off my own car in winter and digging it out if I had to. In fact, there were times in my past when I actually enjoyed the exercise. The country house I grew up in, and that David and I lived in with our children after my mother’s passing, had a driveway that if filmed from about fifty feet up by a drone would look like a hockey stick laying on its side. We all loved that driveway because we could pull in, drive to the end, steer to the right, back up, and then drive forward and park near the back door of the house with our vehicles facing the road, so that leaving again involved no backing up whatsoever. The driveway measured about one hundred feet with the turn around, making it a fairly long one.

And before I was a married woman, and a driver, I was a teen with a shovel and yes, snow days meant I had a shoveling assignment. As long as the driveway was clear by about 3:45 in the afternoon, when Mom came home from work, all was good.

There were a few times when I shoveled the entire length of that sucker in just a few hours. And a few blessed times when one of our neighbors (who owned the quarry and would in the future be my husband’s boss) came down with his loader and cleared that one hundred feet in about ten minutes.

The good old days indeed.

Every snowfall we’ve received this winter prior to the one on Monday has melted away in less than a week. I doubt this lot will be melting anytime soon. But one thing I do know, if I know anything at all is that you really never can judge how long the snow will last or what the weather will be, forecasts be damned. And since I don’t need to leave the house until the first week of February, I guess I’ll just sit back and watch out my window to see what happens next.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 January 12, 2022

I know it’s definitely winter when I dig out the few pairs of thick, dark blue men’s very fuzzy socks that David gave me a couple of years ago. Regular socks worn with high over-the-ankle slippers simply just don’t cut it when it’s deeply cold the way it’s been here the last few days. Thanks to the arthritis, when my ankles get cold, they don’t feel cold to me unless I touch them with my fingers. They just hurt.

I resorted to those socks on Monday when the temperature was “14 Fahrenheit but feels like minus 4.” They absolutely made a difference. I wore them again yesterday and I’m thinking that for the next few days at least, they’re going to be my new best friends.

With the arrival of January comes the return of a some good prime time television programs, so I have more than the option of watching the cable news networks in the evening—theoretically. I’m trying to focus on reading in my off-writing hours, and not watching so many doom-and-gloom cable news presentations. The constant hair-on-fire admonitions can really wear a body down!

When our kids were younger, weekends were a time when we’d head to Blockbuster Video, and each kid would get to pick a movie—and that was how we spent the weekend. We’d watch those movies as a family, and sometimes twice. But in the last, oh, ten years or so, I have lost my taste for watching movies. There are a few I’ve gone to the theater to see (pre-Covid, of course), and a couple I’ve watched since, but at home. But mostly movies just don’t appeal to me anymore. I wish I wanted to watch more movies. With all the streaming services available there are movies galore one could watch and never view a news program again!

In the interest of complete transparency, I must confess that there is currently one exception to that, and it’s not a movie, but a “live capture” of a Broadway play that’s available only on Apple TV plus. I know I’ve mentioned it to y’all in at least one previous essay. The name of the production is “Come From Away”. I’ve watched it, oh, maybe a dozen times since last September. It helps that it’s a musical because I always have loved musicals.

Lately, I’ve been more than a little annoyed with the propensity for people—people who I have to figure were raised better—to lie. And not just to lie to their neighbors and friends, but to the world at large, and on social media. But what I am really annoyed with is the way so many people seem to believe the lies being told. There is an entire massive chunk of the population that has not been blessed with what I consider to be a vital characteristic: discernment.

Discernment is an important attribute/skill/trait to cultivate. You don’t have to be born with it the way you do with a talent for, say, music or writing or making an inviting home. It can be gifted to you, of course, but you can develop it if you have a mind to.

How many of you recall a time when mom or dad would get after you for following along with some lamebrain thing that one of your friends did, with an admonition that sounded like: “And if Ted jumped off a cliff, would you follow him then, too?”

That was your parent’s attempt to help instill discernment within you.

But from what I’m seeing with regard to societal trends especially with regard to social media? There are a whole lot of people lying and a whole lot more folks willing to follow those bad actors off every kind of cliff you can imagine—metaphorically speaking.

Now, I earn my living through the sale of eBooks. I owe a lot to this online medium, this internet, I really do. But there are times when I wonder—would it really be so bad if we suffered a major CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) and this technology went poof?

Of course, that’s just my irritation talking. Since it would, in fact, be bad—there are likely so many everyday things that are built on the back of the internet and its attendant technology that if that went for a dive, we’d all be in very real trouble. So, no, I can’t pray for the internet to vanish just to stop the rabid spread of horse puckey and bull hooey on social media. (Although there is a part of me that wishes I could because, man, that stuff is getting deep.)

Thus, it’s up to me, and me alone to monitor my own intake of mind-waste. And since I do have a healthy sense of discernment, separating the wheat from the chaff in life isn’t a particularly difficult thing for me to do.

It is however—and especially lately—an onerous, boring, never-ending task.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury