Unplugging...

 August 26, 2026

As I look around me, I can’t help but notice how challenging life is becoming for us all. Partly, and most absolutely, the environment—in any definition of that word you choose—is less easy going than it once was. Not only are there more physical upheavals (weather, wildfires and violence), but we are also bombarded with more information, more noise than we ever were in times past.

I tried to think of something I could liken the level of this seemingly constant barrage of stimulus to. The only thing in my lived experience was the few times as a young woman when I would go to a bar that had music videos playing on large screens at full blast, while everyone around you shouted in the (futile) hope of being heard.

The constant broadcasting of information is like that. People today seem anxious to unplug and go off the grid, desperate for a break—to disconnect from society. And they spend a lot of money to do just that.

Disconnecting from society didn’t used to be called that. It was simply alone time. You turned off the television and the radio. Unplugged the phone if you had to. And there, in the comfort of your own home you were “disconnected from society”. You could have that necessary alone time.

We all need time to be alone, to be able to power down our thinking, our coping, our emotional responses. We need to breathe. We need to relax. We need to be able to place ourselves in a state of grace so that we can cherish the sound of the ticking of the clock on the wall.

Oh dear. I just realized that last metaphor may not be as universal as it used to be.

The noise of social media is more harmful than we know. I’ve come to that conclusion. Social media can be a useful tool. In the right hands, it can even help save lives. But we must always remember that we are the users and it is the tool. We’ve given this particular form of media a kind of mission creep within the boundaries of our lives. Instead of using the thoughts and ideas of others to simply inform us, we far too trustingly have given those voices too much authority in our minds. We’ve let it replace our own sense of self, our own moral compasses, as well as our own common sense.

Even when I was young, aka the old days, the saying was: “The only problem with common sense is it's not very common.”

Another expression I would sometimes hear growing up? “If your friends jumped off the cliff would you jump off it, too?” Now, setting aside the humanitarian gut instinct of wanting to save said friends, the answer was always no. Because in those days the thought of needing to save anyone presupposed that those in need of rescue weren’t stupid enough to jump off that cliff in the first place. That saying meant this: you’re responsible for all of your actions, so stop and think first.

Recently I’ve been using this noodle of mine to better advantage when it comes to social media. And by social media, I mean the ones I use regularly: Face Book and YouTube. I do have Instagram, but I really don’t know how to use it very well. I used to have Twitter, but it died, the first social media platform to be torn apart by wild, ravenous beasts. I do not have Tik-Tok or whatsit, because there’s only so much modern technology I can cram into my brain.

So, using my noodle…..when I get postings from “friends” on my Face Book feed and it’s outside my own boundaries of decency, I unfriend whoever sent it to me. As for YouTube, I’m careful about what I will watch. Some videos have a hook they don’t honor. I stay away from anything that is obvious misinformation, or that intones hatred—and I use the discretion that I’ve been gifted with as my filter. I prefer uplifting messages, especially the rescue of animals or humans by random people. Because I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people one meets via social media, and on YouTube, especially.

Extraordinary people who in the course of their lives have achieved much good; and ordinary people who, when placed in extraordinary circumstances, rise to the occasion and thereby fill us with pride and gratitude.

And I am convinced of the fact, and pleased to announce, that the latter far outnumber the former, by a landslide.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

Waiting on tomatoes...

 August 19, 2026

I don’t know if summer is waning or not. I do know that we are mid-way through August and I’m not certain what the weather is going to be like from day to day.

I don’t usually care overly much, because I don’t spend a lot of time outside. It’s just not something I tend to do anymore. I remember past years, long walks, visits to beaches and parks. Raking the leaves in October and earning red chilled cheeks for my efforts and loving it. Enjoyed every bit of outdoor time I got to spend with my family. I don’t dwell on the limitations I have now, they are what they are. So, I don’t generally care if the day is sunny or not, sweltering or not.

Except, of course, when I am waiting for the tomatoes that are on the vines to start ripening. They really do need sunlight to do that, and we haven’t had a whole lot of sun over the last couple of weeks.

Here I sit with my stuffed tomato recipe ready to go, but I need ripened beefsteak tomatoes and so far, while we’ve had some of the cherry tomatoes to nibble, the larger ones are still green. Those I live with seem to be on the same page with me, here. They’ve both begun wondering aloud if there was something wrong with the plants we got this year, that they seem to be taking their damn time to ripen.

And because I tend to be a teeny bit perverse at times, their echoing of my thoughts got my attention.
The last summer that we had a really good bumper crop of tomatoes was the summer of 2023. And I do recall at that time, I was so tickled with the bounty of fat juicy red fruit I picked in one day, that I took a few (well, maybe more than a few) pictures of them.

So in theory it was a simple matter to access my camera download file. These photos are stored digitally, and they show the date that the pictures were taken.

I am relieved to report that those pictures were taken between late August and well into September. Hopefully that means there’s time yet for me to eat my fill of fresh picked tomatoes.

Having worried a little about them, my mind skipped ahead to autumn and so has our daughter’s. We have enjoyed several meals of green beans from our garden so far, but we already know we won’t likely have enough from our own garden to freeze and enjoy through the winter.

We don’t grow corn but always get enough from our local farms to freeze. We’ll add a few baskets of beans to that plan, and we thought we’d also buy a few butternut squash—the last more for the convenience of having it on hand when we have a hankering for a supper side dish—or a soup.

I make several soups in the fall and winter, and they are almost always gobbled right up. The family’s favorite by far is cream of potato, or potato/leek, or even potato/bacon. I actually get special requests from our “second daughter” for that, and I usually make it for her. My family also likes a hearty squash soup, and all those soups are easy enough to make. I’ve also made mushroom soup, and a few times I’ve served cream of broccoli, too.

But I’ve always loved a good home-made chicken soup. Chicken noodle, and chicken with rice. And those I make from pure chicken stock.

We purchase packages of boneless/skinless chicken breasts which we then cook up and put through the food processor. Thus ground, we serve it as a supplement meal to the dogs. They get kibble, but at night they each get a quarter cup of ground white chicken meat. Low fat, good protein and the dogs love it.

How I cook the chicken varies. In the summer months, I slow simmer the pieces on the stove top in a bit of water. But in the cooler weather I place the meat in a lidded casserole dish and bake it. There is always a good amount of “juice” remaining, and since I don’t add any water to the casserole, that juice is pure chicken stock. And my how good that tastes compared to anything from a can or a package. I very rarely need to add anything other than salt, some chicken, and either rice and carrots, or noodles.

Daughter and I will schedule the gathering of the veggies for stocking our freezer for either September or October. We considered going to a very large and amazing outdoor market here in our neck of the woods in a community called St. Jacob’s. But I know myself and would be tempted to buy more than I can easily process if we did so.

So we’ll shop very local. Daughter has promised to help because, despite my desire to just do it all myself, I’m no longer able to manage the chore alone.

But those stuffed tomatoes? Mine to make, certainly. And mine to eat, too—as I’m the only one in the house who enjoys them.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

The power of your words....

 August 12, 2026

I play with words for a living.

It’s true! At this point I’m working on my seventy-second title for my publisher, Siren-Bookstrand. I cannot tell you exactly how many words I have written in my lifetime. I can tell you that, since becoming a published author, and taking into consideration my novels, a novella or two, and of course these weekly essays (since the autumn of 2006, once a week, minus a small handful of Wednesdays missed) the total is more than four million words.

Can you imagine? No wonder I’ve had carpal tunnel surgery twice on my right hand. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that the first time—and it was on both wrists—was due to the office work that I had done in the course of all of my nine-to-five working life. And the only good news there is that’s why it was only on my right wrist this time. Because I play with words only now and not numbers, too.

But I digress.

Words have meaning. I want you to read that again, because that is one of those sentences in life that has become a common place saying without actually being understood. So here it is once more:

Words have meaning.

Or to state it more accurately: words have power.

That’s a truth that has been repeated again and often without being fully comprehended. In some cultures, both historically and in the present day, people don’t give their names out to just anyone. There is a deep-seated, perhaps even intrinsic reluctance to give one’s name, because it’s seen as a giving away of power over the one named.

In the last century, the belief that words had meaning/power was at the heart of the self-help/motivational movements that many people used as their own personal north-stars. And then of course, there is the Bible.

God created the world by speaking it into existence; and then He created humankind in His own image.

Words have meaning and they have power, and nothing annoys me more in this life than when people just open their yaps and let it all hang out. Linguistic inaccuracy and ignorance are not considered sins in the traditional sense. But they should be.

This isn’t voodoo, and before you tell me you don’t believe that words have power let me ask you a question and give you a couple of examples.

If you doubt that words have power, then why do you compliment someone who’s feeling down? Surely their mood has nothing to do with you. And yet you tell them something good about themselves, something nice, and their mood is improved, and their spirit is refreshed.

Your words did that.

Conversely, those of you who are parents, teachers, or bosses, cannot deny that sharp words, words used as weapons, deflate the emotions of the person you’ve hurled them at. They wound. Say the wrong thing and your employee/student may quit. A few careless words, and your child dissolves into tears.

Your words did that, too.

Those are two personal examples that point to a larger, universal truth. We all need to be a little more careful of the words we choose to use. Because there’s one more power our words have and it’s this: our words, used recklessly and with abandon, rob us of our credibility and our integrity.

To the point that we’ll open our mouths, and no one in this life or the next, will take us seriously.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

Loving and loss...

 August 5, 2026

Over the last few years, I’m very grateful to say goodbye to the month of July. That wasn’t always the case.

When I was a child, and even into the beginning of my married years, I looked forward to the seventh month every year. We used to call it Christmas in July—both before and post marriage. My brother’s birthday was on the first, and my mother’s was on the fifth. My own birthday was on the twenty-first.

David and I married on the fourteenth of July.  Our first son was born at the end of that year (in December), and all was well until he was three and a half years old. That year, my mother died in April, and I became an orphan at the age of twenty-one.

The next year, our second child, our son Anthony, was born on my mother’s birthday! It felt at the time as if God had planned it that way. The following year, I gave birth to our daughter on the thirteenth of July. This was also the birthday of a dear friend as well as two of her own siblings, and she had begged me not to do it…but really, Diana, I had no choice!

Then, after almost three decades of Christmases in July, of a birthday a week for three weeks straight (5th, 13^th, and 21^st), we lost our Anthony on the thirtieth of July—twenty years ago this year. And my brother left us on the 29^th of February, 2020.

It is natural in life that the older you get, the fewer people there are within your circle. It’s natural but not easy. What isn’t natural of course is having to bury one’s child. All losses forever possess the ability to render us to tears, occasionally. But the loss of a child is a wound that never heals sufficiently to allow one to move on seamlessly.

That’s not to say that I regret being given the opportunity to be the mother of the one I lost. He was a challenge, and the path was twisted, but I did, and I do, celebrate his existence in our lives and in my heart. I loved him beyond words and I still do.  He brought our second daughter into our lives, and together they gave us three beautiful grandchildren…including the first one who was with us for only a few days. I find comfort knowing that the two of them are together.

Love, the kind that sinks deep into your soul and wraps around your heart, is always worth the pain of loss. Always.

I’ve often written in my essays, in one way or another, that the purpose of life is to help us become the best version of ourselves possible. It’s a journey of growth, of disappointment and triumph and yes, tragedy, and those are the refining tools used to shape us.

Oh, one can certainly decide, freely, that they’ve had enough of that pain of loss, and close themselves off to the possibility of more. They refuse to make new friends or adopt new pets and to just stay to themselves.

But then you stop growing. You stop being, in a way. You stop…serving your purpose. You’re no longer living, you’re just …breathing.

There are good memories. There are smiles from looking back and there are even moments of laughter there. Perhaps the tears are always just waiting in the background, but that is only natural, too.

Even the most beautiful of gardens welcome the rain.

Today is the fifth August and July 2026 is receding in the rearview mirror. It’s time to look forward again. To think and to plan and to hope and to dream again. Until the next July.

As I contort my body to look beyond my computer monitor at the sunshine and blue skies waiting there on the other side of my office window, I feel contentment. That’s the thing about being shaped and molded by the tools in the Creator’s hands.

There are always a few quiet moments of joy and thanksgiving in between the sessions. Moments of peace and quietly building strength.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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