Dear Friends,

It’s been too long since I’ve checked in, and I apologize. The last time I wrote anything here was Dec. 13, 2023 when I espoused the importance of local news, especially Lookout Santa Cruz, which I still read every day. (FYI: since my last writing they have won a Pulitzer!) Wherever you are, I hope you are lucky enough to have such a news source. During these troubling times, it helps to keep your eyes focused on what’s happening close to home, where you can actually have some influence.

But I’m not going to write about politics. (Though I could. You know me, I have all kinds of opinions!) But luckily, we have Heather Cox Richardson for that. If you don’t subscribe to her newsletter, I highly recommend. She is one smart woman and helps me get the long view of what’s going on in this country.

So the reasons for my absence here are many. Firstly, I’ve been working on a new novel, another mystery set in the fictional town of Tres Ojos, and when I have time to write, that’s my go to. Also, it can be difficult to convince myself that anyone would want to hear my random musings, which is curious really, because I love to hear other people’s! Shoot, I lead two online writing workshops (one with Women at Woodstock and one privately) and I am totally fed by the peeks into the minds of other women. Because what is writing if not that? As my friend Wallace Baine once wrote, and I’m paraphrasing: reading someone’s work is the closest you can ever get to understanding their thoughts.

So here’s a peek into my mind, my life. I’ve been looking for way to unhook myself from screens. When I think about the amount of time I spend looking at them it appalls me. Especially considering that I grew up in a time when the only screens we had were movie and television screens. And at least in my family, we weren’t allowed a whole lot of TV. So I’ve been knitting, crocheting, gardening, birdwatching, and awkwardly playing the ukulele. All this along with The Fun Institute. Yeah, Dixie and I still serving up improv. After the pandemic, and with the results of the recent election, community seemed more important than ever, and girl, do we have an amazing community! And I am so grateful for it, for you! But just in the past few weeks, I’ve also rediscovered another entertaining way to spend some time.

Origami.

Here’s how it happened. Over dinner, a new friend and I discovered we each knew how to fold paper cranes. I’m really good at it because I just folded one-hundred-and-twenty of them for my ninety-one-year-old mother. I crafted her mobile of cranes many years ago, and when I dusted them on my last visit to Philly, I decided it was time to fold her some new ones. Last Christmas, she fell off some steps and has spent this last year working her butt off to get back to the spry old lady she was pre-fall, and she has! Hallelujah! But here’s the deal, whether I fold someone a single crane or a hundred-and-twenty cranes, I enclose a prayer in each one. And yes, I do believe in prayer, and by prayer I mean sending a clear intention toward a wanted outcome, either for a person or an event.  Having just finished reading Lynne Taggart’s The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, a layman’s introduction to Quantum Physics, (I highly recommend) I believe more than ever that our thoughts matter. Our beliefs matter. But this is a whole other tangent I’m going to keep myself from traveling now. Read the book!

Back to origami and screens. Because I’m so good at folding cranes, I can do it as I watch TV. Just like I can knit or crochet. But what about trying something new? What about an activity that engages my brain? As a kid I spent hours poring over the obstruse written origami directions for folding everything from reindeers to prawns. If you’ve ever tried to learn origami from a book, you know what I’m talking about! This cannot be done if there is a screen anywhere in the vicinity. It takes full on concentration. There are little arrows, dotted lines, directions like petal folds and magic diamond, even something called an x-ray vision diagram. Yikes.

So, the other day, this new friend gave me a folded origami tulip in a glass cup. It was lovely and I was so touched! And as I’d recently watched her perform an improv scene about a woman holding a wake for her four pet fish, I decided to fold her four fish, only I challenged myself NOT to look at YouTube (which is so easy!) but instead to use my old origami book, which I’m ashamed to say has  printed on the inside Free Library of Philadelphia. Did I steal it? Get it at a sale? Who knows? It was over fifty years ago. The fish took me a few tries, I admit it. But as a challenge, it beat the hell out of Wordle and Connections. I was using synapse that hadn’t been used in years. When I sent her a photo of the fish, she sent back the text: Game on! So there’s more good fun to be had. And if you are an origami enthusiast, I encourage you to post photos or thoughts.

So, that’s a little about me. What about you? What do you do to keep yourself off the screen? I’d be interested. And Happy New Year!

As always, remember to live the love, it’s all we’ve got—and more important than ever now.