Pandemic Journal 27/3/2020 – only connect

This pandemic, like a dark bird of history pierced the thin membrane of our personal world. Ripped open we feel the call of friends lost and and found. Their voices sound in our dreams. We bear witness to our loss. Our bounty. And reach across to others. ...In this new era, COVID-19 time, this impulse to connect, an essential element in our well-being, is enabled by our digital technology. Isolated in our homes or wherever we find ourselves, connections stretch out the minutes of our day into a zone of contemporaneous aliveness. We humans peer at each other through machines. Our bodies relax or contort into awkward postures scrunched down on a chair - or standing, our weight on one foot, at the sink.

48 hours in a life unfold – a long read

What days - feasts of friendship, feminism and this. Sunday, 25 August It began with a brunch ...chez Sheena with her loving extended family. Xander grins when we stand back to back: Ha! surpassed the height of this petite doting auntie. After Ajay’s crispy bottomed eggs, (a specialty, observes Shanda,) and other treats, we visit… Continue reading 48 hours in a life unfold – a long read

Unsettling Relations: Margaret Donnelly (1841-1896)

Henry & Grizella Donnelly - Margaret Donnelly & Robert Shields - great great grandparents - my paternal grandmother's Irish and English lineage My paternal great great grandmother Margaret Donelly was a mystery to me. At twenty years of age in 1861, she lived with aging parents - her mother Grace or Grizella and father Henry… Continue reading Unsettling Relations: Margaret Donnelly (1841-1896)