Okay, let it snow…

02 Dec 2025 Leave a comment

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We knew this would happen, and “all the sudden” here it is! December 1st arrived yesterday and brought with it a brief heavy snow, so it’s official: For those who celebrate, Christmas is on its way and so is winter. I played the Old Card and chose to observe the first snow of the season by abstaining from the gym and my Monday workout, which turns out to have been the wise decision. When Kim got home from pickleball he said the streets were crazy and so were the drivers, and then I read that parts of town looked like a parking lot. This lil’ troublemaker didn’t need to be leaving tracks out there, so home and fireplace it was and it was lovely.

By now you know I’m not a holiday fanatic, or even much of a fan, but I do love the seasons, warts and all. Cold, heat, rain, snow, all good in their time because I’m fortunate enough to have a safe place that’s in out of the weather, and when I walk around town I realize what a big deal that is. The world has changed immeasurably in the new millennium, but the milk of human kindness hasn’t entirely soured yet. Every day on our local Facebook page I see proof that we still know how to love each other. Some typical posts:

“I have a bag of potatoes I need to share with someone while they’re still nice. Can you use them?”

“I found a wallet on the sidewalk today. If you’ve lost one, please provide pertinent details and we’ll git ‘er done.”

“I’m new in town, single mom, and my car’s sitting in my driveway with a flat tire. Can somebody recommend a reliable service for me to call?” (Gives general area of town.)

Followed quickly by: “Ma’am, I’m close to your neighborhood, I’ll be over in just a few minutes, no charge.”

“I have one less working guy to feed this evening, so if you need/want a plate of hot food, stop and get it on your way home.”

And on and on every day, the little stops and starts, the deep breaths, the choices made, the life sustained. They’re the golden threads, the tiny veins and capillaries that nourish this great human mating ball and keep us from annihilating our species. They’re the stuff life is actually made of and we don’t see a fraction of it.

On this sunshiny, sparkly day, though, things seem a little clearer… just for a bit… and it feels nice. I still have enough Pollyanna left to hope for a profusion of sparkly days ahead… and to hope we’ll know what to do with such abundance.

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Image by Judy Smith

Hello, October…

01 Oct 2025 Leave a comment

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Yes, boys and girls, another segment of 2025 is upon us, and be forewarned, it will pass as quickly as the previous nine have done. Month by wild month the year becomes history before we’re fully woke and then what, straight into another just like it? A person can hardly be blamed for asking.

Nevertheless, all the nostalgic autumn truths still stand. We open our hearts to the dying time in order to see fresh new life emerge in the spring and trust that will happen year after year, proof that we stay in some ways, against all odds, perpetually innocent.

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The following came across my feed this week and its melancholy fits the season. As the world grows colder, stranger, and let’s face it more terrifying by the day, the average person on the street is left wondering “What can I do about all this?” And the unfortunate honest answer is “Not much, really.” BUT… we can still care enough to be our authentic selves and keep going, which matters because people are looking for other genuine people who will help keep the lanterns lit.

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It is indeed an increasingly Halloween world, a place seemingly populated by monsters and ghouls, and when I wonder what to do in the face of all that I default to Mary Oliver and her calm realism.

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DAILY AFFIRMATION

Image by Judy Smith

Month by month…

06 Sep 2025 2 Comments

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Abundant August rains have brought us to a lush September, and fall should be a show of color. I love all of autumn but I may be prejudiced toward the month of September since it contains my birth date (today) so just know I’m doing some extra thinking. I staggered into a Facebook site last week called WDNC, populated by women WhoDoNotCare, and it’s as therapeutic as you might already imagine. In that vein and a spirit of celebration:

IDNC that I’ve never, in all these years, managed to fit the mold. Full disclosure, I still don’t even know where and what it is, so I guess that gives us the pertinent information right there, hm.

IDNC that on the little things I’m wrong more often than right, that’s just bad luck. On the BIG things I’m far more often right.

IDNC that I alone can say what qualifies as large or small in life.

There are many things I genuinely no longer care about and most of them are things I should never have cared about at all, so passing birthdays are good for perspective and a few other concepts like longevity, which reminds me… I’m not old. Not yet. Both of my grandmothers saw 96 with their minds in working order and I call that incentive. My mom had me in the same September in which she turned 20, so I always knew exactly how old she was. This year she would be 98 and likely still wouldn’t be “old,” so there’s some more perspective.

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The state of human existence being what it is, I offer one piece of advice from this vantage point: Whatever it is, do it NOW.

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And everybody still gets one special birthday wish, right?

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Image by Judy Smith

Totally random…

05 Aug 2025 Leave a comment

***

Soooo, we’re into yet another new month, for good or ill. It’s still summer, it’s still gonna be hot, and the world is still in a wackadoodle state of mind, but happy August, boys and girls, the countdown to Christmas has begun.

Our summer skies have been just this side of eerie, and I finally realized that we were getting smoke from Canada’s fires. At times we can smell it in the air and it hangs heavy over the river. This is fair trade, considering that Canadians must feel like they’re living in an apartment above a meth lab most of the time. Thank you for your grace, northern neighbors.

It’s been a summer sprinkled with small discoveries of great import. I learned that choosing a new doctor just might provide fascinating (i.e. life or death) tidbits concerning certain meds and their dosages. I am now acing the test on that chapter. A second discovery has to do with people and their faces. Most everyone with distinctive features reminds me of someone else, and I finally realized it’s because I’ve been roaming the earth long enough to have seen those features in endless combinations on a never-ending succession of faces, thus making them all seem somehow familiar. It’s comforting except when it isn’t. Full disclosure, there are a few faces I’d rather not see again in this lifetime.

A key summer discovery was that coffee and herbal tea are not the same animal, and that caffeine has much more to say to me on a daily basis than I knew. Got a wild hair to see if I might feel more serene internally without the influence of coffee, so I quit cold turkey. Started drinking a delicious herbal tea. Felt somehow healthier. Cleaner. Let’s face it, righteous. By the time I’d slept away five afternoons in succession I was pretty disillusioned about the whole thing, so caffeine it is, at least for now, just less of it. I am not above accepting a little help with daily living.

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These are hard times, so do what you can to entertain joy, which is mostly found in the simple things. Good coffee, lovely tea, excellent food, kind and astute friends, love shared… it’s all joy. And there are always flowers somewhere.

“Wildflowers” by Aoife Dowd, Irish artist. Oil on canvas.

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Image by Judy Smith

Seems like just yesterday…

25 Jul 2025 Leave a comment

Photo by Kim Smith 07/2025

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This week we’re celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary, a number that might confound the skeptics but makes us happy. Yesterday we had lunch in the Rozelle Room in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, a space that lends itself to retrospection… perspective… and projection. I wondered out loud if we might have another 21 years in us and neither of us laughed, so we’ll see. I’d be 99 years old and Kim would still be the kid he’s always been, but what’s life without the challenges, right?

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The Rozelle Room. It’s casually elegant and the museum is a 3-day experience, so we’ll be going back soon. Yesterday we primarily saw the Egyptian exhibition and the one for Photography, half of which is currently closed for renovations. It’s a pretty wonderful place and good for getting steps in if you’re counting.

So… starting on the next twenty. Can’t wait.

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Image by Judy Smith

And the rains came…

17 Jul 2025 3 Comments

Flash flooding on July 6, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. Heavy rainfall caused flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas with multiple fatalities reported. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

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Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, it’s been a spring and summer of rain so it’s a Water World all over the place except where it isn’t, because there’s always the odd exception. So far our heavenly blessings have been copious but benign, and we’re living in the middle of more green than I’ve seen in all my previous years put together. That kind of benevolence hasn’t held true for much of the U.S. and other parts of the planet, however, and our hearts are aligned with all who’ve lost everything to the violent weather patterns. The chaos and destruction only add to an ever-increasing list of How Do I Handle THIS? occurrences, further complicating the simple act of existing for people already stretched to jusssst about their absolute limit. So sorry for the injustice of it all, world.

The Kansas City Metro area is reporting some off-the-chart rainfall totals from overnight:

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Our neighborhood report shows 4″ so we weren’t slighted. Kim got up at 3am and peered through the blinds because he thought we were getting pounded by hail, but all the noise was coming from huge raindrops pelting the wall-to-wall windows. Must have been deafening and I’m envious since I miss out on all the night-time storms now, pore me. Okay, that’s enough weather, one of the least-endorsed subjects to yammer on about, jeez! Pretty sure I can find an alternate subject, hang on a minute.

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E’erbody still here? I hope you enjoyed your lunch as much as I did mine, which was a tasty rendition of minestrone soup. And yes, you’ve caught me stalling. The daily glut of information and shenanigans is such that I don’t even know where to start, so I don’t. Every day, though, the challenges become more of a thing, so this would be no time to tune out.

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It’s hard to say precisely what we need to happen in the world, right here, right now, but daily magic isn’t a bad choice:

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Could be time to return to our roots and get back to the beginning. The VERY beginning, if such a thing exists.

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In the face of overwhelming reality, every bit of beauty we can put back into the world makes a difference, so pitch in, beautiful people.

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Image by Judy Smith

Wow, look at the time!

11 Mar 2025 2 Comments

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It’s been a while. A whole month has passed without my having held forth about it, and we’re none the poorer for it, because the processing of momentous events takes time and a certain remove from the action. Otherwise, our voices grow steadily louder without solid sense behind them.

It’s been a time. An incredibly eventful one, rife with change on an hourly basis. The onslaught is such that commenting on it feels like showing up to a mob hit with a water pistol.

It’s been a challenge. We voted for a kinder, more humane society, but that didn’t happen, so we deal with what did.

There’s a growing rumble of protest encompassing all fifty states, but we don’t yet know the extent of the Power of the People that might be awakening. You know, becoming woke. There’s still much we don’t know, but the picture becomes clearer day by day. For now… I’m finding comfort and companionship in books and music, doorways to magical worlds, often intertwined. What we can see of the universe tells us it’s a brutal but intensely beautiful place, and that beauty keeps our spirits anchored to the good in all of it until we can see the good and the beautiful in each other again.

“When the world seems heavier and filled with troubles, remember about patience and timing. Everything comes when it must come. A life cannot be rushed. So often we feel like pushing the river… we don’t want to wait. The river flows on at its own speed. There is always a timing at work, always a plan, even if we don’t see it at first. Patience and timing.”

~Dr Brian Weiss

art/ Natalia Lukomskaia

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Image by Judy Smith

Slouching toward the promised land…

13 Feb 2025 Leave a comment

***

It’s winter. It snowed again. It’s cold. There, you’re all caught up.

Soooo, yeah, what a long strange year it’s been, all 44 days of it, and this morning dawned cold and crinkly once again. The sun is blindingly bright on the snow and it’s 6° as I write… one of those days that looks positively balmy until you step outside and freeze your nose hairs.

As the world beyond the weather grows increasingly frigid, and as I continue to process recent and ongoing events, I’ve realized this morning that my prevailing emotion at this point is not fear but disappointment. Like the Pollyanna I’ve always been, I’d held out hope for at least a pause in the hostilities, a willingness to see each other as people again, to make room for kindness first of all, but it wasn’t to be. Our candidates were too happy, they both laughed too much, and you can see how that would be so wrong for the country.

Nearly every generation thinks we’ve arrived at The End on their watch, but so far it’s been nothing but false alarms. We’re a piteous species in that we no more get something figured out than we feel compelled to sabotage that in some way. Always two steps forward, one step back. Sooooo slow, the progress, it’s almost possible to observe evolution in real time.

In lieu of a softer world I’m cushioning my own with books and music, good food and good company, all the things that matter and over which I hold some slight sway. Keep the goals reachable. Whatever makes you a happier human, DO IT. Live your life, it’s the one that’s happening NOW.

Image by Judy Smith

It’s not complicated…

24 Jan 2025 1 Comment

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Image by Judy Smith

On light and hope…

19 Jan 2025 Leave a comment

***

Boys and girls, I promised you a Pollyanna post before tomorrow, so stand by for a test revealing whether or not I can produce one. In truth, it’s simple: think positive thoughts and write them down. Got it.

I’m positive that after tomorrow life will change, so be ready for anything, good or bad. Don’t let the good pass you by while you’re focused on the scary stuff.

I’m positive, and have proven it to be true, that we don’t have to immerse ourselves in “what’s happening” every living second of our lives, and equally positive that it’s damaging to do so. I hopped off the TV news merry-go-round months ago because I can be far more selective and equally freaked out by reading the daily feed instead of watching it. In addition, I’m positive my daily perusal is overkill.

In the cockamamie world we woke up to, I’m positive that the following is factual:

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I’m positive that the world can someday get itself right-side up again so imma hide and watch. Since I’m no help, at the very least I can choose not be a hindrance.

Whew! What a relief.

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I’m not voluntarily going anywhere and I hope you won’t either.

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Image by Judy Smith

Tick, tock…

14 Jan 2025 Leave a comment

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Yesterday we had a week’s grace before the apocalypse hits, this morning we’re down to six days. Then five, then four… and we’ll finally arrive at Day One, being billed as the greatest day in human history, hosted by CF47, gonna be lit! The entire world waits and watches.

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Christmas already feels like it came and went long months ago without making a ripple in the fabric of society. As a nation, we achieved the full measure of hypocrisy during this past season, simply by pretending to celebrate something we don’t actually believe in, as evidenced by our actions.

CF47 has said the deportations will begin on Day One.

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And because we’re not going to bow down to not only a dictator, but his racist apartheid insane sidekick, who seems to have appointed himself King of the Known World.

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So on we go, hoping this isn’t the end of life as we’ve known it, doing what we can to preserve “truth, justice, and the American way” and against all odds, I must add.

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We have… maybe… one more week of relative peace before the storm. Gird your loins and other parts, kids.

I’m old enough to remember when people cared about each other and life wasn’t entirely transactional. We may or may not ever see that vibe again, but living felt a little more fair, considerably sweeter, and we had a sixth sense as to whom we could trust. Someday, CF47 and all who bow to him will be gone, but we’ll never forget what he’s done to destroy our lives, and what people we respected did to facilitate that debacle. Trust, once squandered, is a total bitch to recover because of all it entails. People thought one thing, were told one thing, wanted one thing, and entirely different things happened. We’re being told to live with the untenable, the implausible, the preposterous and unthinkable, and it’s a psychic stretch we’ve likely not had to pull off until now.

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Whatever’s coming… the things we hold no sway over… it’s on us to find a way to survive because of course. Simply by existing, we cheat the oligarchs out of pennies and crumbs we have no right to subsist on. My question becomes: Are they planning to implement indentured servitude in order for their laundry to be done, their mansions cleaned, and prime food delivered hot and plentiful to their mouths? And if not, will it be robots doing those things?

It matters not how it all happens, we’ll eventually bow the knee when we get hungry enough. The Rule Book, Project 2025, has been written and published, so they’ll say we knew what was expected of us and therefore deserve whatever punishment is meted out. I still want to live to at least 95, but not in THAT world.

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There are so many people I miss, but I don’t entertain thoughts of that changing because it feels like we’re past that point. Love and friendship require trust and respect. And sadly, that’s the end of the story.

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Come back tomorrow for a Pollyanna happy-post. Had to purge my psyche so I can keep being real with you and me.

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Image by Judy Smith

Ah yes, the New Year…

31 Dec 2024 Leave a comment

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This morning, because her words reached me and are doing their intended work, I’m borrowing from Rachel Alana (R.A Falconer), Midwives of the Soul, with deep appreciation for her gift.

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~ This year, dear friends, may we all lose weight!

The weight of expectations. The weight of self-criticism. The weight of disconnect that fills us with a deeper hunger. The weight of not always loving. The weight of a worn and weary world. Of not always accepting, seeing, and inhabiting this precious and sacred body that we’re in.

~ This year, dear friends, may we all exercise!

…our holy will! Our sacred sense of purpose. Our vision and hard-earned wisdom. Our discernment and our shining hearts. In ways that enrich connections, with our bodies, our souls and those we love. And even to the world. ❤

~ This year, ah yes… may we all start the work of quitting…

…that collective Kool-Aid. The negative self-talk. The small-assed living. That cacophony of cockatoo-voices that drown out our souls. And old habits: Those used to stop us hearing our pain, our disappointments, and all things much better loved, seen and accepted right down to the very bottom ~ and to find true freedom, through a connection with our deepest souls.

And…

~ This fine new year, (well, here’s the best…) May we all be rich!

Yes, utterly and completely rich. Wildly and unapologetically. Rich in love. Life. Connection with one another and all that really matters. Filled to the brim and bubbling over; more again and spilling over that. Full of laughter, acceptance, joy, and less of worry. Less of sorrow ~

Rich in renewed experience, of a whole new year! ❤

Happy 2025, dear friends!

~Rachel Alana (R.A Falconer)

Midwives of the Soul

Image by Judy Smith

Fractured fairytales…

27 Dec 2024 1 Comment

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Once upon a time, strange as it may sound, Christmas happened in a world that wasn’t ready for it, making things discombobulated and odd from the start of the season. Planet LOOK.AT.US. was out of sorts and feeling aloof from the whole affair. Things were not right in the kingdom and no one knew how to fix it. Such a different holiday it was shaping up to be, with far too much sadness in the mix.

But wait… since the task of Christmas is to lighten hearts and gladden the soul, I must give you, instead, the story of The Four Farmer’s Daughters… have you heard this one? Get another cup of coffee and pull up a chair, it goes like this:

Long ago, in a previous century, four daughters were born. Two sets of sisters, farm girls all. After high school came the usual endeavors that send people their separate ways… college, extensive travel, careers, partners, children, life. Circumstance and the passage of time eventually conspired to bring the four together again some years into this century, hours spent realizing how alike they are in their world view and code of living.

These four women, now mostly past 70, have not lost touch since, and won’t. In the midst of this barren-feeling lonesome Christmas season, everybody listened to their inner angel and they spent hours… again… sharing food and conversation and knowing nothing’s changed. Oh, out there in the world, everything’s changed, but real friends don’t. That’s a supreme gift to open, one that makes everything seem possible. Keep it real in 2025.

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Image by Judy Smith

We were festive…

26 Dec 2024 2 Comments

Just not THIS festive.

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Christmas Day this year was sweet and special in too many ways to list, but you know I’ll try. It’s hard to sort out what the whole thing is about for me now, but what remains… always… from the past and forever… is the love. It’s entirely a feel-good day if we can do it right.

Rita was here, she and I wore our Christmas jammies, the Chiefs won, and dinner was amazing.

The traditional cheese ball I hadn’t made in 30 years. The recipe holds up.

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Salmon filets in cream sauce with spinach and cherry tomatoes over Jasmine rice; candied carrots, and cheesy biscuits. And vino. Dessert was warm fruit tarts with ice cream.

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The usual suspects.

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Today we’re being hugged by a heavy fog and indoors is where it’s at. Perfect.

Let quiet and peace soak into your bones, and savor every blessing.

Image by Judy Smith

Let the light always remind us…

21 Dec 2024 Leave a comment

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… that the sun will soon return.

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Image by Judy Smith

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