Monday, December 21, 2020 (10 days remaining in 2020)

This morning, I hope to move more quickly, having learned that tomorrow as well as today are eight-hour working days. Usually, Tuesdays are the beginning of “my weekends”, but sudden changes mean going with the flow.

I dislike leaving the horses here at home, through yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This warm weather would let them be grazing in a neighbor’s pasture. My having to be at work very early erases time to walk the equines across the street. It’s not a quick gig. The horses must be haltered, arranged for leading, and then taken across the road. After entering my neighbor’s place, we cross his property to the pasture in back. On a good day, this horse transferring eats away twenty minutes.

I want it outside to be nearly light before going to feed horses and to give them an hour in the stalls. The lack of early light deeply cuts my free time. And worst, today will be the year’s shortest, and tomorrow also will be short of light. That means the horses must stay home, and at lunchtime, I’ll briefly return and toss hay to them. This, too, will pass.

Otherwise, Thursday will be Christmas Day. The mood of shoppers is friendly and open. They’re rushing to handle last-minute needs. It’s too near Christmas to find goods, now often scarce or missing, and shoppers are seeking alternatives. My workplace, Central Oregon’s only Costco, is crazy, busy, and now, even fun.

On Facebook, musical artist, Janis Ian, posted this cartoon. It sums-up 2020 about right.

Dear Friends: Oy, Great Britain has been hit with a more virulent, new Corona-V strain. Diana

Sunday, December 20, 2020 (11 days remaining in 2020)

Approaching this year’s darkest, shortest day–Oh, yes, there’s one that’s real!–as a couple of planets approach one another, we’re eleven days prior to the New Year. I am reflecting on 2020 and its lessons for me.

I learned that one can semi-isolate and find ways to be okay. For me, this year’s early months of self-isolation meant purchasing and more purchasing. First of all, books for reading; and too, purchasing art products and learning to use them; purchasing materials and practicing knitting skills. There was endless purchasing and practicing, or purchasing and ignoring. In 2020, online shopping became a biggie.

I learned during self-isolation the bonus of having some property and private space. One could go outdoors unmasked and be alone. I purchased battery-operated power saws and practiced using them. The gift of private space let me spend weeks outdoors trimming long-neglected trees. That might not sound like, nor was it fun, but I was outside and physically active in a safe space.

Pets can be saviors, and especially horses. They need constant attention and care but give much in return. Horseback riding in a local forest transported me from home, allowed my dogs to run for miles, and gifted me with lovely, memorable spring and summer views.

It’s no small accomplishment that a focus on getting through 2020 helped me recover from having lost my very influential big sister toward the end of 2019.

At summer’s ending, my old job revved up again, called me back to work, I felt ready to be among others. My workplace, the local Costco, paid great attention to cleanliness and mask-wearing, and I resumed work as a sample-server which felt good enough. But in the unusual circumstances of these times, I was offered a promotion to Shift Supervisor.

I accepted while feeling terrified. That new position called for learning a large organization’s highly-time-driven and complex computer-reporting system. As a long-time retiree, I’d not thought about anything similar for years. It was scary, having to tackle a left-brain challenge, but I had to discover if my brain still could handle it. In short time, it did.

Now, in these final days of 2020, I’m revived, with confidence in being able to process a variety of complex information. It’s been a year of testing–with reading, creating art, tackling knitting, sawing limbs, and demonstrating foods–to returning among others and enjoying them. And the surprise of being able to navigate a giant organization’s complexities.

Twenty-twenty: “T’was the worst of times and the best of times.”

Dear Readers: All, despite 2020’s political traumas which altered known-world orders. Diana

Saturday, December 19, 2020 (12 days remain in 2020)

On a recommendation by Jane Brody, Health Writer for the NYT, I’m reading a book published in early 2020, entitled, “Falling is not an Option”, by George Locker. It’s subtitled, “A way to lifelong balance.” Brody writes periodically about the losing of balance as people mature. She finds that Locker’s book explains and illustrates exercises appropriate to re-strengthen human balancing muscles. Locker’s exercises, designed for maturing adults and seniors, are to rebuild self-confidence in the ability to balance.

I’m interested, because of living on a small rocky acreage and being active with horses. Maintaining balance while navigating the property on foot, alone or leading a horse, is a concern. Our local hospital offers a popular balancing program, to which I’ve been referred, but always too busy, or something.

Locker isn’t a physical therapist, but a forty-year practitioner and teacher of T’ai Chi. In teaching, he offered seniors exercises not otherwise available to improve their balance. His teaching reflected the science and biomechanics of T’ai Chi balance and stability. His book is about “postural retraining”, by following assembled exercises, and illustrated postures and movements, based on his long study and experience.

The book is readable and understandable, the exercises simple, but powerful, and focused on holding times, instead of active repetitions. They’re designed to re-strengthen feet, ankles, and weight bearing muscles. Locker asserts that balance isn’t mental, cannot be willed, is neither a skill nor a sense. Instead, he says, balance is knowledge, pure muscle knowledge from doing the balancing. Essentially, it isn’t the mind, but the body that learns balance.

Locker’s recommended exercises that appear simple aren’t so. For example gaining the strength to stand, with slightly bent ankles and knees, while maintaining relaxed arms and a straight back, is a slow process. An exerciser’s goal would be standing this way and unmoving, say, for fifteen minutes.

I’m on board with what seems an appropriate way to practice daily, and in time available, focusing on self-balancing. I’ll begin this morning.

Dear Friends: Locker’s confidence is catching, his methods seem worth trying. Diana

Friday, December 18, 2020 (13 days remaining in 2020)

A Costco customer introduced himself to me as Scott. He purchased electrolyte and energy products and explained that he’s an extreme bicyclist who annually rides a couple of California courses. One is “the death ride”, a timed race through 129 miles of “California Alps”. Another he rides (I forget its name) covers more miles, is more difficult. Scott seemed happy, pumped, and about to start preparing for the 2021 competitions.

In our local Costco where I work, I’m on the lookout for interesting customers. It’s easy to spot those in fit-condition and they’re inspiring. I peer into their carts carrying “Scott-like” endurance essentials, and other items trending toward high protein, low sugar products. Increasingly, carts carry plant-based foods, a preference-trend Costco has noticed. Our store has begun stocking vegan cheese, vegetable-olive oil butter, and increasingly more products plant-based. I’ve tried many new ones and they taste good enough to swing an experimenter to a vegan perspective.

Having worked in our Costco since 2007, I’ve witnessed changing food-buying trends. Back when I started, most customers (long-time locals and often farmers and ranchers) were enthusiastic meat and potato eaters. This Costco’s food selections noticeably began expanding when first we demonstrated a new product, humus. Most customers claimed intensely to dislike humus, mispronounced the name, and after tasting just turned up their noses. I wasn’t happy having to try promoting humus. Eventually that changed, and one began seeing humus in shopping carts. As varieties expanded, many formerly humus-resistant customers willingly sampled and purchased.

That’s when first I understood the power of effective marketing in an unreceptive environment. That’s when first I recognized how Costco and similarly-aware suppliers influence shopper preferences toward differing product lines.

Athletically-aware Central Oregon is receptive to increased opportunities to purchase plant-based and vegan-oriented foods. As a sample-server, I notice fewer customers refusing to consider anything but meat and potatoes. But its hard to change old habits and some folks stand firmly by theirs. But today, even carts pushed by long time farmers and ranchers might contain alternatives to meat, because they taste like products they’re representing and promoted as healthier.

My new friend, Scott, after explaining why he buys electrolytes and energy products disappeared to continue shopping Now, I’m curious about the products that might have landed in his cart. He promised to return and update me on his progress in preparing for rides. I’ll take the opportunity to ask about his various routine purchases. Maybe I’ll learn, again from a customer, more about healthy-eating.

Dear Friends: As with other shoppers, information and experience alter my preferences. Diana

Thursday, December 17, 2020 (Fourteen days remaining in 2020)

I continue wanting to be done with 2020. The election is past, except for the Georgia runoffs. Some Republicans are slipping from the despot’s grasp and the nation seems slightly calmer.

I’m reading Isabel Wilkerson’s book, CASTE. She explains in a clear readable way how historical attitudes toward the differences among people have defined status, been unjust. She speaks to India’s caste system with the rich and the untouchables. She correlates the early philosophy of Nazi Germany to America’s divisions of people, categorized by power versus helplessness, money versus need, good versus bad, worthiness versus unworthiness.

She suggests that these histories reveal how Trump’s blustery and domineering nature has won passionate support from millions of followers, and also support from a majority of Republicans in high places. This nation has verged on being overtaken by power players focused on accumulating wealth and ignore needs of citizens less affluent. Trump’s government has supported a caste system, by denying entry to immigrant parents and removing their children, denying citizenship rights to many already long living and working in this country, and raising ever-higher the evangelistic flag of sheer Christianity.

Even after a national election ousted Trump, those in power and their followers tried to deny the outcome. They attempted to reverse election results to keep Trump in power, to maintain power themselves. If they’d again become America’s ruling majority, heaven help we who once were middle class, and worst for individuals with different skin colors, and those disabled.

This era of nearly-uncontrollable pandemic has been awful, but thankfully did rid us rid of Trump. He and his minions didn’t handle the dangers and ignored them, instead focusing on international strengths and the higher-echelon’s wealth.

This has been the world’s year of learning, and of threats. People have learned that long-lived organisms may disappear and recur; that the larger environment has supremely critical needs, that over-populated areas led by despots are hotbeds of angst, and that imminent threats exist to our long-held confidence in democratic processes.

Dear Friends: May 2021, with thoughtful, fair leaders revive farsightedness and hope. Diana

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December 16, 2020 (Countdown to the New Year, another 15 days.)

Back when I lived in LA, a pair of successful realtor-brokers, both blondes, called their company, “The Bizzy Blondes”. Their theme was: “If you want to get things done, hire a bizzy person.” Well, they were right.

My hours at Costco almost suck the air out of anything else I could or should do. My job is part-time, but weekly means five days of dressing and showing up. My wearable electronics indicate that working in the store daily has me averaging 13,000 steps. Arriving home isn’t a rest for the weary, for eager pets need cleaning-up after, feeding, and attention.

The thing is, I’m on the go like a buzzy blonde and can’t stop. I’m into cleaning and organizing activities usually ignored in my off times. After all, an un-bizzy can clean and organize anytime, chores become set-asides.

But not now for me, and there’s assistance.

While dusting a console and glancing beneath it, I re-discovered my iRoomba vacuum–parked there on its charger, forgotten a couple of years. I pushed its “clean” button and that little robot took off! It ran in a helter-skelter pattern for an hour or more, over carpet and tile, did a yeoman’s job.

That sent me online for a shopping spree. Now, en route are a second iRoomba-Vac and an iRoomba-Scrubber. Experience teaches to expect the vac will work well. I know little about robot floor scrubbers but feel confident. Years ago, a Costco customer explained that she had small kids and a couple of German Shepherds, and she daily ran a scrubbing robot and loved it. Although my work is sales-related, I’m often sold things by customers. Soon, I’ll see a working robot floor scrubber.

I’m not highly organized, don’t make lists and careful plans. My nature resembles an iRoomba’s roaming and handling what next pops into the path. In these days of increasing work-related activities, my brain’s organizing parts are re-activating. I’m becoming “more bizzier”.

Dear Friends: Spot-on, Blondes! Doing more work inspires more self-challenges. Diana

Tuesday, December 15, 2020 (16 days until)

These days the hour may be early, when home from work I’m at the barn to feed large animals, but it’s too dark to take photos. Last night, I had to use my new camera. Early that morning I’d discovered it forgotten from the night before, atop a feed storage can and encased in a glassy coat of early-falling ice. My heart sank for sheer neglect had ruined it. I carried it into the house, wrapped it in a towel to absorb thawing moisture. Full of self anger I hurried off to work.

On coming home, I found a dry camera, could turn it on and off. Now to hurry to the barn, feed, and try to use the camera. Of course, no natural light for picture-taking, but I wore a headlight and with it illuminated areas. To my relief that light, and the camera working properly, created visuals, and they’re interesting.

This slightly-claustrophobic capture, among my favs, is a staircase toward the lower level.

And finally, welcoming holiday lights! Arching over my across-the-road neighbor’s entry gate.

The camera still works; and lesson learned!

Dear Friends: Modern technology astounds, amazing new electronics often cost less. Diana

Monday, December 14, 2020 (Seventeen days more in 2020)

Isabel Wilkerson is a very bright, educated, excellent writer. Her readable first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, won a Pulitzer Prize. It describes in the early twenties, a migration of Black Americans from the “Jim Crow South. I’d heard that label but little understood it. Maybe I preferred to avoid understanding more, but Wilkerson gave me an education. It was appalling to comprehend the inhumanity in a Jim Crow society. That perspective’s not a bygone, and many forms remains evident.

Wilkerson’s latest work, Caste, is a brilliant explanation of the origins and rationale behind common categorizations in populated areas of human worth, based on skin colors, religious beliefs, and monetary accumulations. She compares frequent rises and falls of contagions (AIDs, Covid-19); and political situations (ascensions of Nazism and Trump); and social categories (India’s stringent ranking of “untouchables” as lowliest); and early America’s Native People (stolen from and pushed-aside).

Caste is a compelling read, not based just on history, but also on Wilkerson’s personal experiences with undeserved confrontations. Like all women socially, she’s considered a “set aside”, but regardless of smartness, education, and social standing, she’s also a “Black Woman”.

This book has forced me to rethink my Oklahoma upbringing, the attitudes taught to me that for years hindered my ability to appreciate an individual’s worth. It’s making me now in maturity to rethink my current attitudes, and wonder how often, how much, and if somehow I still try to categorize others.

Recently, I spoke of wishing for all people to understand that among forest trees’ roots and fungi, a thriving relationship exists underground, with trees and fungi actively communicating and exchanging beneficial nutrients. Wilkerson’s readable and understandable Caste focuses our attention to “above ground”, to human social impulses, how they’ve been employed to accumulate, categorize, communicate, and manipulate.

Both her books are must reads.

Dear Friends: Underground is about health; above ground is about money and power. Diana

Sunday, December 13, 2020 Eighteen more days, is all.

Taken from beside my barn on a icy frozen-out afternoon, that’s the South Sister, about twenty miles away as the crow flies. I’m practicing with my new camera, a fine one that makes me both happy and a little disappointed. My older version of this zoom Canon had an eye-view, which the new one lacks. The pressure of my forehead helped to stabilize that old camera as I tried to shoot birds.

Yesterday for sure, the new camera easily sighted a perched bird atop a 60-foot tree. My hands couldn’t stay steady enough while trying to grab a good shot. Here obviously, the bird’s a Robin, resting nicely and unmoving, but see! My unsteady hands disturbed the opportunity.

Practice helped.

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Close-up captures were a piece of cake, and the camera stopped action of some birds flying toward the water.

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I’ll learn more and be happier with this camera. Meanwhile yesterday, the most interesting visuals beside nearby visiting bluebirds were distant icy-blue mountains. I liked the composition of today’s header photo, with the nearby trees suggesting distance from the South Sister. Again, here’s that Sister in full zoom.

And another in the Range, compelling Broken Top, my favorite among the Cascades, and also, a beautiful area for horseback riding.

Dear Friends: Snow that began falling early might make today a visual delight. Diana

Saturday, December 12, 2020 (Nineteen days left in 2020)

I spent this morning’s wee hours studying how to use my new Canon SX540HS (point & shoot with a 50X zoom) that arrived last evening. This compact camera is lighter-weight, with many more features and greater power than an early predecessor that for years served me well. My wanting this powerful zoom is to shoot birds, perched high or in flight, to capture animals as they run and play, and to record impressive landscapes.

Having an earlier model, I knew how to turn this camera on and to point to shoot. Unfortunately, this early morning’s murky darkness made it impossible to find even a slightly-visible photo op. My searching for light took me to a one and only shot. Taken through a glass door, the string of lights bordering my small deck isn’t a prize photo, but I like it. Even without appropriate lighting and shot in autofocus mode, the capture is moody and suggestive.

Right now, that’s all I understand of this camera’s features. Unfortunately, my brain couldn’t process correctly the steps needed to connect the camera via wi-fi to other devices. Later, I’ll re-tackle the wi-fi challenge and hope to do better. Another possibility is to borrow a bit of another’s brain for assistance.

Dear Friends: Photography technology is exciting, so many creative possibilities. Diana