Lee Ann, Author at simply retired

Both of us• Great-grandchild• Health and fitness• mycorona• Travel

Giving the Lakes the Finger

October 16, 2021

Throughout the pandemic, we have observed a range of behaviors from people our age. I know a grandma just recently recovered from breast cancer who flies out west to visit loved ones and travels regularly with her significant other. Another couple who regularly entertain the unvaccinated grandkids and have taken multiple Road Scholar trips. An urban couple who have remained in virtual lockdown the entire time — no…

Learning• Lee Ann• mycorona• spirituality

Music, Methodists and Mojo

September 10, 2021

Music – so-called Christian “praise” music at that – is turning out to be a spiritual lifeline of sorts these days. I did not see that one coming. About a year ago, I announced a break from Christianity, the institution. Over that period, we attended our church a handful of times under COVID conditions – outdoors, with masks, and no singing until that brief respite in July. It…

Learning• Lee Ann• mycorona

Of Pilgrims and Indian fighters

January 19, 2021

My family is fragmented, and the most immediate members of it are and were broken in many ways. My father, and his father, were scoundrels at best . . . I won’t go into what they were at worst. At any rate, dysfunction caused me to not care, rather belligerently, about my family roots. When I saw people gleefully discovering their history on Ancestry.com, I scoffed. Who cares?…

Both of us• mycorona• spirituality• Sue

So This is Christmas.

December 25, 2020

Last night we attended a Christmas Eve service with 9,200 people we didn’t know. But they weren’t really strangers. It was the Washington National Cathedral’s Christmas Eve Eucharist, and it unfolded with pipe organ preludes, youthful choristers, and a procession complete with bishop, Cathedral dean, and vergers. There was the goosebump-inducing descant of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” There were enough people present in the Cathedral – although…

Learning• Lee Ann• spirituality

As the Creed crumbles . . .

September 17, 2020

I am taking a sabbatical from Christianity. And I think Jesus will understand. There are many reasons, and I am not proselytizing you to join me. The bottom line is I believe the net effect of Christianity over the course of history, including American history, is negative. Even evil. Not just the Crusades and the Inquisition. More recent history: Manifest Destiny and genocide. Slavery and Jim Crow. Hatred…

Health and fitness• Learning• Lee Ann

Paddling to an epiphany

August 30, 2020

The yellow house on shore stayed in the same spot, and I had been watching it for what seemed like an eternity as I struggled to reach Tower Beach on Rehoboth Bay. The swells on open water were rougher than I had ever faced. The dark clouds were threatening and the wind blew right at us. The shore never seemed to be getting any closer. At that point,…

Learning• Lee Ann• mycorona

A pandemic guide to reading

June 15, 2020

At the beginning of 2020, pre-pandemic, I set a reading goal in Goodreads of 20 books. That may not sound like a lot, but if you read with moving lips like I do – constantly referring to maps and Googling people and events – it is a respectable aspiration. At the beginning of June, according to Goodreads, I was “three books ahead of schedule.” I decided June would…

Both of us• Learning• Lee Ann• mycorona

Fine-feathered Zen

May 13, 2020

Certain determined creatures don’t know there is a pandemic out there. They flit around in the understory or perch on tree limbs, foraging and pecking and standing out in their fine yellow, blue and red plumage. They trill and squawk and sing cheerily. When they are feeling magnanimous, they will sit patiently while I set up my tripod and focus my long lens on them. I have always…

Both of us• mycorona

Hoping for a new normal

April 13, 2020

The altar was adorned with lilies and the white and gold frontal signifying a High Holy Day. There was a guest trumpeter playing a fanfare. There was our deacon, Pat, singing Mozart’s “Alleluia” and hitting that shattering stratospheric high note at the end. There was the He-is-Risen return to singing the Gloria. And there were our fellow parishioners, sending up hearts and likes and tears and “Amens” and…

Both of us• mycorona

Guerilla shopping and grief

April 4, 2020

Today, Sue sewed masks for us out of one of my cotton 5K T-shirts. It’s another adaptation to the coronavirus lockdown that we could never have envisioned even a month ago. We plan our outings, calling ahead to the artisanal bakery 20 miles away where we now buy bread and pastries since our own local bakery closed. We drive up, announce our name, take the box and drive…

Both of us• mycorona

The longest month.

March 28, 2020

March 2020 began like any other month in our mostly laid-back lives. I had handbell rehearsal on March 1. Sue went to the chiropractor on March 2. I was designing a church website. We got our taxes done on March 4. We both got haircuts. We first heard the term “social distancing.” The corona virus news was starting to seep into our consciousness, provoking concern, but it still…

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