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PROGRAMMING NOTE from the Author and Archivist


So obviously I just stopped blogging on this platform. I'll get back to it eventually. Or not. I'm taking a break from all social media. It seemed necessary for my mental health.

The last few years have been busy and … challenging:

- 2015 Happened.
- 2016 Let's call it The Lost Year. (Obviously words failed me.)
- 2017 about broke me. Literally. Mentally.
- 2018 was ridiculous, proving 2017 was just a warm up. (Good thing I was already broken so it couldn't hurt as much.#2018TrashCanFire I thought things were going okay, but maybe not?)

- 2019 was such a blur. I know there were highlights, but then stuff happened and carried into the next year...

- And then in March#2020 really took a turn. Who can even categorize 2020? Do we dare?


I kinda want a do-over of some of the last few years. But life doesn’t work that way.


So for now, I'm hunkering down. Regrouping. Trying to stay safe and sort some stuff out.


Stay safe everyone. Stay well.

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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Poem of the Day: Beim Schlafengehen

Beim Schlafengehen
(Going to Sleep)

Now that the day has made me tired,
my longings shall be accepted kindly
by the friendly, starry night
like a weary child.

Hands, stop your activity,
head, forget all of your thoughts;
all my senses now
will sink into slumber.

And my soul, unobserved,
will float about on untrammeled wings
in the enchanted circle of the night,
deep and thousand fold to live.


From Richard Strauss' song series Vier letzte Lieder, text by Hermann Hesse
Translated by Heather Engebretson, soprano


Context for the worried parental unit: I attended a Liederabend, a vocal arts recital by one of my work-study students, a young and upcoming soprano. This is the English translation of a Strauss song featured on the recital (not the soprano mentioned above). It caught my attention because sometimes I have a problem going to sleep - turning my brain off from its busy-ness, and shutting down my other senses. My hands sometimes twitch like I'm still typing, and I need to enter a meditation trance to calm them and my mental activity. The words seemed to echo this state and I wanted to remember how relevant it was to me not long after I heard the song.

(Good grief Mom. It's not a call out for the shrink)

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