I gave my first Zoom presentation yesterday, as a guest “author” for a local women’s group. I love speaking to groups. I had a great nine-slide power point presentation ready to go for a 20-minute talk. As I rambled through slide three, the host said, “You have five minutes to go.” Panic. I flew through the meat of the talk and rushed into my “final takeaway” slide. Oops. I guess I lost more time than I realized trying to figure out the technology - how to see people’s faces, my slides, and my notes all at once. Apparently, it can’t be done effectively. There’s more to Zoom presenting than I realized. Oh well. It wasn’t a disaster. I learned some things – practice, print your notes, watch the clock, don’t try to see your audience, and be grateful for awesome friends who show up for moral support and say, “You did fine!” My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 288: 151 words, TOTAL = 48,067; 11,933 remaining
0 Comments
This is what the world looks like from my window at 3:30am on June 8th in central Maine. I left the clock image blurry, since that represents pretty well how my perception was working at the time... The first bird sang out its clarion call with conviction at 3:33 this morning. I know, because I’d already been lying awake for quite some time. Ten minutes later the next brave soloist tested his voice. The only other sounds were the skitterings and scratchings of the unknown creature who lives in our ceiling, and the shiftings and scratchings of the known creature lying next to me. Thoughts swirled: the Zoom-talk I have to give today, the logistics of renting on Sutton Island, my mother-in-law’s grocery list… I gave up on sleeping and turned on a light to read. Jonathan pulled our shared makeshift mask – a wadded t-shirt – over his eyes, but finally gave up and pulled out a book. By 4:45, five minutes to dawn, birdsong had swelled to orchestral proportions. I turned out the light to little darkness. Drifting away, I startled at a bird’s thump against the window. At last, I slept. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 287: 156 words, TOTAL = 47,916; 12,084 remaining Here’s the perfect book to read (or re-read) during Maine’s bicentennial celebration of statehood. Hamlin, born in 1917 in Fort Kent, Maine, was a rugged adventurer who chose to take her teaching degree into the depths of Maine’s north woods back in 1937. After a year, she married a game warden and spent two more years (including snowbound winters) in isolation that makes our current quarantine look like a party. Highlights include the surreal beauty of snowscapes, care and dependence on sled-dogs, insider views into the early logging industry, spring ice-out, frontier medicine and innovations for survival, and much more. Hamlin’s writing style is spare, direct, and highly readable. Her love of the outdoor life and meeting physical challenges emanates from the pages. An excellent immersion into another place and time, worthy of note. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 286: 134 words, TOTAL = 47,760; 12,240 remaining Unfortunately, we had a storm the first night out here. Fortunately, the torrential rain showed us where our roof is leaking. Unfortunately, it was leaking right over an ancient sleigh bed where Rachel Field used to sleep. Fortunately, all the quilts and sheets were so thick, the mattress stayed dry. Unfortunately, the bedding was drenched, so we had to hang it outside. Fortunately, sheets blowing in the wind provide a glorious meditation on wind and weather, rest and resistance, time and tide, watching and waiting. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 285: 87 words, TOTAL = 47,628; 12,372 remaining I am proud and gratified to see the daily protests around the country. I am worried about the coronavirus resurging from the gathered crowds’ exposure. I fear more violence and destruction and escalation of military presence. I get overwhelmed, and feel the need to turn it all off for a while. What a treasure, this island. Time out. Time to blend into the tidal flow. Time to breathe, to sit, to look, to listen, to be. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 284: 76 words, TOTAL = 47,541; 12,459 remaining Imagined crises populate my mental meanderings these days, but I’m also inclined to wield my imagination to find hopefulness. Out on my bike, social-distantly escaping into the wider world, I came upon this ever-sobering scene the other day. Every town has one, a roadside memorial to a lost young soul. I never pass this place without thinking of Susan. Here on this site, a life slipped away from its vital young frame on the side of a roadway. A tragic accident, never to be undone. My children grieved, the community was in shock. And yet, it seems that every spring it happens – someone drives distracted, overstimulated, intoxicated, or just overjoyed as spring opens its promising arms to celebratory teenagers, emerging from winter hibernation. Are there teens whose lives have been spared because of quarantine? We’ll never know, but I like to imagine so. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 283: 143 words, TOTAL = 47,465; 12,535 remaining I swam for the first time in months today. I met all the new requirements: arrive in bathing suit, answer screening questions, depart via back door. The pool was blue and clear and absolutely empty. Over recent weeks, I’ve missed the distant clamor of cheering crowds at the high school. I can usually hear football, soccer, softball, spring track meets. When I go walking around the high school (sticking to roadways, safely oriented), I am struck by the emptiness of parking lots, fields, track and bleachers. On a spring Saturday, there should be busloads of runners, the pop of starting guns, pounding feet, amplified announcements, picnicking families and friends erupting in local hurrahs or cries of disappointment, a noisy, daylong, outdoor affair. But there’s only a vast empty space, maybe a solo runner or walker. A woefully silent world. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 282: 139 words, TOTAL = 47,322; 12,678 remaining https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000007171122/protests-constitutional-rights.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR3kjGQi_-TPLsUSB7khV9aa6x5P3Ra9HuB2ZJ_GfyR0eFO9DF6HgMMHAn4 This video put out by the New York Times (opinion section) broke me. Sure, they have used production strategies, a powerful soundtrack, artful splicing, but none of that can change the fact that these are real people, real videos of our country, now, today. By the time it was over I was sobbing. Fear? Horror? Grief? Fury? Yes, yes, yes, all of these things. Also a sense of helplessness and ignorance. This is not okay. We cannot let this be okay. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 281: 82 words, TOTAL = 47,183; 12,817 remaining Tick, tick, tick… That’s not a clock; it’s me counting the crawly monsters (6!) on me after my unplanned walk today. I thought I was following this nice new path at our local middle school, but somehow I ended up wading through acres of thick, hummocky, fields. Tick heaven. When I finally emerged onto pavement, I had no idea which road I was on or which direction to go. This is my neighborhood. I like to think of myself as an intelligent being. But panicky mayhem scrambles my receptors. Disorientation is powerfully unsettling. I’m spatially adrift, stuck in a nightmare vortex. I turned the wrong way, checked myself on Google, and corrected. Once I’d resolved my location, my brain’s chaotic malfunctioning ceased. Everything clicked into place. I was back. I’ve read about far worse cases of sense-of-direction-challenged folks, but even mild disorientation is a little like a visit to the Twilight Zone. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 280: 152 words, TOTAL = 47,101; 12,899 remaining Scent is a hallucinogen, a magic, transporting drug. Lilac blossoms in a jar remind me of my mother. One night when Mom was dying, Jim and I stealthily clipped blooms off a neighbor’s tree, to offer Mom a precious scent memory. On my daily dog walks, I’ve watched a bed of lily-of-the-valley progress from needle shoots to bladed leaves. Days later, from within the green curls, filaments emerge, decked with tiny buds. The buds swell into a carillon of white bells. I smell them before I see them. I kneel down, place my hands carefully on the soft ground between plants, plunge my nose into the air surrounding the bell-like blooms, and inhale. I am home, under the rhododendron bushes in my childhood back yard. Mom is inside, the dachshunds are sniffing around, maybe my siblings sent me in here to fetch a kickball, knocked out of bounds. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 279: 148 words, TOTAL = 46,949; 13,051 remaining |
AuthorRobin Clifford Wood is an award-winning author, poet, and writing teacher. She lives in central Maine with her husband, loves to be outdoors, and enjoys ever-expanding horizons through her children, grandchildren, and granddogs. Archives
January 2024
Categories |
Proudly powered by Weebly