There are whole worlds of new sensory-based experiences available to anyone – beauty or meaning that is there, but unheard or unseen. All anyone has to do is use their senses with attention and concentration and the wonderful variations within the ways humans create art and beauty and find ways to create delight will show themselves.
A job where you get to call nonprofits and tell them you are giving them several million dollars sounds gratifying. But the people at Yield Giving have to deal with the fact that at first no one believes them. The nonprofit getting the call often believes it’s a scam.
It’s Paddlefest, one of the most Cincinnati of traditions, with a joyous summer vibe. While you’re enjoying it, you can take a minute to imagine that near you on the river, there’s a teenager paddling, too, with a smile on their face, because Paddlefest is a fundraiser for Adventure Crew, whose aim is outdoors for all.
I love a good historical house tour, and I’ve taken walks through famous people’s houses more times than I can remember. Often they are furnished carefully in the style of a time period, with a sort of reverence for the objects the famous person touched.
I do my best thinking when I’m walking. There are two special walks in Cincinnati that really inspire thoughts. I mean big thoughts. Like the mystery of time. That we’re all going to die. That human beings are specks in the greater scheme of things.
It was pure emotion that led my husband and me to donate money to the Immigrant and Refugee Law Center early last year. It was a sort of general outrage over policies that seem unnecessarily cruel, like family separation, a desire to line up on the side of the long-standing American tradition of welcoming new residents.
I’ve had a cartoon from The New Yorker pinned to my bulletin board for a long time. Two men, with hard hats and clipboards, are looking at a big hole in the ground with a skyscraper foundation. One is saying to the other, “I don’t know – seems like a lot of work.”
I’m sure 70 sounds ancient; it did to me not that long ago. Turns out, it’s not. So I work pretty hard to make people communicate with the real me, not a preconception … I can take advantage of the freedom that comes from having lost all my conversational filters.
December is the giving month. We search for things we hope our loved ones will need and like and wrap them up in shiny paper. Many people also make charitable gifts this time of year, to help make changes in lives beyond their own.
Condolences on a death are hard, both to offer and to receive. After my sister died two years ago, I heard a lot of awkward silences and attempts to hurry the conversation along. When my mother died last year, I at least had a useful way of making the whole thing easier.
