My brother posted something the other day that was wise. It was a challenge to spend less time thinking about big stressful things you can't control, and more time focused on everyday ways you can love. There was a picture of a person holding an umbrella over someone else so they wouldn't get wet.

I had been thinking about the writer Annie Dillard, who died recently, and another thing I saw posted on social media by Benji Hardy, my friend and former piano student who is among the top journalists currently writing in Arkansas. It was a page from an Annie Dillard book, and it said, in part, "What shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing."

She no doubt borrowed this idea from Benjamin Franklin, who famously wrote, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of" in his publication Poor Richard's Almanack in 1746.

I was challenged by these admonitions because I frequently find myself getting into tizzies about this and that. One of the main ways I deal with these tizzies is to write about them. This results in columns about politics on a national scale which I certainly can't affect and state stuff like bogus education policy, pro-suffering and death abortion laws, plans for a prison in my backyard, punitive wait lists for disabled children, welfare for the wealthy, librarian oppression, and other idiocies I hope at least to do my part to eradicate. But I'd best digress........

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