September 6, 2026- I spent much of the day at a Red Cross Donation Center in Irving, about 40 minutes west of Plano. When I got back, Hana was waiting and wanted me to play with her for a while. So, we focused on a new set of colour-coded cloth baskets, which each hold three cloth vegetables and fruits. The green basket holds a watermelon, an avocado and a pear. The yellow basket holds an ear of corn, a banana and a pineapple. The red basket holds an apple, a tomato and a strawberry. The orange basket holds a pumpkin, a carrot and-an orange. The items are lined up on a Velcro strip, on one of the walls of the playpen. Hana has started to associate the vegetable or fruit with its coloured basket. She is especially fond of the red items.

She went with her Mom and Dad to a Japanese market, while I was at the Red Cross center. She seemed to like the place better than she did the first time we all went there, for Mother’s Day. Of course, then she was four months old. Being “twice as old” changes one’s perspective. Having had a full day, at any rate, she went to sleep before 7 p.m.

HANA’S NOTE- I like the colour game. I can even put some of the pieces in the right baskets.

YEAR IN REMEMBRANCE-2020 The meteor streaked past my home, as i arrived back from a drumming session in Sedona, around midnight. Meteors and comets often portend something momentous. Little did any of us who saw the fireball know just how impactful the event would be. Coronavirus disease 2019 was not World War III. In a way, it was far worse. COVID 19 could have easily wiped out a huge percentage of the world’s population. As it was, the number of victims, in all but six of the world’s countries and territories, was, by the pandemic’s ebb, a horrendous toll. There were a lot of deaths, and a significant number of people suffered from lingering effects of the disease. Vaccinations became available, and once school resumed, in the Fall of the year, we substitutes had to be vaccinated with two doses, two months apart. Many people distrusted the vaccines, and tried their own remedies. For the healthiest of those folks, the DIY stuff had a placebo effect. For others, like Herman Cain, a conservative podcaster, it was lethal.

I, like most people, was largely confined to home during the worst months of the pandemic. We had meetings on Zoom, an online network, which actually allowed people to communicate across the nation and the globe, visually as well as audibly.

I took hikes, around Prescott and in Sedona. I visited restaurants whose owners either were not cowed by the pandemic or who had people who were unrelated sit apart. In grocery stores-and most other places, like the post Office, masks were required and distances of 12 ft. were required. Semantics became a battleground- “physical distance” vs. “social distance” being one of the bones of contention.

Hurricanes did not take notice of the pandemic. In August, I spent two weeks with the victims of Hurricane Laura, as part of a team responding in Alexandria and Baton Rouge, Louisiana during the brunt of the storm. I was daytime floor supervisor, tending to the needs of some 86 displaced souls.

A month later, I went to Dallas, and helped many of the same people, who were now living in a hotel provided by the Red Cross. I was “bumped up” to assistant shelter supervisor, by an appreciative manager. Each family had their own room, and meals were taken in a large dining area with long tables. FEMA was present, and I was able to establish a good working relationship with that team. The two weeks passed with few serious issues. A laundry snafu, which resulted in a person’s clothes being mislabeled by the laundry service, and thus delivered to the wrong room, required some detective work on my part. Fortunately, after I had arranged for some shopping funds for the aggrieved party, her clothes were brought to us by the person who had been given them by mistake. All was thus made right. The ladies even gave each other “air hugs”.

The year ended, while the pandemic lingered. I was okay, even celebrating my 70th birthday at the family apartment in Plano-their first Texas home. We all survived.