Field Notes from a Life

We celebrated Thanksgiving a bit differently this year. J’s work schedule on Thursday made it difficult to prepare a traditional meal in one day. I also wanted to enjoy cooking without rushing, so we spread the meal over two days. On Thanksgiving Day, we had what I called “the appetizer course” — small, comforting dishes that didn’t require hours in the kitchen. The rest of the feast was saved for Friday, when I was more relaxed and could cook at my own pace. When dinner was ready, I set the table with dishes my ancestors used. I placed the roasted chicken, bright orange squash, and gravy in bowls and platters that once belonged to my maternal grandmother, Geri Schmieman. Our dinner plates came from my maternal great-grandmother, Margaret Wayer. They were shipped to me last year by a cousin, who carefully wrapped them for shipping. They had sat in her attic for decades. We used them for the first time tonight. As far as anyone knows, they haven’t been used in over fifty years. That’s a...

Yesterday evening, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and make the necessary change. With the solemn resolve of a parent trying to get their kid to eat spinach, I carried the wooden branch into my studio. It was long past time to swap out the metal perch my white-winged dove, Oliver, was accustomed to. For too long, he had sat upon it for hours, a gleaming runway that did absolutely nothing but encourage his nails to grow into impressive scimitars. A single nail-trimming by the vet a couple of months ago had been traumatic for both of us. We needed a better, more natural solution. So I selected a wooden branch from the garden — sturdy, honest, pleasingly irregular. During Oliver’s Free Flight time in my studio, I installed it with care. Oliver was horrified and refused to fly back into his cage when playtime was over. I had to chase him while he did loop-de-loops around my head. Once he finally landed on my office chair, I caught him and put him in his cage. Not an optimal way to...

Inspired by Theresa MacPhail ’s article “ You Should Act Your Age – at Least When It Comes to Exercise” ( The Guardian , Nov 3, 2025) Read the original article → Yesterday, I read an article about exercise and aging  by Theresa MacPhail in The Guardian . Her main point was that we need to adjust our exercise routines and be more realistic about our exercise goals and our body's abilities in general as we grow older. Specifically, she points out that older people should increase resistance training to about 60% of their workouts, reduce cardio to 40%, and overall be gentler on their bodies. MacPhail calls out the fallacy of “ 50 is the new 30 ,” which I’d already come to see as a myth, yet still had been carrying in the back of my mind. I often compared current self to the image of my thirty-year-old self and blamed any slowdown on laziness. The article encouraged me to shift that thinking. I'm working on it. MacPhail shared several anecdotes about older adults who'd...