Once Lean and Fit of Mind and Body

I can’t promise this will work, but you might be able to see all the “slides” in this package about climate chaos that I presented at the Floyd Library in 2019.

Click this link; let me know if it doesn’t work. This will be important for future reference. NOTE: each image can be viewed at larger scale by clicking it from within the Milanote page.

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The past year of the microbe has taken its toll on our bodies, physically (I speak in the collective voice because it takes some of the focus off me in particular.) We get out less; we angst more; we eat for comfort; we vicariously binge watch other people’s lives from a time back when.

It has been the physical cost of the pandemic I’ve been thinking about these past few sluggardly days, home-bound by blizzard and winter lethargy. The winter pounds have reached a new high, always this last decade creeping up annually a pound or so, but not five! I’m too cheap to buy bigger pants!

But the new (ab)normal:: No dog; no firewood duties; no mountain trails to walk with friends. I’ll get back to (or near) my training weight come gardening season, but it bothers me to consider how things have gone to pot (belly) in the physical plant.

This decline, I realize now, is evident when I acknowledge it, also in my creative-civic-social fitness. This morning I ran across a set of “slides” I used for a talk about Floyd County’s possible response in the face of inevitable climate chaos. This was one a half dozen similar projects from the past couple of years that kept my mind active and challenged me to strive to deliver an informed and well-crafted face-to-face conversation in my community, subject to the view and judgement of my friends and neighbors.

I had accountability back then, and worked for the personal reward of a job well done, and for the conversations in the room and new acquaintances these talks would generate afterwards—usually including a neighborhood pot-luck meal.

And so I’m realizing a new loss just now, having stumbled across these talks; and going on to remember 20 years of blog posts; and finding audio recordings of radio essays; and seven years of newspaper columns; and 35k images that each tell a story of a vital and engaged life.

And so left alone to follow the path dictated by neglect and indifference, I’m considering a possible future in which I am destined to be old, fat and dull.

But wait! Save for the getting older part, I can intervene. I can shed the pounds and regain much of the stamina and drive in an age-appropriate way. And I can at least imagine a time when I rekindle the imagination, curiosity, enthusiasm and hope to jump back into the conversation—maybe even without a mask. And maybe, even, with a pot-luck!