100,000!! (but who's counting)

Happily tunneling through

Today, "Unretiring" passed the 100,000 hits mark. Wish I could say it was for one day, but it's more like several years, though frankly, I got my flu shot so I don't expect a virus to attack.
I have immersed myself lately in a subject I never planned to know anything about. But my path to discovery has been exciting and invigorating. Within a few days, I'll be turning in my book, having tunneled through records of the last century and a half. If anyone had  told me that I'd become perhaps the foremost expert on the history of Boathouse Row in Philadelphia when I left newspapering, I would have cracked up laughing. But a couple years later, ask me anything!! Which goes to show that there's life after newspapers for those many who have sadly lost their jobs and those likely to follow.

I'll be picking my blog up again soon. But thanks to search engines, people keep finding old posts which accounts for the  record today.

Thanks, everyone!  May you have a happy new year with a little risk taking to explore outside your comfort zone. Never know what excitement you may find.

What I learned from a Young Buddhist Nun in Vietnam

A young Buddhist nun in Hanoi shares her ideas

What wisdom can a 20-year-old Buddhist nun impart to a group of people more than three times her age? This young Vietnamese woman, who at the age of 15 joined a nunnery  in the Imperial city of Hue, had us almost in tears by the end of an hour-long conversation.  First we asked her all kinds of questions:
Why did she decide to become a Buddhist nun? (She was inspired by the way an older brother who had become a monk had changed.)
What is her day like? (She gets up at 3:30 AM, brushes her teeth, chants for 45 minutes, does some cleaning,  has breakfast at 6, goes  to school, returns, more cleaning, more chanting and bed by 9:30 PM.)
 What does she find most rewarding and most difficult? (Finding inner peace is the most rewarding--and also the most difficult.)
And then she asked us a question: What was the greatest difficulty we had experienced  in our lives? Some answered "raising children." Others said "balancing work and family." But most said "losing a loved one."
To which she responded that "Yes, that is the most difficult. You are sad but we meet people and then they leave, just as we are meeting today. And we must let them go though they stay in our hearts. That is Buddhism. We believe the one who has left us also feels our pain and we must find peace so that they may find peace. (And maybe be reincarnated.)
Except for the reincarnated part, her words touched home.

In Absentia (Wondering What I'm up to?)

Almost every day,  recently, I've wished I had the time to get back to my blog.
But others have been speaking up on issues about which I am passionate:
--The front page editorial in the New York Times that lambasted our national policies and politicians for their support of guns, as we so easily arm our own terrorists at home.
--Stories about Pennsylvania's Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin who can sit smugly in his black robes with his hammer of justice while emailing buddies and male co-workers material some describe as pornographic, misogynistic, and racist.
Even the governor of Pennsylvania has called for his resignation. I second that.
On a more upbeat note, I was interested in an article about how companies are getting smarter about keeping older workers, even using technology to help them get the job done easier.
Here's one on companies doing i right.
And another on new technologies.
I really liked this one about an exoskeleton you can wear with sensors that helps older folks continue to do jobs that require heavy lifting.

My excuse? I'm finishing a book ... my unretirement project.
Happy holidays. Don't let the grinches get to you.