HilaryNicholsWrites

I am inspired by Haley Nahman's blog Maybe Baby  to write my Covid diary. But do I?  The impetus to fine tune my focus only calls forward the 100 other things I am doing in this very moment. While I type this I notice I'm holding eye cream in one hand. I was about to do my face for a video addition to a live birthday greeting. Which reminds me, I meant to gather up some images to add to that offering. But wait, I can't get to that app right now cause it is uploading the last photo show, which I find needs some hand holding. The duplicates and discarded files need to be sorted out to finalize the one professional task on my docket. That should be done. But I don't want the real work to go away. It is the most grounding task of my day. Maybe I could create a delay.  Or rather, I'm sure I can come up with some other real work or at least sort of worthy play in any case. Like my writing maybe. Once I have carved out some time. But not before the ...

The day Bernie dropped out broke my heart. Again. Again and again. As a pathological optimist I put my bleeding heart out there over and over. Convinced by the ground swell, the numbers, the powerfully positive record on social justice and the momentum of the movement swept me into really believing the vision. Bernie in the white house, and the crime boss behind bars. (In Matching orange jump suits let him and all his friends pick their own privatized prison.)  Until the impeachment proceedings got played and we didn't win Michigan this time.   But still I held out hope. Other primaries to sweep. Until that too felt sadly stolen and smashed by the seemingly corrupt upper hand. How quick did that supreme court overrule the governor to dictate an in person election during a shelter in place pandemic?  But the days that followed have allowed a little uplift. It is true that this message is bigger than one man and the movement can still gain ground. Stacey Abrams as th...

Oh, the lengths we will go to when relaxation is required. Three and a half hours from San Francisco, up I 80 toward Tahoe take a left at Truckee and drive for another 30 miles on a curvy mountain road until you finally pull into Sierraville Hot Springs Retreat Center with a sigh. This is a sister facility to the better-known Harbin Hot Springs near Calistoga. The two centers have similar offerings of a variety of healing waters, health services and assorted accommodations. But comparing the two doesn’t do either justice. Not a scene, no schmooze. There is nothing like the intimate woodsy warmth of Sierraville Hot Springs. You arrive at the main lodge with a sense of traveling back in time. The rustic building with two story columns greets you with its wide stairs to the grand deck entry, and once inside the lodge living room welcomes with couches and cozy corners to cuddle into. A full-service kitchen, TV room, yoga space and vegan restaurant share the space. You can book a...

OPEN HEART - OPEN HOME I heard about the Kia and her kids first from my new roommate Cristina, who had met Kia in Sedona Arizona through their mutual yoga teacher. Two of Kia’s 5 children live in Sedona. Cristina had visited the orphanage on her way back from a family reunion in Bolivia. I heard about Kia again when I ran into an old friend Rob Weber at the Mama Amachi ashram in the bay area. Rob and I had been co-creaters on early Mystic Family Circus efforts. He impressed my with his sweet spirit blended with true activation. He was a get-things-done kind of guy and took on lots of responsibility effortlessly. As he mentioned Peru and this orphanage, I was shocked. My new roommate had just talked about a woman in Peru with the same telling. “Is your new room mate Cristina?” So the world got smaller. They had met at Kia’s, before her path crossed mine. Rob had made a film of her project and was planning a fundraiser, was I interested in helping? When he mentioned that the expansion wa...

MAMA KIA's LONG STORY TOWARD LOVE Kia Ingenlath was born in 1949 to missionary parents. Her mother and father became engaged on the island Trinity, and continued to convert the indingenous carribeans while raising their children in the British West Indies. Little Kia was the preacher’s daughter with another side to the story. Devout by day, drunken by night, her father was a man who hid behind the cross and excused his abusive behaiviour in confession. They moved home to Florida when Kia was 10. Her brother died when she was 12 years old. Her father died soon after, of what was taken to be a broken heart, though actually a brain aneurism. We are all stricken differently. Her mother died that same year as breast cancer matastisized to her brain. So Kia was left orphaned and alone before she was a teen. She hid out with a friends family to avoid foster care. And at the age of 14 she crossed county lines into Georgia, to marry her 30 year old Sem...

Meshell Ndegeocello - Soul of a Singer for PLANET MAGAZINE Meshell Ndegeocello gave herself that name when she was a teenager, about the same time she taught herself how to play the bass guitar. Now she calls herself Bashir or ‘B’. But she's not attached to that name either. Taking a cue from the aboriginal children in the book, “Message Down Under”, “They are encouraged to give themselves what ever name they feel at the time," Meshell Ndegeocello will not be pinned down. When we were first learning of her, with the 1994 release of “Plantation Lullabies,” she was the black, gay activist with an attitude. Now she states that “Gay is dead.” And that “Race is performative.” With her latest release, "Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape," we see it is not only her name that changes. On it we are invited to know the many sides of Meshell. She is the angry, empowered revolutionary, the brash hip-hop boaster, and the sensual soul singer...