Miscellaneous

Happy New Year! And 8th Day of Christmas! I’m really enjoying this stretching Christmas out thing. I know; my Catholic friends and relatives already know that it’s still Christmas season until Epiphany. But I’ve never done it before. If you’re new to the Compass Rose Queen, I’m doing a series of posts to celebrate each of the 12 Days of Christmas, with a gift to you each day of something inspirational/encouraging/fun. as well as a gift to the world by asking you to join me in prayer for a region/group of people/situation.

Yesterday we did some reflection on this past year. After posting, I sat down with my journal and wrote short answers to each of the 10 questions. (Much shorter than my answer to Question 1 that I included as a sample- I had too much fun describing some beautiful things I experienced last year!)

Today I’d like us to hope and dream and plan a bit for this next year. Don’t worry; it won’t be hard! And I know, even as we look forward, we will still look back to grieve things from this last year. Don’t be afraid of that. It was a tough year, and I don’t think positivity means pretending the hard stuff didn’t happen. Whether your grieving loss of work from lockdowns, loss of home from natural disasters or war, or loss of loved ones due to Covid or war or anything else, or even just feeling the grief of loneliness from all the social distancing, let yourself feel the pain of loss from time to time. But please keep looking forward with hope, too. I am trying to.

With that, let’s get started. I have three easy tasks to plan for 2021. And don’t forget to at least skim to the bottom to join me in prayer for a group of people.

Part 1: Ask yourself, what big things am I hoping for or looking forward to this year?

For me, most of the things I’m hoping for are too private to share on here. But I believe that verbalizing things can solidify our drive to make them happen as well as giving us things to look forward to. So I’ll share these two things: I would like to move to a 2-bedroom apartment. And as soon as it’s safe regarding Covid, I hope to drive to the Southwest to visit my BFFs, and if I can afford the time and money, to Texas and the Midwest to visit my relatives. What am I going to do about these things? I plan to set up a separate savings account for a new apartment (deposit, etc.). It’s been in my spending plan for a while, but without a separate savings account for it, I just keep forgetting to actually set that money aside for it. And I already have a practice of setting aside money for travel.

Part 2: What new things did I do in 2020 that I would like to do again, or make into traditions?

I did a lot of new short-term/seasonal things that I hope to do again, like Zoom family reunions and game nights, peach-picking, mushroom hunting, cider pressing, taking my mom kayaking, wildflower hiking, watching Dinner For One on New Year’s Eve, and many others. Even if I don’t do them all again this year, they were great experiences.

There’s one long-term thing that I did that I definitely want to do again. This was the first full calendar year that I completed a gratitude journal by filling it in every single day. My writer friend Doreen gave me a “2020 Vision Planner” she’d designed that had space for this as well as other spaces for planning and reflection. Little did she know how vital that would become when days (which became weeks and months) stuck at home due to the pandemic blurred into one another. Finding something to be grateful for each day became a lifeline. Sometimes it was just for enough break from the rain to go for a walk. Other times for a gift from a friend or something that went well. Still other times for a characteristic of God (His love, etc.). Thank you, Doreen!

And in keeping with that gratefulness practice, I’m thankful for these new things that helped 2020 feel not so wasted. And thankful to God for helping me survive this crazy year.

Part 3: What new experiences or practices do I want to try in 2021?

I’ll have to consult my thick “My Ultimate Bucket List” book that one of my besties gave me for this one. A lot of the time, I stumble upon things, like the unplanned mushroom hunting when a friend and I hiked the forested ridges at the coast this last summer, or when a friend invites me to do something I’d never done before. I definitely want to go back to the bouldering gym once they reopen from the lockdowns, because I have more punches to use on my card. That one’s not really new, but still a goal. I’d like to raft the Rogue and hike the Steens and Wallowas and Broken Top and every other gorgeous mountain in Oregon. Ooh, here in the middle of the book is one that I’d marked but haven’t done yet: Submit a photo to National Geographic! I should do that. I have entered photos in the county fair and scrapbook pages in the state fair, but nothing to Nat Geo. Oh, there’s so many things I’d like to do!

Happy dreaming and planning and having high hopes for this new year! I hope it is a good year for all of us, despite the challenges that will inevitably come our way.

For today’s prayer, let’s pray for everyone who is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts. Here in my region, this is a dark time of year from all the rain and short days, and even in normal years it can be tough on people. And now people are more isolated and lonely than ever due to the pandemic. Please pray for hope and for help for anyone who is struggling with this. Thank you.

Happy New Year’s Eve! At least in the Gregorian calendar. If I forget to say it on future New Year’s holidays this year: Happy New Year’s in the Julian calendar, Happy Chinese New Year, Happy Nowruz, Happy Islamic calendar New Year, and any others that I’m forgetting!

Today’s gift is the gift of reflection, and thanks to my writer friend Diana for sharing this website with me. This website has 10 great questions to ask yourself about this past year. Do this exercise however you wish: grab a notebook and journal your answers, talk them through with a person close to you, or even just think through them yourself. You can do as many of the questions as you want. I’ll answer one of them below, in my usual long-winded way.

End Your Year Intentionally with These 10 Questions

Also, because it’s New Year’s Eve, I’m going to share with you this German tradition. People there watch this hilarious classic British sketch every year, despite it not being shown much in Britain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVd_VLO9xcc Be aware that the first two minutes is an introduction in German, but the rest is in English. To understand why it’s so popular there, check out this short funny video by a Brit living in Germany which analyzes this phenomenon. https://www.dw.com/en/dinner-for-one-a-bizarre-german-new-years-eve-tradition/av-51711675

For today’s prayer, let’s pray for 2020 to be better for everyone, especially people who have been hit the hardest by natural disasters, war/terrorism, or the pandemic. And for everyone who is spending the holiday alone. Thank you.

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I’ll put my answer to #1 here to whet your appetite. It reads “What makes this year unforgettable?” Well, obviously Covid, but besides that, I’ll say Wildflowers, Waterfalls, and Wacky/Wonderful times with family.

Before the lockdowns began, I got to visit my friend in Fremont, and she took me hiking to Coyote Hills overlooking the Bay. The best part? Poppies everywhere, against the rocky outcrops and on the lush green hills. In July, I got to hike the Cone Peak/Iron Mountain trail with my friend Natasha. Up high in the Old Cascades, the meadows were blanketed with every color you could imagine. In August, my friend Alex and I hiked the epic Whitewater Creek trail to Jefferson Park. There were some flowers still in the alpine meadows, but in the areas of the trail burned by a wildfire a couple years ago, there was bright pink tall fireweed everywhere. This gives me hope for the future now that the entire area has burned from the crazy fires this year.

In Oregon, waterfalls are a dime a dozen, and I’ve seen so many of them multiple times. But this year, I got to see some that I’d never seen before. Natasha and I found four of them east of Cottage Grove just after a big rain, so the water was plentiful but other hikers were blessedly scarce. I had no idea these gorgeous falls were so close! Later in the summer, I took my niece to Henline Falls in the Opal Creek wilderness area. After playing in the crystal clear pool below it, we followed the directions I’d found online to find some unofficially named, off-trail waterfalls. We had to hike up and down crazy steep not-quite-trails and then “creek-whack” to the first of the “Family Falls” waterfalls, Jerry Falls. From there, we couldn’t make it over the giant boulders to get to any of the other waterfalls, so we turned back. But it was great fun seeing a beautiful waterfall that very few people had. And probably won’t for a while, since that whole area was also burned by wildfires this summer. I also saw other falls that I’d seen before but love. Mom and I checked out awesome Paulina Falls on a day trip to Central Oregon. And of course, when my friend Cindy came to visit me in Oregon, I took her to my favorite waterfalls, Upper and Lower Proxy Falls.

For wacky and wonderful times with family, I will mention a few of these treasured times. For Easter, I put together a Zoom family reunion for my mom’s side of the family that is spread out across the USA. They liked it so much that we’ve kept it going every month! Actually, this answer would count for question #4, “What’s your biggest win this year?” Getting to know family more has been great. My nieces in Ohio attended some of my Zoom game nights in the spring. It was so great to see them, and my great-niece and great-nephew! I also took mom on some day trips where she got to face some fears: kayaking beautiful Clear Lake, driving to the top of Paulina Peak, and picking peaches. Okay, no fears at the peach farm, but that was a first for me, so it was fun! I also got to see my dad’s side of the family for an outdoor picnic when my cousin joined the military, and got to pretend-camp in my cousin’s yard and eat cold s’mores with one of her adorable kids. And of course, old-fashioned visits with the rest of my immediate family (dad, brother, nieces and nephews, etc.). Then there’s the extended family- I got to camp at Waldo Lake again with my cousin-in-laws and friends from church, and go on short hikes and do other fun outdoor activities with friends.

All these things helped keep me going when the weather turned cold and we couldn’t get together as easily. What made this year unforgettable for you? What was your biggest win? Feel free to answer these or any of the other 10 questions in the comments below.

For today’s gift, I give you: Games! First, a Smithsonian article about Christmas games from around the world. My favorite? Oaxaca’s “Night of the Radishes.”

The next article is also from the Smithsonian, a collection of online versions of board games that you can play with your family or friends from anywhere during this upcoming winter of more social distancing. There are a couple that I want to try! Anyone game? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

For today’s around-the-world prayer, please join me in praying for safety of civilians in Afghanistan, especially the Hazara people who are being targeted by IS there. Thank you.

Happy 5th Day of Christmas! For today’s gift, I give you the gift of daydreaming about journeys around the world. Pilgrimages and epic treks fascinate me. I recently wrote a short story with a main character that lived along the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James). When I lived in Central Asia, I was in one of the countries the Silk Road went through. Currently, I live less than two hours from the Pacific Crest Trail. I’ve gone a few miles of it, on short backpacking trips, but that’s it! Someday I’d love to do a long trek. That takes time, money, planning, and training. But you never know!

So today’s link to something fun was tipped off to me by my writer friend Professor Popinjay (you can find his column in Springfield, Oregon’s Free For All newspaper and on his Facebook group page). This is the longest walkable road network in the world. Check it out in this article by Popular Mechanics (link below). It looks amazing! I don’t think I know anyone who would ever actually accomplish it (for a variety of reasons), but it does look like good inspiration for my writer friends. I could see a fun adventure novel based on this in the vein of Around the World in 80 Days. Happy daydreaming! How many of you would take this trek if you could?

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a30285283/longest-walkable-distance-earth/#:~:text=The%20suspected%20longest%20walking%20route,Trail%20are%20short%20by%20comparison.

For today’s prayer, let’s pray for the whole world! Why not, since we’re dreaming about trekking halfway around it? But specifically, let’s pray for the world to heal from the devastating effects of Covid-19, including our own countries/regions/cities. Thank you for joining me in this!

Happy 4th Day of Christmas! I hope you are enjoying this holiday season with loved ones, as safely as possible.

For today’s gift, I want to tell you about an inspiring woman. At age 51, after being widowed and divorced, Méxican-American plant lover Ynéx Mexía discovered her life’s calling while studying botany at the University of California. According to her card in my Women Explorers Knowledge Cards deck, she discovered over 500 new species while traveling all over the Americas, many times by herself, in Alaska, Mexico, and all over South America. You can read more about her in the National Park Service’s webpage at https://www.nps.gov/people/ynes-mexia.htm

Since it’s Christmastime and we’ve mentioned Mexico, I’d love to share with you the beautiful legend of how poinsettias became associated with Christmas! The alternate name for them is “Flores de noche buena” or “flower of the holy night.” A little girl wanted a gift to bring to the Christ child on Christmas Eve, but she had no money. Find out what happend at https://www.farmersalmanac.com/the-legend-of-the-pointsettia-2815

And completely random but just for fun, since our hero today traveled to South America too, check out this adorable fresh news piece from the BBC, about a dog on the soccer field in Bolivia. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-55458599

For today’s region to pray for, please join me in praying for Venezuela. They have been struggling economically and politically since long before the pandemic, which has exacerbated the situation. Thank you.

Reference for Women Explorer Cards Deck: by Sharon M. Hannon, published by Pomegranate Communications, Inc.

Happy 3rd Day of Christmas! Today’s gift to you is a newsletter that my friend Jas wrote for her employer and their customers. It has some great ideas for ways to make the holiday season merry, despite the pandemic. I want to try the Watch Party idea!

http://pages.azblue.com/Dec-2020-Newsletter_Creative-Holiday.html

Today I would like to ask you to join me in praying for the nation of Ethiopia, and the conflict there. Please pray for peace and for protection of civilians. Thank you!

Happy Boxing Day and beginning of Kwanzaa! If you haven’t read yesterday’s post, please read it first so you’ll understand this series of posts. Also, I plan to add a feature in this series: besides leaving you with something fun/encouraging/inspiring, I would like to invite you to join me in praying for a different situation/region/people group around the world each day.

Today’s gift is introducing you to a family I’ve never met. The Holderness family has a Youtube channel where they, well,, channel their creativity into a variety of fun videos. Some are music parodies that would make Weird Al proud. Some are parodies of Hallmark movies (they confess that they love watching them, so they’re not too mean, but spot on!). Others are just funny discussions that they have. One of my favorites is the “Sanitized” song parodies, in honor of the pandemic (which is one of those things that you kind of have to laugh at sometimes or else you’ll cry). All of them are fun, and they try to stay positive despite the strange times we’re in. To introduce you to them, I’ll give you this one, which is kind of their musical Christmas card to everyone. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFuNFVBTjMo

Today the country of Nigeria is on my heart. Please pray for the safety of schoolchildren and other civilians there, with extremist terrorist groups causing traumatic devastation. Pray for wisdom on the part of the government in dealing with this. Thank you!

Happy Christmas Day, in the Gregorian calendar at least! According to some branches of Christianity, today is the First day of Christmas, with the 12th and final day of Christmas being Epiphany (celebrating when the Magi/3 Kings went to see Jesus), on January 5 or 6. And if I forget to say it then, Merry Christmas on January 7 to anyone in the Eastern Orthodox churches!

This year, I’d like to give my friends and readers a gift on each of the 12 Days of Christmas. Don’t worry, I don’t have a partridge in a pear tree for you. Or even two turtledoves. And definitely not five golden rings. But I want to give what I can.

I read a short essay recently about Christmas and how for us humans it’s about receiving, not giving. Jesus is the ultimate gift to us, and we can’t give Him anything that would be enough to reciprocate this amazing and precious gift of life and grace. All we can do is reach out and receive it. But in honor of that gift, and with the example given by the Magi of what they felt compelled to bring to Him, we do give gifts. We give Him the gift of our love and devotion in return. We do the same for others in different ways (including tangible gifts, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, and physical touch) to show our love. And sometimes, we need to be humble and willing to open our arms to receive gifts. This Christmas has been teaching me this lesson in some humbling but sweet ways.

I don’t have much I can give all of you, my readers. But I will share with you something fun, inspiring, or encouraging each day. A little bit of light during these dark days (interpret that literally or figuratively, but here in Oregon it’s definitely dark this time of year!).

Today’s gift: music from the Benedictine monks at Mt. Angel Abbey here in Oregon. Click the link below for three songs that they perform. The top one is fun jazzy music from the Charlie Brown Christmas special. The middle one is carols sung by the monks. The bottom one is organ and violin music. Enjoy! (Photo is by me, taken nearly 2 years ago on a visit to the Abbey with my stepsister and her kids).

Seasonal

Here’s the newsletter that I sent out with Christmas cards. By New Year’s Eve, I’ll do a post with photos of some of the cool things I got to do this year. Merry Christmas!

Even though it’s been a tough year in many ways, there have been many silver linings and blessings.

I got to do a lot of new things with family and friends, including pressing apples into cider, mushroom hunting, peach picking, jewelry making, and making a potted plant herb garden. And lots of exploring, from finding new waterfalls to hiking to Jefferson Park (I’m so thankful I got to see it before it was burned by wildfire this summer!). I even got to drive Mom to the top of a shield volcano. And of course, I learned how to teach online! I’m grateful to see my students.

This year held lots of joys that I had done before, too, like seeing friends that I taught with overseas, camping at Waldo Lake, going on short local hikes, and other outdoor activities with friends and family. I’m very grateful to you all for reaching out to keep me connected!

Some other silver linings/things that have helped me stay sane this year: Getting to see friends and family from far away thanks to Zoom (and also get-togethers, meetings, and cool seminars from church, writing groups, and other organizations), living walking distance from a park with hiking trails, books from all the Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood, DVDs from the library, and of course, my cat.

What new things did you try this year? What helped you stay positive? I’d love to hear about them in a card, letter, email, or even a postcard. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  Love, Jessie (and Arwen, aka Santa Kitty)

What a year this has been. I wrote my last post in May, back when we had the summer and outdoor socially distanced functions to look forward to. Since then, things have changed, and yet, they haven’t really.

Part of me would like to take this opportunity to lay out in detail what I believe about some of the things we’ve been dealing with: the pandemic, unrest, deepening political divides, disasters, and so much more. Part of me feels like it would be pointless.

I’ve been wrestling a lot this year. With my beliefs, especially politically, and how politics interacts with my faith. With what to do about racism in my country. With loneliness and isolation because of the pandemic. With how to help my students from the other side of a computer video chat, and how to help people affected by disasters like wildfires and hurricanes and war. There is so much. But I have done what could when I discovered a way to help in these areas.

I’ve also been trying to find the silver linings, the opportunities afforded by my current circumstances, or at least allowed by them. Almost every day, I’ve gotten a nice walk through a wooded park nearby. I finished writing a short story, had help from writer friends to revise it, and submitted it to a publisher. I’ve been working slowly through online guitar lessons. Over the spring and summer, I went to some beautiful outdoor places with friends and family. I’ve reconnected with some family and friends with Zoom game nights. And I have worked hard to make lessons for my students to get an education despite not being in a school building. I’m determined that this year will not have been wasted.

But it’s still been hard. I know my brain is stressed because I’m making the same dumb mistakes at work over and over again. I can’t seem to keep some things straight in my brain. And now I have grief to add to that; my “bonus grandma” (close friend’s grandma that I adopted long before my last grandparent passed away 10 years ago) recently died. I knew it was to be expected eventually. But it’s still sad, because she was the nicest grandma I ever had, and I’m sad for my friend and her family who are all going through a lot. And my friend and former coworker Meranda died of cancer this summer. Praying for her family and friends as well during this holiday season.

A friend wrote in her most recent blog post that despite the enormity of everything, she feels that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I am hanging onto that. Hanging onto hope. Despite the despair around me, I believe that God still loves us and is still guiding us.

This journey of life is hard sometimes. I feel like I’m wandering in the wilderness, and I don’t mean a scenic National Park wilderness with a sturdy trail. I mean wandering through tough terrain with only a compass. But I will press on, seeking God’s guidance constantly. Thank you for joining me in this journey.