2020

 2020

West Chester, PA

My age: 64-65

Volunteer Work- driving cancer pateinces to thier treatment. Unfrotunealy for the cancer patiences, this stopped with the covid lockdown.

Music-  my goal for my 65th birthday was to put togther a playlist of 65 songs from the 21st Century.  When I was in hihg school and college, I knew every song on the radio.  Now I know nothing.  So I spent the year listening to music.

• Someone That I Used To Know- Gotye
• Take this Heart of Gold- Mandolin Orange
• My Silver Lining- First Aid Kit
• Parachute- Chris Stapleton
• One Number Away- Luke Combs
• In Our Time- AHI
• The Honey and the Moon- Joseph Arthur
• Turn the Tables- Joanelle
• Daylight- Mandolin Orange
• Let Me Be A Woman to You- Lana Del Ray
• Rescue- Laura Daigle
• Red Light- Jonny Lang 
• Sophia- Laura Marling
• Anyone Who Knows What Love Is- Ruby Amanfu
• Little talks- Monsters and Men
• Little Lion Mean- Mumford and Sons
• Ho Hey- The Lunimeers
• Kinder- Copper Wimmin
• After You- Chasity Brown
• Human- Rag'n'Bone Man
• In Hell I'll Be In Good Company- The Dead South
• Dark Paradise- Lana Del Ray
• Beautiful Day- U2
• Slow Burn- Kacey Musgraves
• Love Like This- Lauren Dalgle
• Love Me- Forest Blakk
• One Heart- Michaela Anne
• Please Forgive Me- David Gray
• I Cry- Macy Gray
• The Night Will Save US- The Strumbellas
• Wallingofrd- Gamien Jurado
• End of the Earth- Lord Huron
• The Reaper- Alana Davis
• Truth Hurts- Lizzo
• Home- Ed Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros
• It's A New Day- Will. I. Am
• I Gotta Feeling- Black Eyed Peas
• Flow- Shawn James
• Heaven- Kane Brown
• Wait- Broken Fences
• I'm Getting Ready- Michael Kiwanuka
• White Winter Hymnal- Fleet Fox
• Central Reservation- Beth Orton
• Crash Into Me- Dave Matthews
• Heartless- Diplo
• Let You Down- NF
• Beg, Steal or Borrow- Ray LaMontagne
• Wagon Wheel- Old Crow Medicine Show
• Ada- The nationals
• Please Read The Letter- Robert Plant
• Ocean Eyes- Billy Ellish
• What Does It Mean to Travel-  Mary Chapin Carpenter
• Murder Most Foul- Bob Dylan
• Stranger To My Happiness- Sharon Jones
• Beat Up Old Guitar- Shemekia Copeland 
• Nothing But The Water- Grace Potter
• Falling Slowly- Glenn Hansard
• Breakeven (Falling To Pieces)- The Script 
• Louise-  Korey Dane

Movies- I watched a lot of movies during the pandemic.  Movie threaters were locked down for the rest of the year.  So I joined Netflix and used my Amazon Prime movies.  I bought movie rentals from theaters and I found movies on the internet.

• The Two Popes- there was more insight in to this movie than I had anticipated.
• Bombshell- The heroes were the women who took these awful men down.
• Little Women- OMG, this movie was dreadful.  It was too long, too white, too sweet, too boring, too boring.
• 1917- the story of April 6, 1917 in France during WWI.  My grandfather was in that war.
• Just Mercy- This movie should win Picture of the Year.
• Don't Worry, He Wont Get Far on Foot- this was an interesting take on how difficult the 12 Step Program is.
• Won't You Be My Neighbor- I wasn't thrilled with this movie.
• Hidden Lives- The cinematography was absolutely beautiful in this movie.  The man's convictions were beyond what I could endure.
• Parasite- this movie started out to be funny and ended on a gruesome note.
• JoJo Rabbit- I loved this movie which is funny because I saw the previews and it just didn't interest me.
• 2019 Oscar Nominated Action Films
• 2019 Oscar Nominated Animated Films
• 2019 Oscar Nominated Documentary Films
• Midway- the story of our response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
• Les Miserables- some people have the most miserable lives. This was the last movie I at a movie theatre before the lockdown.
• Honey Boy- another movie about a dreadful father who was fucked up and did everything he could to fuck up his kid.
• Call of the Wild- I read the book and couldn't figure out how they would do this move as the dog was so humanized in the book.  But the use of computerization did the trick.
• Aerounats- the story of hot air ballon flight
• The Torture Report- we can do dreadful things in ur country on the basis of national security.
• Marriage Story- this was a hard story to watch.
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind- a boy in Africa figured out a way to make a wind mill.  We have a lot of talented people in this world and their talent is untapped.
• The Skin of a Wolf- Spanish movie- beautiful cinematography and a tough story.
• A Little Chaos- a gardening love story.
• Milada- the story of a woman who stood up against the communists and worked to liberate the Czech Republic.
• The Laundromat- the story fo the Panama Papers and the greedy of the few very wealthy people in the world.
• Court India- a story about the injustices of political artists in India
• Lillies of the Fields- I watched this movie in 1963 and have been searching for it fro years to watch again.  Now that I've seen it a 2nd time, I don't need to see it again.
• The Resistance Banker- a banker finds a way to filter money to the Resistance in Belgium during WWII and it costed him his life.
• Alone in Berlin- a husband and wife drop postcards of resistance around Berlin during WWII and it costed them their lives.
• Outbreak- I saw this movie several years ago but it really hit home because of our pandemic.
• Anita- Anita Hill told her story of her testimony against Clarence Thomas as he was about to be sworn in to the Supreme Court.
• Flip Flip Flipin'- one man's story of walking the Appalachian Trail.
• What remains; The Life of Sally Mann
• Radioactive
• Good Trouble- John Lewis- This was the first movie I saw in the theatre after they finally reopend from the pandemic lockdown.
• Wendy
• The Assassinates
• Collective- 
• Come Away- the story of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland as small children. I love Peter Pan stories.

Travels

• I went to the Dakotas with my nephew in July.
• My niece and I took a cruise to the Caribbean in February. We went to Mexico, Honduras and Belizze.
• I traveld to Florida twice in the winter.
• This is the first year in 20 years that I did not travel to a new country.  This was due to covid.
• My May trip to China was cancelled die to covid.

News events

• Biden is elected President.
• Trump pushed a lie of election fraud becasue he was so embarrassed that he lost BIGLY.
• COVID rules the world.  This virus caused the entire world to stop in its tracks.

Family news:

• I was diagnosed with uterine cancer in November.
• Deirdre became engaged to Kevin Yang and we couldnt celebrate becasue of Covid.
• Kevin Staudt became a father for the first time.  GiGi was born in July but we couldnt meet her becasue of Covid.
• I started Medicare in July and I was so damn happy to have good health insurance after 10 years of crappy coverage.