Tallahassee Journal by Margaret E. McColley

    [Photo: Fluffernutter, who gives me "sense of home."] #Grief#Voice#Friendship#ReflectingonInteriorSenseofHome#BookComing      I attended an online offering by the author David Kessler this week. He spoke beautifully about what our culture needs when it comes to grief and bereavement. One of the lines I jotted down in my notes was, “we can’t heal what we don’t feel.” And I thought of my friend J.J. She had called me spontaneously the day before to share her sorrow at the loss of my parents — of her parents — it was the same loss for each of us I felt when we connected through the phone speakers. I had started to talk about why I hadn’t called in a long while and she had answered through tears:  Oh,that is not what I am thinking about at all .  I am so sorry you lost your parents, and I am so sorry I lost my parents.” And in that expression of feeling I heard a familiar and tender timbre that I hadn’t heard for a long time, and I felt a sense of home...

       Robert McNair McColley, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois, passed away peacefully at his home in Urbana on the winter solstice, December 21st, 2025, with family at his side. Bob was born on February 2, 1933 in Salina, Kansas, the son of William Grant McColley and Alice McNair McColley. Grant McColley was an itinerant academic with a PhD from Northwestern University. He moved his family around the country, working various jobs during the Great Depression. Consequently, Bob spent his childhood in towns associated with Kansas Wesleyan University (Salina), Smith College (Northampton MA), Western Carolina Teachers College (Cullohwee NC), and Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago). The family finally settled in Washington DC, where Alice became a CIA analyst.                         Bob, front and center, with (from the left) Margaret&cat, Grant, and Carolyn Alic...

  Home is elemental (a piece in progress, here are some preliminary, rough sketches:)   A year following the worst (three-tornado) storm that Tallahassee has ever seen, I have thoughts circulating about a topic that speaks to everyone--What is HOME? ****** For two decades or more this topic has lingered in my heart (tho in some ways it has always been there, has its very genesis in life as a small child). It was the nexus of the study of women's travel letters that made it's way to the doorstep of my mind's eye in the early 2000s. And I must say, with no doubt, the "Home" that I wanted to explore wasn't the rosy red-cheeked children-scape at the dinner table of Rockwell (whose paintings I love). ****** The week I defended my thesis on the subject of Home at the University of Virginia in 2005 was the same week that Katrina blew in and devasted so many homes on the grittiest level of materiality. And I felt then as if I wa...

When I feel like the "world is too much with (me)," to borrow from Wordsworth, I take myself to St. Mark's. The capacity for unloading one's mental wastebin and drifting instead with the ebb and flow of the St Mark's river is so deep and expansive that I often give way to the pull toward this place. It's located just far enough away from Tallahassee to feel like I'm getting out of town without committing to a long drive, and for cyclists, there is the magnificent and well-known bike trail going all the way there from its trailhead off of Capital Circle. On my most recent trip down, I stopped at "The Shack," an inviting coffee shop with many options for cooling off, perking up, and feeling better through the nourishment of freshly-made treats. Just next door to this oasis is a wonderful antique shoppe for beach-themed decor, "The Beach Trader." The restorative experience begins when I hit the Woodville Road from Cap Circle and know I...

  Canopy When I returned to in-person teaching after lockdown but before the vaccine, I would come home and, before entering the house, I'd sit in my driveway on its warm, stony surface to unwind after work. A sit would become a stretch, and then a full lie down, a tree-gazing savasana. I would look up at the glittering leaves, the sunstream, and the blue sky behind and feel the caress of this entire arc of nature. My breath would adjust to the waves of breeze that would brush across the airscape and cause the branches to sway here and then there. In the flow of time a furbaby or two from the outdoor pack would come over and lie down near me and stretch. My movements were familiar to them--for this is how they spend hours and hours every single day. They move at the pace of the plants around them, at the speed of the breeze, deliberately yet, easily. I started to take to the driveway for daily yogic movement and lying down to gaze up at the canopy. She offered a whole new way of lo...

  Lynne is my friend, but Lynne is much more. She is bringing magic to a hurting world. The day I was unpacking my U-Haul trailer, she walked up to me and introduced herself. She was my upstairs neighbor in the new apartment building I had found by great chance, with hardwood floors and an old, Floridian flair. I knew we'd become friends, despite working in demanding jobs (full-time teacher, hospital administrator). In truth we came together because of our demanding jobs. What began as a simple greeting turned into dinner at the Mexican, then road trips to the Gulf. The rest is herstory in the making.  The smile of friends who hadn't seen eachother for months in the early 2020s. We compared notes. We found resonance. It was soothing. This is my interview in 3-questions with Lynne,  angelic friend, planner-pro, mom to interesting adult sons and high-energy shelter pups, and aspiring mahjong player if you have any Tallahassee leads... What new inspiration are you carrying ...

Diane Booth Gilliam is an extraordinary human, one whom I am grateful to have met and someone I will continue to seek out for guidance and creative inspiration. She is the creator of  Yogastrology ®, a practice that marries the lessons of ancient yogic and ayurverdic practices with knowledge rooted in Vedic and Western astrology.   To learn all about her offerings, visit: https://yogastrology.com/ . As a student and teacher of yoga, I was looking for something deep that went far beyond learning about the physical shapes the body takes in yoga. What I found was a supportive, intuitive, listening voice with whom to engage on the most gorgeous topics through which yogic practices allow us to explore and expand. Diane's curriculum is utterly unique, and allowed me to find a Home within while learning about interactions between the cosmos, the natural world, and an enhanced path to being. Here is our interview in 3 core questions:  1. How did your travels to India imp...

                                                       Sometimes when I brush my teeth at night, I look down and inspect the sink in the bedroom where my toothbrush and paste are located. And unless I've just scrubbed it down until sparkling, I have an unheimlich feeling of horror while looking. It's almost never clean enough for my ablutions, and I hear myself questioning my self worth: what have you accomplished today, anyway? Your sink is dirty. You can do better. This is when I know that I stayed up too late and my tired voice is talking to me.... At this point I try to make a b-line to bed, surrendering to the sandman, hoping that my horror will stay at the sink and the sandman will caress me gently with kinder words. It didn't occur to me until today, while talking to a new student, that maybe perfectionism was the culprit. But this isn't wha...

 Recently I was out to lunch with a dear friend when she told me to" Stop It". I had been speaking in a self-deprecating manner without realizing it. I took her words as an admonishment. I got reactive. "It's not your job to fix me,"  I returned. "I'm not trying to fix you--it just hurts me to hear you talk about yourself that way."  We got a little heated trying to flesh it out all the way. But ultimately it was a tune-up for our communications. It had been building up for a long time... years? Prior to this lunch date I had already been reflecting on the Art of Misunderstanding.  It seems to me that so much of life is filled with misunderstandings that there should be a play-book for how to make them turn into a growth moment.  But the fact is, life moves so quickly at times, and we have so many communications within a day (and this is ofcourse variable, depending on one's circumstances), that they aren't that easy to track and revise in-...

   Limoges tea cup: Anne Bewley Artwork: Lancelot Gambis A Cup of See (for the phone-shy) In memory of dad,a conversationalist This poem is an exploration of the intimacy that comes through in-person vs. over-the-telephone conversation. I had started to notice a greater impetus to use video when calling friends and family, and wondering what it is about the phone...And yet: some of my most intimate conversations have been over the telephone. The voice alone can convey so much , and without the seeing part involved, we may listen more deeply to the warmth and musicality of the human voice.To be explored later...once I phone the ones to whom I owe calls, those who prefer the phone overall.  I realized while composing this that there is a whole philosophy of seeing that I want to consider, since seeing goes so far beyond the visual, since we do not all see through the eyes*All of my writings are subject to tweaking so check back from time to time to time (the beat of the h...

 Hunkering down with the Ferals, and what They are teaching me. fe·ral /ˈferəl,ˈfirəl/ adjective (especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication. "a feral cat" I provide some food and shelter for a family of feral kitties living in the cul-de-sac.  This is what I'm observing, and learning: 1. They take turns being sentinals for eachother (protection, sharing). 2. They eat their food delicately, even when they are very hungry (non-dominance, non-greed). 3. They keep eachother warm (sharing heat). 4. They greet eachother by bumping into one another with purpose, shoulder-to-hip, in a side-swipe (recognition, hospitality). 5. The pack is a matriarchy, and she eats first (respect for the mother, for elders). 6. They are more comfortable when I hunker down at their level (equality, meeting them at their level). 7. They have sensitive hearing (vigilance, awareness of surroundings). 8. They like sleeping on leaves (naturally-lea...

  This is where they walked, swam hunted danced and sang, Take a picture here; Take a souvenir. Cuyahoga, R.E.M.   Sometimes words swim around in our minds, sinking into the inner layers until they embed, planting new life in our neurological bedrock.  ~~~S y l a c a u g a~~~ A few days ago, my swimming word was a name-place: a small, hilly town in Alabama, where once tread the Shawnee, until they were forced to move west of the Mississippi through the Indian Removal Act. Sylacauga looped around like a river otter in my ear.  Chalakagay was a Shawnee settlement prior to the expelling of native Americans both more and less itinerant (the Creek were established in this area before the arrival of the Shawnee, who were refugees). The lay of the land is gentle here; one can see why it made such a compelling place to rest, with its hills, forests, and lakes coming together, forging ecosystems. See: https://digitalalabama.com/alabama-cities/sylacauga-alabama/2543...

September 16, 2022  If I had to create a symbol for the last few years, it would be a circle. So many circles have come to mind. At the same time, I've missed circles: the kind created when several people come together, and sit around a fire, for example. A fire circle. The circle I have been thinking a lot about is one created by narrative. We have these family Zooms, you see, and after more than two years listening to people speaking, I have started to recognize circularity. Coming back to a story that has been told before. The way that the brain changes as we age and becomes more circuitous. What if: We were re-telling stories we have already told in order to seal them into others' memories, and our own? What if repetition of the same story were considered a golden gift and never judged as less? Circularity. The embedding of stories.  

                                          A Summer Solstice Ritual One of the byproducts of lockdown in the early 2020s was moving online for connection. So many of us longed for and found online healing practices.  At a time when our repetitive daily habits were weighed down by the new normal, they were mentally cleansing. They helped to lift some of the fear we were living with, and helped us live it alongside others, and feel less alone with those feelings. I attended online workshops with Jen Waine, (see jenwaine.com) and she incorporated  rituals that helped me move through some of them. David Kennet, too, offered (and offers) incredible sound baths via fb live.  (see davidkennet.com) The word "ritual" may bring many things to mind. The word can be associated with habit and routine. For example, making coffee in the morning might be considered a form of ritu...

  One Asana at a Time During the early days of the pandemic, my yoga practice froze. So now, gently, I'm taking it one asana at a time. I can thread them together in time. Every asana we learn gives us a way to nourish our internal organs, muscles, bone, and skin, our largest organ.  They each connect us to the earth, to all of nature, the elements, and the larger planetary system. Learning yoga is similar to learning a new language; it helps to take it one syl-la-ble--one move- ment-- at a time. One asana at a time. How better to take care of self and of the planet but by recognizing the eternal connection between all living things? One asana at a time. Won't you join me? Thanking equally of all my yoga wisdom teachers over time and space: Diane Booth Gilliam, founder of Yogastrology (R) - Claire Saunders (France) Jen Waine- Marni Sclaroff-Joanna Valentine  Leslie Hanks- Mary Ruth Bradford Ellen, Marni and Gretchen of Namaste Yoga Tallahassee Cara Curcio Cyndi Lee- Sarla...