I have just received news that I am getting an award from the INlL . NA/US (the Icelandic National League. North America/United States.

“The Joan Inga Eyolfson Cadham Award was established in 2017 to recognize individuals who have been outstanding in the promotion of Icelandic culture and heritage by way of literature, arts, or media.”

I’m being given travel and accommodation as well as registration to the AGM where the award will be presented. This makes me feel better, as if my unsung efforts to create, edit, write and produce the quarterly news letter have been appreciated—though I needed help with the formatting, which I cannot do. That’s not why I got this. I think I told you I gave the copyright to one of my books (Letters to Icelanders: Exploring the Northern Soul) to the ICCT (Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto) as a fund-raiser for my home chapter to publish and sell, keeping the royalties. I didn’t realize it would be so much work for them to publish a new edition but they did it and the book is out now just as it was but with a new cover and a few words of explanation from me and Gwen Morgan, the current ICCT President. It looks lovely.

There are people I must tell—my family. It will be nice for them to hear something other than my dull lockdown complaints. And my doctor to see if I can go. I will exercise more to gather strength for the trip. Walking is always good. And I will write something other than lockdown complaints. A carrot has been put in front of this donkey’s nose.

I am so grateful.

That’s quite enough for today.

Anyone who remembers who I used to be, that is, what I used to be like, compared to this lazy self-indulgent creature, might wonder, if she cared, what happened to me.

Cl0vid and age, lockdowns and aging, isolation and agism.

Also, finally, reality and acceptance.

When Covid shut the theatres, the New York Times reported on the theatre and told me what was happening. Disaster. Of course, it has survived. New writing and new faces emerged, new venues were discovered and new methods. Theatre had a separate seciton in the Times last week on the season to come. Cinemas have opened and live theatre too. Streaming is available with intelligent, exciting, even profound, rich writing. I knew, I trusted, that this would happen. But I also recognized that it would happen without me. I would and have become a bystander, an audience with less involvement. I lack the resources—energy and money— to engage the way I did. I can no longer participate the way I did. I can’t get in again, even to the limited way I did.

I am too old.