Jo Chern

Category: community

  • The Tiniest of Spiders in This Troubled Web

    The email from my massage therapist was brief. Their two woman massage clinic would be closing for two weeks during the Covid-19 outbreak. Massage, she pointed out, wasn’t compatible with “social distancing.” I can imagine them thinking as they made this decision “two weeks? four? two months?” because who can tell when, if ever, their…

  • Is Quitting Sometimes the Greater Good?

    As that old song goes “Should I stay or should I go?” For the last five years or so, I have been trying to return to the writing that I walked away from when I stopped teaching after twenty years. Twenty plus years of not writing, then I began again. Stops and starts; small steps…

  • Back Away From The Keyboard

    As other introverts will understand immediately, after I’ve charged into the world with some public face on, blogging faithfully for a week, for example, I’m left both exhausted and terrified and I slink back into my den, wrap my tail around my face and try to hibernate off the contact. I use to try to…

  • Lets Get More Qi Flowing

    The Qi Gong Center of South Central Wisconsin now has its own domain name and a web hosting site (WordPress, of course) although nothing is on the site yet. My Indiegogo campaign has raised about a third of what I need for this and has 25 days left to go. While the center may exist…

  • So, A Buddhist and A Taoist Walk Into A Bar…

    I often write about Buddhist ideas and refer to authors and Buddhist scholars like Jack Kornfield but I have to admit I’m just not a nice enough person to be a Buddhist. Really. Quietly and patiently putting up with jive? I think not. Sitting quietly under the bodhi tree awaiting enlightenment like the bodhidarma? Ain’t…

  • More Qi for the Cheese State!

    I’m raising money through Indiegogo for the formation of The Qi Gong Center of South Central Wisconsin. It’s a very small campaign and donations of even $1.00 make me not only happy but positively delirious. I’d love to spread the health and meditative benefits of Qi Gong throughout the area (and beyond, if possible). You…

  • Who Ya Gonna Call?

    Does everyone have someone they can reach out to with whom they play no roles, someone who answers the call when the crying out is about to burst through, someone who can listen but not judge? Does everyone have this person except me? Why do I even ask this? The question started with a cup…