12/12/13 – A Busy Day
My weekdays begin with coffee and Morning Pages; in the background are the iced-over windows of winter. I decided to make another time capsule of December 12, based on last year's idea of capturing my day of 12/12/12. Last year's date was picked because of the cool date, and I figured I'd just continue with the December 12 date. If I manage [...]
Learning to Make Do – When Your Oven Breaks on Thanksgiving Or the Water Main Breaks
We had a Thanksgiving without a turkey, and not by design. As I turned on the oven to bake the pies my daughter and I had so carefully put together, the bottom heat element went up in smoke. Literally melted. I had the turkey stuffed and ready to go. Since the top heating element was still working, I refused to [...]
Happy Chanukah! Happy Thanksgiving!
Walking through the preschool building at my son's school always lifts my spirits. Invariably I will come across funny and cute creations like these Menurkeys (= Menorah Turkey), created, in this case, by the Parent/Tot class. That's one reason I love working at the school (I do their weekly e-newsletter and handle other communications tasks). Last week these Menurkeys were [...]
Osage Oranges
Osage oranges are one autumn's delights for me. I never knew about them until my first residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts a few autumns ago. There, I happened upon these glorious light neon-green orbs. They were lying by a hedge that seamed a field I was crossing on one of my walks. What, I asked myself [...]
Discovering David Plowden
I am in love. With David Plowden and his stunning black and white photographs of the American Plains and Prairie. It's been one of those serendipitous encounters: The big photograph of a field in Iowa in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye because any photography of the Midwest does, and the accompanying brief review of his book Heartland sounded intriguing; I [...]
Art: Boring Today, Interesting Tomorrow?
Pierce Hall, in its current state of half demolition For my Artist's Dates these past two weeks, I attended the two-evening Bookmakers program offered jointly by the Smart Museum and the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College. Both sessions focused on bookmaking, obviously, but specifically on photo books. I love making photo albums, or using digital applications and services like blurb, [...]