As you may know, I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions. Why wait until January 1 to start improving yourself or your life? I’m really good at maintaining healthy new habits, when I feel motivated to do so. But my motivation can strike at any time. Plus, too many New Year’s resolutions are either...
I can’t explain why, but every year, the first Christmas song that enters my mind is, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Maybe it’s because I’ve spent over 30 years writing about and studying World War II, and my imagination travels back in time to the lonely soldiers on the frontlines for whom that song was...
Memory is a funny thing. This time of year, a particular memory always returns to me, and I have no idea why. It’s from December of 1988. I was 21 years old and studying for a semester at West Chester University outside of Philadelphia. My roommate, Nancy, invited me to her house for the weekend....
This week I’ve been sick for the first time in two and a half years. I forgot how awful it is to be so achy you can’t get off the couch, and how achy you then become because you can’t get off the couch. For someone who usually has lots of energy and drive, it’s...
I hosted one of my art salons last week, and our topic centered around the famous Martha Graham quote in which she talks about an artist’s work and says, “there is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through your action, and because there is only one of you in...
The musical, Wicked, is celebrating its 20th year on Broadway. It takes place in The Land of Oz, before the arrival of Dorothy, and tells the story of two unlikely friends, Elphaba and Galinda, who later become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch. So, I pulled up my favorite songs...
On a recent trip to New York, my husband and I visited the Morgan Library. The library’s permanent collection includes pages from a Mozart symphony dated 1782, a Rubens’ drawing circa 1613, and a Gutenberg bible dated 1454. As we and many other visitors wandered through J. P. Morgan’s study and library it occurred to...
This past week I hosted one of my Bursts of Brilliance® Art Salons at our local museum of art. Our discussion topic for the evening centered around the fantasies that pull us into our art careers and keep us going when things get tough. I brought up this quote by Louisa May Alcott: “Far away...
I recently pointed out to my husband a problem we were having with a device and that the problem always appeared after he used it. As most people would, he insisted it couldn’t just be him. It must also happen when I used it. So, I tracked it for a few days and was able...
Last week, I attended a fine art show featuring a curated group of talented Black artists. One of the event’s speakers, Kevin John Goff, was the nephew of famed actress Hattie McDaniel, the first Black American to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. As a long-time student of...