Today I’m mourning the death of my friend and fellow artist Dan Sekellick. In recent months, our Unitarian Universalist congregation has lost seven older long-term members in close succession, but Dan’s death hits closest to home. A retired architect, Dan was dodgy about his age, but he was on the far side of seventy –… [Read More]
Narrow Escape from an Art Attack
Wandering the streets of Schenectady during the “Art Attack” on Saturday, evading the pleading eyes of the artists hawking their works throughout the city’s downtown, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief that I wasn’t one of the hundreds who’d signed up for what may become an annual event. I was reminded, too, how writers… [Read More]
Math anxiety – one of those pesky women’s problems?
My face is red – well, at least pink – because of a glaring error in the math for my contest. I wrote, “I’m about to reach a milestone on this blog – 50,000 hits! My stat meter when I logged on this morning at 8:58 a.m. stood at 48,888, so based on my current… [Read More]
Looking ahead – life lessons from skiing
“Don’t look down at your skis or right in front of you,” my instructor said yesterday. “Look far ahead down the mountain, the way you want to go.” “But what if there’s uneven terrain or something nasty right in front of me?” “It’ll be too late then anyway. You don’t look at the hood… [Read More]
A starving artist and a viral spiral
Yesterday one of my Facebook friends invited people to visit his website, where he’s put up a PayPal button for donations. The cause? Help him with his daily struggles – pay the rent, buy food, that kind of thing. He described himself as a starving artist. The first comment: “Are you f*&%ing kidding? Who do… [Read More]
Down with hoarding – in praise of my gorgeous new garbage bin
Am I truly a hoarder? My Significant Other would say so, but I’m not nearly as bad as those folks on A&E’s show Hoarders, which I watch almost as religiously as Project Runway. Hoarders defines hoarding as a mental disorder, but the official verdict’s still out. The boundary between run-of-the-mill cluttering and obsessive-compulsive hoarding isn’t… [Read More]