Blog

When I had my own children I moved to Long Island. In the summer, I felt nostalgia, trapped in the airless frenzy of traffic, the earth paved over, asphalt heat waves, car exhaust. I dreamed of moving to the country, but didn’t see how I could uproot. I wished it would happen miraculously. Then it did.

It seems to me, amidst our tragic circumstances, person to person, we are connecting with one another, that there is a new world coming forth. It may take time, this birth. But I believe it is happening...

They are migrants. Their lives were saved. They came to a new place and added such beauty, a yellow different from the broom plants, the evening primrose, the Gloriosa lilies, Stella D’oros, the pale yellow lilies, names unknown to me, and the tiny yellow flowering ground cover, another gift of this place to me—its name also unknown. A shimmering time of yellows, the beginning of July...

Life is a relay race One passes the necessary tasks to the Next One... And we open our hands to receive them, those necessary tasks. We open our hands to touch the world—however we can.

It is six or so weeks ago that I entered clicking and sliding into the maze of Facebook. I have managed to set up that third profile. When it asked for my face, I was blank. My page sat that way, blank of face, until about a week ago when I clicked willy-nilly on something punctuated with many of my faces, my column of the Good God knows what—is it my story? Is it my private news feed? Is it my timeline? I’ve yet to understand...

When I got to midtown and parked the car, I combed the sheet of newspaper, four pages, double sided. There it was, the story of a man who had bought a shoe store during hard economic times. One shoe store became two, then three, then twenty-five. A chain of shoe stores! The man had accumulated wealth, and had the means to help others—which he did. “During hard times, expand,” is what he was quoted as saying.

I saw a red-tailed hawk last week, camouflaged in winter white, no red tail flashing—playing on the wind! I stopped my car on that country road where I rarely meet another traveler. The hawk tumbled like a crow. I’ve seen crows play on the wind. This hawk wasn’t hunting. It was having a wonderful time!...

I think the eyes open when one writes, just as they do when one paints, to a more subtle, finely-tuned world. I’ve just looked up from my notebook. The snow on the hemlock trees past my window makes a fine, latticework pattern. I didn’t see that before I started this writing. It’s a glimpse, a vision of bright order. Outer to inner eyes. I think I’ve gasped...

Many years ago, my sister and I went on a house tour, a walking exploration of some of the great old houses in Oyster Bay, on Long Island, the peninsula that extends east from New York Harbor, sitting in the Great South Bay where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. The house tour was something I was less interested in than was my sister, but it was a way for us to spend time together...

One of the things I love to paint in my long lineup Still Life paintings is a group of vintage cans I’ve accumulated—tobacco cans, powder cans, baking powder cans. I love the look of their graphics, their beautiful colors, and the way they remind me of another time: childhood...