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Purposele$$ Art
Stuck in traffic When I grumbled to a friend that I seemed to be working hard every day and getting nowhere, very slowly, she suggested that I think of it as “being stuck in traffic.” It hit me, she’s right, I’m stuck in traffic, the key difference being that there is no paycheck at the end […]
You can’t spell “blog” without “log”
Saturday at around 7 pm, the doorbell rings. Mark immediately responds with “No. thank you, we’re not interested,” thus fulfilling his husbandly duty of deterring yet another of an onslaught of solicitors who peddle everything from tree work to eternal salvation. Except this time, I recognized the truck out front. And in it was an […]
Walk in Beauty
I joined the sustainability group at Los Angeles Valley College because two professors whom I respect are members and they were looking for volunteers. The signal achievement of the committee is the acquisition of Tree Campus status for the college, an honor bestowed by the Arbor Day Foundation. Little ol’ LAVC is the only community […]
Artists and Island Gardens
Like many people, I look forward to reading Robert Genn’s Twice Weekly blog. If you aren’t familiar with him, Robert Genn is a Canadian landscape painter who happens to write extremely well. Each entry is an insightful essay marked by a generosity of spirt. One entitled “Summer Joy” caught my fancy well enough to check […]
Christmas in July
It’s July and summer is in full swing. Thoughts turn to beach blankets and BBQs. But for me, it is never too soon to start thinking about Christmas. Not because I am wishing the summer away–anyone who knows me knows that summer is my favorite time of year, even here in LA. While others wilt […]
Addicted to Dots
As research for an app he is developing, my husband showed me a game he downloaded on the iPad called Dots. While his interest was purely academic, for me it was like taking a first hit on a crack pipe. The game seems innocent enough, child’s play, really. You connect dots of the same color […]
Orange Crush
A profligate impulse buy for some women is a pair of Jimmy Choos. Me, I walk into a farmer’s market to pick up a few veggies and come home with a pomegranate tree. Small children and dogs know that late June is the absolute worst time to plant anything in LA, what with four months […]
Earnest Owl
Although he stands at attention in all his finery, Earnest Owl serves no earthly function other than to make you smile. He so desparately wants to help. You can see it in his eyes, which seem to say “Please, tell me I’m good.” Owls are irresitable. We humans seem to project all our emotions onto […]
The Art of War
“All warfare is based on deception.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War Nowhere is this more true than in the recently aired PBS documentary, The Ghost Army, a fascinating revelation of how the United States army used weapons of mass deception to help defeat the Germans in key battles of World War II. A […]
A Tale of Two Caterpillars
This is a tale of two caterpillars: the Gulf Fritillary and the Tomato Hornworm. The former, I invited into my garden; the latter is an unwanted guest. To my eyes, both are beautiful, but I revere creepy crawly things more than most people. The Gulf Fritillary grows up to be a beautiful orange butterfly; the […]