“I am sorry– the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours.” A quote from my friend Jim. Conversation with friends is near the top of my list of life’s pleasures.  Even when topics get heated, there’s humor and a reasonable confidence that I am still loved. And since I live in the Scandinavia  Read the Rest…

Here in Seattle we have had a week of lovely early summer weather.   It was warm enough to sit under my magnificent 40 year old lilac trees at six in the morning, drink tea and read.  I was so engrossed in the book by Stephen Greenblatt called The Swerve that I read it straight through,  Read the Rest…

It’s the Christian holy week and I’ve been musing over my changing beliefs about Jesus, the point man for Christianity, the one whose mind so many people profess to know.  Actually we don’t understand what’s in our own minds, let alone anyone else’s.   But since I am one of two people who know the  Read the Rest…

The subject is women’s bodies.  I had a moment the other day that would have been welcome 45 years ago, and I have been thinking about it ever since.  The prep work for the moment began as I was reading Tina Fey’s book Bossypants which was as funny and lively as I expected it to  Read the Rest…

My blog topics are a result of little frissons I get in my solar plexus.  Something funny happens and it laughs down there.  Or something thrills when I feel passionate about an idea.  Or I get triggered by something that upsets me so much I want to pretend it doesn’t. I got one of those  Read the Rest…

This week I finished a painting inspired by a photograph of a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins, and Eugene, my first little soul-mate cat.  He’s the cat who liked raisins, broccoli and ear wax –I don’t need to get into how that came about—and who played my answering machine when he was bored. I wanted riots  Read the Rest…

I grew up with a religious education that pretty much killed religion for me so of course, I ended up being a church musician.  I fought against it and actually got fired from a church job once because I didn’t have the outward behavior they expected of staff.  One of the many complaints against me  Read the Rest…

Here’s a cheap trick: I’ve learned that traffic on my blog shoots up when I have a titillating title.   Now you’re here, you might as well hear what I have to say about Sigmund Freud because his birthday was May 6, 1856.  He no longer has that much to do with the way analysis is  Read the Rest…

My friend Jenni, a student who single-handedly improved my sight-reading abilities by 75% by showing up with new music every week, recently accomplished something admirable: She went without words for a week.  Part of an Artist’s Way class, she called it her Reading Deprivation week.  She went without books, television and computer, explaining in part  Read the Rest…

I was browsing at the library when I heard a distinctive voice I hadn’t heard in 35 years.  It sounded exactly like someone I had known at college.  I followed the sound and sure enough it was Pat.  Then I ducked my head.  I didn’t have a thing against her.  I had liked her well  Read the Rest…