January 3, 2026 Happy new year! I hope... I have begun a fiber-art project - from the Tempestry Project - that visually shows changes in average temperatures over the last couple of centuries. It is a wall-hanging made of multiple horizontal crocheted stripes. The colors of the stripes depict "deviation-from-normal" temperatures, with the bottom stripe of the wall-hanging representing where we were globally in 1800, and the top stripe representing where we are now. Colors ran

December 14, 2025 “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” ~ Anne Frank Happy Hanukkah! And tears and rage for the anti-semitism and other “othering” cruelties that are persisting across our globe. On the eve of the Festival of Lights, here in the US at Brown University, a gunman fired upon a classroom that was reviewing material for an exam. While we know few details, the class was taught by a Jewish professor who teaches Jewish studies. Two peopl

December 8, 2025 “Things take the time they take. Don't worry.” ~Mary Oliver A former student reminded me tonight that I used to tell her, “It takes as long as it takes.” I think I was unintentionally semi-plagiarizing Mary Oliver. Nevertheless, the sentiment has been helpful to me in the past and is increasingly coming to mind in the present. Back up a few years. December 8, 2012. Larry and I had our first “date” (that sounds so weird at our age!). We had met through an onli

November 16, 2025 "Please let me merge before I start crying!" A few days ago, I was stalled in traffic at the Point's "spaghetti junction" in Pittsburgh. If you know, you know. I noticed this bumper sticker on the car in front of me (other stickers included ones supporting the Humane Society and Shih Tzu puppies). Man, I felt the driver's pain! That discomfort you feel when you know you are supposed to know how to do something, IN PUBLIC, and your lack of practice with the s

October 27, 2025 “As you can no doubt imagine, we often say in despair, ‘What’s the point of the war? Why, oh, why can’t people live together peacefully? Why all this destruction?’ The question is understandable, but up to now no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. Why is England manufacturing bigger and better airplanes and bombs and at the same time churning out new houses for reconstruction? Why are millions spent on the war each day, while not a penny is available