Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote telling lines in a love poem that could apply to all human relationships:

"I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

Composer Eric Whitacre is acclaimed for creating music performed by assembling the video clips of 5,000+ singers from around the world into virtual choirs. On November 9, he led The Florida Orchestra and The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay in three of his works.

For his Deep Field, the audience watched NASA footage as the group performed in what must be one of Whitacre's dreams. It was his musical interpretation of the Hubble Telescope's initial blurred view and the fix that made it possible for astrophysicists to discover 3,000 galaxies beyond our Milky Way.

Before the performance, Whitacre said he wrote Lux Arumque (commissioned by Master Chorale of Tampa Bay) in the year 2000, now, "a gift my younger self gave to my older self." More works followed, such as the animated Fly to Paradise. The five-minute choral performance ends with the names of his 5,000+ singers scrolling on the screen.

We Are Born Into More Than a Family

British TED Talk speaker and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson PhD., author with Lou Aronica of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything refers to finding "your tribe." That this musical tribe is possible on a global scale was unimaginable before the technological advances of a geek tribe. Such a tribe can be found anywhere creative minds are going about their business. 

I've encountered my tribe when, as a solitary writer, I collaborated with a magazine's art department about accompanying artwork and photos and, as a staff writer, I settled into a Gannett daily newsroom and on a Corporate Communications team, I found my contribution added to its synergy to conceptualize a project, and more recently, in Keep St. Pete Lit writers' workshops. In such places, I operate full throttle in what Robinson calls "being in your element.”   

Yeah, But What About ...

Level-headed realists argue it is cruel to encourage the young to develop their creativity only to have dreams dashed by an indifferent job market. True, the performing arts - music, theater, dance, film - do exact a toll on their adherents, and the world yawns. But, what a bleak existence this would be without the derring do of 5,000+ humans making orchestrated cell phone videos around the world.

And, creativity itself is fit for the tool belt of a working life: architecture, business, education, health care and the STEMs (science, technology, engineering and math). The future will hum with industries yet to be imagined. Since exposure to music, art, theater and literature opens minds to the creative process, children deserve to be immersed in it and assured their creativity is as valuable as the skills they acquire in academia. It will be in the world as it is - a matter of constant creation.

See Eric Whitacre Biography

Back home with a brief travelogue and a few observations to share.

                                                 *  *  *

My iMac perched on the desk in my daughter Lee and her partner Rick’s home office in the Hudson Valley region of New York. They had scooted their iMac over to accommodate me when they opened guest quarters for my visit with my husband, Vincent Mancuso, and our 13-year old cat.

Nature

As I started this blog in their nearly 100-year old house nestled in woodsy acres, I gazed out at a tangle of tree limbs crisscrossing each other in abandon. Nature being natural. Leaves rustled in trees around the property, more golden as time marched toward the end of our stay.

An electric company work crew arrived on their road to clip, chip and haul away branches dangling over wires, foiling the usual suspects from perpetrating a power outage with the first snow. Walking down the road beyond the crew, I waved to a woman as she corralled a toddler on a sloping lawn, and in the course of an hour, watched one car drive by.

Beneath the rustling leaves and cawing blue jaws, admiring the houses of weekenders from the Big Apple and of heirs to families who settled the area in the 1700s, I was delighted this is the environment my loved ones inhabit. Here they plant and pick a season’s bounty, spoil purring pets, hike the ridge called Shawangunk, bike a rail trail and pamper us.

We spent time with Connecticut kin who opted for a similarly bucolic existence. A lake on one end of their road served as the backdrop for impromptu children’s picnics. Deer ambled by, flicking white tails. A dairy farm on the opposite end of the road is equally peaceful. I would not be surprised if (like the internet video of a saxophonist performing for a herd of cows) my 13-year old grandson arrived at the farm with his sax one day to stir its slumbering music lovers.

Human Nature

A stay at our favorite New York cottage capped this 2019 country quiet, and it merged with our life among the masses – first at JFK and Copenhagen international airports, then Copenhagen train stations and then ports of a ship bound from Denmark to Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Nova Scotia and Brooklyn, NY, USA.

Humans on the move are something to behold, crisscrossing the planet. We utter a mixed-tape Babel of languages, play distinctive music, savor fragrant cuisines, don all manner of fashion. We tend to get along - as far as I observed. Nature being good nature, apparent when we joined an international crowd visiting Edinburgh Castle, high atop volcanic Castle Rock, a site first inhabited in the Iron Age and by Scottish monarchs across the centuries.

And, when we left the ship in Dublin to tour Powerscourt, one of the world's great gardens, the bark of a single redwood tree planted 200-years ago seemed as stunning a reminder of our Earth's beauty as a space station view of the planet.

Observations on a Storm Crossing

Aboard the Regal Princess, a ship as long as the Chrysler Building is tall and carrying nearly 5,000 international passengers and crew, we headed west across the Atlantic Ocean. The experienced captain set a course between two hurricanes, and, during one phase of the crossing, he ordered the ship's fog horn to blow every few minutes, a reminder of the perils of the sea. The captain also drew a packed audience to his lecture about navigating the North Atlantic using international forecast resources.

Swells rising around the huge ship proved to be a startling sight; yet passengers settled in to read or play trivia or board games; hit the gym or track, met for dinner and cocktails; filed into the theater to watch a show or a lounge to hear the classical trio or dance; and set the casino’s slot machines to pinging. They also got along.

Unprecedented Aberration

So, how do we account for the recent isolationist America rhetoric spewed in - of all places - the United Nations General Assembly? And how does any adult, let alone the leader of the free world, mock a teenage girl defending the science of a shared planet?

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called this period of history an aberration. It's a departure from the norm created when some voters reportedly figured they'd, "Gave the other guy a chance." We awaken each day to face the latest "unprecedented" aberration from the other guy.

It's reported one-third of Americans read his tweets, 10,000+ official communications from a president, dense with lies and cruel remarks unbecoming his office. Two-thirds of us groan and ask what will it take for his wilting party to stand up for the country. We can see abandoning global allies is perilous and consequential. And, laughing off environmental alarms seems as reckless as charting a course into a hurricane with a joker in the wheelhouse.

Of course, September’s preposterous departure from reality is old news. What we hear now are his "jokes" that strain credulity. And threats of civil war if anyone dares to right this ship of state.

As Americans plan their 2019 Thanksgiving celebrations, they may just sigh, “Catch you in 2020.”

Dinah Shore, the singer who in 1953 first belted out See the USA in Your Chevrolet, might be dismayed. Driving through municipalities large and small in 2019, an aura of defeat pervades. There are few good jobs or promised infrastructure projects for those Main Streets. Faint hope enters here, and many hopeful depart. This is true for black and white residents. Still, those who stay in hometowns to work for change merit applause, not the low blows of tweets by an heir to a slumlord dynasty.

Our Legacy

President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 referred to “the sin of slavery,” and the route between Florida and New York remains a shame-laced chronicle of this country’s indifference to an historic wrong and our continued wrongheadedness.

Making stops to pump gas at new and bygone-era gas stations prove telling: The stations second as food markets for impoverished locals, reminding us that few shopping options exist save Walmart.

Our I-95 corridor trek normally occasions a night in Savannah, Georgia, with tourist dollars spent on a hotel, meals and souvenirs. But, such a visit in 2019 would suggest we're okay with the state’s scandalous voter tampering, suppression of black votes and misogynistic anti-choice laws. Not so.

The Road Traveled 

A pickup-truck looms in the rear view mirror like a spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the driver toys with bashing the tail end of our car. Finally, the high and mighty one surrenders to our speed-limit obstinacy and zooms past, flashing a confederate flag. Big and bad those rebels, state after state. How many Tiki torches rattle around truck beds for the next rally?

Deliverance Belligerence

On roads up North, even when we hang back from pickup trucks flaunting confederate flags, the drivers play out Deliverance games all the way up the Hudson River. Strutting with that flag - a symbol of slavery - and gigantic American flags equals yet another in-your-face way to “Own the liberals.” I forget what they hate about liberals. Latte-drinking? Kale eating? Oh, yeah, defending human rights.

Outright belligerence is not confined to former slave states. In July 2019, stores from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts reportedly stocked one thousand – yes, 1,000 “Feel Better Dolls,” i.e. rag dolls of little black kids - with instructions to slam the doll’s head against a wall to feel better. The manufacturer is based in Westchester County’s Verplank, NY.

We did this. We’re still doing this.

"With Malice Toward None"

It's well past time to honor President Lincoln’s call for action, “With malice toward none." In the current toxic environment, it seems a stretch. And, given the chill that meets appeals for those in need, let alone for reparations for slavery, who knows when we will proclaim the second part of Lincoln's vision: “With charity for all.”  Christmas, maybe? Now that people can say it's "Merry."

Reggie Morrisey

Note I: I'll see you in October.

Note II: The song lyrics of See the USA in Your Chevrolet

“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five

The “present” seems to be gone before the word leaves our lips.  What do we make of what is ours in time - the dash between our not existing and being done with existing?

More than one sage suggested that continually deciding, “Now, I’m happy” and “Now, I’m happy” could stretch moments into relatively wide hours of wonder and contentment.  I think of experiences that were mine to keep, and they stretch across my life, summoned by a scent, sight, touch, taste or sound. Take the music in, Down to the Moon, a New Age album released in 1986 by jazz harpist Andreas Vollenweider.

When, in 1987, I took my 10-year old daughter on a July outing to the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, I turned on my Walkman for the album’s title song as we stood in the dark and faced an enormous tank where a female Beluga whale held court. As if suddenly aware of newcomers, the whale swam up to the glass separating her from us and smiled. As the whale rounded the tank in one sweeping passage after another. Vollenweider's music played. Giddy with pleasure, we smiled back, waved and pressed open palms against the glass, as close to cheering for such royalty as the laws of nature allowed.

Turns out, in the 34 years of her life, the enchanting Kathy the Beluga always smiled and interacted with visitors. In 2004, the New York Times ran the celebrity whale's obituary in which her keepers were quoted as calling her a queen. Millions of aquarium visitors experienced this delightful creature. When I hear Vollenweider’s music, I picture the whale smiling. Ever now, she is mine.

Given the mandate to "choose the contents" of our minds as Gerald Jampolsky wrote in the classic Love Is Letting Go Of Fear (now in its third edition), being selective in what occupies the mind is a decision that takes resolve. With the daily chaos reported in the news, summoning up and taking notice of a pleasant scent, sight, touch, taste or sound ushers in serenity.

One trauma specialist refers to this idea as parenting oneself.  It requires deliberate mindfulness for sensory timeouts, especially in the aftermath of trauma. This is healing work, replacing an upsetting thought with a keenly felt pleasant experience. Some July 4th celebrants might even recognize such a mental exercise as the simple "pursuit of happiness" prized in our Bill of Rights. 

Our dilemma as Americans is mindfulness of the upsetting state of incarcerated children whose families claim refugee status at our country's southern border. The New York Times reported in June "government lawyers in court argued that they should not have to provide soap or toothbrushes to children."

One rights advocate, in describing the stench at a Texas facility, said conditions were the worst she's seen in 12 years of inspections: “So many children are sick, they have the flu, and they’re not being properly treated,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She observed guards for Customs and Border Protection "wearing full uniforms — including weapons — as well as face masks to protect themselves from the unsanitary conditions."

For incarcerated children, "the present: how wide it was, how deep it was" will forever prompt Pavlovian triggers to harken back a time capsule of terrible days and nights, not family outings. It will take tremendous resolve for them to move beyond the experience. Gazing up in a cage, there is the vision of guns in holsters and masked men who look down on them and fear getting sick. For officers ordered to contain the children in an emergency created by abhorrent policy and for those of us who abhor it, that image is ours to keep. 

Yet, we seem frozen in the silence of spectators observing a once-unthinkable current event. This is happening. But it appears to be a case of human-family crisis being met with, "They  asked for it." Even the release of humanitarian funds comes with non-humanitarian strings.  

So, what will move us beyond Executive Branch malfunction and Legislative Branch stalemate on immigration reform?  The correct answer is not silence.

How to help.

Contact your representatives

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
by Anais Nin 

Since 2011, periodic emails have referenced “Our Wednesday, Your Thursday?” 

That year, after boarding a packed train in Cork, Ireland, we faced two recent arrivals to our car. Soon, we sat knee to knee with this Australian couple. Laughing about the tight quarters, I joked, “We are your new best friends.” But it was no joke; we remain friends across the globe all the way to 2019.

Shared Experiences

When we arrived in Killarney that September day, we  met with Gayl and Allan in a quiet corner of the International Hotel and shared an impromptu Happy Hour of cheese, crackers, grapes, chocolates and a bottle of wine.

Over the next three days, we experienced the sights and sounds of Southwest Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, watching a demonstration of whip-smart dogs herding sheep, shopping in the hamlet of Sneem and touring a castle and national park. At dinner between sets of raucous pub music, we shared more travel stories – they six months into an 10-month gala retirement trip around the Northern Hemisphere and we flying to Paris for a week's stay after Ireland.

The travel tales flowed into observations about life in the United States and Australia, about career to career, family to family. With they recently retired and another three years to my retirement, it was a case of work life was or will soon be over. Unknown territory, indeed. 

The Virtual Life 

Not a whole lot of difference between our work or world views, but 14 hours and an International Date Line between our days. Thanks to Skype and then FaceTime, we’ve stayed in touch; they having their next day’s breakfast juice, we checking in before the previous night’s dinner. The “best of times” and “worst of times” made their appointed rounds for each of us, episodes we could talk about frankly as friends.

In 2016, they could not join us when we set out for a fishing village in the south of France. Instead, we FaceTimed to hear about their travels around Asia.

In 2017, we toyed with the idea of meeting up for a Panama Canal cruise, but ship schedules and seasonal disparities (their winter, our summer) got in the way. Instead, we switched plans, leading to meeting in Hawaii in March 2018.

Another Hotel Lobby

Nearly seven years since Ireland, we met Gayl and Allan in the bustling lobby of Oahu’s Park Shore, a boutique hotel located by a city pier jutting into the Pacific where surfers and sunset dazzle and just across from city gardens, a zoo and Diamond Head.

On the first night at the hotel’s Japanese-owned restaurant, we gestured our way through ordering dinner. Another night, we hosted an ABC Market takeout dinner in our hotel room on the third-floor pool deck, the breezes balmy. Next, they hosted a dinner in their 18th-floor room overlooking the ocean and mountain, the balcony view stunning.

With rainbows rising above the spine of Oahu’s mountain range, we all sailed away from the shore to snorkel with sea turtles and a school of blue fish milling like extras on a movie set. Next, we rented a car for a drive to the North Shore and then toured somber Pearl Harbor before boarding a ship to cruise to Maui, Hilo and Kona on the Big Island and Kauai. Since our friends preferred touring volcanoes and we were drawn to tropical gardens, we took separate excursions, meeting at night for the ship’s entertainment or dance clubs.

To Meet Again

It was hard to say goodbye to these fun-loving people, and we thereafter commiserated on FaceTime. Trying on practical retirement masks, we said 2019 would be a quieter year, until it wasn’t. If all goes well, we’ll see Gayl and Allan in Fort Lauderdale in November before they take a Panama Canal cruise, We’ll have tales to tell about a second cruise from Copenhagen to New York.

For the November get together, I’ll suggest we drive 22 miles to Butterfly World, since we have something in common with its 20,000 flighty creatures who gather from all over the world, find life intoxicating and, in the cosmic scheme of things, don’t live very long.

Cruising by Hawaii's Kauai coast 4,000-foot mountain range - 2018

Riding a motorcoach by Ireland's Southwest Coast - 2011

They arrive as perfect strangers: Distressed by alien surroundings, they cry, wail and appeal to our humanity. It’s all “Feed me, cloth me, comfort me.” Such dependency can consume our attention for years. 

I owe the term “perfect stranger” to author Barbara Ehrenreich in describing her own newborn child in Living with a Wild God.

Newborns

I get the “perfect” part. Parents refer to their babies as perfect: moving, breathing, with 10 fingers and 10 toes.

Ehrenreich’s more clever, cautious observation: Our babies are strangers. We have no idea about their likes and dislikes; how much they’ll eat and whether it will only be certain foods; how they’ll feel in the clothes we buy; if they will be prone to ear aches or not readily fall asleep. Getting to know such facts can consume our attention for years.

It is painful to hear a grown man or woman recall no attempts by parents to make them feel comfortable, at home and wanted as children, even more upsetting to learn they had been physically or emotionally abused or left to survive on their own devices, as in Tara Westover's memoir Educated.  As we know too well from news reports, some parents do damage their young. But some people rise above awful family histories, determined not to pay misery forward.

Modern Adoption

Nicole Chung, author of the 2018 All You Can Ever Know, describes the unease of not having a family history beyond that of her adoptive parents. As a daughter of Korean immigrants to the Northwest, she grew up in a predominantly white, rural corner of Oregon where discrimination was rampant. The taunts belied her white parents' insistence she belonged. Nicole loved her parents but grieved about being "grafted onto a family tree" and ached to locate her biological-family's tree. Her reflections on becoming a mother and on learning family secrets make for an engrossing story of a perfect stranger.

Modern Complexities

Equally thought-provoking is the book Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love. Author Dani Shapiro uncovered alarming, unintended consequences in the use of sperm donor programs. In keeping their involvement in a donor program a secret, her parents did not seem intent on deceiving her. They just wanted a baby. Yet, she was left to mourn the loss of a self-image as her acclaimed father's daughter. She tracked down likely sperm donors, revealing how intrusion into the lives of sperm donors introduces a host of awkward dilemmas. If Dani's donor's sperm was used in creating other babies, she has quite a few half siblings to track down. What to do with all of them is another story.

Heredity

The PBS series Finding Your Roots, hosted by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., unearths the family histories of influential people, including tales of immigrants, asylum seekers and slaves. Prominent blacks and mixed-race guests have learned their ancestors were once slaves, some with families separated, some children of slave owners. It is rare to see a guest guided into his or her past who does not shed tears for the suffering of their enslaved ancestors. 

Recognizing life isn’t always easy, Sesame Street, in 50 years of enlightening children, little by little added segments about homeless children and children of jailed parents, adoptees, children with autism and other challenging mental or physical conditions. It may soon have to air segments for asylum seekers and former slaves, for children of sperm donors and surrogates.

The Ultimate "Us"

Such modern scenarios demand a change of assumptions and heart about who belongs here. Yet, half of America revolts from even thinking of the traumatized children separated from their families at the Mexican border. Swayed for decades by the cavalier policies of Ronnie Reagan and now Donny Trump, this group scoffs at paying a penny to make any strangers’ lives bearable or at assuming an “It Takes a Village” mentality when we are obviously members of a planet-sized village, and there’s no getting off it alive. Strangers meet too many stony faces here. 

In the poem, “Famous,” Naomi Shihab Nye writes: “I want to be famous to shuffling men / who smile while crossing streets, / sticky children in grocery lines, / famous as the one who smiled back.”

I’m with Naomi in acting as if honoring our shared humanity matters. 

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day, Stranger!

I have a grandson born on April 22, Earth Day, and a granddaughter born April 26. In between, I celebrate the birth of William Shakespeare on April 23.

For the lifetimes of my grandchildren, I wish "Much Ado About Nothing," though portends suggest ado, fuss, trouble, bother, upset, agitation, commotion, stir, confusion, tumult, disturbance, uproar and furor aplenty about this precious planet.

Other than writing comments to The New York Times and asides here, I'm left to accept that my grandchildren's planetary future is not in my hands; yet I must still help those scurrying to change course as the climate changes. Of the latter, it "ain't over yet." Not with Arctic drilling. Not with rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Not with turbines powering windmills, no matter what "they say."

Thank you, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Fund, and Audubon Society to name a few.

For this April, I share images of artwork by my late brother Ed Morrisey honoring earthlings of many ilk and poems meant to bring attention to the wonder I've experienced on our planet. Happy Earth Day!

Mother Mine
Canaan Valley, WV
Circa 1980

I heard a benign soliloquy
from assertive Mother Earth
as busy waters scrubbed 
against a washboard ripple of
Appalachian stone.

Her utterances never spent,
she persisted with gravity
through sun-flecked woods alone,
scouring a glacial slope
in puddles, twists and turns.

Bolder leaves fell in with her,
gliding to a stop at rocky pools.
Hemlocks leaned as I did,
callow fellows caught
and loath to stray.

Winds nudged to hint
of a larger world,
yet nothing rose above
her liquid voice.

An older woman,
assertive Mother Earth,
bent with grace
to her everyday chores.
A domestic in easy discourse.

And we,
seedlings
of this rich estate,
who would nestle
for a last chill nap,
daydreamed
upon a velvet lap,
and lingered.

With Headset on Winter,
One for the Birds
St. Petersburg, FL
February 1996

The cello swells,
High tide on Smacks Bayou.
Pelicans "carpe diem."
I dance in place.

Appearing to sit serene,
within I twirl,
I leap with grace.
Dove on a dock.
Nearly fifty...
that a shock.

Paul Winter's music soars.
Gulls in high time glide.
A flock of geese
takes lettered form
and low-key ducks
tip wings upon the water.

From afar I am a statue
in the sax and cello's wake.
But I dance their jig to life.
Flight does not elude me.

Within,
my hair twirls round.
Ruffles of a skirt
will never cease.

My heart beats
like the hummingbird.
The bored raven crows.
The egret has my number.
One with them,
I choose motion
over slumber.

Training to be
"an older" woman,
my foot taps.
I am still dancing.

Rising
Cedar Key, FL
2009

Cedar Key is the coast of nature.
Yes, nature prevails.
The tide rolls out
where mullets fly
and oysters rise in a
field of puffy bar.

A full-moon spring-tide takes
more than a foot of water down.
They say it takes an elephant gun
to down a braying air boat
as it thunders by.

Even black mangroves spring up here.
Like olive trees with their green berets.
Like Rosewood blacks who fled
the redneck terror of the Roaring Twenties.

Cedar Key plays home to migrant snowbirds.
Some in condos – with binoculars.
Some high stepping through stressed bars.

They dare not eat the oysters
for the poison rising up
inside the earthen shells.

To live and die by spring tides.
Slowly, the bar fades
and beds are made
as water rises.

Slowly, the church bell tolls,
worn as the creaky dock
where big boats wait their day.

As hogs rev their motors
outside Annie’s Café,
soon to cruise,
we ready our canoes.

Oh, Breath of Life
St. Petersburg, FL
June 21, 1996 

Oh, breath of life,
you take our breath away.
Tug the heart
while breaking night and day.
Blushing sky, hued parable afar.
Storied mounds of clouds
mask who we are.

Tropic June, a moist beatitude,
addresses tree and blossom,
man and dove.
While palms hold sway,
mere humans swoon with love
for arching rainbow,
crystal dome above.

Yes, atmosphere,
the pressures rise and fall.
Drops descend in seas
upon a street. 
Your chemistry is simple,
air to water, back to air,
nearly all we crave
to be complete.

Yet farther out,
we circle round ourselves.
Fending limits
natural life proposes.
Farther one day
three rings left behind,
we aim for space where
we can stick our noses.

Audio Options

Click the links below to hear recordings of a poem about a lunar eclipse and an ode to Shakespeare.

Eclipsed          

Happy Birthday, Bill Shakespeare

Note

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They're all around here - treasured works of art acquired over the years. Since I hadn't given thought to the artist’s gender when acquiring two and three-dimensional works of art, I was startled to realize how many pieces were created by women. 

In this Women's History Month, I draw your eye to the works that grace our lives, some found while living in New York, California and Florida and some in travels. What the artists really have in common is that their works stopped me in my tracks. Seems a common theme is, “I have something to say.” That is how these works speak to me. Women's pursuit of their own styles and voices is nothing short of NASTY. As I present these artists' works to you, where possible, you'll find links to sites that feature their work. I hope the images shown here do them justice.

Anna Lowther : We met in passing at a Westchester County, New York, outdoor art show in the 1980s as I explored her booth full of what for me seemed to be affordable oil paintings. Anyone might say, as a single mom and freelance writer, I should not have bought art that day. But, notice how well she painted the lace. I do every time I look at it.  

 Barbara & Joe Ott pottery

Barbara Ott left the corporate world to focus on her pottery and ceramic wall art in Clearwater, Florida. Her husband, Joel Ott, also discovered his passion for making pottery. They collaborated on the work shown here. Barbara's word has always been "Peace." It comes through in her art.  

Carmen Carmen Cruz teaches watercolor painting at The Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, Florida. We've never met, though I was drawn to this painting in the Morean's Gift Shop.  

Brooke Allison is a Master Pastelist of the Pastel Society of America and a prime mover and elder stateswoman of the Tampa Bay Pastel Society.  Just knowing she persevered for decades as an artist and promoted the art of pastels is an inspiration. 

 Brooke Allison, still life, pastel

Dorrie Rifkin: Friends with a house on the New Jersey Shore took us to an exhibit in the Victorian mansion that is home to the Orange County Artist Guild. Here I came upon this reproduction of a watercolor of Grand Central Station that simply had to leave the state with me. The work captures the shimmering hustle of the place I’ve rushed many times. 

D.M. Weil:  During a summer stay in the Hudson Valley, we visited the studio and huge gallery of D.M Weil in in New Paltz, New York, and discovered a person who makes abstract paintings that delight my eye. 

Katherine Mathissen "Bliss"

Katherine Mathissen: The artist’s booth at a Gasparilla Festival of Arts is where I both cried when I saw this sublime statue and immediately christened it “Bliss.” She is good to have around as a reminder that a strong woman can go through hell. She does not stop to take pictures.

Kate Carney: Strolling through the historic St. Petersburg Coliseum for a Cool Art Show one July, I discovered Kate Carney, a Florida artist who grew up and studied art in England. Her seascapes and landscapes prompted an immediate internal dialogue, “Which one to buy.” Kate created an array of small paintings, mindful of average-sized wallet and wall space. 

Maggie Thomas, Camarilla, California artist and friend to my late brother Ed Morrisey painted him as he played his recorder. I treasure this reproduction as an example of Maggie’s unique style and testimony to their loving relationship.

M. Christiano,  Still Life in Red

Melissa Christiano: When Melissa had studio space in downtown St. Petersburg, her friendship with my husband, Vincent Mancuso, who also rented space there, led us all to hours of conversation about creativity. Her soft Southern accent, humor and talent endeared her to us. Her death at 42 was a blow to all who knew her. 

Rebecca Skelton is a gifted artist in many mediums. At her studio at ArtLofts over Florida CraftArt Gallery in St. Petersburg,  I was able to see works in progress and to acquire these paintings. Along with her husband photographer, Joe Walles, she is an appreciated artist and friend of the road

L. Schnakenberg oil

Lois Schnakenberg: I came upon this 50-year old oil painting in 2013 at an exhibit at Unframed Gallery in New Paltz, New York, and I spoke to the artist. She had spent her life teaching and creating art. This painting captures the beauty of the Hudson Valley, which draws rock climbers and hikers to venture way beyond the beaten path, just as Lois did.

S. William's original

Sandra Williams: This artist’s Fine Art America page attests to her love of wildlife. I was visiting her former Nature of Art Gallery in gulf-side Pass-a-Grille, Florida, when she hung this plein-air painting of a nearby alleyway where we often biked. It was love at first sight in the gallery and thereafter in our living room.  

S. Schorr pottery

Stephanie Schorr is a potter and owner of Craftsman House Gallery in St. Petersburg, who created one of my most playful works of pottery. The pinched nose of the mustached gent on the side of the piece makes me smile. Seems a good place to put him.

Wende Caporale graciously presented me with this pastel portrait of my eldest daughter whom Wende painted when, as a teenager, my daughter posed for week-long portrait classes led by Wende's husband, Daniel Greene. Both are acclaimed artists. What more can I say?

Martha Kemp's clay studies proved irresistible whenever I entered her studio in the late 1990s at the communal St. Pete Clay Company in the old railroad station on 20th Street South. The pale, saucy woman in the Adirondack chair seems to have stepped out of the water and is about to get a strapless tan. I call her "Girl Friend." The two ladies pictured seem of other eras as they assume a, "Not to be disturbed" pose. 

A popular clutter-freer, Marie Kondo, author of "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" suggests, when determining what to keep and what to dispense from our lives, we hold an object in our hands to see if it sparks joy. When I conduct this experiment, all I feel is joy.

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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
quotation from poem by Mary Oliver.

With all the madness unleashed in our world, thank goodness, I don’t run to the frig when I’m upset. I read, i.e., these days I mostly listen to books.

I signed up with Goodreads, a "social cataloging website that allows individuals to freely search its database of books, annotations, and reviews.” Aiming to be organized in my approach to reading, I assigned myself the outsized 2018 goal of reading 100 books. For a person who has always tended to count gym circuits, swim laps and bike miles, the site is as handy as a Fitbit and far less strenuous. In December, looking at the Goodreads stats sent in an email, I saw I had gotten 75% there. Like my 10-year old self, blissfully walking home from the library, a stack of books piled to my chin, my eyes still tend to be bigger than … you know.

Of the books I read, fiction on best-selling lists too often earned my dimmest views and fewest star ratings. I did get hooked on “Big Little Lies” by Australian author Liane Moriarty – book and television series. And, I boarded more than one ferry to Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard with Elin Hilderbrand to hear how some rich woman fell for a hunky local carpenter or gardener or whatever. I happened upon gems by relative unknowns and followed Amazon five-star commenters to a dozen books, only to end up with a two-star “Meh.”  

Rather than waste your time on snark, I offer notes made about a baker’s dozen of nonfiction and fiction books. In my “one wild and precious life,” I will track down such books and write whenever I’m not on the move. As the saying goes, “Buckle up.” Great reads could be a healthy diversion and no-calorie route through your new year.

Note: Speaking of being on the move: My husband, Vincent Mancuso, was prompted to do the painting of Muir Woods after seeing (and hugging) a thousand-year old coastal redwood in California in March. The acrylic work is called "10 x 100 Years" and was shown at the St. Petersburg Morean Arts Centers' 100th anniversary exhibit.

Nonfiction

The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory
by Checkoway, Julie

This book by Julie Checkoway ranks with "The Boys in the Boat" as a masterful tale of human endeavor in sports. Both nonfiction works describe athletic triumphs achieved at great personal cost in the 1930s, with the Three-Year Swim Club moving through later years.
The author seems so well acquainted with competitive swimming, I assumed she had personal experience with the thousands of hours swimmers devote to achieving mastery. Ms. Checkoway is simply a great writer with thousands of hours logged in her writing craft and research.

Her turn of phrase made me smile. For example, she described sports writers covering an amazing swim event as staying up way past their bedtimes “swatting at their typewriter keys.” Such artful description occurs again and again. She also refers to tidbits of the lively sports writing of the era and to local Maui newspapers in her first-rate reporting and writing. This is a thoroughly engrossing story that gives one hope for the human race.

A History of the World in 100 Objects
by Neil MacGregor

As a BBC Radio 4 and British Museum 100-part radio series written and presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor, it's taken time to finish this unique audio book, mostly while driving. The program should be savored for its object choices and keen observations. The writing is very fine, as are contributions from experts in the history of different periods and places. I've learned a lot I never would have considered - about the "Iron Age nouveau rich" onward to the 2000s.

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring
by William Souder

Well documented biography of the much-maligned, courageous Rachel Carson who warned of the dangers of over use of pesticides and of radiation from above-ground nuclear testing. Considering the current political environment, with threats of launching strikes against a country with nuclear weapons, it is a sober read. Rachel would not be shocked at the apparent lack of concern over radiation and nuclear fallout. It didn't faze a lot of people in the 1950s and 1960s, despite the ill effects on humans, animals and the planet. I recall the taste the pesticides sprayed over populated areas back then. The author of the biography claims that decades later chemical companies game the regulatory system to keep getting approved for use. All I can say is, "Thank you, Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and all forces who speak for Rachel today." See also: Two Thoughts: Venturing out and into the Mind 

Feel Free: Essays
by Zadie Smith

In her recent book of essays, writer Zadie Smith interviewed rapper Jay-Z and quoted Big L Larry Coleman in a way that made me stand up and notice rappers – one a dude I may have heard of in passing and the other I tagged as husband of Beyoncé. Big L said, “I’m so ahead of my time, my parents haven’t even met yet.” 
The fact that rappers go deep was new to me. Rap is a music wave I never attempted to ride, not in the 1990s and not today. (After reading more Big L quotes, turns out he wasn’t known for saying anything else that wasn’t fatally obscene to me.) 

Smith’s comments about the brilliant improv comics Key & Peele reminded me just how excellent they are at assuming the interior life of other characters. Famous for the Obama Anger Translator skits and both biracial, it was Key who, on a gap-year trip to England, observed a very different black experience and the way blacks are perceived: “It’s all cultural. None of it’s about melanin.”  

An Ivy league professor, Smith defends the public library as “The only thing left on the … street that doesn’t want either your soul or your wallet.”  A London daughter of a Caribbean mother and much older British father, she approaches the touchy subject of Brexit from afar, on a trip to Northern Ireland, which, like Scotland, was royally shafted by the plan and then shares remarks from her mother, who said an old white women announced to a multiracial group on a London street that now they’ll all have to go. Smith offers so much food for thought she makes me picture a chef with an appetite for exotic ideas, a pantry filled with the best words and an assortment of carving knives for her rapier wit.

The Order of Time
by Carlo Rovelli

Like many reviewers, I was struck by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli's ability to express complex theories beautifully and by my struggle to grasp them.

In the comedy movie "Defending Your Life," humans are referred to affectionately as "little brains." That's about where I stand. I do like my science mixed with a poetic turn of phrase and lots of quotes by great thinkers. I do not expect to join that group by mere exposure to great ideas, but I will appreciate the exposure, admire the thoughts and cling to the evidence that many humans revel in thinking. In today's deplorable, anti-intellectual climate, I find books such as this comforting. I will read it again ... and again. 

Wolf: The Lives of Jack London
by James L. Haley

Fascinating story of Jack London's life and works. I appreciated the research into London's adventures at sea and in reporting the San Francisco earthquake/fire and foreign wars and in the hustling he had to do to make a living and support loved ones.

For All the Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula for the World's Favourite Drink
by Sarah Rose

A breezily written account of world history that offered a lot of facts that were new to me. I enjoyed the main story of Robert Fortune’s rogue journey into forbidden parts of China to collect tea seeds and leaves and his attempts to start up the business in India. Following the author’s many side bars became challenging. The unexpected story of the term “bite the bullet” with its demand that 19th Century Indian soldiers lick pork and cow fat lubricating their bullets demonstrates the brutal cost of cross-cultural ignorance, ending as it did in massacres. Whatever colonization and theft of the China tea industry gained for the West in tea was more than lost in tales of human slave trade and drug traffic. The audio would have benefited from a professional narrator. The author’s voice is far too cheery and upbeat for the trickery and human misery her research reveals.

Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
by Joan Druett

A remarkable story of two shipwrecked crews on opposite sides of the same desolate island south of New Zealand in the 1860s. One group more than survived due to the leadership of a competent captain who kept a log while most of the hopeless, poorly led other group perished. The author tells of the valiant captain's ingenuity, courage and a refusal to despair when pitted against terrible conditions versus surrender to circumstance by a group that lacked direction. Well researched newspaper accounts and diaries. A gripping read.

Take You Wherever You Go
by Kenny Leon

Kenny Leon offers an insightful memoir and stories of acting and modern theater life. A native of Florida, he occasionally put me in mind of Andrew Gillum, who ran for and lost the 2018 governor's race, particularly in both men’s comments about the influence of a beloved grandmother.

As a northerner who has been exposed to the bruising inequality faced by black men and women in the south, I admire Mr. Leon’s courage, grace and perseverance. Some sweet day, racial prejudice must fade. It hasn’t yet. I was happy to read how his St. Petersburg high school experience markedly changed the course of his life and how hard he worked to meet the requirements of programs offered. No one handed him anything, but he ran with his opportunities. His book contains many life lessons and interesting stories of theater greats, including the brilliant playwright August Wilson.

My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie
by Todd Fisher

Todd Fisher’s book brims with well-told and interesting family stories. His childhood alone is a marvel of indulgence, wild dreams coming true versus the pain of his father’s indifference. Todd’s love is palpable, making unflattering revelations about his brilliant bi-polar sister simple fact. He and Carrie Fisher made their way through a mine field of disappointment that must have tried their faith in others. Debbie Reynolds experienced jaw-dropping betrayals. How they all kept going in is remarkable. A lively and thought-provoking read.

Fiction 

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
by Kathleen Rooney

Cleverly written day in the life of a feisty 84-year old New Yorker.  Thoroughly original. Quirky. Captures 1980s Manhattan in simple human exchanges.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
by Moshin Hamid 

Mohsin Hamid has come upon a brilliant way to convey the drive to succeed that is our human birthright. He addresses the reader as if he or she is confronting the main character's dilemmas, fears and turning points. His compassion is simply breathtaking. I hope to read more of his work.

My Name Is Lucy Barton
by Elizabeth Strout

Reading this book is like listening to a seat mate in a darkened plane while on a red-eye flight. The woman shares wrenching details of an anguished childhood and of her adulthood as it unfolded. The temptation is to nod and listen. Questions do come to mind about motherly love and fatherly insanity; but, in the end, I’m inclined to marvel at her will to survive and thrive.

Fin & Lady
by Cathleen Schine  

Fin Lady by Cathleen Schine, a novel that takes place in the 1960s in the wealthier environs of Connecticut, Manhattan and Italy’s Isle of Capri, is a delightful read. Connecticut and Manhattan always interest me as story locations. As a person long ago enchanted by Capri, I thought Ms. Schine’s depiction of the island’s allure was near perfection. How lovely to be back in Capri in her shimmering prose. 

The Lady of this story proves enchanting to all who meet her. Her pithy observations smack of Dorothy Parker in a prior era. Her restlessness serves as an underlying tension throughout the book, especially to the dependent, young brother Fin. I found the mystery of the narrator challenging but ultimately satisfying.  The author's command of the English language is superb.

Beware: Deplorable

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
by Jordan B. Peterson

 As a recent MP3 offering on Overdrive, I found the book surprisingly heavy handed on a “woman as chaos and man as order” theme. Seems that’s the way it was for centuries, and that’s the way it always will be. Like the flat earth theory.  

Given the current chaos generated by the allegedly manly occupant of the Oval Office, that notion about women didn’t quite seem scientific coming from a trained professional. Next came Peterson’s stroll into the Old Testament and Genesis. So what do we have brewing here? A misogynist, religious tome? Worse.I pressed the Pause button long enough to skim the reviews of 1-Star Goodreads commenters and found ample evidence of unbelief in Peterson’s creds as a scientist or a modern human being. As to a master of the healing arts, his is what I call the “Snap out of it!” school of therapy.

As an internet celebrity since 2016, he’s making money hand over fist with crowdfunding and by bolstering the egos of dejected young men who wouldn’t mind forcing women to marry them if the men aren’t doing well making a living and fear they’ll miss that woman boat.

Since I sometimes attempt to listen to the right wing to learn what’s on their 13th Century minds, I considered plowing through this book. But I do not believe this guy is on a beneficial track, nor is he the first sage to approach the topic of living life well. Dr. Wayne Dyer, author of “Your Erroneous Zone,” which sold 35 million copies, also spent decades reminding people to take responsibility for their actions and to be compassionate. Though Peterson talks of human suffering, he has no use for those who suffer. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with modern women either. Even the book's title begs credulity. If women represent chaos, Peterson’s rules are an antidote to women.

Also giving me pause: Millions have read Peterson’s book and watched his online performances, just as millions watch Fox News.