Scribbles and Photos

African Assortment Recently, I was asked by one of my nieces to write a letter for her "Me Book" - something she had been assigned to create in class.  This is what I wrote. October 2012  Elephant Cheeks I am writing this during a chaotic time for our country.   And I keep thinking about the young women in my life and what I’d like for each of you.   I want you to grow up in a Society where your work is equally valued as that of a man and you are in charge of your own body.    There needs to be a safety net that can catch you if you stumble and fall.   Most of all, I want you to live in a Society that embraces diversity and revels in the strength that brings us as a nation. You may have noticed that this is typed and not handwritten.  I am a person who treasures the freedom a keyboard gives me to write, to edit, and to write again.  It is true that I grew up in an era where we put pen to paper.  I progressed in sc...

This week, I learned a couple of new tricks (what is that saying about teaching old dogs?) -- and it's only Tuesday! Trick One:   PicMonkey This is one cool little program for making collages and will solve the issues I have with blogger when I want to do a blog that is mostly photos with very little text (e.g., Zebras:  Boys will be Boys ).  This is going to save me hours and is a hell of a lot easier than moving over to a blog platform that is more photo friendly.   Plus, it makes for more interesting visuals when posting to Pinterest.  Woo hoo! I doubt that it will lead to me being a more prolific poster though. Trick Two:  Depositing Checks from Home My first bank account was a savings account with a passbook.  Deposits, withdrawals were all recorded by hand -- requiring a visit to the bank, a paper deposit slip, and a bit of a wait in line.  That was followed by a checking account with -- gasp -- my very own checks and ...

Me in Tofino (by the B) Have you ever imagined a time when you are unable to make decisions for yourself?   Thought about who will watch out for you if you need medical care? Who knows how you would make decisions?   What data would you want?   Who knows what you think about life-prolonging treatments?   Who knows how you feel about dying?   Who knows you? Have you looked at that moment through the eyes of relatives and loved ones who may have no – or every -- legal authority to make decisions for you?   Gathered around you as you lie in a coma or nervously waiting outside the operating room as surgeons struggle to save your life?   Have you thought about the range of decisions that might need to be made for you?   Each decision likely leading to another decision -- with sadness and grief permeating them all.   We don’t like thinking about those types of things – at least my family doesn’t and I wouldn’t be surprised if yours ...

Gingko (Central Park) This week, I've been happily pinning to my 2012 Olympics Moments , a Board I created over on   Pinterest .  Since I last blogged about Pinterest, my enthusiasm has waxed and waned. There are things I like: It's easier than clipping things out of magazines/newspapers and filing them away. There are a lot of people out there collecting really cool things and organizing them using Pinterest. It's a perfect way to keep track of something like the Olympics. And things that I don't like: Pins that lead nowhere (you know, a photo of a really cool place with no comment as to where it is and if you click on the pin, you just get a bigger version of the picture);  Pins that lead nowh...... oh, I said that already.  Sorry. The copyright policy (it got better but it's not great). The sometimes insane focus of the social media world on Pinterest as a tool for building your brand. Pins that lead... A Rose is a Rose Nowhere. Ye...

I can still remember my father filming us kids with an 8 millimeter camera and my older brother still has his old video camera (big, clunky, requires a bag).  This video, on the other hand, was shot by my iPhone camera -- standing on the window ledge during yesterday's thunderstorm.  Amazing how far we've come in my short lifetime.  Add some sound effects, edit out the LONG minutes where there is no lightning i had a video in fairly short order. Of course there are a lot of videos featuring lightning over Manhattan so I'm not expecting this to go viral -- but it was fun making it.    Happy viewing! And no post would be complete without a picture from the archives.  This one from a trip to Botswana in 2007.   Zebras Looking

Lily Interiors I was an early aficionado of Trading Spaces   – and its British counterpart, Changing Rooms .  Like most British imports, the original was better (and less time-consuming) than its American counterpart (and for the record, I loved Lawrence).  One thing I hated about the shows was that design often trumped function.  People would ooh and ah over a room even if the TV had been located behind the couch (yes, that did happen).  I always admired the home owners that were willing to take the risk of ending up with an awful living space – particularly given that the overall budgets for each room were not all that ample.  I wonder how those rooms – slapped together in a 48-hour period – have held up over the years? Another place where form often trumps function is the magazine business.  Now that I have an iPad (and its precursor, a Kindle), I usually only pick up a magazine or two at the airport to get me through take off and landing....

I have been meaning to post some photos of the gardens at the Hotel Bel-Air  where I stayed with the intrepid Nancy B (aka the B) on my recent "mini-cay" in southern California. The gardens definitely offered an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with an older (and more cantankerous) camera -- the Olympus Utz.  For the record, it still has a mind of its own when focusing and it still performs just "so so" in low light.  On the positive side, it's a lot smaller and easier to carry around than my usual travel companion (the Olumpus 520 DSLR). I've waxed rhapsodic about the Bel-Air in a review,  Oasis in a Big City , on TripAdvisor.  It is a great hotel that came out of a two-year renovation ready to host the Hollywood elite -- and folks like me -- for another decade or so.  As for the flowers -- it's clear that a lot of hard work goes into the gardens and grounds and that work pays off in a big way. They grow them big and showy in southern Califo...