misc.
What is a voice?
My husband is mentoring a teenage boy who wants to be an artist. He’s been taking him to exhibitions and listening to his ideas, and the other day I said, “But have you explained to him what being an artist means?” “Well,” he replied, “not really….you see, it’s quite complicated….” Hmm. Yes. It is complicated. [...]
Horses are the new black.
According to the colour supplements and the fashion mags (and all those other mysterious forces that proclaim how we’ll all be wearing 50s tea dresses and lumberjack shirts this season), horses are this year’s fashion phenomenon. Apparently, anyone who’s anyone now spends all of his or her spare time mucking out, preferably at his or [...]
Still King.
ATTENTION all i-phone app designers. I know you’re out there, because someone’s made a fortune out of GPS software that helps you figure out where you left your car, software that makes your screen look like a pint of beer, or identifies any building in any city in the world. Yawn. My request is far [...]
Scotland, Ho.
I have a funny relationship with Edinburgh that began in 1977, when I first visited it — on December 21st. I’m still getting over the idea that a place exists where the sun rises after 11am and sets again at 3. No such problems in August, of course, but I always seem to arrive for [...]
Remembering August 1973
It’s after midnight and I can see the shooting stars from my bedroom window. Flashes of dramatic sheet lightning are lighting up the clouds over the sea at approximately regular intervals, and when they come, I can see the big sailboat that got its timing wrong and has been stuck for hours a little way [...]
Odd Thoughts
I once took my daughter to an old-fashioned child psychiatrist because she was having a desperate time with insomnia, and like all good shrinks, his thoughts turned immediately to death. Afterwards, I took him aside for a moment and said, “um, I think I might be to blame a bit here, because she’s very attentive [...]
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