I’m on the Metro in Washington, D.C., in a crush of pink-hatted (mostly) women, many carrying protest signs. We are really doing this. We are feeling our power, many of us for the first time. It is an extraordinary thing to witness and be part of. Successive subway...
Here’s almost everything I know about trains. Trains are great generators of white noise. This is good if white noise helps you sleep. Trains and the people inside them also generate plenty of the other kind of noise. Is black noise the opposite of white noise? You’re...
Sometimes the best we can do is quote the smart, funny, insightful people we know. In the early 1980s, when Mike was in grad school working as a teaching assistant his roommate, Harry, who worked as a bartender at the Pinckney Street Hideaway in Madison, brought home...
This week’s Letter from Home is brought to you by the color yellow: egg yolks from free-range chickens, aspen leaves in the fall, and sunflowers that bloom along roadsides in August in northern Arizona, in fields and yards all over town, playing against the clear blue...
Eight weeks ago, I began what should have been a three-day project to empty my studio, clean and vacuum, spray for spiders (I know, but the studio’s been infested with black widow spiders, and I have a zero-tolerance policy on that score), then sort and replace the...
Enclosed you will find your copy of the 1959 Britannica BOOK OF THE YEAR … This handsome book provides you with unbiased, accurate information on every important phase of world affairs. It enables you to discuss current events and world developments with authority …...
My first grade teacher was scary. That’s what I remember, anyway. Mrs. Appel was old, for one thing. (Probably about my current age.) I remember her as intimidating, and not gentle or particularly kind. She was doing the best she could (aren’t we all), but she was...
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about snow, and about the color white, which led me to think about Agnes Martin and her serenely abstract (and mostly neutral) paintings. The simplicity of them caused some to discount her work, but in the end, she was...
This past weekend I participated in a panel discussion: “Life as a Successful Artist.” When I was first asked to do this a few weeks ago, I balked. I thought about what it means to be a successful artist. And whether (or not) I feel like one. Sadly, the success label...
Now that I’m finished procrastinating – the dishes are washed, the laundry is done, and my desk is cleaned off – I can sit down to write with a clearer head. Today is a day for being inside. After a temperate fall, snow has at last coated the bare aspens: white on...
