One of my new favorite words is Hiraeth [hee-REY-eth], a Welsh word that I learned this past spring. Hiraeth lacks an exact English counterpart. It refers to the a yearning for or missing of a space or geography. It comes with a mixture of wistfulness, sadness, grief, and nostalgia for an ideal place of the…
As spring gently glides into summer, I’m thrillled to report that for once in over a decade, spring has actually been spring with only a handful of scorcher, orange alert days here in “Hotlanta.” Spending 99% of our time at home as we do, it has been nothing short of glorious. My shaded back yard…
I was three or four years old, and the climb up on the piano bench seemed like Everest but worth the adventure. Roddy Noll was a teenager, and, if possible, even more mischievous than he’d been as a child. He knew exactly how to stir up trouble and fun in a heartbeat: Play boogie woogie…
For decades I’ve advocated the importance of playing in other media or learning new things in a different field from your primary one. Sherlock and his dubious violin playing are a prime example, but seriously, how much longer would the world have waited for Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (General or Special) if it weren’t for…
Spring is here in Atlanta with the trees in my backyard budding, the few flowers that have survived our dogs blooming, and the splash of purple from my neighbor’s redbud tree making me do a double take every time I look out the kitchen window. I love that color prevails! We are so fortunate to…
This week, the big, final, studio puzzle piece arrived: a custom built flat file drawer cabinet that looks like an antique map drawer cabinet in pristine condition. I’d had slight heart failure last fall when my husband cc’d me on an email he’d sent about getting it custom built. As a highly productive, tools and…
Save when you get or give my multi-award winning art book Giving Voice and feel good about helping those in need. The ability to make a difference for babies’ and children’s health is one of the reasons I turned my best creative work ever into a book that others could read. I donate 10% of…
