Tag Archives: about me

Part 4. Greetings, Salutations, and Food: All Mocked-Up. (2)

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The final dozen of mock-ups follow. I have seen lines of copy that is like mine, with similar ideas, appear on the shelves years after mine were printed. There’s no way to prove I came up with the ideas first, that’s how it is with trademarks and copyrights. I’ve thought of contacting a card company or two, (at the time I vowed not to deal with Hallmark which had a monopoly in the industry) to explore the possibility of producing a card line. There are other, smaller companies that are worth supporting. I’ll see.             … Continue reading →

Part 3. Greetings, Salutations, and Food: The Process All Mocked-Up (1)

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    In addition to finding the published greeting cards, I also found the things that led up to them: the stack that we chose not to print, my mock ups, the ink drawings (had to use special ink) the camera-ready acetate overlays, on and on. I remember standing in a print shop waiting for a xeroxing job. There was a girl behind the counter grinning, high, over-dramatically singing “That’s What Friends Are For.” It was 1986. There I was on the other side of the counter, thinking that I was creating a line of greeting cards. Was I nuts? … Continue reading →

Part 2. Greetings, Salutations, and Food (cards 13-24)

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The memories continue. Imagine walking into a card store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, near Lincoln Center, and seeing your cards on the racks. Flip one over and find that a sticker placed over the printed cost raised the price. I suppose that was the store’s way of making more money, but it didn’t help me any. I had a great time at the Trade Show at The Jacob Javits Center where I met the New Yorker cartoonist George Booth and got an autograph. One of my favorite cartoons.   Here is the second set of twelve cards. … Continue reading →

Part 1. Greetings, Salutations, and Food (cards 1-12)

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Let’s leave the present behind and travel back to the past to 1985 and 1986 when I was on the first of two teaching sabbaticals. It was the year I studied at The School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design, The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. I was hoping to start my own business and though the creative part was the biggest high of my life, the business part was a reality check. I studied entrepreneurship, business law, graphic design, greeting card design and wrote, designed (art, logos), copyrighted, trademarked and registered, and produced, one quarter … Continue reading →

204. Mother-Daughter→Husband Journey: I’m Gonna Sit Right Down

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Woman Writing at a Table by Thomas Anshutz   I received a call earlier from the Hospice social worker who visits my mother and shares her observations. My mother sleeps a lot and is living on sips of soup. She is thinner and thinner and undoubtedly more diminished since I saw her last week. She perks up briefly and listens. I think her blindness has engulfed her: Her eyes are clouding over. Candy, the aide, says she is living more and more in her memories. My mother told Candy that she wanted to write a letter to my father (gone … Continue reading →

Day By Day: We Are Never Over the Events of The Past

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Starvation.   It is 7:00 PM on Thursday, October 1, 2020. I am standing in front of the deli counter at Marino’s Market. My son is waiting in the car for me to come out with a load of groceries. We have just come from my mother’s apartment where Candy has greeted me. I have come to get my mother’s wheel chair. For my husband. My mother is bedridden and in and out of reality. My husband has a double MRI appointment the following day and I fear that he will not be able to walk from the car to … Continue reading →

From Dreams to Butterflies

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Here is an admission: I have been feeling low. Very low. Terribly, exceptionally low. And in the word lonely there is low. Lo and behold the times of plague, both universal and personal. This, is personal. This is putting into words the sick feeling I arise with each morning. The mother is virtually gone, and the husband, who is in limbo health-wise, weigh heavily on me. I wake up each morning and fear the new day. What else can possibly happen? What else must I take care of? What else is there to worry about: knowing full well that worry … Continue reading →

What My Step-Mother-In-Law Left Me

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My (step) mother-in-law and I had a lovely friendship. She passed away around 2005. Her son and his wife cleared out her apartment as soon as they could. They took art, furniture, a baby grand, mementoes, books, you name it: everything ended up in their home. But, I got what I wanted: the Portmeirion planter I had given her from a 1977 trip to Wales, and the lonely forgotten plants on her windowsill. Previously, when my in-laws lived in their home, they had an incredibly beautiful, possibly Peruvian or Ecuadorian clay pot purchased duringIt was large and sat in its … Continue reading →

Validating a Memory: The Neptune Raincoat Company

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  I was thinking about my father: he was a laborer. That’s what my mother said. I never knew what the words meant until later in my childhood, but I understood the memory of an image at a young age. I knew, for years, that my father worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, south of where we lived, on East Broadway and Canal Street. Somewhere, down there. I knew that he worked for The Neptune Raincoat Company. I remembered that in my early teens, while I was in Junior High School 104, that my father traveled to Elizabeth, … Continue reading →

Angels Among Us

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  We have been confined for three months of quarantine and my husband decided that he had to get a haircut. Mind you, he has neurological issues and very poor balance, he has lost a lot of muscle weight and his gait is unsteady. He has not been out alone nor has he driven in three months. In my mind he should not have gone out. But he is stubborn and overestimates his abilities. I was busy dealing with the issues with my mother. He went for a haircut, in this new world order of masks and gloves and lines. … Continue reading →

Nurture Nature: The Butterfly Project 2019: Transformation

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  At this point, there were seven pupae in the little tree we constructed and about a week went by. Then, one morning, this happened:   This was our first “baby.” We weren’t sure how to proceed: we ended up waiting a day to release it, it might have been the weather. The wings have to dry; this guy was ready to go and was very active. We gave it sugar water but it didn’t drink. And then the time came for the ceremony. The shortened version. It was very touching to let it go. We had done our job. … Continue reading →

Nurture Nature: The Butterfly Project 2019: Part 2: Fat “Cats …”

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What you witnessed in the previous blog post was the hatching of little egg gems and the morphing into tiny barely visible creatures, which, when fed well, grew and grew into chubby green multi-legged hungry guys, with black, white and yellow markings. In short, it was amazing. Life is a series of transitions and growth: Caterpillars are programmed to transition and they adapt to each stage so well, relying on innate messages to move on with their lives. We watched this occur with eight caterpillars. The eighth one was rescued after we explained to our neighbor that it was a … Continue reading →

Nurture Nature: The Butterfly Project 2019: part 1: Tiny Pearls …

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  This bright green and black fellow was noticed as we were about to pick parsley. A few years ago my over-the-fence-neighbor was lingering over his parsley and espied one of these guys, plucked it from its grasp on the little leaves, declared it a plague and dashed it to the ground. I thought it was the precursor to a monarch butterfly and my heart was crushed. My son and I did some research and learned that this was indeed going to be a butterfly: a black swallowtail. The research began and there was a lot to learn. Step-by-step we … Continue reading →

Nurture Nature: The Backyard Observations

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I noticed the sound of little birds lately. It is October 1st, and it sounds like spring. They chatter and twitter, unlike the mockingbirds of a few months ago that would sing, non-stop day and night, mimicking every sound they ever heard including car alarms. No, these are the sounds I remember from my childhood. Here’s a memory: We are in Brooklyn visiting my grandmother and aunt at #1 Tennis Court. (How’s that for an address?) And it’s time to leave, the sun is going down, the shadows are lengthening, the light is gold, the air is full of spring … Continue reading →

8. Life is a Journey, But This is a Trip: Less Oil, More Episodes?

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Just when I thought, or perhaps naively felt I was on the road to being “cured” of migraine episodes, an attack crept in through the back door and mugged me. Not so fast, you migraine-bully! I am taking the self-injection, newly released drug, Aimovig since July; I believe it has helped. Although my migraine pain previously was not debilitating—pain-wise, but more of an inconvenience that impacted on my functioning that I could manage via an Advil and/or migraine pill, I can report that I have had NO migraine vertigo attacks since using the shot. That’s great! The ocular migraine incidents … Continue reading →

Steller Story Series: A Charmed Life: Book 14: Firenze in Silver

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I have been photographing—and re-photographing my collection and designs; so this is a multi-faceted project: one project, the collecting, then the designing, begat another; the photography and presentation. Here is a link to the on-line presentation on Steller. If you are so inclined, download the Steller app. It is lovely the way the pages “turn.” The view is especially impressive on a large screen, as on a tablet. Feel free to comment!   Steller Link: Book 14    

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Steller Story Series: A Charmed Life: Book 13: ROMA in Silver

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  I have been photographing—and re-photographing my collection and designs; so this is a multi-faceted project: one project, the collecting, then the designing, begat another; the photography and presentation. Here is a link to the on-line presentation on Steller. If you are so inclined, download the Steller app. It is lovely the way the pages “turn.” The view is especially impressive on a large screen, as on a tablet. Feel free to comment!   Steller Link: Book 13  

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Steller Story Series: A Charmed Life: Book 11: My Italy: Enamel Shields

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  I have been photographing—and re-photographing my collection and designs; so this is a multi-faceted project: one project, the collecting, then the designing, begat another; the photography and presentation. Here is a link to the on-line presentation on Steller. If you are so inclined, download the Steller app. It is lovely the way the pages “turn.” The view is especially impressive on a large screen, as on a tablet. Feel free to comment!   Steller Link: Book 11    

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Steller Story Series: A Charmed Life: Book 10: The Bio Bracelet

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  I have been photographing—and re-photographing my collection and designs; so this is a multi-faceted project: one project, the collecting, then the designing, begat another; the photography and presentation. Here is a link to the on-line presentation on Steller. If you are so inclined, download the Steller app. It is lovely the way the pages “turn.” The view is especially impressive on a large screen, as on a tablet. Feel free to comment!   Steller Link: Book 10    

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