Music

Thursday Doors—Manhattan apartment

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

Have you ever received a casual invitation that was likely not meant sincerely? You know, something like “you should come visit sometime”? Welp, I got one of those once and I decided to take the person up on it.

My husband’s cousin (an interior designer) and his husband (an investment firm VP) live in a very fancy Manhattan coop in Murray Hill. We saw them at a family gathering in Massachusetts in 2008 and they “encouraged” us to visit. Looking back now, I really don’t think they meant it. They were childless city folk and we had young kids.

Anyway, I reached out that summer because my friend and I wanted to go to NYC to see Legally Blonde on Broadway with our daughters and get this—they offered us their apartment for the weekend! They were going to be at their “country home” the weekend we were coming, but said we could stay in their city place by ourselves.

We couldn’t believe their place. First of all, it was HUGE. Second, it was decorated in the least kid-friendly way imaginable. There was glass everywhere, Nothing was left out on any surface, everything was completely smooth. There were sculptures (mostly of gorgeous male bodies) on pedestals that would have been deadly if knocked over.

It was actually comical. We were so afraid of breaking anything that we barely moved! At one point, I remember hunting for a coffee maker in their exquisite, smooth-surfaced kitchen (a note said it was in “the appliance garage”) but then just giving up and going out for coffee.

This interior hallway door gives you the vibe of the place—smooth, orderly and very adult.
The huge living room/dining room area
Sculptures on display
A bathroom
The girls sitting very carefully in the HUGE living room (remember this is in midtown Manhattan)
The smooth and baffling kitchen where I couldn’t figure out how to make coffee
Getting cast autographs after Legally Blonde
A fun weekend—and we left that apartment just as we found it. Nothing broken 😅

I realize I’m not using Dan’s Thursday’s Doors in the usual way. I search my photo file for “door” and some door pops up that prompts a memory.

Check out the other cool doors here or just search for posts tagged Thursday Doors.

Watercolors—botanicals 3

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

It’s a winter wonderland here in Massachusetts. No sign of the plow guy yet this morning, but the Patriots are going to the Super Bowl – again. Therefore many New Englanders (husband, son…) are in a much better mood than they otherwise would have been. Go Pats!

And some good news: our whiny-ass, murdering, rapist, senile, spray-tanned orange President has announced he’s not going to attend the Super Bowl because he doesn’t like the halftime performer. He’s probably afraid all those Boston and Seattle fans would boo him into oblivion. In any case, Long Live Bad Bunny!

I’m continuing to work my way through “Watercolor Workbook” by Sarah Simon. If interested, she’s on Instagram: @themintgardener. All designs are hers.

Buttercup Wreath
I like how the “wet in wet” worked out in the lower yellow flower (upper flower was too dry when I added the darker color). I also like the berries. Author suggested droplets of paint rather than brush strokes.
Fiddle Leaf Fig

Unfortunately my paint set doesn’t have one important color for botanicals: Oxide of Chromium. I’m having to make do with Sap and Veridian.

Wildflower Swag
This is painted in the so-called “undefined boundaries” style. It’s fun to somewhat ignore boundaries and let the paint and water do what it will.

Related:

Watercolors—botanicals

Watercolors—more botanicals

NO KINGS & more watercolor botanicals

GenX Grandma

~ MaryG ~ 16 Comments
Someone conked out listening to GenX hits and shaking her maraca 🪇

Playlist:

When you were Mine – Prince

Alison – Elvis Costello & The Attractions

These are Days – 10,000 Maniacs

My Life – Billy Joel

REM – (forgot which song)

The Cars – (forgot which song)

Pearl Jam – Better Man

In Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel

Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac

These are songs Alexa plays for you when you start by asking for a Prince song you like to dance to.

Any other GenX Grandparents out there? What songs/bands are you gonna make sure your grandkids hear?

Beatles (obviously)

What else??

Anything Goes Week

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is unlike any other.

No school. No work (or less work) for many. Hopefully all the shopping, wrapping and cooking paid off on Christmas and everyone had fun, but now is the time of no chores, no commitments, no challenges.

I told my husband it’s “anything goes” week. If he wants three Godiva chocolates for breakfast, that’s fine. If I want to wear my Comfy and slippers into a store, I will. (My slippers have hard bottoms, like real shoes 😉.)

My high school did the musical “Anything Goes” when I was in junior high in the late 70s, so I never got to be in it. But my friend’s older brother had one of the lead roles. We idolized those older kids and couldn’t wait to get to high school so we could be in the musical too. I still remember all the songs, especially the title song.

Here’s Sutton Foster in the Act 1 Finale of Anything Goes on Broadway. She got a Tony Award for her part in this production.

Merry Christmas

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

OK, I’m back in a good mood now. I had a lovely Christmas Eve.

I felt profound gratitude for four things last night:

1) I have a good son. Mothers of good sons, you know what I mean! Last night my son drove me to church for choir practice and came back an hour later to sit with me during the service, which was especially meaningful as my husband couldn’t make it to church this year due to his knee surgery. My son offers his arm when we walk through icy parking lots together. ❤️

2) SINGING: I just love it. Especially on Christmas Eve at our beautiful candlelight service.

My church on Christmas Eve

3) My husband felt well enough to go out to dinner with us after church. It was his first time in a restaurant since his surgery a month ago.

4) A negative mammogram. Ladies, you know how good that feels. Even if you’ve never had breast cancer, we all have friends or family members who have had it. (I got my results on Christmas Eve at 10pm.)

And now we await the arrival of our “celebrity guest” (as my son is calling her)—my precious one-year old granddaughter and her parents.

My husband preparing his famous Lasagna Bolognese with an ice pack strapped to his new knee

Merry Christmas!

Happy Solstice

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

Yesterday I participated in a sacred circle dance where we honored Yule and the winter solstice.

AI depiction of our sacred circle yesterday, which included a 90+ year old woman and her 5 adult daughters all dressed in white for her birthday

The sun set at 4:16pm yesterday so we lit a fire in our fireplace in the evening. I had a memory of how much we really wanted a fireplace when we were house hunting. (Our first house did not have one.) We only use our fireplace occasionally, but it IS special to have an an indoor fire on these longest, darkest nights of the year.

As the embers burned down, I made myself two s’mores for dessert.

And now, on Winter Solstice morning (December 21) it is still pitch black at 6:30am and I’m awaiting the replay of the livestream of the ancient chamber at Newgrange in Ireland, which we visited in June. (I wasn’t up at at 3:40am to watch it live.) We saw a demonstration of how the sun lights up the inner chamber on the solstice when we were there, but I want to see the real version.

Finally, if you missed this year’s Lucia Morning broadcast from Visby, Sweden on St. Lucia Day (December 13), it’s a great thing to experience during these dark long nights. I watch it every year. The second children’s choir (the younger kids in the adorable wool coats and sweaters) are particularly enchanting.

Wishing all of my fellow Northern Hemisphere dwellers a light in the darkness this December solstice day. It only gets brighter from here.

🔥

December Past

~ MaryG ~ 25 Comments

Posting for Lens-Artist Photo Challenge: Holiday Fun

I’m afraid the 2025 holiday season will be forever remembered as the “Year of the Knee.” Arthroplasty is rough, people. My husband is doing OK, but the pain is quite brutal. Thank goodness for opioids. I honestly don’t know how anyone gets through this without a partner. (I know they can and do, but it would be really hard.) Outpatient PT has started and now I get why folks call the PTs “Physical Terrorists.”

But on to happier things…

I have been enjoying looking at the lovely, happy holiday posts and photos from Scillagrace and others.

Last year was such a special Christmas because we had my brand new baby granddaughter—so perfect in every way. After the sting of the horrible election in November 2024, she gave me so much hope. She was—and is—a miracle. All babies are. I thank my wonderful daughter for the greatest gift of all last Christmas. Infants are pure love, pure light, pure joy.

My granddaughter and me last December
Our tree last year
The new mom managed to decorate—and even bake—last year.
Hand-dipped and decorated Oreo cookie balls
White roses for Christmas last year
I got Christmas “crackers” from the British imports store and did special napkin folding last year.

Related post and pics, also from last December:

Winterlights

I hope everyone can find some way to enjoy the season this year, despite whatever pain or hardships burden you. I recommend watching Sweden’s National Santa Lucia Day broadcast this Saturday, December 13. It’s always such a beautiful celebration of light in the darkness, with gorgeous choral music—including young children singing in tune. It’s typically available on YouTube the same day.

December Rx:

Music, lights, babies (if you can’t get your hands on a baby, watching young children sing is a good substitute)

Progress

~ MaryG ~ 8 Comments

Yesterday I went to a concert by the world-renowned Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston’s historic Symphony Hall.

Boston’s Symphony Hall yesterday afternoon

My friend Eileen and I had wanted to attend this particular concert because the planned guest conductor—a young man we knew from our days working together at the Conservatory—was making his Boston debut.

AFTER we bought our tickets, we were notified that he wouldn’t be conducting due to “ the recurring effects of a shoulder injury.” Instead, 29-year old BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Handler would be making her Symphony Hall debut. OK, well at least we were seeing someone’s debut!

The first piece was “The Imagined Forest” by 31-year old British composer Grace-Evangeline Mason. It was atmospheric and beautiful.

Something about seeing these two young women—the conductor and the composer—take their bows together felt like Progress. I’ve seen plenty of women take their bows as soloists, but not as conductors and composers—the artistic leaders—at the very highest level of classical music.

There was no mention of it being a historic first or anything like that, but you could feel that the audience was 100 percent supportive. Partial standing ovation (unusual for the first piece in a concert). Many cheers.

Brava, ladies. Well done. Respect.

29-year old Anna Handler commanded the podium in a focused, confident way as she stepped in for an ailing guest conductor of one of the world’s finest symphony orchestras

Pics or it didn’t happen: 1989

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

If you’re GenX like me, about half your life was captured on film only (if at all). Digital cameras were not a thing when we were kids. If you were the third or fourth kid in the family, there may be very few photos of you as a child. This is not the case with me. I am the oldest and my parents were diligent. There are a lot of pics of me as a kid. Later on, I liked taking photos and even took a photography class or two.

Therefore, I’ve got a huge closet full of photo albums, boxes of loose photos, and a folder of black and white negatives in my basement, most of which have not been digitized. These include photos from throughout my life from 1965 through the birth of my second child in 2000. (After that, we went digital.) The photo albums are pretty easy to leaf through as they mostly have the correct year on the spine. And the boxes aren’t too bad because they’re pretty small. Until this weekend, I had ignored the big folder of negatives.

Welp, I finally decided to have a look and it turns out that the negatives are almost entirely from the year 1989–the year I took a photography class at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston. There are apps now for scanning negatives with your phone. I used one called FilmBox. It worked OK. There were a few surprises in those negatives. Things I had completely forgotten or only vaguely remembered were jolted back into my mind through the tiny black and white images.

My three best friends from college and me in Boston’s North End. This was about 18 months after we graduated. I had forgotten that we briefly all lived in the same city.
This was an art exhibition opening at the museum where I got my first job: The Institute of Contemporary Art. I had forgotten about those openings and the cheap white wine we always served at them. I typically invited my friends who lived in Boston.
The woman on the right, Teil, was my second boss at the museum. She taught me so much and was such a wonderful person. I think this is the only picture I have of Teil. It’s appropriate that she has a plastic cup of that cheap white wine in her hand.
I had forgotten that my 80s friend Debbie came to visit me in my first studio apartment in the Fenway. Seeing her in front of my turntable, CDs and record albums (in milk crates) reminded me of how people used to look through each others music collections as a way of sort of figuring out what they were like. At that point, I think our musical tastes were diverging, but we both liked Prince.
In that same studio apartment, I had forgotten that my very bad cat Kimba was SO bad that I had to keep the bathroom trashcan above the mirror or he’d spread it all around the apartment. He was very cute, but a real pain in the neck.
I definitely remember going to the massive March on DC for abortion rights in April 1989, but had forgotten I went with two friends from work—Ann and Bridget. Later that year, Bridget and I became roommates in the North End.
We tried. 😢