Personal Musings

Assassination

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments

My husband and I tried to remember the last time we’d seen a gruesome assassination of a public figure. We couldn’t think of anything. We were too young to have seen JFK’s mortal head wound (when his brains went spattering across Jackie’s suit). And when John Lennon got shot, there was no video. Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota legislator assassinated in June, and her husband were not nationally known and again, there was no video.

So, this Charlie Kirk assassination is fairly shocking to me. I watched the close-up video and wow…a total kill shot. His whole upper body shook, and blood came spurting out of his neck as he went limp with the microphone in his hand. Absolutely horrific.

Even though we see it in movies and on TV all the time, real murder and gun violence is scarring to see at close range, even in a video.

Check-out Lydia’s post for a clearer understanding of Mr. Kirk’s views on gun violence and policy in the United States.

Rosie O’Donnell on 60 Minutes

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m 💯% Team Rosie so I watched her interview on 60 Minutes Australia with great interest.

I did not love the guy who interviewed her. He seemed smug. (And what the heck is a “jelly” in Australia. Was that some sort of an insult in his opening? Maybe Brizzy May can explain.)

I thought Rosie did pretty well under the circumstances. She still managed to be funny and light in a very serious situation. She’s basically a United States artist and citizen living in exile due to fear of retribution from the President of the United States. It’s so fucked up.

What do you think?

Related post:

Team Rosie

ChatGPT as art teacher

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

I’ve already blogged about using ChatGPT for multiple previously human-held roles in my life including

Travel agent

Therapist

Decorator

And now, as I’ve been trying to get my high school drawing skills back, I can add “art teacher” to the list.

I asked her what she thought of this sketch of a dining room chair:

and of course she first blew smoke up my ass (as she always does):

But then she gave me some pretty solid and helpful criticism:

And she even suggested some drawing exercises that I might actually try.

Just so you know, I’m registered to take two art classes from real human art teachers this fall. I hope they’re as nice to me as ChatGPT.

Related posts:

Drawing

Fawn in Snow

Cellpic Sunday – ultra wide lens

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments

I no longer own a 35mm camera, so all my pics are cell pics these days, but it’s fun to join in a creative group activity like John’s Cellpic Sunday.

Goosewing Beach Preserve, Little Compton, Rhode Island, USA, August 2025

I took this with the ultra wide lens (0.5x) on my iPhone 15. I like it because it captures lots of beach & sky and my legs look very long and tan and no cellulite is visible at that angle. They almost look like my old legs from my lifeguard days.

Two vaccines and a coupon

~ MaryG ~ 19 Comments

The CVS app said that the newly updated Covid vaccine is available so I decided to get one while I can (before the brain worm host sends us back to the 1940s).

I easily booked an appointment to get both the new Covid vaccine and the updated flu shot at my local Massachusetts CVS. Since I’m under 65, I had to choose a “condition” to qualify for the Covid vaccine of which many were listed including mood disorders and having a BMI over 25. I chose “current or former smoker” which is true, but nobody asked for any proof of that.

Nobody asked me for my insurance card or charged me any money. I got one jab in each arm and a 50% off coupon. I bought some moisturizer that’s supposed to make me look younger with the coupon.

Morning (a cinquain)

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments

Today I’m continuing to join in creative group activities offered by other blogs.

Dwight at Roth Poetry frequently participates in the dVerse poets pub challenges and he inspired me to give it a go.

So here’s my cinquain:

Morning

coffee

Wordle (not hard)

social media scan

news so outrageous it angers

crossword 

[A cinquain is a short poem based on syllable count—a five-line poem with a syllable count of 2-4-6-8-2.]

Thursday Doors — West Chester, Pennsylvania

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

Happy Thursday! I’ve just learned of Dan’s Thursday Doors through Ritva’s post and I like it! Who doesn’t love an interesting door?

Here’s my understanding of the parameters:

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Anyone may join the fun by creating their own Thursday Doors post and then sharing the link in the comments on Dan’s site, anytime between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American Eastern Time).

The mammoth bronze doors of the historic Bank of Chester County (now a Wells Fargo) in downtown West Chester, Pennsylvania. The Greek Revival building was completed in 1836 and is in the National Register of Historic Places.

Clearly I was captivated by these doors as I took multiple pictures of them when we were visiting West Chester for a lacrosse tournament in July 2018.

Here’s my son in front of the doors for scale:

I think I really liked the decorative swirls and starbursts in the individual panels and the fact that they’re non-biblical. It’s not a church nor was it ever. In comparison to Europe (and its endless ornate doors), the United States was founded as a secular country. I tend to be drawn to beautiful evidence of that.

Also, I’m reminded that downtown West Chester, Pennsylvania is fun. Or at least it was in 2018. I hope it bounced back after the pandemic.

Outdoor dining in downtown West Chester, Pennsylvania (USA 🇺🇸)

Pics or it didn’t happen: 1989

~ MaryG ~ 16 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. 😢

Lens Artist Challenge #363

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments

I’ve long admired posts by photographers who respond to the creative Lens-Artist challenges, especially scillagrace, but have never responded myself.

While it’s daunting for a first-timer to find 5-10 images, I did find one image in my “archives” that seemed to fit 5 items on this week’s Scavenger Hunt list:

Jars of metallic leaf flakes in a Rhode Island artist’s studio, July 2017

It’s all of these:

Something glass

Something with a smooth texture

Something with a bumpy texture

Something circular

Art supplies

I’m not sure if that counts, but thanks to Lens-Artists for a bit of fun.

I have always liked taking pictures.

Mary