What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
I think books, music and art make life worth living, once basic needs (food, shelter, safety) are met.
I got to go to an art show by a dear old friend from college last night. It is her first gallery show. In college, she was a double major in art history and religion. For decades, she’s worked as a museum educator and administrator.
She always had an artist’s eye and soul. We studied abroad in Italy at the same time and traveled together on our fall break. A fellow blogger’s post about the city of Bergamo (Italy) reminded me of that trip. We went to Bergamo, Parma, Verona, Venice, and Milan.
Her artwork involves deconstructing everyday packaging and reassembling in very cool ways.
A large piece by Julie Bernson on display at Gallery Kayafas in Boston
Julie taking a photo atop the Duomo in Milan in 1985.
A year ago this week, we were in Grand Canyon National Park.
Selfies are hard. This is one of our better ones.
We stayed right in Grand Canyon Village. This was taken just outside our hotel—Thunderbird Lodge.
Shoshone Point—a wild and gorgeous spot in Grand Canyon National Park
Shoshone Point
We even took a helicopter tour—scary at first, but spectacular and worth the price.
This trip was motivated by the death of my close friend Carla who loved the Grand Canyon and whose ashes are spread there. (Carla is the person who set me up with my husband more than 33 years ago.) I would consider it my first “bucket list” trip of retirement, even though I didn’t retire until six months later.
I’m lucky to have a kind and hardworking husband who is willing to travel with me (within reason). He doesn’t love it like I do, but he usually ends up liking the trip a lot more than he thought he would.
Thirty-one years of marriage—that’s a whole lot of time together!
The Grand Canyon lives up to the hype. Go, if you can.
I’ve got a fairly long and hard to pronounce last name, but if my last name were Smith, I’d go with something more exciting than Mary for my first name.
If you’re from the East Coast, you probably know about Sky Bars. The genius chocolate bar with four different flavors buried inside—caramel, vanilla, peanut, and fudge. In my memory, the vanilla was more like marshmallow.
Here’s a brief history of the Sky Bar from SkyBarCandy.com:
The Sky Bar was invented in 1938 at the New England Confectionery Company (“NECCO”). The molded chocolate bar revolutionized confectionery technology as the first chocolate bar to have multiple different flavored centers. Chocolate bars of a similar molded form had started popping up around the early 1900s, but none had the same internal complexity of the Sky Bar. Recognizing the innovation they had on their hands, the folks at NECCO chose the name “Sky Bar” because flight was the excitement of the day. They chose to launch this new candy bar with a sky writing marketing campaign and they built up anticipation by advertising the upcoming sky writing events. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the era of the family road trip and the vending machine, Sky Bars were seemingly everywhere. Thanks to extensive TV advertising, the Sky Bar was the candy bar of choice for many families, primarily up and down the East Coast. As a result, the Sky Bar evokes special childhood memories for many. It was continuously manufactured by NECCO for 80 years, and after a hiatus of only a year and a half, it is back, and looking forward to the next 80 years and a new generation of Sky Bar fans!
It was always very exciting to see which flavor you’d bite into next.
I haven’t had one in years, but thanks to this prompt, I will be buying one soon. Since NECCO went out of business in 2018, I have my doubts that the new manufacturer will make then exactly the same way, but we shall see. I’ll try to have an open mind.
Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?
I remember having “Pat the Bunny” as a very young child.
This favorite book for babies was first published in 1940.
Books by Dr. Seuss and his protégé P.D. Eastman (“Go Dog Go”) were good for both learning to read and being read to. Horton was particularly fascinating, perched on that nest while lazy Mayzie flew off to Palm Beach!
As I got older, nothing beat Judy Blume for real talk about real things that I actually cared about. “Deenie” was a favorite and of course, “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret?”
Book banners like to target Judy Blume books, which is all the more reason to keep buying them, reading them, and giving them to your kids and grandkids.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck gave me a much better understanding of the Depression and the Dust Bowl and that whole chapter in US history. The take home message that people were poor to the point of starving, with no safety net, is something that stayed with me.
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi was not an easy read, but I’m glad I made it through. It was one of several books that became bestsellers during the worldwide racial justice reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. It’s a survey of the history of anti-Black racist ideas throughout American history. It helped lift the veil from my eyes.
I was having a hard time making it through this very dense and challenging material, so I started a short-term nonfiction book club with two friends over Zoom. I’m glad we read it together in the summer of 2020.
The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood came out when I was in college and was a huge bestseller. This dystopian novel describes a Christian fundamentalist theocratic regime in the former United States where some women are forced to conceive and bear children in the most horrific way. It really motivated my involvement with the pro-choice movement of the 1980s. I recently read the sequel: The Testaments, which was published in 2019.
So much of Handmaid’s Tale horror has re-surfaced and resonated loudly since the Dobbs decision by the MAGA Supreme Court. It’s scary—and infuriating.
I’ve posted in the past about how I started getting flowers delivered monthly during the pandemic. They’re not cheap, but if I renew around Black Friday, I get a huge discount on the annual subscription from BloomsyBox.
I really like having fresh flowers in the house. It brings me joy. (Guys, I’m telling you, this is a winner for your anniversary or her birthday or Christmas.)
And now, I will subject you to more photos of flower arrangements.
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I read library books on Libby or Kindle, I swim with my Apple Watch, I meet with faraway friends on Zoom, I go for walks with my phone and AirPods. People even meditate online now.
If the power (and therefore the WiFi) gets knocked out by a storm, I just switch to cell phone data and charge my phone in the car.
If I’m truly unplugged (without electricity and cell coverage), something bad has happened. I’m scrambling for D batteries to put in my boombox, which also gets AM/FM radio. We’re bringing in firewood from the garage and heating water on a camp stove.
In the olden days, “unplugged” simply meant that a band did a set with acoustic instruments, instead of electric. The results were mixed. This one was cool: The Cure’s unplugged “Just Like Heaven” from 1991.
Now that I’m 55+ and have lost several friends my own age to cancer and addiction, I am not picky. I like all my old friends. If I’m in touch with them at all at this point in my life, it means there was/is a real connection there.
In making new friends, I gravitate to people who both listen and talk. And obviously, no MAGA. That’s a deal-breaker.
Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in “Grace & Frankie” on Netflix. No surprise that I was a big fan of all seven seasons of this show.
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