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E.B. White & Winding the Clock

Categories: anarchy anarchy apocalyptic apocalyptic beauty beauty dystopian dystopian evil evil excellence excellence freedom freedom friends friends gratitude gratitude happiness happiness hard work hard work healing healing hope hope kindness kindness love love maturity maturity real friends real friends redemption redemption spiritual teachings spiritual teachings vulnerability vulnerability wholeness wholeness

Of late things have been hard. 

My heart is broken. Broken again, for the 3477th time this life.

"Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time," wrote E. B. White, to a despairing Mr. Nadeau. The actual first paragraph of White's letter said:

"As long as there is one upright man..."

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Of the season, and a milestone

Categories: art art beauty beauty business business errors errors hard work hard work psychosis psychosis redemption redemption Sabin Howard sculpture Sabin Howard sculpture WW1 Memorial WW1 Memorial

My latest on Medium Online is "The End of the Beginning: Eight of Sabin Howard's Doughboys Get Ready to Go Back to Europe." 

I wrote it to share--to celebrate--a milestone: Sabin and his stalwart team have finished principal sculpture on the first grouping of eleven figures from A Soldier's Journey. 

I'm so proud of our sculptors Sabin, Charlie, and "Raymond." They've worked with focus and dedication...

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Love and chaos in the time of the coronavirus

Categories: anarchy anarchy apocalyptic apocalyptic dystopian dystopian friends friends hard work hard work healing healing hope hope life and death life and death missing people missing people passings passings vulnerability vulnerability

The world is rife with panic and pandemic.

People are sick. People are dying. The COVID-19 respiratory illness is sweeping across the globe. No place will be spared.

Italy is quarantining. Have the Italians stopped their millennia-old practice of bussing on both sides of the face in greeting? 

I bet they have. Kissing is for the inviolate.

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Art and Representation

Categories: art art beauty beauty excellence excellence gratitude gratitude happiness happiness hard work hard work kindness kindness love love marriage marriage redemption redemption Sabin Howard Sabin Howard Sabin Howard sculpture Sabin Howard sculpture sculpting sculpting

Author Traci L. Slatton muses on art and representation, ely concerning Sabin Howard's Bust of Ceres sculpture.

My husband Sabin Howard can sculpt. Think Carpeaux, Canova, or Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Think Michelangelo. He says, "Art represents us. How do we want to be represented?" It's a fair question...

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The Gottman Institute: The Art & Science of Love

Categories: beauty beauty excellence excellence gratitude gratitude happiness happiness hard work hard work healing healing kindness kindness life and death life and death love love marriage marriage maturity maturity real friends real friends redemption redemption sex sex vulnerability vulnerability wholeness wholeness

Two days of extraordinary learning at the Gottman Institute workshop. The first day focused on building the ground of being of love through Drs. John and Julie Gottman's research-based techniques. The second day addressed conflict and techniques for repair after regrettable incidents.

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Factual Error in The New Yorker: Is this how fake news starts?

Categories: anarchy anarchy art art authors authors autobiography autobiography criminal behavior criminal behavior dystopian dystopian errors errors hard work hard work healing healing hope hope literature literature love love marriage marriage maturity maturity Memorial Memorial politics politics psychosis psychosis Sabin Howard Sabin Howard Sabin Howard sculpture Sabin Howard sculpture vulnerability vulnerability WW1 Memorial WW1 Memorial

Author Traci L. Slatton writes about how The New Yorker misquoted her husband sculptor Sabin Howard, creating a factual error. Dedicated to all the women whose ideas have been misattributed to a man and who were told to leave it be and not to rock the boat.

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Fragile

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I was keenly aware of the fragility and preciousness of life. Everything can change in a split-second.

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La Serenissima

Categories: art art gratitude gratitude travel travel

La Serenissima,It's true, I prefer the Florentine painters. The clarity and bright colors and sweet spirituality of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Fra

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Method Writing

Categories: terrorism terrorism writing writing

My husband told me last night that I was "method writing." It's true that I write from the inside of a story and I am writing a dark novel set during WWII.

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Imperfect love, and impermanence

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Imperfect love. The other morning, a friend and neighbor died. Barbara was a lovely human being, a much-depended-upon wife, mother, sister, and friend.

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Channeling Miss Phryne Fisher

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I find myself hopelessly enamored of a certain saucy Aussie investigator. Her effervescent, inquisitive nature slay me. My girl crush is Miss Phryne Fisher.

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Clothes-hangers and the Other

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I've come to understand that it's never me who is being sketched, sculpted, photographed, written or sung about. It's the artist's own projections onto me.

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Why I write

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Why I write. Ultimately, the reason I write is, Because I have to. Because I can not imagine my life without my writing

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Pulling Teeth

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When I was about 10, some molars started growing in the back of my mouth, and my teeth started jamming up together.

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Self reflection

Categories: love love marriage marriage

Self reflection. My husband, missing me, asked for some pictures. I did my best, using a mirror. This is the only picture for the public; I got creative.

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Epistolary Fiction

Categories: art art writing writing

Epistolary Fiction. This is an old form of novel, the novel in documents, usually letters, that is morphing into blog letters-posts.

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Day 5: Letter to a friend

Categories: art art writing writing

Day 5: Letter to a friend. This morning I did a solid hour of yoga to make up for my excesses last night. Food, drink, and… Jean-Sven. He behaved himself

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Day 4: Letter to a friend

Categories: art art writing writing

Day 4: Letter to a friend. The light at this time of year stretches seductively far into the evening—at 9:30 or 10, a honeyed lucence falls on everything

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Day 3: Letter to a friend

Categories: art art writing writing

Day 3: Letter to a friend I hope you're receiving these notes, and they provoke a smile. Lord knows you seemed dour enough in our last few conversations

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Great New Reviews

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Great New Reviews. THE LOVE OF MY (OTHER) LIFE is on Netgalley, and a reviewer just finished a review. Midwest Book Review featured a review of COLD LIGHT

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Sexy

Categories: art art

Sexy. Some people have given me grief because I don't like 50 Shades of Silliness.

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Happy Valentine's Day

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Happy Valentine's Day. It's Valentine's Day, and thoughts go to the invitation of eros. Of this, Rumi speaks well: Out beyond ideas

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