AI Makes Me Angry. A Gloomy Rant

On a visit to my daughter in Los Angeles, she summoned a car with an app on her phone. Laughing, we belted ourselves into the back seat per instructions of the automated voice. Driverless, we pulled off to our destination, front seat empty, steering wheel moving on its own. 

After a few more rides like this one, I became confident in the robotic car — even a little blase like it’s a normal thing to trust a robot to drive. When in a neighborhood not serviced by Waymo – the driver-less car company — I was even disappointed to be driven by a human. It felt tedious to chit chat with the Lyft driver rather than continue gabbing freely with my daughter with the music of our choice playing. I also thought about when she might be out late partying. Surely she’d be safer in one of these robot-cars than driving with (most often) a strange man from Lyft. I also imagined myself older and no longer able to drive. How helpful a robotic car would be.  

Strange maybe, that I embraced this AI driven car since I was horrified when I was still working and my boss said we should use ChatGPT to write our emails. Honestly, they weren’t bad but it just felt morally wrong and I only did it a few times. And now that I know how terrible AI is for the environment, it makes me mad. I get that AI can and is used positively in the world. There are so many cases of vital surgeries and advances in medicine credited to it. The possibilities for good are many. And I don’t include writing corporate sales emails as good.

The question is, at what cost? For a start, entire communities are being gobbled up by data centers. And then — what about art? What about nature and the health of our planet? What about the soul? What about the future of our children and many adults now too lazy and increasingly incapable of using their brains for simple tasks, emails, decisions? Are we doomed?

These days, AI worries and terrifying developments and predictions of world destruction within the decade are constant news. Perhaps the horse is already out of the gate. Still, enough outrage might produce at least some controls. But I am skeptical. Everyone seems numb. Too few of us take to the streets for anything. 

I confess that my anger about AI started percolating when I felt its impact personally. No, not because there’s a data center in my neighborhood (yet!) nor because my water is being swallowed up by noisy machinery. (yet!) I started to feel uneasy and then mad a few months ago when views on my personal blog hit crazy-high numbers that didn’t make sense. Readers went from single digits a day (higher on days I published something new) to 50 or more a day – for months. At first I was pleased to see this growing following but something seemed off. 

I cannot see who is looking at or reading my blog, only what countries they are from and what posts they are reading. Or scanning. The USA of course and also UK, Ireland, Japan, Canada – these are places where I have family, friends and followers. Now, they are regularly from China and views are almost hourly with no comments. Yesterday, 48 views. For awhile, there were also as many from the United States but I guess they finished harvesting. Maybe silent secret admirers but more likely, my site was being scoured for language and information for AI. I don’t know how all that works (do any of us?) but that’s what I figured. I am now hesitant to post anything. I feel watched by the wrong entities. I don’t wish to feed the machines.

That’s my completely selfish and personal reaction to this terrifying new reality in already dark times. The world has been too slowly becoming aware of what’s been creeping up on us. Artificial Intelligence that’s faster and maybe smarter than us. What might go wrong? 

There are so many important, crucial reasons we should be rising up and rejecting the mind numbing infiltration of AI. First of all, it’s brought to you by the worst humans alive. The same tech bros profiting off the caging and deportation of our brothers and sisters. The same tech bros who wage wars for personal profit and control. Who have rigged the system so thoroughly that they get away without paying taxes and convince too many in the population that it is others – our poorest and most insecure neighbors – who are taking the crumbs we have – away from us. These are the lies being gobbled up by much of the population. 

Science Fiction and action movies have long depicted the takeover by robots and machines. Of course art always leads the way. Yet we fail to pay attention when fiction becomes more and more our reality.

Around the world, our poor overheating earth is flooding and erupting in violent tremors of warning. Data centers necessary for powering AI are destroying the environment and communities. Many of us are privileged enough to live far enough away, but that won’t last. As we nonchalantly Chat with AI, getting it to plan our trips and answer silly questions to solve basic math problems, write our emails – it seems to be coming for us all. Like a robotic car summoned with an App.

PS – A trick when you’re doing a search is to type -AI in search bar and you won’t get AI answer.

What Did I DO? My Summer Report

Unlike winter’s long dreary hold, summer always seems to fly by. The end of the season no longer includes back-to-school energy with all the excitement and stress. In those days, summer break was always a mixed bag so I wasn’t always sad to see the end of it. When my daughter was young, it could be challenging to figure out affordable camps and care that covered life as a single working mom with a limited amount of time off from work.

Now I look back on the hot months of this year where nothing and nobody but me decided on my schedule and think: what did I do again? A question I often field from others now that I no longer work is: What do you do now? I should make notes because the days and weeks look blurry when I look back. I like to think that’s because I live in the present rather than fret about the past or the future. Thinking that makes me feel more evolved rather than doddery and old.

The season of summer seems to have changed a bit. Or maybe it’s me. But doesn’t the earth feel warmer and the blaze of the sun almost unbearable? I can’t imagine actually sunbathing. Or maybe it is another sign of my age that I shy away from being out in the scorching heat. Like a farmer, I wake early and step into the garden with my tea to assess the growth or, like the other day, the damage. The joy I felt in a recently planted redbud tree seedling was swallowed by the heartbreak of finding it almost snapped in half, its heart shaped leaves and tender branches eaten by rabbit or ground hog, I suspect. Ever-the-optimist I wrapped the damage with medical tape and placed netting around it to ward off any more critters. Time will tell but it may be too late. I’ll let you know. 

In other garden news, I transplanted a fig tree I’ve had in a pot for years with nary a fig to show for it. I celebrated every leaf because new growth was so sparse. What was I doing wrong? Along with the never blossoming pomegranate tree and all the house plants, I always moved the fig inside with the frost. This summer, I liberated fig from its beautiful but now obviously too small pot and put it into the ground. It almost said ‘ah!’ in relief. Fig is now thriving. I can no longer count the leaves and new sprouts are appearing besides the lone stem I’d babied for years. It just wanted out, to literally spread its roots. No figs yet but it’s looking more hopeful. That’s all I need – a little hope. 

The serviceberry tree freebie I received as part of a greening program in my city has grown a few feet since it was planted last summer. I miss the shade of the oak tree I had to take down last year. My handyman split and chopped it to perfect size and burning it kept me warm all last winter. I have a bit left and will once again thank each log before loading it into the stove. 

While I miss the oak I welcome the serviceberry and the sunny space I now have for a perennial garden. Flowers never grew out front before but now there’s plenty of light. There was only a small patch of daylillies, iris and ivy growing around the bird bath and in winter, the bird feeder. This summer I marked out a larger space using oak branches, smothered the grass with newspaper, soil and wood chips and planted more flowering shrubs and plants. Like everything else I do, it’s a little slapdash and improvised as I tackle it in sections, but it’s looking good.

This is some of what I did this summer. 

And I did my laundry and dried it on the clothesline. Washing in summer is one of my favorite things and again, like a farmer, I watch the weather to time it right. I haul the basket of wet clothes out of the basement to the porch from where I peg each sheet and shirt to swing in the breeze and sun. With these shorter days I must start earlier to capture the heat of the day. Yes, my electric bill is low.

The passing of all the seasons for me is now primarily aligned with nature so I follow the light, flowers, and plants of the season. I’m sad to see summer go but glad to reclaim the mid-day hours as it cools off again. And so the planet spins and time passes.

Missing the Cicadas

Have you noticed the absence of cicadas this year? I’ve found a few mummified bug-body casings but have missed their crazy, almost hysterical noise. Where are they? The grind of these summer insects is like a summer soundtrack to me. It seems like their volume increases with the heat of the sun. But this year, while there have been plenty of blazing days, other than an occasional cicada buzz, it’s been silent. Nothing like the raucousness of past summers. Are they missing everywhere? I walk at the beach, visit other friends’ yards and don’t hear them. I guess summer will be closing out without a choral farewell.

I did a computer search: ‘Where are the cicadas this year 2026’ and turned up all sorts of sites dedicated to cicadas. I love how some humans become obsessed with things like cicadas, study them, maybe they even get a PHD in cicadas. My interest is just a passing one, but I am grateful for dedicated people more obsessed than me who then share their knowledge on sites we can easily access. 

Turns out, cicadas, like locusts, have cycles. Thirteen years for cicadas. The ones I heard this summer are called ‘stragglers’. And even their emergence can be predicted – these ones that miss the schedule and emerge when they’re not supposed to. That’s who I’ve been hearing – stragglers. I love them even more now, those little rebels turning up when they’re not supposed to. By the way, we can report on them to help with mapping. If you’re curious, check out this site: Cicada Safari. This is where I learned that – “Our next major emergence of the periodical cicadas will start in late April and early May 2027, when the 13-year Brood XXII will emerge.”

Like most cicadas, I seem to  have gone underground this summer. I often find myself hiding from the heat and sun. Perhaps because I no longer work so being outdoors is available to me 7 days a week, Yet I don’t feel compelled to get outside, even to kayak. I did not pay for a rack at the beach this year so I am not worried about getting my money’s worth. My plastic boat mostly gathers dust in the garage. Don’t get me wrong – I still love summer and kayaking, I’ve just been lazy and not loving the heat. Do you?

I get up early and do things while it’s cooler. My home and community garden plots appreciate early morning visits and I like how my feet get wet in the morning dew. I also go walking in the evening. It is lovely at the beach. The crowds have mostly cleared out by then. That is except for families so large they need to drag over extra tables. It looks like they’ve been there all day – someone’s napping in a hammock tied between two trees, shivering toddlers swaddled in towels after splashing in the Sound. Always, delicious smelling smoke fills the air from barbecues. They’re still there when the sun is down and the beach lights start to come on. 

I sit on my porch a lot – reading, napping, chatting with friends. The breeze in the front of the house is usually better, but right now, I’m sitting in the back with an umbrella casting shade onto the table where I write. These days I’m barefoot almost all the time, wandering inside and outside the house, the screen door slamming behind me. This afternoon, there are no biting bugs. Not yet – and that seems miraculous. Bees and a few monarch butterflies float by, hovering briefly over the two flowering bushes that frame this little deck. In the distance, I hear the complaint of a bluejay, the yap of a dog along with the constant traffic hum. The highway noise I could do without but otherwise, I like these summer sounds. It’s all kind of perfect. Except for the missing cicadas. I will be listening hard to welcome Brood XXII next year.

How’s your summer been?

Green Days

Rainy days ruined barbecue plans for the holiday weekend but brought on an explosion of green. We needed that rain. From my windows, gaps of space that only a week ago framed a glimpse of houses and yards have filled with fresh shades of green. The leaves have fully emerged. Driving the winding roads in morning rain, where before I could look through the woods at tree trunks and rocks, I now see only green. 

I savored the long spring we experienced this year after the long, tough winter in the Northeast. Cherry, dogwood and other blossoms hung on much longer than without the quick, almost overnight thermostat rise we have become accustomed to in recent years. For us gardeners, when to plant tenders like tomato plants became a gamble. During one odd hot day I did the seasonal switch of clothes and curtains, turning my cozy living room into a lighter, airier space. Then the temperatures dropped again and I was digging out my too hastily packed sweaters. This past cold rainy weekend I thought hard about throwing the last of the firewood on my porch into the cleaned out woodstove. I resisted, instead, using blankets while I watched television. 

The rains have left and the sun is shining and summer has moved in. I’ve mowed the lawn twice so far and the hedge is already growing wild. The first of the peonies grace my table.

I love this time of year. My whole body relaxes, even though my chores have increased. Besides the lawn to mow, the hedge to clip, there are an abundance of weeds to pull. Summer furniture to retrieve from the garage. While I write this inside, soon, most of my life will be lived outside – puttering in the garden or sitting on the back or front porch. 

I have a good life. I am cognizant that the number of green springs I will get to see is not infinite and because of my age, almost countable. Maybe 20? That’s if I’m lucky. And I mean that from both sides. I’m not interested in living forever and 87 sounds like more than enough to me right about now. Thus, the greening of spring is glorious to watch. The softening of branches of a wood where all winter long there have only been angles and earth colors. Then comes the rains followed by heat, blue sky and sun and SHAZAM! like magic – summer greens are dense. And comforting – like being enveloped in a fertile embrace. 

I check my gardens regularly for new sprouts. At home I have planted flower seeds in dirt patches hoping they’re not appealing to my resident rabbits, squirrels and at least one – likely more, voracious groundhog. In my community garden plot up on the hill in the city I live in, I planted leeks between the autumn sowed garlic. I separated the tiny strands clustered together in a clump in a small pot, and carefully placed each one in a deep hole I’d dug between the garlic stalks. And then I watered them. One doesn’t fill the holes with dirt following planting, you just let the dirt find its way around each shoot as you water. 

Another plot is full of lettuce I planted in early April while the days were still bitter. I can see the welcoming splotches of green as I trudge across the field to my plot. I’ll pick some leaves for a salad later, maybe some to share with friends. And so this season of bountiful green begins.

Superstitions, Wishes and Magical Thinking

My Catholic education fanned my tendency towards magical thinking. As a child, afraid of dying with sin on my young soul, I diligently recited my prayers every night and slept with my little white first communion prayer book under my pillow like a talisman to keep evil away. The nuns and priests along with the crime pages of The New York Post I surreptitiously read each week, convinced me there was plenty of that around.

I was a voracious reader even as a kid, and deeply affected by many books. One of was The Endless Steppe: A Memoir of Survival by Esther Hautzig – the story of Esther’s childhood in exile in Siberia during World War II. Esther fell in love with the harsh landscape of the Steppe and approached her life with a brightness and positivity I admired. And she had rituals to maintain that outlook including, stepping into her shoes always right foot first to ensure the day would be a good one. This superstition to ensure the best day became my habit too although I lived in New York, not Siberia.

From an early age I adopted some witchy routines. Lying in bed and looking out my bedroom window, I’d search the sky through the crosshatch of the screen for the first visible star of the night. Then I would make a wish, sending my desires out into the night sky. When I discovered that eyelashes were for wishes, I began pulling mine out. I tried saving them in a little plastic capsule that once contained a 5 cent toy from a gumball vending machine. I thought I was onto something with my wish-stash until my mother noticed and scolded me in horror. I was too embarrassed to continue the practice. 

What could I possibly have been wishing for? A toy? What ‘want’ did I have at such a young age? Did I already have longings? I do not remember what I was wishing for at the age of 5, 6, 7 but as I grew into adolescence, it was for boy love. I regularly had mad crushes on my older sibling’s friends. I remember one wild haired boy who I was obsessed with. He was a high school junior or senior and I was perhaps in 6th grade. I’d learned somewhere that if you put the name of your longed for love on a piece of paper in your shoe, your love would be requited. Of course I tried. And weirdly, on more than one occasion, when I’d randomly stick my head out the window of our 7th floor apartment and peer down at the Broadway sidewalk below, my crush was walking by! And I just happened to look out the window! As far as I knew, he lived nowhere near us, it must be magic, I thought. I was careful not to stick my head out too far – although the chances of him looking up and recognizing me were slim. I was happy to watch him with a thumping heart. He seemed so joyful as he moved like a dream down the dirty sidewalk in his floppy painter pants and flowing hair. And my heart beat thinking he was there because his name was in my shoe. I didn’t call out to him or run down the stairs to catch him. What would I say? He didn’t know I existed. 

While I grew out of these particular superstitions and compulsions, I managed to adopt new ones. Of course I avoid walking under ladders and sometimes I might wish on a star because, why not? Living in different countries, I picked up a few new ones. In Japan I learned never to choose just 4 of something – be it flowers or fruit – or anything. The character in Japanese for 4 is ‘shi’ – also the word for death. Besides, aesthetically, the asymmetry of odd numbers of things is more interesting. Italy has plenty of practices that many a grandma there would say is only common sense. No wet hair outside and things like that. In Croatia, if you have any interest in marriage, do not sit at the corner of a table.

And as for wishes, while I only learned in the last few years of 11:11 supposedly being a magical time and when I find myself glancing at the clock or my phone when these digits mark the time, I can’t help but make one. Now my wish is more like a prayer. I appreciate the pause. Time to focus for a moment. A sliver of peace – and also why not wish! With gratitude, hope, and always, love. We can never have too much love, can we?

Food Memories from a War Zone

The postcard sized menu is typed out on beautiful stock paper. It still looks good after 32 years. The Bosnian crest is top and center. The word MENU is all in caps. Cauliflower soup. War steak. Cooked vegetables. Pudding. Red wine. Dated: Sarajevo, February 12, 1993. This lunch meeting was fancier than we expected.

It felt surreal to step past the ubiquitous sandbags, enter the Presidency building and climb a red carpeted, grand staircase to a dining room with one table elegantly set. It was only my boss and I and the man we were meeting with who must have been high up in government. I didn’t make a note of who he was and don’t remember what the food tasted like. I remember hoping that War Steak meant fake meat or some kind of alternative as if that might assuage the guilt I already felt for all this fanciness in the middle of a city under siege. It was meat. I was pretty sure that Sarajevo’s citizens were not eating like this. The war had been going on for almost a year. It would last for three more. 

I looked in my journal to check for more details. I see that lunch at the Presidency was just one of the events I went to that cold winter day with my boss Victor. I was his assistant, accompanying him to meetings with humanitarian organizations, civilian and military leaders including, as he called them: bandits. I scribbled copious notes and wrote up reports. Earlier that morning we’d driven in our armored UN car just beyond the city, through checkpoints to meet with a Serb archbishop who I thought was pretty militant for a supposed spiritual leader. I remember that from where we were, we had a wide view of a large part of the city. I knew that many shells were being lobbed from here and felt sick.

My journal has no description of nor do I have any memory of how the war steak tasted. Nor questions about what animal it came from. I am sure I made a point of not leaving anything on my plate.

Under the Geneva Convention, a venerated document that is now regularly disregarded by our administration and other militaries supported with our tax dollars, food must never be used as a weapon in war. We can now watch on our telephones as communities are starved as well as slaughtered by weapons supplied by our government. This was being done then too. Food and water – both were in short supply for Sarajevo and other surrounded towns in Bosnia where roads and the airport were closed to all but United Nations and NGO traffic. Often, humanitarian assistance was blocked.

This is how I met my husband Neil. He was working at the time for the International Committee for the Red Cross, and drove his boss Philippe, to a meeting outside of Sarajevo at a defunct Coca Cola factory. Serb women had been blocking the road for days, not allowing humanitarian organizations to deliver food into Sarajevo. A few days earlier, when Victor and I spoke to the women in the street, they said their demand was the release of their men who had been taken prisoners by the other side – in this case, the Bosnians. Initially, I was excited by their protest, imagining a kind of Antigone movement where women might be the ones to stop the war. This notion was dispelled days later when a meeting was organized and I was the only woman in that cold and smoky room.   

The international community, were well fed at UN bases. Even when the food wasn’t great, we ate for free. Our UN ID was enough to get meals across the countries of former Yugoslavia where battalions were located. I ate with Czechs, Kenyans, Nepalese, Ukrainians, Russian and French peacekeeping troops – including the Legionnaires. The most delicious meal was not at a base but rather a dusty outpost of the French army set up near a local checkpoint. Sitting on camp chairs in a tent on a summer day by the roadside, I enjoyed multiple courses for lunch: Juicy steak with a pepper sauce, salad and even aged soft cheese. All with wine and followed by a perfect demitasse of coffee. Served to our host, a young French Major and us UN civilian guests by the dashing soldiers under his command. It’s one of the few meals I remember from my four years there.

A year and a half after Neil and I met at the Coca Cola factory, we traveled from Zagreb back to Sarajevo to get married. We celebrated in the evening at the oldest restaurant in the city. On that August night in 1994, we gathered in a cobbled courtyard set with a long table. We made toasts of champagne poured from pitchers lest the local authorities decided to pop in to enforce the no alcohol in restaurants rule of war-time. I don’t remember what we ate – or if I even did. After all, I was the bride.   

To Wonder Like a Child

In my writing group, we use prompts to inspire our weekly essays. Last week we were each to choose and open a book to a specific page and line to use as our first sentence. I had to go through a number of books before I found a sentence that resonated. Here’s what I landed on:

“As artists, we seek to restore our childlike perception: a more innocent state of wonder and appreciation not tethered to utility or survival.” (From The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin)

The spirit of this sentence reminded me of my early 20s when I studied in Kentucky with a sculptor and profound teacher, Mike Skop. Back then, Mike’s teaching awakened a lot of wonder. I am doing my best to remember and reclaim this way of being in the world.

For almost 30 years I was focused on day-to-day survival with my shoulder to the grindstone. My life was punctuated by traumas including living with my husband’s addiction and finally, suicide. No surprise: ‘wonder’ sometimes eluded me. I lived in a cloud of to-do lists around my job and raising my daughter. While I remained appreciative of the magnificence of life, a sense of ‘wonder’ was often obscured. That has changed this past year.

Recently, on flights to and from Los Angeles where I went to visit my daughter, I kept the window shade up so I could look out. I always thrill at the NYC skyline and as we lift up higher and higher, I love to watch the world through the clouds. Like a little kid, I crane my neck, nose pressed against the window, trying to see more. It’s a marvel, being above the world, watching the landscape of this country change with the hours and miles. The endless wooded stretches of Pennsylvania, and a checkerboard of farmland is Indiana. At some point over Kansas the light was hitting what might have been a string of ponds or small lakes that from my angle in the plane, looked like an abstract painting, splotches in grays and yellows. 

When I visited my daughter last year, I passed directly over the Grand Canyon. It was all I could do not to squeal with delight. This trip, while the flight map indicated that we were flying over Flagstaff, I saw only smaller cuts in the earth, not the very grand Grand Canyon. Still, the landscape was magnificent and exotic – buttes and red earth, snowcapped mountain ranges, houses in the middle of nowhere. I remember last year that the hills around Los Angeles were golden and dry. (I was there shortly before the disastrous fires.) This year, thanks to the late autumn rains, these same hills are green.

I kept comparing my view from the window to the video-map in front of me, trying to figure out what towns we were flying over. I imagined what we looked like from the ground. And I thought about the lives below me. Did any of them notice us? Sometimes, I look up from my yard or a parking lot and think about the people on the planes I see overhead. I look around the plane cabin and see that no one else has their shade open. Is nobody interested in looking at this remarkable landscape? Is anyone else marveling at the distance, the space, the phenomena of being so high up here? I understand. While remarkable, the idea of being in this massive piece of metal so far from the earth is also bloody terrifying. Sometimes I scare myself thinking about it and will choose sleep, reading or a movie. But not these last trips across this country. There is. so much darkness when I think about what’s happening – I like to be reminded of the sheer physical beauty of this place.

Safely on earth, on a cold winter morning, I see the waning moon fading in the dawn light. I think of the vast distance between us – the moon and earth – and yet, how close we are. For a few minutes, I think about our planet spinning through space, how incredible the universe is – in spite of us. I feel that wonder. Like a child. Who would have thought this gets easier with age? 

What to Save from a Fire (Nothing to Steal Here)

Last January fires devastated communities in the Los Angeles area. My daughter Molly lives five blocks from where the recommended evacuation area was. Besides the threat of flames, toxic smoke hung heavy in her neighborhood. Molly and her roommate fled to a friend’s apartment in a safer part of the city. In tears, she described how tormented she was having to choose a few possessions to save from potential loss. She took things that had been her late father’s: jackets from movies he’d worked on like the blue satiny Superman bomber with his name embroidered over the heart.

I barely remember feeling that sense of preciousness about things. I’m at the stage of life when caring about objects fades daily. And yet, I’ve never had so many possessions. Don’t get me wrong – I would hate to lose my house and what is in it but where I am ultimately headed, there’s nothing I can take. This is my time for downsizing and I’m not being great at that. It is mostly my laziness that prevents me from purging, whittling down my life to lessen the future clean out for my daughter. 

But it’s also my awareness that my daughter wants to hang onto things. I recently mentioned to her that I was exasperated with my younger self for shipping two large sculptures from Japan that I’d carved. They are too heavy for me to lift alone. Titled ‘Relic’ and ‘Seed’, they sit – giant dust collectors in the corner of my living room, barely visible behind the television and plants.

“They are my inheritance,” Molly says. 

Her future headache, I think. Even if I could move them, I would not bother to save my well traveled sculptures from the threat of flames. In fact, perhaps that’s what I should do with them. I’m sure this well seasoned camphor wood from Kyoto would burn nicely in my wood stove. 

Letting go of possessions can be difficult for some of us. When I was in my late twenties to early thirties, I rented a room in a house by the beach in Connecticut. I escaped from the city on weekends to my sweet space on the third floor. The house was owned by Tom who became a beloved friend. He was in his 80s by the time I moved into his rambling home overflowing with a lifetime of memories. Many of the rooms of the house were unusable because they were so full of things. There were boxes and boxes of Tom’s belongings, his deceased mother’s and other long-gone family. The 5 or so of us who lived there as ‘roomers’ had clear spaces. Almost in reaction to Tom, our rooms were sparsely furnished and neat. The kitchen too, was always clean and organized although Tom was known to eat expired sandwich meat. 

We all became friends and regularly gathered in the cluttered but manageable front room for cocktail hour with Tom as our generous host. He’d offer drinks to all, make himself a martini and always had plenty of Molson’s and wine on hand. We’d find space on the couch and other perches around the room, filling it with laughter. Sometimes Tom would crank up the player-piano from the adjoining living room – too full of boxes and treasures to sit in. Living there was casual and easy, the evenings of warmth and friendship sustained us as did Tom’s love. We became an oddball little family and barely noticed the clutter around us. His home was an oasis. I loved it there.

While not as much as Tom, I have my own lifetime of stuff – the value of which is primarily sentimental. A thief who looked in my window would pass on making the effort to break in. No fancy sound system, jewels or likely valuables in this house, they might easily assess. Only memories. Nothing to steal here. 

In Praise of Second Hand

Tis the season to buy things and this year I haven’t. Not much. My daughter Molly, my main recipient, is staying in California and I’ll be visiting her in the new year so no crazy holiday traveling for me. Nor gift buying. I’ve never really operated well under the seasonal pressure of giving presents. Working in a bookstore I used to give a lot of books. I’ll still happily give books, but unless you’re a little kid, who needs more books? I am now an avid library user. I’ve also been tackling my shelves — filled with unread titles. I bet yours are too, right?

I don’t hate shopping per se. I usually enjoy food shopping and I like wandering through hardware stores. (Lowes – never Home Depot) But I love thrift shopping. I have been a thrifter since high school and still find it an adventure.

Currently in my living room, these are the things I purchased new: television, vacuum cleaner, this computer, the carpet, woodstove and one small chair. That’s about it. Everything else has been thrifted, found at tag-sales, scavenged, and given to me by friends. The same is true for every other room in this old house. The things I own have stories – and only some of them are mine. Pre-owned, they came to me with their own history. 

I look around my living room. A Boston fern I transplanted a month ago to give it more room, sits on a plant stand I picked up off the street while walking in the neighborhood. Someone’s reject. The simple wood stand could use a fresh coat of paint; a task that may take me a while to get around to and sometimes, I just don’t. But right now, the plant and wooden stand look lovely in the light of the wood fire burning in my stove. I am burning wood from the oak tree I reluctantly took down this summer. I salute each log as I put into the fire, grateful for the years of shade and now the heat it brings me. I carry the wood in from the porch in a wire basket that Molly spotted at a tag sale a few years ago. 

A blond, Swedish-design coffee table sits in the center of the living room as it has for years. This and matching chairs were a gift from Mary, formerly a beloved neighbor who gave us some furniture when she moved out. Only the table still remains. The solid, deep and comfortable couch was my friend Nina’s. She told me it hosted countless naps and gatherings of her big family of mostly boys – now all grown. It’s a better piece of furniture than I would purchase new and each soft crevice feels like love. Now, it’s where I sometimes snooze.

In the corner is a metal stand that 30 years ago my friend Hendrik designed and welded for me to display one of my sculptures on. During the winter months, I move the sculpture and give this indoor stand to one of my Gardenias plants. It seems happy in its warm corner. 

I prefer used and older furniture, clothes, garden and kitchen tools – almost anything. New things rarely have the grace nor substance of older pieces. While I admire beautiful couches on display in upscale stores and funky themed showrooms, I am not interested in stretching my limited budget to pay for them. 

Years ago, when I was living in NYC, a guy I was dating said to me, “You live like a refugee.” In fairness, I think he was referring to the jerryrigged cinderblock bookcase. I knew my life in the city was transitional – that I wouldn’t stay living there forever, so why put down roots? And besides, I love other people’s old stuff and my books sat happily on those improvised shelves. I haven’t changed much.

Although I now have more stuff. And real bookcases. Yet I cannot resist visiting my favorite thrift shops. ‘It’s only $15’ I said about the tall metal chair that provided a tall perch on the porch all summer. Now it sits by the window inside. I tuck the heavy winter curtains behind the chair to let the light in. Sometimes I sit there for a different view of my space. Worth $15 for a change of perspective, no? 

My favorite are church thrift shops run by volunteers but sometimes I’ll stop into my local Goodwill, usually shopping for something specific. Most recently my mission was to find large enough dishes to put under all the plants I was moving inside for the winter. I found just what I needed plus a sweet plant stand with spindle legs that now sits at the bottom of the stairs, home to a Mandeville plant with its last red blossom from summer still hanging on.

This afternoon I am going to make a cake that requires a loaf pan. I searched in all the cabinets, looking behind pyrex and clay cookware. How do I not have any loaf pans? But I do not. Dare I venture out to shop on the last Saturday before Christmas? I think Goodwill should be fine! 

May your holidays be beautiful!

PS – Walked down to Goodwill and found these!

Cross-Country Memories

Over my lifetime I have taken more trips than I can remember. Still, there is one adventure that remains a favorite. Not my solo trip at 18 when I schlepped across Europe on a Eurail pass. No — I was lonely on those trains and European streets, miserably pining for the man I’d met on my first day of travel. I went on carrying that torch by myself all the way to Greece and back to Limerick 4 months later – and too late. 

No, my favorite trip was one I took with friends a few years after. While traveling alone is an adventure and a time to discover things about one’s self, I prefer to share travel, laughter and meals. I learned that from the cross-country journey I made with Paula and Jane.  

Paula and I had sublet an art studio in San Francisco for a month in the summer and would drive there from where we lived in Kentucky in a car we’d get through a drive-away service. Jane would come along for the ride and fly from there, home to England. We’d all been studying with a sculptor in Kentucky for the past few years and knew each other well and liked each other a lot. When a VW Rabbit Cabriolet to Los Angeles came through as an option, we were excited to have a convertible and took it. However, the cute little red car had a glove compartment sized trunk space already packed with the owner’s stuff. And it was stick shift which meant Paula did all the driving. Jane offered to be in the back seat and happily curled up with all our luggage, towering beside her. 

Jane, tumbleweed and me

Most details are now blurry from the decades gone but the delight I felt each day in seeing the magnificent landscape of this country, still feels vivid. I have only about a dozen 1980s quality prints, mostly taken at the Grand Canyon, of course. The three of us look so happy though windblown and burnt by the hours spent under the sun of all the states we passed through. 

My memory of our journey exists as short clips in my head. I needed to refer to a map to place the clips in my mind according to the route we took. First sight of the Rockies in the distance – sweating in the late morning sun across Colorado as we sped towards the snow topped mountains. We stayed the night in Boulder and my head ached with the altitude. Breakfast outside at a cafe in the woods was a gigantic bowl of yogurt and fruit surrounded by the most beautiful mountain scape I’d ever been in. More flashes of memory include the profound space and silence of the Grand Canyon, tumble weeds, the road blocked by real cowboys moving their cattle, desolate areas marked as reservation land. And the surprise of Utah – first lush mountain roads and pine forests and then the expanse of Painted Desert (where we cranked up Brian Eno music) all in one day.

Jane, Paula and the Grand Canyon

We drove to Santa Fe, New Mexico where Paula fell in love with something about the place – the air, the landscape. Even in Kentucky where Paula still lives along the river, before even visiting the Southwest, she painted in the colors of the desert. The pull was so strong for her that decades later, she’d return multiple times, before finally buying a house there.  

Me and Jane – Grand Canyon

Paula and I insisted that we stop in Las Vegas. In 1981, still a sleazy gambling spot – not the glamorous tourist destination it is today. English Jane did not understand the appeal and said she’d be happy to skip it. She was right. We made one stop in a casino, full of smoke and sad characters lit by the light of slot machines, used the bathrooms and carried on.

The relentless blazing heat of the desert – as we drove through Death Valley – aptly named because it felt like we might die there. I think it was on that last stretch we finally put the top up and ran the air conditioner. Seven days after our departure with incredible landscapes to digest, we arrived in Los Angeles. 

We were sad to give up the road and the cute little car. Drop off was to a Mrs. Goldbach who lived near UCLA. We drove to an unassuming house with some children playing in the driveway. As we pulled up, a woman – perhaps the age I am now – came out of the house and greeted us with a New York accent. She was from Queens. I identified myself as originally from the Bronx and introduced Jane and Paula. Noting Jane’s accent she gestured to the children and said, my grandchildren are visiting from England. She agreed the car looked in fine shape and invited me to follow her into the house so she could return my $100 security deposit. As she was writing her check I noticed a picture of Ringo Starr on the mantelpiece with his arms around a beautiful woman. Back out on the street, I shared this cherry on top of our road trip with my fellow travelers as we walked away from the house. Our cross country trek so packed with cliches was complete – even with a kind-of celebrity sighting.

Jane, me, Paula in San Francisco

I ponder why this trip remains a favorite – even more than my exotic honeymoon to the Seychelles or so many other exciting journeys I’ve taken. I remain dear friends with both gals. On that trip, we were wonderful travel companions – comfortable with long silences, easy with laughter and happy to sing to the radio. I was mesmerized by the road and curious about what was around each corner. Twenty-two year old me felt loved and free and ready for the world.

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