I’m always amazed at how memory shows up in the creative process. This photo (circa 1975) had been lost to me for decades. I recently found it and was surprised how the visual of the mountains resonates in the words from a short story I wrote just a few years ago: Mitch looked into the…
Frank Lloyd Wright is one of my favorite architects, mostly because he was such a prolific architect of homes and churches, leaving a trail of evidence of his perspective and talent in dozens of neighborhoods around the country. With over five hundred of his nearly one thousand designs having been built, his Prairie style or…
Ours is a walking marriage. After thirteen years, my husband and I have figured out the secret to a happy marriage: walking. We walk to see how far we can get. Some days yield more steps than others. It’s our exercise as we work toward our twelve thousand steps each day (okay, more like ten…
This photo haunts me. This is my father in his late twenties doing two things he loved—boating and smoking. The photo was taken somewhere in Southeastern Virginia when I was just nine or ten years old. The nicotine inside that pipe would kill him several years later. But it’s the expression that haunts me. Is…
Our horrific American past comes to life here at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. After passing a sculpture by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo depicting the trauma of slavery, I entered the open-air memorial to stand face-to-face with our past. A slab of copper-colored material, in the shape of a tombstone, hangs—each placed beside…
I have always been mesmerized by Dale Chihuly’s art. The dazzling way he captures color and light. The whimsical shapes and forms. The spectacular statements and reflections. The exhibitions in the last few years of Chihuly’s glass forms in natural settings manage to merge art and nature in such a unique and contemplative way. A…
