When I have a feeling I will want to re-read a newspaper article, I cut it out and put it in my clippings file. When I re-read the article, I sometimes find myself jotting down ideas or writing down what I learned from reading the article. One such article was a New York Times article by Sally McGrane: “How One Berliner Battles Hate: With Conscience and a Sharp Scraper.” I learned about Irmela Mensah-Schramm who lives in Berlin, Germany. She is a retired teacher, who taught children with severe disabilities. She was born in 1945, at the tail end of World War II. In the early 1980s, when she was…
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Noticing Beautiful Math in Nature
If you look closely at a sunflower, the base of a pinecone, or the shell of a snail, you will see a spiral, one of the ways nature organizes form. The math that describes the geometry of a spiral is call the Fibonacci Series. It is created by adding the two previous numbers in a series to get the next: 1 + 1 = 2 2 + 3 = 5 3 + 5 = 8 1,1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 and so on… Discovered by Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa in 1225, this sequence also generates other pleasing geometries, such as the Golden Mean. Ancient Greek philosophers…
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Tai Chi Class = One Room Schoolhouse
For the past two months, I have been taking a tai chi class. Forty years ago, Koncho (an honorary title for my teacher and “head of school”) moved to the United States from Japan. Although he speaks English much better than he thinks, he will sometimes explain a tai chi movement in Japanese. Because there is always at least one student in the class who is fluent in Japanese, Koncho’s instruction is immediately translated into English. As I speak some Japanese (due to spending the first ten years of my life as an ex-pat in Japan), I have been delighted to discover that I understand half of what Koncho says…
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Remembering a Moment From Each Year of Your Life
Can you remember a distinct moment from each year you have been alive? It’s kind of fun to try. Last year on Natalie’s 19th birthday, we sat in our garden in the dark and lit a candle each time Natalie remembered something from each of her 18 previous years. The 19th candle was a wish, which is secret. It was such a lovely ritual, we plan to do it again tonight. (Last year she made a list, so this year will be much easier.) Here’s her list: Age One: The feeling of looking for blankie upon returning home with the blankie song: Blankie, blankie, where-o-where is blankie? Age Two: Second…
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One of Life’s Pleasures: Reading Aloud
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. – Joseph Campbell Sometimes we stumble, and we think we can’t stand up again. The power of stories is that they can help us stand up again. I believe that those who show us how stories can comfort, guide and empower us, give us a lifelong gift. After losing touch for 30 years with my closest friend during college, we were recently reunited. Within minutes, we found ourselves picking up exactly where we left off: enjoying each other’s company. For the past 10 years, Judy has been an elementary…
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When Food is Love
Nowruz (literally “new day”) is also known as the Persian New Year. It is the day of the vernal equinox, and marks the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. It usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day, depending on where it is observed. The moment the sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes night and day is calculated exactly every year. Today at 3:28 a.m. Pacific Time, the vernal equinox, occurred. Once again, night and day stand in perfect balance. Sometimes, people enter our lives, who help us stand in balance. One such person entered our lives last fall. Three weeks after my mastectomy in September, Bill…
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A Letter to the Future
We have managed to get through a kitchen project — refreshing our 1950s/1980s kitchen with new user-friendly cabinets, which allowed for a wider countertop (no longer necessary to place flour and sugar bins on kitchen table while baking) and a larger sink (no more splashing on floor when washing baking dishes). Although it sounds straightforward in a sentence, it was rather involved. We decided to turn it into an adventure. We cooked outdoors on a camp stove and gas grill for eight weeks. We dined at a long folding table. We were sprightly for most of the weeks, but by the seventh and eighth weeks, we were mighty eager to…
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Unexpected Surprises on a Patio Kitchen
I thought I was going to be writing about something else today, but something magical has occurred on the patio and I want to share it with you. Admittedly, two weeks into our six-week patio kitchen adventure, there are moments that feel inconvenient, but I am surprised to say (at least at this moment) that most of the time we feel like we’re on vacation. We linger over candlelit dinners at the long table. Early in the morning, we watch bees visit the kumquat tree to collect pollen from its blooms. Hummingbirds zip past on their way to the fountain in the front yard. Mourning doves coo on the…
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Kitchen Re-do Leads to a Patio Adventure
We are in the midst of refreshing our 1947 kitchen with new cabinets, counter and floor. Although a few updates had been made over the years, we knew we were finally ready to expand our cabinet space (freeing up limited counter space). The new cabinets will allow us to retrieve things easily (no more getting on the floor on hands and knees to reach the bowl in the back of the cupboard on the bottom shelf). For the most part, though, our new kitchen will be much like our old kitchen, which we have loved for 19 years. In the process of preparing for the project, I checked out from…
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Art and Detecting Come Together
A recent article in The New York Times caught my eye. It was about Amy E. Herman, an expert in visual perception, who has written a book titled Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life. She teaches medical students, business executives, and those who work in local and federal law enforcement how to use art as a tool for critical inquiry: What am I seeing here? How do I attach a narrative to it? Her goal is to teach people how to notice details they might otherwise miss. Because I used to take my film students to the art museum to do something similar, I was totally intrigued by the reactions of a…
