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a book review One of the great mysteries of the 20th century was the identity of the personal librarian to John Pierpont Morgan. Born Belle Marion Greener to an African-American family in 1879, she became Belle da Costa Greene at the age of 16. Her parents were separated, and her mother brought her and her

Underneath the Niagara Parks Power Station, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, which was a working power station between 1905 and 2006, there is a long tunnel. This tunnel was built without the use of electricty. The main tools used were lanterns, rudimentary dynamite, pickaxes and shovels. This tunnel is an amazing feat of engineering. For a

Today, I used my Derwent Intense paints to create this picture of a flower. I’ve been painting versions of this flower for several months with a variety of mediums. They look alike and they look very different. I’m learning, from the process of painting this flower, over and over again, that, even with colors that

Today’s art project is an example of the “reuse” part of “recycle, reuse, reduce.” This is an old spice jar that I decorated with glass paint. I have a few of these. They are good for holding small objects, such as Q-tips or toothpicks. Or you could simply enjoy the jar as decoration and place

It’s almost #wordlesswednesday!!! A few days ago, I went on a day trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario, with family. We went just to look at the great waterfalls with the kids, who live in California and have never seen that great wonder of the world. This was my first visit to Canada since pre-COVID times.

I just finished reading a book called “Never Let Me Go,” by  Kazuo Ishiguro, the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. At first, it came across as being a story about how children lived and learned in a boarding school. called Hailsham. They were encouraged to be creative through a variety of visual

Early every year, I try to choose a word for the year. Sometimes, I remember the word for the whole year, but, quite often, I forget. This year, I will make every effort to try to remember by posting monthly here my thoughts on that word. This year’s word is something that means a great

The fairy and the moon There was once a fairy who lived on the earth. The humans around her barely noticed her presence because they said that fairies weren’t real. They went about their daily business, working at jobs that they did not love and shopping for food that they did not like. The jobs

Today, I wondered what the picture of the flower would look like if I painted it with orange and black ink, which seem very October-ish and Halloweeny. I had been experimenting with mixing orange and black, always with a large amount of orange and a very small amount of black. Together, they produce a brown.