I’ve decided that 2018 is the year of rereading for me. That means revisiting books that have been favorites of mine throughout my life. I recently reread three childhood favorites: “Charley,” “A Wrinkle in Time” trilogy, and “The Secret Garden.” I read “Charley” when it was actually called “Charley,” but somewhere along the line, the publisher retitled it “The Girl Who Ran Away.” The local library used to have a copy and I reread this…
I have the Autodesk Pixlr app (remember when we used to call apps software?) loaded on my computer. One of the most interesting editing features on this app is the Double Exposure tool found in the Refine menu. I was messing around one day and started experimenting with this tool, which allows you to lay one photo on top of another and change the transparency with a few settings that are part of the tool.…
I found an article from Smithsonian.com that discusses frisson, that delightful feeling of chills that overcomes you when listening to stirring music. I experience frisson all the time with music. Apparently not everyone does. (Dang, that would stink!) According to the article, “The researchers found that the brains of individuals who occasionally feel a chill while listening to music were wired differently than the control subjects. They had more nerve fibers connecting the auditory cortex, the…
It’s the beginning of the year. Where most people set resolutions, I review my ongoing list of goals and decide whether to dump any or add to the list. One of my goals for 2018 is to leave Facebook. Sounds pretty drastic to abandon a social media network that has billions of users and an addictive interface, but this feeling has been building for some time now. As Facebook has grown, it has shifted from…
I belong to the flood of women in the world that have a #MeToo story. In a continuum from sexism to sexual harassment to rape and other forms of violence, I think we’d be hard-pressed to find a woman anywhere who hasn’t got a #MeToo story. And when you include sexist policies baked into the governance of many cultures, we’re all affected to varying degrees. Because sexual harassment is so pervasive, it seems easy to…