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Coffee Shop Writer
Have you ever wandered into a coffee shop, placed your order and then, while the barista was brewing your beverage, looked around? Not a quick, cursory glance before your attention turns to your phone to solve the mystery of today’s Wordle; I mean an unhurried, inquisitive look around the café. I have, and I’ve noticed…
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Miss Rumphius
My father was a salesman – gregarious personality, boisterous laugh, firm handshake and all – he thrived in conversation. We joked that he could talk to anyone; sales came naturally to him. I inherited some of those traits, for sure. Every time I opened an exam room door in the Emergency Room to greet a…
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A New Way of Seeing
“One’s destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things.” (John Steinbeck or Henry Miller – I’ve seen this quote attributed to both) Our children are fond of telling me I married well, and I wholeheartedly agree! Art is a wonderful man and, lucky for me, one of his passions is travel.…
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“Om Mani Pae Mey Hun”
The Secret Lies in the Lotus It’s sweet summertime in Pennsylvania: a season for marveling at lightning bugs; reminding myself a bajillion times to watch the ball when I swing a golf club; drinking iced coffee; enjoying a vacation or two; and writing shorter blog posts (I hope!) I find magic in all four seasons…
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Good Enough
Years ago, when scrapbooking was my creative outlet, once or twice a year I would spend the weekend with a small group of friends in a craft store north of Pittsburgh. One of those women was an unrelenting perfectionist. If she could not find the perfect shade of seafoam green paper or decide which photos…
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Where The Magic Happens
I love gazing at photos of artist’s studios, studying the little details of how they store their materials, how they organize their space to maximize their creative flow, and how they express themselves within their space. Yet I rarely open my own studio for others to see the same. Despite the many visitors we’ve had…
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Words To Live By
As the dust settled on my gallery show in October last year, my daughter-in-law asked if I would make a painting for her classroom. She recently graduated with her master’s degree in early childhood education and had just begun her first full time teaching position. She was hoping I could create a visual representation of…
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Find My Friends
Find My Friends is an App I encouraged everyone in my family to download onto our iPhones years ago. My children were gradually scattering first across the state, then the country and then, on occasion, the globe, and I found comfort in the idea that we could always find each other (at least each other’s…
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Blue Skying!
I admit, it’s an unusual title for a blog post written in February in Pennsylvania where most days the landscape and, occasionally, my outlook resemble 50 shades of gray. My college roommate’s father, Mr. Murphy, dubbed this time of year “the Febs,” a perfect description for the daylight-deprived doldrums of a Northeast bleak mid-winter. Perhaps…
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Around The Bend
This past August, I visited the Anne of Green Gables Heritage Site on Prince Edward Island with my sister, Kathy, my niece, Abbie, and my great-niece, Logan (photos below). Cavendish, PEI, is the home of the book’s author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. We wandered red sand beaches, gazed at picturesque lighthouses, and ate amazing lobster rolls!…
Melissa Stephens Art 