Category: Personal

Working with Generative AI

Personal

Last year I finally replaced my old hand-me-down laptop with a brand-new, modest but still exciting, Lenovo Yoga. I bought this mostly for work, but also to have as my everyday machine. I expected to do a lot with it. One thing I hadn’t really foreseen but maybe should have, was how I would start working with generative AI.

“Learn AI!”

Everyone hears, every day it seems, that we need to learn to incorporate AI into our everyday lives and work. That those with expertise in AI have better prospects for future success. I personally had been more than reluctant to dive into AI. I’d been skeptical of its usefulness or its value, and I’d been doubtful of our real need for it. In addition, I felt it would only be a negative, especially for those of us who create for our livelihoods. Hearing that AI could write articles, blog posts, even books, filled me with a certain amount of dread. It was also irritating to me. This seemed largely out of our control; it would happen whether we liked it or not. My concern of course extended to other creatives in the visual arts or design communities, as well as to society as a whole.

Creating my own images

So when I got started with my new laptop, the last thing on my mind was engaging with its AI features. Well, that changed. I was working on one of my blogs, struggling with ideas for illustrating a few articles. For as long as I have been doing this – blogging (which was originally called online journaling, when I first got started at it) – I have created the vast majority of my own images. Occasionally, I will include photos, maps, or other images that are more meaningful for a particular article than anything I would design myself. But, in most cases, I have done my own art and graphics for my sites. Even when I was a columnist for a print magazine, I designed the graphics for my column and provided the images each issue.

Jumping in with Copilot

I decided to play around a little with Copilot, which was included in my new laptop. When I write an article I often have a fairly solid idea of how I’d like to illustrate it. My imagination typically comes up with several ideas, and from there, I kind of just start working on it. If it requires a new photo, I consider where I can go – if I need to be in a certain kind of place or environment. Or I consider what items I have on hand that might serve as effective “props.” As an aside, I like that this somewhat follows in my father’s footsteps to a degree, since for years in the 1960s and 70s he was a display artist for large department stores. Putting together props or items for an illustrative photograph has its definite similarities to designing and creating a storefront display.

Writing my first prompts

With Copilot I thought of these articles and what needed to be illustrated, what kind of illustration could add to the writing, could reflect the meaning of the writing; something that would perhaps not only draw people in or grab their attention, but also anchor their attention, so to speak. An illustration helps to get across and cement the meaning of the writing.

I was new to this, so I just wrote rather detailed prompts of exactly what I was looking for. And, I was quite surprised. The resulting images obviously weren’t what I would have drawn by hand (besides, my drawing skills do not go that far for illustration purposes), and if I’d tried to put together photos, it would have been nearly impossible. Since my AI-generated images included people, photos would have required far more than I have the capability of doing – setting up a location or studio, hiring models, supplying costumes, etc. I was, therefore, somewhat pleased with the AI-generated results, and they worked well with the articles.

I was also quite surprised. Not just with the results themselves, but with my satisfaction with them. I do tend to be fairly open-minded, which for me, includes being open to change, open to considering other opinions or viewpoints, open to trying new things – including those things I have previously dismissed. But I hadn’t expected to have a positive feeling from having played around with generative AI. Paradigm shift, for sure.

Illustrating memories

Deciding to play around a bit with Copilot, I thought, what if I could generate some images that illustrated moments of my childhood – childhood memories? These of course would not be actual memories (haha), but what would they look like? Would they provide any sense of genuine nostalgia for me? Would they effectively illustrate memories I had that I might share with others? I have a strong imagination and tend to visualize things fairly easily, but that’s not true for everyone. We each are different kinds of “thinkers,” so I don’t see it as a shortcoming if someone has a harder time picturing something.

A day at the beach

A girl on the beach, with a starfish. You can see where the AI messed up, if you look at the points of the starfish! they look a bit more like pretzel sticks 😉

I thought of a few memories from my childhood. These were not specific events or occasions, rather, these were simple, somewhat generic moments in time. I first chose the kind of moment I would have had at my favorite beach growing up. My family went there often. The beach was about two hours from where we lived. We’d often go out for a long afternoon, enjoying the quiet, the solitude, the beauty, and the peace.

In my prompt, I described a little girl (representing me, obviously), how she looked, how she was dressed, her emotions at the time, and what she was doing. In this memory, I was holding a small starfish I’d found in the sand. I was quite happy, as well as fascinated in that childlike way, by the little creature. In minutes, Copilot offered an image. I had to laugh, because it was mostly quite accurate (look closely at the picture to see where it really failed). Again, it was not me in the picture. It was not the actual memory, and it was not an actual picture from that time (all obvious), but it got across my experience of such a moment. If I showed someone else I wouldn’t say, “oh, here I am at the beach when I found a starfish in the sand!” but I could say, “this is a lot like what I used to do at the beach when I was a kid,” knowing that the beach actually looked a lot like the one I had gone to, because of the details in my prompt.

On the railroad tracks

The main issue with this one was how close the houses and factory buildings were to the tracks. But that was likely due more to my prompts not specifying distance

I did another, fast-forwarding some years to myself as a teen, in a much different place. This was my home, my “backyard,” and I walked alone at dusk, lost in thought, and with a degree of sadness. Again AI took my description and very closely showed me what could have been a snapshot of me at a certain age, in that familiar place that had been home. If I wanted to share a story about spending hours at night walking along the train tracks behind my apartment, I could use this (or a similarly AI-generated image) to illustrate my story. Despite the issue of the buildings being a little closer to the tracks than they really are, this image does a very good job at showing the kind of place I lived through much of my childhood.

Is it creativity?

I wouldn’t want AI to replace any true artistic endeavor. I don’t think of these images as having been my “art;” they were made to my orders, so to speak. These were not drawn or painted by me, by my hand. However, one thing that really surprised me and stood out to me, was how creative it had actually felt. There is creativity in vision, in envisioning itself. When I stand at an easel with a stick of charcoal, I don’t envision anything ahead of time. If there is a model, or an item I am drawing from still life, I suppose that is the vision – the vision is in how I am seeing what is in front of me. I don’t see a finished piece of art when I’m drawing. I let it come through me. In working with AI, maybe sitting with the chat box and creating the prompt is like standing at the easel. I’ve formed a vision of what I’d like to see, written a detailed prompt, and AI has matched it as well as it has been programmed to.

Obviously, these AI-generated images lack the soul of real art. They lack a certain depth or complexity. Many AI-generated images have a certain recognizable kind of lighting; they are a bit unnuanced. They will not evoke the way a great painting might. But they might still communicate a feeling or a mood, which in some cases is enough. For the purposes of illustrating certain articles, I have found them useful and helpful. For such purposes, I am not going for fine art.

A quick glance

I think we know that unfortunately, the average attention span has shortened greatly (are you still reading? wow, thank you!). If the average reader is just skimming an article or post, looking for a TLDR, how much attention are they paying to the accompanying artwork then? With this in mind, I have accepted the idea of generative AI for such needs. At least for now…

Our choices when working with generative AI

AI is still super new to me. I have still only played with it a little bit, and I do not use it for writing, even to clean up or edit. I won’t even use it in replying to texts or emails. And I have only ever used it a few times for illustrating articles (and always note when I have). Each of us, even if we accept AI into our everyday lives, will have our own areas where we will refuse to engage with it. But I am very curious about where we are headed with AI, and its place in our creative lives.

Thanks for reading. And as always, feel free to reach out with any questions or comments, or just to say hi.

~ Nellie

Images: main image created with my prompts for a wedding in the woods, inspired by my Polish heritage; others inspired by personal memories. Created using Microsoft Copilot and Photoshop.

Still in There

Personal

I was watching the Ted Danson show, A Man on the Inside, on Netflix the other day. My husband and I have only just started watching this. It was something I was interested in but was unsure I felt ready to watch until recently. I didn’t know if it would be slightly triggering. I knew this first season took place in a retirement home, and I thought it might focus too heavily on the Alzheimer’s and dementia experience, for me. Seeing what my dad went through with dementia was one of the hardest things I have ever gone through. I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy the show, or if I’d simply be rubbing salt in a still open wound.

We took a chance with it about a week ago. It’s been three years since my dad died, and though I miss him terribly and will always be grieving in a way, I don’t still struggle with the more intense aspects of the grieving process. The show is pretty great; we have both enjoyed it a lot. Although it takes place in a retirement home, that’s what it is – a retirement home, not a nursing home. The residents are far more mobile than the residents had been where my dad was, which was a nursing and rehab facility. They come and go as they please, and live in suites, not constantly attended to by nurses or nurses’ aides. It is a different environment with just a few similarities.

Memory care

It wasn’t until the last episode we watched that the show pointedly focused on memory issues, or “memory care.” There is a memory care unit in the facility, called “The Neighborhood.” In my dad’s facility, there was an Alzheimer’s unit too. Despite his ever-worsening dementia, he was never moved into it.

Becoming the forgotten

In this last episode, the increase in cognitive decline of one of the residents is discussed. Also discussed is the fact that she has begun to lose her friends because of it. They have simply stopped coming to see her. This struck me immediately, since I saw this firsthand. Not just with my dad, but with other residents in his facility. It is almost a blocking out, a removal, a brushing aside, and ultimately (ironically) a forgetting.

People become uncomfortable with seeing their friends and loved ones seemingly disappear before their eyes. I know the pain of this. I first saw it with my husband’s grandmother, who I met when her Alzheimer’s was already well advanced. Everyone in the family told me how different she had become. She was almost an entirely different person than the woman she had been. Because I hadn’t known her previously, I just became close to the person she had become, but I saw the pain etched on my father-in-law’s face, and the discomfort others had in being around her.

The list goes on

Others in my family and among family friends, also went through Alzheimer’s, and a beloved great-aunt of mine had dementia. I hadn’t seen her for several months, and when I next came to visit I had been warned of the changes. I was not prepared. Nothing can really prepare you, can it? I had to hold back tears, and visit with her as if I wasn’t heartbroken seeing what had happened to her, and to her vivacious, witty, and warm personality.

My grandmother also went through Alzheimer’s. It was the first time I actually felt a huge punch in the gut by the experience. She, like my husband’s grandmother, became an almost different person. She also had immense memory loss, and forgot who all of us were. We would visit just as kind strangers. My grandmother had been a very strong, very independent, and very smart woman. In Alzheimer’s she barely spoke, and there was always a look of fear to her.

Unfortunately, this listing of my loved ones who’ve gone through these illnesses and conditions could be far longer. I think at this point we all have had at least one or two people in our lives who have gone through it. If not, then we probably know others who have gone through the grief of losing someone to a memory disease.

Erasure

I have talked about being with my dad through his progression of dementia here on this blog. I don’t need or want to focus on how that looks or feels. Instead, I just want to talk about this removal of the Alzheimer’s or dementia patient from people’s lives, from their everyday, from their own memory.

Early in my dad’s diagnosis and for a short while after he moved into a nursing home, he regularly received visits from his friends. He had had many friends. My dad was fairly well-known in town. He had worked in local media, had worked with local leaders, had lived there virtually his whole life. My dad had also dedicated many years’ work to the town’s revitalization, as well as to running enriching community programs. He also never forgot his friends. When a very close friend of his was diagnosed with early dementia, my dad didn’t let discomfort or sadness govern his actions. Instead, he visited frequently and assisted in his care. It was not shocking but it was upsetting to me, that so many of his own friends then seemed to simply forget he still existed.

Angels

When he first went into the home, he received visits from friends every week. By the time he had passed away, it was down to us – his immediate family – his significant other and occasionally her children, one close friend, and a few cousins once in a while. Old friends would occasionally call, and they would sing and laugh together. Very occasionally, he would receive a visit from out of the blue, from someone he hadn’t seen in years.

As his daughter, this was of such significance to me. Those people who stayed in touch, who remembered him, who still had love and warmth for him, were like angels in my mind.

Not the same kind of remembering

Why don’t people visit? Is it just to avoid the pain of it? Or maybe they’re embarrassed, to see someone who had been so capable, become utterly reliant on others. Perhaps they think the person with Alzheimer’s or dementia simply no longer thinks, or understands, or feels. Certainly, they do not remember in the same way, but this varies. I learned with my dad that he remembered much. It was spotty, and he had his “good days and bad days.” But, he never forgot who we were. He might forget where he was or why he was there, but he always knew us.

Also, although he forgot specific occasions, there was a remembering still tied to those times. For example, he no longer had any memory of taking me to a Van Gogh exhibit at the Met when I was a teenager. But as we flipped through the exhibit program together one day, his eyes lit up, and some part of him remembered. He had sung in the opera Aida with the Connecticut Opera, in the 1980s. It was another highlight of my childhood. During one visit with the whole family, we played Aida from Met Opera on Demand on a laptop. He watched, enrapt, and he sang the songs, from some kind of memory. As he sang, he taught some of the words to my daughter, his granddaughter. He did not remember having actually performed these songs on stage, but he still recognized the opera, and still knew the songs.

These things may not be the same kind of memory, but they still show a deep survival of something, inside. The specific memory doesn’t have to exist the same way it had before, for it to demonstrate that they, our loved ones, are still there. My dad had lost much of his memory. Some of his behavior had changed. He suffered new feelings, new emotions, new internal struggles, but he was still there.

If wishes were horses…

This is what I wish people understood. I wish people would not turn away from the person with Alzheimer’s, dementia, or other cognitive condition. That they would not put them out of their own mind, turning them into just one of their own memories (that they may think they will have forever). I wish they would continue to visit or at least call or send a card. I wish they would continue to come be with their old friends, even if those old friends look at them with confused eyes, can no longer laugh along with shared memories, or might not even speak aloud.

It’s childish, I know, to say “I wish…” But I have heard it from others as well, others who have also gone through this process with their mom or dad, or their grandparent, or sometimes, their partner. It is another part of grieving, this watching as people stop visiting or reaching out.

One of the lucky ones?

I was actually fairly fortunate. Our family had quite a few years after my dad’s dementia diagnosis, and although visits from his old friends waned, he continued making new friends in the place where he lived. Even through covid the facility encouraged socializing, as much as was deemed safe. My dad was spared the devastating isolation that I know many others endure. He had us, his closest loved ones, as well as his new friends, and the dedicated family of the home he lived in.

A larger family

I’ll end on that positive note. The facility that cared for my dad was highly rated, and people there were dedicated to their residents. It became another, larger family. All of us – the residents and their families; the people running the facility; the staff, from doctor to nurse to rec director to housekeeper to cook; we were all part of this family. I think that kept many of us going. Each of those people saw our loved ones as people. They treated them as people. They hadn’t, in most cases, known our loved ones before they were stricken with their conditions, so they got to know them by who they had become. And that was okay. They treated them with respect and with love. They knew they were still people, that they were still in there. That’s all I’m really hoping for, and it was that sentiment that was reflected in the episode of the show. There is still someone in there, and they should not be forgotten.

Thanks for reading, and as always, please feel free to reach out with comments or just to say hi.

~ Nellie

image: my dad took the photo above, of a sunset at Hammonasset Beach in Madison, CT

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Fifty Years

Personal

A few days ago it occurred to me that this week is fifty years since my mother died. I mean, this shouldn’t have surprised me – I know how old I am, after all. But despite noting the anniversary date each year, time goes on. You don’t necessarily think of how long it has actually been, with every anniversary. Also, my dad and I used to always speak on the day, whether he called me or I him. It wasn’t an emotional call. It was more just a quiet acknowledgement. And perhaps, a reassurance to the other that at least, we were still here.

In perspective

My perspective of her death has changed over time, of course. She died when I was very young. I understood she died, understood her illness, I had these concepts. But when she died, I had really only known her as my mother. My little five-year old’s heart didn’t conceive of her as anything else. Obviously as I grew older I imagined her at her other ages, and in other roles, her first jobs, her falling in love with my dad, her private aspirations and passions. As I got older, my heartache was not for what I had lost, but for what she had.

Fifty years feels like a long time. When you get married, or have a child, or hit other milestones, you miss the loved ones you’ve lost; one might say, especially your mother. Difficulties are confronted without her, joys are celebrated without her.

I now feel so far beyond the age she had the opportunity to live to, I sometimes wonder how she might perceive me. Would her perspective be that of a 32-year-old? It is an odd thing to contemplate (and probably pointless).

It’s natural

Years ago I was seeing a therapist, and I mentioned to her that some of my friends thought I spent too much time dwelling on death. I explained to her it wasn’t so much a dwelling on death. It was a feeling that it was always present, and therefore, I felt a need to try and understand it. She laughed, and said it was perfectly natural for me to contemplate such things, as I’d lost the most important person in my life at such a young age. She said it would actually be more concerning if I didn’t think about it.

I don’t dwell on it. Rather, I remember it, remember her, and especially on an anniversary like the fiftieth year, I feel a need to honor her with more intention than many other years. I still have some of those old questions born in childhood – where did she go? Is she still around, is she truly gone, is she watching over us, is she at peace…? I am more of a skeptic than I used to be, though the hospice nurses who cared for my dad certainly opened my heart to the possibility again that there is something more beyond death, some kind of continuation of the soul. I heard remarkable stories from their personal as well as professional lives, that gave evidence of something beyond this life.

A reaching out

At fifty years, if she is still around somewhere, even just an awareness of soul, I hope she knows that for fifty years she has always still been loved deeply, and missed terribly. She is remembered, thought of often, and held dear within our hearts.

~ Nellie

image: the photo is of her and me, when I was just a toddler, several years before she died

Coziness and Comfort in a Little Log Cabin

Personal

Every year, I have an underlying worry that fall is going to go too fast. There’s going to be one huge rainstorm that just takes all the leaves off the trees before foliage has peaked, and we’ll end up entering stick season too soon. I make a point of getting out and enjoying the season up close. I do as much walking as I can, take foliage drives, go to harvest festivals, buy pumpkins, and eat fresh corn on the cob until the markets run out. Now that we’re into November, and only the last, brown leaves are holding onto the branches, I can reflect that yes, I have truly been enjoying fall this year, and I’m feeling ready (ready enough anyway) for winter.

The gray of November

November is an odd month for me, has been for a very long time. When I think of November, what comes to mind first, is gray. Just that, gray, grayness. It’s a color, it’s a feeling. I’ve talked about it so many times before, so I’ll just briefly say, I know why November is gray for me before it’s anything else. My mother died in the middle of the month. And as is the case for so many going through loss, the world lost its color. November was also literally quite gray at that point. The trees were bare, the grass was dull, and the ground was frozen.

Ever since then, November has always been gray first, and then cold. Entering November often leaves a pit in my stomach. Beyond the very personal reasons, once we are through the delightfully crisp and deeply colored days of October, here in the north we know we are careening quickly towards plummeting temperatures and big piles of snow.

Coziness and comfort

Coziness and comfort are a must! The soft-as-fur throws are already out, as are the flannel pjs and the Silly Cow cocoa. I look also to other things, things that will help me see beauty in November, beauty in the bare trees just as they are, and beauty in pausing between two very bright and fun holidays. But comfort first…

… in a little log cabin

I keep a lot of mementos on my desk at home. I’m a nostalgic, somewhat sentimental person at times, and I likely think too much about the past. There’s this one thing that I bought a little while ago, that I had to buy, because it’s something my dad used to buy for me when visiting Vermont with my family as a little kid. We would stop in Queechee, before heading into the hills and remote roads of Central Vermont. A souvenir shop there always had these well-stocked. I fell in love with this small joy. It’s a little log cabin incense burner, and as a little kid, it absolutely delighted me. I think all of my most essential wishes were contained in that cute little cabin – coziness, comfort, warmth, home, family, love.

These little log cabins (and they sell a large size as well) are produced by Paine, a family-owned company in Auburn, ME. The incense is all natural, made from the tips of Maine fir trees. I was so happy to see that they are still made by a family business, right in New England.

Inside the little log cabin – a packet of incense cones, and complete instructions for use

The scent of the burning incense, which is balsam fir, is as comforting as the little log cabin itself. I have lived in this state almost forty years now! And I hadn’t really come across these again until I was recently shopping at a gift store that sold souvenirs as well, and there they were. I couldn’t resist. It now sits right on my desk. When I feel like a little touch of comfort, I light a cone, and it brings me back to that feeling I had as a little kid – safe, secure… home. I think I’ll be lighting it a lot of days throughout November!

Allowing beauty through all seasons

Of course, I know there is a lot to love about November. As I’ve gotten older, the starkness of emotion has softened, the edge is off the low mood. It is a beautiful time, though quieter and rawer than earlier in fall. There is often snow on the mountains, creating a gorgeous scene of contrasting whites and grays. Bears are no longer raiding neighborhood yards, so we can put out birdseed again. It’s always a joy to watch chickadees, nuthatches, cardinals, titmice, woodpeckers, and blue jays raiding the feeders! Deer are spotted often at the edges of the wood, and turkeys make their procession across the fields every day.

All of this creates a stunning, powerful lead-up to Thanksgiving. It’s a quiet pause, a time for a bit of hunkering down and reflecting, a time for seeing the beauty of nature in shades of gray and brown, but rich and deep all the same. I think that little Paine log cabin epitomizes what November here in the New England mountains can be: cozy and comforting.

To learn more

Visit Paine Products for more info on these little log cabins, and for other naturally scented products. In addition to the little log cabins, they offer myriad products that will help bring coziness and comfort! Btw, this is not an affiliate link, it just goes directly to this great old New England company 🙂

~ Nellie

A Purposeful Gratitude Practice

Holiday, Personal

It used to be every night as I closed my eyes in bed, I would give thanks for the love in my life, the good home I have, and the beautiful area I live in. Thanks didn’t come because each day had been perfect or great – or even good. Thanks came because despite everything else, regardless of everything else, as I was falling asleep I still had so much to be grateful for. This wasn’t a “gratitude practice,” this was a habit. Many people talk about starting a gratitude practice. It’s often when it’s difficult to recognize the blessings in their lives because of the challenges they experience: the hardships, sorrows, and struggles. I grew up to be grateful for what I did have – often recognizing what I had despite great loss.

Celebrating the good things

I don’t know how my habit of gratitude was formed. I don’t know if it was something my mother instilled in me, or something I learned from my father, who tended to find the positive in things despite an often very painful life. It could have been from a grandparent, my church, or a book. But until recently, those words of gratitude did come no matter what else was going on.

A few months ago, I realized I was no longer doing this automatically. My head would hit the pillow, I’d close my eyes, and I’d experience racing thoughts. Though it wasn’t new for me to have racing thoughts, usually they’d still be joined by feelings of thanks. At some point, those racing thoughts or tired sighs became the habit. The words of gratitude despite the day’s difficulties were not immediately there as they had been. I don’t even know when it started happening, though I would guess it was probably around the time my dad died.

Pandemic and other crises

This signaled a big change for me. It wasn’t exactly surprising though. I’ve written about it all enough here, don’t need to rehash the details. But to summarize, my dad passed away after several strokes and several years of subsequent dementia. The year after he died I was diagnosed with a bunch of health issues that seemed to come out of the blue. And then following those diagnoses, as I was optimistic about moving forward with more energy this year, my mother-in-law got sick, and died in under two months. Also in the past year my husband and I have experienced a lot of housing insecurity, and we are still uncertain about our future. And finally, pandemic, and the year I could not see my dad in person, or meet regularly for family dinners with my kid and her partner. That was probably when I started to actually feel a bit defeated.

There is still so much to be grateful for. I mean that. But I can see why my mind stopped ending each day with a silent shout-out of thanks. The past few years (more like five or six, but who’s counting?) have sucked a lot of the time. Many, many days by the time I went to bed I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Some days I was in tears – as well as in pain. There were countless nights I slept on the couch so I wouldn’t wake up my husband due to tossing and turning, or I would wake in the middle of the night, and being unable to fall back asleep, would head downstairs to practice keyboard, make a cup of tea, or read.

Finding real gratitude again

Realizing I was no longer ending my days with a thank you for all the love and beauty still in my life, was kind of a soft punch in the gut. It made me realize maybe I did have a threshold, a breaking point, so to speak. Everything had finally become too much.

That’s how I decided to learn more about starting an actual gratitude practice. Will it be forcing it? Does that work? I don’t know. It’s not like the gratitude isn’t there, it is still there. It’s just not there all the time, or as automatically, and it’s harder to draw up when overshadowed by challenges, or when falling into bed feeling a bit trampled.

Thanksgiving – a natural time for gratitude

There seems to be no better time to start a gratitude practice than Thanksgiving time. This year will be quite different for me and my family as well, so it might be a challenge to start too!

Most years, we would gather at my mother-in-law’s for the holiday. Even my family, my dad and others, would come as well. Thanksgiving was of great importance to my mother-in-law. This year will be the first Thanksgiving without her. She used to have us all state what we were grateful for each Thanksgiving. As we sat at the Thanksgiving table in her apartment, the food all laid out before us, she would go around the table to each of us and have us state one thing we were thankful for. It sometimes felt corny, but there was value in that little family ritual. I think we each learned what we really valued in our lives by doing that, and we also learned what others valued – or what they feared to lose. I don’t expect we will carry on that tradition as we gather this year (who knows though, maybe?), but I can reflect on that myself. This can be the beginning of my so-called gratitude practice. I can start it with this one: I am grateful to have had my mother-in-law in my life, for who she was as a person, and for all that she taught me.

~ Nellie

p.s. If you are interested in beginning a gratitude practice, or are looking for ways to expand one, check out the mindful.org guide, How to Practice Gratitude, which has an abundance of insights and suggestions for an effective, fulfilling practice.

Piece published

Personal, Publishing

Since this is a writing and art portfolio site, I thought it was relevant to start sharing my publications as they happen. I’m happy to post that today I had my poem “Still I Don’t Know You” published in the witch lit mag, Toil & Trouble. This is their fourth issue, and the theme is Memory.

Toil & Trouble is a young witch-run literary magazine. The magazine was formed in October 2022, and has published steadily, with regular issues.

Published poetry

Poetry is not usually where I focus my work; I rarely even submit poems. My poem “Something Sinister” was in HUES Magazine, a feminist magazine that was active in the 1990s. Besides that, I don’t recall the last time I did anything with poetry, so this is very cool. I am in very good company in Toil & Trouble, among some great poets.

Support your writers

Please do check out Toil & Trouble for some great writing, find some new writers to follow, and continue to support young or independent creative outlets! 🙂

As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi. I love hearing from visitors.

~ Nellie

The Ghost House – beloved family home

Personal

This is just a little something for Halloween, about a beloved family home… and ghost house…

In the remote hills of Vermont

H.P. Lovecraft found inspiration in the remote hills of Vermont, in the same area where my great-grandparents bought over 100 acres of land and an old farmhouse in the 1950s. The farmhouse had been built in the 1800s, and at one time it had been a stage stop. It was a family house – many aunts, uncles, and cousins visited often, over many decades. I grew up knowing this farmhouse as my home away from home. I loved roaming the woods, dipping into the nearby rivers, and staring in wonder at the vast number of stars visible in the country sky. And the house itself, I loved deeply. I had great affection for its rustic qualities. This was despite its lack of hot running water.

Secret compartments and a spooky cellar

There were some spooky things about this beloved house. The stove was an old potbelly that had to be disassembled each time a visit ended. We hid the parts away in secret compartments in the stairs to the attic. This was because at one point, someone had broken in and stolen the previous stove. They removed it piece by piece, through a window. The idea of attic stairs that lifted up to reveal secret compartments seems pretty neat now, even practical. But back then it simply added an old-fashioned mystery to the house.

The cellar was short-ceilinged, with a dirt floor and giant stones for a foundation. Upon arriving for a visit, the electricity had to be turned on by going into that cellar and fiddling with antique glass fuses. It meant walking through the dark, shuttered, creaky house, finding one’s way down the old stairs, straight into the middle of the cellar. The tall house sat alone, looming over the dirt road that was not much older than the house itself.

A family get-together

Though I loved the house dearly, it did at times feel creepy. When several families of us cousins would visit together, filling the house, the energy was alive and cheerful. But when only a handful of people came to stay, it seemed pensive, at best. On one occasion, I and my boyfriend (who is now my husband), arrived at the house in the middle of winter. We had planned a visit with my brother and his girlfriend. They were to join us later. We cleared snow from the doorway, turned the electricity on, and got a good fire going in the woodstove. We settled our things and lay down for a quick rest.

Out like a light

The fire in the stove warmed the place nicely. We both fell asleep in cots set up in the living room, unexpectedly drowsy from the heat. We woke suddenly to the distinct and familiar sound of the key in the front door. Jumping up to greet my brother and his girlfriend, we were surprised when the door did not open, and around us was as silent as snow. My boyfriend reached for his glasses, which he had placed on the floor by his cot when he lay down, and could not find them. I joined him in the search, and finally found them clear across the room, past my cot. On the floor, but certainly out of anyone’s reach.

We both went to check the door. It was still locked, and it was clear there had been no one there. At that point we were getting a little spooked. The sound we had both heard was the exact, familiar – and distinct – sound of the key in the door. The glasses were inexplicably found fully across the room. The gentle silence of winter surrounding us was little comfort.

More unexplained noises

Shaking the feeling, we decided to start dinner and wait for their arrival. As my boyfriend stood at the stove, stirring, I sat by the still-shuttered window. We were just talking together easily, when we suddenly heard a loud, deep scraping sound. I jumped up, heart racing, he stopped stirring, and we looked at each other, trying to figure out what had caused the sound. Our first thought – trying to be rational, was that an animal had pulled on the outside shutter. Seemed unlikely, but a possible rational explanation. The shutters were closed whenever anyone left after a visit, and they were held tightly in place by strong hooks. My boyfriend went outside in the deep snow to take a look… no tracks, no sign of an animal anywhere around the side of the house.

Get out…?

Our second thought was perhaps a boulder had slipped loose in the cellar; it certainly would have made a loud scraping noise. It also seemed unlikely though. We both went to look and found nothing out of place there either. When we came back to the kitchen, we both felt our nerves growing on edge, and when we tried to get back to what we had been doing, we simply looked at each other and knew… I don’t remember which of us said it first, but we had both strongly felt the message, “Get out.” It was as if each event had been trying to tell us what suddenly formed as a message in both of our minds.

We started hurrying to clean up the uneaten dinner. As we did so, the feeling intensified and it wasn’t until we had driven away that we started to feel better. It was many years before the time of cell phones, and the town we were in had no pay phones, so we weren’t able to call my brother and his girlfriend until we checked into a motel many miles away. They had not been able to travel north, as something had come up, and of course, had no way of reaching us.

Unexplained activity

We’ll never know what had created those noises. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard noises in that house that were not easy to explain, and it wasn’t the first time I’d felt a little spooked there, but it was the first time the noises had been so precise, an object had been found somewhere it hadn’t been left, and such a negative energy had risen up. It was also the first time that more than one person had experienced the same things together. When describing it to my brother and his girlfriend, they both admitted having felt such unease there before, only when they were there alone as a couple, and had actually been unsure about making this visit.

Continued family visits, continued love

After that time, we had a few family visits there and all was fine (the house has since been sold and renovated). We never went back alone, and as far as I know, few people did. At one point we buried my father’s dog on the land there. My dad of course had a close kinship to the area, and his dog loved the woods there. In dreams, this house has appeared to me as “the ghost house,” where I have visited and conversed with family members who have passed away. I don’t know what the real nature of the house is… whether there really is something “other” about the place. But I am pretty sure it would have made a great setting in a Lovecraft story!

As an addendum – a cousin eventually purchased the house for his own immediate family and did some renovations. My husband and I visited a few years ago and spoke to him and his wife… He insisted, and this is an otherwise rational seeming guy, the house was haunted, and often spooked him.

More spooks…

If you enjoy spiritualism or all things haunted or ghostly, check out my post about Conjuring the Spirit World, a fantastic exhibition at the PEM in Salem, MA. And if you’re interested in the Lovecraft story set in the remote hills of Vermont, check out The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft at Amazon, which includes the tale, The Whisperer in Darkness.

~ Nellie

p.s. that is the beloved old house in the image above, dressed up a little for Halloween with some blurred edges 😉. It has since been renovated nicely and is quite beautiful. And I still have immense love for this place – if I could afford it, I would buy it myself 🙂

50th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons Stamps

Personal

A few weeks ago my brother texted me to share something his wife had picked up for him when she was out running errands: 50th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons stamps! I found this ultra-cool, and I was inordinately excited.

A long personal history

When I was around eight my older brother started playing D&D at a local bookstore. He and his friends had discovered it, and played every week. To me, who had already begun reading Tolkien, it sounded amazing, and I was itching to play. Contrary to stereotypes of boys, my brother wanted me – his little sister – to be able to enjoy the game. He began to seek out ways I could play. When the DM at the bookstore told him I was too young to join, he and our cousin formed a group that I could join. We played often, and I eventually joined campaigns that my brother and his friends ran as well, long after the bookstore games had ended. One stereotype was true: we played D&D for hours on end, easily losing track of time, stopping only to devour whatever snack our dad or stepmom delivered to us.

D&D for the generations

I continued to play as a teen, and then with my boyfriend (now husband). We then raised our daughter with a love of Dungeons & Dragons. She grew up gaming – we as a family played; D&D as well as Pathfinder and other TTRPGs (table-top RPGs), as well as board games. My family still plays together whenever we can. Sometimes I DM, sometimes my daughter does. When my brother is with us, we tend to revert to those early eighties styles of play. There are lots of jokes and laughter, often loud expressive play, many (many!) tangents, and a good dose of healthy competitiveness. Our Christmas table is often transformed into a Forgotten Realms setting these days, with graph paper, pencils, dice, stacks of rulebooks, minis, and of course, snacks.

Dungeons & Dragons Stamps

Dungeons & Dragons boxed notecard set, from the USPS

When I saw there were Dungeons & Dragons stamps, I expected my tiny local post office wouldn’t have them, so I rushed to the USPS website and pored over the offerings. Not only is there a sheet of twenty stamps, there are also several solid collectors’ items. The USPS offers a gift set with notecards and a sheet of eight stamps, contained in a box that can double as a dice tray. There are enamel pins, a t-shirt, a first day cover, and a commemorative panel, among other items.

Dungeons & Dragons enamel pins, from the USPS

I ordered stamps and a few of the collectors’ items, and will be sending some of these to my daughter and her partner (who also plays).

An integral part of my life

D&D has become so popular, which always seems surprising to me and to many other long-time players. Those of us who started playing in the seventies or eighties grew up quite used to being considered very weird. We were also sometimes assumed to be Satan worshippers. Many of us got out of D&D something that we weren’t getting from anywhere else. My brother and I had lost our mom just a few years before we started playing. I have often thought that D&D helped us both find a way to express ourselves. It brought us close-knit friendships that might otherwise have been difficult at the time. It was also incredibly fulfilling as a hobby or pastime.

As surprised as I sometimes am by the rise in popularity, I am glad to see this thing that was such an integral part of my life and emotional health growing up, has continued to be meaningful to others as well. It is now unmistakably important to many, even with the youngest generations of kids while continuing to be played by fifty-somethings like myself. And now in addition to all the other ways it has been noticed, it has its own collection of US postal stamps, recognized for its place in American culture.

Fifty years

I can and I can’t believe it has been fifty years. I can, because I know how long I have been playing, and it’s a long time; I can’t, because as kids back in 1980, I don’t think any of us would have expected to see it continue to grow as it has and still be going strong so many years on.

If you are interested in the D&D stamps, head over to the USPS Store. There are more collectibles than what I purchased, so make sure to have a look around.

As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with comments or questions, or just to say hello.

~ Nellie

A Doll Collector

Personal

I am not a doll collector. My grandmother Josephine collected dolls. She bought dolls when she traveled to other countries, she sewed soft dolls and painted their molded faces with curling smiles and mischievous eyes, she repeatedly promised me she had an ever-growing doll collection for me that I would receive when I was “old enough.” I never was old enough, but after she passed away I did find a number of dolls in her attic. I wondered if they were the collection she had always promised me. Unfortunately, many were in bad shape from being poorly stored, and could not be salvaged, but I was able to hold onto a couple peg dolls she had bought in Poland.

My mother’s doll Tina

When I was very little my mother let me play with her childhood doll Tina. This was an intimidating doll, with moving parts. I was forever traumatizing myself with it because it seemed to break so easily. One time I ended up hiding in the closet, thinking I had broken Tina for good and fearing my mother would be furious. My dad found me, and after a quick laugh and a hug, reassured me I had not broken my mother’s doll. He showed me how her eyes were simply askew, and he fixed it right away. And my mother was not furious. Still, after that I pretty much avoided playing with her.

I have had Tina since my mother passed away though. Past her prime for playing, she’s a delicate seeming doll, so she has mostly been kept in storage. Recently I have been going through a lot of old family items. I took Tina out of her box and became inspired to clean her up, possibly try my hand at simple repairs or refurbishment, and honestly, it set me on a completely unexpected course (since I am not a doll collector).

A walking doll from the 1950s

Tina is apparently (and please excuse my newbishness here, for anyone reading who might actually have experience with old or vintage dolls), a Tina toddler walking doll, by IMPCO. Her hard plastic body is jointed, she has a sound box (though I don’t recall her ever “talking”), her mouth shows teeth and a tongue, and her eyes move. There are issues that clearly need repair of some sort. Her head is very loose (having lost some kind of internal S hook along the way), her eyes close if she is tilted just slightly, and her limbs are almost dangly.

Preliminary doll clean-up

After a short, gentle clean-up, but before doing the hair. The plastic bag was to protect the body from water while cleaning the hair (I hadn’t planned on blogging about the process!)

Following some online advice, I cleaned her gently and tried to wash and brush her hair. The hair seemed way too brittle, even using a small metal pet comb. After an initial dipping of the hair in warm water I just let it dry and I re-braided it. I hand washed her clothes, but had to throw out her shorts and socks. After getting her all dressed again, I sat her in the living room, temporarily. When my husband noticed her he said she looked really good and I had done a great job. She no longer looked matted and dusty, or afflicted by cataracts. I can’t believe I am going to say this, but she looked pretty and happy – which is probably exactly how she was supposed to look, to the little girls who had such dolls, like my mom.

Obviously, there is much more to be done; this was just preliminary. What I would really like to do is clean her more thoroughly and repair her. I need to repair her limbs so they do not seem like they are going to just flop around or fall off. I’d like to replace the S hook inside her head so it doesn’t continually tilt alarmingly – causing her eyes to close. I would also like to figure out if I can do something to clean her hair. Her clothing could use some repairing as well. Those sleeves need stitching to give them some gathers, and I should probably iron the dress as well.

What makes a doll collector?

After I set Tina aside and gathered the little dolls from Poland, I looked around and realized there are other dolls in my house, placed here and there.

I have small hand-carved kachinas from Arizona that although they are not playthings, might technically be considered dolls. They were given to me by a family friend who collects larger kachinas, when I was quite young. I also have two Strange Dolls, handmade by a local artisan, that I have displayed over my desk. They are my only modern dolls, which I actually bought for myself. There are also a couple Annalee dolls – both gifts, one from when I was a kid.

There is a ceramic figurine my grandmother Jo had made back in the 1950s that she and my aunts called a “doll.” She had loved doing ceramics using Holland Molds, and this figure was particularly unique. Not only did she cast it, paint it, and glaze it, she created a dress for it out of lace. That is another that will require careful handling and delicate repair. I currently have no idea how to clean it.

This quick, quiet perusal made me wonder just how many dolls one must own in order for it to be a collection… Or perhaps I should put it this way: how many dolls can one own before it is considered a collection? Because it is possible that I am a doll collector after all.

As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch or leave a comment. I’d love to hear of any great resources for refurbishing dolls like Tina, so please feel free to suggest some. Thanks!

~ Nellie

Picking Up Where I Left Off?

Hiking, Personal

No, there is really no picking up where I left off… it would be a reasonable assumption, but in this case, too much has happened. Life changes so quickly – we all know this of course – but sometimes that change and the rapidity with which it occurs, is shocking.

Time off for a real vacation

In May my husband and I went on a much-needed vacation. We had decided to use some serious vacation time, which we rarely do, and decided to make it a road trip. It was fantastic, truly, entailing some stunning hiking in Shenandoah National Park where we stayed up in the mountains in a fabulous lodge; a few nights at Virginia Beach, enjoying time on the shore and the ease and relaxation that beach visits tend to bring; and seeing our daughter and her partner, which of course is always a highlight. At the end of our trip we stopped to see my mother-in-law for a few days.

Unexpected tragedy

I’m not going to go into details of what happened, other than to say that while we were there we needed to take my mother-in-law to the ED, where she received a terrible diagnosis, and after only a mere few weeks, passed away from her illness. Since then we have of course had a funeral, and have dealt with the responsibilities of clearing out her apartment, settling her affairs, etc.

It has been an unexpectedly very difficult summer. And of course, more grieving. The grieving process has really only just begun because the past two months have been overwhelming with busyness – too many things to take care of, too many people’s feelings to assuage, as well as family tensions, and many trips out of state to take care of things.

Home again (and not exactly picking up where I left off!)

I am home now, and rather than picking up where I left off, I am looking at the future with yet again new eyes. And yet again a sense of bewilderment and uncertainty. It seems the older I get, the less certain things become, rather than the more certain.

As always, thank you for visiting, and please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or comments, or just to say hello.

~ Nellie

p.s. the hike in the photo above was just an easy but beautiful trail right off Skyline Drive, called Stony Man Trail. If you ever are fortunate to visit Skyline, I would highly recommend it!