From the words of Joel

Norman with Joel

Joel knew every child who dipped their toes into the pool at camp and he knew just when a storm was coming with a whole lot more accuracy than any of the experts tracking Hurricane Flo. Our friend is a retired teacher and a retired camp specialist. I bow to his ability to live in the present and to be retired the right way.

This morning on television, Matthew McConaughey was a guest on Live with Kelly and Ryan, (a new TV habit for this retiree). Mr. McConaughey, who is almost as cute as Joel Hochheiser, but not quite, spoke about a role in a movie he just made. He said that the poverty-stricken characters in his film were living on the hopes and dreams of the future, busy reciting the nostalgia of the past and paralyzed in the present, not going anywhere. On my kitchen wall is a quote from our friend Joel. He read similar words of wisdom to us on orientation day one summer, but as with everything, he recited them with much more finesse than the trained actor on my TV screen.

Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent of course. Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to a good purpose...

To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who failed a grade. To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby. To realize the value of ONE WEEK, ask the editor of a weekly magazine. To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet. To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, ask the person who just missed a train. To realize the value of ONE SECOND, ask the person who just avoided an accident. To realize the value of ONE MILLISECOND, ask the person who won the silver medal at the Olympics. 

Treasure every moment that you have and treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to share your time with. And remember that time waits for no one. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.

This cartoon was printed in 1994. This quote is often attributed to Bil Keane, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Joel Hochheiser

As I age, I find myself reliving the past. I give credit to the many people who touched my life, such as Joel Hochheiser. And I also can't help wonder what this new chapter in my life will bring. A popular activity at school was to ask the students what their hopes and dreams might be for the new school year. Many would say that they hope to get better at math while others might dream of a future as the President. I do hope our new generation of students makes a difference! A better American life is a lovely dream for all of us to have.

As far as the present, today is Friday, and people who are not retired are waiting for the bell to ring, announcing the start of their weekend. Unfortunately, that might mean wishing many hours away. My Friday is no different from my Thursday or my Saturday. I have a chance to enjoy every day as a special day, just as Joel Hochheiser showed us all how to do at camp. Today, I am reminded to take his words and his actions to heart. 

What will you do today?

The Five Senses of Life

My sketch of Sam years before he found his singing voice

Today I have an appointment with the audiologist. I can't hear very well without my hearing aids. And I can't hear very well with them either. The volume is too intense for every sound, making it a challenge to hear the person who wants to be heard. So today, I have much to discuss. Let's hope I can hear what my options are.

Three guys walk into a bar.
First one says, "Windy, isn't it?"
The second one says, "No, its Thursday!"
The third one says, "So am I. Let's get a drink."

I could be a part of that club! It's a shame my memory is fading as fast as my hearing and I can't remember some of the funnier things I thought my kids were telling me over the years. None of us are perfect at my house. From not hearing, to driving with one eye, to a few missing teeth, to gluten intolerance and a lack of hair, we present quite the family portrait. I guess everyone has something they can laugh about.

Of the five senses, hearing would be an awful thing to lose when you have fallen in love with the deep baritones and humorous lyrics of Sam at a microphone. And Norman could rhapsodize over the image of his children seen with two good eyes. But I really think my sense of touch is my favorite of all. How I love to feel the soft fur of my dog, to caress the warm skin of someone I love, and to create. My hands create. My hands make me who I am. My sense of touch has to be my fav.

A sketch of my hand, an odd selfie but a perfect reflection of me

I have always been fascinated with hands. Going way back in time, a teacher at my Junior High took us on a tour around the school and told us to notice how the portraits in the hallway did not have hands. She had said, "They are very hard to draw and artists will often leave them out!" That was not the first time I thought a teacher was ridiculous. So I took her up on her challenge and I usually found ways to include them in every drawing. The angles and lines of fingers are really no different from getting the features of a face just right. It is a matter of learning how to see.

Another selfie with hands

My final year at Queens College, back in 1979, was spent working on a series of pencil sketches of me. Imagine staring at yourself in the mirror for an entire year! I came to know my hands and my face pretty well in those days. Back then, figuring out how to be an artist, I had no clue what a wonderful life I was about to embark on. The life that began the day I met my husband brought meaning and joy to all of my senses. Together, we have kvelled over the sound of Sam's CD on the car radio, the sight of delight as Michele accepted Zach's proposal, and the mouthwatering aroma of apples and cinnamon wafting through the oven door at Katie's apartment. I could never have imagined back then what my hands were capable of creating. I still have many things to see, hear, smell, taste, and create. If only I can remember what they are.

At least I have hearing aids.

Happy birthday Vicki

My Photograph of Daddy

I am not a photographer. My teen years were spent with a photographer, and an architect, it seems, as my dad also built the darkroom in the basement of our house. I was allowed to witness the magic of his artistry under the red illumination in the room. A projector burned an image into existence and the trays of chemicals finished the process. I understood darkroom artistry. I was often part of the excitement in that little room. But I am not a photographer.

I taught photography for 15 years. Every year, a small class of would-be photographers happily walked around the school campus taking photos of each other, selfies in reflections of windows, and images they were assigned to find. They learned how to use a camera, and more importantly how to carry and care for a camera in their 9-year-old not so careful hands. They discovered how to be a photographer when everyone, these days, carries a handy camera around in their back pockets. But I am not a photographer.

I was asked to Photoshop Santas into living rooms, absentee students into yearbook photos, and braces off smiling faces. I taught 4th graders how to use the Liquify tool in Photoshop to do what models are transformed into for magazine covers. My classes used those same tools to make spiky hair, stretched out noses, and third eyes, all in jest, but in a classroom setting that demonstrated a possible future for them as a commercial artist. I know my way around the tools of a photo-retouching program. But I am not a photographer.

Robert Fisher

My dad is a photographer. For many years it was how he filled his creative soul. His images were repeated, constructed as 3D forms, and hand colored with dyes. The artist in him was never satisfied with a simple mounted image. He would explore the creative possibilities of every image he captured in his viewfinder. His 90th birthday was a retrospective of his art in a photography showroom he helped to build years ago. He is a photographer.

Rick Fisher

My brother, Rick, became a photographer in his retirement. Although he claims the creative gene skipped over him in the family, he proves himself wrong with his creative hands over and over again. He was or is a stained glass artist, a kitchen artist, a beer crafting artist, and a photography genius. The light through the camera lens he experiments with captures the motion of a tiny hummingbird with uncanny brilliance. He is a proud member of a photography club that he started. My brother is a photographer.

Vicki Windman
"Wonder Wheel with Wonder Woman"

Our very good friend, Vicki, also became a photographer in her retirement. I think she always was one. She experimented with new equipment every summer, capturing the joy in the faces of hundreds of campers without that ever being part of her job description. Now she carries a camera around her neck with a lens that seems to be much larger than she is. She walks the streets of New York and the beaches on Coney Island shooting the simple joys of life. Her captions on Instagram are as creative as the shots of the people she captures. Vicki is a photographer and a literary genius at that.

We just spent the day with Vicki and seeing her was our beacon of light in a day of parking hassles and traffic. Walking down 2nd Avenue, thinking about the milestone of her upcoming birthday and all the images she will soon be sharing from her trip to London, reminded me of how thrilled I am that she found her love of art. I am going through a similar redefinition of my life in retirement so I understand the happiness and fulfillment she finds in her new obsession. As for me, I paint, I write, I cook almost as well as my kitchen artist friend, Buber, and I often take pictures of whatever I create. I am an artist but I don't define myself as a photographer. Vicki is a photographer and she is finding her voice through her art.

Happy Birthday to our very talented friend, Vicki. I hope this will be a year full of camera opportunities, fun artistic adventures, and interesting people wherever you travel.

A Norman Rockwell Day

A Ranney Landscape by second grader, Gianna E.

Nine Eleven, two odd numbers that will always be forged together in our memories. Nine Eleven, a day that happens every September, but in 2001, in a brand new millennium, it became a date for future students to memorize, numbers to associate with terrorism.

Just as people of my mom's generation will always remember what they were doing the day JFK was assassinated, our generation can't help but remember where we were when the first plane hit the first tower. I heard what happened over my car radio. It didn't take very long for me to run into Staples for some supplies and listen to the cashier rant on about how we were being attacked, for me to question her paranoia since at that moment it appeared to the broadcaster on the radio that it was just a freak plane accident, and for me to return to the car, turn on the news and be faced with reality. "You give us 22 minutes, and we'll give you the world," says 1010 Wins. They did.

Norman was a Dean in Wagner High School during that brand new school year. He should have been safely ensconced on Staten Island, away from the targets of the planes. That day, he was asked to travel into the city for a suspension hearing. Some folks trek into the city on a daily basis and shrug at all kinds of horrors and adventures in their travels. My husband picked quite a day to make that trip. He didn't hear the news over a car radio, he saw the plane hit the tower through the windows of New Jersey Transit. He spent the rest of the day frantically finding his brother downtown and racing with Peter to get out of the city.

I began teaching at Ranney one year after the attacks. Nine Eleven worked its way into my art lessons on many levels. We were still living the terror of al-Qaeda, we were still writing that event in the history books. And Nine Eleven defined how I taught art. Second graders, my seven-year-old artists, understood what Nine Eleven meant. We learned about architecture for a Norman Rockwell inspired landscape and we talked about the construction of the buildings at Ranney School. In quite a few years following 2001, we still discussed how safe we felt in our classrooms and in our school. When Ranney changed the landscape of its campus, the memories of those tall towers falling were beginning to fade and we all got to watch a new school building rise from the ground. Our new Lower School building had thick steel pillars holding the roof of Panther Hall proudly up to the sky. My seven-year-old artists had a first-hand glimpse of how to draw a building, not just as a rectangle with a triangle up on top, but as a sturdy structure that kept them safe.

Norman Rockwell, "Freedom from Fear"

The attacks on Nine Eleven were 17 years ago. Some of my early students, now college graduates, still remember 2001 and the art lessons from their second-grade year. But students entering second grade this year were born in 2011, ten years after that fateful day. Unless their families were personally affected or they make a trip into the city to see the living memorial to the 3,000 who lost their lives, Nine Eleven will be just another set of numbers to memorize in a history lesson.

The other day, I wrote about a dear friend from our camp, Mikhl Baran. As a Holocaust survivor, he makes it his mission to tell his stories to every new generation of campers so that his legacy is not forgotten. Yet there are those in this world who question if the Holocaust ever happened. It was too long ago for some to fathom the breadth of those the horrors. Even 17 years as the anniversary of Nine Eleven is a long time. These days, we walk around, shaking our heads in confusion under the leadership of this country, but we go about our immediate business, hoping just to survive another rainy day or the threat of another hurricane.

Today, of all days, Norman and I are going into the city to visit our friend, Vicki. It is just another day in a city that never sleeps. There's always lots going on. But it is the anniversary of September 11th and this is quite a day to drive into lower Manhattan. We will not be able to forget 2001.

I have a wish for the next generation and for my future grandchildren. I hope my sweet little nieces, Lillie and Emma, will not have to live through the horrors of history in the making as we did. I hope they can dance through life and only know fear as something unimaginable in a history book.