Somewhere, amid the darkness,
a painter measures a blank canvas,
a poet tests a line aloud,
a songwriter brings a melody into tune.
Art inspires, provokes thought, reflects beauty and pain.
I seek it out even more in these times.
And in so doing, I find hope in the human spirit.

~ Dan Rather (via Twitter)

* * * *

The past couple of weeks have been unusually insane.

From the delightful (taking a dear friend out for his birthday), the exciting (joining a new singing group) and the thrilling (some news you’ll hear about in a later post), to the aggravating (a longtime client who was refusing to honor his promise to pay me at the agreed-upon time), the heartbreaking (my elderly aunt, who lives about 500 miles away and may be in her final days), the frustrating (an as-yet-unscheduled meeting, the scheduling of which I cannot control in any way), and the stressful (a brief to be prepared according to unfamiliar rules and filed in a court I’ve never dealt with), it’s been a whirlwind. So, on Friday night, when I finally received confirmation that the brief had been filed, I declared a holiday weekend. (Since I worked most of Labor Day weekend, I viewed it as comp time.) Continue reading →