Entering 2025 to build, explore and converse

 Officially walking back into the routine of leisure time activities and professional work for the year 2025...

Excited about:

Building a micro-curriculum, aligned with understanding the use of and the legal environment of AI in Advertising. I've spent the winter break diving into the subject of AI ~ so much content to digest! And disclaimer, I'm an advocate for the use of it.

Exploring/Discovering good food, by getting back to my love of scratch cooking on the weekends. + Take more cooking classes.

Conversing more, my professional life engages a great deal of time in public discourse on a wide variety of subjects with a host of different people...I need to do more of it with everyday people about everyday existence.

These are not resolutions simply aspirations to walk into a year filled with newness.

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Finding place in a shifting world

Seeking solitude or simply stepping back from the hectic pace of one's life isn't uncommon. In fact, I suspect quite common as the world shifts and our lives seek greater balance in what some interpret as turbulent times.


As some of you know from previous posts I spent the better part of a decade in the Ithaca, New York area before heading south. An era before recessional trends and gray hair. In this rally into my golden age I find I am a constant interloper of the Finger Lakes. I give myself permission constantly to hold this region tight while also keeping my feet firmly planted in the sands along the coast of South Carolina. As if placing myself in the lush natural surroundings means I'm cheating on the wide swing tides of the Lowcountry.


It's the places I find myself occupying during these retreats that make it sweet...

The City of Ithaca has successfully completed a reinterpretation (repair) of its Commons where a young mayor (Svante Myrick) brings his youthful enthusiasm to the concrete and civic endeavors found in his backyard. From Hip Hop concerts to public coffee talks with the local police chief to cutting the ribbon on another new entrepreneur's business. What one individual does makes others take notice. Check out the mayor's parking space at City Hall, here.

An uncommon space and constantly evolving is Mimi's Attic. One need not be in the market for their wares, simply checking out the staff's talent to recreate living spaces on the shop floor every day is entertainment enough on any given day. In my mind, no one in the interiors market has anything on the sharp marketing and design skills of this team.

Then there is the Meeting House at Boiceville Cottages, a common lodge where members of the community can gather either serendipitously or in planned celebration. I've met some remarkable people simply by spending a few hours a week in this community space. Some weeks it's a graduate student writing a dissertation, others a book club discussing their latest read, or a yoga class bringing everyone to center and sometimes it's simply young people parking their bicycles on the curb to grab a quick cartoon.

Spending time with James Rada in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in planning to bring students to South Carolina in the days leading up to the primary in February 2016 gives me the chance to engage in my home state even when away. James accompanied students to Washington DC in 2013 as they covered the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for NBC and PBS Newshour. In March 2015, he joined Ithaca College students as they travelled to Alabama to cover the 50th Anniversary of Selma for NBC News. They will come to South Carolina in 2016 to shed light on the new and old south during a key democratic process. I'm proud of my alma mater for interpreting the experiential nature of its curriculum as key to its students success and lucky enough to have the time to share in the journey.

Discovering my place in this world simply by being where I am.

I'm a classic stumbler

I was recently asked what appeared on my "bucket list" of things to do (before I die) and the individual making this query was taken aback by my answer, so much so they repeated the question to ensure I had the opportunity to provide a more befitting reply.  Each time I responded in the same manner; however, in the second go around I pre-empted my response with the explanation that I had already been fortunate to have lived many of the experiences others typically place on lists such as this.  Also citing the recent loss of a family member and the travails that follow in sorting through what is relevant and what gets cast aside.

While I appreciate the sentiment of the question there is an entire website offering a means to fulfill one's dreams (bucketlist.org), a host of inspirational books dedicated to it and a plethora of movies depicting the quest to fulfill it,  most notably "The Bucket List" in 2007.  I approach the question of what I must do before I exit life from the standpoint of creating presence past my physical ability to be in the moment literally.  I'm bound you might say by the "eulogy virtue" as explained in a column authored by David Brooks in the New York Times "The Moral Bucket List." I am most certainly the classic stumbler...

"The stumbler doesn't build her life by being better than others, but by being better than she used to be. Unexpectedly, there are transcendent moments of deep tranquility. For most of their lives their inner and outer ambitions are strong and in balance. But eventually, at moments of rare joy, career ambitions pause, the ego rests, the stumbler looks out at a picnic or dinner or valley and is overwhelmed by a feeling of limitless gratitude, and an acceptance of the fact that life has treated  her much better than she deserves."

For the sake of not wanting to appear devoid of "list" material I can conjure at least one place I'd like to spend time in before I kick the bucket. I'd like to scan the rim of the Grand Canyon before some developer strikes a horrific blow to its landscape, all the while trusting that the possibility of destruction never comes to fruition.  Beyond that, I'll stumble my way toward an aim in creating meaningful memories indefinitely. 

Four Leaf Clovers and Eldercare

Picking up the eldercare journal entries again...

Just when you think your frame of reference for a parent has slipped away and has been replaced with some stranger and utterly unlikeable the Universe has the where-with-all to deliver a sign in a language of words that speaks solely to the intended.

Yesterday, Dad verbally delivered the first stanza from a poem (my dad just doesn't quote poetry EVER). While that's significant in and of itself the underpinning nature of the poem even more poignant...I needed to hear these words.

Four Leaf Clover by Ella Rhoads Higginson (1861-1940)

I know a place where the sun is like gold,
And the cherry blooms burst with snow,
And down underneath is the loveliest nook,
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith,
And one is for love, you know,
And God put another in for luck—
If you search, you will find where they grow.

But you must have hope, and you must have faith,
You must love and be strong – and so—
If you work, if you wait, you will find the place
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

Day 4: Reinvention and "The Other Mother"

Ann-Marie:

Resilience and reinvention are inspirational pivots for many of us during the current economy. I suspect the bloggers associated with "The Other Mother" blog tour know a great deal about these topics either directly or indirectly.

I have a tendency to lean my own personal story in the resilience category. One that sheds more light on living with grief and framing hardship as a learning tool. However, what I have learned by rallying through and up from these circumstances is that while one may not necessary effect outward changes, others make a note of a transition to some perceived flipside. Placing what they "see" in a category of transformative reinvention or as Byrne suggests to you "walking into another room." I do believe the common denominator of resilience and reinvention is the recognition that what transpires in one's life is significant, but not all-defining.

The Story of Byrne is a myriad of experiences in this regard. As is your own story Teresa. One realizes this reading the book or watching your "The Wisdom of Quitting" presentation at TEDX Charleston in 2013. 

Teresa:

Byrne Miller definitely knew a thing or two about reinvention. She was a classically trained pianist, but when the Great Depression hit she had to help support her parents by becoming a burlesque dancer on Vaudeville.

It's funny; because of my fanatical training to be an Olympic rhythmic gymnast, I always equated quitting and starting over with failure. One of the most important things Byrne Miller, my other mother, ever taught me was wisdom of quitting. It's the catalyst for reinvention.

She would tell me, "When what is painful can't be fixed, simply close the door behind you and walk into another room. The brain has more chambers than the heart."

In the course of researching her life for my memoir of our relationship, I learned how many times Byrne had to walk into another room.  Her professional modern dance career was cut short by having two daughters, so she reinvented herself as a choreographer.  When she moved to Beaufort and couldn't find enough professional dancers to support a performing company she reinvented the Byrne Miller Dance Theatre to become a presenting company for modern dance instead.

By the time she "collected" me as a daughter, she had another womenism at the ready: "There is not a contract on earth that cannot be rewritten," Here's to that!

The Other Mother: A Rememoir by Teresa Bruce

Tell us about your story of reinvention...

Day 3: Provocation and "The Other Mother"

Ann-Marie:

"Provocative" according to Merriam Webster...serving or tending to provoke, excite or stimulate. 

Pretty much describes a recent word string I wrote about holiday activities associated with the month of December: "What's not to love about a month of stealing kisses under mistletoe, spending time in the kitchen making nog and ramping up the naughty or nice meter! And then there are the elves doing everything other than sitting on shelves."

I relished the response by Bryne's husband in Chapter 9 when she promised that she would behave on her tour with The Sara Mildred Strauss Dancers. (Readers will have to grasp that at a time when great hardship befell the country, Bryne was able to secure employment as a dancer that paid well, gave her husband the freedom to pursue writing a novel and support her parents~handsomely paid for wearing next to nothing). He told her "...Be brazen. Be bold. Be burlesque!" It's in this chapter called "Taking Turns" that the reader realizes that to follow their passion (Byrne and Miller) was as much about the individual pursuit as it was celebrating the other's attributes.  Which becomes even more meaningful when the chapter ends with a decision by one of them to relinquish "a turn" to benefit the other.

Passion, bold, and brazen (as well as compassionately human). I do think Byrne and I would have enjoyed each other's company.

Teresa:

Are you kidding? Byrne Miller would have eaten you up ~ she was a snob about language and you're a writer. Major points right away. Plus she claimed to love my cooking and I'm not half the foodie you are. So we're defacto sisters by Bryne.

Provocation was a game to Byrne. she enjoyed, shall we say, surprising people. Personally I'm always attracted to larger-than-life personalities so her most outrageous pronouncements seemed like performances. Remember, I was 22 when she dropped such womenism bombs like "every woman should have a at least one affair. It builds confidence" and "modesty is for the hoi polloi." I didn't even know what that last one meant.

It was only later, when I started to list them all for "The Other Mother: a rememoir" that I realized Bryne's womenisms were an expression of love for her collected daughters. She meant for each of us to live the fullest lives we could and never settle. If a husband or a boyfriend wasn't up to the potential she saw in us, she had no use for them. She knew we could do better but instead of criticizing our choices, like regular mothers do, she'd tell us "mediocrity is distasteful" and "there is no contract on earth that cannot be rewritten."

She did shock me though, when friends threw me a going away party when I left Beaufort for a new career in Washington D.C. She raised her glass of red wine for a toast to the possibilities a big city would offer. Only she said it this way: "Anonymity has its own rewards. You can be trashy and nobody will ever know."

The Other Mother: A Rememoir by Teresa Bruce

Tell us about a provocative moment in your life...

A bowl of simple pleasures

Everything Grits
Waffle House~Port Royal, SC

So many times our lives become filled with appointments, expectations, tasks, routines and promises that we spill ourselves out endlessly over the rim never really pausing to enjoy a full bowl of simply ourselves.  And when this continues to happen we find the necessity to retreat to reconnect to our true desires in living this life.

I rather relish these moments of becoming a recluse to my own whims.  I do not dally in their unfolding. I simply find what matters most to me in this middle life craze. That's me, myself and I. I need the best of me to forge ahead, not everyone and everything else I garnish myself with along the way. Those things and people are/were important and meaningful, but they do not make my dreams reality nor emote my truest desires.

Leaving behind the brandishing of titles and the conquering of monumental odds was no easy task.  I rather liked those aspects of myself and so over time I've wielded them, released them, wielded them again only to cast them aside one final time.  I find I'm more relevant now.  Relevant in that my instincts and desires fit into a far more important role that competes with no one, relies on no time clock and simply allows me to just be.

So I'm staring down at this breakfast bowl of grits, sausage, egg and cheese thinking "this is the best of everything." But I would say the same were it just the grits, just the sausage, just the egg or simply the cheese.  Any one of these singularly would make my day complete.  And so on the days when I have it all I'll enjoy it, but the days when its just me I'm far more likely to be happy.

Farro and Layered Reality

A women's retreat in the mountains of North Carolina, specifically at a place called Mountain Air, near a quaint little town called Burnsville can simply be described as breathtaking. It truly is "a community that embodies the soaring spirit of the mountain beneath its feet and the divine beauty of the forests that surround it." Not only were the surroundings humbling, but the 25+ year history shared with an abundantly brilliant group of women who through college, illness, Transatlantic moves, relationships, recipes, sorority bonds, marriage, births, social networks, life reorganization, adult beverages, divorce, career beginnings and endings, food, death and even laughter brought a lifetime of learning to a reality point. That is, a point where we recognize that reality is a by-product of the constant layering of experiences in one's life. Thus, we scan for recipes that "layer" to fit this analogy of life that at the same time embodies the cooler climates of a mountain top region. Digressing from the simplicity of a Caprese and flanking on the decidedly different we'll deliver the Cucumber, Buffalo Mozzarella and Farro Salad. Farro is the oldest grain there is and it is believed that all grains derive from it. Visiting a mountain top, enjoying the cooler temps and contributing to a collective experience only emphasizes the point...that layering through and to others is the real beauty of what we call life.