Susan Barrett Price's Blog, page 56

Week In Review: All focus & no distraction makes Susan a…

Snow on the ground, temperatures hovering around 28. I am diligent, disciplined, and dull as dirt. To see how I accomplish this magic, read my week in review>>>

If I'm Reading The Bible, Is This The Sue-Pocalypse?

Christiane Amanpour said her favorite character as a child was Jo from Little Women, so I started re-reading that*… then I had to look up Pilgrim's Progress** and the next thing I knew I was downloading the Bible*** to my iPhone. My Mardi Gras outing had been canceled so I settled in with Genesis.

At the risk of a lightning strike, I have to say that God sounds like, well, kind of mean-spirited. He made us; he messes with us. He toyed with Cain by rejecting his offering. He wiped the...

Ghosts In The Photographs

I'm sorting through abandoned family photographs and suddenly I'm creeped out by an overwhelming sense of… melancholy? The subjects are long dead but the spirit of the photos linger on.

Years ago Jim assembled a collection of 19th century cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards, all made by Rochester photographers. They are what antique store dealers refer to as "instant ancestors." Jim made quite a little research project of organizing them by photographer. We tried the give the whole bunch to...

Week In Review: Pinocchio Minds The Store

Industrious week working in my Ebay store and revising my work-in-progress. For full week in review, continue>>>

Got out my sketchbook. My "action drawings" look like puppets on a tightrope. No strings. Too bad I'm not writing a zombie story. Watch! as the Dangling Woman Falls! And Is Re-animated, Again & Again!!! Never Wise, but Always Wised Up!!

Tabletop Video for Product Sales Descriptions

I love when I can innovate with materials on-hand. I bought a teensy Vado HD camcorder (like a Flip) back in November, at a sale price that I couldn't resist. After fooling around with it on our trip to Florida, I had mixed feelings — esp. now that the iPhone 3GS does video. I was about to throw it on Ebay to sell when I got the bright idea that maybe it could help with other ebay sales. As long as I could mount it on a tripod… yes! The Vado software uploads directly to YouTube and you can...

Confession: I Love Snow

I don't like it when snow is a terrible hardship to people, but when I'm safe and sound inside, I love its silence and its beauty. I'm perversely of jealous of the people who got socked by "snowmageddon" this week (it completely went south of Rochester, but it looks like we're in line for Round 2).

At the end of March 1993 we got about 4 feet of snow in one day. Even snowshoes were impossible. It was one week after Jim broke his leg skiing, meaning it was one week after I moved into his condo ...

Talking to Myself Again

I'm sitting here today with what I'll call the Third Draft of "Grand Exits," my personal mythology in progress. It's short. Printed in paperback format, it's no more than 80 pages. That was my intention — short fables, quick flashes, stones skipping across the surface of deep waters.

I'm reading it out loud to myself again. Best way to cut through the mud.

I like talking into a microphone. It gives me a persona. It makes me feel like more than just a mumbling dweeb talking out loud to myself...

Week In Review: Cocooned

Happy to be in my head and in my den. Sorry we are missing the monster storm up here — odd to be too far north for a snow event. Details of the week>>>

Abortion in 1913: Nellie's Exit

Nellie Flanagan Kralemann

I'm tempted to think that taking charge of your life, being the hero of your own drama, taking leaps into the unknown is always a good thing. Risk-takers win, right? Strong-willed women who make things happen for themselves are supposed to lived happily ever after. But then I think of Nellie. My great-aunt Nellie reminds me that gambling with the future is always a flirtation with danger. And that danger can kill you.

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On Tuesday, March 25, 1913, a rainy spring day in ...

The Bead Collector

"Pearl" (ha!) pop beads

1956. My first beads were pop-beads, a 1950's fad. I coveted them and competed with my girlfriends for the longest strands, draping myself in ropes of them. My favorites were pearls. Then one day the cheesy paint on one of the "pearls" peeled off It revealed a bead no more lustrous than skim milk. I was stunned. Why did people think children should be satisfied with crap? At the age of eight I was pondering authenticity. When my mother made me dresses , she finished...