Why you should steal ideas from others — I was a saddlemaker for many years. and I’ve been a musician for even longer. It occurs to me that the two paths are not all that dissimilar, that they have some basic things in common. Those who follow these paths make things up, from scratch (or nearly so), using…

With apologies to Dorothy Wordsworth — I have found a summer house with a stable door and red-tiled floor and windows with black curlicue handles. There is a wood table and five stout chairs. No view of the lake, just the tops of the rhododendrons and Helm Crag. Helm Crag is green and where the green…

Coming of Age in the Early 1970s: Strikingly Familiar; Deliciously Different — This is Part 37 << Back to Part 1 “Never trust nobody,” said Skinner, topping up his beer glass from a fresh bottle of Double Diamond. “Never trust nobody. That’s my motto now.” It was the worst Christmas that Vonnie could remember — not because of the new rules, which…

The fascinating story of Muriel ‘Mary’ Gardiner. — Illinois. Massachusetts. Oxford. Rome. Berlin. Vienna. She had travelled miles, but this was where her journey began, where the fearless American heiress would make her mark in the world. There was a chill in the Vienna weather reminiscent of the fall in Wellesley that she had gotten used to before…

I’m probably not seeing your posts if you’ve done these — Are your posts getting fewer claps or comments than you’d hoped? It may be happening because you haven’t hit your stride or found your voice on Medium — and you’ll start getting more when you do. …

BUS KIOSK “He shot me cuz I said hello!” The ghost kept pantomiming this story for me. I knew not to see this wound, the phantom, its mouth which was opening to a blood abyss. A pity trap with those jagged metal jaws set. The eyes are the windows to the eternal slide in the amusement…

When night had well and truly fallen and his grandmother was tucked neatly — and with the help of three family members, God bless them — into her bedroom and the rest of his family asleep, he decided on a drive. It would have to be in his mother’s BMW…

Table of Contents for all chapters — Welcome to American Kingdom, a work in progress, one chapter per day for the thirty days of November, God willing, until I reach fifty thousand words or bust. I’ve got a bag or two of coffee, a stock of beer, and a pantry full of nourishing, healthy food such as…

Make your Photoshop life easier and quicker. — I’ve been using Photoshop for around 16 years now. And yet, I still don’t know all of the keyboard shortcuts. I don’t think I ever will. So over the past few days, I’ve been noting the shortcuts I use the most so that I could pass them on to you. …

How could reading about events that never really took place, involving non-existing people and creatures, help us see truths about the real world? — Introduction Our liberal humanistic education is, to a great extent, based on the idea that we can learn from fiction, especially from great fiction. Literature classes (hopefully) bubble up in vivid discussions about canonical texts ⎻ a process that is supposed to advance the student’s knowledge. …

François I had a huge influence upon the developing French fashion industry — For my inaugural post in my new publication, Fashion Police, I began wondering about the history of fashion design. My passion for designing clothes is fairly new and I’m pretty ignorant on the subject. I can name some 20th-century designers, but go earlier than that and I’m clueless. I began…

Some People are just life’s Victims [5] — Previously Ruth couldn’t fully escape the past, because dreams reminded her of the troubled life she left behind Silence still hung over the house like a blanket when Xander let himself out and unlocked his car. He’d slept in the spare room so as not to disturb Mandy, an arrangement…

I was a reader and a writer before I could read or write. I sat with my mother at four years-old and verbalized stories as she wrote them down. I thumbed through encyclopedias at my grandparents’ house looking at pictures. School progressed, I fortunately became literate, and kept writing short…

I write about fashion and trends from a style point of view — how to achieve your own style by wearing the colours and shapes that suit you. If we can do this in a sustainable way, then all the better. I spent around 20 years working in design management…