After yoga asanas and a nourishing breakfast, I spend a few moments planning and anticipating, while gazing through the window and watching the busy bird world outside. My winged friends always get started ahead of me!
 
Oh how I love seeing their feathered population at my winter feeder. Gliding over from out of the hedge and down from the tree limbs above, they occupy each perch and ring shoulder to shoulder around the rim of the circular saucer. They decorate the frosted winter grass beneath. Plucking at sunflower seeds in the shell, they crack and spit with gusto while twittering a sustained conversation.
 
There are so, so many of my animated guests, their variety rich with diversity and winter colors—compact wrens, sparrows and snowbirds; petite gold and house finches; a singular downy woodpecker, gentle doves and a big, red-dot-adorned flicker; noisy grackles with heads painted lapis lazuli; bright-breasted robins and cardinals in scarlet and taupe. Communally tending their dining, they’re a gloriously ordinary, feasting inspiration. Their focused intention encourages me to get on with my own work on behalf of art and artists.
 
Oh how I love my job working on behalf of art and artists, so much so that I leave my treasured hibernation to meet with a colorful collection of creatives in the chandeliered gallery of artCentral. I sit with better than a dozen of these inspiring people ringed around a large table. They’re the Artists of Grace.
 
When I first came to Carthage and discovered Grace Episcopal Church I was delighted to find a place of exceptional beauty and a parish of remarkable artistic depth. For months, Father Steve Wilson and I have been in conversation about the possibility of an exhibition—a possibility now manifesting, as details are put in place for November’s ARTISTS of GRACE Exhibition and Opening Reception with artistic offerings including watercolor, acrylic and oil paintings, portraiture, sculpture, stained glass, photography and more.
 
Next week I’ll give you the full 2016 Exhibition Calendar, beginning with JRAC’s SPARKLE and SHINE opening February 12th. In the meantime for a preview, visit artCentral’s website: www.artcentralcarthage.org/events.
 
At artCentral we cherish sophisticated pleasures and simple pleasures, too.

After my presentation, I visit with guests and answer questions about my works displayed on easels around the parish hall. This is when I first encounter Ida Ruth Locarni—an attractive, engaging woman with an inclination for resonant laughter.

Recently, Dan Trogdon—retired teacher, cartoonist extraordinaire, artCentral member and recipient of the 2015 Chamber of Commerce Artist of the Year award—asks me to bestow the 2016 Artist of the Year recognition on his behalf. Learning the recipient of his choosing is Ida, I accept his request as a privilege and a pleasure.

When offered a position by the Carthage Superintendent of Schools, Ida returned to her Carthage roots and married. Over the next forty-five years, Ida shared her gifts teaching Choral Music Appreciation in our Carthage Junior High School, giving private voice lessons and instructing classes at MSSU—all the while raising her two children, earning a Master’s in Music at Pitt State and directing the Grace Episcopal Church choir.

A well-trained vocalist and aspiring thespian, Ida has a stunningly impressive curriculum vitae. As an in-demand mezzosoprano, she landed many plum parts including singing as a soloist with the Dallas Symphony performing the Messiah and with the Saint Louis Symphony performing Beethoven’s 9th.
 
Locally Ida took star turns as a comedic actress in plays produced with peer musicians. As determined artists, Ida and her acting colleagues knew how to creatively ensure their shows would go on! Since these musicians had no money to stage their productions, they enlisted the help of the then all-men-Rotary. Not only did the Rotary men have the money to fund the plays, they also had the muscles to build the scenery!
 
Today as a true and dedicated doyenne of Carthage culture, Ida continues her work of many years with the Carthage Council on the Arts, with the Musical Devotees and with the Helen S. Boylan Foundation.
 
For all of us, each and every day, the cultural life of our wonderful community is enriched by Ida’s lifelong passion for making and sharing the music she so dearly loves.
 
Please join with me in the privilege and pleasure of congratulating Ida Ruth Locarni—our 2015 Carthage Artist of the Year.

There is a time to every purpose under heaven.  This first year has been my time to be totally artCentral-focused and fully engaged—to put in long days and late nights and to donate my weekends in order to make a grand beginning. 

When in late December I left for Jersey, I knew I was very fatigued, but I also knew, in the company of my family I would be rejuvenated. I was. Returning home, before my bag was unpacked, the weight of debilitating fatigue hit again full force, rendering me limp with no choice but to retreat, rest and nurture myself back to my usual vitality.
 
There is a time to every purpose and to everything there is a season. Now, in the depth of winter, seems the perfect season to practice sanctuary in my cottage—to rest, reflect and reset to begin again.
 
At a time like this when exhaustion comes knocking, I’m painfully aware of my best kept secret: I am an introverted introvert. Yes, on a personality questionnaire, I fall off the introversion end of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Bottom line: To live a balanced, healthy and happy life, I need significant time alone with spacious hours free of peopled interactions—hours to rest, refresh and resource by being still and quiet and nourishing my spiritual life.
 
Looking to this new year before me, as I continue to pour my passion and energy into artCentral, I will mindfully, consistently give myself enough time to recharge. This means working a sensible number of hours each day and five days a week instead of seven.
 
I’m making a good start. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I spent delicious hours in my cottage, painting at my easel. Painting is my short cut to “that other side”, where life is lush and easy. Where energy flows unrestricted. The place where I am most aligned and vibrating in sync with the source of my creating. Painting is my happy place. I will paint.
 
There is a time to every purpose. I am trusting that if I consistently give myself the quality restorative time I need, if I take time to resource and paint, all artCentral’s important work will get done and our mission to support and promote art and artists, including myself, will continue to thrive. 

When I slip down to the guest room to fetch my camera, Sophie stands at the top of the stairs emphatically calling “Grandmère, Grandmère, Grandmère—come back up here!” to which I reply “Sophie, Sophie, Sophie—I’m coming!” and I do. Our play resumes.
 
We take Trooper for neighborhood outings. On her trike Sophie speeds like Mr. Toad down the sidewalk inclines and over the big bumps, while Mommie and I scurry alongside trying to keep even. We go to gymnastics class where Sophie fearlessly walks the high beam with “arms up”. We go to a birthday party and Elsa makes a guest appearance. Traveling to the New York Botanical Gardens, we see the annual Christmas Train Show and lunch on toasted cheese sandwiches and cocoa.
 
At bedtime Sophie insists on at least four books.  I get to read some. A favorite is her “ōga” book. Sophie stands up in her bed and does her asanas, posing in tree and bird and several others until we read the last page. Then she stretches out and closes her eyes to practice breathing slow, deep breaths in and long, slow breaths out. Mommie turns the nursery lights very low as Grandmère slips quietly out the door.
 
Since I left Sophie and her family to come home to Carthage, I’ve been yoga breathing a lot. Yoga breathing helps soothe my aching heart.
 
Missing my precious playmate goes with the bliss of being Sophie’s Grandmère.
 
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