Creativity

How does the idea of a road trip or a vacation sound to you right now? Pretty good, I would venture to guess. In every vacation, we take two pleasure trips. One is the trip itself. The other is the anticipation of the experience – the planning…

Learning to play a musical instrument is something that many of us have considered doing at some point. As well as being fun and providing a great sense of achievement, there are many health benefits of playing an instrument…

Black people have always been writing and singing, but few companies were producing Black Art. To garner the substantial funds to produce for storefront theater, much less Chicago Lyric Opera or Broadway, requires a guarantee of success…

Family gatherings are fascinating experiences. They can be wonderful moments of shared love and joy. They can also tip to the other extreme and result in conflict. But usually everyone makes up again and all ends well…

All through college and in my first writing job, my work horse was an old black Corona typewriter. Things were a little fancier at the corporate headquarters, where I clacked out copy on a state-of-the-art IBM Selectric…

Sixty and Me has featured articles on the joys and health benefits of reading, and more specifically, bibliotherapy, the practice of reading fiction to improve one’s mental health. As an avid fan of the “cozy” mystery novel most of my life, I’ve just now realized…

I’ve often read of the connection between messiness and artists. There is apparently a direct correlation between disorganization and creative thought. More than one study has shown that creative types prefer chaos to order. Messy desks/work spaces promote thinking outside of the box…

I always wanted to learn another language. Why? The only reason I could surmise is my desire for learning. Also, I love a challenge, and what better way than conquering a new language? So, I have embarked on learning Spanish, a journey of agony and ecstasy.

When most of us were in grade school, we were mainly exposed to classical poets such as Chaucer and Shakespeare. Mixed in might have been some limerick poems…

Have you ever cooked from Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking? Please raise your hand. I can’t see you, of course, but I would guess there are quite a few. It was a sort of cooking bible in my house in the 1950s. My father…