Yesterday I received the following email comment from Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark - one of my very favorite art blogs.
Hi Shirley you have been tagged by me - and now need to share with us seven
things most of us don't know about you (if you care to play along!)
I treasure my visits with Katherine when I'm in London and would never consider saying no. So here goes:
1. I met my husband in our final year of high school and this year is our 40th anniversary. We married after our second year of medical school, but I remained in Philadelphia and he stayed in Chicago and we had a long-distance marriage for 2 years. He still thinks of me as "the captain of the high school cheerleaders" or calls me the "dancing hematologist." If it weren’t for his encouragement and support, I may never have gone to medical school.
2. We had 3 children between September 1971 and July 1975. I was permitted 2 weeks vacation after my first and second children were born, and then moved from California to Texas when my 3rd child was 14 days old. I have always loved being a mother (and now a grandmother) and a physician.
3. I just reduced my work schedule to 3 days/week, but continue to work as a Professor of Medicine at a New York medical school. This allows me to expand my interests and passions further - and I started sketching, painting, and joined Everyday Matters in 2005.
4. I spent 3 years intensively studying my family history (2000-3) and have 10 leather-bound, 3- ring notebooks full of birth/marriage/death records, passenger lists, and naturalization papers. My great-great-great-great grandmother was kidnapped as a child by the Delaware Indians in 1757 during the French-Indian War and released in 1764 by a treaty between the British and the Indian tribes in Ohio, USA. I read the original letter sent by Colonel Bouquet to General Gage about the prisoner release this past year at the British Library in London.
5. I don’t like or exercise, organized sports, running, jogging, hiking, or camping. I took dance classes "on and off" throughout my entire life, most recently ballet classes in New York. I have never been to a spa and have no desire to do so. I love living in a city where I can walk anywhere I want to go, but still drive to work.
6. I love textiles and everything related to them - sewing, smocking, French hand sewing, silk ribbon embroidery, Madeira applique, quilting, painting silks with procion dyes, and beading, These interests started when I was very young and I continue to add additional skills.
7. I adore bookstores and stationary stores! I have a shelf full of blank journals and many journals of various types that I keep: sewing, quilting, cooking, fabric dying, books I have read since 1985, travel journals and now travel sketchbooks to name a few. I write a "welcome letter" to each of my grandchildren when they are born and a detailed letter to each of them on each birthday. I have very few things left by my ancestors and want to make sure that I change that with my family. One of my favorite books is Leaving a Trace by Alexandra Johnson and I’m trying to do so!
Addendum: On 5/14 I was also tagged by Casey Toussaint and told her that I would add her name to my entry so she could stop looking for another to tag.
We spent several hours in Central Park with my son, daughter-in-law and grandson Robbie in celebration of Mother's Day. The weather was beautiful and the Great Lawn was full of families and softball players. I sketched the city skyline looking south from the Great Lawn at 86th St. 
