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.
Today was my monthly Empire Quilt Guild meeting which is held on the 8th floor of Building A at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). I arrived early to meet with my small applique group and while sipping more coffee sketched the view from the window - another NYC rooftop image. I'm not sure what fascinates me about these water tanks. If you take a minute to look up in the city, they are everywhere! And no two structures or rooflines are the same. This is the back of the buildings on W. 26th St. 
