A “Work” Anniversary
"Aurora Borealis", a sketch I did for an illustration for a book about two polar bears who...I don't remember the story line, but I do remember checking my voice mail at home while I was at work that last autumn I was at my day job, and listened to the message from the small press...
Read more ...
A Connection, However Small, Changes What It Touches
Thank you, whoever was the person who made the autumn decoration I purchased in the Family Dollar this week. Out of all the piles of things scrambled in displays as I headed for a roll of tape it completely caught my eye through the blinders I usually wear in stores like that, made me stop...
Read more ...
A Conversation with My Father
My father and I were in the kitchen of the house where I grew up one morning in 1987, having a nice conversation. This was not a typical event because I’d never had a substantial conversation with my father before that, nothing more than one-word answers or brief sentences. I don’t remember exactly what we...
Read more ...
About My Brother
This was first published on August 13, 2016. I lost someone very special to me last week. My brother Mark died unexpectedly on July 28. I had written about him last winter when I moved him from one apartment to another in “Coming Back Home”. The new apartment was not comfortable but he was more...
Read more ...
Adopting Again After Loss: Why and How We Adopt Again
I spoke on the topic of “Adopting Again After Loss” at the 2018 Pet Memorial Sunday ceremony hosted by Chartiers Custom Pet Cremation. I first presented this talk in 2016, refined it a bit in 2017. This year I decided it’s an appropriate presentation to use from now on. We three speakers found that our...
Read more ...
Cloaking, Clothing and Fireworks
Cloaking, Clothing and Fireworks I was in K-Mart the other day, just a quick run for a fan they had on sale, one item, intentionally going near closing time so I'd be in and out. I walked in the store and stopped to get my bearings, trying to remember the department the fans would be...
Read more ...
Father’s Day
My father smiling and laughing, summer 1960 I find it sweet to see all the tributes on Father’s Day, even the simple one-line thank yous, pictures of dads who look like anyone’s dad, just everyday ordinary people who were heroes to at least one person. I see comments that are not so positive as well,...
Read more ...
Follow the Distraction
This really happened, amid a time of deep worry and sadness for me as I watched my mother's mental condition deteriorate, knowing she'd soon need skilled care and be lost forever emotionally, then physically. Though the day was an unusually warm and sunny Saturday in mid-November that felt so normal and even comforting, my errand...
Read more ...
Fragments
I moved the furniture around in my bedroom yesterday to better accommodate the overflow from my studio while still giving me space to walk in both rooms. I’ve also realized that, with my guardian tree gone from the front of the house, I no longer want to sleep under the window where I can hear...
Read more ...
How Many
Opression It wasn’t just the four officers it took to arrest a non-resisting African American man and three of them to lie him down on the concrete and all kneel on him and handcuff him, it wasn’t just the 8 minutes and 46 seconds Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck on the pavement in...
Read more ...
I Don’t Want to Be Colorblind
I Don’t Want To Be Colorblind I don’t want to be colorblind, I want to paint what I see, the colors of our faces like flowers, not different but tones of each others’ faces as we turn toward the light, we blend so beautifully. poem and artwork © 2014 Bernadette E. Kazmarski The illustration above...
Read more ...
In Memory of “Summer”
Summer, from The Four Seasons First published October 6, 2006 No matter what I may do during the course of everyday life, in my heart I am an artist be the medium painting, photography, poetry or performance, and my constant inspiration is the panorama of the world around me. The natural world then, in its...
Read more ...
Indigenous People’s Day
Autumn in the Valley, pastel, 31″ x 27″, 2010 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski Growing up in this hilly tree-covered landscape festooned with waterways I loved the land I walked on. That love formed my forever connection with it through my art and photography and just to be, wading the streams, standing in falling snow, walking...
Read more ...
Listen
LISTEN. I always enjoy visiting the printer where this poster is on the wall at the front desk because I love reading each section of this poster as a reminder. It's business-oriented, about working with customers, but the lesson of listening itself is universal and applies to us all in whatever circumstance we come face...
Read more ...
Memorial Day
Memorial Day Even though Memorial Day was founded to memorialize the losses of the Civil War, it came to be an important day of remembrance for our losses in successive wars as conflicts came nearly every other decade in the century following. My parents' generation called Memorial Day "Decoration Day". It was the weekend to...
Read more ...
Mother’s Day
I always had a difficult time finding an adequate Mother’s Day Gift for my mother, but at one point settled on purchasing a couple flats of flowers and planting them in her yard. I did this for nearly 20 years, also starting seeds for flowers she liked that I couldn’t find, like hollyhocks. Though my...
Read more ...
My Mother’s Tuesday Afghan
I stopped in at the nursing home to see my mother on a November afternoon in 2010, and, really, the first thing I saw when I looked in her room was the afghan pictured above, and it immediately took me back to an earlier day, a similar afghan...and a younger mother. She was in her...
Read more ...
My Own Labor History
First published in 2013 When I was a senior in high school I began my first full-time job as a cook at a local deli, Isaly’s in Pittsburgh. Working part-time nights and weekends until graduation I trained in the day cook’s position of opening the kitchen at 6:00 am to cook the lunch entrée and...
Read more ...
On Planting Peas
It is early March and I am planting peas. The wan spring sun is finding its heat and lays like a warm hand upon my back as I work. Signs of approaching spring fill my senses in the mild air on my skin, the scent of damp soil and the shrieks of children as they...
Read more ...
Perhaps the Storm is Finally Over
First published August 30, 2009 I remember the night Hurricane Katrina was headed toward New Orleans, partly scoffing at the hyperactive media reports and partly worried that the storm of the century really was heading for the Gulf Coast and knowing that, if it did, many people, most people, would not take it seriously. For...
Read more ...
September 11, 2001
Aside from being in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, I am nowhere near New York or Washington DC. I am, however, barely an hour away from Shanksville. On the hot sunny morning of September 11, 2001 I was just finishing early morning work in my garden and yard when the first plane hit...
Read more ...
Ten Feet High With Jewelweed
Jewelweed That was my garden last year. In fact, it was most of my back and side yards, the places I’d grown my vegetables from my cold frame to my raspberry bushes, where my native plants had stood and called to the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds and songbirds, all in their season. I’d walked...
Read more ...
The Cats in My Garden
Daffodils The re-emergence of life in my garden this spring is tinged with sadness as I picture two of my best friends, in spirit, wandering among the green and daffodils and last year’s leaves. I have a whole household of cats and I never permit them outside to roam, although I take them outside with...
Read more ...
The Handkerchief
Handkerchief I can’t pass up a pile of linens, no matter what they are. Six years ago I flipped through the pile of handkerchiefs, all different, handmade, store-bought, flowered, embroidered, lace trims, a typical pile of hankies from years past. I found this one in the pile and recognized the letter “H”, my mother’s first...
Read more ...
The History We Will Never Know
A wide, heavy volume always occupied a space in the bookshelf near where my mother sat in the living room, along with her crossword puzzle reference books and world almanacs, dictionary and thesaurus and other reference books, near the book club novels that were still her favorites. But she regularly used those reference books and...
Read more ...
The Light in the Darkness
FOR THIS LAST SUNDAY before the end of the year I thought I'd share some observations brought to mind by the darkness of the season, the solstice when the sun is less and less, each day shorter, some very old part of our brain senses imminent danger then by a miracle the light returns and...
Read more ...
The Rope Swing
A cloudless burning hot August day made bicycling on the crushed limestone of the former rail line trail unbearable, sending me off the trail when I found a little path into the immediate cool shade of the woods. As I walked my bike down into a shallow portion of the former limestone quarry, sycamores and...
Read more ...
The Thanks of a Grateful Nation
The Thanks of a Grateful Nation My personal tribute to veterans everywhere, beginning with my father, veteran of WWII. This is a small portion of the flag I fly on appropriate holidays, and sometimes when I just feel like it. It's the flag that was presented to my mother at my father's funeral, he a...
Read more ...
We Are Still Here
I watched the late afternoon light moving across the back yard at that hour when it begins to turn golden and shadows develop a violet hue. The neighbors' houses funneled it through the tall standing pine trees into long, bright beams moving more quickly as the sun began its descent below the houses, the hill,...
Read more ...
What Stays With Us
As the seasons change I look to nature for familiar scenes and welcome details held dear from year to year especially in my garden, my little patch of toil for the years I’ve lived here, beginning in 1990. Even though I’ve worked and planted and composted and created raised beds and paths and the site...
Read more ...
