A Work in Progress

I am one of the lucky people who usually remembers her dreams. Not all, but some – enough to keep me thinking. Very seldom do I have a nightmare, so I am lucky in that sense, too.

A lifelong theme of my dreams has been houses, buildings and rooms in houses. This has been going on since I have been an adult and certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I am a Realtor and very involved in houses of all sorts. I think it is coincidental that I sell houses for a living, but then again, who knows how we really end up on our own life path. It is a mystery. So much of what we do and where we are is a combination of luck, serendipity and purposeful determination.

In my dreams, I discover hidden rooms in houses I have long occupied and think I know inside out. Or, I stumble upon a house half constructed in the woods and it belongs to me! Whatever the particular theme, the feeling I have is one of awe, exhilaration and wonder. Also, the thrill of having additional living space and new rooms to decorate. I also discover antiques and artwork long forgotten but now mine! It is always good and exciting.


Obviously, I am looking for the undiscovered parts of my self. It keeps hitting me over the head, literally, in my dreams while I sleep. It is too easy to get in a comfort zone and discard the need to discover new things.

So, going forward, in this time of New Year’s Resolutions, I promise to seek out and discover these parts of myself I have yet to know. Who knows what I will find out about myself?

Snow and Holiday Songs

There is nothing quite like the combination of snow and holiday songs!

Nestled in the warmth of my home where I can comfortable gaze at the beauty of the first proper snowstorm to hit Newport this season, holiday songs have been running around my head since the snowflakes started falling!

I wanted to share a few with you & issue a challenge as to whether you can read the words of the songs below without starting to hum either to yourself or aloud….

Let It Snow!
Oh, the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is so delightful, And since we've no place to go, Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Winter Wonderland
Sleigh bells ring, are you listening, in the lane, snow is glistening; A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, walking in a winter wonderland.

Jingle Bells
Dashing through the snow, On a one-horse open sleigh, Over the fields we go, Laughing all the way; Bells on bob-tail ring, making spirits bright, Oh What fun it is to ride and sing, A sleighing song tonight, Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! O what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.

Frosty the Snow Man
Frosty the Snow Man was a jolly happy soul, with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal, Frosty the Snow Man is a fairy tale they say, He was made of snow but the children know how he came to life one day.

I’m humming, how about you?

Happy Holidays!

In praise of older...

...houses! I have always loved old things...old furniture, old music, rusty old signs, musty old books, faded vintage textiles, and - best of all! - old houses. Having spent time living in places that are not particularly old or historic - Miami (not much built before the roaring 20's) and the Bay Area in California (not much built pre-Gold Rush and then a lot of it lost in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906) - has only deepened my appreciation of structures that have stood the test of time, structures that have the ability to actually transport us BACK in time.

Just look around places like Newport, Jamestown, Bristol, Wickford, the old plantation sites of South County, mill towns like Peace Dale & Wakefield, the Hill & Harbor area of East Greenwich, the East Side of Providence, and the turn-of-the-century summer playgrounds like Narragansett & Watch Hill... there are old houses EVERYWHERE here! They're just part of the everyday landscape of Rhode Island...no biggie.
But I say, they are the heart & soul of this state...part of what makes people visit, return, buy summer places here, stay if they were born here...re-locate here if they weren't. Mansard roof lines...graceful columns...wide covered porches...stained glass...cobblestone streets...picturesque harbors…whitewashed church steeples...rambling old stone walls...wrought iron gates...elaborate stone mansions...humble clapboard farmhouses...a 12 over 12 window in a 1750 colonial with a candle shining brightly on a winter night. You don't have to live in an old house yourself if you don't want to - but be damned glad lots of other people do so you can bask in the history, the charm, the unique New England quaintness they maintain - and you enjoy - all around you.
(Coming up next...are you an old or new house person??)

Castle of dreams

Browsing through the antiques at the Armory on Thames Street has long been one of my most dependable emotional pick-me-ups. To wander through the jumbled aisles of time definitely helps to put things in perspective. That cracked china plate? There’s a story hidden in its chipped surface, a story about other people, other times, other lives, other possibilities. It’s a concentrated version of the same thing that imbues historic places with their healing power. Hard to feel like you and your problems are at the center of the universe when you’re staring at the Great Pyramid of Giza…or the Coliseum…or Newport’s Friends Meeting House or the Old Stone Mill, for that matter. Historical places have a comfort-factor built right into their fabric, and a place like the Armory, filled to the brim with the survived detritus of the past, has it in spades. Yes, I know…as an activity, technically, going there probably DOES qualify as “shopping”, but the good news is that you don’t need to buy anything to reap the benefits. Like meditation, you can do it for what you’ll get out of it, or you can just do it with no thought of gain. For those of you who like to read, I offer the following bookwormish analogy: the experience triggers the same kind of light trance state brought on by a good book.

So. You head over, you arrive. The building itself looks exactly like a fortified castle. The only thing that’s missing is the moat. I find that highly satisfying. And symbolically it validates the entire experience. What do you expect to find in a castle? Treasure, that’s what. The out of the ordinary, that’s what else. Anything you buy in a castle has automatically got to be better than anything you get anyplace else, and even more to the point, anything you find in a castle is, by definition, NOT a piece of junk. Value, safety, strength. Talk about crucial messages for anyone selling anything to impart! From the moment the big heavy front doors crash shut behind you, you know you’re safe. Bring on that fantasy! Safe from crowds, safe from being ripped off, dealings, safe from boredom. Safe from loneliness. Safe from pain. Just plain safe.

From there on in I give myself over to the aimless, meditative joy of drifting through time's back alleys. Say I spot an old alarm clock from the 20’s. How did it get here? Who did it once wake up and where did they go each morning? That daguerreotype, why does that woman look so sad, that man so severe? What yachtsman did that oyster plate feed? That old doll – that rusty fire truck - where are their owners now? To what cemetery did those childhoods lead? Dance cards, cruise ship menus, faded postcards trivial (having a great time, wish you were here) and profound (we left Scituate hard at dawn, & I wept inconsolably all the way to NY), old doorknobs and keys and pond boats…autographed Elvis photos, braided hair brooches, oil lanterns, gimbaled compasses, hand painted carousel animals hewn out oak, heavy as iron…Here you’ll find all the ephemera that fills up our human lives, but disconnected and out of context, like a kaleidoscopic surrealist assemblage. Holy relics all, alive & still sparking. And so many of them, so many, it stuns. In these disjointed, discarded objects resides whatever remains of the “real” Newport, and to wander amongst them and their incoherent tales is to understand, at last, the complexity and strangeness of where you are.

Shoe Diplomacy

Politics is not something that a Realtor would be advised to discuss. It is very personal and you never know when and how you will offend someone. So, the best advice is if you are not asked point blank, don’t bring it up.

But I have to comment on the shoe throwing incident. I’m sure everyone has seen it by now – the astonishing sight of an Iraqui reporter, taking off his shoes and throwing them as hard as he could right at the head of President Bush!

I don’t know about you but I was completely blown away. I did not know what to think – there were so many thoughts going through my head at once.

Like –( 1.) Good for that guy! He must really be at the end of his rope to do something like that! (2.) What the heck just happened?? That is the President of the United States! Doesn’t anyone have any dignity anymore? Does anything go? (3.) Where were the Secret Service? (4.) Boy, W. can really move. He was ducking and weaving pretty good. (5.) Thank God, President Bush was not harmed or hurt in any way.



And finally, ( 6.) after 8 years of shaking my head and muttering every time I hear President Bush utter something that leaves me aghast, I could not believe how gracious and laid back he was about the whole thing. He laughed it off! He made a joke about ‘ducking reporters’. I was amazed at his attitude and was in agreement with him for the first time in 8 years.

Gifts from the Sea

Every once in a while, when we have a big storm like we had last night, the waters of Narragansett Bay creep up into my neighborhood. The sea water climbs up the beaches and spills into the streets. We wake up to find seashells littering the lawns. What a treat!



Most of the houses where I live are set high on a 10 or 12 foot bank. So they are not in any danger of flooding. And the lower lying houses, across the street from the beach, have gently sloping lawns. Sometimes the water gets pretty close to those houses.

Bits of seaweed, rocks, sand and shells leave their mark on the streets and lawns. They leave a high water mark that is unmistakable.

On gray days like this, nature has a way of making the sea, the sky, even the trees, all the same tone and the world seems very soft. A silvery gray color.


My neighbor, John, was walking his dog, Zoe, this morning and called to me, “Did you find any quahogs yet?”

I do live in a zany neighborhood. Wild Goose Point just outside of Wickford. I love it there.

Studies in Pessimism

It’s rough out there. Staying positive can present a bit of a challenge these days, especially if you are, like me, of a naturally melancholic bent to begin with. Billion dollar bailouts. Terrorist attacks. Dwindling retirement accounts. Falling home prices. And that’s just out there in the macrocosm. Here in my own personal little microcosm, conditions aren’t a whole lot better. One friend is on the verge of losing her house to foreclosure. A former co-worker from the NYYC committed suicide last month. Evils big and little seem to be multiplying exponentially all around me, like a cartoon snowball careening down a hill, growing huger & more avalanche-like as it picks up speed. Christmas is coming. My bank account never looked worse. My cat is still missing. My 52nd birthday looms. My weight is not what it should be. My houses aren’t selling. Another turn of the snowball. Add some self-doubt to the equation. What had I accomplished with my life? My achievements felt, well…small, my contributions paltry, my significance negligible. The upbeat approach was fast becoming a thing of the past, a speck in the distance.

So there was nothing else for it - it was time for a trip to the bookstore. When my internal settings need adjusting, only a bookstore can fix me. A conflicted agnostic, I don’t have a church. A therapy drop-out, I don’t have a therapist. I do, however, have a bookstore right down the street. So it was there I turned my trudging steps towards.

It’s been a bad decade for bookstores on the island, and the Newport ones have been steadily disappearing ever since the Barnes & Noble opened in Middletown several years ago. The sole exception has been Kelley’s Books, on the corner of Broadway and Malbone. A used bookstore on a busy street without so much as a parking lot, Kelley’s is an unlikely candidate for role of sole survivor, but there you have it. Used books, bent covers, poor overhead lighting. No lattes are served, no fresh mozzarella & pesto panini are available, no cds or greeting cards or magazines are sold. The inventory isn’t computerized, the proprietor tracks his customers on hand printed index cards he keeps in a dented metal box under the register and the background music isn’t even Muzak – there’s just a staticky radio tuned to a classical music FM station. Kelley’s is an un-hip throwback to a time when the only reason you went to a bookstore was to look for books, period. Even better, since it’s a used bookstore, your finds are pretty much dictated by chance and serendipity. Any pre-planned agenda is pointless; the only way to go is to abdicate all pretense at control and just browse, drift with the tides. And maybe it is precisely this not having to be in mental control that is the sweet secret reward of a visit to the bookstore. What a relief to not have to be responsible for your own consciousness, even just temporarily… In fact, now that I think about it, it’s probably safe to say that just about all of my vices tend in that direction. Farewell, self!

But back to the books. Instead of finding what you’re looking for, you’ll find what you weren’t looking for, and sometimes what you didn’t even know existed. Did I need a book on three modern Icelandic poets? I didn’t even know Iceland had any modern poets. Did I walk in there in search of yet another copy of Boswell’s Life of Johnson? Nah. Did I have any intention of settling down with a good re-read of Schopenhauer’s Studies in Pessimism? Nope. But no way could I resist the gloriously self-pitying melodrama of his opening line, to wit, “Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim.” Bitter words, fighting words, succinctly if mordantly put, and so completely over the top that I burst out laughing, right there in the aisle.

So if you’re feeling the pain of the season, I suggest you hie yourself over to Kelley’s for a dose of righteous attitude readjustment. Forget real estate. Forget the economy. Forget your mortgage and your car payment and your tax problems. Lose yourself in the stacks. Flip through an art book. Check out the science fiction. Pull out that classic you’ve always been meaning to read. You’ll be chuckling along with Schopenhauer in no time.

Technological Wonders Never Cease

Technology is one of my all time favorite passions in life! Whenever a new gadget is introduced to the market, I can usually be found at the head of the line, anxious to check it out. I have always been fascinated with anything that can simplify my life. Back in the early 60’s when I was just a young girl, long before the advent of the “personal computer”, I actually imagined and dreamt of what would later become the handheld computer, thoughts undoubtedly triggered by the invention at the time of the innovative transistor radio. If they could put a radio into such a small package, I knew there just had to be more to come some day. If I had only known how to make that dream happen back then I might be living or vacationing in some tropical and exotic resort right now… wow, I’d be right up there with the Bill Gates of the world. As is, I am most content exploring, investigating and buying techie gadgets.

One of my recent discoveries is the Eye-Fi Wi-Fi digital camera SD memory card. What a fun toy this is turning out to be. The Eye-Fi Card came with everything I needed to set it up and connect to my home computer wireless network (Wi Fi). It only took a couple of minutes to set up. Then, using the memory card that came with the software, all I had to do is snap the pictures! Now, whenever I take pictures that I want to download to my computer, I just need to be sure that both my computer and digital camera are turned on at the same time. Like magic, any pictures I’ve taken are automatically downloaded to my computer and stored in the file that I set up to receive them! How easy is that?

As a Realtor® this is a very useful tool for getting my pictures onto my computer and ready for immediate use! If I’ve been out taking pictures of properties, I come back to my home office and like a child anxious to see what Santa has brought; I rush to my computer to find the pictures waiting for me. If I get to the computer in time, I can catch them flashing on the screen as they are downloading. No more looking for the memory card reader, connecting USB cables or removing the memory card from my digital camera. It’s all automatic! In short, downloading pictures is no longer a chore -- its fun and it keeps me productive. What will they come up with next? Whatever it is, I’ll be sure to find it!

Click the Play ► Button to see photos downloading!

A detail in the fabric of Newport

George didn't have one when he visited Trinity Church in Newport,

but Elizabeth did.

Needlepoint kneelers.

Every pew has them, and each kneeler is a work of art, lovingly made by the members of the Trinity Church Needlework Guild. The guild is back in session under the artistic direction of one of Newport's most beloved artists, Eveline Roberge .

The most famous kneeler may be the one featuring an intricately rendered ER II, for Elizabeth Regina, Queen of England. The Queen’s kneeler has an English rose embroidered on the side, as well as a crown and laurel leaves on the top surface, framing the initials ER, with the Roman numeral two stitched between the letters.

If you've never been, it's worth a visit to Trinity Church, it's been an active place of worship since the 18th century. Trinity is just one of many treasured sites in Newport.

I could go on about the memorial windows (one, the gift of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt in memory of her husband) from Tiffany Studios , but they really need to be seen.

Newport Nutcracker

If you are looking for an enjoyable cultural activity to help you get into the Holiday spirit, I recommend the Island Moving Company’s “A Newport Nutcracker”.

Newport’s most romantic mansion – Rosecliff – is the setting for this unique take on this holiday classic. This magnificent venue for the performance is fully exploited as the audience experiences the performance by moving through many of the mansion’s rooms following the dancers as the story develops.

The action begins in the central foyer with the sweeping sweetheart staircase as the stage for the fight between the mice and soldiers. The action then moves onto the ballroom and then a reception room with a wonderful Christmas tree. During the second act, the audience gets to rest their legs in café style tables in the glorious ballroom.

The cast includes the dancers of the Island Moving Company as well as 100 children in two casts from dance studios throughout Rhode Island. The children are truly adorable as well as being talented!

There aren’t many performances left, so call for tickets (401) 847 4470.

Don't Miss This!

I live just outside the Village of Wickford, along the shore. It really has a lot going for it in all seasons. In the summer, we have the art festival, the air show, and fireworks just to name a few things.

But during the holidays, there are also a couple of outstanding events. One is the Festival of Lights. Santa arrives on a sailboat surrounded by kayakers, television crews are there to show the holiday windows and the winner of the best window is announced live on Channel 10, carolers stroll the streets, and you can even get a hay ride and some hot chocolate. Santa arrives Friday evening at 5:30 at the town dock. There are other activities all weekend.



The other thing not to miss, is the annual Little Picture Show at the Wickford Art Association on Beach Street. The members offer their smaller-sized art at very affordable prices. What a great gift! Original art is always appreciated. I make a point of buying myself something there every year along with a couple of gifts. The show runs through December 24.