Bonni Brodnick Blog

I am going back to using pencils. Tired of roller ball pens.  Let's have a graphite revival  so we can at least hear what we're writing. Cool pencil sharpeners available here .

According to a story by Natalie Kitroeff in Bloomberg Business ,   " The Best and Worst Fonts to Use on Your Résumé ," " Using Times Roman is the typeface equivalent of wearing sweatpants to an interview."  While constrained to often use Garamond as primary font, with Arial as secondary font, my font of fondness is toujours Helvetica. A friend commented, " Helvetica is so, mid-century modern.  If you must go sans-serif, go with Franklin Gothic. " So I looked it up.  Franklin Gothic was named in honor of a prolific American printer,  Benjamin Franklin . How does it distinguish from  other sans-serif typefaces? It has a  more traditional double-story  a  and especially  g (as double-story  g s are rare in sans-serif fonts), the tail of the  Q  and the ear of the  g . The tail of the  Q  curls down from the bottom center of the letterform in the book weight and shifts slightly to the right ...

At a recent lecture, someone put their sound setting on "Raindrop." Every time a message came in, I heard DRIP. As if ... Get in the mi s ophonia a nd  s elective   s ound  s en s itivity discu ss ion on  Fa c ebook. C lic k  here.  

There is something soothing about simplicity and symmetry. Here are a few shots from Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass. All photos by Bonni Brodnick

Who is he hurting?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   Live and let live.

There was something metal bouncing around in the dryer. Even after I removed the homeless quarter, my ears could still hear it.  Get in the mi s ophonia a nd  s elective s ound s ensitivity discu ss ion on  Fa c ebook. C lic k here.  

Someone wrote in: "The most annoying sound I heard today was sitting in a meeting and hearing the distant copy machine go roque. It printed hundreds (and  hundreds ) of copies.  Someone finally asked, "Is anyone printing something?" When no one answered, another colleague went over to the machine and pressed " CANCEL ." ‪ Selective Sound Sensitivity. C lic k here. ‬ 

     I am eternally grateful to the Pound Ridge mothers who joined my effort, 20 years ago, to plant a memorial garden, skirting the Pound Ridge Community Church playground, to honor the 168 victims -- including 19 babies -- killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Here is the article written by dear friend Cynthia Wetzler: Pound Ridge Sculpture Honors Oklahoma Dead By CYNTHIA MAGRIEL WETZLER Published: April 27, 1997 FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ EMAIL SHARE PRINT REPRINTS POUND RIDGE—  IF rocks could speak, the white alabaster in ''Unfinished Lives'' by the Pound Ridge sculptor Miles Slater might be saying to the dark granite that it enfolds: ''It's O.K. Let go of the pain.'' The sculpture was the focus of a commemorative ceremony at the Pound Ridge Town House last Saturday to remember the children who perished in the Oklahoma City bombing exactly two years before -- on April 19, 1995. Melva Noakes, founder-director of the Ameri...

Lisl Steiner ... The venerable and formidable.  One of the featured stars in  P O UND RIDGE PAST: Remembrances of Our Townsfolk. ~~~~ Now in its second printing, Pound Ridge Past   is a delightful anthology of historical and personal recollections of life in Pound RIdge from the rural 1920s to the swinging 1970s. The book includes first-hand accounts of Hiram Halle, an American businessman, inventor and philanthropist, and his impact on Pound Ridge; what it was like to attend one-room schoolhouses (much to Eleanor Roosevelt's dismay), what was the town buzz the day World War II ended, or when Albert Einstein was a surprise guest at a local party. Also dazzling the calm of the countryside were such renowned celebrities as Tallulah Bankhead; Frank Morgan (the "Wizard of Oz" himself!); Buster Crabbe; Shirley Jones; Eli Wallach; Ann Jackson; Zoe Caldwell and Robert Whitehead; writer Westbrook Pegler; radio sports legend Howard Cosell and "Tom and Jerry...

I always wanted to be this organized. Telephone goes next to my bed, orb monitor is within easy reach, magazines are neatly piled, baby is conveniently filed ... Good times.

Here is the very last patch of snow.

A   story in The   New York Times   talks about chicks gone wild in Kaui. I noticed the same thing when I was there a few months ago. Feral chickens are everywhere . The beach, parking lots, in the woods ... " They seem to be living a whole diversity of lifestyles, from eating garbage and cat food to being fed by tourists at the beach to foraging on native arthropods,' said  Eben J. Gering , an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State University who has been studying these truly free-range birds. In the parking lot Local lore is that many of the chickens are descendants of birds that escaped when Hurricane Iwa (in 1982) and then Hurricane Iniki (in 1992) ripped across the island and blew chicken coops all over Kaui. Waimea Canyon At the beach on the  Nā Pali  coast In the hotel lobby.  (Oops ... wrong bird shot.) On a path near the  Kalalau trail In one far-flung comment on TripAdvisor, a traveler notes: " There are ...

Listen to the chicks:  "Have a wonderful and joyful Easter!"

The sound of your cat meowing when you're trying to meditate. OMMMMMMmmmmmmmG. To join the Miso- Clubhouse, check out the FB page, Misophonia Madness. Want some more?   Click here.

With the calendar turning to April, and northeasterners pleading for relief from the winter of 2015, we braced for yet another major blizzard that has wreaked havoc on the region. Massive power outages and high wind gusts of 30-40 mph have slammed the airports and all flights to New York's JFK and LaGuardia, Newark Liberty, Boston and Philadelphia have been cancelled. We are currently under at least 20-inches of snow, and it continues to fall heavily. Winter Storm What-the-Hell? is in full-blast as we face whiteout conditions, impassable roads and downed power lines from a major snowstorm that we pray is the last of the season. It's a frikkin' nightmare out there with a lot of cracking sounds as old maples fall. Cheers to the town snowplows for keeping the roads clear. The snow is making archeological patterns outside the upstairs window. The birdbath a few hours (and about 8-inches more snow) later. The birdbath at 3 p.m. "There hasn...