“What is your blog about?” a professor friend has asked me (I dare say more than once) as she’s led me through constructing this website. I can answer now that it is about the way a writer opens up our imagination, and we take it from there. We listen, and hear connections, as if it were harmony or counterpoint, to our thoughts, and compose. Be seated, please, in Carl Larsson’s “Cozy Corner,” pictured above, and enjoy delving with me into thoughts, discoveries, reminiscences, and observations of all kinds.

     How is Mann alive? On gray winter days when I look at the sun, “poor ghost of itself,...milky and wan….,” I recall the lyricism of “Tonio Kröger” and the gray doesn’t seem so bad, at least for a moment. And overripe strawberries—what story do they bring to mind? When I look at our political life, I think of Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man and know that Mann’s insights into music in the political world have sharpened my critical skills. In a lighter vein, when I describe a person, as I have for a future blog, with tell-tale broad humor, I know that Mann’s love of caricature has creeped into my style. Wittingly or not, our man is alive—at times, whether we want him to be or not. 
      I wish to acknowledge the great friend who asked me the question: “What is your blog about?” She is Laurie Ayre, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Education, King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, PA, newly titled Angel for her unfailing help and Saint for her patience. I would also like to acknowledge Erika Funke, radio journalist at WVIA-FM, who has always taken the time generously to listen, to read and comment on my work, and to encourage this project. How can I also not thank my husband Murray Small, a gifted writer himself and future blogger?