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Seeing Guido Reni at the Alte Pinakothek


...reminds me that I've met someone who knows his paintings like the back of her hand...



I'm working on a new slew of stories for Endeavors, the online creativity and research magazine of Texas Christian University. I've decided to make myself an honorary step-child of the place, seeing as it's been a "bountiful mother" to me for about as many years as it takes to get a PhD. I wonder if I need to tell somebody.

I'm talking about wealth, here. The kind you can't count, fold, shine up or slink around in. I've thought it many times over the years, as I've had the chance to interview people who discover, enthuse and enjoin, transform, spark and heal: to be able to write their stories is to have the best job in the world.

I remembered that yet again this week, listening to the soft west Texas accent of Dwayne Simpson, who has spent forty years trying to un-knit the chain-mail of drug addiction. And to the world's most patient engineer, Tristan Tayag, who had to explain to me at least three times how his machine (the one that may one day help cure diabetes) tumbles, tumbles, tumbles cells so that they never land, or break apart, or die.

It has been a lucky education. I don't mind if they never let me graduate. As long as I can keep coming to school.