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Welcome to The Sea Pearl, a collection of curiosities, essays, and guiding principles that inspire my life and everything in it.

The Shape of Things to Come

As you may know, MeWe is my favorite social media platform because it’s so clean, there are no ads, and it’s not Facebook(!). It is the home of The Sea Pearl group page where I share items of interest that may refresh your soul. (For an explanation of upcoming changes to this site, see my recent featured article.) Just to give you a foretaste, someone sent me a link the other day to a radio program that blew my socks off. I never listened to Bill McGlaughlin before, but he takes the listener through  music in a way that truly informs and educates the ear—and, I swear,  it’s a hundred times better than taking a course for credit. You have simply got to hear his March 29 broadcast, “How Strange the Change from Major to Minor, Part I,” where he explains how the Dorian mode came to us from the ancient Greeks. What kind of music do you love? It’s all there. If you prefer quiet inspiration to heated discussions, The Sea Pearl group on MeWe may be the perfect place. (“Calgon, take me away. . .”)

Art Subjects

Breaking: This issue we’ve gone international! Responses to the magazine in other places have been positive. The only negative, we heard, was that there weren’t enough magazines in the outlets—a very good ‘problem’ to have!

If you are interested in art subjects, please check out Art Chowder magazine, a Northwest regional publication which my husband, Melville Holmes, writes for (with a lot of help from moi).

If we fill our souls with beauty, it will radiate.

MELVILLE HOLMES

In this month’s issue (May-June 2021) we continue our coverage of the amazing work of a PhotoShop colorist from Moscow, Olga Shirnina, better known to many as Klimbim. You will be amazed to see long dead historical figures come to life in color (Greta Garbo before she was a star, Josephine Baker, Edgar Allan Poe and more). This month’s article includes a QR code where you can access a gallery of nearly 50 pictures colorized by Klimbim.

In case you didn’t know, you can read Art Chowder online regularly for free. You can also obtain a physical copy at many book shops, including Barnes & Noble and Whole Foods.

Inspirational Spaces

For me, decorating is all about freedom and idiot-proofing your life, but it’s also about beauty, quiet spaces, and room to dream. If you ever wondered why you can’t achieve an Architectural Digest home no matter how hard you try, perhaps this is why: You really live in your home (unlike those other people whose homes appear in magazines). Additionally, there may be other people in your household who are messy, have aesthetic sensibilities different from yours, or perhaps you move around a bit and what worked in one abode doesn’t work in the next. Decorating Freedom is a practical set of pages I’ve put in the menu above to help you reconcile your busy life with the space you truly inhabit.

—Memos—

If someone had told me two years ago that I would be spending May 2021 caring and feeding red wigglers, I’d have probably laughed them into the stratosphere. But that is exactly how this gardening season has kicked off: digging, pulling, rearranging outdoor plantings, helping the husband re-engineer a problematic back yard with the biggest DIY paving project of his life. Only one small construction project remains, and all the main veggie plantings are done. I dropped the little wormies in holes I dug just this morning. In the rain. Alone.