Here then, were my heroes.....
Joan Marlowe, my dancing school teacher...no photo of Miss Joan, only memories...
The older girls in my Irish Dance classes...I strove to match their amazingly complicated steps....
Sister Miriam Joseph, 7Th grade teacher...incredibly beautiful, the epitome of smooth....no photo available....nor necessary....
Pattie Boyd, girlfriend of Beatle George Harrison, cool, lovely, George's girlfriend....no more need be said...
Betty Smith, author of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"...I tried to fashion stories as she did...
Joni Mitchell....sigh...was, and is, an enormous part of my overall psyche...I adore her and cherish how she is a constant in my heart and mind...
Mary Cassatt, artist, Impressionist, free spirit...while attending the Art Students League in Manhattan I once believed I might channel her talent on those most creative of days...
Joan Marlowe, Part Two...while teaching dance in the South Bronx, thought surely that I would perish if not able to follow in Joan's path of choreographing musicals...did not choreograph, nor did I perish....
Elizabeth Berg, fellow Chicagoan, novelist extraordinaire...she writes me....not about me...rather writes ME...
Amy Krouse Rosenthal, writer, astonishing thinker, "The Beckoning of Lovely" muse....she puts my thoughts, my words, on paper in ways I have not...
Lastly, Beatrice Potter, illustrator, writer, ultimately independent woman when independence seemed improbable..
So then, my list....much considered, much examined. Time to allow the list to take wings. Time to find inspiration within.
This years sole task begins.....