Fall is sneaking in. I feel it in the cool air and the strange moisture, I see it in the brightly changing leaves. My skin can tell summer is coming to an end and it’s filled with both excitement and longing. Fall always makes me feel poetic and inward. Maybe it’s the transition, or the colors, or the faint hopeless hope that maybe summer will win this time. Transitions... Here is what I think is uncomfortable about them. You are leaving one familiar thing, you are leavi

My grandma Nada was an artist. She saw the world through color and form. When I was little she would take me to her favorite Italian restaurant in Chicago. She’d tell me, “the food’s pretty good here but I come for the table cloths.” Each table was adorned with a big sheet of white butcher paper. In her purse she had an array of colored pencils and pens. She would whip them out as soon as we sat down and start to draw. First and foremost a doting grandma, she would teach