Revisiting A Darkened Room

Sunday, January 11, 2026

I always used to rely on movies—not just for entertainment, but for guidance, inspiration, and small lessons in “being human.” Throughout my growing-up years, films were a kind of companion.

The early ones—Hollywood standards of the 40s and 50s—taught me about glamour, timing, and emotion, and that stories can move with an almost musical rhythm. Later, I gravitated toward the New Age filmmakers of Italy, England, and the independent Americans who emerged in the ’60s and beyond. The emerging works felt looser, freer, more searching. They offered complexity instead of polish. They lingered in ambiguity. They asked viewers to stay longer, look again, and participate.

Eventually, as with so many things, the growing internet altered my habits. I stopped going to theaters. I became a streamer—at first enthusiastically. Art houses were becoming harder to find, and searching for them was tiresome. Over time, I watched fewer movies and watched less attentively. Eventually, part of myself drifted. One that used to feel essential, that welcomed art as nourishment.

Right now, considering the year ahead, I’ve started noticing that absence. Not dramatically—but more like realizing a room has gone quiet. I miss great movies. I miss the feeling of settling into a seat, lights dimming, a subtle sense that something meaningful might happen. I miss my own alertness, my old curiosity, my willingness to follow a director’s point of view.

I’ve done a little exploring and learned something surprising. There is an art movie house in this Central Oregon city. And “just like that,” something old and familiar stirred in me.

Today’s header photo represents today’s matinee, and I’ll be attending.

Not from nostalgia or needing to reclaim some earlier version of myself. I’m going because sitting inside a darkened room—surrounded by strangers, facing a screen larger than life—once held great purpose for me. And purpose, even if lost for a while, can return in surprising ways. Sometimes renewal begins by doing something small, but true. Something once beloved.

I’ll be watching a very modern American art film. I’ve no idea if it’ll be extraordinary or forgettable. (As a note, this film also might be streaming now, and I’m avoiding that.) Because today I will join a live audience. I will return to a first theatrical experience after many years.

This might renew more than a habit. It might refresh my relationships with attention and imagination. There is a possibility that art can still shift me, nudging me and inviting me into a “different room” than the one I walked into.

Entering this new year has made me think about purpose. Somehow, today’s adventure seems a small re-beginning. I will re-explore a once-significant source of learning. And most importantly, this could be a new beginning.

Later, I’ll know more. About the film itself, and about how it feels to sit, again, in a darkened room with emotional potential. For now, it’s feeling great simply for having decided to go.

— Diana

Listening for Presence

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Yesterday, I wrote my first of several planned posts about listening to music, and I paused. Soon, something different and subtle struck me. I was highly focused on writing about music, but wasn’t rushing off to research or make lists. Nor was I working on organizing sections, say about eras, or trying to build arguments toward a point of view. Instead, I found myself involved in actively listening itself.

I wasn’t listening constantly, nor methodically—but differently, very thoughtfully. More slowly. More attentively. I found myself listening for something, and not simply to something. That “something” has always been hard to name, but it’s something I constantly search for–and I always recognize it instantly when it appears.

To me, certain voices don’t merely enter a room—they change the space. The air feels altered, and as a listener, I feel myself being addressed—and personally. This doesn’t depend on volume or virtuosity. It’s likely to arrive in a whisper, a pause, a cracked note, a breath held just a beat longer than expected.

Here are examples: While listening to Louis Armstrong, I realized I’m not just hearing sound; I’m hearing weight—as if he’s carrying joy alongside sorrow, humor braided with endurance. When Ella Fitzgerald sings, I hear something like generosity in her phrasing—as though she’s opening space rather than filling it. Nina Simone’s voice creates a world where feeling becomes thought itself—urgent, unyielding, refusing comfort. Janis Joplin sang as if nothing were protected. Amy Winehouse sang as if she already knew the cost.

Here’s what strikes me: these are voices that don’t ask permission. They don’t soften themselves for acceptability. They don’t sound engineered to land well—they sound natural and necessary.

When I hear them, the idea of “performance” feels inadequate. Performance suggests polish, presentation, and a certain distance. Instead, I hear presence. I sense the singer fully inside the moment, and bringing me along without barriers between experience and expression.

Presence can’t be trained into someone, and presence can’t be copied. One can imitate another’s phrasing, tone, and even style. But “real presence” isn’t a technique; it’s a condition. And listeners know it when they hear it.

I often think about how rare this feels today—not because artists lack talent, but because so much contemporary music is filtered through expectations of marketability, branding, perfection, and constant visibility. Today’s technologies create pressure to be seamless, consistent, and endlessly repeatable. Earlier music, by contrast, often allowed unevenness. Performances included roughness, surprise, and even discomfort.

That may be why I return so often to voices from earlier decades—or search for modern artists who feel somehow outside the machine. I seek those whose sounds are as though something real is happening to them as they sing, not just through them.

I’m not suggesting that suffering creates great art, or that pain is a requirement for authenticity. But lived experience—fully inhabited—leaves traces. Great artists allow those traces to remain audible.

Listening in this way makes me consider my own habits. How often do I listen while doing something else? How quickly do I move on when a song doesn’t immediately reward me? How conditioned have I become to smoothness—to ease?

This is my second post about listening to music. Not to make a conclusion, but to create something more like a tuning fork. A small way of noticing what resonates—and what doesn’t.

In another post on this topic, I hope to stay close to this question: What makes a voice unrepeatable? Not better. Not more famous. But singular—so that no matter how many imitators try to cover an original, something essential refuses to transfer.

For now, I’ll keep listening for presence. And I’ll gamble that once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it either.

— Diana

Lessons In Jewelry

Friday, September 26, 2025

I grew up with the saying, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” In mid-20th-century culture, that line carried enormous weight. A diamond was more than a glittering accessory—it symbolized status, romance, and permanence. It was also, and very often, a woman’s only financial safety net. When women had little access to income or property, a diamond ring could be converted into cash if someone suddenly found herself left and on her own.

Working in jewelry today tells me how much has changed. Modern women build careers, manage investments, and create their own security. Diamonds remain desirable, but less as a lifeline. Talking with customers has taught me that diamonds are just one option among many ways to celebrate love, beauty, or success.

I see today’s women often choosing pieces that tell their own stories. A birthstone ring, an heirloom reset into a modern design, or a pendant from a local artisan can mean more than a flawless solitaire. Essentially, jewelry is becoming autobiographical—and saying, this is who I am, rather than this is what a woman should have.

I also see the shift favoring ethics and individuality. Many women prefer lab-grown gems, recycled metals, or fair-trade stones. Others embrace color—emeralds, sapphires, and tourmaline—or opt for raw crystals and asymmetrical cuts. Jewelry is often collected in layers and stacks, shifting with mood and season.

So what replaces that old “best friends” phrase? Maybe nothing—and everything. Younger women, especially, are unbothered by distinctions between mined and manufactured diamonds. They want bold sparkle and personality, not conformity. Meanwhile, women from traditional cultures often still value mined diamonds as both symbol and security.

What I see every day is that the “best friend,” rather than being a single stone, is having choice itself—the freedom for a woman to define what sparkles brightest for her.

— Diana

Emerging

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Yesterday, I shared my shock on learning it could cost me up to $10,000 to repaint my small car. I’m a product of living in Southern California and remember a very different time. Back then, several successful auto body repair businesses offered remarkably low prices. Earl Scheib’s, for instance, promised to repaint an entire car for anywhere between $99 and $299 — a deal that drew in countless customers.

So why could repainting my modest vehicle today run as high as $10,000? That question might shed light on why the auto repair company that’ll repair my dented fender specializes in doing only insurance repairs. It estimated my fender repair job at $1,400, which, frankly, felt to me like reverse sticker shock. Back in my old California days, it was common to feel taken advantage of by auto repair shops. Today’s quote, which to me seemed cheap, likely reflects pricing which represents prenegotiated figures acceptable to insurance companies.

Curious, I decided to dig deeper into the modern automotive paint industry. What I found didn’t just give me logical explanations — it also made me realize how out of touch I’d become with current standards, not just in auto painting, but across many trades.

I’m learning that today’s auto repair materials are worlds apart from what was common during my California years — and they’re also vastly more expensive. Similarly, labor costs have increased because of today’s higher performance standards. There are stricter environmental regulations and added compliance expenses, along with inflation and overhead charges. All of those factors contribute to modern repainting quotes.

Consumer expectations also have changed. The old Earl Scheib approach was all about speed and budget, providing quick, cheap, purely cosmetic “spray over and go” jobs. In contrast, a modern $10,000+ paint job typically involves a complete surface restoration, performed to rigorous standards and utilizing advanced materials, handled by skilled technicians who meticulously adhere to environmental laws.

Years ago, low-cost repaints in any color were easy to find, although minimal prep work meant those jobs rarely lasted for long. Today’s high-end shops strive for results that meet or exceed factory standards. That requires painstaking labor, high-quality paints, and strict adherence to environmental compliance. All those drive costs up dramatically.

Dear Friends: Like Rip Van Winkle–awaking to a world more changed than I realized.— Diana

Disaster

Tuesday, December 28, 2025

Today is a somber anniversary. On this day in 1986, America’s Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight and disintegrated 46,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, killing every crew member aboard. One crew, a non-NASA employee, was a schoolteacher going into space under a Teacher in Space Project.

Because the mission included a civilian, it drew high media interest and live streaming. Adults, as well as many children in schools, watched as video captured the launch and explosion.

Dialogues followed that unveiled “The O-ring Disaster.” In essence, key spaceship suppliers rushing to meet the liftoff date ignored their engineers who were questioning anticipated O-Ring performance.

(Spin forward to Boing’s troubles today because of gross mismanagement and frantic rushing to produce aircraft.)

The spaceship tragedy was caused by failures of the primary and secondary O-ring seals in a joint in one space booster. Record-low temperatures at launch time stiffened the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal joints. Shortly after liftoff, the seals were breached; hot pressurized gas leaked through the joint and burned into an external propellant tank.

The explosion collapsed internal structures, causing rotations to throw the orbiter into aerodynamic forces that tore it apart. The now-destroyed craft flew uncontrollably until a range safety officer destroyed it.

That disaster today is imprinted in memory as firmly as the horrific assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, MLK, and John Lennon.

Dear Friends, Reliving my memories of the Challenger disaster and its aftermath. Diana

Birding Artist

Friday, January 10, 2024

Some time ago, I casually listened as an interviewer questioned the popular and successful writer Amy Tan. I’d not read anything by Tan; I became more attentive as she explained some experiences and interests that turned into creative inspirations. She said bird-watching was a high note in her daily life, and the activity gradually had changed–from being very casual to becoming highly attentive. Best of all, focusing on birds made another of her artistic sides evolve.

I am a great appreciator, a casual watcher, and sometimes a photographer of wild birds. I have two domestic birds in my home, each very different–a retired racing pigeon and a busy Cockatoo. Each is interesting and intelligent (most overtly, the Cocktoo) in its own way.

I long remembered elements of that interview with Tan and wished to learn more about her affection for birds. I finally ordered her book and haven’t been disappointed. In fact, it’s more delightful than I anticipated because her “other artistic side” is pen-on-paper artwork–and her own!

Tan’s bird art is a fine art. Today’s header photo is of the book cover, with birds by Tan, hinting at more art on its inside pages.

She’s an excellent writer, too. Her words share Tan’s observations and delight, bringing readers near the writer’s first-hand experiences.

Dear Friends: It’s an original, a beaut that evolved from wishing to learn. Diana

Hay, Mom!

Friday, December 13, 2024

Yesterday, we Central Oregonians coped with several inches of snow and can expect more today. That morning, I wore tall boots with cleated bottoms while out feeding my horses. At lunchtime, I came home from my outside job to feed the horses. I should say, “I crawled home.” Vehicles were crowding the roadways and barely moving. I returned late to work and felt guilty.

The weather, time constraints, and traffic stalls got me focusing on my priorities. My horses are at the top because equines must be fed several times daily. My other critters need attention and care, too, but less critically than the equines. I can’t avoid taking too-long lunch hours when conditions make that necessary. Feed the horses–damn the torpedos!

My coworkers seemed to understand and didn’t complain. One of my reasons for appreciating that outside working environment.

Long story short, weather conditions stopped me from finding and bringing home a Poinsettia. I wanted a bright red plant to punctuate the snowy landscape that fills my big picture window. Since the snow is sticking and we can expect more, I will have time to find a potted Poinsettia for the shelf of my snow-filled picture window at home.

Dear Friends: Home caring for equines is a consuming responsibility. Diana

Adornments

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Yesterday, the department store where I work part-time hosted a traveling jewelry show. The jewels, primarily of gold and diamonds, were beautiful and expensive. Those luxuries in these economically stressful times drew individuals who wished to self-identify uniquely from others; however, it appeared (to me) that actual sales might be falling short of the goals.

I remember reading somewhere that, “First man made tools, and then he made jewelry.” The earliest jewels worn that identified individuals uniquely probably were real seashells and artist-created resemblances.

Watching customers yesterday, I was struck by how long they (mostly women) studied the array and carefully selected pieces, one by one, to try on. Most arrived wearing their favorite jewelry pieces, hoping to match or complement those items. Many found choices they loved and looked fine, tried on, but decided against making a sizable investment.

Sure, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Nonetheless, potential buyers did show up and spent much time looking and playing with offerings. It resembled a sort of practice event, like entering a department store’s dressing room and trying on clothing, self-assessing, and then deciding against purchasing.

If the store’s goals did fall short, it’s likely for not advertising or promoting adequately an upcoming, unique opportunity to discover fine jewelry locally.

I’m often struck by yet another recognition of today’s businesses inadequately providing training and learning opportunities. Maybe I could have helped more with yesterday’s selling effort and improved the bottom line. However, I wasn’t adequately trained before the event.

About inadequate training: Experience has taught me that regardless of how many computer-generated training videos an organization provides, time spent “learning via videos” quickly becomes a brain-deadening sentence. Simply put, teams need regular meetings to gain a common understanding and be on the same page.

Dear Friends: At least I glimpsed “a little inside” of key jewelry showing. Diana

Caballeros

Monday, October 07, 2024

I asked my coworker Adrain for a photo of himself minus his full-face beard. He said he’s been bearded nearly forever and would look for a picture. So, I got the capture that’s today’s header, young Adrain, adorable and irresistibly huggable.

The modern Adrain sports a beard covering much of his handsome face. The beard “speaks volumes.” For one thing, he’s a salesperson–easily spotted and remembered. For another, he’s reflective and decidedly an individual.

Here’s Adrain doing one of his favorite things, fly-fishing.

He’s still loveable. If you happen into whatever space Adrain might occupy, he’ll be instantly recognizable. (Tell him, “Diana says hello.”)

Adrain’s fun photos sidetracked me. I had planned an update about my puppy Chase; he might be captured for a while.

Early yesterday, I spent much time attempting to secure his kennel door, which constant pawing can rattle open. That kennel is built to house chickens, not a strong dog. My “fix” had to be quick and easy, for I’m usually hurrying to kennel the dog and leave for work.

The solution became four strategically placed bungy cords tight against the door, keeping it still. That’s successful, at least for now. Yesterday, after getting home from work, I found Chase still kenneled. Whew!

Dear Friends: My earlier working hours force me to quit writing now. Diana

Speaking Arts

Thursday, July 18, 2024

I ordered a drawing pad on a whim. The cute pad connects to a computer; strokes on the pad appear on the computer screen. I thought, “Well, that sounds like fun.” After receiving and examining the pad and watching some training videos, I gathered that my scribbles are not up to the possibilities with this tool; it’s designed for skilled artists using specialized software.

I have few skills in comprehending artists’ software. That’s become apparent after years of using Photoshop. I’ve studied it, practiced utilizing image layers, and am most comfortable doing basic editing. The speed at which this new pad grabbed my attention (and money) is a mystery. I wonder what made the item so appealing that I couldn’t resist it.

Wondering about appeal and irresistibility goes beyond a drawing pad. I often think about it while selling fine jewelry, which isn’t a basic necessity but strongly draws people. Beyond the social influence of jewelry, there’s also an emotional level, reminding individuals of something they’ve loved or cared about. The artist’s pad touched a deep need inside me to draw.

Growing up in a complicated family taught me the safety of keeping my thoughts private. I began to mature with few conversation skills and wanted to become an artist. I could sit for hours drawing objects in my sight or depictions of my memories. Resistance to revealing my thoughts eventually became less, helped by a psychologist. I slowly began speaking more, and simultaneously, that slowed my drawing, and finally, I stopped drawing.

So, the pad is an emotional connection with drawing. It little matters that I don’t draw because my deep, ongoing attraction to drawing as an essence of self-expression is a hefty push.

Dear Friends: An item’s appeal aligns with hobbies, interests, and passions. Diana