Asking Susan about Giving Advice

...that a person
can hear

[First appeared as “Ask Wednesday: Ask Susan – About giving advice that a person can hear” on May 11, 2015.]

During the venerable run of your “Ask Susan” columns, whenever we have forwarded you a question, you have always seemed to rub your palms together in delight, often replying within only two or three days. Giving advice seems to be your métier, or calling. What do you think of that? Does it feel like a calling, or just what does it feel like to you?

Goines On: Sinister influences

Click image for more vignettes

Goines’ hours today seemed shrouded by a poisoned blanket. He felt no empathy or love for the woman he saw behind the wheel of a car approaching him as he walked to the gym, however outwardly friendly she may have intended her answering wave. More than one man at Walmart earlier had seemed to look at him with ulterior motives, one of them seeming to be trying to warn Goines off from further observation of what the man’s female companion might be up to.

Ask Wednesday: Ask Susan

About giving advice that a person can hear

Edited by Morris Dean

During the venerable run of your “Ask Susan” columns, whenever we have forwarded you a question, you have always seemed to rub your palms together in delight, often replying within only two or three days. Giving advice seems to be your métier, or calling. What do you think of that? Does it feel like a calling, or just what does it feel like to you?
    You should just know by now that i will resist any labeling whatsoever. Not my calling, just something you thought of (tho, weird, i was thinking of the same thing when you mentioned it) and i love doing it.

Tuesday Voice

Ocean lighthouse therapeutic painting plus (detail)

Therapeutic art is more

By Vic Midyett

My wife Shirley calls the painting shown below HER therapeutic painting. She started painting it well over a year ago. At first it was only clouds in vivid orange, red, pink, and white splashes, almost like an atomic explosion. Then it toned down a little, but still with dark, angry-looking clouds. She would put it away and go back to it over the months, changing its mood each time.

Tuesday Voice: Why I paint

By Shirley Deane/Midyett

I paint because I must. Children are born with an innate desire to extend out into their world in different ways, like making mud pies. I started by taking different coloured leaves and little brown twigs and used them to make clothes. I lived in a fantasy-filled world, creating stories. I made up a language and produced little books filled with pictures and symbols.
    Things changed when I went to school. Not only did the teachers not like my endeavours, they wanted me to learn theirs, so I stopped.