The Happy and Sad Life of Jean Seberg What happened to Jean Seberg? At one point she was on top of the world, the darling of The French New Wave, the cutting-edge cinema of the 1960s and a glamorous beckoning pixie. And later on in her short life she descended into an overwhelming despair that didn't leave her. Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in November 1938 in idyllic Marshalltown Iowa. Her father was the town pharmacist and owned a drug store on the main street eponymously named "Seberg's." Her father Edward Voldemar Seberg, was very conscientious and would open up his store in the middle of the night if need be to get a prescription for a sick member of the community. She was the second of four children and her mother Dorothy Seberg was a homemaker. Jean had a penchant for bringing home stray animals, "but they followed me home?" She grew up in the Lutheran Church. She loved high school dramatics...

I had a tele- session with my psychiatrist a few days ago and asked if he could increase one of  my sedating antidepressants. It seems that people who've never had big issues with anxiety have  reached out for help. I sometimes deal with an encroaching agoraphobia especially during the long  Minnesota Winters, going for days without stepping outside for days unless I absolutely have to. I  come alive in the Spring when the living seems easy and everybody looks pretty. Why I have chosen  to stay in Minnesota is a conundrum to me. Well, perhaps not so much. I've never really had the  resources for a cross country move or the ability to try to show up in a place that far away from my  friends although sometimes I may go a long time without talking to them. In theory, I know they're  close and I could call them if I wanted to. It started to get warm early in the Twin Cities blissfully early and I was deter...

I have a good friend who has depression and  anxiety and she recently told me again how the decline  of the physical world we live in is upsetting her. It's a reasonable fear to have. It's an ongoing worry to many of us. I have to stop myself from thinking about it too much sometimes distracting myself with watching something something else like a movie or Britbox. The non-stop coverage of it is troubling. What can we do? It seems insurmountable and that we're already doomed. And doom has been on my mind for all of my life. What will happen? What can I do? I believe individuals can do something to help lessen the effects and reduce our individual angst about the whole thing. So I say start where you are.  I assembled a list that is aimed at getting by on the cheap at the same time. SO HERE GOES 1. Recycle whatever you can in your home. This means having a box, container or bag in your kitchen to use as a recycling bin. Empty it when it gets full int...

Painter Georgia O'Keefe (1887-1986) lived with depression throughout her long life. Born in Sun Prairie Wisconsin, she is considered one of the master's of 20th Century modernism; A pioneer for women in art. She is probably the best known female American artist of the twentieth century. She carved out her own style apart from the chaos in modernist abstractionist painting and lived her life on her own terms. She paved the way for women artists (along with some others like Alice Neel.)  She spent much time in New York with her husband, photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz in the early stages of her career. She left for the sunshine of New Mexico in 1929 and made that her home. Known for abstract flowers and bleached cattle skulls in her work (did she know they would be part of a twenty-first design craze?)  She lived in the kind of adobe house that your picture when you think of Santa Fe and set up her studio there. Often painting outdoors and laying under he...