Well, professionally I am a philosopher. I teach Plato and Aristotle and all the historical stuff. I read and I think and I teach and I write a lot of stuff. But I have always been attracted to beads and bobbles. I bought some beads in a store once and had no idea what to do with them. So I chucked them in the closet. Then my husband Bill bought me some jewelry tools for Christmas one year. But I had no idea what to do with them, so I chucked them in the closet. But then one summer while I was waiting for my boys at swim practice I saw another mom working with tools and beads. I asked her for a demo, and I was off to the races! I put things together, I took things apart, I sorted beads in the middle of the night and I used my hands to make things. This is not something that I can do as a philosopher—make things with my hands.

During the covid shut-down, I started to learn how to silversmith. I got bigger torches, more tools, more beads, and more practice. I got more invested and more skilled. Making jewelry for me has been and always will be about learning new skills, problem solving in different ways and attempting to execute my own ideas into physical reality. The complimentary skills to philosophizing help to grow me into a more fully capable human.