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Jane Pollak

Wishes, Not Goals

  Click here to listen.     © Jane Pollak 2025(illustrated with pieces of my art process along the way) Since my eldest child gave birth in 2011, I’ve kept an ongoing Notes section labeled Grandma Activities. Whenever newspaper articles or ads for family fun...

The Business Lesson I Had to Learn the Hard Way

  Click here to listen.     © Jane Pollak 2025(illustrated with pieces of my art process along the way) A familiar conversation with my mother in the 1980’s: Mom: When am I going to see you? Can you bring the kids for a visit on Sunday?Me: I’d like to (I lie),...

NOvember in December

  Click here to listen.   I’m very suggestible. When a fiber arts colleague on Instagram shared her wisdom about material storage, I accepted and felt compelled to honor her methodology. “At what point do you throw out leftover pieces of wool?” I asked,...

Born to Make Headlines… and Then What?

 Click here to listen.     Talk about ink in one’s veins! This birth announcement, created by my dad, is prominently displayed in my baby book from 1948. My mother, too, had a way of making things newsworthy just by naming them. When a neighbor in the Midwest...

An Unplanned Fall

 Click here to listen. I took a hard stumble in mid-September, broke my shoulder and have had to pivot my well-organized life to accommodate what is. Still, I’m able to create exciting new digital mock-ups of wall installations. My fantasy:  I would announce to you...

Prospecting: From Carrier Pigeons to DMs (Almost)

 Click here to listen.  Do you remember the staggering number of catalogs that used to weigh down our mailboxes day after day, particularly in the fall? LL Bean came weekly, if not more often, in various iterations: Women’s, Outdoors, Holiday, etc. But there were a...

A Mysterious Transfer

Click here to listen. This post tells the story of an exception to the rule of thumb: Never meet your heroes. In the early ’70s, when my art students from Westhill High School competed in the state’s Scholastic Art Awards annual competition, we were upstaged and...

How to Fill Your Well

As a fan of the Rule of Three, I mulled over what would complete my list for this month’s newsletter inspiration. It all started, serendipitously, while I was in Iceland on vacation last month and received an email from one of my collectors. She wanted me to see...

Magic, Luck or Persistence? Yes!

As a kid in the 50’s, I played a game called 7-Up. All you needed was a Spalding ball and a wall. Our garage was the perfect arena for mastering the seven different challenges of throwing the pink sphere against a flat surface: allowing it to bounce, catch it...

What’s the Connection?

On waking each morning I meditate for 23.5 minutes (a TM practice) as a way to connect with myself before interacting with others. I then take in an uplifting page from my daily reader which helps open up my connection to the world beyond my own thoughts. Then, as...

Who Cares?

I was 19 years old when Mr. Oliver Allyn, the Chairman of the Department of Theatre Arts, took me aside and said, “I want to proselytize you to become a theatre major.” It was 1968, and I was enrolled in the entry-level course, Theatre 145, at Mount Holyoke College...

What Inspiration Looks Like

Driving down William Street toward our house in Connecticut, a full moon lit up the winter-black sky. “Ach!” I exclaimed to my family of passengers, the ‘ah’ catching in my throat from the emotion behind my pleasure. Henceforth, that monthly spectacle was labeled...

Have You Tried Reframing?

  Each time I visit my grandsons in NJ, I bring a surprise. It could be folding a dollar bill into an origami shirt, sharing a fun painting technique (making roses using a plastic bag), or introducing silly riddles or word games. I listen for cues to...

Where Were Your Feet?

In reviewing this past year and considering where to put my own feet in 2024, I checked to see where those tootsies had taken me in 2023. I used two tools for that measurement: my Google Calendar and the spreadsheet I keep for calls with my action partner....

The Place of Not Knowing. Do You Know It?

An actress/playwright I knew in the 90’s described a pop-up tent she’d erected in herbackyard in rural Connecticut. What intrigued me most was the handmade sign she’d hung atits entrance. She labeled it The Place of Not Knowing. She explained that she would sit in...