Ten years ago, when I moved to Bay City, Michigan, from Beaver Island, I was in terrible shape, having suffered two rotator cuff injuries, a frozen shoulder, acute tendonitis in both wrists, a bad back, etc etc. When I moved to Bay City, I couldn't lift a half-gallon of milk. But last year I finally joined a health club and started working on various of those complicated-looking machines and by gum, I started to get stronger. I went very slowly, but after a year of treadmill and throwing and pulling and biking, I must have done something good, because I was able to move boxes like I was twenty. Or so it felt.

Of course, five years ago I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and went through the usual treatment of 34 doses of radiation. (I think today there are some new techniques that are much quicker and safer.) I did not require chemo and did not take Tamoxafin after a disastrous six months of Arimidex, which I quit.

So now, five years out, I seem healthier than ever. I say "seem," because with cancer you never know. You can feel on top of the world and be carrying around a tumor. But every minute of this respite is a gift to me and I continue to feel extraordinarily grateful.

I decided that there's nothing magical about 12 months and decided this time to wait 18 months for my next mammogram, which I plan to have somewhere besides where I had it last year. I am not waiting weeks for results this time and I'll drive wherever I have to to get a same-day reading. Medicare pays for everything as of January 1, 2011—checkups, lab work, mammograms, so my checkup isn't until January 3rd.

My health club now is my house and garden and driveway, as well as a bicycle which I bought when my feet started to give out after walking a couple of miles. Biking is much more fun, I've discovered—I can see so much more, go farther, and I even go mushroom hunting by bike. As for my diet, I quit the vegan thing because my plumbing couldn't handle all that fiber and I missed protein. I just eat lots of colors and try to follow Michael Pollan's advice: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

That's it for now. With any luck, I won't have anything more to report until 2011.

Last week, however, I did a watercolor of a Manistee beach for a client who liked the print I had on my website but wanted an original painting. I did three paintings before it became clear to me that I can't copy a watercolor—watercolor has a mind of its own and if I pay close attention to it, sometimes I can follow it someplace interesting. Anyway, I chose the one I liked best to send along, but the others came out pretty well, too. They are now available on the art page.

Now that I don't work in an apartment in a Victorian house, and in fact have a separate work space, I can finally paint with oils. I look forward to this adventure. My only formal art class was about fifteen years ago at Ox-Bow, the summer school in Saugatuck for the Chicago Art Institute. It was a one-week class in oil-painting which taught me the basic materials required and how to mix paint, an incredibly useful class which has helped me in all my artistic endeavors.

I'm hoping to set up some small classes for fall and winter and will put out some sort of brochure or email when I figure out what might work. Meanwhile, I am attempting to illustrate Yoo Hoo Moon—my most successful children's book—and republish it with my own art. Other projects are in the works as well, but right now so many things are calling for my attention that it seems easiest not to do anything at all. It's summertime, and a real firecracker of a summer it is, too. I have a garden for the first time in about 20 years and what could be more important than a sunwarmed, just-picked tomato?

If you missed that one, look for me at one of these Michigan events:

November 22, Bay City, Sunday, 4 to 8 p.m. Mary Blocksma Studio, 1101 5th St. 

December 3, Midland, Thursday, 3-8 p.m., Holiday Craft Fair, 1309 Parkway 

December 4, Saginaw, Friday, 10-4, Andersen Center, 120 Ezra Rust Dr.

December 5,Ann Arbor, Saturday, 10-4, Women's City Club, 1830 Washtenaw

If I survive that three-in-a-row series (they just happened that way this year), my work is available by appointment any time before Christmas. Contact me for times or for more information about any of the above:

mblocksma@yahoo.com      989-894-5925.

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For example, when 100,000 girls are being routinely kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we never hear about it. When a prominent dissident is arrested, however, it's international news. "The global statistics are numbing," state the authors in the preface. "More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in routine 'gendercide' in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century."

The answer, say the authors and many experts, is education and microloans. Educating girls is the most powerful way to reach economic and political stability, in addition to doing justice to half the world's population. Small loans empower women in the Third World.

Please. Read this book. Even small steps to help can have extraordinary results.


My favorite fun book, which I just finished, is Hot House Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire, by Margot Berwin. This is a wild tale about a New York ad writer in her 30s, just divorced, who finds herself on a wild journey through the jungles of Mexico after becoming seduced by both plants and plant-lovers. Since I have been a house-plant person for years, I especially enjoyed the exotic plant information that goes along with the adventures. Sexy and wise and hard to put down.

The most beautiful literary fiction I've enjoyed recently is The Lieutenant, by Kate Grenville, a historical novel based quite closely on a true story. It follows an astronomer sent with the first shipment of convicts from Britain to Australia in 1788. This page-turner offers a fascinating look at the first contact between the British and the aborigines. Kate Grenville won the Man Booker Prize with her previous novel, The Secret River, also about convicts sent to Australia, so I read that one, too, but I didn't like it as well as The Lieutenant.

My 6-foot scarves have been so popular this year that I'm offering a huge new selection. Come enjoy a glass of wine, good company and an unusual assortment of delicious art bargains.

Sunday, November 22, from 4 to 8 Mary Blocksma's Studio, 1101 Fifth Street, Bay City, Michigan.

I'm also feeling overwhelmed trying to figure out chats and walls and find myself reluctant to put my personal life out there in such a public way. I have already this blog and website about my life as a breast cancer survivor, a writer and an artist, and I welcome emails from friends and fans alike: just click on the CONTACT button for my email and snail mail addresses. I always respond. I simply prefer more private conversations.

So please, I welcome individual and private conversations, and of course I love the fan mail and encouragement about my work. The picture here was taken by my face-to-face friend Pamela Johnson during my visit to her and family in Chautauqua, New York, a couple of weeks ago. Click to enlarge.

And then, what should come along but all that rain! Hey, mushroom hunters love rain. So while I've been grieving the absence of a real summer, I've been tracking those big green blotches creeping from west to east on our Michigan radar. I celebrate rain. I hope for rain. I go hiking in the rain.

And I have been rewarded with mushroom hauls unequaled for years. I have gone hunting in familiar places, new places, by myself, with friends, and, most interesting of all, with the Michigan Mushroom Hunters Club, located mostly in southeastern Michigan. Here I have the input of the experts, if not always professional, at least very knowledgeable amateurs.

I am having so much fun! And that is usually how I know that I am on a successful project: the more fun I have writing this book, the more fun you will have reading it.

To check out my eBay scarves, click on the Ebay button in the right column of my home page.

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I got my copy of this remarkable book from our public library, but it is, of course, available wherever you buy your books online. You can read some of Kate Jackson's blog posts and reader reviews at Amazon.com.

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I got so excited after finishing the Chautauqua house that I thought I'd try painting the Fort Lauderdale condo that I have enjoyed for two weeks during each of the last four (maybe five?) winters. It's even yellow, a color that really glows with gouache. It turned out beautifully. I painted John in on his bicycle (although it really doesn't look like John) and Carol walking toward the entry.

Although the size—about 11x22 inches—is hard to make prints of to fit a standard frame, the painting makes fabulous 4x9 notecards. Apparently some other residents like them too.

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Click here to check out some of my other commissions.