Dear Reader: This post was inspired by an email from a reader in Norway that was asking for help with writing a letter to a friend. Below you will find a sample letter I created that anyone can use to send to a new friend that is living or from the United States. You can personalize your letter by choosing one of the sample phrases I have included in the bracket [ ]sections specific advice about that part of the letter or sample pieces of text you can use. If the bracket sections contain choices then please choose only one and delete the rest. If you use more than one, you must change the "or" to an "and". Feel free to contact me lettersfromnyc [at] yahoo [dot] com with any questions you have.
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Posted by: Michele at 10:03 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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~ The Abandon by Camille Claudel

I hope you all have the opportunity to hold someone you love in your arms, perhaps while enjoying a dance or simply by embracing the peson you hold dear and saying: "I love you" before they are gone from your heart and life.

These were the very words that Camille Claudel never heard spoken from the lips of her love, Auguste Rodin, and which tortured her existence to her dying day.

Posted by: Michele at 11:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The snow has finally tapered off in our area and our accumulation so far is 27.7". I wish I could have taken pictures when I went outside midday, but we were on a mission, play in the pristine snow before freezing from the cold temps (21F felt like 12F) and high winds (between 15 and 30mph). Afterwards we defrosted our our bodies with some hot cocoa.

Tonight it will be going down to the teens, but it will feel like 1F. I think it just may be time to bring out my industrial strength flannel pj's to go to bed. Hope your warm where you are!

Posted by: Michele at 05:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In honor of St. Valentine's, I post Rodin's most famous sculpture and monument to love. Blending sensuality and idyllic love Rodin created one of the greatest images of love based on his own love for the young Camille, whom he often called his own muse.

It is based on Virgil and Dante's visit through hell, "The Inferno". While there they saw, among those who had committed sins of the flesh, Paolo and Francesca, two individuals who had lived in the Middle Ages in Italy.

Around 1275, Francesca married Gianciotto Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. He entrusted her in to the care of his brother, the handsome young Paolo. It is said that Paolo and Francesca fell in love with each other while reading romances of courtly love. Rodin portrays them in the moment after having read the tragic story of Lancelot and Guinevere. As they realize their love for one another, Rodin captures what must have been their first kiss shortly before they are killed.

Posted by: Michele at 07:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Another of my favorite sculptures by Rodin. In this piece, Rodin shows how God moulds the human form from matter bringing the divinity into humanity from emptiness. It is also a supposed to represent a parallel symbolic image of the artist who both invents and sculpts a world from raw material.

"The Hand of God" is molding clay with the forms of Adam and Eve intermingled together, powerfully molding the matter from which two newborn creatures emerge from the divine; it is also a symbolic image of the artist who creates a world from an insipred vision.

Posted by: Michele at 09:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Danaid represents the suffering of one of the daughters of Danaus, King of Argos. In the Greek myth, Danaid was condemned to live in Hades for eternity, perpetually filling a vessel full of holes as punishment for the murder of her husband. In this sculputure Rodin captures the moment where she has thrown herself down, beside the stream, in despairing abandon at the futility of her life.

Posted by: Michele at 09:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A computer virus has been spreading through the Internet via e-mail messages which contain a malicious program in the form of an attachment of email senders you are familiar with. If the attached program is executed (which is done by simply opening the email, malware is installed, with a virus payload set to trigger on the third day of each month, beginning February 3.

This malware, commonly known as the Blackmal/Mywife/Nyxem/Kama Sutra worm, has been getting a good deal of media attention, mainly due to the unusual actions of the program hidden within it. When the program is triggered, it will attempt to delete a number of files associated with applications such as Microsoft Office.

To avoid infection you must do the following:
- Before logging online disable your email client from downloading your email automatically.
- Connect to your ISP and then to your Virus Protection Program vendor
- Download updates on your virust protection program.
- Run the updates and then check for viruses.
- If you're system is clean you're ready to then go back online and retrieve your email. Keeping your virus protection program open in the background will make your system run a bit slower but the security is worth it.

Read more about the Blackmal/Mywife/Nyxem/Kama Sutra worm.

Posted by: Michele at 10:31 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ambitious topic I know, but my aim is to offer the average cell phone user tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your cell phoneÂ… especially in an emergency. These are secrets guarded and coveted by every urban warrior who wages battle against having too little time.

My cell phone provider is Verizon, in the past itÂ’s been Sprint, and let me tell you what a world of difference there is between these 2 carriers. With Verizon there has never been a dropped call, unless IÂ’m in a spotty coverage area FOR ALL providers. True their service is expensive, but I believe itÂ’s worth it.

Now, if youÂ’re like me and sometimes youÂ’re traveling and you need the tel. number for a store, or direction on how to get there, or you have your laptop and need to know where the nearest local WIFI Hotspot is, [yes folks, you're very own Hotspot finder (I can almost hear Harvey thinking of a quip on that one)], or maybe youÂ’re not sure what a Local WIFI Hotspot is and want to learnÂ… well then, look no further than Yahoo Mobile Tools.

In all fairness, Google has itÂ’s own limited set of tools that are worth looking into, however, they are not as extensive nor as feature rich as YahooÂ’s Tool set for Mobile users.

One neat feature which Google has developed is the Google Mobile Gateway. In essense it's a protal-like gateway that enables you to convert any page on the internet (provided the page is not too graphic heavy) for viewing on your cell or PDA. Thanks go to Eric of Grumbles for sharing this with me!!! Now I can visit all my blog family from wherever I happen to be and don't have to wait to have time to log on to my home pc to visit them all.

If you have a web-enable phone, all you do is bookmark the google portal address and then copy and paste the url of the site you want to see at the end. more...

Posted by: Michele at 10:45 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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