Luellen Smiley is a creative nonfiction writer, author, columnist, and historian whose writing is deeply rooted in a controversial personal history. She is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a close friend, associate, and business partner of notorious Las Vegas gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Her father was sitting only feet from Siegel when Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947.
That extraordinary childhood history became the foundation for Smiley’s first book, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter’s Tribute, published in 2017. The memoir explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a man connected to organized crime while trying to reconcile her love for her father with the secrecy, fear, and criminal world surrounding him.
Smiley’s work has appeared in publications including the New York Post, MORE Magazine, Southern California newspapers, and Authorlink. She wrote the newspaper column Smiley’s Dice—Adventures in Livingness, which earned a Blue-Ribbon Award from the California Newspapers Association for her Growing Up With Gangsters columns.
Her interest in her father’s history also led her to become a researcher and commentator on organized crime history. She has participated in television, radio, and documentary interviews.
Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction. Her own website describes the project as exploring a woman whose life is destabilized by gaslighting and psychological manipulation.
Her writing career reflects a recurring theme: using personal experience and research to uncover the truth behind complicated relationships and extraordinary lives. From the secretive world surrounding her father and Bugsy Siegel to the deeply personal territory of Gaslighting Greta, Smiley’s work transforms difficult experiences into stories of survival, discovery, and ultimately reclaiming one’s voice.
Luellen Smiley is an author whose life has given her an unusual perspective on secrecy, manipulation, family loyalty, betrayal, and survival—and she uses that perspective as the raw material for her nonfiction storytelling.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
If you’ve read my columns about minimalistic living: adapting to Solana Beach health, wealth and wardrobe conformity (female: leggings, workout bra, or at night show it or stow it. Male, bare-chested or T-shirt with their business logo on the back.) I add this confession, if the community residents were any happier than what I’ve observed I’d get therapy.
This week I became LEGITIMATE.
My New Mexico driver’s license expired in Sept 2024. I was living in my home in Saratoga, and attempted to gather the fourteen documents to show proof of residence, and get a NY driver’s license. I loved my turquoise NM license plates, and did not think I’d be there longer than a year, so I didn’t renew. I drove sparingly, as the village was in walking distance and I had Amazon delivery.
In January 2026 I moved into a hotel in Del Mar, CA and my car was transported by an auto moving company. I spent about thirty hours reviewing the documents I needed to get a CA license moving from out of state. I managed to get registration through my CA insurance agent, and CA auto insurance but DMV wanted proof of residence, (hotels not accepted) so I used Uber. I finally found my studio in May, and used all my time furnishing, and avoided the DMV. Friends offered to drive me there, and they or I got sidetracked.
Finally, a friend here said,
“ Loulou you’ve got to get it done. We’ll go Monday, this week.” I bought the cheat sheet, (out of staters have to take the written test) and studied it all weekend. Andrew, my friend, we met at five years old, called and said,
“ Did you get an appointment?”
“There’s a line of twenty-five, and besides the dice didn’t roll to seven.”
“Loulou, forget the dice and the line, they go fast.”
“ I’ll be over at ten o clock.”
I panicked and reviewed my folder of documents the online DMV said I needed: Birth certificate, certificate of sale, insurance, registration, social security card, proof of residence , passport, and DMV security code.
My phone maps app was taken over by google so I couldn’t access directions, I kept getting an error. So, I handwrote them on a page and met Andrew.
“ You have the directions on GPS, I don’t know where San Marcos is exactly, do you?”
“Not to make this more complex, I couldn’t access the app so I wrote them down.”
“ That’s good, you have all your documents?”
“ Everything but height and weight,” He laughed and we took off on the freeway. Andrew is a conversant man and because we grew up in the same class through high school we can speak, uninhibited.Childhood friends shared innocence, and the rarity of calculated devious behavior. Our trust is dependable and accountable.
“Do you know why I wore all pink?”
“Cause you … I have no idea.”
“ Men and women love pink, so if I get a male clerk, he’ll like it and so will a female.”
“ Where’d you get that tidbit?”
“Me, people like pink, and a search, pink evokes love and compassion.” Our conversation leaped from old friends to our parent’s, to tech complaints, going canoeing on a lake we passed, diet, aging, politics, antisemitism (we’re both Jewish) and then…
“ Do we turn here?”
“ Yes, we go east and then turn on San Marcos Boulevard for one mile and then Rancheros for three miles, and then..
“Okay, two directions at a time.”
After five miles of driving through residential neighborhoods, I knew we were lost. Andrew listened when I suggested we turn back, and we finally arrived at the DMV.
“My ex wouldn’t listen to my directions for thirty-five years. Thank you for listening! You know men are famous forrefusing driving directions.”
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I was walking the streets, and the descriptive details had since evaporated. I mentally pluck myself out of this moment and open the shades to thought and memory, where all writers meet on some psychic level, the place of imagination and creation, an abnormality of reality.
A passage from Anais Nin’s diary says, “Be careful not to enter the world with any need to seduce, charm, conquer what you do not want, only for the sake of approval. This is what causes the frozen moment before people and cuts all naturalness and trust. The real wonders of life lie in the depths. Exploring the depths for truth is the real wonder which the child and the artist know: magic and power lie in truth.”
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Friends are bookends that bind our stories; some are novellas, some are poems, some are cinematic, and each friend serves as a bookend to our personal history. When I’ve lost my way and need direction my friends motorize me, and when I fly without wings, they ring the bell to come down to earth. At times, arguments arise and my friendships stray, but true-life friends never leave you behind. Sometimes, years may pass, and then one day you receive a call or an email, or send one yourself, and the memory of that particular squabble in history fades away. You can start anew; at the same time, it is not.
The essence of friendship never burns out; it is our galaxy, a kind of celestial agility. Are you experiencing a startling outpouring from friends who’ve left your life only to suddenly show up on your social media or a personal email? Are your friends calling and writing more often? I’m always examining some unfamiliar events in life, a new trend, a cultural change. Seems like every topic can be mixed with politics, sometimes the mixture is explosive. I’ve halted the political discussions, and so have my friends, as they are more important to my livingness than politics. With one exception, antisemitism, those are excluded!
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s immigrant neighborhood map highlights 30 NYC neighborhoods but has sparked controversy for omitting historic Italian, Irish, and Jewish communities.
Overview of the Map
The map, released by Mayor Mamdani’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, is part of the “NYC Immigrant Enclaves” guide tied to the city’s World Cup tourism initiative. It identifies neighborhoods with substantial foreign-born populations, including Chinatown, Little Palestine (Bay Ridge, Brooklyn), Little Egypt (Astoria, Queens), and Little Pakistan (Newkirk Plaza, Brooklyn)NewsNation+1. The guide highlights 30 neighborhoods in total, aiming to showcase New York City’s diverse international communities NewsNation.
Controversy and Omissions
The map has drawn criticism for excluding historically significant immigrant communities, particularly:
Little Italy (Manhattan) and other Italian-American neighborhoods such as Arthur Avenue (Bronx), Bensonhurst (Brooklyn), Howard Beach (Queens), and South Staten Island IJR.
Irish-American neighborhoods, including Woodlawn Heights (Bronx) and the western Rockaway peninsula (“Irish Riviera”) in Queens IJR.
Jewish enclaves, including Borough Park, Midwood, Williamsburg, Crown Heights (Brooklyn), and parts of Far Rockaway (Queens), as well as Bukharian Jewish communities in Queens The Jewish Chronicle. Italian-American and Jewish groups have accused the administration of “cultural erasure”, arguing that these omissions ignore communities that historically shaped New York City The Jewish Chronicle+1. The Italian-American Civil Rights League stated that Little Italy is “sacred ground” and called for the map to be corrected and for an apology from the mayor IJR.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
FREINDS, FAMILY AND FIREWORKS, Not me. Leave out the friends and family. But not the fireworks. I haven’t been here long enough to make new friends, and the ones I would call are out of town or playing homebase to avoid the traffic. The first day free of mind bending, sneezing, coughing and body thrashing over the last two weeks with bronchitis subsided. I even mentioned to a friend. ‘the best thing about suffering is when it ends.’ The last time I had the flu was 2011.
New York. I couldn’t abate watching the fleet parade along the Hudson or the fly overs above the Statue of Liberty, or pay very close attention to the historical narrative on the sacrifices our founders lived and died for, so we can celebrate today and tomorrow. What a juxtaposition between the insignificance of being sick and taking a bullet. The day of history and visuals had me looking up every founder, and significant document, dates, places and rendering the Saratoga Battlefield visit with Jx years ago.
“Site of the historic 1777 Battles of Saratoga, which represented the first significant victory for the rebels in the American Revolution. Today, the 3,200-acre park is a popular tourism and recreation site and a wildlife conservation area.”
I took myself out to dinner across the street at the Brigantine, folded into a room filled with chatting staff, guest’s conversation, and a panoramic view of the fairgrounds and Del Mar mountain tops. I sat in the center, unusual for me I usually cling to a wall, but this restaurant has become a sanctuary for socializing, or just being solo, either way I’ve never left disappointed.
“ You dropped this outside the bathroom,” a young shaggy blonde hair boy of twelve or thirteen handed it to me.
“Oh! Thank you so much, that is very thoughtful.’’ He shied, dropped his head in that way that makes adults wonder why we became so different, and left.
Then later on, as I was outside on the terrace enjoying the view of the fair, I noticed him and a woman next to me. We started to talk, I think she liked my necklace or my pants or something and I saw the little boy and I said is that your son? She said yes and I told her the story. She introduced me to her husband, the uncle, the children, the other children’s parents. And when she left, she hugged me. That kind of intervention makes the difference for a single person.
EVENING. After watching the DC extravaganza, I walked outdoors, to the corner, the street was back to back traffic, helicopters, neighbors’ standing on sidewalks and on our property, and I looked up at the start of a Del Mar Fairgrounds fireworks show that stopped me short.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
My possessions in Saratoga Springs now appear as decorations from a former celebration, like side dishes of over 20 years of mixing and matching prints, drapes, sofas, chairs, tables, vases, and artwork. Now they’ve been removed from my experimental minimalistic living. A former lifecycle that began twenty-five years ago, and are boxed up in a big POD storage. And I refuse to meet them in the present. Friends ask me, ‘when are you bringing your furniture here?’ I can’t answer in words, it must crystallize like it has this past week, when I missed my wardrobe and art hangings. Within the admired art, clothes, and sixty-two boxes, (I looked at my inventory) are a haunting of memories tied in see thru knots of Dodger, my x. As a confirmed refuser of goodbyes, in any relationship, this one has to be nurtured with precision, and that means, no reminders.
The stark white walls and Amazon assembled furnishing are stationed without emotion, memory or love. Functional, practical and unfamiliar. Ive created a new palette, like my first studio in Los Angeles in 1976. Then the others, studios over the years, small, compact, easy to maneuver and clean. Internally, the walls and shelves are cluttered with decisions. The edits on my book from the publisher, when will I find employment? How to engage in new friendships, clubs, gyms, meetups.
Singleness in a city, that was once my home for twenty years, evolved through generations, adding new policies, laws, regulations, real estate development, customs, and an impressionable celebration of the arts and culture. It has no resemblance to the San Diego I met in 1983, except for the ocean and the bordering cliffs and seawalls. That is where a continuous rolling of memory waves sear my view, and I see my youthful delight in San Diego. I’ve always been impressed with people who truly live in the present, can’t figure that one out, maybe I’m just a past time girl.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
My first experience with antisemitism was at twenty years old. I was working for a Bank in Beverly Hills in the loan department. One day my supervisor gathered us around and told a joke. I cannot remember it exactly, I do remember that he compared Pizza in the oven to Jews in the Holocaust gas chambers. I told my father. He ordered me to call the President of Gibraltar S & L and repeat the comment. The president was Jewish. I did so. I was assigned a new supervisor, and the supervisor was not fired. .
When I moved to San Diego in 1983, I witnessed derogatory comments about Jews, I don’t look what is the stereotype Jewish female, so people assume I am not. My father had passed and wasn’t there to advise me. If I was in a social or business situation, and offensive Jewish comments were made, I remained silent and never went back to whatever event I had joined. I was more interested in what people thought, then reprimanding them.
That all changed over the years, and I am emboldened to announce my Jewish heritage. I still hear that vapid response, ” I have a really good friend who is Jewish.” Or “You don’t look Jewish.”
I am not prepared for what has mobilized into a national campaign promise from some politicians, antisemitism. What? Are we in Germany? Who started this and who will end it? Are Jews protesting? I don’t see it. How many non-Jews celebrated the return of the hostages, or the end of the Gaza War? Why hasn’t a film been made about this historical event. I hope and pray I’m wrong, but antisemitism is in vogue. And who follows trends, the youth.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Overlapping Father’s Day is a mirage of life experiences tucked into memory prescriptions you take on a stormy day. A relic of my history rises and reminds me of the fear I once broke through.
It was 1983, and I was poised on a terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Venice Beach. It was March, the month my father died, and I stared at the horizon at dusk, imagining my freedom taking flight. Where would I go? Without his presence in Los Angeles, and my sister, who had already moved to New York, I was terribly alone. The replacement came in summer flings, with men who had crossed my path; a photographer, a New Jersey computer technician with a brassy voice and Joe Pesci humor, and every few days, Kenny, a former boyfriend, dropped by to smoke his pipe of philosophy and blow long-winded ideas on where I should move.
“I really want to move to Canada,” I said.
“For what? To go ice-skating?” He said between puffs.
“I have family in Vancouver.”
“What family? You’re an orphan now.”
“I am not. I have cousins in Vancouver. My father’s nephews.”
“Oh, yeah. When was the last time you saw them?”
“When I was twelve.”
“Terrific! That’s a solid-ass plan. So what will you do in Canada?”
“Get a job in real estate.”
“Lue! Wake up. You can’t get work in Canada unless you’re a citizen. Forget that idea. You’re better off staying here; look where you are: Santa Monica, the beach at your feet. Are you crazy?”
“I don’t belong here any longer.”
“You don’t belong to anywhere; what you need is to stop trying to be a big shot like your father.”
“I am not!”
“When was the last time you left the country? When you were eighteen? Go to Rio, you’ll have the time of your life, or Italy, or Greece–it doesn’t matter. Just take the chance and see how you land on your feet. You’re a dreamer; it’s about time you made one of your dreams come true.”
In the next few weeks, I met with Larry, my boss, who was liquidating his real estate portfolio to retire at 45. Larry wasn’t just an investment visionary; he was passionate about social, political, medical, scientific, and human interests. He was a genius.
“You can stay here another year–I’ll find something for you to do, but you’ll be bored,” Larry told me.
“Larry, I don’t know where to go.” I wiped a tear. He ignored it.
“You have to get out of LA. You’ll never meet anyone here. You think you’ll be introduced to someone riding up and down the elevator in Century City. I’ve spent a lot of time in Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe. They’re nice people. You have a chance there; go down, spend a few days, and tell me what you think. I’ll help you. Now, stop crying. “
I drove down in Dad’s black El Dorado, and parked at Del Mar Beach right next to the lifeguard station at the Poseidon Restaurant. I opened my suitcase, took out a bathing suit, and went into the beach bathroom. The tile was wet and smelled of seaweed and salt. I walked barefoot down to the beach. It was early spring, and the sand was unmarked. A few surfers jogged past me, blonde and bronzed like the Beach Boys. I followed them down to the seashore. In every direction, there was this untouched canvas of light and color; even the beach houses retained their natural sandy simplicity.
After I swam in the ocean, I went back to the bathroom, changed into dry clothes, and walked into town. A man with a beard rode past me on a horse and waved. I picked up a Reader and read the rental advertisements on the patio of Carlos and Charlie’s, the corner café. A roommate advertisement caught my eye: “Roommate Wanted to Share large two-bedroom overlooking Torrey Pines Reserve.” I called, and a man who went by the name of Smokey answered the phone. He invited me to come by for a look. His voice was predominantly ranch-friendly, so I took a drive over. It did occur to me on the drive that I was taking that chance Ken was blowing in my ear, and I was listening to Larry, who told me that people in San Diego were different.
“Hi, I’m Smokey. Come in—would you like something to drink? Too early for cocktails, unless you want one.”
“No thanks. How long have you lived here?”
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His eyes were animal-alert, his face tanned, and his hair cut short but made to look long. His smile was unfiltered with hidden motives, and he was bull-legged.
”I moved from Pittsburgh; I’ll never go back except to see my folks. This is paradise. Don’t you think? I’ve lived here for two years. I rent out one room, because I hate full-time work. I’m more entrepreneurial. You don’t have to worry about my motives. I have a girlfriend, and I’m in love with her. She doesn’t stay here. I go to her house. You’ll have your space, and if you need a friend, I’m here. Come out on the balcony.”
I followed Smokey, and we stood on the terrace overlooking the lagoon and marshlands of the reserve. To the west, the ocean and the stump of Torrey Pines Mountain.
“Wait till sunset; you’ll never want to leave. Come look at your room. I can help you move if you want.”
The room was downstairs, his upstairs, and a stairway of trust in between.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
FEEL, THINK, AND REACT. Tumbling through all the transitory advice forces me to examine more closely whom to believe. I’ve never been a leader, nor a follower, I walk in between, trying to pave a pathway to peace of mind. Maybe that is unattainable as I am in a cultural, political, medical, financial, and socially reimagined world. It reminds me of being a teenager when life was questionable, and confusion was like a stinging bee we couldn’t swap away. So, in my senior year in high school I started writing in a notepad. Gradually, almost supernaturally I withdrew from my gang, and spent the weekends in a Cafe with adults, or in the library. The loner label pleated my pants.
Loners were portrayed in film, books, and art as mysterious, untouchable icons. They even became romanticized as people of superior cerebral awareness. I’ve met and gained friendships with several over the last few decades. It may be that loners have thin skin, they absorb the ethereal and reality, so in many situations the absorption is too weighty and the loner cuts loose before the party is over, cancels at the last minute, and doesn’t answer the phone. Talking, engaging, evaporating into another person feelsherculean for me sometimes.
Does isolation relate to the intensification of rancorous physical assaults in streets and shops, which is my pestering pursuit today. Are all these perpetrators unloving, and live amongst the unloved? People are shot because their hamburger wasn’t properly served on time, or they have a different opinion. I was living in Los Angeles in 2018, and one day driving down Pico Blvd I noticed a sign, “Walk in Anger Management.” Maybe we need to convert a few drive-thru food diners to Anger Management centers. It sounds amusing. If I was financially able, I’d open one in every major city.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS CULTURE is unimaginable for a woman who grew up in the Love and Peace generation, or even into the eighties and nineties. We didn’t shoot one another, maybe a fist fight, or a shouting match, but not murder in cold blood.Could this macabre movement be abated by friends who love you more when you are gentle and kind? It cannot be that simple, or could it? When I used to rage about some occurrence that tattered me personally, Dodger would come to me and say,
‘Greta put your guns down,’ that always made me laugh, and then we’d talk out what triggered my fury.
THE COMFORT OF EXHIBITINGlife on paper. It is not the act of writing with pen and paper moving along at a steady rhythm; it’s the activation of the heart and mind, collaborating to unravel the relevant from the irrelevant. To reach this state of matrimony, a writer doesn’t need a Tuscan Villa or an English Castle, but experiences that flake off the skin and shake out relevance. What I’ve rediscovered is that without a lot of stuff to organize, the mind is free to think, more time to create and effect essential decisions. Narcissism is sacrificed and replaced with more visceral makeup. Minimalist living has erased my past, and that is as transforming as day to night.
PUZZLE OF SOLITUDE will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are puzzled by too much solitude, or not enough. There is an inner exploration happening, unfolding like spreading new sheets on my bed, that solitude has befriended me all my life, in the best of times and the tedious. I have to find the frolic and follies in the world that I created. I have to laugh alone, so I watch screwball comedies, seek humor in my irregularities; wearing a sweater inside out, pouring coffee into a wine glass for a cocktail, and chuckling when I keep forgetting where I left my phone. Laughing at myself is a funnel that leads to writing.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
IT’S UNLIKE ANY OTHER CITY I’VE EXPERIENCED. Named the city different, it is also the city difficult. She ( I see Santa Fe in the feminine gender) has to be treated gently. Her weather patterns resemble a menopausal woman,her stature demands respect, and she can be congenial and patient.
You can walk this city as if it were a neighborhood. If you do that consistently you’ll meet people, and get to know them. Unless you’re like me, a standoffish fast walker dazed by the outdoors.
If you’re dazed and illusional you can master this city very well, as the drowsy pace and cordiality allow freakish freedom. I ‘ve seen the liberating soul of Santa Fe, teenagers racing down the middle of a commercial street one foot on the skateboard, bad-ass bikers talking with bad-ass cops, women with parrots on their shoulder, dogs in baby carriages, cats in a bag, and women on horseback galloping up Palace Avenue.
At night you’ll see raging midnight ramblers dancing on the sidewalk, and all of this is appealing to an LA transplant. I have driven in my robe, danced in the street and broken the heels on most of my shoes because of the pot-holes. They are always working on a street, but never the sidewalks. I ‘ve been bounced out of the locals night-howl El Farol for accidently pushing a dancer, who knew the manager, who came running after me and took down my license plate.
So many of us are loners, the serious kind, that have to be riggedout of our nests. Luckily I live on a commercial street and have no choice but to be commercially friendly. After nine years, my seasonal behavior is obvious: sprite in summer, blissful in fall, giddy in spring, and withdrawan in winter. I’ve learned patience,understanding, and adopted a mixture of cultural traditions. I’m close to fifty percent certain I’ll miss Santa Fe terribly when I do leave.
Has living in Santa Fe given me more than I’ve given back? Yes, it has and that’s why when I’m asked what’s it like living in Santa Fe, I try to reveal the blessings here and not the beef.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
The first gallery opening I attended. Smashing art by Hunt Slonem, photography by Tim Hardy. Conversation, champagne, and what we all need, social engagement. Unlike a concert, or theater performance where you are seated next to someone you know, art galleries are a sensory of interaction with the artwork, the guests, and the elan of the space. Madison gallery was a warehouse, exposed twenty-foot ceilings, enormity of space, and minimalism in furnishings. It feels like an indoor park.
Once a gallery lover, then a gallery owner, and now seeking a job in a gallery. I joined the mailing list of a dozen galleries, realizing resumes are sifted through by AI and not the owner.
My love of photography began at a museum observing the work of Edward Weston. I used this line when selling my photography in Santa Fe” Photography are stories on the wall., not just the photo, the photographer. Of course you can say the same about a painter, but for me, catching a moment in time, that will never be repeated is poetic.
One guest that visited my gallery said this to me, ” Photography isn’t art.” He was famous, not as an artist but the son of John Huston. I cannot recall his explanation, but I have heard this statement several times and that is why there are so few photography galleries.I’d open one again when the if’s are removed.
One of my favorites by Jim Marshall. Jim caught Bob in a private moment, and let him publish it. An early concert, 1963, with already famous Joan Baez.Fuzziness is my fault.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
