The American Museum of Natural History

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Doing research for my book No Time for Regrets, I made virtual visits to several places I remember well from actual visits in my childhood and later as a young adult. One of the first places my characters visit is The American Museum of Natural History, located on the western side of Central Park. A school outing there is one of my earliest memories of a trip into “the city.” The trip itself I barely remember other than that it involved several school busses full of children, but of the museum itself I have some very vivid images.

Entrance to the American Museum of Natural History
Photo Credit: Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Like most kids, I spent a lot of time gawking at the dinosaur skeletons. They were awesome and terrifying, with those huge frames, and scary teeth and claws. I also remember seeing an enormous meteorite and a diorama showing a primitive family around a campfire.

I could barely take in the size and extent of the place, just like my hero and heroine when they visit. One day can only just scratch the surface of what the place offers. On my school visit, we also saw a show at the Hayden Planetarium and that is among my clearest memories. Watching the way the projected stars moved around on the dark ceiling of the huge dome sparked an interest in astronomy that has persisted to this day.

Now it’s possible to visit the museum online and take various virtual tours. There’s so much available to see that way, I almost got lost in it again as I was researching for the book, and nearly forgot why I’d embarked on the journey.

The museum has a number of video tours and highlights available at its website: https://www.amnh.org/explore

Here’s a highlight tour: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/american-museum-of-natural-history

 

Dinosaur picture: Giorgio Galeotti / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

Crystal: DerHexer, Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-sa 4.0 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Hayden Planetarium
Photo Credit: Alfred Gracombe / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

No Time for Regrets is available on Amazon

The New York setting for my No Brides Club books

Karen McCullough Posted on by

No Time for Regrets has released in ebook.  A print version will be coming soon.

The book is set entirely in New York City and its suburbs, which makes it another trip down into the memory banks for me.

I was born in the suburbs of New York City and grew up there.  We made occasional forays into the city for various functions while I was growing up. (Note: even though you may live in suburbs that are technically part of New York City like Queens, going “into the city” means going to Manhattan.)

Later we moved to the Boston area for a couple of years, then back to upstate New York. To New Yorkers, “upstate” is anything north of the city itself and immediate suburbs. Poughkeepsie is a small city on the shores of the Hudson River, a 50-60 minute drive (depending on traffic) to Manhattan, or a 90-minute train ride to Grand Central Station.

After my first year of university, I went home to Poughkeepsie for the summer, but I needed to do some research to complete a paper for a History class, so I made that train ride several times to use the resources of the New York Public Library. And since I had to make the trip into the city, I took some time to explore the city a bit more.

Over the years since, I’ve made several business trips to New York City for meetings or conventions. I’ve always tried to find a bit of time during those to revisit old favorite places and discover new ones.

Over the next series of posts, I plan to talk about places that are important in the book, discuss my own experiences of them, and share pictures and ways you can visit them online right now.

 

Upcoming Release – No Time for Regrets

Karen McCullough Posted on by

No Time for Regrets, my latest entry in the multi-author The No Brides Club Series, releases on May 1!  The book is a sweet romance novel set in New York City.

When Samantha “Sam” Dennis’s life implodes, she flees her hometown for a fresh start in New York City. Her cousin Julie helps her get settled and introduces her to her friends in the No Brides Club—other women who’ve sworn off love to concentrate on their careers. She gladly joins the club as she spends her days waitressing at a cafe and nights attending an online business school.

But then Matt Sentori walks into the cafe.

Matt has his own tragic history, and Sam is reluctantly drawn to him, even if he is a lawyer just like her ex. He makes it clear he’s interested in her, but when his law firm gets involved in the sale of the apartment building she lives in, which will displace all the tenants, Sam is more convinced than ever to commit herself to the No Brides Club.

Matt wants to win back her trust by showing he’s not the same uncaring creep as her ex, despite their shared profession. Finding ways to help the most desperate and needy tenants who share her building seems a good way to do it, but dealing with her neighbors and their problems will test Matt’s and Sam’s ability to trust each other as well as their growing love.

When Sam finally puts her life back together, will there be room for Matt in her heart?

Read an excerpt here.

Having Covid19 (Probably)

Karen McCullough Posted on by

There are so many ironies and quirks to the story. Irony one: if my trip to visit family had been scheduled for just a week later, I wouldn’t have gone. And I wouldn’t have gotten the disease that has dominated my life for the past few weeks. Irony two: Until they develop a test for antibodies, I won’t get a formal diagnosis. My one goal and hope throughout has been to stay out of the hospital. I succeeded, and because of that I haven’t been tested, so it may never be official. But I know that I’ve had Covid19.

I don’t know exactly where or how I got it. I flew to visit family on March 5, returning on March 13. Given the timing of symptoms, I likely picked up the germ on the trip out or shortly after I arrived. Did I get it from the very large man in the next seat on one flight who wheezed throughout? Or in the crowded, bustling Atlanta airport? Or maybe on the also crowded playground where we took the children a couple of days after my arrival? Someone else or somewhere else entirely? That’s one answer I’ll never have.

Almost a week into the visit I started to have symptoms that I realize in retrospect pointed to what was about to happen. For a couple of days I had mild headaches I attributed to the change in routine which meant I didn’t always have as much caffeine as I was used to.

I thought I felt fine on the trip home. That night, though, the anvil dropped—on my lungs. At least that’s what it felt like. My chest got very constricted, feeling like someone had tied a band around it and was pulling it tighter and tighter. I couldn’t draw in a deep breath. I started coughing a deep, dry cough that raked my throat raw.

The three weeks since then have been an up and down time. Like most people with the disease, fatigue has been a huge issue.  As far as I know, I haven’t had a fever, but I don’t generally run fevers no matter how sick I am. We don’t even own a thermometer.

I’ve had better and worse days and the contrast can be dramatic. Several times I actually thought I was getting better, and then the next day I’d wake up the with anvil on my chest again and the fatigue pinning me down to the recliner. On bad days my chest hurt, I coughed so hard my throat was raw, and it was all I could do to walk from one end of the house to the other. I simply felt miserable.

I’m in the vulnerable age group and have a few continuing health issues. I couldn’t help worrying that I might take a turn for the worse and end up in the hospital, possibly dying. I’ve done quite a bit of meditating on that, but it’s a different essay. I did consult with my doctor’s office and also with a good friend who is a nurse. Both believed I had Covid19, but my symptoms weren’t severe enough to require further medical intervention. At some of the worst times I teetered on the brink of calling for help. But then I’d improve just enough.

The good news is that finally, after three weeks, the tension in my chest has abated and the coughing is diminishing. I think I’m on the way to recovery. But this virus is tricky. I’ve thought that before. I hope it’s true this time.

More to come…

The Tree Balls Are Up!

Karen McCullough Posted on by

The neighborhood where I live, Sunset Hills, in Greensboro, North Carolina, has a unique and unusual Christmas tradition. A few weeks before Christmas, the balls start going up in the trees. Beautiful colored balls made from chicken wire shaped into a sphere and wrapped with a couple of strings of Christmas lights are mounted high in the hundreds of giant old oaks, huge maples, and any other trees large enough to hold them.

The result is magical. The cords disappear in the darkness, leaving hundreds of balls of light appearing to float high in the air. It’s incredibly hard to get a decent photograph but this year I did manage to get this one, looking down the street on a cloudy, rainy night. It doesn’t capture the colors or the impact of all those lights.

The tradition started about twenty years ago when a college student came up with the idea of creating the ball and hanging it in a tree. It has spread all through the area since then and even migrated to other places. My neighbors have take a further step and use the magnificent display to collect food for homeless shelters. I’m proud to live in this wonderful area.

The only downside is the traffic the display generates. The closer we get to Christmas the more balls go up and the more traffic thickens in the neighborhood. Our somewhat narrow, usually quiet streets fill up with slow-moving vehicles full of tourists coming to gawk at the display.

 

Growing up readers

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A couple of months ago, I ventured to South Bend, Indiana, where I was visiting my daughter, Sarah, her husband, Ian, and their four boys: Liam, Cassian, Henry, and Freddie. The oldest boy is 8; the youngest is 2.

And I’m proud to say that they all love reading. Only the oldest one actually reads on his own, but he basically taught himself at age three. He’d read all of Winnie-the-Pooh by the time he was four. The six-year-old and four-year-old are both learning to read now.

But they all love stories and encountering new things. Whenever I visit, I try to bring some new books for them and they’re always eager for them. And it’s clear that one of grandma’s primary roles, as far as they’re concerned, is to read to them. In fact, any time I sit down, it’s all but guaranteed one or more of them will approach with a book.

 While they have favorites, pretty much any reading material aimed at kids will do. We can go from Where the Wild Things Are to Science Concepts for Kids to Night Night Construction Site to the Sesame Street Alphabet Book. It’s all good.

The two-year-old is insatiable. He’ll beg for book after book, grabbing them off the shelf one after another. When I say “enough,” he’ll give me the big-eyes, how-can-you-say-no-to-this? look. And I melt. We’ll read yet another Sandra Boynton book, maybe Dinosaur Dance or Happy Hippo, Angry Duck. And we’re both content.

The 2019 Christmas Cookie Baking Extravaganza

Karen McCullough Posted on by

It’s a new-ish tradition in the McCullough household. One weekend day a few weeks before Christmas a few family members and friends gather here for a day of serious cookie baking and decorating. This year my daughter Liz and her friend Julie brought several containers of frosting mixes and a variety of decorations to experiment with. The results were both beautiful and delicious!

Fifty Years!

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Fifty years ago today, I made the most important promise of my life when I married my husband. We were both young. I was 19; he was 22. I was in my junior year at university and he was in his first year of grad school. We had no idea what we were in for, no idea of the demands that marriage and family and just surviving in the world would make on us. We were in love and ready to commit ourselves to each other in the blindly passionate way of the young and naïve.

And we’re still together today. We’ve had our ups and downs. We have our disagreements. We see some things very differently and there are things we just don’t discuss. We’ve fought, compromised, sulked, and cried. We started out poor, struggling to make ends meet, and stayed that way for many years. We’ve had our share of (mostly) minor health crises, come through the occasional household disaster, and survived a major, eight-month-long home renovation project.

We raised three children who have all turned out very well (if I do say so myself). Each of them has made us proud in a variety of ways, including the eight beautiful grandchildren they’ve produced among them.

What has kept us together all these years is, at heart, the fact that in addition to being in love, we like each other. Without doubt, he is my best friend. We have a few shared interests and enjoy doing things together. We laugh together frequently. And we have some deeply rooted shared values. Religious faith, though we approach it in different ways, integrity, loyalty, and honesty are the foundation our relationship is built on. We help each other, support each other, and try to act as a team in all important matters.

Before we married, someone (I wish I could remember who) told me that, despite what everyone said, marriage was not a 50-50 proposition. It was more like 80-20, with each person feeling like they were giving the 80 percent. In fact, there have been times when each of us has felt we were giving 120 percent. We’ve each made sacrifices and sometimes held on by our fingertips.

But here we are, with fifty years of marriage behind us and I hope many more years to come. He is still my one and only true love.

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Karen McCullough Posted on by

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