What a pleasant set of thoughts.Alice Walker was just as wonderful in reality as I had imagined her to be.

Oddly enough, while I would like to watch the artists on A&P work now that I’ve heard a bit of their voices, I fear that the itch to create would overcome me. I think I would rather have a very large dinner party (catered, of course) and just blather away with all of you.

I find it very hard to watch artists, particularly accomplished ones, do their work. I always want to dive in and try doing the work for myself. I didn’t make a very good student at those demonstrations in art class. And I’m always forgetting my camera and then telling Jer (my husband) that he should try getting the image from “this” (read that as “my”) viewpoint. He ignores me, as well he should. I don’t have this problem with music, although my throat does ache a little when I’m at the opera…..

Birgit, I think that’s why there are no visual artists on my top 5 list. There are plenty of artists who I would love to watch work and whose company I might enjoy, but for just hanging out and talking people in other fields seem to be higher on my list.

In my field of science? It is enough for me to happily remember the quirky characters of many Nobel prize winners from my Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory days.

Literature? Way back, I was fascinated by how Alice Walker prepared to write the Color Purple reading a NY Times Magazine article: To avoid noise, she moved from Boston to San Francisco and then to the Country side. To let the characters in her novel fully occupy her mind, she gave up writing magazine articles. And how the characters in her head worried about her daughter coming to live with her, an event that changed the intended outcome of her book. I read all of Alice Walker’s earlier books which allowed me to understand how she learned to crystallize her characters better and better until she could write the Color Purple. I remember a photograph in the NY Times article showing her walking through the countryside with her partner. All this stuck in mind over the last 20 or so years. Do I want to meet Alice Walker? No. My fantasies are so vivid that I do not want them disturbed. Do I want to see the musical? No way. I am still trying to forget the Darcy character from watching Pride and Prejudice two years ago.

Music? When I learned playing the piano from Bela Bartok’s Microcosm, I fell in love with him and would have liked to meet him to listen to how he played his music.

Politicians? I listened to Clinton’s speech at my University out in the open, only a few feet away from him. His charisma was truly amazing. I don’t know how I avoided shaking his hand when I found out how many of the people that I know had their hands shaken.

Art? I would love to watch how everyone leaving comments here on A&P does her/his art. Thus, I would rather learn by watching people work than by only talking to them - my hands-on approach.

I moderate an email list on art history and themes, and one of our members spent a month taking us through Liza Lou’s work. Before that I barely knew anything about her.

Do you think obsessives make good dinner guests? I suspect so, if their obsession happened to match one of my interests.

And those students were literally at Rich’s feet — sitting on the carpet in front of her chair. I felt a bit out of place, too middle-aged and straight and un-famous. Rich, however, was a delight, even while being adored.