Writing
The Old Antique Shop
Visited St. Charles today, where we used to enjoy browsing the many antique shops that were there on Main Street. Mostly gone now, except for one which still features the same items we used to see there years ago. I was inspired to write a little story. Let me know if you like it.
The Old Antique Shop
by Barbara Lipkin
The beer stein breathed a sigh of relief as the lights of the store dimmed and he heard the click of the shop’s door as it shut for the night. He’d been standing straight and proud for the last nine hours, putting his best face forward with his handle cocked jauntily on his hip. Now it was time to relax.
“I’m glad that’s over,” Ms. Teacup whispered to her neighbor, Mr. Stein. “It’s certainly been a long day.” Ms. Teacup was fashioned from the finest Limoges porcelain, part of the Champs de Tulipes collection designed by Dior, with graceful pink petals composing a delicate floral tribute to the mid-century place settings of which it was an important part, topped with a rim picked out in 24-carat gold. She’d been resting on her matching saucer, bright but demure, since early morning and now welcomed the chance to let down her guard a bit.
“Yes,” Mr. Stein agreed. “For a little while there, I thought that young couple was about to take you home with them, but then apparently changed their minds and walked out without adopting any of us. Close call, there.”
“True, but I wasn’t really worried,” Ms. Teacup responded. “It’s happened before, you know. Lots of times. But I’ve found that young people these days have no use for relics like us. That’s why we’ve all been sitting around here so many years. Actually, I’m surprised that our proprietor hasn’t already thrown us all in the recycle bin and closed up shop. She surely can’t be making any money here. She almost never sells anything now. But nobody cares anymore. One shudders to think what people must be putting on their tables these days.”
“Yes, there was a time when such as us were loved and cherished. Mid-century young brides would spend hours choosing fine china and silver, and creamy smooth linen for their tables. And when they entertained, they brought us out with pride, and everyone admired us. But those days are gone, now. No one cares anymore.” Ms. Teacup’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I often feel so sad and lonely. I remember dear Mrs. Howe. She’d spend hours polishing us up, caressing and admiring our whole set. But then after she passed on, her kids came and packed us all up, and brought us here to the shop. They got only a few dollars in exchange, but they let us go without a backward glance. It really hurt, I must admit.”
The silence of the antique shop was broken with a gentle rustling, as many of the china pieces, the crystal glassware, and the silver cutlery, shook themselves out of their poses. They tried so hard, every day, to appear bright and attractive, but the few people who came into the store walked right by, with hardly a glance. They were often heard to say, “Oh, my mother had a set of glasses just like that.” Or—“I remember my grandma used to sew on a machine like this one, using a foot treadle to make the needle go up and down. How quaint.”
“Quaint,” muttered Ms. Teacup. “Quaint. Well, one day, sooner than they realize, they’ll be considered quaint, too. Their own kids will come to their homes, pick through their things, and box them all up to move them to a store like this one. Unless all those precious objects end up in a land fill somewhere, unseen and unremembered, treated like garbage. Then they’ll know how quaint we all are, but it’ll be too late then.”
“Now, now, dear, let’s not get our knickers in a knot,” remonstrated Mrs. Music Box. She was a pretty little thing, a round china box with a little ballerina perched on her top, who whirled around in time to the music when anyone turned the key on her side. Which hadn’t happened for quite some time, now. “It’s the way of the world, that’s all. We had our time in the sun. Now it’s time to move on.”
“Move on where ?,” Mr. Stein demanded. “Move on, how? We’re pretty well stuck where we are, until our ‘owner’ gets good and sick of coming to this store every day and gives it all up. Then we’ll end up in that land fill, to be sure.”
Ms. Teacup sniffed. “You’re right, I’m sure. Still, it’s sad, isn’t it? To think we were all so loved and admired once. We thought it would last forever.”
“Nothing lasts forever, dear. You know that.” Mrs. Music Box said.
A soft sigh and a lot of sniffles could be heard throughout the shop, but soon enough, all the antiques settled down for the night and all was quiet and still.
The Writing Process
A brief lesson in how to develop a story
I had a fun time writing this little short story, which was, very obviously, inspired by the board game, Clue, which my family and I used to play all the time. Hope you enjoy it!
Writing 101
by Barbara Lipkin
Professor Plum killed Mr. Boddy in the Library with the candlestick. Journalism.
Professor Plum killed Mr. Boddy by hitting him over the head with a candlestick, while Mr. Boddy was looking up a word in his Webster’s New World Dictionary, because Professor Plum didn’t want Mr. Boddy to be able to tell everyone else what Professor Plum had meant when he called the group pusillanimous psychopaths. Short story synopsis.
Professor Plum was a troubled soul. As he looked around campus, all he could see was his contemporaries walking around with their noses pointed to the sky, pretending that they were really something special, when everyone with eyes could see that they were merely pusillanimous psychopaths devoting their lives to perpetuating their own kind. Novel, chapter one, paragraph one.
Mr. Boddy was an anonymous sort of person. He was a male of no particular age, with sparse hair of no particular color strewn haphazardly across the top of a sort of roundish head. He wore a collared knit shirt in a shade of beige, with a pair of khaki colored slacks that fit rather loosely around his waste and dragged a bit at the bottoms. His expression was habitually neutral, neither smiling nor frowning, neither engaged or bored but just vaguely pleasant without actually conveying any sort of feeling or emotion. He hadn’t been known to associate with any of the other students or faculty members, but he did routinely show up at the back of Professor Plum’s class on nineteenth century Romantic poets. He wasn’t an enrolled student at the university. No, he was merely interested in broadening his mind. But he didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Or anything else, for that matter. He was dead now.
Professor Plum hadn’t actually meant to kill Mr. Boddy. He wasn’t ordinarily that sort of person. But he was really irritated with his students that morning. In fact, he was really irritated with just about everything and everyone. He didn’t even know why he bothered wasting his life trying to instill an appreciation of the great poets into the little minds of a group of spoiled, entitled undergrads who were there only because Plum’s was a required course for the completion of a liberal arts degree that would absolutely useless to any of them in the real world of the twenty first century, which was at the beginning of a new world order in which the old values were forgotten and ignored. Perhaps calling them pusillanimous psychopaths was a bit harsh, although very nicely alliterative. Probably some of them would go lodge a complaint with the Dean of the College. If they even knew what the word meant. Which Mr. Boddy did not, which is the reason he’d gone to the library to look it up.
Even so, killing him was probably something of an overreaction on Professor Plum’s part. Still, the man was leaning over the dictionary, tracing his finger down the line of ‘p’ words, and the elaborate silver candlestick was just standing there, on the table beside him, and one thing led to another and so Professor Plum picked up the candlestick, hefted in his hand, and swung it against the back of Mr. Boddy’s head. He hadn’t really thought about doing it. It had just sort of automatically happened. Oh, well.
Best thing would be to just quietly leave the building and not say anything else about it. Doubtless, someone would come along soon enough and discover Mr. Boddy slumped over the library table, his head on the dictionary. There wasn’t much blood, actually. Probably a concussion, then. So Professor Plum suited thought to action, put the candlestick down on the table, after wiping it carefully with his handkerchief, turned and left the room. He told himself to just forget the whole thing and that would be the end of the matter. Noone would miss Mr. Boddy, anyway. Whereas he, Professor Phineas Plum, was a respected and valuable member of the University community.
Mrs. Marjorie Peacock loved her job at the library. She got to spend her life in the company of books and students. What could be better than that? In late afternoon, she walked into the reference room of the university library, just to make sure all the books had been put back in place before the library closed for the day. The first thing she noticed was a spill of books tumbled every-which-way onto the floor. Aghast, she rushed over, hoping nothing had been damaged. But as she moved closer, she saw Mr. Boddy’s Boddy loosely draped over the table, on top of the dictionary, with other books balancing precariously on the edge of the table, except, of course, for the ones which had already fallen to the floor.
Mrs. Peacock was a very practical woman. She was definitely not the kind to scream or wave her hands helplessly. No, she immediately identified that Mr. Boddy was deceased, took out her phone, and pushed the number for the campus police. Then she closed the reference room door and positioned herself in front of it to wait for what would come next.
Mrs. Peacock didn’t know Mr. Boddy, although she recalled seeing him around from time to time. Unfortunately, however, she didn’t know his name or anything else about him. And she wasn’t about to search his pockets for ID. She stood calmly in front of the door, but no one else came near, so there was no need to say anything—not yet. Nevertheless, she definitely felt relief when she spotted Colonel Mustard approach. Her solitary vigil was at an end.
Colonel Mustard was a big man, not particularly tall but rather wide. His complexion was ruddy and topped with a mess of blondish hair, complemented by a matching flamboyant mustache. His stride was confident and heavy, a man who knew he was in charge and perfectly comfortable with that responsibility. He wasn’t a colonel in the army these days. In fact, he was wearing a standard issue police uniform, and his title was simply officer, not colonel. But he’d served twenty years in the army before retiring to join the police force, and he brought his old title with him. Everyone called him colonel.
“What have we got?” he asked Mrs. Peacock.
She was considerably smaller than Colonel Mustard, a thin woman with dark hair pulled tightly back into a bun, wearing a loose flower-printed dress, belted at the waist. Thick glasses framed blue eyes, watery and pale. “I found a man in the library,” she explained. “I think—actually, I’m pretty sure—he’s dead.”
“Guess I better have a look. Where is this body?”
Mrs. Peacock opened the reference room door and stood aside for Colonel Mustard to enter. She remained in the corridor, having no desire to see Mr. Boddy’s corpse again.
Colonel Mustard observed Mr. Boddy sprawled across the dictionary and agreed with Mrs. Peacock’s assessment of the situation. He might have called an ambulance. Indeed, he certainly planned to do just that, but obviously, there was no hurry. So he looked around the room curiously before reaching into his shirt pocket for a phone. He concluded that Mr. Boddy’s demise had most certainly been caused by having been hit over the head with the candlestick that stood conveniently on the table. Colonel Mustard withdrew a plastic bag from his right pants pocket and bagged the candlestick, realizing, as he did so, that the perpetrator would have doubtless had enough sense to wipe his or her fingerprints off the object before leaving it to be found.
Miss Scarlet was the first of the Emergency Medical Team into the room. She was tall and thin, but quite strong and muscular, as she worked out at the gym daily, lifting weights and such. She had served as a paramedic in the Marines for a number of years, but decided to leave the service when her most recent enlistment was up, since she wanted to settle down into one location. Serving in the Marines required frequent relocations, and that had become tiresome. But she loved the excitement of speeding around in an ambulance with the sirens blaring, and liked the feeling that she was contributing in a positive manner to her community, so working as an EMT suited her very well.
Like Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlet regarded Mr. Boddy’s posture across the table and concluded that he was deceased. Nevertheless, she dutifully felt for the man’s carotid artery in his neck, and determined that there was no pulse, nor could she observe his chest rise and fall. She summoned her assistant, who was just wheeling a gurney into the room, to help her lift the body on to it, and remove him. Colonel Mustard had already photographed the scene with his phone, so the policeman had no objection to the corpse’s removal.
As the two EMTs were wheeling the gurney with Mr. Boddy’s body on it out of the room, a young man happened to pass by. Mr. Green was quite young but he was an avid student of literature, and was hoping to spend his future career both teaching others to appreciate great literature and contributing to the oeuvre himself. He was rather nicely dressed for a student – no torn jeans and sloppy t-shirt for him. No, he was clad in a pale celery collared shirt and a pair of navy blue chinos, freshly ironed. His reddish hair was neatly brushed back from his forehead, and he carried an armload of books, which he had only just checked out from the library. Curiously, he noted that the body on the stretcher belonged to his erstwhile classmate, Mr. Boddy.
“I see that old Plum got his revenge, then,” Mr. Green noted to Miss Scarlett.
Colonel Mustard overheard this remark, and immediately drew Mr. Green aside to question him further. Mr. Green related the incident that had occurred in Professor Plum’s classroom earlier that day, when Mr. Boddy had taken the opportunity to complain that the Nobel Prize winning novel being studied was overly convoluted and long. “Professor Plum took exception to this opinion, and had said something about pusillanimous psychopaths in response. His face turned purple, he was so angry,” Mr. Green explained to Colonel Mustard.
“So you think that Professor Plum killed Mr. Boddy because of this incident?” Colonel Mustard pursued.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mr. Green replied.
An examination of the candlestick revealed that Professor Plum hadn’t been quite as careful wiping off his fingerprints as he thought he had. The forensics team had discovered a match with a print remaining on it, and that was all the evidence Colonel Mustard needed to arrest Professor Plum, who, realizing that the game was up, confessed his deed.
Flash Fiction.
Decoding Nobel Prize Literature: My Perspective
Thoughts on Art
May 09, 2026
As a life-long reader and writer, I jumped at the chance to join a book club formed to read and discuss Nobel Prize winning literature. After giving it two tries, I’ve decided that this just isn’t for me. Maybe I’m naive or unsophisticated but it’s always been my opinion that writing is supposed to be lucid, constructed in such a way as to be able to convey ideas clearly and in an organized manner. But my experience reading some of these books and poems has shown me that for some reason, people who write prose or poetry that is convoluted, obtuse, obscure, pretentious and impenetrable seem to garner the most applause.
One of the members opined that artists are simply trying to express their own thoughts, without regard for an eventual reader. But as a painter and writer myself, I know that if my only aim was to express my thoughts and feelings, I’d just keep a diary. The fact that I put my work “out there” for the public indicates that I expect and hope that what I have to say will be experienced and appreciated by others. To that end, I try to make my writing clear. Not simple, necessarily. I, too, am fond of imagery and metaphor, but when I use those devices, I try to make sure they are truly enhancing the writing, not just trying to impress and/or obscure. With my painting, too, although I often create abstract works, I try to use color and pattern to express mood and feelings, not simply smear paint on a canvas at random, paying no attention to use of color or design. So if art and writing are meant to express the creator’s ideas, they must be presented in a coherent enough way to be able to do so. A novel, essay or poem shouldn’t be so obscure that the only way one could attempt to make sense of it is to analyze it word by word. Where is the joy in that? Where is the meaning, emotion, recognition and discovery?
So I guess Nobel Prize winners will just have to get along without my patronage. If others enjoy reading their work, more power to them. I have other things to do.
A Death in Our Family
Tradition. It’s how we celebrate the happy times. It’s how we get through the hard times.
Gustav Mahler told us—” Tradition is not the worship of ashes. It is the preservation of fire.”
Bella Sarver counts herself lucky to be surrounded and supported by all three components of tradition: Family. Friends. Community. What else really matters? Even so, life can still be less than perfect and family secrets can roil a community, especially when the end result is murder. So when a respected lawyer, a member of the local synagogue, is killed, his murder sends out ripples throughout Bella’s world – the local art league, the synagogue and overlapping families. Always families. Ancient tales take on new life in every generation, don’t they? Isn’t that why we still tell them? From generation to generation. Tradition.
Sometimes we tell our ancient stories through art, as Bella understands very well. It’s how she makes connections and figures out the truth.
The latest of my Bella Sarver series, A Death in Our Family, is nearly ready to be released. I’ve been playing around with it for more than two years now, after having a provocative email landed in my in-box, and it’s finally evolved into a coherent novel. As an artist, I love to experiment with different mediums, and I find collage particularly interesting. With bits and pieces of various types of papers and fiber and found objects, a collage artist, like a painter, can create meaningful and expressive works, and have a lot of fun doing it. Sort of like playing.
In a way, A Death in Our Family is like a collage, in that it takes pieces of Old Testament stories, and Jewish traditions, and community events and combines them all into a whole, a sort of patchwork. I enjoyed researching it and pulling the whole thing together, and I hope my readers enjoy diving into it.
Yahrzeit Candles
Tuesday was my mother’s yahrzeit. She’s been gone twenty-six years already, though it seems like yesterday in many ways. I still miss her, every day. I lit the yahrzeit candle in her memory, as I do every year on the anniversary of her passing. Its flame gives me comfort. It’s almost as if she were still with me, just for the twenty-four hours or so while the flame flickers and burns and the wax melts in the little glass. I think about her, and wonder if she’s safe, if she’s at peace, if she and my Dad are together up there in Heaven. If they’re together with our grandson Dillon, who left us way too soon, at the age of 28. Are they watching out for him? Are they letting him know he’s still very much loved? And missed? And will never be forgotten? I hope so. I think so.
While the candle burns, I take comfort in my mother’s presence. I talk to her. I wrap my hands around the glass, feeling the warmth of the flame. I’m grateful to have the chance to be with her again, if only just for a little while. But then the wax is completely melted and the flame dies. And Mom is gone. All over again.
We say ‘may her memory be for a blessing.’ Yes, her memory is a blessing. Also a loss. A loss that doesn’t really get better as the years pass. May she rest in peace and love. She deserves the best.
.
Just Released!
This ‘n’ That – An anthology of short stories and drawings’
I’m very excited to announce that my collection of short stories, poems and whimsical drawings is now available on Amazon, in a paperback edition. Some of the stories will make you laugh, some will make you cry. I hope all of them will make you feel … feel something lovely. I certainly enjoyed throwing myself into writing them. I’d love to hear what you think, so please–don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon after you’ve read the book.
Winter
Winter is not my favorite season. The cold, the early dark–make me want to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed until Spring. But that way lies madness–right? So get up and paint, I tell myself. Remember the warmth and color of the sun. It’s still out there, even though it’s doing its best to hide from us right now. So I reminded myself of the Caribbean–the lush islands, the beach, the sea. And I got out my paints, squeezed out a pile of yellow, grabbed a brush, and started smearing paint on a couple of canvases. And guess what? Today, after a couple of weeks of intense cold, the sun did come out and the earth warmed up a bit. So I guess my ploy worked, for today, at least.
First, I did a little vignette.
Sand and Sea, acrylic, 12 x 12
Next, encouraged, I branched out into something a bit more substantial, focusing on the light, the sun filling the sky. So that’s how this landscape came by its name.
Light, acrylic, 16 x 20
Continuing Riva’s Journey from Antwerp
The Red Star Line Museum resides in an old red brick building at the docks in Antwerp. It was in this building that millions of emigrants spent their last days in Europe before setting sail on one of the Red Star Line ships for America. My grandmother, father and uncle were three of those people, about whose journey I wrote in Riva’s Journey: a Memoir (Amazon.com, paperback and Kindle editions). Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to visit the museum for myself.
It was incredible for me to stand inside the same building where my family stood over 100 years ago, ready to leave behind everything they’d ever known to try to build a future in a new land. The museum itself has exhibits detailing the stories of many of the emigrants who passed through there, and is fascinating to visit. Directly across from it are the docks that are still busy and active today, where my husband and I walked past cranes poised to load new ships on new journeys.
The museum is set up to allow visitors to search their databases for ship’s manifests, etc., but there are no records available from 1920, as many were destroyed during World War II. I tried anyway, but no luck. Oh, well–fortunately Ellis Island has many of the same records in their data bases, which is how I know my family sailed on the SS Lapland. So amazing to have been able to visit this site!
Painting in the Narrative Tradition
From earliest times, people have used pictures to tell a story. Following in this narrative tradition, I have created, over a period of years, a body of work that tells the stories of some of my earliest memories. Many of these paintings are hanging in our family room at this moment. Looking at them recently, I realized that I need to take the exhibit a step further.
Pictures are great, but to really tell a complete story, you need words. At least, I do. So I decided to add a ‘narrative’ to my ‘history paintings,’ so that subsequent generations will understand what I had in mind when I painted them.
I grew up in Chicago in the 1950’s and 60’s. My family was close, both in physical proximity and emotionally. My aunt and uncle, and my grandparents were always in each other’s apartments, celebrating holidays and family events, as well as taking many outings together within the city. They’re all gone now, but my memories of them are still vivid and alive.
Times change, and the lifestyle we enjoyed then is no longer possible, with families spread out all over the world. We don’t live in each other’s pockets anymore. So stories will have to take the place of experiences, and maybe my paintings can make my stories more vivid and real.
For example, Passover on 19th Street, shows a family at a Passover Seder. My father, grandfather, and uncle are reading from the Hagaddah, while my Grandma and aunt are working in the kitchen. My mom is next to my dad, putting a bowl of chicken soup with matzo balls on the table. The table is set with the traditional seder plate, wine and matzo, and the children are all at the table with the family. On the left side of the painting, a goat, (a kid-from the traditional song in the Hagaddah Chad Gadya – about one kid that father sold for two zuzim) peeks over the front door, and on the right side, there are the apartment houses that we lived in on Chicago’s West Side. There are a few extra guests at the Seder, which would have been normal. And the dining room isn’t what my grandma’s dining room looked like. But none of that is the point. What I hope viewers get from this painting is the sense of closeness and family celebrating a beloved holiday in a traditional way. I loved painting it.
Lipkin Gallery 