My dad had an eccentric friend who would visit us in the woods of Connecticut. He came from New York City bearing gifts—a stack of Dannon yogurt cartons salvaged from the dumpster behind a grocery store. There was no place for ninety yogurts in our refrigerator, but it was winter, so my mother put them out on the front porch. My five siblings and I worked our way through all of them, peeling back the removable cardboard circle tops one by one.
His name was Morse Minkow.
Morse was a brilliant inventor. He had sold a patent to a luxury watch company—he figured out how to make a watch play a digital version of the chimes from London’s Big Ben. This was the 1960s. He had made millions, maybe. A millionaire, genius, dumpster diver who wore a toupee. He detested waste.
I remember my mother complaining, “He takes the food right out of my children’s mouths.”
I remember thinking, I don’t recall him putting his fingers in my mouth.
My father had six children and a biomedical research equipment startup to run. He had little time or energy for anyone—especially his youngest daughter. But Morse… for reasons I never fully understood, he was present.
I asked big questions about the world, the universe, existence itself. Morse would stop what he was doing, consider the question, and patiently take his time answering—carefully, in detail. This was his love, and I felt it.
Those moments of special attention would prove to have a great influence on my life.
I became an artist who invited scientists and technologists into the dance studio, asking them to share their knowledge with creative teams through my Capacitor Lab process. These think tanks gave rise to ten full-evening works, which we toured nationally and internationally.
When I went looking for a life partner, I found a brilliant technological scientist who seems to know something about everything. Early on, I asked him why he knew so much, across so many domains. He said he was trying to finish the internet.
He has one of those rare minds that retains what it learns and organizes it precisely, so it can be recalled with ease. My brain sang.
Special attention.
Art-making, for me, became a side effect of learning. Curiosity became my North Star. Morse Minkow had ignited that circuitry through patience and kindness.
Happy 2026.
May you give—and receive—lots of Special Attention.
*Photo of Dad and me