Bob Wittersheim
speaker
239 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 6d ago
Bob Wittersheim’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
We give to a different charity each week, and this week we are giving to GLAD, GLBTQ, Advocates and Defenders, working to create a just society, free of discrimination based on gender identity and expression. You can learn more about them in our show notes.
We also have links in our notes to our ad-free and bonus subscriptions, our super cozy merch, including our new coloring set and weighted pillow.
Now Bob and I are taking this week off, so we're bringing you a special episode. It's a two-parter that has never appeared in front of the paywall. We've put it all together into one so that you get an extra long bedtime story tonight.
All you need to do is let your attention rest on the shape of the story and the sound of my voice.
Just shifting your attention from the background static of your thoughts to the gentle structure of my tale will transfer brain activity into the task positive mode.
And they are stories about an inherited treasure and the tale it has to tell. It's also about the precious gift of a common moment preserved in paint. The feeling of knowing someone you've never met.
If you're listening, you know self-care is vital for overall wellness, but it can be hard to prioritize yourself and ask for what you need. If you're a veteran going through a tough time, there are people who want to listen and help with no pressure or judgment. Dial 988, then press 1. Chat at VeteransCrisisLine.net or text 838255 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line.
Responders are ready to support you, no matter what you're going through.
Take a slow breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Do it again. Breathe in. And out.
It had started with the painting in the hall. one that had been handed down through the generations of our family. It had hung for most of my young life in the living room of a great uncle, above his fireplace, in fact, which accounted for all the soot that clouded its surface.
When it had come to me, I'd carried it from one room to another, trying to find the right spot for it, where the light would show the details that had been painted into place a hundred-plus years before. Finally, I settled for a spot in the hallway that led from the kitchen to the stairs. Its hanging wire was still strong and sturdy, and there it had stayed for ten years or so.
Then, at the end of a summer, when kids were going back to school, and the sunlight was just beginning to take on that golden autumn overlay, I'd found a class in the community education brochure for art restoration, step by step, and thought of the painting. In it, a woman in simple clothes looked over her shoulder, out a window, behind her to a green landscape.
She held a book in one hand, and the room she sat in was paneled in wood, with a shelf full of jars and bottles above her head. There was a dark smudge in one corner that we'd always thought might be a signature. I'd taken her down from her nail and signed up for class. she and I had spent the next few months at the community center, where we'd gotten to know each other a lot better.
It is a strange thing to spend so much time with your attention centered on one face. It felt like a kind of communion, not just with the subject, but with the painter, whoever they were. And finding out had been the most intriguing part of the process. We'd started, the half dozen of us in the class, plus the teacher, by carefully freeing our paintings from their frames.
It had taken patience and a bit of hard work to take out the tacks that had been in place so long. But once it was done, we'd each laid our canvases or boards on clean workspaces and looked at their backs. One of my fellow students had a painting found at a garage sale.
And though any work of art has value, his piece, a simple vase of flowers, was being restored more for the experience of working on it than the piece itself. The flowers had been painted on a piece of board, and on its back, we found a signature, an ink pen with a date. It had sent us all into a fever of curiosity. Who was the woman who'd painted the flowers? And what was her life like?
Her restorer had eventually found her in a yearbook at the high school, and he'd brought it in for us to have a look at. We'd crowded around his table and peered down at her picture, taken almost 50 years before. She had a big, 70s collar and natural hair in a high puff.
She'd been in the winter drama that year and played volleyball, and at least according to the date on the back of the board, painted those flowers. I'd sighed with satisfaction when I'd seen her. It felt like reading the last chapter in a good book. I found I appreciated her painting even more. It meant more to me, knowing something about her.
And it made me even more curious about my painting, the woman seated in that room, and whoever it was who painted her. When I'd first opened the back of the frame, I'd hoped there would be a label, a tag, something to send me in a clearer direction. But all I'd found was a scrap of paper that had a few words on it, and most of them had been cut in half.
when the scrap was torn from a larger sheet. There was what I suspected was half of a name, a surname that might have been the painter's. There was also a city and a bit of a date. I thought about those scraps of information while I worked on the surface of the painting.
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