Running a gallery can be demanding physically and mentally, so when I have some down time I usually do things that are relaxing or athletic. Last summer I started doing fixed-gear track bike racing at the Lehigh Valley Velodrome, just over an hour from Philadelphia. My boyfriend and I enjoy racing there on Saturdays and it is thrilling to ride around a steep track with no brakes on your bike! You stop by slowing down your pedaling cadence and eventually grabbing onto a wall or unclipping your feet from your pedals. All summer long they have weekly and weekend night races, the track is in pristine condition and it is unbelievable to watch the quality of athletes perform there—almost like being at the Olympics. As a matter of fact, the coaches who trained us, Mike Beers and Jorge Romero, are Olympic athletes.

--Bridgette Mayer

Owner, Bridgette Mayer Gallery

I've been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature (1836). Emerson is awesome because he forces the reader to either accept total emotional honesty about man's relationship to and observance of nature, or close the book. "The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country landscape is pleasant only half the year ... To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again. The heavens change every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom on the plains beneath." After reading Nature, even in the perceived order and convenience of the modern city, you feel the primacy of the human instinct for both base survival and beauty.

--Joshua Nims

Executive Director, Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund

I have found myself drawn to reruns of M*A*S*H on the Hallmark Channel, and even bought the first seasons on DVD. M*A*S*H had always been my favorite show growing up, but returning to it now allows me to see how revolutionary it was: having a major character in a sitcom killed off (Henry Blake); having a Jesuit priest (Father Mulcahy) and a transvestite (Klinger) as two main characters who not only get along but play poker together; not using a laugh track in the operating room scenes. This was pretty big stuff for TV of the early '70s. The early episodes are funnier and more satirical, but the latter tend to explore issues most sitcoms didn't (alcoholism, racism, post-traumatic stress). M*A*S*H is worth a look—for the first or the umpteenth time.

--Tony Braithwaite

Actor/Barrymore Awards host

Recently I started thinking about time again. I try to live with the assumption that time is something we all made up. (Oddly, I am a musician, and since it's the center of music, the nature of music is mysterious ...) Anyway, together time and space are a sort of filing cabinet that enables us to communicate, both verbally and extrasensorally. It is the simplest language. I was turned on to similar notions years back when I read a book called The Seth Material, by Jane Roberts, and more recently, by Philip K. Dick's Valis. What this all means with respect to past, future and concurrent lives is comforting, yet perplexing.

--Brian D. McTear

Producer, Miner Street Recordings