Cathren is a community collaborative artist who has been working with the Community Libraries of Providence and other non-profits since 2012, developing arts and literacy programs and creating public art installations. She has been an artist in residence at Hattie Ide Chaffee Home since 2023, implementing visual arts and health programs with seniors and dementia patients. Website: ArtHouseRI.com
Dear C and Dr. B, My head is still reeling over this and I have not quite been able to reorient myself. It all started a year ago, after my divorce. I was feeling dejected and lonely. I wasn’t ready to date yet so instead I joined an online pen pal service. I was matched up with […]
Dear C and Dr. B, I am a therapist at a busy community health center and I am unsure how to think about one client who was in her 20’s. She told me she was going to commit suicide by contracting COVID. She said she would carry this out by not getting vaccinated and refusing to […]
Dear C and Dr. B, I think my husband is trying to hand me a load of crap, maybe you can offer an opinion. Joe has a weight problem which could potentially impact his health, but he just can’t stick to his diet. His reason? He blames our pet, a cockatiel. Joe claims the bird […]
Dear C and Dr. B: My sister is an inflexible person and she flies off the handle if we are discussing a topic and I don’t agree with her. She tends to have very negative opinions based on her own social prejudices, like, “EVERYONE on unemployment now is just a lazy freeloader, there’s tons of jobs.” […]
Dear C and Dr. B: I am 26 and my girlfriend and I were talking marriage. I love her very much but there’s one problem: children. She wants them; I do not. I cannot conceive of still being alive to watch them suffer – science predicts that the world as we know it will not […]
Dear C and Dr. B.: I wasn’t really worried until this morning, but now I’m not sure. My husband Steve spends an inordinate amount of time talking to this speaker thing called “Alexa.” It answers questions, it relates news, reads stories, tells jokes, and plays music. What he likes most is when she does sports trivia. Not […]
By Cathren Housley Stefan Couture creates a party wherever he goes. During the long COVID lockdown when venues went dark, he gathered fans and found a growing crowd of new friends at his Virtual Campfire every Saturday night in North Smithfield, RI. Now that the club and concert stages have reopened, Couture has been spreading […]
Dear C and Dr. B, My wife had reserved some books at our local library for a workshop she was teaching at an after school program. She ran out of time doing prep for the workshop and asked me to pick up the books for her while she continued packing up materials. I drove to the […]
In Umberto Crenca’s newest collection, Divine Providence, it is difficult to tell where the artist leaves off and the city begins. These paintings have been a labor of love – his tribute to the streets he has always called home. Crenca grew up on Chalkstone Avenue, the son of immigrants who worked in factories all […]
Dear C and Dr. B; This summer I was a camp counselor. Despite the effort the camp made to create a culture of camaraderie among attendees, the counselors for older kids wouldn’t talk to or associate with the counselors for the younger kids. We were all assigned our groups randomly, and it was purely by […]