A week ago, early on a Wednesday morning, a 63-year-old woman walked from her home in Norwalk, approached the Metro-North grade crossing at Commerce Street, lay down on the tracks and was killed by the oncoming train. Since that fateful day when I went crazy and tossed the TV out on the front lawn and denied my daughters their constitutionally guaranteed right to mindless distractions and foolishness like Jerry Springer and MTV, our lives took a turn for the better â” well, at least mine did. The day after I became a grandmother for the first time, I was so full of joy and enthusiasm when I arrived for work at the Trumbull Times editorial office that the editor asked me to write a column about my experience. Early Monday morning, my boss said he had a top-secret assignment for me, and that afternoon, I was flying to the land of my ancestors, aka Italy, where I walked the streets of Milan in search of my roots . A friend of a friend of a friend â” or something like that â” had a relative with lots of money, so much money he was ranked as one of the top 500 executives in the world, or maybe it was one of the top 500 executives in South Jersey.

Tags: the, leonardo da vinci drawings, leonardo da vinci, painting techniques, i, Da Vinci Painting, a, application of perspective