This post originally ran on July 2, 2022 and is reprinted here in honor of Thanksgiving Week I’ve been reading a book called Real: The Inside-Out Guide to Being Yourself by Clare Diamond. In Part One, Diamond deconstructs “self” by telling us all the things we are not. We are not our thoughts, emotions, beliefs,...
In my ongoing efforts to declutter and Feng Shui my house, I got rid of 96 more books in the past week. In the process, I tackled a bookshelf that I have so far mostly avoided, the one containing my massive World War II collection of books that I used as reference while writing seven...
I hosted one of my art salons last week, and our topic centered around the famous Martha Graham quote in which she talks about an artist’s work and says, “there is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through your action, and because there is only one of you in...
A while back I was listening to a podcast, or maybe an NPR interview, I’m afraid I can’t remember. The guest speaker said something about stories helping us fall in love with the world again, and that’s all that stuck with me. Not the rest of the interview, not the name of the show, not...
I recently pointed out to my husband a problem we were having with a device and that the problem always appeared after he used it. As most people would, he insisted it couldn’t just be him. It must also happen when I used it. So, I tracked it for a few days and was able...
I caught a snippet of Marketplace on NPR yesterday. They were interviewing a professional ballet dancer about her current earnings, and she said when she tells people she’s a dancer they ask, ‘What else do you do?’” She explained to the interviewer she’s in rehearsals from 9-6 every day, and performing and dancing is her...
A friend and I were reminiscing yesterday about what people in Idaho called the “junk room”; that room in an unseen part of the house where the door was always closed and the smell of mothballs was ever-present. I had two favorite junk rooms. One was in my grandmother’s house, an upstairs bedroom piled pell-mell...
This post was originally published March 30, 2019 It occurred to me the other day: – If I’d been more focused all these years, I could have written 20 books, not just 8. – If I’d been more organized, I might not have let so many potential prospects slip away. – If I’d been more...
A frequent reader of this blog wrote to me in response to my post titled, “Does Art Need a Purpose?” “Just as beauty is its own excuse for being,” she said, “so is art.” I found the full quote about beauty online. It’s from a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson called “The Rhodora.” It reads:...
I recently donated a Little Free Library to a local mobile home park. I stopped by the library, which is located near the playground, the other evening and chatted with some of the kids who were playing there. Some of them had seen and even used the library, the others hadn’t noticed it at all....