Write Purpose Journal & Essays & Fiction &.....

"Nobody Owes You A Reading" The Writing Life of Ralph McInerny

2012-02-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

Scholarly journals often have to arrive at just the right time in one's life to be fully read, unless you keep them around for a long time. But time can sometimes take us even further from our stack of intentions. Currently living in a small cottage I decided to gather up a pile of various publications and send them off to the second hand store. Not long into my task I found myself sitting on the floor amidst the possible candidates reading with great interest, in a March 2006 publication, an article called "The Writing Life." When I finished my read, I gently tore the pages from the journal and mailed them off to a friend who has every intention of writing a novel in his newly achieved retirement.

A month later I received a grateful note from said friend who had in turn made copies of the article and sent it out to six of his friends. Why hadn't I kept a copy for myself? Fortunately I realized I could reread the article on line. I found The Writing Life by Ralph McInerny and enjoyed it again. Now you have a link to the article too. Here's how it starts:

It is the rare reader of fiction who does not at some time or other consider becoming a writer. It comes and goes over the years for many, and some carry it about forever as an unredeemed promissory note to themselves. In their heart of hearts, they regard themselves as writers. When my first novel appeared, I got a note from a senior colleague to the effect that it was sly of me not only to think of writing a novel but actually to do it. ...

Not having read any of the man's work, I set out to make myself acquainted with him and learned that in 2009 he retired from 54 years of teaching at Notre Dame and that he died in January of 2010. He was both a published scholar and a prolific writer of fiction and it is quite evident through a number of eulogies that he was a giving man deeply appreciated by many.

In the 1960's, in addition to his teaching and philosophical work, he began to write fiction. It is the story of how he made the transition from wanting to be a writer to becoming one that he tells in "The Writing Life" essay.

And so it began. In the basement was a workbench, unlikely to serve its original purpose for me. It became my desk. It was L shaped. I plunked my typewriter on the short leg of the L and, standing, began. Every night, after we had put the kids to bed, I would go downstairs and write from ten until about two in the morning. The markets I was chiefly interested in were Redbook, Ladies' Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping. Their initial price for a story was a thousand dollars. I sent stories out, but I was always ready with others when they came back. There was never a time when I wasn't awaiting editorial word on one or more stories. This gave room for hope. In April I began to get messages on the rejection slips and then a letter from an editor at Redbook, Sandra Earl, telling me “close but no cigar,” and urging me to keep trying.

Those early times at my converted workbench were, I came to see, my apprenticeship. For someone who aspired to write fiction I was almost totally ignorant of how a story is made. The slick magazines operated on the Edgar Alan Poe principle that a story aims at a single effect. No sideshows, nothing that does not contribute to the point of the story. I would sometimes be asked what paragraph three on page seven was meant to do, would read it, find it lovely writing but effectively idle in the story. Out it went. I was learning that one writes for a reader. Writing is too often described as self-expression. But writing is the art of making a story that will engage and hold and satisfy the interest of the reader. I typed a slogan and pinned it over my typewriter: Nobody Owes You A Reading.

This image is quite stuck in my head...he stood and he stuck to it.
I have never been a reader of mystery novels, though I have certainly heard of the Father Dowling series, and I am not sure that I am up for scholarly texts on Thomas Aquinas, but I might give Mr. McInerny a bit more reading...intrigued as am by the title of his memoirs, I Alone have Escaped to Tell You.

I'll let you know if I do and maybe you'll let me know what you think...
P.S. Despite the perusing that led me to this article, I did resolutely give away a stack of journals at least three feet tall but not before noticing a poem by Ralph McInerny that I just posted on my Bread on the Water Blog.

Sending off that stacks of journals made quite a bit of room for more reading material of the "old fashioned" kind.

Capturing those Quotes that Stimulate further Reflection and...

2012-01-13T11:33:00.000-08:00

What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%. ~John Piper

I have not read the book this quote is from nor anything from the author, but when I encountered this quote, I recognized an experience I too have had. As one ages, forgetting 99% of what you have read becomes an ever stronger possibility.

And of course much of what one reads over the years is forgettable, some of it best forgotten...but words that are life changing, have life in them can be, to paraphrase an instruction in The Book of Common Prayer, read, marked and inwardly digested. You are what you eat...

I am currently reading a book on short story writing that has some great insights. It's valuable on many levels and yet due to the tone and perspective of the author I find myself unwilling to broadcast her gems. I may not begrudge the 99 % I forget, but when work as a whole is marbled with mixed influence that requires significant work to sluice the gold from the dross, I am reminded how much matrix matters. And it is what we draw into the very matrix of our own beings that matters the most.

What will I do with Write Purpose and Bread on the Water this year? There are a few posts I have put up and then taken down... It is again the issue of influence.

Recently I looked over entries that I began and never finished or chose not to post and found several that I began on boundaries. Sometimes, seeing others' personal revelations on line, I scurry off. I remember a mandated group process class years ago, where one member offered herself up and others lured her deeper into the woods of self revelation where wolves snarled and as a pack devoured her. She completed the coursework, but did not become a psychotherapist. Perhaps it was ultimately a service to her. She didn't belong, standing alone out in that field of work, but I couldn't reconcile the willingness of other up-and-comers to use her vulnerability against her. And of course I learned that good Samaritans were next on the menu.

So what sort of reticent goop did I find trekking around in my unposted archives?

2-11-11 The idea of making a true journal entry here is really beyond me. Boundaries prohibit some revelations that would be completely central to the fluid stream of consciousness and dot connecting that are the benefits and delights of private writing. Some boundaries are natural, true to my identity and are worthy of observation, but others, though I may feel their strong mandate may be external and unnecessarily restricting...

Okay, I am good with this...I don't want to do an on-line journal per se. Journal and memoir writing, as rich and wonderful as it is, best not be confused with the art of literary fiction. I may be both too otherwise occupied and too lazy to ever do the work fiction requires.

7-2-11 As regards boundaries, the demands of work, profession, and identity are powerful. People ask, "What do you do?" Some people answer that question all the time with their neckline, from collared priests to those sporting plunging cleavage on dark streets. Others don't find identity in the doings of life. Identity transcends what we do and yet we struggle with what how what we do might be shaping, defining or redefining us.

Who can avoid asking "What am I doing?" "What have I done? " " What can I do?" "What must I do? "

"What do you do?" as a question is often just an honest attempt to get to know another, but sometimes, it is asked just to size another up and compare how one fits into their personal hierarchy of importance. Sometimes people are just asking how you put bread in your mouth, how do you get bread? Some want to know, if by their standards, you can justify your existence.

Well themes such as these two unfinished, un-posted examples, apparently important to me, but thus far, hard for me to write about as they bring me up against my reticence, may have to come into clearer focus.

Monterey, California the art of historical recreation...A Book Review

2011-11-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

No More a Stranger A Story of Robert Louis Stevenson written in 1946 by Anne B. Fisher is what she liked to call a "re-creation." She researched for six years to write this story of the four months in 1879 that Robert Louis Stevenson spent in Monterey, California.

I was almost put off by the romantic cover and already knew the basics and was not further interested in Stevenson's personal life, so I wasn't sure the book would hold me.

But ultimately this book is a story of old Monterey, a town that is in many ways the belly button of California history. While this story is told in the third person and is a subjective narrative of 204 pages, the rest of the volume is sixty pages of chapter notes with photographs and sources, a bibliography, acknowledgements and an extensive index.

I began looking at the sources first and saw that the author had worked hard to diligently unearth her chronicle and that she has faithfully annotated it with her written and oral sources and included contemporary photographs of many of the characters in the book. It is a mark of scholarship standards of old to go to original source material and to truly show your source and I began to trust that a definitive picture of cultural and historical significance was to be found in this story.

As the author says in her biographical notes:

Many readers of this book will wonder how much of the story is true. It is all based on fact. No character is imaginary-not even the horse. Incidents happened as described, and anecdotes related were those actually told. The only fictional episodes which enter into the story are some conversations which had to be filled in to retain the continuity.

The people who encountered and helped RLS on his way were all hard working immigrant pioneers and the variety of people groups is well represented in this story. In some ways this tale is about how much story itself is valued for quite a community had to rally around the twenty-nine year old "ink-slinger" to keep him alive. Even his $2.00 a week salary at the local paper was from a secret hat passing at the restaurant where RSL found food, warmth and a friend in French proprietor Jules Simoneau.

I also found the biographical information of the author to be interesting and am including the pictures of the frail dust wrapper with the notes on the career of a California woman in the 1940's. I find her to be rather inspirational...she made quite a varied career for herself. You should be able to read it if you click on the photo.

No More a Stranger was first published in 1946 by Stanford University Press.
~

You'd generally get to somewhere Else if you ran very fast for a long time...

2011-11-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

as it was told to Alice in the Wonderland she encountered:

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

Words Escape Me but DNA Prevails

2011-10-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

They do...words escape...but butterflies, Monarchs in particular, have captured my imagination of late.

My only net is my camera and my desire to understand them a little better. I am fascinated that every fourth generation of Monarchs is like Methuselah, they live longer. Most Monarch butterflies live for about two to six weeks, but every fourth generation, the ones born in the fall, live for several months. They migrate to hibernate in warmer climes through the winter. I marvel at these little wings and how many miles, they fly; 1000 to 2500 miles in some cases... to come back home. Even the butterflies who have never been "home" before know how to get there....it is DNA as a relay race organizer.

Well, you know if you really want to know about butterflies you can google them and read a proper entomological and scientific explanation of what I just garbled out. As I said, words have been escaping me. Here is my self portrait that I drew this morn...a bird in a nest of letters, nary a word in sight.

D N A must be in there somewhere...

I haven't written much of late. I haven't even written to my daughter because I miss her and knowing she is, off and on, a little homesick, out on her adventure...well if I say how much I miss her ...
But this blog is for her, isn't it? Of course.

Okay, here is the truth....I missed her so much that I even played a hand of on-line scrabble with her kitty...
. . . . . . . . . . .
Today I am going to a garage sale of a sweet lady who is returning to her home-land. The other day I was helping her with a simple task and suddenly she took a phone call...rapid fire she chattered away in her native tongue. I did not understand a word...except I could hear how deep a resonance the mother tongue has in her heart. She ( my friend's request to keep her departure a bit quiet on the web has me being impersonal here) has lived in the United States for thirteen years. This land gave her shelter from the kidnappings and dangers of her native Columbia. Many of her friends and much of her family have moved away...but not her parents... and now, like a butterfly, she returns. She has reduced the accumulation of the years down to four boxes to ship home; that and a heart full of memories and hopes and an awareness of the truth that her path did not fully open up here. She described the dreams she has and that she returns to her land with her dreams still asking. She says she has created a situation where it is hard to leave but knows she must not stay...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Did you ever play connect the dots? You follow the numbers and draw the lines between each numbered dot and then maybe the picture will be a bird in a nest sitting on letters that won't quite make the words she wants.... to express her love and hope for those she loves....

The day calls, I look out the window and see what I see? There is a little sailboat on the blue. As my dear runaway- to- the-circus daughter says....onward. I guess if she can write about being homesick, it is okay for me to admit that I miss her proximity here mightily... and this doesn't even get into the much closer but still not quite nearby other "story." This post is for you too.

Framing One's Perspective

2011-09-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

There's a dead tree in the view. It's just as tall as its living neighbor, but green no more. How one looks at a dead tree, feels about it, may be important. That tree has held that spot for many years and for now there is a dead tree in a very lovely view.

It has reminded me that life cycles are not neat, the comings and goings are unexpected and then the view is changed.

It's important not to consider the view imperfect.

There are so many young trees striving to get established...

A favorite way of writing.

2011-09-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

I was oblivious to and yet comforted by the surrounds...a dear friend took this picture of me.
Away for a few days at a mountain retreat I found myself free to be writing.
Where do you like to write?

September 11, 2011 ~ Rest in Peace

2011-09-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

Snippets after Shut Down

2011-08-10T23:39:00.000-07:00

I belong in bed. I had actually shut down my computer. I have been set to a purpose that is an honor and very hard but a write purpose task. To write a eulogy... I know there are all sorts of experts in the field, tips on how to write a eulogy abound on the internet, but what is needed is heart. Brevity, clarity, organization and hopefully a voice to read can all come...but heart for he who is gone and for each one who feels his loss ( and I am such a one myself) is really all I care about at this point. And I came to a place where I knew it was time to retire and trust the rest of it to tomorrow.

And then I was told there were two new blog posts from my traveling daughter and I fired this computer back up and ignored the exhaustion ahead signal lights that had been flashing for so long the batteries are almost stone... One of her posts was so long and so brilliant and painful and funny and convoluted I know I will read it again in the morning. The other, the latest one was short, a snippet she said...a day that had not held time for writing but she typed out a little marker for the trail...and so both in support of her and because I am encouraged by her, I have hereby officially written a snippet too. Good night.

Write to know what you know...

2011-07-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this quote from John Henry Newman

'I think that writing is a stimulus to the mental faculties, to originality, to the the power of illustration, to the arrangement of topics, second to none. Till a man begins to put down his thoughts about a subject on paper he will not ascertain what he knows and what he does not know, still less will he be able to express what he does know.'

I know for me that writing is a time where I am steeped in knowing that I am not alone in this universe.
In this private time of grief I cannot now share ...but this affirmation of how part of prayer a writer's words can be.

for David

Boundaries in Blog Land

2011-07-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

Ah, time to write...I'll just start a post and even though I 'll have to save it and add to it later, it will be like a magnet to draw together some of the thoughts that pass through so quickly unless I pen them down as able. Even if capture is incomplete, I stand a chance of some themes coalescing.

Nothing got posted here in June.

I wrote and then typing in the near dark early one morning, deleted one June post I had considered calling "Weeds for Words" about the seasonal mandate of the sprouting earth and how weeding, planting and pruning had usurped keyboard time. Living in a garden and being outside is lovely and of course it is the keyboard that should be considered the usurper. My handwritten journal has not suffered for entries but it seems to become more and more a sequestered reality. A family death, concern for the next generation, strange dreams, stranger encounters, political observations, cultural clashes: I can bring a proper light to such subjects, but the first dashed thoughts usually need to at least marinate for a while. I would never do in the world of journalism where the rush to scoop beats many factors of much greater importance.

Boundaries are important.

Often times boundaries are viewed simply as restrictions, look at the implications of the word "sequestered" used above: to isolate or hide away or to take legal possession of... but in fact, clear boundaries can facilitate clarity and freedom.

I wrote recently to one of the dear hearts of my life how impressed I was with her increasing ability to use words to describe her inner terrain. It struck me what a growth it is to keep the internal terrain in a gentle focus while juggling the multitude of external demands. Boundaries are inextricably tied to one's ability to do and give in the world at large and then retreat to recharge. There is a difference between giving of yourself and not giving yourself away.

Although I didn't post here in June, I read many other people's web log entries. I try to be generous in my willingness to respond and comment. I suppose I have scattered an essay or two across the blogosphere at the feet of other's blogs... that's the opportunity available to us: sharing and encouraging and being encouraged and learning from each other. I hope soon to reference to and highlight of few of the blogs I have found noteworthy.

While writing and reading blogs I've thought a lot about the dilemma of personal censorship.How does one identify internal censors, blinders, screens, misbeliefs? How does one sneak up on one's self to get a good candid shot? It's a good trick, to lay down some of your defenses while you write about them in all their ardent hiddenness at the same time.

The delight of self encounter in the very act of writing is good stuff. Balancing requires that one neither be too easy or too hard on one's self...

Ironically, our internal restraints, judicious restraints, are part of potential openness and relaxation, we must say "No" to protect the "Yes" we have already committed to.

And sometimes the best of the candid shots are for our eyes only... and our shots of others...our understandings of others...respect and compassion for self and others...it goes a long way. But not restraint to the point of not sharing, not giving...

What exactly do I mean by judicious restraints and boundaries? I don't mean internal police. I don't mean a ball and chain. I don't mean political correctness. So many negative stereo types exist...

Trust is an important part of judicious restraint. I see internal surrender that then allows us to be free because we can trust we are barefoot where we should be barefoot and well shod for other terrain. It's the restraint that knows how edgy reality can be and even when I'm not paying super conscious attention to it, it informs me where the edges are. It's a restraint that is at the ready, you can climb mountains with it and when you start to slip the instinct leaps in every muscle. It needn't rob you of moment to moment entering in; in fact I think it gives more energy for doing so.

Yes, there is a beautiful field of wild mountain flowers that one can reach without as the old saying goes, "throwing all caution to the wind."

Other adages come to mind, we learn not to throw out the baby with the bath water and not to overcorrect on a curvy road.

The body is a great teacher of boundaries. We are "fearfully and wonderfully made." The cells, as I remember their description from long ago biology classes, have a wall that is a semi-permeable discerning membrane. A healthy cell boundary knows how to let the good stuff in and separate and excrete unusable components.

Our bodies know we should try to avoid toxic realities, not over extend ourselves, that we can't safely embrace or hold onto impurities. There's no room for what doesn't support life as a pure flowing exchange where it is nutrients in, waste out to build strong cells, strong tissues, further organized as organs of purpose...multiple purposes, co-ordinated with an over- arching goal of letting yourself be a real,vulnerable and safe, available and composed,distinct and unique person; a valuable existence validated by God's love.

Tomorrow will worry about it self

2011-05-30T22:21:00.000-07:00

The view from the cottage...the evening of May 30th, 2011

I think of things that should be done, could be done, must be done...things I want to do...might write, have written and not shared and as I watch the sun go down I realize that tomorrow is the last day of May and then I remember that tomorrow will worry about itself.

Alarmists Were Predicted Long Ago

2011-05-17T19:48:00.000-07:00

Recently a woman I know was trying to factor some fearful predictions into some economic decision she needed to make. It’s hard enough for Lily to navigate realms of finance not having been entrusted with singular or even mutual decision making before being widowed, let alone with someone whispering in her ear that she should sell everything she has and just stock up on supplies.

Of course I’m aware of earthquakes and up-risings, and “down-troddings” and wars and rumors of war on a daily basis but I don’t tend to pay much attention to people who think they can give time lines for the future.

I was concerned as she described to me a man who was not currently living up to his financial obligations but was offering her financial advice and either basing it on or peppering it with time tabled predictions of various global disaster scenarios. As a result of his certainty she now felt confused and uncertain as to what she should do.

As much as I was concerned about Lily making a hasty decision about her largest financial asset, in some ways I was more concerned that she thought she would have to be a Bible scholar to sort through this man’s predictions and the seemingly direct line of implications he drew to her circumstances. I’m no scholar myself, but I knew the Gospel according to Matthew addressed cosmic predictions.

Jesus was asked directly by his disciples what are the signs of the end of the age. Matthew 24:3 records that Jesus began his answer this way: "Watch out that no one deceives you...you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed..."

What a great place to start while figuring things out, “See to it that you are not alarmed..." Not only is not being alarmed a desirable state of being, the 'see to it’ language intrigues me. It’s an invitation to look inward. Yes, what are you doing in there, getting alarmed and to what end?

I’m struck with the emphatic quality of the instructions of Jesus to his questioning disciples. “Watch that no one deceives you and see to it that you are not alarmed.” I really can’t imagine any realm where this isn’t good advice.

I find it interesting that before the end of the eons is discussed, or even the precursor times of trouble are described, a mindset is mandated. If you think about never being alarmed or anxious about anything, you know that it is not something most of us embody all that well.

So if you are going to read Matthew chapter 24 about earthquakes and famines, and the end that is not yet, if you are going to read the hard words about persecutions and fleeing Judea...it seems important to first soak in the admonition to watch that no one deceives you and see to it that you are not alarmed. If you don’t read the chapter, but just wander around in the world and listen to the opinions and predictions of others, it seems the right response as well.

In Matthew chapter 24, there are thirty-five verses describing days of distress before Jesus describes "the Son of Man appearing...."

and then he says, ( 24:36) “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

NO ONE.

I sure don't know, do you? It sounds as if we are neither expected nor supposed to know about the future, and that is certainly one of the things that I wanted to remind Lily; people telling us when something will happen in the future is not validated by the very book they purport to interpret.

Jesus does say (verse 42) that one should keep watch. Pay attention, keep watch. But watch for what? In Chapter 25, Matthew records Jesus launching right into a series of stories starting with his parable of the wise and foolish virgins. Those women weren’t sent out to watch for or prepare for disaster, they were waiting on a bridegroom. That’s the first example that follows all the hard to read about trouble, a story about having enough oil to have light in your lamp no matter how long you have to wait in the dark for the promised arrival.

I know I’m more than capable of imagining all manner of difficult things that may, but haven’t, happened. Perhaps I have to fight that tendency because a few hard losses and difficult trials did come my way early in life, but maybe not, maybe it is just how I am; perhaps it’s how many people are? As I read these familiar stories, I glimpsed the futility of trying to be prepared for woe, except by being faithful day by day and being ultimately prepared for joy. How many dollars per barrel do the oils of gladness or gratitude go for?

So going to this storied chapter that I have been exposed to my whole life and read any number of times, with concern for someone else really struggling with fear, was a great reminder for me how important it is to not be distracted by what you think you know. How easy it is to gloss over the essence of something. How easy it is to focus on the earthquakes and wars and stars falling from the sky, and miss the admonition to neither be deceived nor alarmed.

It’s true that there’s plenty of trouble to go around and it isn’t that I don’t believe in being as prepared as able, I do, but preparedness and routine caution is not the same as anxiety. When people make global predictions others’ anxiety is generally what they are preying upon.

If troubles we don’t yet have worry us we are likely to miss the opportunities of today. The Bible says that there is trouble sufficient unto the day and that there will be troubles, but Jesus is very clear with his disciples that no man knows when specific events will come and then illustrates in three parables, the parable of the 10 virgins, the parable of the talents and the parable of sheep and goats, a ready focus. The examples are each so straight forward. Have oil for your lamp so you can be ready with light, be a good steward of all that is entrusted to you, feed and visit the poor, the sick and the imprisoned, and by all means be watchful and ready.

Suffice it to say that I was glad that I didn’t undertake to answer Lily’s request for help “straight off the hip,” rather than use the very book being loosely referenced. She was quick to respond to my letter about what one could readily glean from these two chapters and wrote back that she had received “...peace in the eye of the storm.”

I had to laugh at the effective way her expressed need had caused me to it sit down and study a bit. I can always use all the reminders myself.

An art in itself: handmade hand written personal correspondance

2011-05-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

I opened a blue box tied with burgundy string. The storage unit had housed for 5 years many things we could not take with us or sort through before moving for a new job. What had I saved? It must have been something I had put away years before the move itself.

Such funny little cards, made so long ago...I also found a small packet of letters that I wrote to my grandmother. I won't look at them now. But I will. She saved them, then I saved them.

A little box of treasures...worth nothing and everything. Before the children were making cards and pictures, the box received missives sent to them from loved ones long gone now...dear familiar handwriting sending love to new babies and with little checks enclosed, I am sure.

This last weekend I received beautiful cards...one that traveled across the sea and got here just in time for Mother's Day. Handmade with handpicked flowers from the alps...yes, I got the message. And another card from the southern boundaries of our land with a thoughtful note and photographs from some of the days memorialized in the old blue box. What is it that causes us to write the words that say what is already known? Shaping and sharing our thoughts and feelings that they may for a time travel and have the weight of matter? I see how this box came to be; how could I toss these artful little love packets away.

Ephemera only and yet ...

In the Morning and the Evening

2011-04-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

In the same way that photographers and painters prefer the light of morning and afternoon, I find those to be times I am drawn to writing.

In the morning light breaks into the garden and invites close exploration.

I don't take many photographs while I am working...but the monologue is running.

When evening approaches the horizon calls...day is done. What have I done with it? Do I have more energy to focus...

reflections come...accomplishments are reviewed, tired muscles talk, hunger surfaces. The glory of the day settles as sun and color melt away into night.

Time needs honoring, or the day's creative opportunities slip away..
There is morning and evening and the long full day in between them.

Live and Become .. so hard to do in so many places...

2011-03-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

What a powerful movie... full of history we either never hear or forget too quickly...full of feeling for what happens to children as people groups tear at each other...

I watched this tonight and I don't want to spoil the story line. In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as Jews and airlifted secretly from a camp in the Sudan to Israel. This is the story of a 9-year-old Christian boy who is put on that plane by his mother to live and become.

This movie touches on many primal aspects of individual and social becoming. It is about heart for life, it's about loss and overcoming, it's about family, nations, identity. It is about purpose and it is about faithfulness in the heart of a child. It is a French film and it adroitly gives credit to many people of various leanings when they care, take a stand, tell their story, tell the truth or help others.

I think this movie came out in 2005..but I am always behind the times when it comes to movies.

This is however a movie that I can get behind. I recommend it highly.

Just the title

is a lot to think about...

LIVE AND BECOME

it is what we should always want

for others...yes?

When the movie was over...I saw an article that a friend had posted on her facebook...about a woman in Libya named Eman al-Obeidy

who approached some cloistered foreign journalist in a hotel to tell what abuse she had suffered.

So...may she and the others she was pleading for Live and Become.
~that's my prayer~
~~~

Creative Process Stunned ?

2011-03-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

Tumultuous times have a direct impact on my sense of purpose in writing. There doesn't have to be any actual interruption in my personal daily life...tragedy has such a long arm in our small world.

I have a drawer full of fiction, chapters that I've put tremendous work and heart into, that I haven't worked on since September 11, 2001. Fiction seemed a small voice in the aftermath days, and yet the subjects my characters faced were, albeit set in a different era, the same; clashing beliefs and cultures, losses in war, and love's journey through despair to hope.

I thought I would eventually pick things up and write on, and I may have, but health threats to my own life, healing time and then a new job that required moving and a new life style continued what I hope is only a hiatus.

While I work full time, and writing has to dance around both the duties and joys of daily life, I have been, in private journals and these two blogs that I have been scribbling, warming up to committing more time and energy to the life I find in writing and the giving to others it represents.

This week I recognized a familiar sense of chill deep inside myself as I watched the news reels of the devastation that shook, flooded and burned the island country of Japan which now struggles with the specter of possible nuclear power plant meltdowns.

I cannot dig through the rubble, or fly helicopters. My heart flies out though and then the creative processes get a busy signal. Yesterday I did some simple hand work, repairing some small cloth items. The calming effect was powerful. I was searching for that insulation that allows all that is to be acknowledged, no ignoring the great external heats of various dangers in the world, while keeping kindled a proactive awareness that while it is yet called today, I should do what I can in all the realms that speak purpose to me, despite the multiple dwarfing effects of events across the wide world. Yes, the axis of the earth has shifted yet again, but we must each keep our footing and press on.

As I sat here, typing up these little thoughts, just outside my window on the path into the forest, I heard a sharp crack and looked out to see a limb crashing down. It is just a small limb, but it fell perhaps 60 feet with little warning. One sharp crack and it crashed right where I walk from one house to the other. How glad I am that I was taking these few quiet moments to ponder what I allow to deter me from spending more time writing.

3 Minutes or less: Life Lessons from America’s Greatest Writers ~ a book review

2011-02-11T23:56:00.000-08:00

What would you share about the subject of illusion in three minutes or less? It’s a great writing challenge, isn’t it? Would you be interested in reading what some of America’s favorite authors wrote on that subject when invited to share a prepared speech with such a time limit?

Perhaps your favorite American author has spoken at an annual PEN/Faulkner gala.
3 Minutes or less: Life Lessons from America’s Greatest Writers is an anthology of over one hundred and fifty such essays published in 2000 by Bloomsbury. Every year has had its topic. The collection includes eleven different topics each addressed by ten to twenty different authors.

Eudora Welty delivered one of my favorite essays of the collection on the topic of beginnings. She speaks of her sense of her own internal timeline and experiences of being freed of clock time.

“Remembering, we discover and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction.”

Welty shares a passage from her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, that focused on confluence

“...which of itself exists as a reality and a symbol in one…Of course, the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memory, the individual human memory. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me in my life and in my work as a writer.”

I felt intense freedom reading Russell Baker on the topic of illusion. I won’t steal his thunder or explain why he says, “Our best use and our peculiar gift, if we have any, is our ability to sustain the precious illusion that the teller of the tales is not the author.”

Susan Richards Shreves shares the prescription given her as a young writer to tell the truth about the way things are, knowing that writing is none the less an optimistic act requiring hope about the way things could be. She illustrates this with a very personal story from her family’s history that left me with indelible images of the power of the imagination.

Other well plumbed topics included are Obsessions, Heroes, Confessions, Reunions, and of course Endings.

Some of the writers privileged to contribute to this anthology through their archived speeches are William Styron, Annie Dillard, Larry McMurtry, Rita Mae Brown, Maurice Sendak, Jane Smiley, William Kennedy, Sue Miller, Allan Gurganus, Jane Hamilton, and Thomas Flanagan to name just a few you might readily recognize.

From the clever and the confessional to the inspiring and profound, all of these essays are worth the three minutes they take to read and many of them invite reading again and again.

And having read, perhaps you’ll be inspired to organize and write what you would share in three minutes or less on a topic such as First Love, Journeys, A Lesson, or The Sense of Place.

~~~~~

What's Wrong with the Press of Daily News? A Book Review

2011-01-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

Back in November I borrowed How the News Makes Us Dumb The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society, by C. John Sommerville. It was sitting on the shelf in the guest bedroom in the home of a friend who was taking exceptionally good care of me on an overnight stay.

There were many books I could have chosen but I picked up this one because I didn't like the title. I don't like being told I am dumb, even when I'm aware of the severe limitations anyone of us, myself most certainly, has in vast and multiple realms. Shouldn't I be reading more news to learn more about the world at large? Why did my friend have this book?

I read chapter 1 before I fell asleep and got interested enough that I wanted to continue.

My friend, an avid reader, told me in the morning that she had not read the book yet herself, but was quite willing for me to borrow it and read it first. She said the title had already reminded her to keep her reading heavily weighted in the history, biography and literature realms. When I got home with the book , I got busy with other things, but this last week, after a particularly heavy week of news reading, I picked the book up and was again drawn in and questioning my own response to, and my occasional immersion in, the available daily leads and speculations of the media.

It isn’t as one might suspect, a book about the alleged bias of the news, be it conservative or liberal editors in question. It’s not about techniques of linguistic or factual manipulation. It’s not about journalists using events or people to become celebrities themselves. Nor is this book focused on the sheer incompetence of some journalists or the daunting tasks of what it would take to be an expert in the multiple realms that journalist wind up covering. It’s not about the sound bite oversimplification of television news or the concentration of news to a few corporate chains. Sommerville says that while all these issues worry him, that all these critiques have already been written as well as futile recommendations to improve the news industry by people who believe that daily news is important.

Critique of the news media is certainly not new. Sommerville suggested a snippet of Thomas Jefferson's critique could be stitched on a sampler. Wanting to see the context I searched the world wide web and found that when John Norville wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1807 "It would be a great favor, too, to have your opinion of the manner in which a newspaper, to be most extensively beneficial, should be conducted, as I expect to become the publisher of one for a few years." he received a reply in which Jefferson first recommended authors to read on government and history, then very specifically critiqued newspapers:

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, `by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.' Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false. (see Jefferson's complete letter at http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116906)

Sommerville's book isn't new either. It was released in 1999. The irony is, the fact that the examples are not up to date actually helps demonstrate the thesis of the book. As he says in his preface, “ Items in the news always seem a little homeless and disconnected when we stumble on them later. We have forgotten what they once meant, what the bigger picture was. That is because the news industry succeeded in destroying the context of those items, which is the best way to make money off them. "

Sommerville, also author of a more academic book on the history of the news industry, says that in the three hundred year history of the industry it has developed in line with its essential nature and now at maturity demonstrates its essential flaw. His concern is the way in which “daily news,” deconstructs our experience of the world and blocks the higher mental processes.

The industry isn't likely to go away. Those news deadlined columns will be written, the air time will be filled even if the story isn't known yet; the news is a changing tide with waves of conflicting information flooding in daily. As it says on the back of the book, this is a book for those "dissatisfied with the state of the news media, but especially for those who think the news actually does inform them about the real world."

So if the news can’t be fixed, and Sommerville does make a good case for that, and one wants to be aware and informed on important events, wants to be an informed citizen in ever widening circles, local community, state, nation, the world, what is one to do? Part of Sommerville's answer is this ... “If news were just one of the many things that we read each day, it wouldn’t have the same impact. If we would read science, the classics, history, theology or political theory at any length, we would make much better sense of today’s events.” Page 16.

This book is really about changing our relationship to the news media and that starts with being more aware of how the news media is a flawed vehicle of social bonding and how important it is to be in our world rather than simply observe it through the lens of the news industry. Sommerville thinks we, the consumer, have acquired an addiction, and news people are just supplying the market.

It is a short book, 150 pages here is the list of chapter titles. (click to enlarge it a bit)

“It will take a short book to show all the ways that dailiness constitutes a bias all by itself. Of course dailiness is necessary if we are to have a news industry. And that is why the news can’t be fixed. Consuming this industry’s ‘news product’ actually makes us dumb.” Page 10

Sommerville's last chapter,Virtual Society or Real Community, makes it evident that he is a historian and a caring citizen of this day. He is an encourager and has real suggestions for how you can, "you, personally, learn to inhabit your world instead of just observing it... Let's not think what we must all do. That is the way of the news-addressing us in the anonymous voice of an imagined public..."

I'll be giving this book back to my friend this next week when I get a chance to see her again in person. Maybe she will read it now...maybe you might too? Or if you don't, maybe you will read a good biography or get into a subject in depth...plunge into your own life and interests in some way that your world and the world of those around you is richer. Tell a good story...we all need to hear one.

Why Do We Do the Things We Do? Basic Assumptions: A Paradigm to Use and Share.

2010-12-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

I was reminded lately of a model, a simple paradigm, which has been helpful at times in thinking through things.

What got me going was an exchange between a man and a woman, fortunately they weren’t married to each other, about typically hot topics all having to do with control: sex, choice, population, babies, birth.

They came at each other from diametrically opposed viewpoints. It wasn’t the content of their attempts to influence each other’s stance that triggered my thinking; I was only privy to a description of it by one party, but rather an image that formed in my mind of two people with their feet definitively planted trying to change each other’s posture by whipping each other’s heads around, or suggesting a different tilt of the hips.

( I am resisting popping in pictures of Indian wrestling here. How about just a small picture of attitude from an Engelbeit birthday card?)

Although I have shared this framework, this paradigm with others, it was always shared in person and I could draw charts and crisscross them with arrows and ask questions to employ examples to make sure the applicability of the connectedness was getting through. It will be a good challenge for me to simply write about it but don’t be surprised if I wind up sticking pictures in here and there.

THE PARADIGM

Here’s the rough framework: Basically, out of underlying assumptions we develop values, which are in turn directly tied to more specific concepts and beliefs. Beliefs shape our methods and methods, ideally, are focused on achieving particular goals which would themselves be in sync with our basic assumptions.

GOALS

METHODS

SPECIFIC CONCEPTS & BELIEFS

VALUES

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

You can approach this paradigm from either end. In some ways it makes most sense to me to explain it from the ground up. It’s the way one builds a house and the concreteness of that image makes it memorable for many.

So that’s how I will explain it from the bottom up.

However, I’m typing at a word processor and we read top to bottom and one could as easily make the argument that before you lay the foundation to build a house you first need a vision and a plan. As soon as you ask what the structure is for, you are at the top of the chart with goal and purpose. Both goals and primal assumptions have operative and transforming power directly over each other.

How you wring any value out of the line up might depend on your own style of learning, but in as much as I have conceded that the approach is arbitrary, perhaps you’ll suspend whatever your preferences might be and look at the bottom of the list above.

Basic Assumptions:

?? Is it a created universe, is there a creator or is it just a material world? How we answer primal question about reality, time and space and what we think of human nature, it is out of such basic or underlying assumptions, even if our assumptions are sometimes fuzzy or obscure, that values develop.

Of course we have assumptions about smaller questions in life as well. I was taught about this way of exploring things in the early eighties in a university class focused on designing effective lesson plans. Bernice Goldmark emphasized offering students alternative ways to learn. She hypothesized two teachers where one assumed that all people can learn the same way and the other who assumed that there are variations in how people learn. It is relatively easy to anticipate the different values, core concepts, and teaching methods likely to emerge from such different basic assumptions, even if both teachers’ goals were ostensibly the same.

I don’t remember if Professor Goldmark attributed the basic assumptions paradigm to anyone in particular, but as I wrote this post I found online the work of MIT professor Edgar H. Schein whose work on cultural awareness and organizational behavior explores these concepts at depth. Not that these ideas belong to anyone in particular, they are laced throughout the lives and writings of many. Studying the life of President Lincoln to elucidate executive strategies for current times, Donald T. Phillips, in his book, Lincoln on Leadership, encounters these same concepts. Phillips wrote that Lincoln's understanding of decision making was backed by solid visions, " not simply a string of individual orders. Rather...a continuous, uninterrupted process that is similar to the beating of a heart that sends blood throughout a body."( p 97)
In the concluding chapter of his book, Phillips writes of Lincoln, "He lifted people out of their everyday selves and into higher level of performance, achievement and awareness." (p 173)

I suppose one reason I think the paradigm I am sharing is helpful in making one more conscious in thinking and relating in our complex world, is that of the many things over the years I have studied, I remembered it and found myself, in various settings, putting it to use.

As with many houses, the foundation of why we say and do the things we do isn’t always visible but a foundation determines the footprint and bearing capacity of the structure built upon it.

Values often reflect what we think should happen, how we think things ought to be. Whether or not we articulate them, what we have learned and chosen to value under girds and shapes our more specific concepts and beliefs in life.

I know I'm not always fully tuned into what I actually value. For example, I can say I value fitness, and that I believe that it would be good for me to walk as much as possible everyday, but I didn’t walk today. In reality, in my free time, I valued the other things I wanted to do more and now it is way too dark and cold and … well you get the point. While my espoused value was fitness, my behavior valued comfort or productivity in another realm. I didn’t value fitness in a way that was expressed in a solid actionable concept such as “I will walk whether I am inclined to our not.” Maybe I really believe that I can get away without taking care of myself? That belief could certainly shape my daily choices, my daily method. Actual values and specific concepts and beliefs can become visible in scrutinizing one’s methods or way of life.

I ask myself, why am I writing this essay? I am sitting down to do it, I could be out taking a walk with my cat.

Generally speaking I find myself thinking in terms of this paradigm, and as with all tools, it has proper uses and limits, to help myself read carefully. When people argue and I am trying to make heads or tails of what is going on, it helps me to pull back and try to find a path into what either person’s priorities might be, and ask myself if I can begin to understand how life looks for them and out of what assumptions are they might be operating.

Well…it’s all up to you in the comment section now…

What say you? Let me know if this gestates any new ideas…or awareness about your wiring or helps you decode an encounter, a book or even if you got to the finish line here!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rainy Weather Predicted Didn't Arrive: Here's the Bluest Bright Day We've Had!

2010-10-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

All these photographs were taken on Thursday, October 28th. It was just one of those days. I'm feeling somewhat better, but still not suppose to be bending down...so I took my camera with me to walk the garden so I wouldn't be tempted to start plucking up weeds.

Yes, that is the Pacific Ocean peeking through the cypress trees, and the air was balmy...fragrant...temperate....so fine.

Click on the pictures if you want to see a larger version.

Today is cloudy...and the water appears less blue than yesterday. It was fun to download yesterday's pictures and realize I wasn't making up the sensation of color I remembered of yesterday.

I wonder how many rocks there are in the world named

Bird Rock? Well there's one of them...

I know, I know, this is my essay and writing blog...but I just had to share the green grass, the waters so blue, the rocks, the clouds, the sky... Thanks for visiting and come back soon...I'm working on a few things.

Here's a little story written by shell fossiled in stone...

maybe it will prompt more writing from someone, perhaps from you?

You've Got Rocks in Your Head - Dizziness and Vertigo -What Gives?

2010-10-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Putting it down as it falls... I'm only talking about typing right into this post box without quite knowing what it is I am going to share, but it is an apt image for what walking around feels like for me right now.

It's Sunday morning, almost noon now. I am moving slowly. I've had to learn a little lately about vestibular disorders. If you ever need proof that we are, as Psalm 139 proclaims, fearfully and wonderfully made, make a cursory study of the inner ear and the astounding mechanisms of balance. To have a disruption of one's orientation on this spinning planet is demanding.

As with many troubles, the cause is often hard to pin down with any certainty. One of the disturbing things I have learned this week, when I mentioned in as unwhiny a manner as possible to several folks that I was experiencing and being treated for Benign Positional Vertigo, is that many people experience BPV and are not offered the brief and non- intrusive treatment that is available for this merry-go-round.

LINKS FOR YOU

So, in case you ever are in need...here is a website that has tremendous information: Vestibular Disorders Association and in addition to learning about the trouble and the treatment, there are links, pick your country, pick your state, to trained practitioners in a variety of medical services. There is also information for practitioners of healing who want to become competent in more modalities as well as some self- help guidance for patients. The other helpful site I found is Dizziness and Balance written by Timothy C. Hain, M.D. of Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of many of the circulars used by the VDA and is clearly a leader in this field.

In my geographical area both the local hospital and a physical therapy office have people trained in the various movement vertigo treatments such as the Epley and Semont that have roughly an 80% cure rate. Both maneuvers are named after their inventors and are intended to move "ear rocks" out of the sensitive part of the ear to a less sensitive location. Both maneuvers take about 15 minutes to accomplish.

Yesterday I was talking to one of my relatives who is in her eighties who says she has suffered light headedness and vertigo for years and while her doctors have ruled out serious causes she has never heard of or been offered the simple maneuver treatments. I jumped onto the Vestibular Disorders website in her behalf and found out that in her California town there is a practitioner who is associated with a geriatric health service that does home visits to help people with vertigo and dizziness. If you need and do not find someone near you through this network, you could still learn enough of the terms to better quiz your local health services about possibly unadvertised treatment options in your area.

I feel as if I have turned my blog for today into a public service announcement, but that is sometimes the purpose of writing; nothing fancy, just a sharing of information that might be the word in need for another person. I hope my readers never need any of these specifics... but if any of you do, now you've got them.
And about being fearfully and wonderfully made, it's one of the reasons that I am trusting I will get better, healing is one of the wonders of inherent possibilities.

A Tincture of the Truth: A book review of OLD SCHOOL by Tobias Wollf

2010-10-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

Old School, a 2004 novel by Tobias Wolff is an American tale, set in the 1960’s in a boy’s college prep school that has a tradition and the ability to host distinguished authors such as Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. The students who are aspiring writers get caught up in competitions to win a private audience with the renowned visitors. Or as the unnamed student who is the narrative voice says, “We contended for this honor…”

Tobias, who teaches English and creative writing at Stanford University has written well about writing, self-consciousness, identity, social distinctions, making mistakes and outliving them and accepting fault and flaw in life; it’s a story that believes one can learn about self, others and life from story.

“How did they command such deference, English teachers? Compared to the men who taught physics or biology, what did they really know of the world? It seemed to me, and not only to me, that they knew exactly what was most worth knowing. Unlike our math and science teachers, who modestly stuck to their subjects, they tended to be polymaths. Adept as they were at dissection, they would never leave a poem or novel strewn around in pieces like some butchered frog reeking of formaldehyde. They’d stitch it back together with history and psychology, philosophy, religion, and even on occasion, science. Without pandering to your presumed desire to identitfy with the hero of the story, they made you feel that what mattered to the writer had consequence for you too.”(Page 5)

After reading the novel I read a number of on-line reviews of Old School and was surprised it was not more universally well received. I noticed a bit of a pattern; people who said they didn’t like the book were hankering after more action and plot complexities. It’s a fast paced world for the young, and if there isn’t a kinky plot on one campus, there is some serpentine cruel and tragic tale brewing in some other university.

Large plot lines can show all manner of actions and consequences, but it’s important not to underestimate the loss we risk when we give what’s going on around us too much power, and when we long for social status and measure ourselves in external realms. I liked the interior quality of Tobias Wolff’s novel.

“Say you’ve just read Faulkner’s “Barn Burning.” Like the son in the story, you’ve sensed the faults in your father’s character. Thinking about them makes you uncomfortable; left alone, you’d probably close the book and move on to other thoughts. But instead you are taken in hand by a tall, brooding man with a distinguished limp who involves you and a roomful of other boys in the consideration of what it means to be a son. The loyalty that is your duty and your worth and your problem. The goodness of loyalty and its difficulties and snares, how loyalty might also become betrayal-of the self and the world outside the circle of blood.

You’ve never had this conversation before, not with anyone…” (Page 5)

Page 5 and the narrator is already confessing to us, already owning up to his own self doubt, emotional frailty and incomplete honesty. The character knows he is deficient and he tells his misdeeds in a matter of fact tone.

While the book is about a young man who becomes a writer, later, much later, the narrator tells us that the story he has told isn’t really about how he became a writer because:

“The life that produces writing can’t be written about. It is a life carried on without the knowledge even of the writer, below the mind’s business and noise, in deep unlit shafts where phantom messengers struggle toward us, killing one another along the way; and when a few survivors break through to our attention there are received as blandly as waiters bringing more coffee.
No true account can be given of how or why you became a writer, nor is there any moment of which you can say: this is when I became a writer. It all gets cobbled together later, more or less sincerely, and after the stories have been repeated they put on the badge of memory and block all other routes of exploration. There’s something to be said for this. It’s efficient, and may even provide a homeopathic tincture of the truth.” (Pages 156-157)

The headmaster’s struggle is also a significant element in the story and it will help you to read Wolff if you know to pay attention to the character and his details early on.

“…had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he’d led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity- it’s roots sunk deep in pride, flowering in condemnation and violence against others and oneself. For years Arch had traced this vision of the evil done through intolerance of the flawed and ambiguous, but he had not taken the lesson to heart. He had given up the good in his life because a fault ran through it.” (Page 193)

Well, I don’t want to spoil the book for you. If you come across Old School it is a good read and in some ways it's a bit of an antidote to the brass and bully news stories, such as the one I wrote about in a recent post, coming out of schools across the country of late.

She came home while the Garbage Trucks Clanged

2010-10-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

If you read my last night post, you may be wondering if she came home. It was in the very early mornings hours, but the cat will not be charged with waking us because her sharp meows co-incided with the Friday morning clatter of the refuse trucks.

Only a cat could make one crazy enough to tolerate....well a picture is sometimes truly worth a thousand words...

Waiting for the cat to come on home.

2010-10-07T22:43:00.000-07:00

It's night. She likes to prowl around. Or perhaps she just likes to curl under a bush and sleep. Whatever the case, I am waiting for the cat to come home. I'd be happy for her to be free to come and go, but she can't have her own door or other creatures would wander in and it can be dangerous at night, other animals, wild cats, roam the cliffs.

Sometimes, after staying out all night, she wants to sleep all day, on my bed. Seeds tangled in her fur, she curls up and wraps a paw over her eyes. Don't bother me, I'll groom later.

Sometimes if I wait, she will come and whisk her face against the window, or press her outstretched front legs on the door latch while she stands two legs on the back of a stuffed chair at the entrance. When I can wait up no longer, I get ready for bed, her whereabouts unknown. After I've brushed my teeth and am ready to shut the lights, I check one more time at the front window. I step out in the night and call her. I am grateful she has drug me into the night, whether the sky be cloaked in fog or full of stars, I feel the night, the balm of air. I call to her again. I hear the waves crashing on the rocks below. This is the night she stays out in.

It is fortunate that we have no neighbors to hear my plaintive meow. Later, as I am falling asleep, I may hear meowing and see her silhouette through the skylight. That doesn't mean if I go out into the night that she will climb down off the Spanish tiles of the roof or come inside. But we play that game too, me barefoot in my nightie, pleading to a cat on the roof.

Like tonight, she came to the door and it was opened for her and she ran off into the forest. What a tease. I am waiting for the cat to come home, but I think I'll go brush my teeth and then check one more time...later.

Civility: treating others with dignity, compassion and respect can save lives

2010-10-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

On September 22, 2010 at Rutgers University, a young man who had apparently been pitilessly spied upon, videotaped and broadcast on the World Wide Web in private dorm room moments, left a one-sentence suicide intention note on his Facebook page and subsequently jumped to his death.

Whatever glorious potentials his life may have held for him are now ended and his parents and others near and dear must weather his loss the rest of their days.

Who are all the actors in this forlorn story? Transitions in general and developmental leaps in particular are times when many of us need help. Various aspects of coming of age, such as leaving home for the first time, living amongst strangers, intense exposure to new people with different backgrounds and values, becoming sexually aware or active, loss of a first love, school or other performance pressures, unwieldy group dynamics or being singled out for differences, can put a strain on the most well adjusted young person.

Who can calculate the added complexities or intensities of one's privacy being shared on social networks?

The danger that is created in such circumstances of vulnerability should never be underestimated. People sometimes enact in one moment of despair an irreversible end even if every other moment of their lives and the instincts of their being would stand against the threat they, in their pain, suddenly pose to themselves. For reasons perhaps forever beyond knowing, Tyler Clementi did jump from the George Washington Bridge to his death in the Hudson River. Tyler Clementi was eighteen years old.

The alleged tormentor, Dharun Ravi, is eighteen years old. As he faces his capacity for hard heartedness toward his roommate, what other depths of feeling will he reel through? He’s out of school now, but likely learning about how fast things can spin out of control and how unintended consequences can leap in a single bound from the shadows of our deeds.
Was Ravi’s alleged partner an active participant or did she just witness the travesty and do nothing? If she did just stand by, Molly Wei, may be realizing how dangerous it can be to be complacent about other’s bad ideas, and what it can cost to be passive or afraid to stand up for what is right.

And what of those individuals who tuned in and watched and wrote about the invasion of Tyler Clementi’s privacy without concern for him or the principles, ethic and laws violated? We err in commission, but there are also errors of omission.
Mr. Clementi’s family statement has been quoted in several news stories I have read:

"We understand that our family's personal tragedy presents important legal issues for the country as well as for us," said a statement from the family.

"Regardless of legal outcomes, our hope is that our family's personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity," the statement said.

We are already a land of many laws. Even if it weren’t illegal to invade another’s privacy, to do so is gross disrespect of others; and ultimately we cannot disrespect the lives of others without diminishing our own. What we need to enact is heart for others, not just for people like us, or for people we understand, but for everyone....for we are the people, that hold such truths "to be self-evident, " that is to say, to be part of natural law. Person by person, will our social institutions affirm that development of character evidenced by respect for others is of primal importance and the foundation of any real education? I hope so.

Life is fragile and civility, treating others with dignity, compassion and respect, can save lives.

I want to believe that the Clementi’s are not asking for the impossible.
~~~~

Morning Glory

2010-09-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

that's it... well...maybe one more...not as focused as I had hoped but
the wind lifted up off the waters and the blossom was quivering...
If I had a skirt so soft and gently hued I'd twirl in it for sure....round and round.

Glory...Morning Glory...

Tangled up in Time : Memory, Loss and Hope Make History -dedicated to 9/11/2001

2010-09-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

A Memory offered in Memorium of the Lives Lost and Changed by September 11, 2001

I stopped in the town of Benicia the other day. Popping in there once in a while helps remind me of the child I was before I took my first hard blow. I never lived in Benicia, but my younger brothers and I were, without our older brothers or parents, once left to stay a few nights with family friends.

Benicia, California

Until I was five years old, I had lived in the city, San Francisco,where I couldn't go anywhere without escort. Then I lived in a wonderful valley where I became well versed in the creek that marked the back of our property, the blackberry patches and apple trees in the empty lots, the uppermost climbable limbs of the buckeye trees that grew strongest at the west edge of the valley, the rocky bluffs and caves of the grassy hills between us and Muir Beach on the Pacific Ocean. I was happy in Tamalpias Valley to roam around on my own. As often as not I had a book with me. What more could a kid want?

Visiting the town of Benicia in 1962 I found no lack of nature to explore and the parents temporarily in charge of us were content to let us wander about freely. School had been out for ten days and I had just finished seventh grade. The little town was, back in the early 1960s, poor and small, already diminished from what it had been, but for me the small scale of the streets and houses made everything feel accessible. Life felt so available. I ran here and there, a miniature tourist, content to wander from the muddy flats and back up the streets of the town that hadn't yet had its hundredth birthday.

The history of Benicia is one of greatness passing through and as quickly moving on. Benicia was established by three men. The year was 1874. Dr. Robert Semple, who was a newsman from Kentucky, a Bear Flag revolter and a politician and Thomas Larkin, the first United States Consul to California, a traveler, storekeeper, a trader and man of Monterey renown. Together these two bought land from Comandante General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo who asked that the town be called Francisca after his wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. But Yerba Buena had just become San Francisco and claimed the name. Francisca could not be used. The lady's middle name would have to suffice.

After the cities of Vallejo and San Jose, Benicia was chosen to be the third capitol of California and reigned as such for 379 days, from February 11, 1853 to February 25, 1854. Around that time the founders had a falling out and went their separate ways leaving the town to create its own destiny.

Inland waterways are an opportunity for confluence. It was at Benicia in the 1860's that Pony Express Riders who had missed their connection on the Sacramento River Delta steamers could ferry across the waters blocking their trail. In the 1870's a leg of the transcontinental Central Pacific Railroad established a major railroad ferry across the Carquinez Strait from Benicia to Port Costa. Benicia became home to the largest ferries in the world, transporting entire trains across the inland waters of the San Francisco Bay.

It was in Benicia in 1901, where the world's first long-distance power line was stretched across the Carquinez Straits. When wheat was the big crop, it was stored in Benicia, but when railroad bridges replaced ferries and the early 1900 wheat crops declined, Benicia declined too, mouldering without economic purpose on the back waters of the bay.

Not until World War II, did the little town grow again when it served as a military arsenal. The war boom economy doubled the population quickly to 7,000 residents. The arsenal closed in the 1960s. Later in that decade, oil refineries were built northeast of the town's residences. Eventually, as more bridges were built connecting the bay area's various ports and towns by roads, the little town of no longer as important trains and ferries became what all towns near big cities are destined to become, a bedroom for 28,000 locals and commuters and a weekend diversion destination for city dwellers.

But that is not the town that was back in those few days of my summer vacation. Then it was just a small modest town with no great current boons, but the confluence of its waterways and flying birds, its child friendly streets, cushioned me with hospitality while hope and longing opened in me in the first bright days of the summer of my thirteenth year.

And then on the third afternoon of our visit, my father and older brothers returned unexpectedly. I blindly ran to the murky waters that day in disbelief, wanting to shake off as dream or lie what we'd been told.

Our mother had died.

Here I am tangling my history up with the early history of this little town. I don't often tell my story. I know for everyone its often a struggle to keep clear angles of perspective in this life. I make an effort to pay attention to current events and history. So I've reminded myself, with a little history lesson of a few of the events that have come and gone and shaped this town, of some perspective, and yet it's true that even at my age, as I briefly walked about the edges of Benicia the other day, what I can see best is what had once happened there to me. I can't even hear the name of the town and not remember, palpably receiving that first wrenching.

How true might this be for those who lost family and friends in New York, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon. Today is September 11, 2010, the anniversary of a great tragedy of terror and the loss of many lives. So many people heard that day or the next, how they would have to go on in their world carrying love lost; heard that they had entered a forever- changed- reality. At some level, we all did, didn't we?

I offer this tangled memory of mine in memoriam with my personal acknowledgement of how deeply the loss of loved ones is, how enduring our losses are.

I was also reminded at the water's edge the other day by these lovely little mallards sunning on a log amongst relics of Benicia's past, that there is One who does have all his little ducks in a row.

We need not grieve as ones without hope.

Springs Pour Forth...the Trees are Well Watered

2010-07-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

A Sunday walk in redwoods on a creek brought deep remembrances of childhood terrain...pilgrims, xenoi though we be....there are some places that are more deeply kindred than others and speak of home.

Children's stories often tell the the tale of babes lost in the woods...but for some of us we ~find~in the woods, learn to listen,where water sings on rocks and carves wood and stone ...

The quiet collects in shady pools...may it cling to us, follow us, back into people realms where we lay our hands to work of many kinds. I recently heard a musican suggest that music is a chance to sit quietly, to be able, under the guise of enjoyment, to think on important things in life. An artist spoke to me recently of people needing art to see things that speak inner realities, the known but unknown, the hidden but accessible if...

we want to see, listen,seek, find, be found.

He makes springs pour water into the ravines;

it flows between the mountains.

They give water to all the beasts of the field;

the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

The birds of the air nest by the waters;

they sing among the branches.

He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;

the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work.

Psalm 104:10-13 NIV

A joyous Monday to you.

~~~

Infrastructure ~ Preparedness ~ Lessons from Haiti

2010-07-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

July 11, 2010 For the past 6 months I've been reading the blog of a young woman in her twenties, Rhyan, who was working with orphaned and needy babies in Haiti before the January 12, 2010 7.0 earthquake hit 10 miles outside Port au Prince.

Rhyan asks:

"What does it even mean to be an American? To someone born into this world maybe not much. I’m sure we have moments of breakthrough where we really see how blessed we are but for the most part we don’t recognize the honor that it is. To you and to someone who hasn’t always known this life it means so much more."

She's right. I look around.
I have beans

that I soaked overnight in refrigeration

while I was sleeping in a bed.
The beans are cooking on a gas stove.

I am sitting in a chair.

My shod feet are on a flat wooden floor.

There are strawberries ripening in the garden and chard bolting.
I have pets...
I have electricity and access to multiple communication technologies.
My car sits out front
and there is gasoline in it
and the road, busy with travelers looking for summer fun,
is smooth and safe

and even when there is trouble help comes rather quickly.

Rhyan writes:

"I have had situations when I walk down the streets in Haiti and a woman tries to give me her child. “Are you American?” She asks and when I respond she thrusts her infant into my arms. She begs me to take him to this place she has heard of, this place that had so much to offer. "

This is a young American writing...she's "out there."

July 17,2010   The news stories that came out on the six month mark of the earthquake seemed to indicate that NGO's, non governmental organizations, have been able to do the most in Haiti, especially those that were already on the ground. But the needs that exist have hardly been touched. The news pictures of the tents lined in the median strip of a road really got me. Unimaginable.

What can I do? PICK a group that is doing something in Haiti that I feel I can trust and support it as able. If you know someone involved consider supporting them. Maybe you know an active church group, a specific orphanage or you might prefer a widely known group like Doctors with Borders, World Vision, World Relief or Red Cross.

We remember extra blankets in our cupboards that we are willing to send out when cold hits, but there is often no way to get them to those in need once the blizzard blows. Giving works best if it is in place before the great needs hit. The folks who gave to Shelter Box before the earthquake hit on January 12th are the ones who sent those wonderful supplies into that fray.   In January, touched by the needs of Haiti, I gave to Shelter Box. I wanted to send the tents and shovels and emergency supplies right into that mess we were all watching televised.   On the 2nd of July I received a letter stating that "my shelter box" will soon be deployed and I can go on line and via the assigned box number track where the box goes. Maybe the disaster this box will go to hasn't happened yet.

Many of the on-going troubles in Haiti exist because life was "hard" before the earthquake and now loss, need, and complications to survival are greatly multiplied.

It's all about  infrastructure...the basics that allow things to happen: roads to get where you need to go, safe water supply, sewer systems, power supply, communication grids, emergency response. These are the   basic physical and organizational structures that allow us to get on with our days in a organized society.
But we best not take all these wonders for granted...

So be prepared yourself ...and give now.

Happy Fourth of July

2010-07-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

Fine Art in Carmel and a dabbler too with Solzhenitsyn quote

2010-06-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

There is an artist in town...

I know that Blagojce had a show in Los Angeles and Chicago this year, and last December he opened a Fine Art Gallery for a time in Sun Valley, Ketchum, Idaho....but he most often in Carmel, California where he currently has some of his work on display and his easel up.

It is wonderful to stop by and see a painting progessing

and wonder how many hours into the night did he paint?

Click to enlarge...

Warning: my homage, but ~not art ~ about to appear below...but I had fun playing with the paint program on my computer to frame a quote from Russian novelist, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

"It is the artist who realizes there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven."

You can visit Blago and see more of his art on line at this link: Blagojce

It's a wonderful web page.

In Search of a Bottom Line Ethic of "Good Fences"

2010-06-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

In search of that really bottom line almost everyone could see and agree upon as an ethic of boundaries…I woke thinking of the conflicts that abound on our round spinning world.

In the quiet time, newspapers still on the ground outside the gate, computers still dark for the night, I scribbled thoughts not only of physical boundaries, heated political boundaries - the Middle East, the boundary between the United States and Mexico - but also boundaries in nature, species boundaries, genetic boundaries. I recently saw videos of experiments now common in research fields, the extraction of the genetic material of a cell or an egg of one species being replaced or combined with genetic information from another.

I thought of seeds I encounter everyday, the sesame seeds on the crust of my morning toast and the kale seeds I just planted in my garden. Seeds are astounding blueprints. Is it wise to alter the very nature of things wild? Will altered seeds, their altered plant forms alter all their neighbors? Will originals be lost?

Nation to nation neighborliness has grown so complicated, but then so can garden variety neighbor relations. If your neighbor lets tall strong thistles grow along his border, you too will have thistles and you will either have to entertain them or labor to weed and scour them out. If you poison the thistles, your poison will drift into the air and the water and the soil, yours and your neighbor’s.
At times we resort, rather than working out these dilemmas where unique boundaries and communicative cooperation are needed, to dishonoring our neighbors and spreading complaints abroad.

“Look at that neighbor, he doesn’t even clean his land of thistles,” says one man.
“Look at my neighbor, he denudes the land of all that is wild with poisons,” says another.

Of course the most important place we usually need to look is at ourselves.

An old saying is often summarized as “good fences make good neighbors…”

Exploring the origin of the phrase in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs I found the first noted reference to be from a 1640 letter written by an E. Rodgers in the “Winthrop Papers.” “…a good fence helpeth to keep peace between neighbors; but let us take heed that we make not a high stone wall, to keep us from meeting.” So while the fence is seen as vehicle to help keep peace, once clarity of boundary is defined, there is an emphasis on meeting across the fence on positive terms.

In Modern Chivalry, 1815, H.H. Brackenridge is quoted: “ I was always with him (Jefferson) in his apprehension of John Bull…Good fences restrain fence breaking beasts, and …preserve good neighborhoods.”

This version emphasizes the dangers that good fences can protect us from and that the need for boundaries and clarity is very real in this world where beasts of many species do indeed roam.

Robert Frost wrote “Mending Walls” in 1914. In this famous poem, he describes how hunters have dismantled the fences and how he and his neighbor walk the boundaries of their adjoining land together in the springtime mending stonewall fences to contain their respective cows and protect their crops and gardens. Frost knows he needs fences but as he lifts and rebalances the stones he also longs for openness, earth without a boundary. Perhaps the fence does not need to be continuous: “My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines.” Not meeting the same opinion in his neighbor, as Frost watches his neighbor lift another stone in place Frost imagines him as “an old-stone savage armed.” Frost too has armed himself. He is armed with words; judging his neighbor for fencing all his land, as less sophisticated and thinking than he is. As the neighbor continues the line of the fence he repeats what Frost now calls “his Father’s” saying, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Our father’s sayings might be a way to reference traditions, culture; even the laws that represent what G. K. Chesterton called “ the democracy of the dead.”

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." Chesterton goes on to say: "Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father." Orthodoxy, Chapt4 "The Ethics of Elfland."Page 48 Doubleday Image

Frost apparently didn’t fight with his neighbor about the fence; he went home and wrote a poem about it. In his poem, he reveals an internal dilemma. He knows that he himself, a self he perhaps imagines as having little in common with the stone-age, a self unarmed and perhaps even a self free of his and other fathers’ precepts, this self still needs some fences, some boundaries. It is a dilemma.
A dilemma, by nature presents competing needs, horned alternatives, which are perhaps best met when there are two clauses in answer. Often times people breathe both clauses but join them with a “but.”

If one says, “We need to communicate but we need to maintain strong boundaries.” is it not different from saying, “We need to communicate and we need to maintain strong boundaries.”?

We do need strong fences and neighborly kindness.

Boundaries exist; they are part of a hierarchy found in the most primal realms of life. As a family therapist, my model for boundaries in relationships came to me from the biology classes of my youth and university days.

A living cell is a working model of boundaries. A cell wall is defined as a semi-permeable discerning membrane. A healthy cell wall can let what is needed in and release that which is no longer viable. Families are healthy when they flexibly both shelter and expose vulnerable members to experience. Dynamic tensions, such as the balance between rights and responsibilities are paramount in development of competence and integrity.

Discernment in a cell is a process of maintaining equilibrium. Stable laws govern the passage of molecules through the cell barrier and the concentration of solvents in the cell interior, unless damaged by trauma, physical or chemical.

Every house has a door, and every good fence a gate; every land has laws as to how people may come and go and what rights and responsibilities we bear to each other.
As it is written in Psalm 85:10: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed [each other].
Some realities cannot be separated, and some realities should not be teased apart. Boundaries in the ideal bear these merged qualities. “…a good fence helpeth to keep peace between neighbors; but let us take heed that we make not a high stone wall, to keep us from meeting.”

Rights have Responsibilities... A Vote for Voting and Thanks

2010-06-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

One Hundred Years of Solitude ~ Part Two: The Butterflies for Anonymous

2010-05-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

In response to my review of One Hundred Years of Solitude on May 16, 2010 Anonymous said...
I could not disagree more.
Cien Años de Soledad is a beautiful, magical work, a mosaic of good and evil of humanity and life. In tropical rain season, yes there will be mud, but also beautiful plant life. Living in the tropics is a different life experience, and a different culture with its own beauties. Why not comment on the young man who is followed by a flock of butterflies wherever he goes?

I have not read Gabo's work in English translation, but I fear he has been much misunderstood here.

Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for responding with concern for a book, an author, and a sense of culture that is important to you.

You suggest that I write about the man who had butterflies follow him. That is actually a very good idea. He is very important to the story as a whole. As that man, Mauricio Babilonia, is sneaking through the Buendia family garden where he has nightly been lifting up wall tiles to gain entrance into a scorpion-ridden bathroom where he trysts with a young girl of the family, he is shot.

"A bullet lodged in his spinal column reduced him to his bed for the rest of his life. He died of old age in solitude, without a moan, without a protest, without a single moment of betrayal, tormented by memories and by the yellow butterflies, who did not give him a moment's peace, and ostracized as a chicken thief. " p. 297

In fact, it was the butterflies that alerted Fernanda, Meme's mother, as to why her daughter was bathing every night.

"Fernanda went into her bedroom by chance and there were so many butterflies that she could scarcely breath."

So she takes action and gets a guard stationed in the garden and tells him to watch for a chicken thief...knowing that it is Meme’s lover who will be shot. In this context, butterflies are not a symbol of hope, of metamorphosis; of transformation...they are in fact described as suffocating.

I suppose the one character that I liked was Ursula. It was Ursula that drug me through the book...the mother who took her money from making candy and enlarged her house to be sure there was room for all the family. Sadly though, in those rooms, the sisters cursed each other, the father abandoned his faith and went crazy pondering pseudoscience and all manner of incest and torment ensued.

The butterflies do figure prominently to the very end...for it is the man who was born of the couple in the bathroom who is the last member of the family.

As he did not know who he was, who his parents were, he unknowingly beds his sister who then dies in childbirth. He is distraught and winds up in a prostitute's bed that night, leaving his baby unattended. When he returns he sees his child is

“a dry bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the world were dragging toward their holes along the stone path of the garden..."

The last page of the book is devoted to him learning about his family from the gypsy's parchments. He recognizes his own story

"…he found the instant of his own conception among the scorpions and the yellow butterflies in a sunset bathroom where a mechanic satisfied his lust on a woman who was giving herself out of rebellion.”

He starts skipping ahead in the parchemnts, looking for the predictions of his death.

“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room…”

Then but for a few more sentences, that’s the end of the book, end of the family, end of the village…. and hence my response to this tale…four hundred pages to argue life is meaningless.

It is with that that I disagree.

Book Review : One Hundred Years of Solitude

2010-05-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa

Last year I was sent the BBC list of 100 famous books and asked how many of them I had read. BBC estimates that the majority of people will not have read more than 6 of them. While I had read 64 of them, I’d never read either of the Marquez’s titles so I put them on my list of books to read.

A blurb on the back of the Harper Perennial paperback edition quotes William Kennedy’s New York Times Book Review “…this novel is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” With that stratospheric launching of expectations I began to read.

By the time a grandmother was introduced on page 54 as she pimped a granddaughter for 20 cents, I was already thinking about not finishing the book. I know horrors happen but what will the author do with them? Why I wondered, is this book so lauded? I pressed on, searching for significance. I set Marquez down and went on to other books. I was never tempted to take this book to comfortable reading nooks. I never read it propped up in bed. I left it in the bathroom and that is how I read the entire book, in starts and fits. Deep mixed feelings stayed with me all the way to the end.

It is true that lovely language drew me in but it was I who supplied the hope that somehow this tale would turn, that some character would wake or escape from the world of insomniacs and lost memory of Marquez’s Macondo, the village where to remember the actual “demanded so much vigilance and moral strength that many succumbed to the spell of an imaginary reality, one invented by themselves, which was less practical for them but more comforting.” (Page 49)

I read hoping for some catalytic cascade of events that would be transformational and address the nagging need I was feeling, the need to purge myself of the experience of the book. But in the end, despite Marquez’s stunning language, inside the spider web of reiterations, story within story, ultimately all that happens, the plot if you will, is that this terrible incestuous gorging snake of a family, ever growing in lust and lunacy devours its own as the last man learns they were all condemned in a mystical circularity to do. There is no path in or out of Macondo. It is not a simple tale, yet is simply a tale where incest, waste, and cruelty dominate

It isn't enough to use glorious language, or ably describe despair. Without vision, without dimension for one human being to grow, for despair to be vanquished even occasionally… if it is all insanity,mud,dust and cruelty, then there is no point in even having a shelf on which to keep this book let alone suggest it as required reading or compare it to Genesis where man is indeed driven out of the Garden of Paradise to encounter thorns and mud and dust and death, but even Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, is told that while sin crouches at the door he may overcome it. In one hundred years in Macondo, it is never so.

A Tee Shirt Vendor Hero in New York

2010-05-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

Truly he is a a good model...for how often do people see things and figure it isn't their business to attend to or rationalize that someone else will take care of it, or maybe it isn't really a big deal anyway. Just walk on by...

I hope New York finds a way to thank the man who the news reports that I have read currently only identify as a Viet Nam Vet who is a Tee Shirt Vendor in Times Square.

I'd be glad to buy a tee shirt from this man.

Doing what had to be done...

2010-04-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

There is no other way than to just plunge in, past the mundane clutter and the meaningless chatter of it all and press forward feeling the seemingly blank walls for the longed for egress and proclaim the time of the eclipse to be over.

Where Do You Put Punctuation, Inside or Outside Quotation Marks?

2010-04-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

I try to know and use the rules of language as consistently as the firing of my neural synapse patterns will allow during the prime wakeful hours of any day, but I am easily led astray.

In my years of professional listening I knew that unless I internally corrected some of what I heard, I might absorb it unconsciously.

“But me and her had been planning to get married,” said a man, explaining that his intended had left town with a man she met had at a pizza parlor. (This is a fictitious example. All actual men I have known either had different problems or their losses involved no pizza parlor Romeos.)

Grammar is clearly not an appropriate focus for such an hour of difficulty, but I try to set apart no more than the mental wattage requirements of a small night-light to translate in my own mind the “hims” and “hers” into the proper personal pronouns. If I don’t, what guarantee do I have that I won’t soon forget their proper use myself?

I find I have the same problem with reading unedited material. How many creatively punctuated essays or short stories can I read without becoming uncertain as to the standard use of those helpful little marks?

Reading otherwise engaging self-published material on the Internet does expose us to many problems of English grammar and usage. I once encountered an announcement that looked something like this:

"Don’t Worry, Be Happy", is the title of my new …

That lost and lonely comma lit a flame and inspired a question in me.

THE QUESTION: In American usage, where does punctuation go, inside quotation marks or outside of them?

THE ANSWER: I knew the answer would not be completely straightforward, didn’t you? The answer is, it depends.

INSIDE: Generally speaking, periods and commas go inside the quotation marks.

“I worry I will never be happy,” the jilted man said.

I have a great recipe I’ll share with you called “Mash-Mush.”

OUTSIDE: Semicolons and colons generally go outside quotation marks.

Her favorite writing manual is “The Elements of Style”; she refers to it often.

There are two reasons she hated being called “Sweet Pea”: it is diminutive and it is cloying.

INSIDE or OUTSIDE: The question mark is of course willing to bring up extra questions. In most cases, a question mark should be inside the quotation marks.

“What do you worry about?” he asked.

However, if the question mark is not part of the actual quotation then it must go outside the quotation marks.

Have you read “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”?

No, but I did read “What Me Worry?”

This general rule also holds for exclamation points. If the exclamation mark is part of the quote, include it within the quotation marks. As it has been suggested that any author probably needs to use no more than one or two exclamation marks per lifetime, if the exclamation point is not part of a direct quote you could always solve your doubt or indecision by omitting the exclamation point altogether and then you can follow the more straightforward rule for periods and drop that little baby right inside the quotations marks.

In addition to Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style, one easy reference for questions such as this is Patricia T. O'Conner's book, Woe Is I The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English. I hope my review will help me keep these particulars straight. And if perchance it has helped you that will help me too, because chances are that I have been reading something you have written and as I said earlier, I am easily led astray.

The mere edges...whispers....who can understand?

2010-03-07T12:38:00.000-08:00

As the sun begins its daily descent where it will sink
behind the horizon of

my eye's perspective,
the golden red rays light up the California wild lilac on the path to the edge of the cliff above the waters.

I have been reading "The Book of Job," slowly, and not for the first time, but it always feels like the first time. Sunsets feel that way too. I see them...then I see them.

When reading "Job" it is important to keep track of who is speaking...his counselors really weren't helpful.

The book of Job is such poetry...majestically written.

In Chapter 26 Job is answering his friends and speaking of the Creator:

26:7 He stretches out the north over empty space;

He hangs the earth on nothing.

8 He binds up the water in His thick clouds,

Yet the clouds are not broken under it.

9 He covers the face of His throne,

And spreads His cloud over it.

10 He drew a circular horizon on the

face of the waters.

At the boundary of light and darkness.

11 The pillars of heaven tremble,

And are astonished at His rebuke.

12 He stirs up the sea with His power,

And by His understanding He breaks up the storm.

13 By His Spirit He adorned the

heavens;

His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.

14 Indeed these are the mere edges of

His ways;

and how small a whisper we hear

of Him!

But the thunder of His power

who can understand?

~~~
( NIV translation)

Dedicated to the grieving... Haiti's unhoused are about to meet the rainy season.
... May we remember to give what we can to active aid agencies ...

The Endless Potential of What Was, Is and Will Be

2010-03-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

The word that comes to mind in the town of Moss Landing is mouldering. To crumble into small particles; to turn to dust by natural decay; to lose form, or waste away, by a gradual separation of the component particles, to crumble away. But mouldering is a form of art in this coastal village....the ribs of the once seaworthy boat and the fishing nets still speak.

Yes, the horse is on the second story...it is all second story in this town...the story of what was lays about and attracts people to wander out of their city abodes and think of slower, perhaps simpler life styles that are fast fading. Or maybe it makes our lives look neat and new after wandering around the town's strategically placed relics. Some relics of the past have more to give the future than others.

A work horse of the past...

"Tradition," said G. K Chesteron back in 1908 , "means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." He goes on to say:

Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

(From Orthodoxy The Romance of Faith Chapt 4 The Ethics of Elfland p.48 Doubleday Image)

The Real Estate flyer for this crumbling shack and rain sodden roadside field made me laugh, and yet it is true...there is endless potential...

And this sign made me think of my grandmother, who often referred to God the Creator as "The Man Upstairs."

But we all know that not everything passes away slowly. We are witnesses to catcalysmic upheavel and destruction of life and property...before we can comprehend the devastation in Haiti, Chile is also struck with earthquakes, and tsunami waves. Destruction can come upon us in a flash, not just the slow mouldering that we see in old barns and aging docks.

And doubts surface, as if such events were new to earth's history, what does the Man Upstair have in mind? Is he even home? some ask, and if he is, does he care? C.S. Lewis penned this age old question succinctly in The Problem of Pain:

"If God were good. He would wish to make His creatures happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able to do what He wishes. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both."

That is the question Lewis is addressing, not his conclusion. Lewis reminds us how careful we must be using terms like "good" and "almighty" without keeping all the intrinsics of creation in mind. Nature is relentless. Man cannot permanently persuade, move, or entreat "nature." It is "Nature" that is inexorable.

The inexorable "laws of Nature" which operate in defiance of human suffering or desert, which are not turned aside by prayer, seem at first sight to furnish a strong argument against the goodness and power of God. I am going to submit that not even Omnipotence could create a society of free souls without at the same time creating a relatively independent and "inexorable: Nature. (chapter 2 Divine Omnipotence)

Well, it is a huge subject, and not one I can pretend to explore in depth. I must get back to work. But it is on my heart and I ponder it. One of my friends who survived Nargis in Burma shared some of her struggles of faith in the face of tremendous loss, but her heart is strong and as she has continued to dedicate herself to helping others, her doubts have waned.

We aren't all given to traveling to physically help on location of distant disasters, we can't all travel to where the eye of the storm has just passed, but we can reach out with what we have and give help through goods and services and the hands of those who are deployed. I noticed that two of the first active on site relief agencies mentioned in the Chilean quake news stories were the tried and true Red Cross and World Vision.
Another organization that is proactively ready to help is known as Shelter Box. They create ready- to- deliver boxes with large tents and new survival items customized for the terrain and type of needs likely to faced by homeless survivors.
I know there are many viable organizations and individuals and I thank those who are reaching out to strengthen what remains, living in faith and celebrating the endless potential...
much of which is hidden from plain view.

~~~

Hello Anonymous Commenter and Lurkers, This Post is for You

2010-02-21T10:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Anonymous,

I wonder if you are one return visitor or if several students studying English have visited.

Even though you don't have a profile, you could sign your first name to your comments and maybe even tell what country you reside in, or where you are visiting from. It would be interesting to know what your main course of study is. It would make your comments more meanful and personal for me.

I would be curious to learn how reading a blog helped you accomplish an assignment for college? Are you searching for particular subject matter? Is leaving a comment part of the assignment? Notice the spelling of the word a s s i g n m e n t. One reason I wonder if "anonymous" is one return reader is because this word is alway misspelled in the comments the same way and I get comments with almost identical wording. I should have saved all the comments I haven't published, I could have done a whole post with them.

I mean to post more of my writing here on WRITE PURPOSE but then I have second thoughts. When my children were small I did not let them play out in the street where they might be run over or stolen. That's a little bit how blog land feels. In some ways, anonymous readers are part of that feeling. So maybe if the lurkers and anonymous commenters say hello it will help me risk more in this public place. What do you think?

Words for pictures

2010-02-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

The temperature dropped suddenly, maybe the rains are over for a few days. The sky has been toying around with so much water it's been hard to tell where the sky starts and the ocean ends.
But some days there is no question as to where the waters of the earth end and the sky begins. That's how the sun set tonight. The horizon, which I have not been able to see of late, was suddenly a commanding sure line of  tourqouise in the fleeing light and the sky a softeness of blue I'd almost forgotten. The clouds, not as heavy as they've been, float with golden light from the day's final rays.

I could take a picture of it with a simple aim and a click but somehow today that feels like it would be a lazy choice.  You may have heard the popular parenting encouragement given to frustrated or tantrum bound children, "use your words." That's what I told myself tonight. "Use your words. Maybe you'll see more or differently if you'll use your words."

I mean to co-operate with myself, to listen, to let the words sail toward the inner horizon, but winter time is often a quiet time. The sky and the waters within have been defying distinctions and guidance of the stars is hidden.

Yesterday a man told me that he doesn't know what will become of all the digital images that people take anymore.  His parents' generation, he said, they had maybe one or two portraits taken and a few family shots per year. A family's photographs could all fit in one album. "Who will look at all the pictures? " he asked. Yes, and who will read all the words that are written?

Subtle sepia and framed on heavy black paper, I have some of those photographs. It is true, there are very few of them and they are precious.

Today two stray buttons made me cry. Mother of pearl, an inch and half diameter, two holes to run the thread through, they made me cry. They were my mother's, that's all it took. I'd look at the pictures. I would read her words.

Write the words, use your words. No, I'm buttoning up. I have seen my shadow. It's still the dead of winter.

Life of a Diary beyond the time of Lock and Key

2010-01-19T22:07:00.000-08:00

I was recently reminded of the value, love value, of purging one's archives, notebooks long abandoned, of petty, peevish documentation of angst, descriptions of less than fine and happy hours, to not lay undue weight upon any hapless soul who is either mentioned, or otherwise identifiable, or even simply burdened with reading through the pages to determine if recycling is safe, or if a fire or shredder is necessary.

One suggestion was to carefully clip out worthy pages and reassemble them; a non-toxic diary? Hopefully I have only a few pages here and there that need redaction and all the rest could remain as spewed forth in their little paper jackets.

Blessed and saddled with papers from relatives I love beyond their earthly days, I'm not insensitive to the possible mixed blessings of documents left behind.

I expect I should at least check in and see how big of a project that would be. Usually what happens when I attempt to cull is that I get drawn in and marvel at my brilliance and stupidity. And some of my worst moments teach me the most. It's not a bad winter project, a New Year kind of project...as long as it takes me forward.

~~~~

~If You Want to Write~ but Painters, Musicians & Artist in General -Take Note Too

2009-12-23T11:32:00.000-08:00

I am reading a wonderful book called If You Want to Write A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit written and first published in 1938 by author and teacher Brenda Ueland (1891-1985).

One of her primary premises is that to be human is to be talented because everybody who is human has something to express, and everybody is original and has something important to say if he tells the truth. "But it must be from his true self and not from the self he thinks he should be." (p. 4)

She sees creative power and imagination as very tender and sensitive and usually "drummed out of people" very early in life, and so she sets out to share and encourage the possibility of being blessed by using one's creative powers. In a foot note she writes:

"Whenever I say "writing" in this book I also mean anything that you love
and want to do or to make. It may be a six-act tragedy in blank verse, it
may be dressmaking or acrobatics, or inventing a new system of double entry
book-keeping. But you must be sure that your imagination and love
are behind it, that you are not working just from grim resolution, i.e., to make
money or impress people." (p.14)

She understands any creative work where the feelings imagination and intelligence are employed to have intrinsic value. Writing teaches the writer, stretches a person. "It has done you good." (p. 15), she wrote in her succinct way.
In addition to the much she learned over the years from her students, friends and writer contemporaries, she draws greatly upon the lives and work of Chekhov, William Blake, Vincent Van Gogh and Mozart.
Even though I'm just a few chapters into this book, I've enjoyed aspects of it so much it would feel selfish not to share of its existence and I'd like to hear from others who are already familiar with Ms. Ueland's work. I had never heard of her and just stumbled upon a used copy of the 1987 second edition from Graywolf Press. I've since noticed on Amazon that it's been republished again. It seems deigned to be a classic. I'll leave you with one of her definitions of art:

"But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love (1) and enthusiasm for something, and
in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty
in things to others, by drawing it.
1Or it can be a feeling of hate and abhorrence too. through the work of the men who have worked from love
seems to be greater than those who have worked from
hate.

Well, I'm heading back to a little music, some exercise, my reading and writing and preparing for Christmas.

Happy Holidays to All

~~~~~

Sweet December...Burma

2009-12-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

I thought I was posting about Sweet December and Burma on this blog...but I had actually opened a window over at Bread on the Water so I hope you'll drop in over there and read a bit about Burma...a land where many of the rights we take almost for granted are seriously compromised.
The Burmese people it has been my privilege to meet are some of the sweetest folks I've met...well go on and read what I posted earlier and maybe you will even have a word to share with me in response. I always welcome your comments.

Ageless as the Star and the Lily

2009-11-20T10:27:00.001-08:00

In Praise of the Friendship of Books
Quotations from the writings of Oswald Chambers
(c) 2000 JPR

“Books…friends that are ever true and ever your own.” I certainly feel this way about some books and as for Oswald Chambers, the man who penned these words, I count him, through his writing, as such a friend. His days began in the year 1874 and ended in the year 1917, years before my days began. He had not himself rushed to publish, but after his death those who had known and loved him sought to preserve and share what he’d written, gathering his lectures, lesson notes, journal meditations and letters. Numerous titles were published posthumously and some remain in print.

I had made my first acquaintance with Oswald Chambers, as many people do, through the renowned collection of short readings, My Utmost for His Highest. My husband presented the slim volume to me. I had no idea what a challenge I was being given, nor what a friend I was about to meet. Morning after morning I let this man’s words encounter me, but it was not until seven years later that I discovered other writing of Oswald Chambers on the bookshelf of one of my generous friends.

Even though our homes were distant and our visits rare, my friend insisted that I borrow his entire collection of Oswald Chambers, including the 1959 out of print Oswald Chambers, His Life and Work. Knowing that I might never have my own copy of this treasure, or be able to borrow or read this book again, as I read (1996) I created a notebook of favorite passages from this work . That notebook has been tucked away on a shelf for the past four years. Tonight, I came across it and found that it is filled with quotes of a translucent nature that beg to have the light of additional sharing shine though them.

In the pages of Oswald’s biography, when I say I encountered a friend, I mean, to borrow his words, I encountered “a living mind competently expressed.” Oswald was willing to think vulnerably and strenuously. “To think is an effort; to think rightly is a great effort, and to think as a Christian ought to think is the greatest effort of a human soul,” he wrote in a paper he titled “Holy Patience.”

Stick to the Point

Oswald wrote and lived obedient to his own maxim to “stick to the point.” Listen to the pure poetry of his internal dialogue, the economy of his self-counsel, which is found scattered throughout his journal entries. “Be definite…Never lower the ideal…I refuse to worry.”

As I glimpsed how truly thinking this way could shape and energize otherwise lost time and energy of my days, I lamented. Oh the time that I have cast away in the billowing sails of the ship named “waste and worry.” My friend was ready with another word for me, “Arise and do the next thing…never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action.”

And at what pace does one need to stride to keep in step with such a friend? “Unhasting, unresting…” How do two small words capture such dynamic balance?

“Unhasting,” it is a challenging word; laments about the fast pace of life these days are common. Oswald wrote of how he found it a blessed thing in life that “a man carries his kingdom on the inside, and that makes the outside lovely.” The cry of his heart was for the courage to rely on God’s provisions; redemption in Christ Jesus and wisdom of the Holy Spirit to avoid the world’s polarities of rationalism and common sense on the one hand or worry and fear on the other.

Oswald Chambers was known for urging others to recognize any experience that ought to be theirs but was not, and to promptly confess this before God and to put one’s self in the right attitude to make it one’s own. He thought of counseling and teaching as opportunity to experience holiness in human relationships. He prized “spontaneous moral originality.” He urged that organization must be seen “to be the scaffolding,” and that it not be confused with the body that erects it.

This focus on the essence and the essential is delightfully present in so many passages that may have been just the scribbles of some moment he claimed in quietude.

“The thing that comes to me just now is that children, love,straightforwardness, simplicity, are all very old,so old that there is no time about them. They are ageless and they partake of the order of the star and the lily. The busy-nesses, the importance, the worrying, and the doing-goodness are all recent and passing.”

And so is my friend, Mr. Chambers, “very old, so old that there is no time about” him. He too partakes of the “order of the star and the lily” and the order of friendship that transcends time and place and is passed down and along to us in books.

Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

A Common Thread

2009-10-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

I dislike having to categorize where one day's writing goes versus another. Organizing my journal feels like splitting hairs. There's just one of me, why did I sprout twenty-two labels on this blog and why do I have two blogs? As diverse as the thoughts, feelings and happenings are that prompt me to write, there's a part of me that resists categories and acknowledging divisions. I don't like politics of any kind. For years I managed to pretend politics were of no account, but there is no realm where they do not seem to penetrate. School yard, grocery, bookstore, doctor's office, church, where can one go? Yes, even my notebooks...but I long to just spin and weave with a common thread... I say...with my own embroidery in mind.

Don't get me wrong about wanting to ignore divisions, boundaries are good things. For your visual and mental convenience, I've even started a new paragraph here, hoping to protect all of us from blurry thinking. I see boundaries in nature....niches of functional richness, spacial and temporal and seasonal variations of an environment both allow and limit what grows, and who sings or crawls in any particular place.

Gretchen Johanna at Gladsome Lights leaned on George Bernard Shaw to solve her dilemma of categories : "Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life..." wrote Shaw and so G. J., acknowledging her debt, labeled her archive of posts "Crude Classifications." That helps me, remembering that many of our divisions are but "crude."

Here is an example of the ubiquitous nature of politics: I recently read an interview of a young author,editor. publisher who among other literary efforts, compiled and edited a book of birth stories. Here she is discussing feedback she's received.

Despite the fact that I didn't have a political agenda when I edited the book, I've noticed that people do have a political response to the book. I didn't have any criteria for the essays except that I wanted each essay I selected to reach the highest literary standards. I've found Christians who like the pro-natal aspect of the book but object to the fact that I've included a couple of essays by lesbians. Natural or home birth proponents have objected to the fact that I include hospital births in the book. And hospital birth proponents have argued that the book is biased towards natural birth. Whatever. About half the births in the book are hospital births and half are natural births so I don’t see how there could be a “bias” from either side. And I included essays by Christians, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and who knows what. I honestly didn't care about that part of it. I just wanted to show that whatever TYPE of birth a person experiences, and no matter what spiritual persuasion a person has, the process of giving birth is life-affirming (even when a baby dies, as happens with one of the birth stories in the book) and that process changes men and women in profound and measurable ways.

I take her at her word, she either didn't have an agenda or was not fully conscious of it, but either way she has set out on an up hill battle. I see her desire; she's looking for a common thread and she, not a mother herself, chose to edit a book focused on something that we each and all do in fact have in common, being birthed. Other of her ventures reveal that she is neither unaware of nor ignores the divisive facts of life; it's more like she's willing to head into the eye of the storm in hopes of transcending them.

But of course it is very political to write about anything primal because the body politics wants control and claim over anything of the essence. That is a very old story. It does no good to proclaim our innocence, even if sitting home sewing crib quilts for peace, the critics , representing a full spectrum of goodwill to skulduggery are likely to come and point out how one's underlying assumptions are revealed by every choice, by what one has deigned to include or exclude. It is out of our assumptions that our more specific and concrete beliefs arise. And our beliefs do shape our methods and if we are worth our salt, so to speak, then our methods ought to line up and bring about our goals. Not to just circle about here, but those goals, in a life of purpose should be a practical reflection of the most primary assumptions, the foundation of our being. As tempting as it is to try and ignore politics, there is a war going on.

Divisions themselves are full spectrum, from positive and purposeful to destructive profligate, and within one division others often occur; while occasionally reunions or offers thereof do happen.

The wires of communication are hotly lit of late with news and opinions about the the recent offer that the Roman Catholic Pope has made to priests and parishioners fleeing the Episcopal Church. While some focus on the divisions that exist between these two ( three, four ?) bodies established over the last four hundred plus years, I read one analysis that explores some of the forces in the world that these entities struggle with. Richard Fernandez describes, in Lighting of the Beacons, some of the division and competition he sees this way: "From one side, there is the religion which pretends to be a political movement — socialism/communism. From the other flank there is the political movement which pretends to be a religion — Islam. Both religions have massive amounts of money, heavy weaponry and great cultural power."

It's an impressive essay, but I won't quote more of it here because it needs to be read in its entirety to be appreciated. Fernandez receives hundreds of comments within hours of posting on his web log. Many of the comments are essays unto themselves, some quite worthy of attention.

As I said, the thoughts, feelings and happenings that prompt me to write are diverse and as tempted as I am to resist nailing things down categorically, there is a difference between splitting hairs and seeing the real fissures in the world. It's a big conversation to enter and I never do so without trepidation but I trust that ultimately, whether in the wild or the civilizations of man, not one bird is forgotten and the hairs on our heads are counted. And I aim to lean into the word found in a letter to the Romans 12:18:

In as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men

In other words, while standing amongst clear distinctions, it's also up to us to find a common thread.

~~~~~~~~

Big Thank You to Emergency First Responders

2009-10-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

~You know who you are~

* Police * Highway Patrol * Firefighters *Ambulance Drivers * Paramedics*
and The National Guard

THANK YOU

The boy who cried wolf was at least just a boy...not an adult, not a father or a mother, not a man or a woman. The boy who cried wolf was just a kid.

It's not nice to fool FIRST RESPONDERS!

I am so grateful that no one was injured chasing after what may turn out to be a publicity stunt by the Heene Family of Colorado, but I won't be surprised to hear about what other needs went unmet while a variety of folks rushed out to save a boy who wasn't floating away in a balloon and who wasn't in danger except for sorrows his father and mother may have brought down on their whole family.

What's been in danger for quite a while now are public resources. If indeed a false report was filed by the Colorado parents of little Falcon, one thing they would be guilty of is teaching their children to disrespect the public weal. It is an old fashioned word, "weal", even archaic...but it means a sound, healthy or prosperous state. It isn't only the financial cost of it though; there is another cost born when children are not taught to respect those who stand ready to risk their lives to help others.

Such a hoax is an outright waste of the love and kindness of all our fellow citizens. Twenty years ago there was a little girl, Jessica, who was trapped for 22 hours down a well . The country poured out its resources and collectively held its breath until she was safe. Thursday, my neighbor, a kindly lady in her 80's telephoned just to tell us that a little boy was lost in a balloon and she just couldn't bear to think about it without having someone else to talk to. Yes, people were eager for that little boy to be brought safely down to earth.

Waste not want not...the old saw goes. Let's not ever waste the awesome willingness of the men and women who rush to aid us when we are in peril and need... It's a hard job and it takes a toll on the hearts and minds of those who do it... So no tricks on first responders. They have my respect and thanks.

Sun After a Storm and a Writing Prompt

2009-10-16T10:25:00.001-07:00

Water is always needed on the California Coast and we finally got some. It didn't fall straight down though...it came every which way, but we aren't complaining.

Before the Tuesday storm,

and I heard it was just the leftover of a typhoon

that Japan took the full brunt of, things were mighty tidy in the courtyard.

Only little limbs fell and the redwoods and cypress and pines got scoured by the wind and look lovely clean and much greener now.

It sure helps to have sunshine after a storm. The old house absorbed water like a wick.

After the rain, new buds bloom...

I threw open windows to the portal on the sea....

This picture I took reminds me of a writing prompt in a series of workshops I participated in...

"If I were a gate..." I will have to find that poem I wrote and post it on "Writepurpose" sometime.

But maybe, while I get back to work...one of my readers will write a poem...

just take the prompt...and off you go...

IF I WERE A GATE...

Global Consternation

2009-10-11T23:42:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I begin to post and either I think better of it or I get interrupted...I found this lurking in the drafts dated August 2, 2009:

Journal entries gliding out easily at the end of the day are not as likely for me as capturing first thoughts in the morning light. Before the rumble of the day, before I've girded myself up for people and activities, to think and feel and release a page in one smooth uninhibited scroll is natural, like an uncoiling, a spring released. Not that most of those pages are ever written to share, but they open the doors of perception to use Huxley's coinage, and then sometimes other writing follows.

When it's quiet, and I am too, I can access the inner realm with fewer twists and turns than it takes on an average day. It's evening now, the sun has set in obscurity and it's relatively quiet. I'm hunting and pecking for "what it is..."

Under the duress of intense emotions, words at work in me flow out easily, but that's more as if something is leaping out of me, rather than I entering in to meet and shape and retrieve and carry out a gestalt of thought. Or if it is an entry to within, it's more like Alice falling down the rabbit's hole.

Wonderland is where we live. When it is wonderful, as it often is close to home...I wonder and marvel. But of course we also live in a great wide world and in larger realms, trouble brews and many mad hatters would pour us a cup. And it isn't just that there's no room at the table and one must move down, make room, it's that the table itself is often needed to stage a makeshift emergency room.

So it's October now, I know this thought wasn't finished; it is terrible to spell out the problem and not even lean toward something that one can do. There are so many needs out in the big world. We can pick areas and send what help we can if we can't lay our own hands directly where the pressure is needed. I know I stay pretty busy just listening to people directly in my life, being there for them as best I can, doing my job every day, taking care of our health...you know trying to cook like I know something about nutrition and taking time to exercise and then also exercising that big muscle on top of my shoulders and...well... then before I know it the sun goes down. But I can't read the paper, or the web or click past the televised sound bites and not care and not have something to do or say about what's going on...can you?

~~~~~

The Guard was Down

2009-10-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

You have seen today's headlines...dressed as a diplomatic guard a man asks to use the toilet facilities in the lobby of the World Food Center in Pakistan. Hidden behind his vulnerable sounding request was 16 pounds of explosives. As I first read the story I am thinking in normal human terms, this person has a primal need, we all have these needs, someone took pity on him. It takes me only a moment though, as touching as my first thoughts may have been, a guard had to let him pass.

People need to eat and five people who made it their job, their focus to feed displaced and hungry people in Pakistan, have been murdered. The survivors, those workers who live on and the neighbors of the compound in the surrounding residential area in Islamabad are traumatized. Whether the guard let his guard down or was part of the plan...all human relations are challenged by such treachery.

They were feeding the displaced, those who themselves have no accommodations of their own, those who are daily hungry. To the memory of those killed, in their honor, I paraphrase from the Epistle of James: Pure religion is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction...

~~~~~~~~~

Government Run Programs - Good Track Record ?

2009-09-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

The Monterey County Herald Newspaper has an OPINION page and here is a letter to the Editor and the Reading Public printed Tuesday, September 8, 2009 written by a citizen named Ron Phoebus and titled, which I believe the News Editor does, as:

" Government-run programs don't work "

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775—234 years later, it's broke! The government has also run: Social Security for 74 years—broke! Fannie Mae,71 years—broke! War on Poverty, for 45 years and more than $1 trillion wealth transfer to the "poor"—didn't work! Medicare/Medicaid, government-run for 44 years—broke! Freddie Mac after 39 years of government sponsorship—broke! Eight-hundred billion in pork filled TARP—not working. Cash for Clunkers: Here's a real winner. We (taxpayers) give ourselves $4,500 to buy a car from a factory we own (nationalization of GM and Chrysler), with money we have to borrow (from Communist China) at interest rates our great-grandchildren will still be paying. Most of the cars purchased were Japanese! What was the contribution to productivity? Now, there's another fine government program. And you want government-run health care? Go ahead, bet your life on the government's track record!
Thank you Mr. Phoebus. While Mr. Phoebus may use a few too many exclamation points, I imagine that he had to get a little excited to motivate himself to get involved in this debate. It's not that people like Mr. Phoebus are unwilling to pay for postage, pay into social security, loan money for housing, fight poverty in our midst, resuscitate the code blue economy, have safe economical cars on the road and a chicken in every pot too, but it's daunting to gather up those big numbers( how many zeros does 8 hundred billion have?) and summarize the history, all the while thinking about the hopes of each of those government program versus the actual reality. Of course he used all those exclamation points.
We do need reform in the laws and ethics of the Health Care Insurance Industry. Our hospitals need protection from misuse of services. Tort Reform...Eligibility Law, Health Care Portability...changes need to be made...but the government does not have to become the provider.
It does take getting a little excited, a little worked up to vest yourself in the public realm, to communicate or do anything about the events in the world around us. So in lieu of getting worked up myself, rather than staying focused on the work I have to do, and in an effort to thank this local stranger, I reprint his letter to the local news editor in hopes of multiplying his efforts by whatever number my modest readership represents.
~~~~~~

The Ishimwe Center a Home for Children in Rwanda

2009-08-19T14:35:00.001-07:00

There is a Rescue Home in Ruhengeri, Rwanda that continues to expand in heartfelt response to the pressing needs of children. Ishimwe Center has decided it is time to expand their vision to care for more children without abandoning the primary goal to raise all the children as a family rather than in an institutional setting.

The nanny and the gardener and some of the family

The couple that began this mission are readying themselves to leave their employment and comfortable California home to move to Rwanda to be with the children full time. I hope you will visit their website and read the story and hopes of Rwandan born Faith Shaw and her English born husband, Roger.

Faith Shaw at the Home in Ruhengeri

Little Faith & Hope are part of the family

Recently Ishimwe Center nanny, Judith, came across a child whose parents had both died and then subsequently her remaining grandparent died. The center really was already full, and everyone agreed that no more children should be brought in, but what do you do when you see the face and know the needs of someone truly bereft? The orphaned child hung around the house of a neighbor but the neighbor truly couldn't provide care. Judith became aware of this child when she visited the neighbor. She found herself returning to visit and check on the child and saw that the child was suffering from a skin disease.

As Faith and Roger wrote:

“We had told Judith not to take any more children, but
perhaps we didn't drive the point home and after all she has a soft heart and
was face to face with the suffering. She brought the child to the Rescue Home,
thinking it was a girl about 4 or 5 years old. Later she discovered it was a
boy. When she told us, we also did not want to send him away.

Furthermore, Judith told us that the boy had a sister, one year
older and now struggling alone, but she had only dared to bring one child. We
decided not to break up the remnant of the family and sent Judith back to rescue
the sister. Now both are living at the Rescue Home. The girl (left) is called
Ishimwe (what a great name! So that's what the Ishimwe Center is all about!) and
the boy is called Niyonkuru (or Christian).”

Ishimwe & Niyonkuru

Faith has traveled to Rwanda each year to stay with the children and the people hired to care for them. Roger also goes when his vacation time has allowed it. This March they were able to buy 4 acres of raw hillside land on the outskirts of Kigali. You can read more about what they hope to build and how they plan to both offset running costs and help integrate the children into the local community, by raising and growing food, and building a computer learning center, a day care center and a multi-purpose hall.

I met Faith at a fundraiser a few years ago where she had been hired as a translator. All my encounters with Faith and Roger have been a joy and I will be sorry to have my new friends physically so far away, but the joy of visits will be replaced with the joy of knowing people who are inspired and stretching themselves in love. I will continue to enjoy the energy, peace and fragrance that flow out of their purpose and commitment.

Flavia & Ruka are part of the family too.

Go check out the website of Ishimwe Center and see if it doesn't make you smile.

Thanks for visiting me. I always enjoy your questions and comments.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Classic Cars in Carmel Clunkers ? No Way.

2009-08-18T20:51:00.001-07:00

It was a little chilly out, August 13th, and I had lots of other draws on my attention, but I did snap a few of the classic cars that were driving in the Pebble Beach Tour d'Elegance. Capturing moving cars was a section in my new camera book I hadn't read yet. Why post them here on my Write Purpose Blog? Well, I'm just glad that these automobiles were not deemed clunkers!

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

This one had some trouble tracking the lane. Must have been a bit of work getting out to Big Sur and back.

This one apparently took best of show...it is a 1937 Horsch 853 Voll & Ruhrbeck sport cabriolet. It usually lives in Sparks Nevada. Can you imagine it got shipped out to the Kahleefohrnya coast!

My favorite of the parade and I didn't get the picture I wanted.

That's all folks.

~~~~~

Great Blog Alert: junkfoodscience

2009-08-08T12:01:00.001-07:00

"People also deserve the soundest facts to make informed decisions for
themselves and their loved ones, and so we can all ensure public policies and
clinical guidelines are based on sound evidence and risk analysis."

I would like to recommend a blog called junkfoodscience that I have been reading lately. It's written by Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, CCP . Above is a quote from her self introduction in which she explains why she created her blog. It is amazing what work this beautiful woman has accomplished thus far and her professional endeavor elevates the value of web logs greatly.

Of late, many of her posts have focused directly on the national health care reform debate. In addition to her own expertise she offers a wealth of links to valuable information. As she says:

As hard as some are trying to make healthcare
reform to be about political sides, it is really about human lives.
...the general public largely doesn’t understand what healthcare reform is really about...
Even sadder, experienced medical professionals have seen where we’re being led for well over a decade, but the information hasn’t reached patients and people.

The debate, especially the one in the media, is centered on emotional, intuitively-correct arguments and anecdotes, rather than careful examinations deeper than the headlines to understand the facts, economics, history, medical evidence and, most of all, the ethics of the issue.It’s uncomfortable and hard to think about things that are unpopular to question, including our own beliefs. copyright Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, CCP
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cash for Clunkers?

2009-08-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

It's not that I haven't been writing, it's that I haven't been posting here much. I have been doing a lot of reading. There is so much to pay attention to these days.

In my family it was a given that you took care of things and made them last and reused and recycled and preserved things, so the cash for clunkers program goes against the grain for me.

I saw a comment on a news article that really summed it all up for me:

I hope "Robertshaw: 8/8/2009 2:11:00 AM " doesn't mind that I share his thoughtful words with whatever few people read my blogs, because I think he has it right.

The trade-in cars are being characterized as disgusting, beat-up, rusted-out,pollution-spewing, smoke-billowing, coughing, belching pigs; running only on three out of eight cylinders; guzzling the bulk of the North American refined petroleum supply; and posing a danger to neighboring motorists owing to their utterly dilapidated state of repair, the precariousness of their baling-wire and
duct-tape fasteners, and the parts which consequently are falling off the cars and onto the road -- when, in truth, most of these so-called "clunkers that shouldn't be on the road" aren't doing too much worse than their brand new counterparts gas-mileage wise, are more solidly built, offer greater protection for their occupants, have a good deal of serviceable life left on them, and eventually provide good, used parts to others who are trying to extend the lives of THEIR cars. Not only does the so-called "cash for clunkers" program benefit only those who are able to afford to buy new cars and the dealerships which sell them, it also punishes the poor and others who are trying to practice thriftiness and good stewardship by trying to get the most life from their cars and who rely on these affordable, used parts to keep their cars running. Under this horrible program, these parts are destroyed so that no one else can benefit from them. Those lacking a car but who cannot afford a brand new one -- or who have no business buying a new car and who instead should be doing wiser things with the money -- are not able to buy any of these "clunkers" which typically have years of good life and service left on them. These now are destroyed -- again in the name of taking these "Dracula monsters on wheels" off the road. It is unwise, a crime, a waste!

Thank you again, citizen Shaw.
Our tax dollars at work?

~~~~

Touch of Beauty...for Parched Hearts

2009-07-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight I sat and read several blogs of complete strangers...I was struck with how many folks are depressed and write about it in their blogs...and so I came back to my blog and wrote this very short vignette. I know that depression is not a simple struggle and that this is a very small offering indeed, but I hope you like it.

Once there was a woman who got so very depressed she stopped taking care of her little garden and then her house and eventually even her self. The more things piled up around her, the more tired and discouraged she got and the harder it became for her to even imagine making herself some tea or clearing a path through the clutter of her own belongings. She sat in her chair and pondered, sinking deeper into a morass.

One day a child walking by her house noticed one single rose clinging to the vine near the gate and wondered where the lady was that she had often seen in the garden. There had been such lovely flowers blooming on the fence.

The next day the child picked some roses in her family's garden and approached the woman's door. She knocked. She waited listening. All was quiet. She knocked again. The woman inside could not imagine who was at her door. She didn't really care who it was. She wouldn't let anyone in.

The child knocked, very gently, one more time. Something stirred in the woman. She rose and made her way to the door. The child stood with the flowers in her fist and offered them up without a word.

The woman took the flowers. "They need water," the little girl said. She smiled and turned and skipped out of the gate.

The woman stood at the door and saw the rose vine withering on the fence. When had she last watered?

She took the flowers inside and went to find a vase. The vase was dirty, but she held it in the water and washed it carefully. Gently, she made sure the stem of each flower reached down into the water. She took the flowers to the table. The table was a clutter of papers and dirty dishes. One by one she set things away and wiped the table clean.

She set the flowers in the center and sat quietly for a moment admiring the gift of the child. Then she rose and walked out to the parched garden and watered the hardy plants that had hung on through the drought of her heart. Perhaps tomorrow, she thought, she might sit on the porch a bit. If the child passes by, she could say "thank you."

~~~~~~~

A Squeak for Voices Stolen

2009-06-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

Stolen, it's a common word in our world. Riots break out in Iran with cries of a stolen election. Is it true? Can we know? Or has our trust been stolen in the sources of news that can reach us so quickly and sometimes mislead us. Should I trust the headline that says the election was "fair and healthy"?

Identities are stolen. Innocence can be stolen, but don't let them steal your hope.

Yes, your thunder can be 'stole.'

Or your pig...."he stole a pig and away he run..." What happened to that guy or the pig? "The pig was eat and Tom was beat and Tom went howling down the street." Perhaps Anonymous wasn't telling us an actual true story in "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" but it's a believable story.

Much thieving occurs under the mighty drug of self delusion. What a classic character Tolkien created in the whispers of Gollum, "It's mine, all mine, my precious."

As Woody Guthrie sang in his Pretty Boy Floyd :

As through this life you travel, You'll meet some funny men
Some rob you with a six gun And some with a fountain pen.

I've been learning about some pen and ink "t" crossing and some "i" dotting that may line right up to spell a "thief" in my personal realm. Once I have the facts, I might squeak about it a little bit, although I suspect that pig has already been "eat." Most probably I'll arm myself with the reminder I need...or maybe I'll remind myself of the armour I need.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal." (Gospel according to Matthew 6:19)

All right, I'll work on that. I may need to steal away a little quiet from this noisy world to hear aright, but I'll work on that. And it's also good to remind myself to keep my own word true in all realms; a form of not stealing from myself. Truth is alchemy - a transformer of the common into the precious.

If someone does steal your voice, if your one vote is stolen, that's a hard thing; which is one of the reasons it's hard to read about the elections in Iran and wonder who did have a say? There are over 42 million young people in Iran. From Tehran ( APF):

"The main mobile telephone network in Iran was cut in the capital Tehran Saturday evening while popular Internet websites Facebook and YouTube also appeared to be blocked."

If the elective voice of the Iranian people was stolen, I hope they won't lose hope. Because I am able, I'm just squeaking a little here for those who may may not currently be able to squeak for themselves or may be in danger when they do. No matter where you stand, bad things can happen in the street, look at Tom and the pig. You can read the Tehran APF story here.

~~~~~~~

Why did God Invent Writers?

2009-06-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

The reader knows that the author in his memoir, The Tender Bar, is in fact going to become, not an attorney, but a writer, so it makes the conversation he records with a priest on the Amtrak stand out as a turning point for him.
"Can I tell you something?" the priest asked. "Do you know why God invented writers? Because He loves a good story. And He doesn't give a damn about words. Words are the curtain we've hung between Him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don't strain for the perfect sentence. There's no such thing. Writing is guess work. Every sentence is an educated guess, the reader's as much as yours. Think about that the next time you curl a piece of paper into your typewriter."
(p. 225 The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer 2006 Hyperion N.Y.)

Unfortunately the author also tells us a few pages later that "The inspiration I took from my talk with Father AMTRAK wore off as quickly as the scotch." ( ibid p. 226)

I am feeling something similar about reading this 416 page tome. While it's inspiring in style, and well crafted, I can't wait for this guy to get into rehab! I suppose that means the author, whose voice is quite likable, has engaged me and that there is enough insight in his narrative voice as he recounts difficult events and his frequently misplaced hope and admiration, for me to trust that he will do more than survive the bar, his doomed lusty first love and the self defeating behaviors he documents so well. He's got me concerned for him, but I'm not yet fully convinced the tale is worth recommending.

This is what being in a book group does....gets you to read books you may not have otherwise encountered and finish them before you pick up any of the others you have stacked up and ready to read.

But this little word from Father AMTRAK also caught my eye because for just a moment it made me miss my typewriter..."curl a piece of paper into a typewriter..." I can hear the ratchet sound as I roll the wheel. ~~~~~~~~~~~

Remember those who Gave on Memorial Day

2009-05-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

I read a little about Memorial Day this morning for I need to be reminded what it is really about. It isn't really the three day get away it is so tempting to make it. It isn't just a convenient day for catching up on laundry or to prepare for some young person's graduation or to sleep in. It is a day to remember and thank those who have risked and given their lives in service for our country.

It used to be called Decoration Day, first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

Here is a little of what I read on line here :

To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the "National Moment of Remembrance" resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans "To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to 'Taps."
The Moment of Remembrance is a step in the right direction to returning the meaning back to the day. What is needed is a full return to the original day of observance. Set aside one day out of the year for the nation to get together to remember, reflect and honor those who have given their all in service to their country. "

***Reading this site, I stand convicted of my inattention to this important holiday. I hope the importance of Memorial Day can be restored in our country. We owe a debt we cannot pay...we can honor those who paid with their lives and those that very personally miss them.***

From A Memorial Day Prayer by Rev. Dick Kozelka of Minnesota
"God, lift the hearts of those for whom this holiday
is not just diversion,
but painful memory and continued deprivation.
Bless those whose dear ones have died..."

~~~~~~

added MONDAY MAY 25, 2009

We have hung the flag where many passing by will see it today.

It is a bright sight in the morning foggy gray.

~~~~~~~~~

Misattributed Quotes...

2009-05-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

I recently reminded a young friend of mine that when he pops quotes of others on his Facebook page he really ought to attribute them to their author rather than just borrow them. To acknowledge sources of information is basic, but sometimes good information comes through the grapevine misattributed.

Tonight a quote was shared with me:
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything that you have."
The person sharing the quote had been told it was from Thomas Jefferson.

Remembering my admonition to my young friend, I decided to check the attribution; it didn't sound like Thomas Jefferson's language to me and the quote was memorable enough that I might drop it somewhere some day, like on my blog, and wouldn't want to be wrong about its origin.

I quickly googled my way right into numerous discussions of the various people this quote had been misattributed to, not only Thomas Jefferson, but Davy Crockett, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Who said these words? It was President Gerald Ford addressing a joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974. who said "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything that you have."
And he had said something very similar many years before as a representative to the U.S. Congress that is quoted in Stories and Gems of Wisdom by and About Politicians 1960 P.193 (source wikiquote).

When I read that Thomas Jefferson did communicate to Edward Carrington, Paris 27 May 1788,
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground." That made linguistic sense to me.

And when I read that in 1965 Ronald Reagan did say " Government is like a baby, an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." Well, I could believe this too.

If you "google" these quotes I've shared they will come up in multiple valid sources.
The moral of the story is check quotes out when someone tells you "so and so said..."
But then the moral is also, wow, these guys were kind of on the same page, weren't they?

What page is our government on now?

FLOWERS FOR MY MOTHER

2009-05-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

The memory comes, a small sepia snapshot
with black triangle corners
to hold it in the pages of
days gone by.

Then frame-by-frame a blurry film
The limbs move. The head turns.
Our eyes meet.

Her hand reaches for the flowers
that I’d found
pristinely waving in the breeze
on the mountain ridge.

She takes the bedraggled flowers
from my hot little hand
tenderly she straightens the stems
“Are these for me? You picked these for me?”
She looks again at me.

‘It’s so pretty up there, Mother, You should see it.”
Slow smooth, the curve of her mouth begins
and the little teeth peek out and she laughs.
“How far did you go? Were you at the top?”

I nod, somehow believing if only she would come and see
she would stretch the boundaries she has set for me
to forever and beyond the long blue horizon.

“Someday,” she promised. “We’ll go together.”
She fills the blue glass vase,
tucks in the shooting stars, the limp poppies,
the yellow lanterns.

There is no photograph, but in my heart,
my mother’s smile, her hand reaching toward the flowers
and my hand, empty now.

© Jeannette

Umrigar on Words to the Would- be Writer

2009-05-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

I am somewhere in the middle of reading Thrity Umrigar's Novel, The Space Between Us. I didn't pick it, and thus far I haven't figured out who in the not quite yet coalesced book group I am in did, but I find Umrigar's writing to be rich in complexity, bold in theme and tender of heart.

When I am done reading it I may want to write about the story or the applicability of the underlying themes, but I happened to flip to the back of the book and found a post-story section called "Words to the Wise Would-Be Writer...Fifteen Tips."

A journalist for many years and now a creative writing and literature professor at Case Western Reserve University, Umrigar has much to offer.

Here is her "tip" # 15 : " And finally, write for the right reasons. This is a bit of a personal superstition, I suppose. But the ability to write is a gift, a special grace. It should not be used for cynical purposes. Resist the temptation to write according to a formula or to imitate what is currently commercially successful. Write what is in your heart. Write the stories that make you proud of yourself, not embarrassed. And never lose the ability to know the difference." ( Page 16 of the "Read On " section of the Harper's Perennial PB Edition)

While it is delicate of her to suggest that her tips embody personal superstition, I don't see them that way. *See what you have ( in this case the ability to write) as a gift, resist various temptations, write what is in your heart that will be for the good and grow and hang onto your ability to know the difference.*

It's a good word for me...reminds me of the writings of a guy published back in the 1st century A.D. named James.

~~~~~~

Culture Bandits

2009-04-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Some of us are more impacted visually than others, but the visual environment effects all of us. Culture and environment are inextricably entwined. Companies that make money without care for the culture they create can only survive if we feed our nickels and dimes into their pockets.

I like the gas station in town, it's actually full service and the guys that work there are kind and helpful. What I don't like is the advertisements in the window of the mini-mart.

Full Throttle Blue Demon is apparently a COKE creation and the 2 foot by 3 foot poster ad is uninspiring to say the least. Pair that with a Skoal "Bandit" ad and you have a picture of the confused way the commercial community lauds the wrong guys. When people go out and act like demons and bandits we lament their behavior...we do don't we? Why is good light wasted on bad guys?

I say vote with your pocketbook. If all of us resist buying products that are in some way not good for us, then there will be enough of us to make a difference. The culture you impact will be your own.

Why Do We Tell Stories?

2009-04-05T12:34:00.001-07:00

Sometimes what wants to come out wants to be handwritten...here are four pages. If you click on the image it will enlarge and should be legible. Please tell me if it is not. When you finish a page, you can use your browser's back button to return to the post and then click on the next page.

~~~~~~~~

Night time Journal March 11, 2009

2009-04-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

It's March 11th, 2009 and the 32nd anniversary of our meeting each other.

It's been noisy at our little cottage. Perhaps I'm sensitive to it of late. Purposing to eat less and more carefully takes energy and is some transitory stress. I have to plan more what to eat and can't work at something else up until the moment I'm truly hungry.

I don't know why I'm not asleep, except that it's quiet now and I'm enjoying listening to the night. I didn't pick up this journal with anything particular that I need to write about. Early this evening I reviewed a number of essays that I had written back in Sebastopol, before I was ill in 2003. I see that my mind was honed and pressing to communicate. I'm glad to be well again.

Some days seem like an extended juggling act; one where the balls, once thrown, enter an orbit of unknown duration and so one presses on handling other tasks while knowing that that there are numerous balls ( and maybe a few other objects) destined toward us that will require our rapid response at some unknown point in the future...like right now, or later, or later, or now.

Mark has been reading about FDIC bank insurance being depleted. So what little money we might have, we might not have? This doesn't seem like good bedtime reading to me, it's a hefty thought to juggle...how long is it's full return orbit? I think I will juggle the full moon peeking in both sides of the skylight curtain instead. No one can ever know the future. Can we in any real way prepare? I think I will just juggle living as rightly each day now as I can. It is enough.

Ah, Mark has fallen asleep and that seems very right. I think I will join him.

Thank you for your comments...flowers for you...

2009-03-25T23:01:00.000-07:00

All these flowers bloom right above the beach in the town of Carmel. I took these pictures on Saturday. I'm very appreciative of the comments people have taken the time to share. Thank you.
I'll be posting more to read soon. If you can, visit my other blog too... breadonthewater ...there are some writings and lots of pictures. best wishes, Jeannette

Dragons at my Desk

2009-03-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

Writing groups often jump start participants with prompts. Here’s a response I wrote a few years back to the prompt “dramatize what gets in the way of your writing.”
At least it fills the “dramatic” bill…hope you enjoy it.

~~~~
Why, when I sit at my desk to write, do other tasks suddenly flood my mind with their seeming importance? Why didn’t I notice the drooping plant before I sat down? It’s a rare quiet day, a great opportunity and yet I recognize the familiar approach of the dragon of distraction. Dragons can be fought…“Today is the only day I’ve got,” I cry, as I wave my pen in the air.

I push the telephone and its temptation to the farthest edge of my desk and straighten an empty page. It was Saint Augustine who said, “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance; but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.”
For uncounted moments I hear nothing but the steady scratching of my pen.

But small dragons come quietly and wait for their advantage. One perched rather near asks seemingly innocuous questions about the unpolished and incomplete state of my novel. It’s true; my manuscript is nothing more than a very rough draft. In the increasing heat of this critic’s breath, I grow weary but I know dragons can be fought. I remember a quip from Jane Smiley, her words glitter like a small shining shield. “Every first draft is perfect because all a first draft has to do is exist…”

With another of my dragons, if not vanquished, at least thwarted for the moment, I rustle my pile of unbound leaves, feeling content with the sheer number of pages, with their simple existence. They are safe from the flaming mouth that would have set them afire. My story exists, that’s enough for now. Polishing and completion will come. Why I’ve even got a little heat of my own. I feel content. The mountain of memory within me has heated and rumbled with creative tension and flowed forth like lava sending the dragons reeling back from the molten river’s flow.

But later, when I return to walk through the cooled written landscape, when the lava is but rock and ash, I find what seemed like the weight of tons inexplicably light and airy. It is but pumice dispersed over a bewildering terrain. I see how small and inconsequential the lumps that I am strong enough to pick up at any one time appear in the grand scheme. I myself can barely define a path through the landscape of my manuscript. I again grow aware of the heavy thumping that heralds the return of dragons.

“You’ve probably missed the point,” says a small sharp-tongued dragon.

“Or lost sight of the larger picture,” says another, circling about the cooling valley of my manuscript. “And what will it matter, anyway?”

I look down at my small hands and realize what sharp stuff it is that I am handling, how it can tear at my flesh, and suddenly it seems very inadvisable to go on, barefoot as I am. Perhaps the heat of my creativity has produced nothing but dust and rubble. I know, as Andrew Jackson advised, I shouldn’t take counsel from my fear.

But I retreat from the pen. I pick up a book, For Writer’s Only by Sophy Burnham, an annotated compilation of the angst, struggles and advice of many authors. I read John’s Hersey’s comment, “To be a writer is to throw away a good deal...” Hey, if that’s the criteria, I’m well on my way. And as I laugh at myself, the struggle is over for a while; what kind of self-respecting dragon would want to hang around and pick on a writer like me? ~~~~~

The Jazz of Bailouts

2009-03-12T19:29:00.000-07:00

I try to keep up in current events, I really do. But sometimes reading the economic news tires me out. My husband attempted to rouse me from my accidental nap on the couch asking me what “heuristic” might mean in the sentence, “Jazz improvisation is a heuristic process.”
“The dictionary is on my desk.”
“But can you just remind me what heuristic means? Do you know?" he asked very nicely.
“Um, figure it out,” I said, throwing the paper to the floor.
“You're right,” he said, already in the dictionary, “heuristic implies figuring it out, or exploratory problem solving.”
“Ah," I said.
Sounds more like current economic theories than music to my ears. America is exploring what will happen if we borrow to spend our way back to financial solvency. Will it work? No body knows. It's heuristic heroics in action.

Heuristics, the word and the theories are worth study. It comes from the Greek to discover and is akin to the Old Irish for "I have found," and gives us the word "eureka," which Archimedes is said to have exclaimed when he discovered a method for determining the purity of gold. In the 1849 California Gold Rush miners often cried out “Eureka” when they found gold. A quaint town in northern California carries Eureka as its name today.

Gold mining brings us right back to speculation and it is speculation that a heuristic process uses to serve as a guide in the investigation or solution of a problem. The goal, of course, is to learn through a series of subsequent discoveries or findings. Hang onto to this premise about serial learning, it's important.

In Computer Science, heuristic can refer to using a problem-solving technique in which the most appropriate solution of several, found by alternative methods, is selected at successive stages of a program for use in the next step of the program.
Heuristic is also likened to a rule of thumb. It's a simplification or educated guess that reduces or limits the search for solutions in domains that are difficult and poorly understood. "Difficult, poorly understood," we are in the right key and scale for the economic woes.

Heuristic also implies providing aid in the solution of a problem with aid that is otherwise unjustified or incapable of justification. How do you say "bingo" in Jazz lingo?

The antonym is algorithmic; a commonsense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase the probability of solving some problem.

So our government efforts to solve the economic meltdown in America seem to fit a definition frenetically heuristic. Unlike algorithms, heuristics do not guarantee optimal, or even feasible solutions and are often used with no theoretical guarantee. Doesn't that define the economic solutions we've seen thus far fairly well?

I hope the powers that be will at least wait to observe some actual intended consequences of the $700 billion TARP and the $825 Billion Stimulus, before deciding we should borrow anymore from the future. If the first exploratory efforts don't work, how would that indicate we should print or borrow more money? And shouldn't we have voice? Maybe you'll send your elected representatives a jazzy note of your harmonic discord soon.

Plein Air ~ for Harriet ~

2009-03-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

He was late again. What was she going to do with these feelings? What would it be like to not censor myself at all, she wondered as she plucked up a soft camel hair brush off his watercolor table. She imagined how he’d scream if he saw her using it to flit the thin patina of dust off the quiet black telephone. She watched the motes drift in the golden shaft of sun pouring through the skylight. What if his myriad rebuffs, hidden in shadows and turnings, were spotlighted like one of his young voluptuous models? What if she announced them each as duly noted? Was she willing to pay the price?

There was no changing the rules he lives by, that was clear. All she’d said last week was, “ I’m concerned about our relationship.” She only wanted to open up avenues, not make the going more awkward. But within moments everything had crashed and there’d been wreckage in the streets of communion and long after the initial commotion it seemed like horns were blowing and no matter what color the lights strung above the intersection, she could get nowhere.

“If you were more secure you wouldn't even come up with these ideas,” he said. “I don’t want to hear it. An artist must be free.”

And what must an artist’s wife be, she wondered? For days afterward she had been determined to be pleasant and stay in the moment, as he loved to say. But this afternoon, watching the clock mark hours he’d promised to her, she wanted the thoughts and feelings that rumbled disconnected within her to plug into her life. She wanted the surges of power that arced though her mind to light a path for her. She wanted the parts connected to the whole.

She heard his car turn in. She looked at the thin gold watch on her wrist and the way the sun lit the yellow hair on her trim tan arm. It was almost two o’clock and he’d asked her to meet him at noon.

He came in whistling, holding out a canvas. He brought the smell of a wild field and the oils of the drying pigments with him. Unbidden she felt a rush of tenderness for him; he really had been painting.

“I tried calling you but my cell wouldn’t work. Lookie here. The light was so fantastic in the canyon as the noon sun penetrated the forest. I had to capture it. Do you like it?” He held it out at the just the right angle for her to see what he had painted. Light streamed like liquid though a fragile canopy and tenderly lit the creek in Rocky Canyon.

Color by color, stroke by stroke, it was all of a piece. There’s no point in talking about us today, she thought. He’s so pleased with himself. He’ll accuse me of making a scene. “It’s beautiful,’ she said, barely able to trust her voice. “You really capture it. Your work gets better and better.”

He smiled. “You think so?”

“So what do you want to do now?” she asked, wondering if he could hear the little edges of her words as they caught on her throat.

“Why I must clean up. And then I’m hungry,” he said. “I’m quite hungry. You know how a day of plein air piques my appetite.”

Are you Writing a Book for Me?

2009-03-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

I love to read. I read to meet other persons whose struggles and visions and response to life give strength to the day. I read to meet friends in the pages of other times and places. I read to travel where my feet may not go in this lifetime.

I long for stories that I could unabashedly hand to my daughters and say, read this, it will help you on your journey.

I read stories and look for the tangle of threads that is about to become smooth and woven, stories that shimmer with transcendence and penetrate the day’s complexities in all their shadings.

I look for books that I could gladly hand to my husband; stories that know that man and woman do share interior realities and that the trail home usually does involve a Hansel and a Gretel, bread and stones.

I love to find stories that have explored beyond the magnetic polarities, which don’t paint human faces on the enemy and yet, foible by folly reveal how we trip and fell ourselves.

And sometimes I ask myself what keeps me from writing such a story myself? Is the part of me that doesn't yet write busy learning or busy unlearning? There’s the knowledge of how truly little one knows, and the caution for the world doesn’t need more stories unless love increases. Like Hippocrates oath of old, I must first do no harm.

What I haven’t written sometimes feels larger and harder than the tender vessels in which it needs to be, in the very blood of my life, decanted.

But maybe you’re writing a book for me.