One of my amazing cousins has been giving me jobs to do lately for his Happiness Project. I get points for completing his tasks and, if I win, he’ll donate a hundred dollars to the charity of my choice. Because I’ve enjoyed his latest assignment so much, I thought I’d share it here. Here’s the… Read more
Inspiration
(Photos by Alana T) “Listening is an act of love.” Two weeks ago Morf Morford used those words as he told his story right before I had to get up under the lights. Although I can’t find the person he was quoting, somehow the thought calmed me when I sat shivering in my chair in the middle of… Read more
This week a writer friend named Molly Blaisdell wrote a blog post on the importance of play to her writing work. Before I read her words, I had been stuck on what to post and, honestly, stuck on whether to write all together. I was even having Negative Nellie give it up thoughts. And those thoughts felt like an… Read more
Question of the week: How do you reclaim a place with memories of sorrow? I recently read a piece by Martha Beck on how to mentally rewrite your tragedies so that you can find meaning even in the random badness that sometimes happens to us. In the case Beck describes, a woman is able to… Read more
I recently heard Neil Gaiman tell an interviewer that getting old involved doing fewer and fewer things for the first time. I came up with a cure for that kind of aging that involves two parts: 1. Do something you’ve done before in a new way. 2. Bring a kid who is still doing everything for… Read more
I once believed, like many of my big hearted friends, that I could cut all the male/female references out of God and It would resonate for me. I even thought the neutral would work better for me because He would be free of gender. A great Force. An It that was bigger than gender. Bigger than the labels… Read more
Sometimes when my reasonably fine life gets to be too much, I pull out my clarinet from its beaten case with the sides all sliced and peeling from when it faced various indignities on long ago band trips. I open the metal clasps on the side and look into that velvet-lined interior to find the… Read more
I’ve finally revised my About Page. It took most of the week to get the written ‘selfie’ into shape, so I’m cross posting it here. I don’t remember the rat’s name. I wish I did. I saw the rat terrier sometime after I’d been chased by the pig. Or maybe it was before. It was, after… Read more