As we travel together through the holidays towards the next year, – May you have Walls for the wind And a roof for the rain, And drinks bedside the fire Laughter to cheer you And those you love near you, And all that your heart may desire ~ Celtic Blessing […]
This week’s journaling prompts are inspired by Courtney Martin’s post, Give What You Love: Creative Microphilanthropy Advice, in Good Magazine’s online news page. I enjoy the magazine because it focuses on positive news, rather than the negative stuff—a refreshing change from the mainstream media focus. Anyway, besides the great coined […]
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson What do you picture when you think of courage? I picture children and adults with serious illnesses who manage to inspire others by maintaining positive outlooks; activists for […]
Reading Purge: Rehab Diaries and interviewing author Nicole Johns last week has made me more aware of body image—a touchy subject for most of us, man or woman, boy or girl—and the many ways in which it affects us. How often I, for instance, look into a mirror and see […]
Today I’m excited and pleased to post my recent interview with Nicole Johns, author of Purge: Rehab Diaries. Nicole Johns lives in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where she teaches English. She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota and a BA in English from Penn State University. The […]
Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Día de los Muertos, Samhain — ritual celebrations of death, the end of harvest, and the transition into the cold, dark winter. The ancient Celts believed the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead to be thin and permeable this time of year, […]
This weekend I attended The Sun magazine’s annual writers’ workshop, “Into the Fire” at Esalen in Big Sur. Having been to one of these workshops four years ago, I anticipated the weekend as eagerly as a child anticipates an Oreo cookie–imagining twisting it apart, licking out the luscious filling, then […]
Fairies and fairy dust, elves and goblins, worlds with twelve suns, utopias, timeless oceans, and magic. What do these all have in common? — pictures formed in the mind, imagery, imagination. A place that exists only between your two ears. Have you ever thought about the role imagination plays in […]
Have you ever noticed how some people are able to tolerate a great deal of discomfort and pain, while others yelp or yell or complain about the slightest little things (or at least that’s how it seems to you)? Discomfort is a term that covers a wide range of emotional […]
For my eighth birthday, my mother presented me with a used, Royal typewriter and a dogeared college typing text. Though I’m sure I received many other gifts that birthday, these are the only ones I remember. I don’t think I was a particularly conscientious child — in fact I’m positive […]
Everyone has habits. Some of these habits we think of as “good” and some as “bad.” If we’ve labeled a habit as bad, it’s probably because we consider it to be unhealthy in some way, such as smoking or drinking too much. Or perhaps you think it’s a bad habit […]
I have just been reading Writer Magazine’s June 2011 interview of Gail Godwin, regarding her recently released The Making of a Writer, Volume 2: Journals, 1963-1969. Godwin’s purpose in publishing her edited journal entries is to inspire other writers by sharing her journey and growth as a writer, as well […]
