“Without the public libraries, serious writers, unfashionable serious writers like me, really wouldn’t have a chance.”
- May Sarton
Hey Jude
When John and Yoko began living together in 1968, divorce proceedings began between John and his wife Cynthia. Paul McCartney, who was very close to John and Cynthia’s son, Julian, was concerned over John’s marriage breaking up, and in support of Cynthia and Julian, wrote this song. Originally titled “Hey Julian,” it later developed to “Hey Jules,” then finally “Hey Jude,” because it was thought Jude was a stronger sounding name.
The song is merely a message to Julian, then five years old, of encouragement while his parents went through their separation and divorce. Although Julian at this young age knew what the song was about, he did not learn the facts first hand from Paul until 1987 when the two happened to run into each other at a New York hotel. This had been the first time in years that the two had an opportunity to sit down and talk with each other. Paul and Julian had a wonderful friendship and closeness as Julian grew up, and Julian recalled that there went lots of pictures of he and Paul, more so than there were on him with his father, John.
“Hey Jude” turned out to be the most successful song The Beatles ever released. It was recorded in two days at Trident Studios, London, on July 31 and August 1, 1968, using a 36-piece orchestra, and by the end of that year had sold more than five million copies.
source: I Am the Beatles
the ties that bind
Our spouses and children arrive comparatively late in our lives, and our parents leave us too early. Only our brothers and sisters are with us for the whole journey. – Jeffrey Kluger, The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us
Bill and Mary Beth - Farmington, New Mexico
Bill and Mary Beth - my precious siblings!
when?
As the drought has deepened over the summer, so has unease among Texans about what’s being done, or not being done, to cope with it.
. . . “Texans, if you look back through history, have always been able to deal with calamity, and that’s still true,” says Richard Verrone, a historian at Texas Tech in Lubbock. “But unless you see it firsthand, it’s hard to imagine the complete losses that are taking away livelihoods and hurting families not just now, but potentially for a couple of generations.”
The drought has been, in a word, hellish. Millions of trees are dying, does are abandoning fawns to save themselves, cotton yields have been halved, and Texas cattle herds are at an all-time low. Its effects may yet be felt far from Texas: The price of socks is likely to rise because of low cotton yields, and beef prices in two years may overreach the average family’s budget, economists say.
source: The Christian Science Monitor
not a hobby
Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.
— Jeanette Winterson
a compulsion – an obsession – a necessity
please don’t
feed the alligators
The Alligator
A Poem
by Henry Gibson
The Alligator is my pal
He could be your pal, too.
He will if you’ll just understand
That he’s got feelings too.
The alligator is my friend
He likes to wink and flirt
I’d rather have him as my friend
Than wear him on my shirt
The alligator ate my friend
He can eat your friend too
If only you would understand
That he needs protein too.
He loves to play and swim about
He never sings the blues
You’d like him better as a friend
Than wearing him as shoes.
Alligator! Alligator! Alligator!
He could be your friend
Could be your friend
Could be your friend
Too.
Lord, prepare me
Jessy Dixon
March 2, 1938 – September 26, 2011
charming, but . . .
People who live entirely by the fertility of their imaginations are fascinating, brilliant and often charming, but they should be sat next to at dinner parties, not lived with. – Scottie Fitzgerald, daughter of writer Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
laughter
The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
- Sabastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort, 1741 – 1794
tracking them down
The search never ends.
Thomas Culwell died (probably) in Hempstead County, Arkansas
talker’s block
No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.
Why then, is writer’s block endemic?
The reason we don’t get talker’s block is that we’re in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.
We talk poorly and then, eventually (or sometimes), we talk smart. We get better at talking precisely because we talk. We see what works and what doesn’t, and if we’re insightful, do more of what works. How can one get talker’s block after all this practice?
Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure.
Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.
source: Seth Godin’s Blog
just came to visit
Companion
by Jo McDougall
When Grief came to visit,
she hung her skirts and jackets in my closet.
She claimed the only bath.
When I protested,
she assured me it would be
only for a little while.
Then she fell in love with the house,
repapered the rooms,
laid green carpet in the den.
She’s a good listener
and plays a mean game of Bridge.
But it’s been seven years.
Once, I ordered her outright to leave.
Days later
she came back, weeping.
I’d enjoyed my mornings,
coffee for one;
my solitary sunsets,
my Tolstoy and Moliere.
I asked her in.
Like this:
Happy Birthday, Son
Making the decision to have a child is momentous.
It is to decide forever
to have your heart to
go walking around
outside your body.
- Elizabeth Stone
A Cradle Song
by W. B. Yeats
The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They are weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.
God’s laughing in heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.
I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.
only one way to read
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement.
- Doris Lessing
Like this:
technique
Ron Carlson described his writing technique as
”A spillage. Then I mop like crazy.”
Grace
attentiveness
