Posts
Michael Phelps: 'This is the most overwhelmed I've ever felt'
I have to get in the gym every day for at least 90 minutes. It's the first thing I do. I wake up between 5:15 and 7, no alarm, just whenever I roll over. If it's 7, I'll feed the boys and get them situated, but if it's earlier, I just escape to the gym. And look, there are days that I don't want to be there. But I force myself to do it. I know it's for my mental health as much as my physical health.
If I miss a day, it's a disaster. Then I get into a negative pattern of thinking in my own head. And when that happens, I'm the only one who can stop it. And it typically doesn't stop very fast. I'll just drag it out, almost to punish myself in a way. That's what I do if I make a mistake or if I upset somebody, then I think it's always my fault and just take it all out on myself. When that happens day after day, you can put yourself in a scary situation pretty quickly. And that's been this quarantine a lot of the time.
When I was swimming, the pool was my escape. I would take all that anger and use it as motivation. But now that escape is gone. I've learned in those moments it's important to try to take a step back. Take a deep breath. Go back to square one and ask yourself: Where these emotions are coming from? Why are you so angry?
https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/29186389/michael-phelps-most-overwhelmed-ever-felt
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Michael Phelps
My Brain Loves Swimming
Personally, March, April and May were long months to get through. For obvious reasons, a lot of people were struggling to get through these months. Yet, I felt pretty off, even though I was still working out and trying to keep busy. Recently, I have been able to swim daily again with some of my teammates and I have never felt better or happier. I truly believe that this feeling is because I have my constant in life back. Without even realizing it, I had gone months without the one thing my mind subconsciously used as a getaway. Yes, I do feel physically better about myself now. However, my mental health has soared the past few weeks. Swimming has brought me back to my healthy mental state that I have been missing. By just swimming an hour or so a day, this sport is right back to carrying me through the rest of my day on a high.
Elise Devlin
https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/swimming-is-one-of-the-greatest-constants-in-life/
https://myswimpro.com/blog/2019/06/26/how-often-should-you-swim/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfnwseOgxE0
What Happens To Your Body When You Swim?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btc58JmeiR0
Philtrum
For humans and most primates, the philtrum survives only as a vestigial medial depression between the nose and upper lip. The human philtrum, bordered by ridges, also is known as the infranasal depression, but has no apparent function. That may be because most higher primates rely more on vision than on smell.
Philtrum - Wikipedia
Petrichor
Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrɪkɔːr/) is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek petra (πέτρα), "rock", or petros (πέτρος), "stone", and īchōr (ἰχώρ), the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.
Petrichor - Wikipedia
J.P. Donleavy
“The sun of Sunday morning up out of the sleepless sea from black Liverpool. Sitting on the rocks over the water with a jug of coffee. Down there along the harbor pier, trippers in bright colors. Sails moving out to sea. Young couples climbing the Balscaddoon Road to the top of Kilrock to search out grass and lie between the furze. A cold green sea breaking whitely along the granite coast. A day on which all things are born, like uncovered stars.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man
“The purpose of writing is to make your mother and father drop dead with shame.”
― J.P. Donleavy
“Revenge is what I want. Nothing but pure unadulterated revenge. But my mother brought me up to be a lady.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms: The Chronicle Of One Of The Strangest Stories Ever To Be Rumoured About Around New York
“Writing is turning life's worst moments into money.”
― J.P. Donleavy
“When I'm dead, I hope it may be said: his sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
― J.P. Donleavy
Chic Pea Broth
I love all beans but for some reason the broth from cooking chic peas is exceptional as a beverage all by itself. I use plenty of water when you cooking them in my pressure cooker. I love to add olive oil Adobo (Goya makes it) and sometimes like this week, I added extra raw garlic and oregano to the pot before pressure cooking.
Beloved Mayor Paul Gaines
Rhode Island’s first Black mayor and Newport ‘legend’ Paul Gaines dies at 88
By Sean Flynn
Daily News staff writer
Posted Jun 26, 2020 at 3:52 PM
“He was a wonderful person,” Cicilline said. “He always wanted to do the right thing. There was no funny business. He was full of integrity and a continuing influence in the community and city government.”
People who later ran for City Council and served would call Gaines for advice, he said.
“He was a mentor for many people,” Cicilline said. “It’s a tremendous loss.”
NEWPORT — Paul Gaines, the first and only Black mayor of any city in Rhode Island and beloved throughout the community, died Thursday at the age of 88.
When he became mayor of Newport in 1981, he was hailed as the first African American mayor in New England. He was a former teacher and coach at Thompson Junior High School (now middle school) and at Rogers High School, then served as a top administrator at Bridgewater State College (now university) for many years, capping a 37-year career in education.
There is a long list of community organizations and projects he was involved in during his life.
“Paul was just extraordinary,” David Wilson, a former top administrator at Bridgewater, said on Friday. “He was a giant in the history of the university — admired and respected by generations of students, alumni, faculty and staff.
Monday, June 29, 2020
Basil
My Price Rite hydroponic basil was drowning, rotting and wilting. I must've over-watered it, so I re-potted it and trimmed it. Now I hope it will thrive. Finger's crossed.
Bellman Espresso Parts & Instruction Manual
Our espresso pot was a gift to my husband over 35 years ago. We have never mastered making it. Luckily the manual is here online so we can practice making it again.
Bellman Espresso & Cappuccino Maker Parts & Instructions
https://blog.fantes.com/bellman-stovetop-manual/
Sunday, June 28, 2020
You travel in your chair
“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary
“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...”
“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Flaubert
“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.”
― Gustave Flaubert
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
The Violin
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
Honore de Balzac
Honore de Balzac
“This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.”
― Honoré de Balzac
Colm Tóibín
“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep—it can't be done abruptly.”
― Colm Tóibín
Romeo Swim at the Mill River
I just swam in the river with Romeo. Bill was on shore navigating Romeo's long leashes. I rolled the big rocks away so stepping in was less treacherous. I looked over and saw a tiny head, it was a snake swimming. I looked up and saw a rainbow--a ring high in the sky just like during a sun dog.
Rebecca West
All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin…our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
REBECCA WEST
Colm Tóibín
The world that fiction comes from is fragile. It melts into insignificance against the universe of what is clear and visible and known. It persists because it is based on the power of cadence and rhythm in language and these are mysterious and hard to defeat and keep in their place. The difference between fact and fiction is like the difference between land and water.
COLM TÓIBÍN
Annie Dillard
At its best, the sensation of #writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then — and only then — it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARD
Rebecca Solnit
Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.
REBECCA SOLNIT
Eloise: The Teetering Woman
I've met and chatted with Eloise, a sweet funny buxom elderly lady many times on my walks in Blackstone. She has a cute Scottish terrier named Churchill. She told me that she had a history of back problems. She bought and used the Teeter Totter and it really worked, it helped her back. But one day she got stuck upside down. She panicked and thought Oh no what have I done. Luckily she calmed down and was able to figure it out and get herself freed. She laughed telling me the story. My husband said Don't ever use it without letting me know.
James Baldwin
The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
-James Baldwin
Love your Life
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Tecumseh
Tecumseh
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Tecumseh
Geronimo
Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you.
Geronimo
Make Peace
I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.
Black Kettle
Although the troops have struck us, we throw it all behind and are glad to meet you in peace and friendship.
Black Kettle
Although wrongs have been done me I live in hope. ... Now we are together again to make peace.
Black Kettle
Black Kettle
We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in peace.
Black Kettle
Little Crow
We are many, many people and yet we are one. What we do today with our thinking, what we do tomorrow with our thoughts, what we do with our actions and our interactions with people determines the course of the universe itself. You are not powerless. You are not without power.
Little Crow
Spotted Tail
This war did not spring up on our land, this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land without a price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things... This war has come from robbery - from the stealing of our land.
Spotted Tail
Zitkala-Sa
The voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers.
Zitkala-Sa
Luther Standing Bear
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.
Luther Standing Bear
Black Elk
The first peace, which is the most important,
is that which comes within the souls of people
when they realize their relationship,
their oneness with the universe and all its powers,
and when they realize that at the center of the universe
dwells the Great Spirit,
and that this center is really everywhere,
it is within each of us.
Black Elk
Crazy Horse
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again.
Crazy Horse
Red Cloud
I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.
Red Cloud
Inherit
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children
Chief Seattle
Good and Evil
Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.
Sitting Bull
Chief Red Eagle
Angry people want you to see how powerful they are. Loving people want you to see how powerful you are. Chief Red Eagle
two stories
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
― Leo Tolstoy
What Planet is this?
WATCH: Participants perfect their yoga poses in bubbles to facilitate social distancing in Toronto
clear masks to help the deaf
Las Cruces mother-daughter duo make face masks with clear shields to help deaf community
“mask it or casket”
Just saw someone say “mask it or casket” and honestly, this would have been a great national PSA.
𝙺𝚗𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚊𝙿𝚑𝙳 @knittaphd
Thomas Keller
Another thing I can tell people is that they need to be patient and persistent. I'm not the most patient person. We have to learn to be patient. Be more patient with ourselves to make sure that we take the time to actually learn something. We all want to know something. Who reads the instructions anymore, right? You buy something and you just start at it right away before you've even looked at the booklet. So, patience is really important, being patient with yourself. Learning some skills, learning how to use a knife, learning how to chop vegetables, learning how to roast a chicken, learning how to season, learning the importance of all these things that are going to impact your final result. Don't think about the final result. Enjoy the process. Cooking is a process. Cooking should be fun. If you don't get it right the first time, you know, don't think you are a failure. If you do get it right the first time, you're probably lucky or you're a really good cook. Patience and persistence are really important in that process.
-Thomas Keller
interview
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Marinated Vegetable Kabobs
I'll let you know how they come out...
Update: They were the most amazing grilled veggies. I used baby bella mushrooms* (bigger is better so they don't split), spanish onions, orange cubanelle peppers, bell peppers both red and green.
I was a bit nervous about how this would work but I made a marinade of olive oil, fresh garlic, sriracha, wine vinegar, mustard, Adobo oregano, salt, pepper. It tasted like a good salad dressing.
Then I chopped veggies into wedges and dropped them into the marinade for an hour. I skewered the colorful wedges and then roasted them on the grill. The veggies tasted sweet and so good. If you make this make a lot because they are delicious leftovers.
more recipe ideas
Update: They were the most amazing grilled veggies. I used baby bella mushrooms* (bigger is better so they don't split), spanish onions, orange cubanelle peppers, bell peppers both red and green.
I was a bit nervous about how this would work but I made a marinade of olive oil, fresh garlic, sriracha, wine vinegar, mustard, Adobo oregano, salt, pepper. It tasted like a good salad dressing.
Then I chopped veggies into wedges and dropped them into the marinade for an hour. I skewered the colorful wedges and then roasted them on the grill. The veggies tasted sweet and so good. If you make this make a lot because they are delicious leftovers.
more recipe ideas
*Baby bella and white button are strains of Agaricus bisporus mushrooms that look and taste differently. ... White buttons are harvested at an immature stage, while baby bellas are harvested an intermediate stage of maturity. Portabella mushrooms are fully mature baby bellas.
Dr. Anthony Fauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci told Americans that they had a 'societal responsibility' to avoid getting infected with COVID-19 because 'if you get infected, you are part — innocently or inadvertently — of propagating the dynamic process of a pandemic'
-Reuters
@Reuters
RIP Milton Glaser
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/obituaries/milton-glaser-dead.html
Milton Glaser was born on June 26, 1929, in the Bronx, to Eugene and Eleanor (Bergman) Glaser, immigrants from Hungary. His father owned a dry-cleaning and tailoring shop; his mother was a homemaker.
When Milton was a young boy, an older cousin drew a bird on the side of a paper bag to amuse him. “Suddenly, I almost fainted with the realization that you could create life with a pencil,” he told Inc. magazine in 2014. “And at that moment, I decided that’s how I was going to spend my life.”
my dream about being white
By Lucille Clifton
hey music and
me
only white,
hair a flutter of
fall leaves
circling my perfect
line of a nose,
no lips,
no behind, hey
white me
and i’m wearing
white history
but there’s no future
in those clothes
so i take them off and
wake up
dancing.
Lucille Clifton, “my dream about being white” from Next. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
homage to my hips
By Lucille Clifton
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
Lucille Clifton, “homage to my hips” from Good Woman. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton.
Source: Good Woman (BOA Editions Ltd., 1987)
Cutting Greens
By Lucille Clifton
curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.
Lucille Clifton - 1936-2010
From Like a Beggar
The Morning After
by Ellen Bass
You stand at the counter, pouring boiling water
over the French roast, oily perfume rising in smoke.
And when I enter, you don’t look up.
You’re hurrying to pack your lunch, snapping
the lids on little plastic boxes while you call your mother
to tell her you’ll take her to the doctor.
I can’t see a trace of the little slice of heaven
we slipped into last night—a silk kimono
floating satin ponds and copper koi, stars falling
to the water. Didn’t we shoulder
our way through the cleft in the rock of the everyday
and tear up the grass in the pasture of pleasure?
If the soul isn’t a separate vessel
we carry from form to form,
but more like Aristotle’s breath of life—
the work of the body that keeps it whole—
then last night, darling, our souls were busy.
But this morning it’s like you’re wearing a bad wig,
disguised so I won’t recognize you
or maybe so you won’t know yourself
as that animal burned down
to pure desire. I don’t know
how you do it. I want to throw myself
onto the kitchen tile and bare my throat.
I want to slick back my hair
and tap-dance up the wall. I want to do it all
all over again—dive back into that brawl,
that raw and radiant free-for-all.
But you are scribbling a shopping list
because the kids are coming for the weekend
and you’re going to make your special crab cakes
that have ruined me for all other crab cakes
forever.
by Ellen Bass, Like a Beggar Copper Canyon Press © 2014
Ellen Bass
French Chocolates
by Ellen Bass
If you have your health, you have everything
is something that's said to cheer you up
when you come home early and find your lover
arched over a stranger in a scarlet thong.
Or it could be you lose your job at Happy Nails
because you can't stop smudging the stars
on those ten teeny American flags.
I don't begrudge you your extravagant vitality.
May it blossom like a cherry tree. May the petals
of your cardiovascular excellence
and the accordion polka of your lungs
sweeten the mornings of your loneliness.
But for the ill, for you with nerves that fire
like a rusted-out burner on an old barbecue,
with bones brittle as spun sugar,
with a migraine hammering like a blacksmith
in the flaming forge of your skull,
may you be spared from friends who say,
God doesn't give you more than you can handle
and ask what gifts being sick has brought you.
May they just keep their mouths shut
and give you French chocolates and daffodils
and maybe a small, original Matisse,
say, Open Window, Collioure, so you can look out
at the boats floating on the dappled pink water.
Ellen Bass French Chocolates from Like a Beggar. Copyright © 2014 by Ellen Bass, Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Never stop
Never stop telling the people in your world that they are loved and they matter. You never know which one really needs to hear it, and nobody has ever done the wrong thing letting people know they care
-FarmerNate
@ChittendenNate
Lucille Clifton
[in the inner city]
in the inner city
or
like we call it
home
we think a lot about uptown
and the silent nights
and the houses straight as
dead men
and the pastel lights
and we hang on to our no place
happy to be alive
and in the inner city
or
like we call it
home
—Lucille Clifton
From The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
BOA Editions, 2012
Article
Friday, June 26, 2020
David Milch
My teacher told me that the secret subject of any story worth telling is time, but you can never say its name.
DAVID MILCH
Tuna Salad
Canned tuna with chopped olives, onion, sriracha, red wine vinegar, pepperoncini, celery, salt, hard boiled eggs, mayo, fresh basil.
fresh basil is the secret to life!
fresh basil is the secret to life!
basil mustard onion dried cranberries + green olives
in a pepper jack cheese sandwich
on homemade bread, toasted.
basil mustard onion dried cranberries + green olives
in a pepper jack cheese sandwich
on homemade bread, toasted.
Krugman
Paul Krugman:
Americans didn’t fail the Covid-19 test; Republicans did.
So the really bad news is coming from Republican-controlled states, especially Arizona, Florida and Texas, which rushed to reopen and, while some are now pausing, haven’t reversed course. If the Northeast looks like Europe, the South is starting to look like Brazil.
I’d suggest, however, that the G.O.P.’s coronavirus denial also has roots that go beyond Trump and his electoral prospects. The key point, I’d argue, is that Covid-19 is like climate change: It isn’t the kind of menace the party wants to acknowledge.
The good news is that the politics of virus denial don’t seem to be working. Partly that’s because racism doesn’t play the way it used to: The Black Lives Matter protesters have received broad public support, despite the usual suspects’ efforts to portray them as rampaging hordes. Partly it’s because the surge in infections is becoming too obvious to deny; even Republican governors are admitting that there’s a problem, although they still don’t seem willing to act.
The bad news is that partisanship has crippled our Covid-19 response. The virus is winning, and all indications are that the next few months will be a terrifying nightmare of rampant disease and economic disruption.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-republicans.html
Chomp!
Funny thing yesterday I swam in the MILL RIVER with Romeo in Blackstone. We were playing FETCH with a stick in the water. I stuck my hand out of the water and he chomped! He thought it was the stick. Luckily no harm done.
Caroline Randall Williams
You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument
The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?
By Caroline Randall Williams
Ms. Williams is a poet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html
4AM
I woke up at 4:AM. After an hour of thinking I realized I was awake for the day. I got up and fed the animals and started reading. I went swimming and now it's nap time.
Today
“Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”
― Gautama Buddha
“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.”
― Gautama Buddha
Stories + Stand-Up
We sat down and told stories that happened to us in our childhood, to our children. They were all basically based on the truth. These stories were funny and poignant to us. They just took off. These are all stories from my life.
Howie Mandel
The success of any stand-up act comes out of life experience.
Howie Mandel
Prevent Drowning
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/nyregion/rockaway-beach-drownings.html
Children May Be At Higher Risk of Drowning This Summer
The pandemic poses new safety challenges around water. Parents should be ready.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/parenting/drowning-water-safety.html
Early Bird Swim: Sheepshead Bay
Grandma Sophie swam every morning at 7 AM, in Sheepshead Bay on Brighton beach, Brooklyn before taking the subway to work as a hostess at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan.
The name "Sheepshead Bay" applies to the neighborhood north of the bay as well as the bay itself. Sheepshead Bay was named for the sheepshead, an edible fish found in the bay's waters.
The name "Sheepshead Bay" applies to the neighborhood north of the bay as well as the bay itself. Sheepshead Bay was named for the sheepshead, an edible fish found in the bay's waters.
Rashida Tlaib
Rashida Tlaib pushes to free US inmates from coronavirus 'death sentence’
Exclusive: Democratic congresswoman tells Guardian that keeping prisoners locked up ‘is hurting the most vulnerable’
Article
skin had become a nice place to live in
Pre-lockdown, my body was a willing receptacle for pints of beer, cigarettes and sandwiches. My body had become this doughy thing I carried around with me. The only interaction I had with my physical self was the realization that my skin is brown - a fact that set me apart from my largely white social circle. It was something I came to define myself by.
Working out had become a vital lifeline to my friend, empowering him in the face of an anxiety-inducing virus. But it had also allowed me to feel embodied for the first time in my life. Exercise had stopped being a vain activity I had condescendingly convinced myself I was above. It was an enlivening reminder of the very stuff of my existence. This brown skin had become a nice place to live in.
Ammar Kalia
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/26/pandemic-epiphany-fitness-working-out
throw away the phone and get a dog
I think writing for the press helps in that way because you have deadlines and shit needs to be turned out and you can’t just say, “Where is my muse?” or “Nothing inspires me.” You learn how to “chew glass,” (as I say) meaning you write when the last thing you want to do is write. Believe me. I procrastinate like the best of them, but I’ve never been late with a story and when I wrote my book, I treated each chapter like an article that needed to be finished by the end a month. I paced myself that way so it wouldn’t seem too daunting. “I just have to write twelve magazine pieces,” I told myself, “No problem. I’ve done this before.” My twelve-chapter book was finished in a year. Glass got chomped.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
I took a writing class once and the teacher wrote this on the board. “If you are a writer and you do not write, then you are not a writer.” It was logic stripped down to its bare essence, and it stuck with me. Another writer once told me to throw away my phone and get a dog or cat. I didn’t throw away the phone, but I do have a dog now, and he’s the best writing partner you can imagine. He’s there when you crank. He laughs at my jokes. He’s there to take walks with when you need a break. He doesn’t judge, well he does, but that’s when I’m looking at the phone.
What’s your advice to new writers?
I know it’s easier said than done, but try to find a profession that helps you write in some way. It could be for a medical manual or a click bait news aggregator. It could be just copy writing whatever. Writing is muscle work and you need to be doing it often, not just as a secret hobby at night on your own.
https://advicetowriters.com/interviews/john-von-sothen
Jhumpa Lahiri
I say to my students: in a short story every word, every phrase has to play a role, otherwise it has to go away.
JHUMPA LAHIRI
Walter Mosley
It doesn't matter what time of day you work, but you have to work every day because creation, like life, is always slipping away from you. You must write every day, but there's no time limit on how long you have to write. One day you might read over what you've done and think about it. You pick up the pencil or turn on the computer, but no new words come. That's fine. Sometimes you can't go further. Correct a misspelling, reread a perplexing paragraph, and then let it go. You have re-entered the dream of the work, and that's enough to keep the story alive for another 24 hours. The next day you might write for hours; there's no way to tell. The goal is not a number of words or hours spent writing. All you need to do is to keep your heart and mind open to the work.
WALTER MOSLEY
The Mill River
The Mill River flows from Hopedale Massachusetts, near Bancroft Memorial Library, through a few towns and villages all the way into Harris Pond in Blackstone MA.
Body Clock
At 7 every morning, she meets an 89-year-old friend to go walking. That helps her get up, because she doesn’t want to let him down. Then she goes to work.
“Routine is so important for me,” she says. “It’s all about keeping a steady rhythm in my day.
“I’m like the most boring person alive now,” she jokes. “I try not to mess with my body clock because it will mess up my whole life.”
Article
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
My friend Teddi dropped off two slices of her homemade strawberry rhubarb pie! So delicious.
Magenta celery!
Her recipe:
Magenta celery!
Her recipe:
https://www.thekitchn.com/strawberry-rhubarb-pie-recipe-23010122
Last Night
Last night a couple was fighting at 134 Rathbun. "We already lost one couple to domestic violence in the neighborhood, I'm calling!" I said to my husband. Dispatcher Roy took my call. There must've been other calls because five officers showed up. I was relieved. All of the tenants were out on the sidewalk. I was only sad that all but one officer had a mask on. The others had light blue masks on their chests dangling from their badges.
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Thursday, June 25, 2020
A Killer of American Citizens
At this point, how do we not label [X] a killer of American citizens by negligence, ignorance and incompetence?
Daryln Brewer Hoffstot
On a Pennsylvania Farm, ‘Nature Is Not Just Carrying On’
Quarantine in the country means fresh air and space, but a writer’s sense of good fortune is darkened by the state of nature. “What I’m observing is unsettling,” she says.
My hope is that when the pandemic releases its grip, when the world speeds up again and we return to work and school, when there’s less time to watch birds and weed a victory garden, that we remember what Covid-19 has taught us: that our health and our planet’s health have never been more intertwined — and to take care of the planet is to take care of ourselves.
Article
Ms. Hoffstot is a freelance writer living on a farm in western Pennsylvania.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
A Discovery
I had a teacher in art school who said something about the only works he really enjoyed seeing or found much in were works where he had a sense that a discovery was made in the course of making this object. I like to hold to that as my marching orders.
Martin Mull
Most Dangerous Man
“Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” is scheduled to be published by Simon & Schuster on July 28.
Book
complicit in a bad policy
Birx Privately Urges Guvs To Ramp Up Testing As Trump Attempts To Muzzle It
TPM Article Topics
I don’t disagree w/what you’re saying but [I] can just see where this is headed. On the very day that Fauci is telling us that they’re going to expand more testing comes a report that the Feds are withdrawing funding for testing sites in TX, a state with one of the bigger outbreaks we’ve had. Fauci is widely respected and he could be saying, ‘I think we need to keep funding for the TX sites and expand it to many other states.’ I’m sure he does so behind the scenes, but as we know, it’s just [in] one ear out the other. This WH uses him the way the Bush folks used Colin Powell during the Iraq War. Decent guy, but was basically used for his political value and ignored for his advice. That made him complicit in a bad policy. Same thing for Fauci here.
-khyber900
twenty-six little marks
“(I)n reading . . . stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance to do in ordinary life. It's amazing that those twenty-six little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that. Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely.”
― Natalie Babbitt
Dying
“But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
Ownership
“The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
A Wheel
“Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt
“Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
Last Night
Last night we took Romeo for a swim in the Mill River and I jumped in with him. There was a swan family, mom pop and their 7 dwarfs swimming on the other side of the river.
The male swan, called the cob, helps the female, known as a pen, to look after their babies, called cygnets until they are a year old. The young don’t spend more than one day in the nest once they hatch. If the pen is still brooding eggs, the cob will take care of any cygnets that have already hatched, leading them directly to the water. Though they can swim from birth, cygnets may sometimes ride on the backs of their parents or take shelter under their wings until they are old enough to strike out on their own.
Summer Food
I'm pressure cooking a pound kidney beans again. This is the third time this week after a hiatus from the bean for about three months. They are delicious with my homemade coleslaw. Cold slaw! It cools me off to eat a bowl on these hot summer days. My version of ice cream, coleslaw with kidney beans sprinkled on top.
A Question
I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.
TONI MORRISON
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Iced Tea + Bat Cave
My favorite thing to do after a swim is eat my lunch and drink black tea (Yorkshire tea) sweetened black cherry berry herb tea (Celestial Seasonings) sweetened with apple cider and then ICED. But if I have too much like I did yesterday I have a light sleep. THE CURE is a nap in the air conditioned darkened bat cave. It works.
I have been reading about a guy who does ice swimming. Brrrr. I figure if he can do that, I can pretend the HOT POOL is cold!
I have been reading about a guy who does ice swimming. Brrrr. I figure if he can do that, I can pretend the HOT POOL is cold!
James Baldwin
“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
-James Baldwin
even by a millimeter
“You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
― James Baldwin
blessing or a test
“Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That’s all you need to know in this life…just the certainty that God’s got His eye on you, that He knows what you are made of, what you need to grow on. Why,questioning’s a sin, it’s pointless. He will show you your path in His own good time. And long as I remember that, I’m fine.”
― Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
Dorothy Allison
“Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”
― Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
Love
"Love is just about the best thing we've got that don't cost money or make you sick to your stomach."
BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA, by Dorothy Allison
devils, witches, goblins,
“Children have no use for psychology. They detest sociology. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish allusions.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer
We all play chess with Fate
“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Storyteller
“A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind. ”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer
the chasm
“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
“When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer
a paralyzing emotion
“Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever."
[Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]”
― Toni Morrison
empower somebody else
“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to “I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
― Toni Morrison . This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
― Toni Morrison
Make up a story
“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.”
― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993
The Pieces
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved
Toni Morrison
Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, ‘I love you.’
- Toni Morrison, Jazz
Joy of Swimming
She gave me a basic, common-sense formula to use in future workouts: "Decide on the number of laps you're going to do, and then divide your workout into thirds. The first third is a warm-up—do those laps at whatever pace feels comfortable. For the second third, do intervals: Push yourself—go as fast as you can for a lap, and then give yourself 20 seconds of rest. For the last third, mix it up. Use a kickboard for a couple of laps to strengthen your legs, or put on fins, which increase your speed dramatically. You might try practicing a new stroke or working your arms by using a pull buoy [the foam gizmo that swimmers put between their legs]."
I was afraid that once I entered the world of intervals and pull buoys, I'd lose the dreamlike, otherworldly feeling I so treasured about my water time. But then I spoke to Phillip Whitten, author of The Complete Book of Swimming, and he set my mind at ease.
"Compared to running or aerobic classes, swimming is much, much better at building upper-body strength," he said. "You're pushing against something; your body encounters resistance in the form of the water." He echoed St. Claire's imprecations against those who believe swimming can't help you lose weight, adding that it "has all of the cardiovascular benefits of running or cycling without the pounding and the injuries." I nodded politely as he enumerated the sport's many benefits. But then he got my attention. He paused before articulating a final thought, "It's almost a spiritual thing: Once you get into that rhythm, you become part of the water. It's a completely relaxing, cleansing experience. You get into this zone. It's hard to describe—you're not thrashing against it, and it feels like you can go on forever."
My feelings exactly.
Anne Glusker, a former Washington Post editor, is a writer living–and swimming–in Takoma Park, Maryland.
article
Our Government
flouting the law to turn away minors in desperate need of protection.
By Maria Woltjen
Ms. Woltjen is the executive director and founder of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
Our government is returning children targeted by gangs right back to their tormentors, abused children to their abusers. I’ve worked with unaccompanied children for 16 years. It takes time to unravel these children’s stories, to figure out what, if anything they have to return to.
During the pandemic, we’ve all been required to accept significant limits on our day-to-day life to protect ourselves, to protect our communities. But that’s not a reason to turn away children, especially children desperately in need of protection.
As was recently pointed out by public health experts, there are steps we can take to reduce the health risks for immigrant children who arrive at the border on their own, while protecting Americans. Shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement are nearly empty — there is plenty of room to quarantine children for 14 days.
The rot starts at the top.
America Is Too Broken to Fight the Coronavirus
No other developed country is doing so badly.
By Michelle Goldberg
86,400 Seconds
“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say thank you. ”
― William Arthur Ward
Transform
“Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.”
― William Arthur Ward
Learn, Grow, Change
“The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of life is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.”
― William Arthur Ward
Possibilities
“A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.”
― William Arthur Ward
Inspires
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
― William Arthur Ward
Adjust
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward
God sitting
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
Swami Vivekananda
Some Value
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
Swami Vivekananda
Gymnasium
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
Swami Vivekananda
Thoughts
We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
Swami Vivekananda
Instinct or Inspiration
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates
Infect the Soul
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Socrates
Socrates
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
Socrates
Consequence
“Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays
writing my way back
“I buried the girl I had been because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. She is still small and scared and ashamed, and perhaps I am writing my way back to her, trying to tell her everything she needs to hear.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Acknowledge your Privilege
“You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
You Find Books
“I learned a long time ago that life introduces young people to situations they are in no way prepared for, even good girls, lucky girls who want for nothing. Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
Sweltering Summer in Siberia
Article
Temperature departures from average projected during the next three days, showing extreme temperatures in Siberia and parts of Canada.
By Andrew Freedman
June 21
A northeastern Siberian town is likely to have set a record for the highest temperature documented in the Arctic Circle, with a reading of 100.4 degrees (38 Celsius) recorded Saturday in Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle and about 3,000 miles east of Moscow. Records at that location have been kept since 1885.
If verified, this would be the northernmost 100-degree reading ever observed, and the highest temperature on record in the Arctic, a region that is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe.
Gov Gina: do the right thing
It’s our shared responsibility to do the right thing to keep everyone around us safe. We’re all in this together, and I want you to take pride in knowing that Rhode Island is leading the pack in fighting this virus. If you do the work of keeping social distance, wearing a mask, and washing your hands, then you’re doing your part to protect Rhode Island.
Whenever I am walking my dog in Blackstone Massachusetts, (I live on the state line) I have not seen one person wearing a mask (in 3 months).
Whenever I walk my dog in Woonsocket RI, nearly everyone has a mask even the homeless guys and people driving alone in their cars.
Two States. Two points of view. Now magnify that times fifty states in the union and you understand why our country is in a messaging crisis during this pandemic.
Soul of the World
My songs seem to be resistant to fixed, inflexible points of view. They have, as you say, a concern for common, non-hierarchical suffering. They are not in the business of saving the world; rather they are in the business of saving the soul of the world.
I have very little control over what songs I write. They are constructed, incrementally, in the smallest of ways, the greater meaning revealing itself after the fact. They are often slippery, amorphous things, with unclear trajectories — position-free attempts at understanding the mysteries of the heart.
-Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files,Issue #102 / June 2020
Monday, June 22, 2020
Naomi Campbell
It’s a good thing to be able to look at yourself in that mirror, no running or rushing about — just me, myself and I. At the end of the day, you have got to be able to sit with yourself in solitude, or you aren’t alive.”
-Naomi Campbell
Caleb Daniloff
No longer do I run from my demons, but run with them. We pace each other, the past and me. And some days, I go faster.
-Caleb Daniloff, Running Ransom Road: Confronting the Past One Marathon at a Time - Prologue: Longfellow Bridge Loop, Boston, Mass.
Full Buck Moon July 5th
The next full Moon will occur on Sunday, July 5, 2020, at 12:44AM ET, and is known as the Full Buck Moon. It is also known as the Thunder Moon, Hay Moon, or the Wort Moon.
Swimming in 85 Degree Water
I swam in a hot YMCA pool this morning. It was 85 degrees, a bit soupy for laps but it was still great to swim. I tried to work on my mental powers and convince myself that it was cold water. I sipped cold water and improvised a few swim strokes to make it through.
Willa Cather
Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.
WILLA CATHER
Happy Birthday Joseph Papp
Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival (now called Shakespeare in the Park) in 1954, with the aim of making Shakespeare's works accessible to the public. In 1957, he was granted the use of Central Park for free productions of Shakespeare's plays. These Shakespeare in the Park productions continue after his death at the open-air Delacorte Theatre every summer in Central Park.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Papp
The Corrupt and Evil
The [CORRUPT+EVIL] administration has yet to distribute nearly one-third of the funds provided by Congress for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, leading Senate Democrats say.Article
Dream
I dreamed I was back stage at the police department and it literally was back stage. There was a props department. They were dressing up live models and making bloody corpses out of plastic for reenactment scenes so the public could grieve local events in the news. I told the actors, you are doing important work, this is the true purpose of theater, to grieve.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Lachlan Brown
Why you need to stop feeling responsible for other people’s feelings
Article
by Lachlan Brown
letting the corpse drive itself
We’re being terrorized by our own president. It’s like letting the corpse drive itself to the morgue.
-Skidoo@skidoorunner (on twitter)
Romeo Swims
We took Romeo swimming tonight in the Mill river behind Harris Pond at 6 PM. It was 92 degrees and sunny. We put him in his orange doggie life jacket and attached the extra long leash. He needs both of these tools because otherwise he sinks a little bit and wanders off. I jumped in and swam with him. It was fabulous. We played fetch the stick and he loved it. He gulped a lot of water. Soaking wet he looked shiny and muscular like black beauty. We dried him off with a huge towel and then walked around the neighborhood so he could pee. We ran into 3 other friends Deb, Steve and Celeste walking their dogs and Peter who gave me a stack of art books. A beautiful day.
Saeed Jones
Whose Grief? Our Grief
For Saeed Jones, generations collapse into seconds during an American week of chaos and sorrow.
By Saeed Jones June 5, 2020
Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Maureen Dowd
"I grew up in the shadow of two powerful patriarchies, the Catholic Church and the police. Both institutions attracted an element of warped, sadistic people. Instead of rooting out those dark forces, the institutions protected them, moving bad priests to another parish and bad cops to another precinct."
-Maureen Dowd
Good Cop Bad Cop, Father's Day
Seasonal Mood Cycle
Today I feel better now that Spring is officially behind us. Spring is a BEAR for me emotionally every year since forever.
The Summer + Winter solstices are the beginning of my transmit-mode (fun, optimism, high physical energy mode) good for cleaning, reading writing baking cooking swimming.
The Fall and Spring Equinoxes are the beginning of the dreaded receive-mode (anxiety, overwhelm and + depressive), yet good for painting, reading writing, not cleaning!
Eating more happens in transmit-mode because everything tastes so good with heightened sensory, and energy output constant.
Receive-mode used to be a near total loss of appetite which did not help my mental state.
Luckily swimming is the great equalizer giving me appetite and taming appetite to some degree. I still need to work at not over eating.
Jeckyl Hyde Sonehenge and Analemma
My imaginary grad school thesis:
June Solstice (Summer Solstice) is on Saturday, June 20, 2020 at 5:43 pm in Woonsocket. In terms of daylight, this day is 6 hours, 8 minutes longer than on December Solstice. In most locations north of Equator, the longest day of the year is around this date.
Earliest sunrise is on June 14. Latest sunset is on June 26 or June 27.
source: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@5225809
****
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma
Where one Hears the Rain
"For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle. A page of good prose has the power to give grief a universality that lends it a youthful beauty. A page of good prose has the power to make us laugh. A page of good prose it seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably."
― John Cheever, John Cheever: A Biography
By Scott Donaldson
Salvation
“Literature has been our salvation, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.”
― John Cheever
The Need
“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.”
― John Cheever
A Reader
“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”
― John Cheever
Natalie Goldberg
The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
NATALIE GOLDBERG
Solitude
“. . . solitude, which is held to be cause of eccentricity, in fact imposes excessive normality, and least in public . . . [p. 7]”
― Shirley Hazzard, The Bay of Noon
Life
“At first, there is something you expect of life. Later, there is what life expects of you. By the time you realize these are the same, it can be too late for expectations. What we are being, not what we are to be. They are the same thing.”
― Shirley Hazzard
Shirley Hazzard
It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums to get rid of.
SHIRLEY HAZZARD
Philip Roth
My job isn’t to be enraged. My job is what Chekhov said the job of an artist was, which is, “the proper presentation of the problem.” The job of the writer is not to provide the solution to a problem. That’s the obligation of a legislator, a leader, a crusader, a revolutionary, a warrior, and so on. That’s not the goal or aim of the writer. You aren’t selling, and you’re not inviting condemnation. You’re inviting understanding.
PHILIP ROTH
Barbara Kingsolver
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Art Acevedo: Hang on to Hope
“Policing, as imperfect as it is today, it is absolutely ages better than it was 34 years ago, but we’ve still got work to do,” Acevedo told the Guardian this week. “We have to look at the court system, we have to look at the prosecutors, we have to look at the prison system, we have to look at probation, parole, at the entire criminal justice system.”
“Being the target of discrimination as a child and even as a member of the California highway patrol, I felt it was important to be out there and mourn the loss of George Floyd with our community,” he told the Guardian.
“I’m the leader of the department and so if they’re angry with our department I’d rather they vent with me than at my young officers who had nothing to do with what happened in Minnesota. Then that venting turned into mourning, and mourning together.”
Article
Education Project
This whole pandemic is a demonstration of education or lack of it. Plastic wrap over a supermarket touch pad is not helping anyone. You need to wipe it down after each use. Sanitizing a kick board after a swimmer uses it in a chlorinated pool is meaningless. I understand that this is a huge education project with many conflicting messages from state to state and person to person. If we can't get good information how are we going to teach people how to protect themselves.
We have plenty of good information but it's more complicated than just information. It's time and rational thinking and having a picture of what's going on. I guess that's the definition of education.
We have plenty of good information but it's more complicated than just information. It's time and rational thinking and having a picture of what's going on. I guess that's the definition of education.
Howard Means
Splash! by Howard Means – a refreshing dip into the history of swimming
According to Plato: ‘A man is not learned until he can read, write, and swim.’
So begins this fascinating history of how, where and why humans swim. It is perfect reading for those missing a splash-about during the lockdown. Howard Means, a lifelong swimmer and coach, explains that swimming “remains deeply encoded in our biology”, and sees it not only as a panacea but also a leveller for humans. Water “forgives our infirmities, physical and otherwise,” he writes. “It frees us to dream. Swimming is an equal playing field.” Or, at least, it should be.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Mikel Jollet
Mikel Jollett, frontman of the indie band the Airborne Toxic Event and author of the new memoir “Hollywood Park”
Putting the pieces back together after escaping a California cult at age 5
Article
Another article on the book.
Whole World Watching
And now what does the world see? A country that has produced more Nobel prize winners than any other, with the world’s best universities and most innovative companies, failing disastrously to control a pandemic because of rampant incompetence and cronyism in its government — and that then rushes to resume normal social activities because its dumbest politicians and most idiotically selfish citizens think they should have the “freedom” to infect everyone around them.
-Paul Waldman
America’s failure
we risk another big hit
In reopening debate, economics prevails over science
But we risk another big hit to businesses if we don't protect public health.
By Larry Edelman, June 19, 2020
Article
If you have something to say
If you have something to say, write a book. Thoreau’s Kathmandu principle, the Colette principle (‘‘Break of Day’’ as diary), still holds: You can write anything, anything at all, if you’re honest, because we are each as bizarre and foreign to one another as the news from Kathmandu (as Colette’s life was to me).
Annie Dillard
Solitude
“There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”
― Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes
Colette
“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."
(Casual Chance, 1964)”
― Colette
Summer Solstice
It's the longest day only in the Northern Hemisphere. It's the shortest day of the year south of the equator. They are about to welcome three months of winter there.
source
Peter Cameron
“New York is strange in the summer. Life goes on as usual but it’s not, it’s like everyone is just pretending, as if everyone has been cast as the star in a movie about their life, so they’re one step removed from it. And then in September it all gets normal again.”
― Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
Enid Blyton
“I do love the beginning of the summer hols,' said Julian. They always seem to stretch out ahead for ages and ages.'
'They go so nice and slowly at first,' said Anne, his little sister. 'Then they start to gallop.”
― Enid Blyton, Five Go Off in a Caravan
Deb Caletti
“Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. You can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.”
― Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
Haruki Murakami
“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
The first week of August
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
Friday, June 19, 2020
Hydropsychotherapy
It's so great to be back in the pool. I missed it every single day that they were closed because my mind and my body didn't feel right without swimming. I also missed the fabulous staff at the Woonsocket YMCA and the other swimmers. I hope the nation and the state and the community can stay healthy so we can keep on swimming.
The Swimmer by John Cheever
He seemed to see, with a cartographer’s eye, that string of swimming pools, that quasi-subterranean stream that curved across the county.
He took off a sweater that was hung over his shoulders and dove in. He had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pool.
To be embraced and sustained by the light green water was less a plea sure, it seemed, than the resumption of a natural condition, and he would have liked to swim without trunks, but this was not possible, considering his project.
short story (12pp)
Family Romance: Film by Werner Herzog
An insight into an uncomfortable truth: the institution of family has always been a matter of role-playing and fakery.
Article
Werner Herzog: I'm fascinated
His original surname was Stipetić (reflecting his Austrian mother’s Croatian heritage) but he reinvented himself, taking his father’s surname long after his father had left the scene. He still has Stipetić siblings; they look at him askance. He chuckles. “How should I say this? My younger brother is critical of my work. He finds some of my films awful. And my older brother, he thinks every single film I’ve made is lousy and boring. ‘Argh, you’ve done another one. My butt is getting numb.’ But this is fine. I’m transparent. I do not hide behind the films or hunker down in the trench. I stick my head up. And I can live with that because I know who I am. I’m at ease with who I am.”
Werner Herzog: 'I'm fascinated
At Heart, a Performance
It also raises the possibility that every human relationship is, at heart, a performance.
Herzog article
The poet must not avert his eyes
Herzog reads voraciously; he says that all the good directors do. It doesn’t even have to be great literature. His friend, the documentary maker Errol Morris, recently recommended that he read a real piece of crap. “It was a bad book by a failed lion tamer. His arm was bitten off by a lion. He wrote with the other arm. And it’s a wonderful book to read because you have to comb the content against the texture and it gives you fabulous insights into human nature. It is the same with trash movies, trash TV. WrestleMania. The Kardashians. I’m fascinated by it. So I don’t say read Tolstoy and nothing else. Read everything. See everything. The poet must not avert his eyes.”
Werner Herzog article
Cautious and Careful
Does he [Werner Herzog] have a different sense of himself when he is speaking in English or German?
He scratches his cheek. The question has him stumped. “But one thing I will say. My wife grew up in Siberia. Her mother tongue is Russian. My mother tongue is Bavarian. Which is not even German, it’s a dialect. But we decided, 25 years ago, that we would not speak in German or Russian to each other. Both of us leave the comfort zone of our language, and we communicate in English. This means that we are very cautious and careful. We are trying to articulate our feelings as closely as we can in a foreign tongue. And the result? In 25 years there has not been a single foul word that has passed between us.”
Article
Carol Zernial
“We admire our individual freedoms, but the individual freedoms do not outweigh the common good.”
-Carol Zernial
Thibault
I hold on to my imperfection as tightly as my reason for being.
Thibault, 1894 Le Jardin d'Epicure. 1844 - 1924
French novelist, poet and essayist, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1921. Along with Émile Zola, he championed the cause of Dreyfus
more on Drefus affair
Relief at Last
Summer solstice 2020 in Northern Hemisphere will be at 5:43 PM on
Saturday, June 20
All times are in Eastern Time.
Dream
I dreamed that is snowed an inch. AMAZING, New England weather, snow in June! When I woke up I imagined snow with maximum daylight. There are parts of the world that have this, I thought. In my case I had the dream because I used an air conditioner to sleep.
Tuna + Hardboiled Egg
My latest craze is canned tuna mixed with hard boiled eggs Sririacha hot sauce, mayo, red wine vinegar and veggies; onion celery pickles. I cook a dozen eggs in my instant pot under pressure for 5 minutes and then I plunge them into iced water. They are delicious especially with Cholula hot sauce.
I am back to my swim routine and I crave protein and vitamins.
I am back to my swim routine and I crave protein and vitamins.
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Why Warming Up is Important
Musculoskeletal injuries and medical problems can occur from participating in physical activity and exercise, however the benefits far outweigh the risks. You can decrease your risk of injury by gradually working up to a desired level of activity and by adequately warming up the muscles and joints prior to exercise.
Here’s why a 5 minute warm-up prior to activity is important.
source
original source
I Love the Water
Suit, cap, goggles, and a love affair with water.
The water gives me confidence and it centers and grounds me.
Find the activity that does this for you and you will always go back for more.
I love water so much that I even love washing dishes.
The water gives me confidence and it centers and grounds me.
Find the activity that does this for you and you will always go back for more.
I love water so much that I even love washing dishes.
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Norton Juster
I write best in the morning, and I can only write for about half a day, that's about it. I run out of juice and I have to refuel for the rest of the day. That refueling can be the most mundane sort of thing, sitting in front of the television set or taking a walk. Vegetating, really.
-Norton Juster
John Mensinger on Bob Dylan
Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan
Release date June 19, 2020
British GQ recently published an article where a dozen writers finished the sentence “I never realized how much I loved Bob Dylan until... “ On the eve of the release of his new (39th, over six decades) album, I thought I’d give it my own take.
I was something of a folk music fan in high school... as much as I loved rock ’n’ roll (and I did love it), I also liked kicking around the fringe, and the folkies had connections to the Beats, to the 50’s underground, to the civil rights movement, berets, long hair, cigarettes, coffeehouses and smoky dive bars. It was a “counter culture” that long preceded the Summer of Love, and it afforded me an identity that was somewhere on the edge. There was an integrity to the music, its players, and its history that appealed to me. It was genuine.
But - somehow - Dylan slipped by me. I read about him in the folk bible Sing Out, but his records weren’t on the shelves - he didn’t make the singles charts. I didn’t buy many records anyway; I listened to the top-40 hits on the NY stations - WABC (Big Dan Ingraham was my fave DJ; I was a card-carrying member of his fan club) and WMCA - and Bob wasn’t to be found there. But by the Fall of ’64 I couldn’t ignore the buzz; I had never even heard him, this almost two years after his first record. So I bought “Another Side of Bob Dylan”, his fourth album, and the last acoustic record he would ever make. I had a pair of big over-the-ear headphones that I would plug into the back of the Magnavox console stereo - equal parts furniture and sound system - in the living room of my parents’ house (why do I say that? - I lived there too) so I could listen to my stuff really loud. Plus, in the case of this new record, there was an outlaw quality - a sense of the unexpected... I wasn’t sure if the room would explode if I piped it through that suburban ranch house, maybe kill the neighbors.
So I laid down on the floor next to the Magnavox (the length of the headphone cord required that), retreated into my private Idaho, and cued the disc:
"I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you, beat or cheat or mistreat you
Simplify you, classify you, deny, defy or crucify you
All I really wanna to do, is baby be friends with you."
I was stunned. Damn, a force! His nasal voice was piercing, vibrant, and expressive; I felt a direct connection to a deep place, and goosebumps rose on my arms. I was almost instantly transported into a charged and exhilarating domain, where poetry, imagination, humor, candor, sarcasm and fancy all came together... with confidence, and no regrets. It was so intimate that I thought I was in the studio with him. There were clearly no boundaries for this boy, he couldn’t be contained. Simple rhythmic guitar lines, but played with an understated exuberance that drew me in. And that wheezing harmonica - I was hooked. I had never heard anything like it. The whole experience had taken less than a minute.
I played the album several times that first night (I recall that the lyrics were printed on the jacket, or maybe on the inside sleeve?), and I was captivated. “Black Crow Blues” with its pounding piano, “Chimes of Freedom”, “My Back Pages” (“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”), “It Ain’t Me Babe”.... it wasn’t folk music, and it wasn’t rock ’n’ roll.... It was Dylan, with one foot still planted in his troubadour roots, and the other aggressively striding into places where no one - nobody - had ever been.... When “Bringing it All Back Home” was released just six months later, with a full band, I wasn’t surprised - I had known where he was headed. The first track (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) on that album sent the folkies into convulsions:
“Johnny’s in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine, I’m on the pavement, thinkin’ about the government... look out kid, it’s somethin’ you did.....God knows when but you’re doin’ it again... you better jump down the alley way, lookin’ for a new friend, the man in a coonskin cap in a pig pen wants eleven dollar bills, you only got ten...”
Sing Out disowned him. Me? - I never looked back.Like Dylan, I was on the verge of a grand transformation (“I’m eighteen, and I don’t know what I want”).... life exploded for me, and the Magnavox and the ‘burbs were destined to remain in the rear-view. Bob has hung around with me for fifty-six years.
-John Mensinger
Sarah Silverman Interview WebMD
What's your best health habit?
Probably stretching. I really try to stretch every day. I feel like I'm in training for living the rest of my life comfortably. Before I work out, I stretch for a half hour. I try to get yoga-style patience with it and get into it and love it. But I also have the TV on.
[...]
I see the difference between people who stay in shape and those who don't, and I know I feel better when I feel like I'm strong.
What would be your perfect day?
I used to have a perfect day when I was living in New York in the summer and doing standup on the weekends. This was my Monday: I'd sleep late and then go play softball at 2 p.m. with the Improv softball team in Central Park. We'd laugh and have fun, and then after the game I'd stay and do field practice, taking millions of balls and just hitting them to anywhere in the field. Then I'd walk from the west to the east side of Central Park and always go home by way of the polar bears at the Central Park Zoo. I loved watching them swim underwater like giant, hairy men. They're so cute! Then I'd hop on the 6 Train back home downtown to the East Village, shower up, and play poker with some friends sometimes until morning, and then go out for breakfast. Oh, the comic's life!
Now, I play basketball with a bunch of friends on Sunday and we've all grown old together. We've been playing for the past 15 years, and now we have our knee braces and we have to do our special exercises because basketball will really mess you up. So we break to go out for pizza sooner. I love doing group sports with my friends and laughing.
Here
Nature Walk
We spotted a baby bunny poking out of a shrub on Valley Street on our way home last night. We also spotted two green frogs poking their big eyes and faces out of the frog pond near the waterlilies. I spotted a beaver or was it an otter and a white chested small bird that moved it's wings like a hummingbird, and the famous great blue heron that lives there, all at the frog pond on Carter Ave. The heron heard our voices and started walking stealthily and the water was so still his reflection was just as vivid. The great blue rorschach. Oh, and the other day I saw a red squirrel. His body was tiny and his tail was red.
Alexandra David-Néel:‘Live your instinct’
Undoubtedly most famous for being the first European woman to visit Lhasa in Tibet, Alexandra David-Néel was also a runaway, an anarchist, an opera singer, a Buddhist scholar, a pioneering traveller and a prolific author. Her extraordinary life lasted more than a century.
Article
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Ram Dass
Take My Advice
Don’t sell yourself short by thinking you are only your body or your personality, no matter how intriguing and dramatic they may be. For behind them, there lies a more profound part of your true self. Call it ‘spiritual’ or call it ‘higher consciousness’… call it what you will, but… Call it!
One of the doorways to that higher self is through the cultivation of your intuitive wisdom. As you learn to listen to and trust your intuition, you will find a quiet place in the heart of your being that is wise and can guide your actions. One of the things it will remind you of is your interconnectedness to all things. And out of that appreciation will spontaneously arise compassion for those who suffer; for the earth, and for all living things.
When that happens, don’t be overwhelmed by the suffering you see, by the darkness that exists in the human condition. True, there is much of it. But so, too, is there much caring and compassion in the world. Mahatma Gandhi said, “What you do may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” It is important for yourself, as well as for the balances in the world. As you let your compassion guide you into action to help heal the earth and those who suffer, your very acts will feed your own compassionate heart and in so doing, open the inner gates to knowing your own highest self.
I promise you that plumbing the depths of your being is an unparalleled adventure. I wish you well on the journey.
In Love,
Ram Dass
Monday, June 15, 2020
Diversity, Distance, Duration
Risk ranking of everyday activities for COVID-19, according to an infectious-disease expert
Staying safe from COVID-19 doesn't require isolating in a bunker, but it does mean weighing different risks based on the situation. You can think about everyday activities in terms of the three D's: diversity, distance, and duration. Diversity is the number of households mixing. So risk is higher if you're meeting with people you don't live with, particularly if you don't know everywhere they've been in the past two weeks. It's also higher if your area has had lots of recent cases or if testing is too limited to know how many active carriers are around. Distance is an issue whenever you're less than six feet from other people, especially if you're indoors or people aren't wearing masks. Lastly, it comes down to duration. Are you running past people in the park, or are you having an extended conversation or encounter?
- Dr. Susan Hassig associate professor of epidemiology.
Baby Crying, Mother Screaming
We have to keep the south side windows closed because all day long we hear a baby crying and her mother screaming. It seems to be an extremely unhealthy situation.
Nick Cave Booklist
Would you consider compiling a list of 40 books you love?
VICTORIA, KENILWORTH, WARWICKSHIRE, UK
Purple Velvet Suits
For all the feminist jabber about women being victimized by fashion, it is men who most suffer from conventions of dress. Every day, a woman can choose from an army of personae, femme to butch, and can cut or curl her hair or adorn herself with a staggering variety of artistic aids. But despite the Sixties experiments in peacock dress, no man can rise in the corporate world today, outside the entertainment industry, with long hair or makeup or purple velvet suits.
-Camille Paglia
Academe and the Mass Media
“A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.”
― Camille Paglia Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays By Camille Paglia
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