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Is there anyone better than Dolly Parton? The answer is no. Her new book, “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics” (Chronicle Books, out Nov. 17)
“I have often said that songs are my children and that I expect them to support me when I’m old,” she writes. “Well, I am old, and they are!”
The kids at school made fun of her. “I was trying to tell them in my own way, ‘It ain’t about golden riches. You can be rich in love. In all sorts of wonderful things, you can be rich.’ ”
“I never shied away from any topic, whether it was suicide or prostitution or women’s rights or whatever,” she writes. “I was always like that and still am. Whatever it is, I can say it in a song, in my own way.”
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Dolly Parton's New Memoir
Esther Freud
Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.
ESTHER FREUD
Waffle Iron Hash Browns
These are fantastic and the author has a whole book of waffle ideas.
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/10/waffle-iron-hash-browns-potato-recipe.html
Three Quarts of Water
Three quarts of water in a day is six pints. This is how much water I need in 24 hours to prevent sinus headaches. Sip by sip spread over the day. It's not as hard as it sounds and makes a world of difference in energy, focus, and a painless head. I find ice-cold water easier to drink than room temps so I keep a few mason jars full of water in the fridge.
Head Space
I had an African dance teacher when I was 11, Mr. Ashangi. He told us one day after dancing, "Now stop and sit in a circle because it's just as important to stop moving as it is to be in motion."
This morning I am thinking about Sabbath. Can I have some quiet calm space in this day?
Sometimes my nervous energy, chores and anxiety clutters up all of my head space.
Stop. Sit. Read. Write. Draw, or walk for miles.
Anxiety is fuel but even the fuel needs to take a rest.
Ghost Scents
Remnants of Asiago cheese on wooden cutting board smells like cat spray. I sniffed it out.
When I worked in a restaurant we discovered that a bowl of cut red onions on the salad buffet smelled like a gas leak.
Sinking In
SINKING-IN is the secret to alleviating or distracting anxiety this time of year. Contour drawing is one way. Here's how it works you
stare at you non drawing hand and draw the non dominant hand SLOWLY
without looking at the paper. It's trippy. You SLOW down the pen or
pencil as if you were recording the trail of a carpenter ant crawling
across your hand. Try this for a few minutes each day and you will be mesmerized into slowing and coordinating hand and eye. By the end of the
week you will see progress. It's fun. This is an exercise I come
back to when I've been away for a long time.
New Cozy Spot
Yesterday when I was about to have a nap I instead discovered a new cozy spot to be with my notebook on the couch. Romeo was snuggling next to me warming us both with his paws stretched over my lap.
The neighbor across the street was ranting and pacing in a drug-induced mania on his porch as he often does. So I turned on the classical music station on the radio, just enough to mask the sound.
For me November and December are all about finding a cozy perch to sink into receive-mode.
Dream
I dreamed I invited Dolly Parton into my kitchen so I could show her how I used the waffle iron to make potato-stix. I was a little self conscious of my kitchen but she was completely gracious and focused on the lesson.
Saturday, November 14, 2020
Keep Writing
“The very nicest thing about being a writer is that you can afford to indulge yourself endlessly with oddness, and nobody can really do anything about it, as long as you keep writing and kind of using it up, as it were.”
“All you have to do—and watch this carefully, please—is keep writing.”
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
“I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.”
― Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings
Ram Dass
“We're all just walking each other home.”
―Ram Dass“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
―
“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”―“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
―“The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.”―“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.”―“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”―
Friday, November 13, 2020
Simple and Delicious
I just pressure cooked 2 pounds of kidney beans and added kosher salt, Adobo and olive oil. Then I transferred the beans into another pot. I washed the pressure cooker out and and set up the brown basmati rice which is currently cooking. These simple staples are two of my favorite foods.
Ming Tsai changed my life concerning making rice. The wash/rinse until clear water preparation, has made a huge difference in texture and flavor.
Beginning
Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It’s discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to 0 of the novel.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Tuna Salad
I opened a large can of white tuna and chopped celery into it and added red wine vinegar and Adobo. Then I chopped red onion and green olives and with kitchen scissors I chopped pepperoncini into it. I found a jar of roasted red peppers marinated in olive oil and garlic and I added the whole thing instead of mayonnaise. Now everything is rosy orange. I snipped some fresh basil off my potted plant and added that with a dash of kosher salt.
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