The soul is healed by being with children.

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

Francine du Plessix Gray

One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie. Aristotle put it this way in his Poetics: Poetry is more philosophical than history. And the word philosophical meant considerably more in Aristotle’s time than it does in ours, it meant more true and more real in the deepest possible sense of those words. I’d agree with that, I’d say that history opens us to the possible, whereas fiction, by opening us to the unreal, leads us to what is essential in reality. Mind you, this doesn’t mean that fiction is a higher, more noble genre. The quality of any literary text depends on formal rather than referential values. Nonfiction—think of Gibbon’s, Montaigne’s, Baudelaire’s prose—can produce works of art as great as any novel.

Francine du Plessix Gray

Zissner

One maxim that my students find helpful is: One thought per sentence. Readers only process one thought at a time. So give them time to digest the first set of facts you want them to know. Then give them the next piece of information they need to know, which further explains the first fact. Be grateful for the period. Writing is so hard that all of us, once launched, tend to ramble. Instead of a period we use a comma, followed by a transitional word (and, while), and soon we have strayed into a wilderness that seems to have no road back out. Let the humble period be your savior. There’s no sentence too short to be acceptable in the eyes of God.

William Zissner

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month. Dostoevsky

Parmigiano Reggiano Makers

Parmigiano Reggiano Makers Are Embedding Tiny Trackers in the Rind to Fight Cheese Fraud

Parmigiano Reggiano has used tracking codes for two decades, but now they are going high tech.

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/parmigiano-reggiano-fraud-micro-transponder-rinds-digital-label

most people play louder

“You see, most people play louder to get someone's attention, but getting quieter can stop a bull from charging.”

― Victor L. Wooten, The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music

“There is only one reason that you ever fail at anything...and that is because you eventually change your mind. That's it!...anything and everything you have ever decided to do, you have succeeded, or will succeed, at doing.”
― Victor L. Wooten, The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music

Dog Orphans of Douglas

 

The truth is that writing is simply not reliable.

The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made some space for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear. You tell yourself you can't write in the middle of your daily life, with all its distractions and commitments, and when you finally clear the decks, light off for someplace scenic or at least private, you sit there completely paralyzed. You have devoted yourself to writing, but it has not returned your devotion. If writing were a person, you would be in an abusive relationship. The healthy thing to do would be to get a restraining order and shut it right out of your heart.

 ― Kim Addonizio, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life

Dog Orphans of Douglas

 

Dog Orphans of Douglas

 

Marcel Proust: Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
― Marcel Proust

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
― Marcel Proust

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
― Marcel Proust

In reality

In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. 

Marcel Proust

Rebecca Solnit

Talent is overrated, and it is usually conflated with nice style. Passion, vocation, vision, and dedication are rarer, and they will get you through the rough spots in your style when your style won’t give you a reason to get up in the morning and stare at the manuscript for the hundredth day in a row or even give you a compelling subject to write about. If you’re not passionate about writing and about the world and the things in it you’re writing about, then why are you writing? It starts with passion even before it starts with words. You want to read people who are wise, deep, wild, kind, committed, insightful, attentive; you want to be those people. I am all for style, but only in service of vision.

Rebecca Solnit

The Scent of Good Soup

Part of why I am making a vat of soup today is because (1.) my house still smells like burned toast after yesterday's mishap. And  (2.) tomorrow it will rain. Those are two good reasons to make soup. And (3.) I am lazy. Making a vat of soup means we'll have something to eat for a while.

Food Talk

I am not a REAL foodie --that title is reserved for the true connoisseur and adventurer. I just throw stuff together usually very low on the food chain. Today lentils carrots celery Chianti for cooking (I am allergic to wine, unless it's cooked), two chicken bullion cubes, water leftover sauerkraut, chipotle goop, freshly smashed garlic cloves, olive oil, celery, carrots, onions, and my leftover German potato salad thrown in. I hope it will be good because there will be a vat, eight quarts!

I am loading it all into the instant pot which is like cooking in a washing machine! Load up and hit the button and walk away. Basically I just emptied the fridge into an 8 quart pot. I made a quick calculation on the sauerkraut. Since wine vinegar is often added to lentil soup afterwards (acidity) I took the risk.

 

I love marinades and things that do their magic while I sleep. No fussing for me. Our mile and a half down the road neighbors were tossing out a grill last year and delivered it to us when we asked about it. Bill replaced everything about it salvaging it like an old piano. So we made lots of buttermilk adobo sriracha marinades for boneless skinless chicken breasts.

 

My ultimate favorite is to marinate veggies in a simple oil vinegar herbs dressing and then string them onto the long flat metal skewers and cook them on a hardwood charcoal fired grill. But if it's too hot out we'll skip all of this until Autumn.

 

Update: the soup is fantastic, even better than I imagined!

Garrison Keillor

“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.”

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”

“Computers can never completely replace humans. They may become capable of artificial intelligence, but they will never master real stupidity.”

“Never say anything bad about a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. By then he’s a mile away, you’ve got his shoes, and you can say whatever you want to.”

“They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.”

“I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it. ”

“One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don’t read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.”

“Life is unjust and this is what makes it so beautiful. Every day is a gift. Be brave and take hold of it.”

Fifteen years ago

My mile and a half down the road neighbor told me this story last night He's 85.  He was a beloved math teacher for 45 years. When he heard where I lived he asked me how long I have lived there.

Fifteen years ago we were leaving the Romanian church on Easter Sunday heading to my house in Blackstone. My in-laws were following behind me as I turned onto East School Street. I kept glancing in the rear view mirror and slowing down to make sure they were with me. I pulled over. Suddenly my passenger door opened and a prostitute jumped in and sat down beside me. She thought I was looking at her!

We did not simply live in two cultures

We did not simply live in two cultures, as celebrants of the great American melting pot imagined. Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time travelers. But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles.
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer 

The tendency to separate war stories from immigrant stories means that most Americans don’t understand how many of the immigrants and refugees in the United States have fled from wars—many of which this country has had a hand in.

 ― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

These questions

These questions required either Camus or cognac, and as Camus was not available I ordered cognac.
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

I quietly quaffed my cognac, discreetly admiring Lana's legs. Longer than the Bible and a hell of a lot more fun, they stretched forever, like an Indian yogi or an American highway shimmering through the Great Plains or the southwestern desert. Her legs demanded to be looked at and would not take no, non, nein, nyet, or even maybe for an answer.
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer