Annie Dillard - Writer

Today is the birthday of Annie Dillard (books by this author), born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1945). She began writing poetry in high school, and then studied English in college. After writing a master's thesis on Thoreau's Walden, she moved to a cabin in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. There she wrote poetry and also kept a daily journal of her observations of nature and her thoughts about God and religion. She wrote in old notebooks and on four-by-six-inch index cards, and when she was ready to transform the journal into a book, she had 1,100 entries. "By the time I finished the book, I weighed about 98 pounds," Dillard said. "I never went to bed. I would write all night until the sun was almost coming up."

The result, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, was published in 1974, and Annie Dillard received her first literary award the following year: the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. She was only 29 years old. She has published collections of essays and of poetry, as well as an autobiography. Her most recent work is a novel, The Maytrees (2007). When it comes to writing, she says: "Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark."

Harper Lee

It's the birthday of novelist Harper Lee (books by this author), born Nelle Harper Lee in Monroeville, Alabama (1926). She has written just one novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), but it has sold more than 30 million copies. She hates interviews and speeches, and prefers to live quietly in Monroeville, where she is known as Miss Nelle.

She wrote: "I arrived in the first grade, literate, with a curious cultural assimilation of American history, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapunzel, and The Mobile Press. Early signs of genius? Far from it. Reading was an accomplishment I shared with several local contemporaries. Why this endemic precocity? Because in my hometown, a remote village in the early 1930s, youngsters had little to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren't for small children. A park for games? Not a hope. We're talking unpaved streets here, and the Depression. [...] Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it."

David Hume - Philosopher

It's the birthday of the man who said: "The truth springs from arguments among friends," and "The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster." That's Scottish philosopher David Hume (books by this author), born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1711. While working as a librarian, he wrote the six-volume History of England (1762), which became a bestseller and gave him the financial independence to write and revise his philosophical treatises. He wrote A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). He was a strict skeptic, and questioned all knowledge derived from the senses.

David Hume said, "Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."

He also said, "Reading and sauntering and lounging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness."

And, "He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances."

Rare and pure and perfect...

Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.   Patrick RothfussAmerican Author and College Le

Writers on Living

It's the birthday of writer and naturalist John Muir (books by this author), born in Dunbar, Scotland (1838). When he was 11 years old, his family moved to America and started a farm in Wisconsin. He was working as a sawyer in Indianapolis when he had a terrible accident in the shop: An awl pierced his right eye, and he went completely blind, temporarily. When his eyesight returned, he quit his job and went out to Yosemite in California. He spent the rest of his life traveling and advocating for the preservation of wilderness. His books include Studies in the Sierra (1874), Our National Parks (1901), The Yosemite (1912), and Travels in Alaska (1915).

He said, "One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books."

Writers on Writing

It's the birthday of writer Nell Freudenberger (books by this author), born in New York City (1975).
After graduating from Harvard, she turned down a job offer from Random House and instead spent a year teaching English to teenagers in Thailand. She said, "I didn't really have anything to say about being an American until I went and lived in that high school." After Thailand, she traveled in India, then came home and got a job at The New Yorker. She wrote every morning before work, and one day she started a story about an American woman in Delhi coping with the death of her married Indian lover. She said, "I liked working on that story because it wasn't work; it was simply an hour and fifteen minutes of nostalgia every morning, before I got on the train to go to my real job." A year later, that story, "Lucky Girls," was published in The New Yorker, and it sparked a bidding war for a book. Lucky Girls, a collection of five stories, was published in 2003, followed by a novel, The Dissident (2006).

She said: "I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private — a comforting thought. If you can make that distinction in your head, you can write just the way you always did, even after you start publishing books."

Friendship

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.
  Pam BrownAustralian Poet

Shifting Our Mood

April 19, 2012
Shifting the Mood
Attitude Follows Perspective

We all have days when we are faced with chores, errands, or responsibilities that we don’t want to do. At times like these, it’s easy to get into a bad mood and stay in one as we tackle these tasks. However, given the fact that our bad mood will not change the fact that we have to do these things, and will most likely make things worse, we could also try to shift our attitude. Many wise people have pointed out that it is not so much what we do as it is how we do it that makes the difference in our lives.

It’s important when we’re facing something that’s really hard for us, whether it’s doing taxes, paying bills, or visiting a challenging relative, that we lovingly support ourselves through the process. The more supported we feel, the easier it is to open our minds to the idea that we could change our way of looking at the situation. In truth, most of the chores we don’t like doing are intimately intertwined with our blessings. When we remember this, we feel gratitude, which makes it hard to stay in a dark mood.

We can shift our attitude by considering how much we love our home as we clean it and how lucky we are to have a roof over our head. Any task can be transformed from a burden to a necessary aspect of caring for something we love. All we have to do is shift our perspective, and our attitude follows shortly behind.

We all have to do things in our life that we don't want to and the easiest solution is with to change our attitude.

Cats are Spirits

"I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through"

~Jules Verne

Thoreau's Words of Wisdom

Follow the dream that is yours…

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”  Wayne often quotes these words by one of his favorite philosophers, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Thoreau was educated at Harvard but chose the unpopular career of writer and poet to satisfy his soul’s urging. A force in the New England Transcendentalist movement, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, he loved nature, freedom, and individuality. Thoreau is best known for his reflective memoir, Walden, about his experiment in living simply in a natural setting at Walden Pond. Another one of Thoreau’s most famous quotes describes his empathy for those who follow their own path instead of the one society might approve: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured and far away.”

The Good Ol' Days

newsletter@americanpublicmedia.org>
To: pepstar27@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2012 1:48 AM
Subject: The Writer's Almanac for April 16, 2012

View this message on the Web Monday Apr. 16, 2012  LISTEN The good old days at home sweet home by Marge Piercy On Monday my mother washed. It was the way of the world, all those lines of sheets flapping in the narrow yards of the neighborhood, the pulleys stretching out second and third floor windows. Down in the dank steamy basement, wash tubs vast and grey, the wringer sliding between the washer and each tub. At least every year she or I caught a hand in it. Tuesday my mother ironed. One iron was the mangle. She sat at it feeding in towels, sheets, pillow cases. The hand ironing began with my father's underwear. She ironed his shorts. She ironed his socks. She ironed his undershirts. Then came the shirts, a half hour to each, the starch boiling on the stove. I forgot bluing. I forgot the props that held up the line clattering down. I forgot chasing the pigeons that shat on her billowing housedresses. I forgot clothespins in the teeth. Tuesday my mother ironed my father's underwear. Wednesday she mended, darned socks on a wooden egg. Shined shoes. Thursday she scrubbed floors. Put down newspapers to keep them clean. Friday she vacuumed, dusted, polished, scraped, waxed, pummeled. How did you become a feminist interviewers always ask, as if to say, when did this rare virus attack your brain? It could have been Sunday when she washed the windows, Thursday when she burned the trash, bought groceries hauling the heavy bags home. It could have been any day she did again and again what time and dust obliterated at once until stroke broke her open. I think it was Tuesday when she ironed my father's shorts. "The good old days at home sweet home" by Marge Piercy, from Colors Passing Through Us. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2003

Think Before You Speak (or Act)

Wall Photos

Before you speak T.H.I.N.K ...
T - is it True?
H - is it Helpful?
I - is it Inspiring?
N - is it Necessary?
K - is it Kind?

By: Stay Positive :)

Happiness

Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.

 

~Benjamin Franklin

Inspirational Quote

There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it hardly behooves any of us
To talk about the rest of us.
Edward Wallis Hoch, 1849-1925
17th Governor of the State of Kansas

The Pony Express

The Pony Express began mail delivery on this date in 1860. The first mail pouch contained 49 letters, five telegrams, and a variety of papers. A rider would switch to a fresh horse every 10 to 15 miles; each rider rode a leg of 75 to 100 miles. Seventy-five horses were needed to make a one-way trip between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, a distance of 1,800 miles. At an average speed of 10 miles an hour, the Pony Express could cover the distance in 10 days.

The Pony Express, as it came to be known, had only been in operation for about 10 weeks when Congress authorized construction of a telegraph line to stretch between the Missouri River and the California coast. Once the telegraph connection was completed, the Pony Express became obsolete, and it folded in October 1861.

That's Life

Desire

by George Bilgere

The slim, suntanned legs
of the woman in front of me in the checkout line
fill me with yearning
to provide her with health insurance
and a sporty little car with personalized plates.

The way her dark hair
falls straight to her slender waist
makes me ache
to pay for a washer/dryer combo
and yearly ski trips to Aspen, not to mention
her weekly visits to the spa
and nail salon.

And the delicate rise of her breasts
under her thin blouse
kindles my desire
to purchase a blue minivan with a car seat,
and soon another car seat, and eventually
piano lessons and braces
for two teenage girls who will hate me.

Finally, her full, pouting lips
make me long to take out a second mortgage
in order to put both kids through college
at first- or second-tier institutions,
then cover their wedding expenses
and help out financially with the grandchildren
as generously as possible before I die
and leave them everything.

But now the cashier rings her up
and she walks out of my life forever,
leaving me alone
with my beer and toilet paper and frozen pizzas.

"Desire" by George Bilgere. Reprinted with permission of the author.

It's the birthday of the fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen (books by this author), born in Odense, Denmark (1805), the son of an illiterate mother and a poor cobbler. He trained for the ballet, the stage and the opera, but when all of that failed, settled on becoming a poet. His first novel gained him enough success that he was able to afford to travel, which would become his life-long passion. He left Denmark on thirty trips, spending twenty years abroad, travelling as far as Constantinople. He was great self-promoter and befriended practically everyone of importance in Europe—artists, musicians, scientists, politicians and royalty. He wrote six novels and several travel books, thirty-five plays and a hundred and seventy-five fairy tales including "The Little Mermaid," "The Princess and the Pea," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "Thumbelina," and "The Ugly Duckling." He remained forever true to his humble background and believed status should be the right of everyone and not the privilege of the aristocracy.

Life is God's Novel

Life is God's novel. Let Him write it..... - 3L