I’m in court, sitting and watching the young men who fill up the benches, waiting for their turn. These men who should be hoisting the sails of a tall-masted ship or catching salmon to feed a village or climbing a mountain or pulling an oar with so much power that their boats jet through the water, no other fuel required. We could use their strength – if these men felt strong and able, how different would this country be?
Roald Dahl
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.”
~ Roald Dahl
“What makes a good children’s writer? The writer must …be a jokey sort of fellow… must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be unconventional and inventive. He must have a really first-class plot. He must know what enthralls children and what bores them.
Elizabeth Gilbert
“I believe that — if you are serious about a life of writing, or about any creative form of expression — you should take on this work like a holy calling. I became a writer the way other people become monks or nuns. I made a vow to writing, very young. I became Bride of Writing.”
~ Elizabeth Gilbert
When an idea comes to Elizabeth Gilbert, she actually says (to the idea),
Daphne du Maurier
“Every book is a purge. At the end of it one is empty… like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in.”
~ Daphne du Maurier
The photo shows her in Menabilly, her small writing cottage, which is her space and hers alone. Between novels she paints (those are all her paintings on the walls) and most of her work stays in this room, hidden from view.
The View from the PortaJohns
With every entrance to the Mall blocked, my new goal was to find a JumboTron, even if I had to watch it from a few miles away. The inauguration is due to start any minute but I’m being shuffled around (with a few thousand other folks) by the National Guard.
Then I’m funneled into a dead end – a ring of PortaJohns. I’m alone in a big crowd and would feel extremely sorry for myself except for the family around me.
Clarence (yes, and Bruce).
In high school, Clarence loved football and was good enough to try out for the Cleveland Browns and the Dallas Cowboys. The night before his Cowboy try-out, a car accident crushed his legs and any hope he had of a career in football. He did menial jobs and played his sax until September of 1971 when he walked to a club called The Student Prince.
“A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street.
“I listen to my words but they fall far below….”
Yusuf Islam. Whose words never fall below.
Bruce, live from Rome.
Because Bruce always makes me feel better.
“When you walk through a storm …”
The last two minutes of Carousel.
Naming What You Want
I had trouble naming this column. My first idea was RUNAWAY MOM but that makes me sound flighty. For a while I called it FEELING BETTER but that made me sad. While trying to figure this out, I had the chance to go to Newfoundland with a group of women. 
Talking with these women (none of whom I’d met before) cracked open a shell that I’d formed around myself. The women on this trip didn’t have issues around motherhood — or at least they didn’t have the same issues I did.