This Saturday, January 31, The Flying H Theater Group presents the first installment of “Is that a poem in your pocket or are you just happy to hear me?”
And I am one of the featured poets!
Writing and The Teflon Mind
The uninstructed person ages like an ox.
His bulk increases but his insight does not.
The Dhammapada translated by Glenn WallisAn untrained mind is a velcro mind.
A Buddha mind is a teflon mind.
Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi
So here it is almost midnight. For the past week, at this time, I have been hustling to get a blog post up. Read more…
53 Interesting Facts About the Number 53:
#3 53 is the racing number for Herbie the Love Bug Read more…
What’s in your lunchbox? How the #yourturnchallenge surprised me
My 6 year old son on one of the first days of school 2010 with his Scooby Doo Lunch Box.
What’s in your lunch box?
I wanted to know what was in my lunch box.
7 Tips To Get Unstuck from Writer’s Block (Day 5 #yourturnchallenge)
My students always want to know what to do about writers block: that deep dark dreadful painful place.
That constipated place. That prison block. That place in the shadows.
How do I get my bowels moving? Where’s my get out of jail free card? How do I find the light in the shadow?
“Ever see a plumber who has plumber’s block?” asked blogger, marketer, and author Seth Godin in 2010 in Boston on his book tour for Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? “Or a talker who has talker block? No! So? No writer’s block. It’s part of who you are.” (Here’s the rest of my blog post where this quote comes from).
Sorry Seth, most of my students don’t find this too helpful. I thought it was insightful, and it’s inspiring to me, but for my students? No.
Because they don’t see themselves as writers yet. They don’t know they are writers. They don’t know the power of their own minds.
They don’t know that “to think is to practice brain chemistry” in the words of Deepak Chopra.
What follows are some ideas that my students do find help them get unstuck. And these ideas help me too, as a student, a poet, an academic, and an essayist. Read more…
Slow Down for Slow Wine and Slow Food #YourTurnChallenge
What do you do well?
In addition to being a reasonably good writer and poet and teacher of writing, I am passionate and knowledgeable about the environment, and about food and wine, and about the relationship between how we eat and drink and the land. Read more…
Needs Improvement: #yourturnchallenge
A little perspective…
I feel like drinking whiskey and watching tv but because I don’t have tv and I do want to keep my commitment to the #yourturnchallenge, I am drinking whiskey and writing. Single malt Irish whiskey from Trader Joe’s if you’re curious.And it’s excellent.
Because it’s been that kind of day and it is easier to pour some whiskey into a beautiful cut glass than it is to choose a wine tonight. Read more…
What’s Important: Rule Out The Big Things #yourturnchallenge
On Day 2, today, Tues. Jan. 20, the #yourturnchallenge prompts participants to share something that’s important.
Audre Lorde, in the Cancer Journals, writes that: “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
Right now, I’m thinking about health. Good health. The kind of good health that allows us to enjoy time in nature with family and friends, free to hike, camp, ski, soak in hot springs, backpack, rock climb, jump, dance.
This morning I took my son to the doctor to get his stitches taken out. While I was there, the doctor took a look at my knees. And then I got my first EKG. Read more…
Remembering Michele Serros, MLK, and Why the #YourTurnChallenge
In 1964 when Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, in his speech he said”I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice.” http://nbcnews.to/1BdllKU (“dreams don’t die” 2012 cardboard retablo by Dianne Bennett).
art predator 