“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, From The Dispossessed The review of a book about mental illness in the Brevity blog this morning reminds me about American obsession with competition and our [...]
People ask me all the time, even now as I climb the stiff ascent to seventy: Where do you find the time? This morning, my husband and I were up and dressed and out the door by five to listen to the dawn chorus from the deck of the lodge. We are in Wallowa Lake [...]
So far this month. I have made little progress on Camp NaNo, but I withdrew six poetry submissions yesterday. A story has been out for a year, six months short-listed—I think they are only teasing me. Yesterday the last of the base went down in the dining room and kitchen; it's only been thirty-some years. [...]
Last evening we were upstairs when we saw a couple sitting at our beach fire. (It was dying but we were keeping an eye on it, and suddenly it was back in flames.) We joined them on the sand and shared a lovely time. They were astounded by the fireworks—in Colorado, it would never be [...]
I discovered yesterday that Tin House is closing after this month's issue. I already knew about Glimmer Train, Shimmer, and the end of Apex except as a publisher of books. These were all excellent publications. The New York Times is only writing about Tin House, because the founding editors are in New York? Sometimes I [...]
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and [...]
My computer screen went all magenta last Friday and is being (hopefully) repaired. Maybe by the weekend—they said maybe earlier, but I think it may have died at a mere six months and two days, an infant laptop still under warranty. It has been flakey since I first opened it, and one son shrugs and [...]
