Hi, from California, and welcome to this first newsletter! I was thinking about how to introduce this idea which really will take many forms as it goes along. I partly wished I had a pithy single sentence to describe what is ahead, but I am glad I can’t do that. I am more of the mind of thinking of this like a carrier bag or a sack,  just like Ursula K. Le Guin‘s describes her process of writing and thinking. So here I am lugging around a sack of stuff, full of “beginnings without ends”, ideas from the edges, some only tiny grains. Although my humor has been a bit thin these days some is also funny, it is still in the bag. 

My blogs will take the form of somewhat longer pieces connecting themes along the way, which will live on the site and can be accessed there.

Thanks for coming along on the ride!

  Here are a few bits and pieces I thought I would pass on this week:

  1. This American Life Podcast with Ira Glass. Recently he aired his favorite episode of all time, 129 Cars. He aired it again on July 4.
  2. Julia Child and David Letterman just because I love Julia Child.
  3. Listen to Lucinda Williams who is a fantastic traveling companion.
  4. John Lahr, in The New Yorker, on how August Wilson brought a century of Black American culture to the stage. Since it is not going to be possible to see one of them on stage soon, you can catch one on film. One of these plays, Fences, was made into a wonderful film starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.
  5. Sherman Alexie short story, What You Pawn I Will Redeem
  6. The New Yorker Fiction Podcast: Tobias Wolff reading Denis Johnson’s short story, Emergency.
  7. I have been rereading 2 of my favorite books: Maira Kalman’s , Principles of Uncertainty. It is part visual art, part memoir, via a travel through history with tons of humor and while she questions the meaning of life. And Mary Oliver, Dog Songs.
  8. Ursula K. Le Guin has long explored the imagined possibilities of society in her writing. She has influenced children, older readers, anthropologists, natural scientists, artists, and humanists. Here is her poem, THE STORY: 
It's just part of a story, actually quite a lot of stories,
the part where the third son or the stepdaughter
sent on the impossible mission through the uncanny forest
comes across a fox with its paw caught in a trap
or little sparrows fallen from the nest
or some ants in trouble in a puddle of water.
He frees the fox, she puts the fledglings in the nest,
they get the ants safe to their ant-hill.
The little fox will come back later
and lead him to the castle where the princess is imprisoned,
the sparrow will fly before her to where the golden egg is hidden, 
from the heap of sand before the fatal morning,
and I don't think I can add much to this story.
All my life it's been telling me
if I'll only listen who the hero is
and how to live happily ever after.

      ---Ursula K. Le Guin (from Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet)

Photograph by Hans Laping, @hansdork

Be well,

Marlene

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