"In the back of my mind I always know very well what I am, namely a small, small writer. I swear I know. But it doesn't much matter... I prefer to think no one has ever been quite like me, however small, however flea-like or mosquito-like a writer I may be. What matters is having the conviction that it truly is a craft, a profession, something to follow for the rest of one's life...
"The daily ups and downs of our life, the daily ups and downs we witness in others' lives, all that we read and see and think and discuss feeds its hunger, and it grows within us. It is a craft that thrives on terrible things too; it feeds on the best and the worst in our life, our evil feelings and our good feelings course through its blood. It feeds on us, and it thrives."
Natalia Ginzburg
Friday, December 7, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Stephanie and Meghan Endorse Obama for 08
I think it's safe to say this blog endorses Barack Obama for the 2008 presidential elections.
Today in the New York Times Frank Rich explains what makes Stephanie and I swoon.
So Much Nothing in the Universe
The Ice-Cream Scoop Taken Out of the Universe
Discover Magazine, Nov. 21, 2007
Astronomers at the University of Minnesota have identified the largest known void in the universe, a cosmological no-man’s-land where stars, planets, and even dark matter are mysteriously absent. “It’s like an ice-cream scoop taken out of the universe,” says Shea Brown, one of the astronomers. “There’s nothing there.”
Discover Magazine, Nov. 21, 2007
Astronomers at the University of Minnesota have identified the largest known void in the universe, a cosmological no-man’s-land where stars, planets, and even dark matter are mysteriously absent. “It’s like an ice-cream scoop taken out of the universe,” says Shea Brown, one of the astronomers. “There’s nothing there.”
Monday, December 3, 2007
On life
"But if your health is good, and you have a habit of looking at each day as a whole day - unless you drop dead at noon or something - then every day you live something interesting. It's interesting because you either meet a new tree or if you're in the city, you meet a new person. Or something happens. The sun shifts on the mountain - very beautiful things happen."
Grace Paley
Grace Paley
Lesson in life and death
Pupils build dying teacher's coffin
A Dutch primary school teacher dying of cancer is overseeing one last class project: her pupils are making her coffin. Eri van den Biggelaar, 40, has just a few weeks to live after being diagnosed last year with an aggressive form of cervical cancer.
She asked the woodwork teacher, a friend, to build a coffin for her. "Why don't you let the children make it?" replied Erik van Dijk.
Now pupils of the school in Someren, who normally plane wood for baskets and placemats, have been helping with the finishing touches. They have already sawed more than 100 narrow boards and glued them together. Only the lid needs to be completed.
"Life and death belong together," she said. "The children realised that when I explained it to them. I didn't want to be morbid about it, I wanted them to help me. I told them: 'Where I will go is much nicer than this world.' "
I'm Not There
"To slog through the present requires no particular wit, vision or art. But a certain kind of artist will comb through the old stuff that's lying around - the tall tales and questionable memories, the yellowing photographs and scratched records - looking for glimpses of a possible future." NY Times
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut
The 1977 Paris Review Interview with Kurt Vonnegut
VONNEGUT
Sure. We loved Laurel and Hardy. You know what one of the funniest things is that can happen in a film?
INTERVIEWER
No.
VONNEGUT
To have somebody walk through what looks like a shallow little puddle, but which is actually six feet deep. I remember a movie where Cary Grant was loping across lawns at night. He came to a low hedge, which he cleared ever so gracefully, only there was a twenty-foot drop on the other side. But the thing my sister and I loved best was when somebody in a movie would tell everybody off, and then make a grand exit into the coat closet. He had to come out again, of course, all tangled in coat hangers and scarves.
VONNEGUT
Sure. We loved Laurel and Hardy. You know what one of the funniest things is that can happen in a film?
INTERVIEWER
No.
VONNEGUT
To have somebody walk through what looks like a shallow little puddle, but which is actually six feet deep. I remember a movie where Cary Grant was loping across lawns at night. He came to a low hedge, which he cleared ever so gracefully, only there was a twenty-foot drop on the other side. But the thing my sister and I loved best was when somebody in a movie would tell everybody off, and then make a grand exit into the coat closet. He had to come out again, of course, all tangled in coat hangers and scarves.
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