Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Quote of the Day

Just listening to music activates more brain regions simultaneously than any other human activity.

-- Alexander Pantelyat, M.D. Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Hearing Tsering Yangzom Lama and Shane McCrae

Two nights ago, I attended the latest edition of  Hope College's Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series, featuring novelist Tsering Yangzom Lama and poet/memoirist Shane McCrae.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Hearing Dana VanderLugt

Last night, I attended an event featuring author/educator Dana VanderLugt and poet/retired professor Jack Ridl at Hope College.  The two engaged in an on-stage conversation about VanderLugt's new book, Enemies in the Orchard.

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Quote of the Day

... language is a form of power.  It creates categories that help us interpret the world, and that which is not easily available in language is often ignored in thought itself.  A shared vocabulary makes ideas more accessible while a lack of language can render an experience illegible.  It can isolate.

-- Angela Chen, Ace, p. 17

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Quote of the Day

I think all creative people, you get something in your head, and then you have to figure out how to express it.  And I feel like that's the best way to understand what it's like to be an artist.

-- Sofia Coppola

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Quote of the Day

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.  For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

-- Mary Oliver

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Quote of the Day

ANDERSON COOPER: The strange thing about grief is that it feels so alone.  And yet it is this experience which everybody has gone through or will go through, and yet it still feels so lonely.

ASHLEY JUDD: No one can do it for us.  We do not have to do it alone.

All There Is with Anderson Cooper, "Ashley Judd: Grief, Love and Naomi"

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Bookin' It in 2023

The year 2023 was the most difficult year of my life, for a number of reasons.  I found it nearly impossible to focus on reading for pleasure, but I was able to finish the following four books.

  1. The Apology by Eve Ensler
  2. The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel  
  3. Look Again: A Memoir by Elizabeth A. Trembley
  4. Practicing to Walk Like a Heron: Poems by Jack Ridl 

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Quote of the Day

Life will break you.  Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.  You have to love.  You have to feel.  It is the reason you are here on earth.  You have to risk your heart.  You are here to be swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

-- Louise Erdrich

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Hearing MK Czewiec and Elizabeth Trembley

Last night, I had the pleasure of experiencing two authors/educators/graphic artists, MK Czerwiec and Elizabeth Trembley, speak at Hope College's first Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series event of the school year.

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Quote of the Day

I've been exposed to the incredible world of music from day one.  I slowly collected songs like rolling around in a pile of leaves in wet clothes.  Everything is sticking to you slowly.  It's amazing how much music a person is exposed to and how it alters your life.

-- Ralph Towner

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Quote of the Day

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

-- Mary Oliver