Quote of the Day

Often when people talk with me about having brain fog when they're bereaved, it's like they think they're damaged.  You're not damaged.  Your brain is simply busy trying to help you.  But you need to help it as well by giving it awareness and self-compassion.

-- Mary-Frances O'Connor

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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"