“directly, or indirectly, everything we write is for someone.”
-author unknown
—
Yesterday October 20 was the National Day on Writing.
The National Council of Teachers of English established the National Day on Writing
“to draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans
engage in and to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft.”
The Changing of the Guard – 1962
(one of my favorite episodes of one of my favorite shows by one of my favorite writers, rod serling)
OPENING: Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle, bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Spring School for Boys lies on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight Zone.
Professor Ellis Fowler is an elderly English literature teacher at the Rock Spring School, a boys’ prep school, who is forced into retirement after teaching for 51 years at the school. Looking through his old yearbooks and reminiscing about his former students, he becomes convinced that all of his lessons have been in vain and that he has accomplished nothing with his life.
Deeply depressed, he prepares to kill himself on the night of Christmas Eve next to a statue of the famous educator Horace Mann, with its quote “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Before he can follow through, however, he is called back to his classroom by a phantom bell, where he is visited by ghosts of several boys who were his students, all dead, several of whom died heroically.
The boys tell him of how he inspired them to become better men, and the difference he made in their lives. One posthumously received the Medal of Honor for actions at Iwo Jima; another died of leukemia after exposure to X-rays during research into cancer treatments; another died at Pearl Harbor after saving 12 other men. All were inspired by Fowler’s teachings. Moved to tears, Fowler hears the phantom bell again, and his former pupils disappear. Now accepting of his retirement, content that his life is fuller for having enriched the lives of the boys, he listens to his current students caroling outside his home.
—
credits: imdb, twilight zone
(not me, but if i was a bearded male,
with a cup of espresso, a croissant, and a typewriter instead of a laptop,
this could have been me,
so – very similar to my situation with a few tweaks. )
—
late last night (probably around 9 or so)
soon to fall asleep
at the comforting lake house of my friends
about to write and post my blog for the morning
a couple of friends
saw that i was still slightly awake
so why not sit down
have great chat for a couple of hours
when i finally closed my eyes while talking
we decided to call it a night
so just a few more minutes typing away
to tuck tomorrow’s post in for the night
and when i woke up it was morning and my fingers had fallen off of my laptop and my laptop had fallen on the floor and a fellow blogger reached out to ask if i was okay as there was no post so i quickly set up the post i had meant to finish the night before and balance was restored.
—
“if you want to talk about someone falling asleep,
whether in their bed, in a car, at a desk, while reading a blog post about french grammar,
you would use s’endormir.”
-frenchtogether.com
From WordPress:
Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!
You registered on WordPress.com 9 years ago.
Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.
—
9!
thanks to all who have
read, commented, liked, connected, responded,
met with me, supported, encouraged, inspired,
shared, laughed, cried, smiled, followed, or visited
over the last 9 years
i appreciate every gesture.
—
“i feel like i’m on cloud nine right now.” – nik wallenda
“all you have to do is write one true sentence. write the truest sentence you know.”
-ernest hemingway
—
image credit: scott metzger
loving my new journals and so looking forward to filling them
—
“language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories.
to reach out to people we’ll never meet.
it’s the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones:
the history of how you felt.”
-simon van booy
my class has recently become enamored with a giant box of dinos
they play with them every day
create wildly imaginative scenarios
ask questions about real dinos
reassure me that the ones in our room are not real
one day when playing, a child asked
“would they wear masks if they were alive now?”
another jumped up to say
“never, ever, ever, ever, try to put a mask on a t-rex!!!!”
and an instant class book was born
what a brilliant title
others jumped in to offer reasons why you shouldn’t try to mask one
brainstorming was in full swing
some became illustrators
it is a fascinating and funny work in progress.
dinos may have left the earth forever, but books will never die.
—
“stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defenses and all our differences.”
-kate forsyth
what you might imagine it to be vs. what it might quite possibly be.
—
i recently listened to this book written and read by stephen king, and loved every minute of it-
a mix of his personal story and very straight shooting practical advice.
“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write,
remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.
Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”
― Stephen King
—
Amazon book review summary: Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King’s On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists.
—
image credits: tom gauld, simon and schuster
“what difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse
surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog?
the question is: can you write?”
– Ernest Hemingway
—
early winter hiking in MacCready Nature Reserve, Irish Hills, MI, USA 2020
what impeccable timing
as soon as i had finished working on puzzles
on my favorite old table
putting pen to my journal instead
olive also changed hobbies
from puzzling to journaling
at exactly
the same time and place
simpatico.
—
“the best time to begin keeping a journal is whenever you decide to.”
―
—
“i’ve decided that the best time is now.
the puzzles are gone, there are no open spaces in a puzzle to fill in by laying on them with my body,
no pieces to quietly and slowly push off the table with my paw, and no frame to snag and break apart with my claw.
perfect time to begin a journal.”
-olive
