Favorite Blog Posts for March 2010
Here are blog posts that really caught my attention last month. Thanks to the authors! If you are only going to read one of these, read the first one, by Kenji Crosland, which contains this utterly brilliant line:
An epiphany is the moment when you run out of excuses for yourself, and nothing is left but the truth.
A special thanks for that Kenji.
The Greatest Lesson I Chose Not To Learn
from Unready and Willing by Kenji Crosland
That Moment Where the World Stops
from Sources of Insight by JD
The Best New Altered Words
In the Washington Post’s annual Mensa Invitational, readers are invited to alter any word from the dictionary and create a new definition. These are this year’s winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
Words That Flame In The Art Of Racing In The Rain
It has been a while since I did one of these “words that flame” posts because I have been in writing mode myself and don’t read much while in that space. But on a recent long airplane journey I did read Garth Stein’s The Art Of Racing In The Rain and marked passages that seem to speak to me–my words that flame.
A bit of explanation: the narrator is a golden retriever mix whose owner (Denny) drives race cars and is known for his ability to race in the rain. Race car driving is used in the book as a metaphor for living, particularly for living when it seems to be pouring and the track of life is slick.
7 Reminders About Writing A Book
[I dug this out of the cobwebs on an archived blog of mine because I am about to launch a new book project and I wanted to remind myself of its contents. It still rings true so I am sharing it here with minor changes.]
The challenge of writing a book is as much about the process as it is about the content: maybe more. I’m a process kind of person, so I pay a lot of attention to it.
Meaning-Making Is Both Blessing And Curse
…my mind often buzzes with questions about mundane events…
Red Mountain is in close-up view from a picnic area on the southern bank of the Salt River a few miles north of Mesa, Arizona, where the Bush Highway enters the south-west corner of the nearly three million acre Tonto National Forest. I sat there alone at a weathered and rickety picnic bench one day last week, my attention divided between the mountain and a narrow strip of river where a breeze rippled the surface and trout leaped. I had a notebook in front of me to record what I saw, thought and felt.
I Am A Prose Chameleon
I am predisposed toward unconscious mimicry. I first noticed it years ago when, working as a consultant in England, I spontaneously began using the word “twig” instead of “understand” and pronouncing “strawberry” as “strawbry.”
If I am in Canada for a long period (say, three days), my voice rises at the end of sentences. In Italy I exaggerate gestures. I don’t even need to be in a foreign country. Last year, during a visit to Minnesota and North Dakota, I said, “You betcha.” I said it twice. This from a guy who grew up in Philadelphia.
