This little rock garden plant emerged between the front steps of my office building and has been blooming cheerily for about a week. Everyone is careful to step over it. This is a good demonstration of the crack/flaw in an object being part of its charm. Remember the story of the cracked pot and “do […] Read More

Dropping by my local library a week ago, I looked around toward the desk to say “hi” to my favorite librarian. I didn’t see her and figured it wasn’t her Sunday to work. A few more steps and I came upon a picture of her, surrounded by fresh camellias from someone’s yard. Joyce. That’s the […] Read More

However you feel about the healthcare reform bill passed this week(and I’m heartily in favor), it’s surely clear that Obama is a president who has stuck his neck out. Who bet the farm. Who put his eggs in one basket. And any of the other cliches that stand for high-risk persistence over a long haul […] Read More

Just ran across this item about repairing roads with garbage in Saathee, which is a magazine for Indians living in the Carolinas. It doesn’t sound as if the idea is entirely worked out. However, this is the kind of thinking we all need to be doing: using one problem as the solution to another problem, […] Read More

One of the five offices in the charming 1910 Raleigh house where I work has been transformed. The room or half the room can be rented by the week or the month, by a writer or anyone else needing a place to work quietly within a small creative community. Above you see Desk One in […] Read More

A couple of times, in answer to requests, I’ve promised pictures that I didn’t immediately deliver. I guess I should say I’m making semi-good on the promises, since I’ve come up with only picture in each category. This first one is a piece of the road from where I live toward the first stretch of […] Read More

I seem to have fallen off quite a lot in my frequency of posting. Partly because I’m so busy. And also I haven’t had sufficient impulse. It’s easy to get out of the habit. Not sure whether to let the rate sag until I feel like boldly opining more. Or to keep myself cranked up […] Read More

Almost finished cramming five days of work into four. Such are the perils of taking time off. Seems that I don’t plan and schedule in a very self-protective way. I’ve never thought of planning as a bold activity. Quite the reverse. But I’m starting to see that it could be. It would involve my taking […] Read More

Here’s a most inspiring post from uber-blogger Seth Godin. It’s similar to the change-by-making-a-series-of-tiny-changes approach of kaizen posted about here earlier. Godin’s idea is to be amazingly bold and excellent for a mere five minutes a day. To do that much can rock the world. I agree with him on all except his last line. […] Read More

Y’all, I have always loved giving talks. What I mean by a talk is standing up and telling 30 minutes of war stories, plus reading a few pages from one of my novels and then taking questions. What’s not to love about doing that? This morning, however, I went to a session at a Duke […] Read More