Consider the lovely South African guinea hen. Here’s a bird that’s actually used as a “watchdog” on farms. Not that she’s fierce. Instead she has a lot to say. She’s so attentive and ready to give voice that she can alert a farmer to any little disruption in the night. And warn off an intruder. […] Read More

At Saturday’s workshop, we spent a little time on the use of simple physical jobs as a form of meditation to improve our writing. As in: do a little writing, do a little laundry or sweeping or sorting, then write some more. Once we’ve cranked up the writing, then the rumination continues, in a more […] Read More

Oh, shucks. I thought I was about to shut down and go home for the day and then I realized: not yet. Saturday at the workshop I taught, I asked participants to devise and make a commitment to a realistic “sustainable” schedule for doing their own writing. At the same time, I silently made a […] Read More

It’s Saturday morning and I’m in the midst of leading a workshop called Get Your Ganges On. We’re now spending about 15 minutes writing, so this space is where I’ve turned. The point of the class is to help people draw on their most powerful inner resources in doing their work. I’m finding it exciting. […] Read More

I keep ducking out of the task before me today to cruise celebrity gossip web sites. Partly because I've worked too much lately and partly because of the disaster in Haiti. Here's the Haiti connection: when something huge is going on, it feels wrong not to be somehow involved in the moment. It reminds me […] Read More

Prayers for Haiti and… here’s a good annotated Guide to Haiti Relief Funds Welcome to doni_ione, carmen_tourney2, ktr2, and jsuddath. Add to del.icio.us - Stumble It! - Subscribe to this feed - Digg it Read More

On weekday mornings, I pass this building, Unity Church of the Triangle, on the way to my office at the edge of downtown Raleigh, NC. Every time I see it, I’m affected: by the sharp edges of the white against the sky. It seems to make the sky bluer (and I didn’t fool with the […] Read More

A very juicy account of our most recent presidential campaign is released today: Game Change by New York magazine writer John Heilemann and Mark Halperin of Time magazine. I’ve only read an excerpt and I won’t burden you here with the scorching details, but the intimate material about one failed candidate’s family life was pretty […] Read More

I’ve noticed that there’s a rhythm to my productivity and my get-up-and-go. Mud-wading periods are followed by flying-faster-than-light periods when most things are easy. The mud periods inevitably feel to me like a failure of nerve: as if timidity were slowing me down. This may not be true at all; it may be just a […] Read More

In the last 24 hours, I’ve read Christopher Buckley’s memoir, Losing Mum and Pup, about the deaths of his parents William and Pat Buckley. William F. Buckley Jr., as you know doubt know, was the conservative who used big words on Firing Line and wrote several dozen books and created National Review. I long admired […] Read More