At the front window, the dogs stand with their tails in the air and a ridge of hair raised along their backs. They are on alert, poised to protect us from the dangers posed by blowing bits of paper and leaves, and whatever else might happen along on this windy day. They pace the floor. They follow me around the house and never quite settle into their usual...
Read MoreCreative work; The art of every day
After the Viola Awards a few weeks ago, a bunch of us traipsed over to Uptown Billiards in search of closure and whiskey. Poet and owner of Uptown, James Jay, had just won the Viola Award for Literature. Upon receiving the award he recited a beautiful poem (not even his own) that brought me to tears. Several of the acceptance speeches that night were...
Read MoreCreative types; Fostering art in all abilities
In “Finding Flow,” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi writes, “The quality of experience [is] a function of the relationship between challenges and skills. Optimal experience, or flow, occurs when both variables are high.” When you address big challenges with high skill levels, feats of creative genius are possible. This is true for any field. Even within the rigid...
Read MoreLiving with resolve; New words for a new year
It feels to me that things are falling apart, like the poem: “the centre will not hold.” We’re trapped in a socio-political centrifugal machine, where the heaviest mettle gets spun to the outer edges of society and separates into its most irrational component parts. Last Sunday I drove into spring: down I-17, first past dun-colored hills and...
Read MoreSweet times; Baking cookies with the family
After my grandmother died, my mom and my Aunt Nina took up her holiday cookie-baking gauntlet. This was not an undertaking for the faint of heart. Grandmére was a prodigious baker of cookies; around the winter holidays she spent hundreds of hours filling tins with sweets to pass along to her family, friends and neighbors. I’ll go out on a limb of...
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