Birthday Shout Out

Today is my cousin's, David Ward’s, 50th Birthday.

So many changes have happened in his life and in the world in the past half century. I can only begin to imagine what is in store for the next 50 years!


We better darn well get to Mars in the next 50 years, and hopefully a lot sooner.

Many, many, many, many, many blessings!!!!!!

Dog On It

One of my New Year’s resolutions for this year was to read 52 novels. This included reading the work of at least one novelist for each letter of the alphabet. Recently I had made my way to the Q’s and was having problems. No author whose last name began with Q made my chimes sound. Finally, I put Q into the library search engine, which would have been a disaster for any other letter of the alphabet, and out popped Spencer Quinn’s name. I went a bit over the river and through the woods to find the book, which evidently doesn’t spend much time sitting on the shelves, but I am so glad that I did.

Dog On It is a detective novel written from the dog’s perspective. His point of view drives the novel. As a reader I experience the strong priority he puts on relationships, his frustrations at not being able to communicate the important information he knows, his fears, his fascination with scents, his joy of life. The novel would not be the same told by another perspective. I am so glad that I needed to find a "Q" book!

When Everything Changes

When Everything Changes, Change Everything, by Neale Donald Walsch, is an excellent book on dealing with change. I am on my third time through. Here is one of the opening quotes:

The changes in our life are not going to stop…What can be changed is the way you deal with change, and the way you’re changed by change.

Time Traveling

I finished reading The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger late last night. What a marvelous book. Some of the scenes from the book are still floating through my mind. I am beginning to read and write poetry again. In many ways the novel is a very long poem, scene by scene illustrating the metaphor of memory.

Lately, my life has resonated with the story of the Time Traveler’s Wife. My father died at 51, my mother at 84. I have been cleaning out their house. I look at old pictures, read old letters. Most of the people are gone. A few weeks ago, I was telling my last surviving aunt that it feels so odd to look at these pictures that were taken long before I was born. It feels odd to look in on their lives. I am the time traveler.

On June 5th 2009 I read the introduction to the Dore Lectures on Mental Science, which was written on June 5th 1909. I felt like Thomas Troward was sitting in the living room with me, speaking those words that he had written a century ago. How did he know that I would so desperately need those ideas? It was as though part of him had traveled to the future.

Life is much more asynchronous than we realize. The Time Traveler’s Wife does a beautiful job of helping us to think about that.

Fearless Fish

Robin Fisher Roffer’s The Fearless Fish Out of Water balances celebrating uniqueness with giving practical advice on how to deal with being different. This is one of my favorite quotes from the book:

Accept yourself and others will follow. Apologize for who you are and others will see you as someone to pity. Saying you’re sorry for your imperfections puts doubts in people’s minds about your value.