Remember the Writing Marathon I did back in May? We raised 17,000 dollars and I promised every person who sponsored me would get a handmade, original postcard. Well, I’ve been slow to get them out but they ARE going out. So if you’re someone who’s waiting for a postcard it’s on its way soon, I [...]

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Today I head out to Northeast Oregon for a writing conference and retreat at Fishtrap. I’m one of the five fellows (that sounds funny… but I mean myself and four others have a fellowship for the week)– and I’ll be taking a writing seminar/workshop/class three hours every morning with the writer of one of the [...]

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Awesome news. WS Merwin is such a sweet, spiritual man–a Buddhist and Environmentalist– who lives in Hawaii. (pic from Univ. of Arkansas Daily Headlines). And, he’s 82! Today NPR interviewed him (click to listen) for just a couple of minutes and he read this poem, so tiny and beautiful: Separation by W. S. Merwin Your [...]

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I’m making my way through Tinkers, this year’s recent Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Paul Harding. Yesterday I took it to a coffee shop, had an iced coffee and a cookie and sat out on the patio and read for an hour and a half of uninterrupted bliss. I’m torn between really loving the book, [...]

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Back from NYC. Wonderful wonderful. Two weddings (in one night…) but no funerals thankfully. We did get to meet up with some of our favorite people: Aaron Hamburger and Anthony (by the way, Aaron’s new cooking blog , Aaron’s Sweet Spot, is fantastic!), Lee Houk and Kip (Lee’s book comes out in August! Yee haw!), [...]

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Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg 1956 My favorite postcard of all time.I think I bought it when I was about eighteen or nineteen, as a sensitive young gayboy in San Diego. Peter Orlovsky (on the right) was incredibly beautiful and also a writer, but definitely inspired some incredible poems by Ginsberg, his partner of 30 [...]

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How does time slip away so fast? I was just saying to my buddy Eduardo yesterday that days and weeks and months just fly by now that I’m a grown up. I remember being in junior high or high school and feeling as if the days and weeks dragged on. Now I wish they would [...]

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For my birthday Ted got for me this great vintage Pocket Book, Peabody’s Mermaid, by Guy and Constance Jones–and it came today in the mail.  The book, this version of which was published in 1948 (it was also serialized in Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1945!), is a movie tie-in. I think I’ve mentioned it before but [...]

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It’s been over a week, sorry, since my last post. Lots going on– school is coming to a close– I finish teaching the last week of May. I cannot wait. I’ve rented an office with a co-worker of mine–it’s beautiful, pics to come! So I plan on spending my summer writing–especially since I have literally [...]

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Reading the book A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher; she’s one of the featured writers at Fishtrap, where I won a fellowship for July so I thought I’d better read her book. It’s won or been nominated for a slew of awards and it turns out I remember this book being reviewed in Entertainment Weekly [...]

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