About ten days of mail arrived yesterday via UPS, sent by my brother-in-law who is kindly checking my mail this month. I opened the large envelope this morning and began going through the contents one by one. In about five minutes, I had opened and reviewed everything. I wadded up the junk and empty envelopes and…
A Creativity Lacuna
“When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring—and where the sea might deposit you-—until one day you know you have lived between two places, the scene of arrival and the point of departure.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan Rothko’s…
I Have Forgotten How to Read
Growing up, my bedroom was small, but cozy with lots of light and well-designed space. It was my haven, and I would spend hours lying on the twin bed my dad built out of wormy chestnut—deeply engrossed in a great book.I discovered Dahl, Fitzhugh, Rawls, and later as a teenager, Salinger, Steinbeck, Hawthorne, Camus, Melville,…
How to Turn on Your Creativity
“An individual’s ability to draw is … the ability to shift to a different-from-ordinary way of processing visual information—to shift from verbal, analytic processing to spatial, global processing.” ~ Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain I’d like to take a moment to thank you for being a part of my community…
The Subtle Creativity Killer
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t…
Being Differently Wired
I stood in the hallway in the elementary wing just outside of her classroom. She leaned in and used a file folder to cover the side of her face. “The truth is is that he didn’t learn what he needed to learn in the first and second grades. I’ve been trying to work with him,…
