Every Monday Night – Celebrating our 14th year! Hosted by David Elsasser and Su Polo Monday, November 9, 2009: Featured Poet Winslow Eliot 7:30 p.m to 10:30 p.m. Sign-up at 7 for Open Mic. Winslow reads at 8:30 p.m. At the Nightingale Lounge 213 East 13th Street, at 2nd Ave. $3.00 Donation $8 Minimum at Read more about Saturn Poetry Reading on Nov. 9[…]
The Bright Face of Danger has been published in four separate French editions: as Fatale Vengeance (Harlequin) and as L’Innocence du Mal (Mira Books and Harlequin Bestsellers)! Here are some comments from my French readers: Boulimie livresque – Bienvenue sur mon blog “J’ai lu ce livre en à peine 2 jours. Et je dois dire Read more about MERCI BEAUCOUP![…]
I wonder whether we pay enough attention to the fragile time of transitioning from one thing to the next. Moving from playtime to bedtime can bring on a tantrum. Moving from one job to another may not bring on a tantrum, but it can be devastating. Moving from an old home to a new one Read more about Transitions, Poetry, & Teens[…]
Your agent has submitted the manuscript of your latest novel to a dozen major publishers. You are living in a strange pause, like being in a bare, sterile waiting room belonging to a stranger, where you wait for the call that will change your life. Again. There isn’t a writer alive who hasn’t experienced this. Read more about Waiting for the Call that You Think Will Change Your Life[…]
An intriguing discussion occurred recently between some of my Twitter friends regarding book reviews. A reviewer had posted a brief disparaging piece (I wouldn’t call it a review, by any stretch of the imagination) about a historical erotic novel. Someone else had made an even more disapproving comment in response, about why writers feel the Read more about The New Book Reviewer[…]
Today I took a walk with a single-mom friend who has recently taken on a full time job. Her 10-year-old son gets home from school at 3:30 p.m.; she arrives home with his younger brother about an hour later. I asked her if he was okay with being alone for that hour. She answered that Read more about Nothing Time[…]
A friend is on her way to Paris, and I urge her to visit Shakespeare & Co, a bookstore on the Rive Gauche. It’s a place that changed my life when I was just seventeen. I had just arrived for a month of studying at the Alliance Francaise (hoping it would help me in preparation Read more about Shakespeare & Co and a Tribute to George Whitman[…]
If you’ve been following my ‘daily happinesses’ you might have noticed that each one is posted in a different colored font. And if you met me, after a while you might begin to notice that on certain days I wear red, on other days I might have on an orange scarf. Not always, but usually Read more about Colors: Simplicity and Balance[…]
It’s summer in the unlikely city of Montreal, and a lot of people are out and about in Claude Bouchard’s edge-of-your-seat crime mystery/thriller, Vigilante . It’s been a long time since I read thrillers that weren’t redeemed (my choice of word) by romance or humor; thankfully Bouchard certainly has the latter. I was quickly introduced Read more about Vigilante by Claude Bouchard[…]
A few months ago I wrote about Romancing the Tweet and what I’d discovered in my early journey with this foreign and strange social medium. Because of something that occurred yesterday, I realize it’s time for an update. Yesterday a fellow Twitterer posted links on his website of six Twitter friends (including me). He wrote Read more about Twitter: The Sense of Belonging[…]
Yesterday a friend on Twitter asked this question “If you had to limit yourself to just 6 books, which ones would they be?” Here are some answers: http://ow.ly/lyBW What’s interesting is the number of respondents (myself included) who simply couldn’t resist a challenge like this: thinking about limiting yourself to a small number of ‘must-reads’ Read more about Six Books for the Journey[…]
The Meaning of Love by Vladimir Solovyov, introduction by Owen Barfield Lindisfarne Books If you want to read one of the most logical, persuasive, and unusual treatises on this eternally fascinating topic, pick up this book! Following a brilliant introduction by Owen Barfield, Solovyov proceeds to dissolve most of our preconceptions about the meaning of Read more about Reading ‘The Meaning of Love’[…]
Whenever I’m on a trip I think about my mother’s book: ‘Around the World by Mistake.’ In 1962-63 my parents took my brother and me on a year-long freighter voyage. They wanted to inspire us to regard the whole world as our home, and people from every country as our friends. ‘Around the World by Read more about “Tyrants coerce, whereas poets, artists, storytellers sing the daily life, the immediate life, the only life we have, the one we love.”[…]
In August, every now and then I’m startled by the sight of a yellow leaf. It always seems too soon, and takes me by surprise. It seems to signify the end of something big. I try not to get caught up in a whelm of nostalgia. But in August I can’t seem to help it. Read more about The Yellow Leaf[…]
In a recent essay on Writers Block and other Urban Legends (http://dosomedamage.blogspot.com/2009/08/writers-block-and-other-urban-legends.html#comments), Jay Stringer defines (and dismisses) the affliction that he says is erroneously labeled as writer’s block. At first, having suffered painfully from this alleged ‘affliction,’ I read his piece with a certain amount of resentment. But then he wrote this:
I’ve recently become a ‘twitterer.’ Twitter – this brave new world of sorts – has opened up new vistas that have made me view the whole world differently. I joined initially at the persuasion of my friend Richard (http://twitter.com/RCaro) – who seemed to imply that tweeting was essential for anyone who 1) is a writer; 2) is interested in other people knowing about one (i.e. ‘success’); and 3) cares about community, other people, the world, and who wants to know what’s what.
The Letter
The phone rings. My daughter is calling from California. Not unusual – but imagine my surprise when she excitedly informs that she secretly nominated me for a Diva Do-Over at Body & Soul in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It’s a six-session program for women fifty years old and over.
Well, bless my soul. Here I am – a decrepit old lady – and I’m being offered an opportunity like this!
Samantha emails me the letter she wrote to nominate me:
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED ONE WEEK BECAUSE OF THE ICE STORM!! Come on December 18 instead.
The “Meet the Berkshire Poets” monthly series continues on Thursday, December 18 at 7:00 p.m. at the Mason Library. Please come to hear December’s featured poets:
David Jaicks, Dawn Barbieri, and Winslow Eliot
The Mason Library is located at 231 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230.
For more information please call 413 274-3738.
In an effort to try to shape society in a way that they hope will be healing, Seth Jordan and a group of friends recently founded an inspiring new organization called Think OutWord. Loosely based around Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on the threefold social order, Think OutWord is a peer-led training in social threefolding.
Around the World by Mistake
By Jane Winslow Eliot
In the summer of 1963 Jane and Alexander Eliot put the last of their money onto a trip around the world: a Yugoslav freighter that was scheduled to deliver all sorts of exotic goods from Rijecka to Osaka and then back again. They trusted to fate that they could pick up the pieces of their freelance writing lives again when they returned. […]
L’innocence du Mal, the French version of The Bright Face of Danger, has been reissued for the fifth time in France! The latest edition is under the ‘Bestsellers’ imprint – “une marque deposee par Harlequin S.A.” Beautifully translated by Francois Delpeuch, L’innocence du Mal continues to be enjoyed by readers all over France!
Interview with Winslow Eliot
Posted on Why Waldorf Works
Last May, Kate Christensen won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for her novel The Great Man. Kate graduated from Green Meadow Waldorf School in 1980, determined to be a novelist. She proceeded to write and publish four humorous, caustic, utterly compelling novels: In the Drink, Jeremy Thrane, The Epicure’s Lament, and The Great Man. All are well worth reading! Although she attended a Waldorf school for just her junior and senior years, her teachers and classes left a lasting impression on her. […]