
The Guardian Book Blog visits the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. Have a fun trip.

The Guardian Book Blog visits the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. Have a fun trip.

At last, we say goodbye to the seemingly endless January and February and hello to March, the promise of spring to come. But before we welcome the verdant green that will be here in a few weeks, let’s pause to look around.
Take a look at a large tree. Have you ever noticed that, without leaves, the branches look just like the roots? It looks as if a giant hand had pulled the tree out of the ground whole, turned it upside-down, and shoved it back down in the ground, with the roots sticking out.
So, imagine that the “roots” you can see are trying to pull nutrients out of the air as roots pull them out of the soil. Can you imagine yourself mustering up your own energy and sending it to the tree, to feed it? Try it. Send it positive thoughts of strength, health, sunshine, love. And as soon as you do, I’ll bet the tree sends you more, right back. You may feel foolish at first, but eventually, I’ll bet it will make you smile.
We are all part of one energy force. Feed a tree.
Thank you to Lisa Scalfaro for the beautiful photograph.





Today’s “One for the Books” column is “Don’t Worry; Be Happy!”
The Washington Post has posted the eulogy for the late Robert B. Parker (author of the Spenser novels) that was written and presented by his choreographer son, David. Just beautiful.
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From FreelanceFolder: “20 Writing Mistakes That Make Any Freelancer Look Bad”
AND
Resources to Help You Improve Your Communication
Here are four great resources that can help you improve your writing:
The Web site Poets & Writers offers its list of 50 of the most inspiring authors in the world.

Have a Merry Christmas!

The American people have been given a lovely Christmas present this morning. The U.S. Senate has voted to pass the health insurance reform measure, which will (eventually) make sure no one has to die from lack of health insurance or go broke or lose their home because someone in the family got sick. Thank you, senators, and God bless us, every one!
Click here
or on the envelope
for another
Christmas e-card.
Click here
or on the tree
for a
Merry Christmas
e-card.
Do you know what the symbolism represents in the song “The 12 Days of Christmas”? Here’s one interpretation:
From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality the children could remember.
Hanukkah begins tonight.
I want to wish everyone a wonderful, glorious, blessed Hanukkah!
Fascinating. Alan Rinzler blogs about how your brain reacts when you read in “Lighting Up Your Reader’s Brain: Can Neuroscience Teach You to Be a Better Writer?”:
“… There’s scientific evidence that books really do turn on our brains. The brain’s response to the written word can be seen in scans using technology called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), that illuminate in bright lights and colors the increased flow of blood through synapses of the brain as we read. …”
Here’s a photo tour of 20 of the world’s most beautiful libraries.
The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn, arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw their church, it was very rundown and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.
They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc., and on December 18 they were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On December 19 a terrible tempest, a driving rainstorm, hit the area and lasted for two days.
On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.
The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home.
On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity, so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.
By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.
She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and how it covered up the entire problem area.
Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet. “Pastor,” she asked, “where did you get that tablecloth?” The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the woman’s own initials, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.
The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison, and she never saw her husband or her home again.
The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth, but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, saying that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.
W hat a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return.
One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood, continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving.
The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war; how could there be two tablecloths so much alike?
He told the pastor how the Nazis had come, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in prison. He never saw his wife or his home again, all the 35 years since then.
The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier.
He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.
True Story – submitted by Pastor Rob Reid


Thanksgiving greetings!
May your stuffing be tasty.
May your turkey be plump.
May your potatoes and gravy have nary a lump.
May your pies take the prize.
May your Thanksgiving dinner stay off of your thighs!
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
“Do all you can with what you have,
in the time you have,
in the place where you are.”
—Michael Kneale, 1942-2009
“Langley used to bring back from the secondhand bookshops slim volumes of poetry and read from them as if poems were news.
Poems have ideas, he said.
The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images.
That makes poems far more intersting than your novels, Homer.
Which are only stories.”
— from “Homer & Langley”
by E.L. Doctorow
In the Wall Street Journal, several prominent authors reveal some of their writing methods.
The National Catholic Reporter online reviews “Prayerfulness: Awakening to the Fullness of Life” by Robert J. Wicks

“Maybe there is a universal truth embedded in everyone’s soul. Maybe we all have the same story hiding inside, like a shared constant in our DNA. Maybe this collective truth is responsible for the similarity in all of our stories. … Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true … written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don’t understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us … vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called … re-membered … re-cognized … as that which is already inside us.”
— From “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
— John Muir

“So now do you know why books are hated and feared?
They show the pores in the face of life.”
—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Happy birthday today to Mahatma Gandhi, born this day in 1869. I am grateful that the world had him as a mentor for nonviolent protest.
Let’s celebrate by not hating anybody for a day. Anybody. Anywhere. For any reason.

“October is nature’s funeral month.
Nature glories in death more than in life.
The month of departure is more beautiful
than the month of coming — October than May.
Every green thing loves to die in bright colors.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
This is very fun, especially for writers. Stella at The View From Here lets us in on some helpful Web sites that can aid writers who need to find names for their characters. It’s also good if you’re expecting!

Driving down paved roads
slick with wet fallen foliage,
window down
letting in cool air
redolent of burning leaves.
Ah, autumn.
National Catholic Reporter Online has begun an initiative “to draw attention to the remarkable work of women religious around the globe and comes at a time our church is growing and changing in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In instance after instance, women religious are part of this growth.” Click the link above to sign up for e-mail alerts and to find out more about this program.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
— illia (The Wind Among the Reeds 1899)