Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 142

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating pictures in people's minds'

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating pictures in people's minds':   “Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.” – Melissa Etheridge A native of Leavenworth, Kan., Etheridge...

'Creating pictures in people's minds'

 
“Life happens, and I write about it wherever Iam.” –Melissa Etheridge

A native of Leavenworth, Kan., Etheridge was bornon this date in 1961 and almost from the time she could walk and talk wasinterested in music, singing everywhere she went and learning to play theguitar at age 8.
Known for her mixture of "confessional lyrics, pop-based folk-rock, andraspy, smoky vocals," her songs often are inspired by her own experiences.“But, sometimes,” she said,  “they (the words) are more than my real-lifeand, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.”
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 (now inremission) she underwent surgery and chemotherapy and said it caused her tocelebrate life each and every day. "I don't have a bucket list," shesaid.  "Whatever I do each day IS my bucket list."
A gay rights activist she wrote heraward-winning album “Yes, I Am” about being gay in the early 1990s and hascontinued to be a champion for gay rights since. She is also a committedadvocate for environmental issues.
 [image error]
“As an artist, singer and songwriter,” she noted,  “Itry to use my words to create pictures in people's minds.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Dancing in the breeze'

A Writer's Moment: 'Dancing in the breeze':     “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” – William Wordsworth For Saturday's Poem -  to accompany the clouds...

'Dancing in the breeze'

 

 
“Naturenever did betray the heart that loved her.” – WilliamWordsworth

For Saturday's Poem -  to accompanythe clouds wandering through a  Colorado sky -  here is Wordsworth’s,

 

IWandered Lonely as a Cloud

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; butthey
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

@font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}@font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-520092929 1073786111 9 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}

A Writer's Moment: 'Capture the wind and the place'

A Writer's Moment: 'Capture the wind and the place': �� ���An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.��� ��� Tony Hillerman ...

'Capture the wind and the place'

 

���Anauthor knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get afeel for his place.��� ��� Tony Hillerman

 

Born on this date in 1925,Hillerman, who died in 2008, is best known for his Navajo Tribal Policemysteries featuring two iconic police officers ��� Joe Leaphorn and JimChee.  Several of his books have beenadapted as big-screen and television movies, including A Dark Wind andthe multiple-award winner A Thief of Time.

 

A native of Oklahoma, Hillerman gravitatedto New Mexico after serving in World War II. Starting as a journalist, he worked out of Santa Fe, and then moved toAlbuquerque where he both wrote for newspapers and earned a master���s degree inwriting.  It was while covering crimenews that he met a sheriff who became the model for his Navajo cop Joe Leaphornand sparked an idea for his first book TheBlessing Way. 

 

A consistently bestselling author,he wrote 18 books in his Navajo series and more than 30 books total, among thema memoir and several about the Southwest, its beauty and its history.  Given numerous awards, he said two of themost meaningful were one from the Navajo Nation and another from the Departmentof the Interior, recognizing his attention to Native culture and his encouragement formaintaining nature and the land. 

 

���Remember, he advised, "youwrite for both yourself and your audience, who are usually better educated andat least as smart as you are.���

@font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}@font-face {font-family:"������ ������"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"������ ������"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"������ ������"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}

A Writer's Moment: 'Make every day the best day'

A Writer's Moment: 'Make every day the best day':   “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson, born on this date in 1803, was t...

'Make every day the best day'

 

“Writeit on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson, born on this date in 1803, was thefirst American to advocate for Americans developing a writing style of theirown; to create “American” writing and not just copy that of their forebearsfrom other parts of the world.
He was born almost simultaneously with the commissioning of Lewis and Clark's great expedition into the Louisiana Purchase.  Thus, as the Corps of Discovery was created toopen American frontiers, this great writer and thinker was born to a similar pathway – only toward discovery of the written word.  
Emerson was one of the first writersto keep journals, influencing his friend Henry David Thoreau to do thesame.  Emerson’s lifelong extensivejournals and notes ultimately were published in 16 volumes by HarvardUniversity Press and are considered to be his key literary works – eventhough that was not his intent.  “I justwanted to maintain a record of the things that were important to my life,” hewrote.     As it turned out, they are things that haveinfluenced generations of writers both in their content and the practice ofjournaling itself. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson[image error]
A teacher as well as writer andscholar, he was a staunch supporter of education for girls and women and helpedfound a Massachusetts school for girls. And, from the mid-1840s on, he was a national leader of the abolitionistmovement.  Known for his kindness andsupport of others, he said simply, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for younever know how soon it will be too late.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A yardstick for language'

A Writer's Moment: 'A yardstick for language':   “Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the l...

'A yardstick for language'

 

“Everyindividual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as aguide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.”– Joseph Brodsky

Born in Leningrad on this date in 1940, Brodsky first started writing at age15 getting published before he was out of high school.  Hisearly writings got him in deep trouble with both Stalin and his successor Nikita Khrushchevas being “anti-Soviet” and by his late 20s he had been jailed, “confined”to a mental institution, and finally expelled from hishomeland.  Luckily for the writing world,he came to live in the United States thanks to the  help of poet W. H. Auden.
From that point until his death in 1996, hetaught writing and poetry at many different U.S. universities, including Yale, Columbia and Michigan before becoming a full-time facultymember at Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts.                  In 1987, Brodsky was awardedthe Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbuedwith clarity of thought and poetic intensity.” And in 1991, he was appointedUnited States Poet Laureate, the first naturalized citizen to be so honored.
He saidcoming to America was the best thing that could have happened to him.  After living under totalitarianism andoppression America was a breath of fresh air that renewed his spirit andbelief in his fellow human beings. “Cherish your human connections: yourrelationships with friends and family,” he advised.  “Knowhow delightful it is to find a friend ineveryone you meet.”