The Guilt and Grief of Discarding Books - And How to Avoid It
Five years ago, my contractor husband and I decided to downsize from our 4400 square foot home to a much smaller home. The “Big House” had been the realization of a dream, a solar home on the country acreage that he had owned for more than forty years. We built that house with our own blood, brawn, and brains. The only contracting we hired out was the drywall — which as a petite, 5-foot tall woman I simply couldn’t lift — and the outside brickwork because we weren’t qualified as masons. My husband’s brother was an electrician and a plumber who did the work with our assistance, but we did EVERYTHING else.
Read full storyNix the Stereotypes to Improve Marketing and Increase Sales
A promotional photo for a tea-blend by Pitch Black North in collaboration with the band Cradle of Filth. Credit: CallyNicole Arsenault / Featured in NYT article. What if your job was to market an old standby to a completely new audience?
Read full storyHit Hard: How to Deal With Ambiguous Loss
Grieving Those Who Are Alive But Not What They Used to Be. Pat and Tammy McCleod are leaders in the Christian community of Harvard University, serving as campus chaplains. They coordinate student activities, mentor young adults who are growing their faith, and lead mission trips to put Christian beliefs into action.
Read full storyHow Many Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Novels Have You Read?
Joseph Pulitzer instituted the Pulitzer Prizes in 1904. Photo: Shutterstock. Learn what’s “a distinguished representation of American life and get a good “read” in the process.
Read full storyThe Intense Joy of Loving My Neighbors' Children
So many good things come in pairs, like ears, socks and panda bears. But, best of all are the set of twins, with extra laughter, double grins. “Downsizing” for us meant moving from a large two-story home on our twenty-five-acre property into a house one-quarter of the size. Our new home was a much smaller house that we had built years before for my husband’s mother, just about thirty yards away from our original Big House.
Read full storyThe Forgotten Ingredient for a Better Life
A dreary, gray Sunday afternoon surrounds me as I sit in my bedroom listening to the drops plunking off the thawing icicles. Faraway in the distance, a dog barks. Next to me, the furnace exhales sighs of warm air.
Read full storyThoughts to Cheer the Soul-Weary
I once heard a politician, Denny Heck from the House of Representatives, talk about his retirement after four terms in political office. He said,. I sighed, grabbing my notebook to scribble his words. For a moment, I felt discouragement, distress, and despair. His phrase didn’t just resonate with me. It vibrated through me like a tuning fork had been struck on my heart.
Read full storyHow a Daily Reading Habit Makes You More Creative Than a Daily Writing Habit
If you want to be a writer, you hear it all the time. “Write every day” is the standard advice. Everyone talks about how you need a daily habit to establish yourself as a professional. Writing every day improves your skill. Creates a routine. Teaches you discipline.
Read full storyWisdom From a 5-Year Old: Because You Don't Have to Be Old to Know How to Live
The four things you need to know to know “enough”. My sweet, imaginative, energetic 5-year-old friend, Elizabeth, has it all figured out. Just the other day, she told me the four things she needs to know in order to grow up. If she knew these things, she’d know “enough.”
Read full storyHow One Compassionate Woman Put 150 Million Books Into the Hands of Children
"Hollywood Star Dolly Parton" by DominusVobiscum is licensed under CC BY 2.0. It feels like everyone wants to write. Bloggers abound. Hundreds of content platforms exist. Seems like everybody wants to publish a “how-to” book, a memoir, or a book of poetry. Some estimates are that more than 6 million books are published every year, with self-publishing increasing daily.
Read full storyWhy the Merger of Two Major Publishing Houses is Sounding an Alarm
If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard about the proposed merger of Simon & Schuster with Penguin Random House. If you haven’t, you probably will. It’s a fundamental issue in the shaping of the publishing industry that may actually be litigated by the Department of Justice.
Read full storyIf You Wrote a Love Letter to Technology, What Would It Say?
My parents were famous for getting lost. They once drove two hours east instead of two hours south before they noticed they were near unfamiliar towns. I inherited what I call “directional impairment.” If I look at a map and highlight my route, I can tell you which direction I’m heading, but without visuals, I have no internal compass guiding me and end up lost and confused.
Read full storyHow to Make Your Mark...Literally
Marketing the Allure of the Legendary Blackwing Pencil. My history crush, Benjamin Franklin, would have had no hesitation about spending hard-earned money on a quality pencil or the perfect pen. He did, after all, believe that.
Read full storyAn Eye-Opening Look at Why What We Weigh Matters to the World
People are always talking about body weight, how many pounds they’ve put on, how much better they’d look if they’d lose some belly fat, what kind of diet they should follow, how much exercise they need to do to whip themselves into shape.
Read full storyNeed Spiritual Sustenance? Read the Novel, Gilead, To See the Power of Faith
Reading the Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction Since 2000. Last year, I made it one of my projects to begin reading all the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels since 2000. On one of my bookstore jaunts, I scored a $6.00 copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, a book that’s been on my reading list for years. Since Gilead was the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction — and since I’m not reading them in any particular order, I bought the book knowing that it would help me achieve my goal.
Read full storyWhy The Great Writers of the World Often Choose to Write with Pencils
“Sometimes just the pure luxury of long beautiful pencils charges me with energy and invention.” — Steinbeck. All writers have a process, a routine, a way of getting their creative mojo flowing. Who knew that for so many great writers, their muse speaks best when they hold a pencil in their fingers?
Read full storyWhat You "Otter" Know About These Florida's Slinky River Creatures
Sleek. Fierce. Surprising. Never saw such a critter. We are camping in the south of Florida, a beautiful campground called Torry Island, located at the bottom edge of Lake Okeechobee, an area comprised of canals and marshes, filled with birds, fish, and wildlife of all kinds.
Read full storyWhat You Don't Know About Thoreau: 7 Astounding Facts
Almost everyone has heard of Henry David Thoreau, the writer of Life in the Woods, published in 1854, that came to be known as Walden. Most people know of Thoreau as a naturalist and philosopher who wrote about living a simple life in the woods, apart from the materialism and frenzy that overwhelmed most people.
Read full story"To Hear You Tell It:" How-We-Met Stories Can Predict Your Future Happiness
She smiles every single time. My husband is a talker…(and you have to see me smiling as I say that.) Ask him how we met, and he’ll happily tell you, stretching a five-minute story into a twenty-minute tale, no matter how many times he says, “To make a long story, short.”
Read full storyHow Beloved Writer, Thoreau, Carved His Words Into The American Psyche with Wooden Pencils
PHOTO: THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM, MA 6069. PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRAHAM S. HABER, 2010. You’ve probably heard of Henry David Thoreau and his experiment at Walden Pond. You may remember a classroom teacher telling you about a man who went off to live by himself in the woods and wrote about his experience.
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