Stormy Lake Adventure

I have an urgent need to tell you my Fourth of July weekend outdoor experience, my small-scale "hero story." Now this episode was not bold, instead mildly stupidly reckless, and yet a fine little adventure with some lasting satisfaction.

Sunday afternoon I felt a strong pull to take my little inflatable Sea Eagle kayak out for a paddle on nearby Jordan Lake. It had been too long, and the sun was shining. Never mind that thunderstorms were predicted.

Once out on the lake, I could see that there was a dark smudge along the treeline on the horizon, but it was only about a foot wide. Intellectually I know that things get larger as they get closer, but I was still sure that with my lightning paddling speed, I'd be able to dodge it. The lake is huge and many-armed; I'd just avoid the weather, if it even traveled in my direction.

I had a particular and exciting goal in mind, finding the mouth of a creek that I regularly drive across a few miles away on my way to work and back. I had a pretty good idea where it would enter the lake.

Well, I'd paddled hard for over an hour, found a beautiful little cove I'd never seen, scared seven great blue herons out of the trees there, cruised along at the edge of a tall thicket of water grass, and still not found the creek mouth, when the rain began to fall. And, in instant, the thunder and lightning were cracking overhead.

I wasn't going to dodge the weather after all, and I was a very long way from anything but heavily forested shore with bits of exposed sand at the edge here and there. Plus, I was using a metal paddle, in the state with the highest number of lightning deaths per year (or so I'm told.)

So I took the paddle apart and used only the plastic blades, one in each hand, and slowly scoop-scooped my way to one of those little strips of sand, just in time. Five seconds after I pulled up onto this sliver of beach, huge wind whipped up and flipped the boat over as a big pelting rain started, and suddenly the lake was all grey surf. The waves were big enough to break and roll, to force water several feet up the strand and under my feet where quickly I'd positioned myself, lying beneath my overturned my boat, holding it down against the force of the wind.

Within moments, I felt cozy under there, a little warmish cave, with hard rain beating down on airfilled compartments overhead and on the sand on either side of me. The sound was like that of a tin roof in a storm, but all within a foot of my face. I could see out from under the edge of the boat and watch the long waves break into white against dark sky.

I'm accustomed to water. I grew up at the beach, living in Wilmington and spending much of my time at Wrightsville, and I continued going along on some surf fishing and deep sea expeditions in my early twenties. And my eldest nephew tried to teach me to surf fairly recently. But it had been thirty years at least since I was so surrounded by the raw edge of the elements. And this time alone, and definitely not in a charter boat.

As soon as I got under the shelter of my dear little boat I found I was immediately deep in trance. I was comfortable in spite of being drenched, and lying half across a broken branch and having one shoulder hanging out in the rain and dealing with some aggressive ants. For most of the hour and a quarter I was under there, I had little sense of the passage of time. I had a feeling of gratitude, for both the shelter and the nature drama, that was almost tangible, like a shawl of warmer air.

I wasn't really worried. The worst likely to happen was that the storm wouldn't let up until late night, and a small embarrassing search for me would begin. Husband Bob wasn't likely to be worried prematurely though; he's not a worrier and has also decided I'm invincible. I hope never to dissuade him.

I didn't want to be rescued, but I did wonder briefly where the bullhorns were. Once, out on this same lake on a sunny afternoon, I was floating in what was essentially a toy boat, an $11 blow-up vessel with plastic paddles that I got at Best Buy. I probably looked pretty ridiculous because the paddles were tiny and the boat not much bigger than an innertube; my legs were stuck up in the air. A huge cruiser chugged up close by, with enough waves to swamp me. From up on the bridge of the boat, a man in some kind of government park service uniform called: "Ma'am, are you all right?" I was just fine. It was a gorgeous day. There was no threat in sight. But on the day when a storm hits and lifts my 30 pound kayak into the air, I saw no crisply nautically uniformed man cruising up alongside. No doubt, he has the sense to stay in on such afternoons.

The rain quit once for about five minutes, then started again, quiet and steady. The thunder gradually became a little more distant. The surf died down. I crept out. I regathered my metal belongings from where I'd tossed them: glasses, earrings, the pole of the double paddle.

I set out on the water again, again using only the blades, one in each hand, one on either side of the boat, to paddle. There was still too much thunder and lightning nearby for me to want to be flashing a metal rod over my head. I don't know that any of my safeguards actually make any difference--I'm going to learn about that before my next storm chase--but I was doing what I could.

It was one damn long dog-paddle before I could even see the paved ramp where I'd left my car. And by the time I got there it was too dark wearing my prescription sunglasses to see anything at all. But the water was deliciously warm, and I found myself talking to it, every few times I dug a blade in, almost as if it were a pet: "nice warm water, such nice water." It felt as delicious as the shawl of air. Good thing: because if I paused in my paddling for a second, I slid backwards fast. The wind was not going my way.

By the time I made it back to the put-in ramp and was onshore deflating The Boat, packing it in the trunk of my car, I was shivering all over, ready for towels and a hot shower and more towels. And I was enjoying a strong sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, in spite of the basic dumbness of the escapade.

This morning, the day after my adventure, I drove across one of the lake bridges coming into town and thought: "My lake." I felt as if we'd spent a night together, this body of water and I. And we very nearly did.

I'd spent afternoons on or beside this lake before, but never so memorably, or to such effect. This trip melted me into the place, and brought back another location where I'd been so connected before.

When I was a kid, I had this kind of lying-in-the-wet-dirt intimacy with my whole neighborhood on Mimosa Place, knew how the grass grew under the drip line of the Lynch's roof, and could draw precise maps of the major branches of a lot of the trees. It's been a long time since I've had that cell-to-cell connection, even though I'm a gardener and love the plot I raggedly cultivate.

I'm glad to rediscover that deep earth-to-human infrastructure, to remember it exists. When it's active it feels like a combo of raw storm energy and puppy affection, born of nothing but intense prolonged close-up attention to the place and dependence on knowing those details. I didn't know I'd missed that feeling. A funny thing to rediscover on an Independence Day weekend.

What I did know, while I was out there, was that I was going to relish telling this story.



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Happy Boldness Day

For people of the USA, there's never a better day than the 4th of July to make a significant and positive bold move. If you do make one, be sure to report it here. It will inspire all.


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Two Free Tickets to a Bold Performance

To the first person to comment here who can plan to attend, I'm giving two tickets to this Saturday's Raleigh performance by the Brussels Chamber Orchestra.

It's the American premier of this group and they are hot; their second American performance, to be held in the Hamptons next week, just got a nice calendar notice in The New Yorker.

Setting up the Raleigh appearance is the very bold project of my office partner Carrie Knowles, whose 26 year-old son Neil Leiter plays with the group. She single-handedly turned the news that the group was coming to New York into the creation of an annual international classical music festival for Raleigh. A successful visual artist, gallery owner, and author, she says its the largest project she has undertaken, and that is saying a lot.

If you want to buy tickets ($15), call 919 757-9279. The performance is Saturday, July 5, at Raleigh's AJ Fletcher Auditorium. The musicians, eleven young talents from six countries, will come out front and meet the audience at the close of the program.




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The Fear of Separation

I recently finished watching the full six years of The Sopranos TV series a couple of weeks ago, in sequence in my living room on Netflix DVDs. Through the last weeks with the famous "Mafia" family, I had come to dread the inevitable end of the disks, so great was my attachment to these people.

I even did that dumb thing that people do--that I thought I'd never do--when someone close is dying. I started to withdraw in advance, in order to ward off the full impact of the blow.

I was surprised at myself. If there ever an example of "cowards die a thousand times before their deaths, the brave but once" or whatever that quote is*, this was it. And provoked by nothing more serious than the loss of fictional characters I can always rent again.

Ideally, one stays involved full-tilt to the end, even with fictional people. At least that's what I think. That strikes me as the boldest and most satisfying approach. No numbing out, no missing of the final intensity. That's what I mean to do should I ever face another such loss.

But I can't even imagine it. I agree with New Yorker editor David Remnick: The Sopranos were the best thing that ever hit TV. I also think the show was the best characterization I've ever seen on film. I'm pleased that this particular piece of art unfurled in my lifeime.

Surely that deserves full engagement.

I'm doing one thing right in this process though. I thought about immediately starting to rent The Wire or My So-Called Life or some other series. But I'm not yet ready for another relationship. First I need time.



*
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar




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My Beaded Fish: A Writer's Cross-Training

Last week, during my stay-home-and-clean-up-the-house vacation, I finished this little craft project that I'd let sit for about two years.

Because of popular demand (one request, thank you, Mamie) I'm displaying it here. I mean for it to go outdoors, hanging from a tree near our little "farm" pond. But I hung it up overnight in front of the curtains in the den, and decided for the moment that I like it there.

She's a quarter of an inch shy of three feet long. This kind of goofy free-hand playful handiwork does a lot for loosening up my creative juices for writing. It's very helpful to me to switch gears so radically: to place little physical widgens of color rather than words.

And to not have to meet any standards of quality or of market limitations. Very freeing. It's also nice to literally tie up some loose threads.







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Day Five: Clean and Organize

Many emotional stages to this process: last night I felt my efforts at helping Bob clean out his junk room weren't being properly appreciated. I had a talk with Gandhi who reminded me that we need to refrain from focusing on the fruits of our labors; "do the work and then step back."

Also had a talk with Bob; there were points on both sides. Today I'm feeling much more appreciated.

I feel I know Bob a bit better, from seeing the things he has saved for twenty, forty, sixty years. It's rather moving to me.

And then I come back to earlier bits of my life in the process too. Had to pause for a while over a 1969 Yackety Yack (UNC yearbook, for the non-North Carolinian.) Even though I'm a Dukie, that was pretty stirring.


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Day Four: Clean and Organize

Hoo boy. We have taken on something large here. Yesterday morning Bob and I started on his "junk room," which is also the kennel location of his 125 pound serious-shedder of a dog. This morning Bob likened the process to remodeling; it tears up everything and leaves it a mess for a long time.

It's satisfying though. We're making progress.

And I'm also doing smaller projects that are actually finishable: the bathroom drawer, the upstairs chatchke bowl, and a more inventive little undertaking: sewing corner extenders onto the sheets so that they don't come untucked.

I started that last one because I have a larger sewing project in mind that I don't want to do by hand as I usually do these things. So Sunday I bought one of those little $15 hand-held battery sewing machines at Target and I'm trying to learn how to use it. Haven't quite got the hang of it yet. It feels like a cross between a stapler and a hamster.

This is all so grounding, this real-world nonverbal stuff. I say that somewhat ironically, but it's true.



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Day One: Clean and Reorganize

Since I last blogged, I finished beading a two-foot image of a fish and did all of the pile of mending for Bob and me (3 prs. pants, 2 shirts, a scarf, a vest, and a gardening glove). The pile was mainly winter clothes. Oh well; they're ready for next year.

Cleaning and reorganizing mean different things to different people, obviously. I'm very happy with this progress.

Tomorrow I will hang the beaded fish art from a tree near our pond. This particular project has been lying around my house unfinished for about two years. What a relief and delight to get it out of the house and up a tree!! It had become one of those things that coaches and feng shui people refer to as an "energy drain." (See Cheryl Richardson's Take Time for Your Life.) Getting rid of those is a major point of this cleaning week for me.



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A House Cleaning Vacation Plan

This coming week, my husband Bob and I are staying home to clean up. We had this "vacation" planned before I stayed home last week being sick, but I've rallied in time to pitch in; though I may forget what my office looks like in the meantime.

The work-at-the-house week doesn't officially start until Monday when we'd normally go to offices. But I thought I might get a running start this weekend.

Well, not yet, as it turns out. It's 4:08 pm. Saturday and I've not yet done a dab of the planned neatening.

But I'm excited about this. My plan is not to create some ideal of order (fat chance) but to make the kind of changes that actually make life better. If I discovered that this worked, there could be a revolution.

Anyway, this effort is for me pretty damn bold.

I'll keep you up on progress.


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Clay Collins: Creative Freedom

I just stumbled across a blog on a kindred subject: The Growing Life, about the blogger's creation of a life and career outside of corporate institutions.

"One of the great tragedies of human existence is that so many of us toil for another person, who is in turn toiling for someone else, who is working for someone else’s interest. And on and on. There are entire corporate chains of command comprised of people working for someone else’s interest rather than their own. In far too many cases, there is no there, there."

I feel much the same way about large organizations, and not only from the point of view of what it's like to work there. My objection is: it's too hard to locate the conscience in an organization where the final deciders are the amorphous stockholders, presumed to be interested in profit by any means.

So there's much I agree with this blogger Clay Collins, who describes himself as "a trafficker of ideas, an outdoorsman, a proponent of human rights, a creative visualizer, and a believer in a better world."

There's one idea, though, which crops up here and there in the posts and comments on this highly popular blog, that drives me crazy. Irritates me enormously. And that is: a trace of feeling superior to those who work day jobs for salaries, etc. Examples:

*"At a very young age, I somehow knew that the schooling process was bullshit."

*"It's the dilettantes that really get to grow."

*"The paradox of intelligence (POI) says that in general, the more intelligent you are, the less brainpower you’re likely to keep for yourself."

*"Who’s winning the battle for your mind?"

My stance is that I do my thing and people who are doing something else no doubt have their reasons. No doubt I'm inclined toward righteousness or I wouldn't be so easily irked by it.

Anyway, I very much like, on the whole, the way this guy thinks. I save my wee smackdowns for the people who are almost meeting my impossible standards. (I often niggle about how Bill Moyers presents something; never give a thought to Rush Limbaugh.)

So do go visit this site. Because there's a lot of damn-right good stuff: "Once external factors no longer tie us down, it becomes easy to become our own tyrant bosses... We make what seem to be incredible sacrifices to remove ourselves from restrictive conventional situations, and damn it, after all that sacrifice, it better result in something breathtakingly amazing. So we start setting unrealistic and ego-driven goals (as opposed to the unreasonable authentic goals that bring us alive and cause us to wreak havoc on the world in beautiful ways)."

Now I'm off to wreak some havoc.




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The Five Things We Cannot Change...

I just started reading a book from my stack(s) that my hand felt magnetically drawn to. The title: The Five Things We Cannot Change...and the Happiness We Find By Embracing Them. The author: David Richo.

I hadn't even reached the discussion of the First Thing before the book had reminded me very memorably that: the difficulties we each encounter are our chances to learn, expand, and shine.

I've always had a feeling that any problem I encountered was likely caused by my own bad planning. No matter how improbable it might seem, somehow it was a bad decision I made that caused trouble.

I don't know how exactly this book dissuaded me of that. But for the moment at least it has.

If you're burdened with hyperresponsibility, you might find it worth having a look at.

Personal health update: still recovering, sleeping about 12 or so hours a day, and feeling amazingly serene.



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Eleanor Roosevelt

Rarely has anyone so bold emerged from such a timid beginning.

Last night a 2.5 hour documentary on Eleanor Roosevelt aired on my local PBS station. I hadn't planned on watching, though I knew it was scheduled. I told myself I already knew that story.

I happened onto it by accident, though, turning on the TV just as the program was starting. I was fascinated through the very end. And not so much by any new facts I learned, instead by watching this woman transform.

She moved from dreadful shyness to become the most powerful woman in the world. And it didn't happen in a smooth easy sweep. Nor did she transform herself into a different sort of person. Instead, she took herself, as she was, out into the world and kept doing the best she could: for human rights and equality and the easing of poverty. The effects of her work continue. So does her example, made more powerful by the fact that it was never easy.




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Healing Quotes

Advice from our wise commenters on healing boldly:

From Mojo:
"Take your time..."

From Billie:
"...When we get sick like this it's a direct message to take time for our 'selves'; and slow down our pace."

Debra W:
"Part of living boldly is knowing when to just say no to everything else, so that we can give ourselves the time that we need in order to heal. It is very important to learn when that time comes. We must become bold enough to become our own advocates."

Thanks to all.







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Pneumonia Lungs

The bug I was thinking of as sniffles turned out to be pneumonia. As the germ turns!! It was certainly a surprise to me. I tend to downplay any health problem, because I've never had one to amount to anything.

But other people kept telling me that this situation was not looking good and I finally went to a doc. One person had actually refused to do business with me, said we'll talk another day.

I'm a great believer in optimism. But there's also some value in not jauntily walking off a cliff I'd refused to recognize.

So, with a few days of sleep behind me, now I start creeping back, a little at the time. Then picking up speed, if history is any indicator.

More later on combining sickness and boldness in a useful and nondestructive way.


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Expecting to Recover Soon

Got a bug. Can't talk now. Back soon.



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The Last Lecture

If you haven't seen this already, go to Youtube and listen to Professor Randy Pausch's last lecture--on how to live--which he gives knowing he has pancreatic cancer and has been given a life expectancy of two to four months.

I had a sore throat the day I saw it, and was moving kinda slowly. The video of this gutsy, charmingly immodest, athletic, gorgeous, smart, and nice 47 year-old facing death didn't take away the slight under-the-weather feeling I had.

But it did remind me that, with the right spirit, it's possible to face anything with courage, joy, boldness, generosity, gratitude, and style.

One delightful piece of news: he has already outlived by months the prognosis. At least as inspiring as the video is his online update of his progress.





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Another Technology Success

Yesterday I carried on here about my bold move in managing to send a photo from my camera to my blog.

Riding the swell of confidence and accomplishment from that, I took on a biggie: I learned to make my own letterhead envelopes on my own printer. Not without difficulty, as you can see from this off-the-mark attempt at a return address. (By the time I'd gotten to this point, I was almost home free.)

But having persisted and struggled and whined, I now have some very artful and personal envelopes. And the immense satisfaction of having again ventured successfully into the storm-tossed surf of electronics. Little victories do add gas to one's tank.

Do remember to give yourself credit, even if it feels a little silly.




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Daily Courage

This strange structure--a water tower, I think--is about 12 stories high. And there's someone walking around on its sloping upper surface, adjusting those wires that hang down.

That guy has a job that takes daily courage. Maybe he's used to it. But I can't believe he doesn't get a stomach wobble now and then.

I pulled my car in beneath this tower yesterday, while in the process of correcting a wrong turn I'd made on the way to a printer's. My own small act of courage was to to, for the first time, shoot and send by phone a picture to my computer for this blog. There are people who are used to phoning in photos too, millions of them. But new tech tasks still give me a stomach wobble in the form of dread and irritation.

The daily courage requirement is different for each of us. An undertaking that feels like nothing for one person takes guts and boldness for another.

It's important to give ourselves credit for our own bold moves, and not compare them to walking on water towers.





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Orchestrating a Major Bold Move

My friend and office partner Carrie Knowles decided recently to create in her spare time an annual international music festival in the Raleigh area. Not that she was lacking for things to do: she's a writer and visual artist and mother of teenager.

It began thusly: Her oldest son Neil Leiter, 26, plays viola in the Brussels Chamber Orchestra which was already scheduled to come to the U.S. and play in the Bard Music Festival of the Hamptons. Since they were going to be only 500 or so miles away, it seemed a no-brainer to arrange a few concerts in North Carolina and turn it into an annual event.

Whoo-boy!

Well, a few weeks into the project it looks large and it's definitely happening.

There's plenty still to arrange, but the orchestra from Belgium will play two concerts in the Raleigh area and the Star-Spangled Banner at a Durham Bulls baseball game.

I'm wowed. And here's my point that we can all keep in mind: set the wheels of something big in motion and it's highly likely that it's going to happen. Because once you've got hosts for the musicians, restaurant meals set up, a new nonprofit in the works, a couple of concert venues and a fundraising art auction scheduled, then there's no turning back. Even if the details start to seem overwhelming.

Ten years from now Raleigh will probably be a major international classical music venue. And it will be because one woman had the idea and then got busy on the phone.

NC concerts are July 5 in Raleigh, July 6 in Cary, and July 2 for the national anthem at the Durham Athletic Park. For more info about the North Carolina appearances, contact Carrie Knowles at cjknowles@earthlink.net.

(Neil is the tall blonde guy in the back.)




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Garden Wisdom

My eccentric garden benefits from some of my husband's bold and imaginative ideas. This owl and another totem pole he used for years as posts for a badminton court. When joint troubles ended badminton, he got them moved into the plot that I devotedly cultivate. They're ever a mysterious surprise when I notice them again . I'm glad I didn't marry the kind of guy who would use a couple of aluminum poles to hold up a badminton net.


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A Month of Daily Writing

Brava to Yvonne of NYC who has initiated a 30 day writing plan.

"...My fear of not ever writing anything is finally starting to outweigh my fear of writing and failing at it. And second, while I am pretty content with everything in my life right now--I often go to bed with this emptiness inside of me, this void that something is missing. And I think it's about creating something that makes my life more meaningful than just going to work and paying the bills and lifting dumbbells at the gym."

Yvonne, we're cheering you on.



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Eccentric Gardens

I love funky gardens and think they're such a fine form of art and self-expression.

My own garden is a bit peculiar. And the current issue of Domino Magazine ("The Guide To Living With Style") reminded me of the pleasures of other people's odd plots.

Have a look at Tony Duquette's and Madame Ganna Walska's Lotusland and Robert Kourik's.

Or simply Google "eccentric gardens." There are photo books on the subject, and visitable gardens, and then there's the DIY combo of plants and objects that only you can create.

You can create a living green fantasyland in a container if that's all the dirt that's handy.


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Four Minutes to Write This

I forgot to bring my laptop from home to my office today, and my husband has my car. So I walked to the library some distance away to do this, and my time is running out after checking my email.

But here's my point: I worked on two projects today, WRITING IN HANDWRITING. Got to some good stuff. I think the change did me good. Sort of like that fellow who took his laptop to the produce dept.



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Pretend You're Blogging

"In the words of renowned writing instructor William Zinsser: 'Any invention that eliminates the fear of writing is up there with air conditioning and the light bulb.'"

From an article in the Ottawa Citizen on e-mail and texting.

One way to deal with hitting a wobbly moment writing is to pretend I'm simply writing an e-mail. Or a blog post, which almost always seems to fly straight from unformed thought to screen, without hesitation at all.



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"Hello, My Name Is Scott"

I'd intended to focus here on a cool post I ran across called "4 Ways to Motivate Your Melon". The guy who wrote it, Scott Ginsberg, had hit a wall trying to write it, so he implemented one of his own techniques for getting the juices flowing. He moved his writing location to the produce department of a local grocery store. The change did the trick. The resulting piece is entertaining and useful.

Then I googled Scott and found an even better story. This man wears a nametag full-time. The first of his several books is Hello, My Name Is Scott: Wearing Nametags for a Friendlier Society.

This man is bold.

I've said to friends so many times after leaving parties or other crowd scenes: I wish we all wore nametags all the time.

But did I start wearing a nametag myself in order to set the trend in motion? I didn't even think of it.

Scott Ginsberg did. He'd left a nametag on after an event and discovered that lots of people spoke to him and started conversations with him. So he kept on wearing it. Now he even has a nametag tattooed onto his chest.

A nametag? It takes guts to seem that dorky. I'm still not quite up to it. But I'm going to get his books, including The Power of Approachability, Make a Name for Yourself, etc.

Hello, My Name Is Peggy. Just trying out the idea.

Maybe I'll get a rhinestone cursive Peggy.

I dare you to put on your own nametag for a day and let us know what happens.


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In Lazy Memory of Bold Soldiers

So I boldly took the long weekend of Memorial Day off. And didn't even blog. That's a serious matter, like not checking e-mail, which I didn't do either.

It was startlingly easy, for one who is prone to overwork a bit and delay vacation time. I've often found that to be true with making leaps, both small and large. Once I get started, I'm puzzled why I ever hesitated.

Anyway, I did a bit of gardening for three days in a row, the last weekend that in my area that can be relied upon not to swelter.

And I took my little inflatable kayak over to nearby Jordan Lake and paddled for an hour, saw a couple of herons at water's edge. Circled a small island that during last summer's drought was attached to the shore by a long ribbon of sand.

And read. And did laundry. And hung out with my husband and a friend. And saw a movie. And ate at the admirable Watts Grocery in Durham.

When I showed up at my office building this morning, one of the upstairs tenants said, "You look rested." And I got a whole lot of work done today.

So, no downsides to this particular wee variation in the usual. When such small changes can take a booster rocket of energy to bring about, it's hard to imagine the kind of steady boldness required of the soldiers we memorialized this holiday weekend.


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The Daffodil Principle in Action

Remember the Daffodil Principle? One woman kept planting and planting, day after day, a few more daffodil bulbs. Time passed and she didn't quit. Small bits of effort multiplied and then: 50,000 bulbs burst into bloom each spring on the land surrounding her home.

With dibs and dabs of time, she'd made an art work with the impact of a mountain view. This one woman had become a force of nature.

I'm thinking of this again because I was just asked to e-mail my NC legislators asking for funding for the NC Arts Council. On the occasions when I take a moment to do such things, I'm half-thinking that I'm just wasting ten minutes.

However, a dab of my time, a dab of yours, and extraordinary things happen. People and places bloom.

Though it may not always seem so, everybody's dab is crucial. Don't forget to add yours, maybe even daily, to the world changes you want.

And, if you live in NC or have any interest in the arts here, click here to take action. It probably won't even take you ten minutes.




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Letting Your Freak Flag Fly

"Dare to Be Yourself", says the cover of the current issue of Psychology Today.

"A sense of authenticity is one of our deepest psychological needs, and people are more hungry for it than ever. Even so, being true to oneself is not for the faint of heart."

Aristotle suggested that authenticity is going after the highest good, not simply "letting your freak flag fly." (The flag phrase is from Karen Wright, author of the article, not Aristotle.)

By this definition, authenticity can have its costs, Wright points out, especially in the short term. For example, writing for the market can produce money and recognition; writing according to your own highest standards is likely to be more satisfying, and (perhaps arguably) more toward the highest good.

Showing one's quirky colors--the freak flag--is for me, not only fun, but helps in the larger effort for highest good and most profound satisfaction.

In my early twenties, just out of school, I seemed to be a bit like a color you could wear with anything. And in fact both Democrats and Republicans asked me out. Within a few years, as I became more myself, only Democrats called. Which created a smaller pool in the short-term, but led to a happy marriage.

So I think there's no either/or decision on these two approaches. I favor flying one's flag, whatever it looks like, as we each sail, with zigs and zags, toward our best selves.

(If you go looking for the article, check out the hard copy. It has a useful how-to sidebar.)




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Sweet and Sassy

A picture of a coiled rattlesnake lying in straw is on the back cover of the May issue of Wildlife in North Carolina magazine.

The image is eye-catching enough in itself. Then I was startled by the caption: "What the pigmy rattlesnake lacks in size, it makes up for in looks, rarity and bold yet endearing attitude."

Bold yet endearing? A rattler?

I studied the picture carefully and still didn't understand.

What I do like, though, is the idea of bold and endearing describing the same personality. The words bold, outspoken, etc. often get a bad rap, being considered euphemisms for obnoxious.

But they're not the same thing at all. In fact, it sometimes takes more boldness to say something nice, to say something so authentic and tender that it feels dangerous.

That willingness to be vulnerable is bold and endearing.

But I'm just not seeing it in that rattlesnake. I'll have to check out the full article on the "petite viper" in next month's issue of the magazine.



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Playing a Fear Game

Kim, a student in Perth, Australia, is having a having a bit of banter with her physics teacher in class.

From her blog Scotchkey:

"kim: Well, Mr. L. You see, I have this deficiency complex too. When I'm writing up my labs, I have a fear of writing too much because if I use up all my ink, what's going to happen then? *MrL has previously made comments about the brief-ness of my answers*"

MrL says that this would be to the detriment of her marks.


My point in posting this item: some of our hesitations are just as silly as avoiding writing because we might run out of ink.

I have even had the occasional twinge of actual guilt that I was using up so much pencil lead by doodling that produced no timeless art. This is sick! At least it's no excuse in the wealthy world of bloggers: in Varanasi researching Sister India, I knew an engineer who'd done his math homework as a kid on the margins of old newspapers. That was all the paper he had. That's not the kind of trouble that anyone who reads this is wrestling with.

I have plenty of pencil lead. And Kim can most likely get hold of all the ink she wants.

All we need is to stop making silly excuses and leap into our lab reports, our novels, our Sistine ceilings...



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One Man's Bold Decision

"I've decided to take a more personal interest in the news," said the e-mail from my friend, media expert Hank Scott, "and particularly in the things that piss me off and embarrass me as an American. It is so easy for these issues to be seen as institutional, and they are. But they also are the consequences of actions by people..."

He was referring to reading in The New York Times, where he worked for many years, about an Italian tourist arriving in Washington at Dulles Airport and being held in custody for ten days. The man is a 35 year-old lawyer who was coming to this country to visit his girlfriend and her family in Alexandria, Virginia.

The reason given for his being jailed was that he had asked for asylum in the U.S., and therefore needed to be held for a hearing. He said he wanted no such thing. Officials finally agreed this had been a mistake. Still, he was not released, in spite of the efforts of his American friends, and U.S Senator John Warner of Virginia. Instead, he spent ten days in a rural Virginia jail, where he had been taken in shackles. "He ended up in a barracks with 75 other men, including asylum-seekers who told him they had been waiting a year."

He was released when a Times reporter began investigating. Yay, New York Times!! Yay, free and vigorous press!!

And yay, Hank, for calling immigration authorities to complain and encouraging others to do the same.



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Keep Balance

A writer told me today that novelist Walker Percy kept on his desk a sign that said: Wait.

Another similar piece of wisdom received second-hand this afternoon: Be Cool. A much-published novelist offered this as advice to a younger writer startled to find himself suddenly in demand and needing to make choices.

I have a bias toward hastiness. I find it hard to refrain from a quick decision, quick action. Especially if I think I have a fish on the line who might be tempted to get away.

It's hard to wait and hard to be cool. Especially when the fate of one's novel is involved.

Still it's good advice: to let a decision rest overnight, to wait a bit and reread before sending out work that has just been revised.

In any event, it's valuable to remember: boldness does not mean rushing into action too soon.

I know a boy who, when thanking his family members during his bar mitzvah, told the congregation he had learned "chillness" from his older brother.

I'm almost sixty and in the last few years, I've learned some chillness, though not a whole lot. I do have a few strategies for moments when rashness beckons:

*leave the location
*get away from computer and phone
*get physical exercise
*talk to somebody calm
*meditate
*do a routine brainless chore like weeding
*tell whoever is pushing me that I'll get back tomorrow , even when I'm the one who is pushing me.





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Do It Right Now

"TODAY I will tackle at least two things I dread doing. I will not waste my time and energy by wallowing in boredom, worry, criticism, or fear. I will do what needs to be done even if it requires effort, risk and change."

A thought for the day from Hazelden, passed on by writer-photographer-businesswoman and regular participant here, Mamie Potter.


When I received this from Mamie this morning, I first thought: I'll post it. A second thought: I'll do it. So I added two items to my plan for today, both more important than anything already on my list.

Of course, it's still necessary to do them. But once they're on my list, it's highly likely.

If I followed through on this every day, I could really go places!



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Boldness and Good Boundaries

Yesterday on the phone with my friend, teacher, and fellow novelist Laurel Goldman I had one of those ping-moments of realization.

Rattling on about my work consulting with writers, I realized all in an instant why I prefer working with people one-to-one rather than leading a long-term close-knit weekly group. I'd always thought that my reluctance to run such a group had to do with the extreme regularity of it.

Now I know that that's the smaller part of my objection. I prefer the one-to-one irregular contacts better because I don't have to witness the immediate unhappiness that critical feedback can bring. I typically hear from the person again only after she or he has decided what to do or not do with my feedback, and has gotten past any anger or disappointment.

That period of disconnection allows me to be as fully forthcoming with my thoughts as I need to be in order to be useful.

This is true of me because my boundaries (my sense of separateness from other people)haven't been strong enough long enough for me to tell every critical thought I've had without a significant possibility of holding back, consciously or unconsciously, in a mistaken effort to protect both of us.

For a person who is paid to give feedback on writing to withhold a response to the work is malpractice. It's cheating the other person.

For me, this little distance lets me keep my balance better, allows me to be bolder and freer, more objective and better at doing this kind of work.

After all, doctors don't usually treat their own family members. Lawyers don't go home with clients to whom they've had to deliver some hard-to-take information; if they did, and witnessed any resulting unhappiness, they might be tempted to soft-pedal in a way that ultimately hurts the client.

So for the time being I structure this little distance. Maybe one day my sense of separateness will let me do it differently, or maybe not.

In any event, I'm glad to have figured out this connection between boundaries and being as fully outspoken as I need to be.










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Your Inner Guidance System

"Never leave until tomorrow the thing that you are guided to do today."

From Touchstones (Hazelden Meditation Series)quoted on Daily Spiritual Guide



The trick, of course, is discerning what is guidance and what is an escapist impulse in no one's best interests. Often that's pretty obvious. When it's harder (for a lot of folks, I think) is when the impulse is to set aside responsibilities and go play. Most anyone who is conscientious enough to think about such matters is likely to err in the direction of ignoring the voice that says take it easy.

Whatever the decision about a particular impulse on a particular day, it's so important to pay attention to the inner urgings that show up again and again. At the very least, they're important information. And may lead somewhere wonderful.




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Come Right Out and Say It

Yesterday's post cited St. Paul. Today's item on this far-reaching discussion of boldness has its origins in Edgar Cayce and aura photography.
I've just come from my monthly lunch gathering, Mystic Pizza: half a dozen folks who like to talk about metaphysics. I told a story there, then realized: I never before said that out loud to anybody.

The story in brief: I was at Heritage Store in Virginia Beach, which began in order to sell the health products that Cayce, through his psychically derived info, was recommending. The place is now a huge New Age department store, with cafe, massage rooms, etc.

That day an aura photographer had set up in a front corner. When I sat down to have my picture taken, I inwardly said: okay, God, you show up in this picture too.

When the picture emerged, the photographer said, first thing, exact quote: "What did you do, summon God?" She pointed to a vertical wisp of pink in the photo: "That's divine."

I have not arrived at my final stance about whether that pink wisp was God. But I was startled by the neat parallel of my thought and her next comment. And then I never mentioned that moment to anyone until this week.

Here's the irony. All my books are about speaking out/taking action/self-actualization. My first novel Revelation is about a minister who hears the voice of God and then hesitates to tell anyone, because after all, it sounds a little weird; and he's a minister, it's his job to tell. Finally he is emboldened. He emboldens himself. He speaks. And takes action. That's the underlying story line of most of what I write.

Hard to believe it was just a coincidence that for perhaps ten years I never got around to speaking of that little incident to anyone. And didn't even notice that I was keeping silent about it. It's certainly not as if I forgot.

It's surely no coincidence that I write (and blog) about what I do: telling others to speak up, etc. Clearly I'm preaching first to myself, which I think is true of a lot of preachers and various kinds of exhorters.

Also, I always wonder who else has pink wisps show up in their photos or floating orbs over the breakfast table, and just doesn't get around to saying it out loud.




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Anti-procrastination Strategies

Ever had a no-big-deal phone call you needed to make and you put it off a couple of days and then it became near-impossible?

I do it. I see my husband do it. Are we the only ones?

I've read that procrastination is the art of making a big deal out of a trifle. I'm not sure I know the mechanism, but I know I do see items lodge in my to-do lists: again and again on the daily lists, then sometimes for weeks on the weekly list. (Today's daily list on magenta Post-it, week to the right on orange, both stuck to the desk feature called a writing slide, which can thus be pushed out of sight.)

The sure cure is, of course, to do everything immediately. And I'm pretty good about that most of the time. But let anything slip and it's soon in a free fall. Also, trying to do everything immediately obviously can create an unnecessary and tense sense of urgency about everything.

Once I finally mark one of these stuck items off my list, I feel terrific, all-powerful, silly for having delayed. (Maybe that's why I do it?)

Rewards have often worked for me: as soon as I do x, I get to do y.

Also, doing the hard item first is a no-brainer. It's so liberating that I always ask myself why I don't always do it. (Then I think of Paul of Damascus who had the same issue: wondering about why "the good he would do he (did) not." If Saint Paul had to deal with this, I shouldn't wonder that I do.)

So as anti-procrastination strategies, here are some possibilities:

*do it immediately
*do it now and get a marvelous self-awarded reward
*do the hard item first
*get someone else to do it
*discover an underlying reason for avoidance thus making it possible to act or decide not to
*realize that the task was really a bad idea and good sense is saying no
*pair up with someone else who has a long-delayed stupid little task and do them together, then celebrate
*do it in a half-distracted state so that it's done before you know it
*plunge in boldly, like a surfer going out through the breakers, relishing the experience

Other ideas?






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Getting Published

An update on an earlier report: two weeks ago I wrote here about The Writer Daughter. The daughter is that of my dear friend Connie who shared with me, back in the 60s, many long intense teenage literary discussions (we were both so artsy and special.) Connie's daughter Alexa in April received news that her first novel had won over a major-house editor who was enthusiastically presenting the book to her acquisitions committee.

Held breath ever since.

Well, the news was terrific! Several houses were interested in the book. And now ALEXA MARTIN has a deal for her debut novel at Hyperion for good money with an editor that she "really really really" likes. And the sales force is excited and comparing her to the excellent Sarah Dessen, of whom Alexa has long been a huge fan.

It's always nice to post good news about getting published. Plus, this good news has a long history for me.

Also, Alexa didn't start writing just yesterday either. She's one fine example of talent combined with the focus and persistence it takes to publish a book.

As she put it so ably in her email: Hurray!!!

An added thought: Mustn't give all the foundation-laying credit to those teenage book talks. Her father Dr. Larry Martin is a writer who decided to be a psychiatrist instead.



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A Model of Creative Courage

From citykitty, who describes herself as an actor and an introvert:

"Screw the fear of writing, I started my book."

Kudos to citykitty!



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Gag Reflex, Lizard Brain

My courage fails me often at the dentist's; I don't like gauze or metal or cement at the back of my mouth. My throat tries heroically to get rid of the stuff: thus an unseemly fit of gagging.

This morning, I was having "impressions" made for a nightguard, to help me stop grinding my teeth. This involved holding what felt like a half-pound of wet cement in my mouth for two full minutes, one minute each for upper and lower. My gag reflex (which I learned I should code as a mere gag response)kicked in with astonishing ferocity.

Even though I could get air, for a long moment I had the sensation of drowning, and of my body struggling to stay alive. I'd never seen death from this angle before, or descended so fully into my primitive self in order to fight back. And I was even breathing nitrous oxide at the time.

Eventually, we did get the job done, the able hygienist and I. But only after I'd had an enlightening experience of what it is to be a panicked animal.

I'm going to be able to use this information, though I'm not sure yet how. I'm hoping I'll figure out how to connect with that lizard-brain part of myself, now that I've met her. Maybe we could work together on some projects; there's too much energy there to waste.




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Obama at The Raleigh Times Bar

Yesterday I ran for a glimpse of our next president.

Sitting here at my computer, I'd half-consciously noted that a helicopter was hovering overhead. And that it wasn't going away. But didn't pause to ask myself why.

Then I got a hurried shouting cell phone call from my office partner who had walked down the street with her husband to eat dinner. Traffic was blocked, she said, and Obama was working his way down Hargett Street shaking hands.

Hargett Street is one block from my office. Had I not paused to put on lipstick, I'd have seen more. Nonetheless, I arrived breathless in time to see him, across the intersection, stepping lankily into his car. Even with the door shut, I could still see the trademark white shirt and tie through the glare on the window, which I watched until his entourage was gathered and headed out.

Thrilling! Seriously!

Obama and his wife had dropped into The Raleigh Times bar for 15 minutes and a beer. Owner Greg Hatem had had 30 minutes notice that he was coming. It was enough time for hundreds of people to gather, spilling out onto the sidewalks and filling the street, clapping and cheering and pressing to meet the candidate.

This bar and restaurant is named for the newspaper that was housed in the building, the same paper where I later had my first grownup job, as a reporter covering the desegregation of the Raleigh schools. (I blogged about a Times reunion there just before the restaurant opening.)

After growing up in this state in the Jim Crow era, to be able to see Obama campaigning at The Raleigh Times bar, to see a black man overwhelmingly win in North Carolina, where once blacks had to sit in to get a seat at a counter, gives me such pride and hope. We've come a long way.

And the undeniably bold Obama is already taking us closer to the way a neighborhood ought to be.

I look forward to celebrating his presidency.




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Bold Move: Keeping On

My polling place is at Holland Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church, about a quarter mile from my front door. Today is long-awaited primary day in North Carolina. I was voter number 73 at 8:45 this morning. There was no line; I could walk right in and vote. And it's always thrilling to me to do it.

I voted for Obama because I think he's less hawkish, more a negotiator than an adversary; because he's African-American, and he'd bring in a new set of Democrats. At the same time, I hated not to vote for Hillary Clinton. I like her health care plan. And the fact that she's a woman.

Most of all, I like the fact that she hasn't quit. She has kept going, full tilt. I admire that enormously.

For artists and others who work in nonmainstream ways, that kind of bold gutsy persistence is probably the single most important ability to have (assuming basic work competence.)

I like watching that bold persistence in action. Even if Clinton is defeated this year, I think there's a reasonable chance she may yet in a later election become president. I'm planning to vote for her next time (unless she's running against a bold gutsy persistent pacifist.)








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How to Expand Your Mind: Doodle

I'm a near-constant doodler. Now I discover that there's neurological evidence that doodling helps us think, solve problems, listen better, and keep better perspective. All of which helps out a lot when one is practicing boldness, creativity, and courage.

First, I discovered at White Cafe a review of a book, Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson. "Best of all, though (the book) contains delightful observations and insights, it isn't drowning in advice, but is mainly focused on fun, free-ranging exercises that plunge you straight into a world of creative experimentation."

The amazing doodly drawings resulting from these at White Cafe led me to go looking for any info on what doodling is coming from and leading to. What I learned in a nutshell in the 9 minute video, doodling: langage, gesture, and cognition, is: there's evidence that speech came, at least in part, from gesture rather than primitive vocalizations. And doodling is gesture. It uses motor skills.

The idea, simplistically put, is that doodling contacts and uses more of our own native creativity and communication equipment. In my experience, it just calms me down, allows for focus.

My first memory is of doodling. I was a toddler of late two or early three, out in the backyard squatting on a bare patch of dirt. I was wearing a sunsuit with a ruffly butt and making marks in the dirt with one wobbly little finger, the other arm held out in the air like an outrigger for balance. My mother and a neighbor were standing near.

I've always wondered why I remembered that. Now I have some support for the importance of making marks in dirt.

From the blog, Consider This: "Doodling taught me to say yes to the spontaneous me, no matter how dumb or clumsy the line was on the paper. By allowing one line to lead to another, by letting the drawing inform me instead of the other way around, I came to appreciate a vastly wider horizon of possibility for me and my world."

A few of my recent doodles: the intricate one below was drawn while listening to a novelist read a chapter of her work aloud for critical feedback, the orange gingerbread angel above is my notes of feedback on my own work, and the lines and circles were done in a class I was teaching while the participants are writing for a few minutes. Definitely three different states of mind.

Drawing the crowded one made it so much easier for me to listen to the reader. I felt as if all distracting thoughts were channeled onto the page and did not interrupt me.

Once many years ago, I wrote an article on root doctors for Sepia magazine. One of the healers I interviewed drew circles and spirals and swoops the entire time we were talking. It was entrancing for both of us.

It was pretty bold of the man to do it. I've found that in face-to-face conversations with clients, they sometimes look alarmed if I take up my artwork. Office supplies stores should sell signs that say Doodling Helps Me Think. Or maybe I could simply speak up.




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A Courage Quote

For moments when resolve wavers:



"Show me what I need to know

Take me where I need to go

I give thanks
for help unseen
already on its way"

--Native American Prayer


And thanks to artist and teacher Jane Dalton for passing this on to me.



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Holy Boldness

Googling for blogs on the subject of boldness, I discovered that the huge majority that came up first were religious, Christian in particular. I was surprised, but then I was made to realize that I was falling into a kind of stereotyping.

Here's the quote that set me straight, from Black Fire, White Fire, a blog aimed at African-American women:

"What is holy boldness? And why is it that anyone folks want to portray as goodly has to be small, weak-ish, scrawny, lowly, and lamb-y? Can there be no fierceness in goodness? ... Was Moses being 'scrawny' when he stood before the super power of his time, Egypt, and requested the freedom of his people?"

Note to self: there's nothing namby-pamby about taking a passionate and principled stand.





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Self-Actualization: Write Your Life

One way to acknowledge and fuel what we're about in life is to record and announce it. For example, telling my writer's group that I'll have a draft done by the end of August almost guarantees my getting it done by then.

I'm accustomed to using that technique, and have always found it amazingly effective, for myself and for others announcing their goals. Here's an expanded version of that idea.

This morning I learned that this is Personal History Month, certainly as good a time as any to write things down, both for ourselves and for later readers.

"You may find it a bit presumptuous, perhaps even arrogant or egotistical," writes Larry Lehmer of When Words Matter, "to put your own life down on paper. But ask yourself this: If your great grandparents had left a written record of their lives, would you read it?"

Putting down what you've done and what you're doing and the story of your family "makes it real" by showing the direction you've taken, the paths and patterns you've created. It's a process of taking stock that helps in making decisions about where to put time and energy, how to spend the coming years.

Lehmer is an expert in personal history writing and author of The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, and he knows the value of archives.

So do I. Working on a biography of painter and mystic Elisabeth Chant, I've found that every line she or any of her friends or relatives put down about their lives is valuable. I'm grateful to those who left these records. It's a gift to me; and I'll bet it was useful to the person writing at the time.

The current issue of Lehmer's free e-newsletter "Passing it On" gives a list of getting-started tips. I like Number 4: Start outlining your life, the major dates and events, in chronological order, with space provided to add new material as it comes to you.

Self-actualization--reaching one's full potential--is of course more than keeping records. But being clear, in writing, helps the process.

And May is also Creative Beginnings Month.










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Updike on Creative Courage

My model when I first began writing fiction was John Updike. I studied those Rabbit novels down to details of tenses and pronouns. More important, I found and find his work unsparingly honest and amazingly observant. His kind of writing requires an unflinching hand.

So I finally this week got around to reading his memoir in essays, Self-Consciousness, which has sat like hoarded chocolate on my to-read shelf for quite some time. Here he turns his famous scrutiny on himself, and does so in a manner that is neither self-aggrandizing nor self-deprecating. He manages balance while navigating the story of himself and his family and marriages, his world-view and his dental work.

Kirkus Reviews said the work is "A neat masterpiece of literary undressing." That reviewer said it well. And what a feat such a book is.

In it Updike deals directly with the subject of telling the tough truth and how he gears up to do it, in fiction and nonfiction. In short: he relies on a higher power.

"What small faith I have has given me what artistic courage I have. My theory was that God already knows everything and cannot be shocked. And only truth is useful and can be built upon. From a higher, inhuman point of view, only truth, however harsh, is holy."

I agree with all of that. And yet, I still flinch...at how my fellow lower humans may respond. Maybe he does too...and then writes it down anyway.

What philosophy (or self-help gimmick) helps you muster courage for your work?


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The Paradox of Creative Courage

The best way to have creative courage as you work is to forget about creativity, courage, fear, or imagination, and simply SAY WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY.

The inner shakiness a lot of artists get is a lot like fear of public speaking: once the focus shifts to getting out what we have to say, with that becoming more important than how we're feeling, then the fear evaporates. Which we may not even realize until later.

Ever looked up and found that the time had passed and the work was done? (Well, a first draft of a piece of it, anyway.) It's a great feeling.


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A Positive View of Problems

Yesterday I paused at my local metaphysical bookstore Dancing Moon to buy a couple of birthday/housewarming presents. While checking out, I pulled one of the cards from the deck on the counter, the idea being that I would be guided to select one that would apply to me and my situation.

What the card said, in short: the problems you run into are chances to develop strengths and grow.

Okay, I'm willing to view dealing with the vast complications of the book business as weight-lifting. I don't know how long that attitude will last, but it did give me a brighter perspective yesterday that has lasted at least until today.

The attitude gibes with that of the admirable Ralph Waldo Emerson. From the Emerson on Man and God which was a gift to me in high school: "Difficulties exist to be surmounted. The great heart will no more complain of the obstructions that make success hard, than of the iron walls of the gun which hinder the shot from scattering. It was walled round with iron tube with that purpose, to give it irresistible force in one direction. A strenuous soul hates cheap successes."

I don't know any artist--or anyone, for that matter--who thinks of his or her successes as too easily won. Still, the obstacle-as-strengthener idea can take away some anger. I've developed an unnatural patience and a certainty of my own purpose through the years of obstacles (huge pain-in-the-ass interferences) that publishing so often presents.


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Courage

"The original notion of the word 'courage' means 'to stand by one's core,'"
says an Omega catalog description of a course taught by Mark Nepo, author of Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives.

Podictionary.com says that the root of the word courage is the French for heart. "Bobby Kennedy ...said that for every ten men brave in battle there was only one with moral courage."

In either case, the word does not necessarily mean being on the front lines of just any battle. It means remaining steadfast to one's most strongly held passions and convictions. Which can refer to simply continuing to do your work, day after day.



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Grace Wang: Standing Her Ground

A Duke freshman from Qingdao, China, has stirred up world news in the last three weeks.

Twenty-year-old Grace Wang did this by trying to start a conversation between the two sides at a demonstration for and against independence for Tibet from China. On the evening of April 9, she was leaving a campus cafeteria and saw the two flag-bearing groups squaring off out on the main quad. She went over to check the situation out.

Then this young reader of Harvard Law School's Negotiation Journal decided to intervene, to get the two sides to talk. She had spent Christmas as the only Chinese student housed over the holiday in an apartment with three Tibetan students; it was too far for any of them to go home. Conversations with those three had been good and made her think that talking would be helpful for the two groups facing each other on the quad.

She wound up leaving the site under police protection. Now her parents in China have been forced into hiding. She and her parents are getting death threats. It's all a whole lot more than she had in mind.

But in an essay published in The Washington Post, she says: "I haven't shriveled up and slunk away. Instead, I've responded by publicizing this shameful incident, both to protect my parents and to get people to reflect on their behavior. I'm no longer afraid, and I'm determined to exercise my right to free speech."

I feel connected to this story. For one thing, when I taught creative writing at Duke last spring, a Tibetan student was in my more advanced class. I thought he had a lot of guts; just imagine taking an advanced fiction writing course in Tibetan.

Then too, forty years ago, I was a student at Duke making the same early evening trip Grace Wang was--between cafeteria and library--when trouble broke out. I wasn't involved in the campus demonstrations, but simply happened to come out onto the quad at the moment the National Guard entered the long drive up to the main quad and gassed anyone who happened to be there.

I remember running within the billows of eye-stinging smoke and seeing the narrowed silhouettes of others at a distance within the same yellowish cloud. I headed for what I hoped would be a building I could get into and breathe. I wound up in a men's dorm, stampeding with others down the halls until we finally came to a stop in a commons room, where the events outside were already on the national evening news.

I'll never forget the events of that dusk. And, for me, there were no death threats, no buckets of feces dumped at the entrance to my family's home.

Grace Wang wasn't angling for that either. And she may not have been thinking too hard about the possible negative fallout when she made her first move.

But her actions since that night--in staying public and making her story and her positions known--have been pretty courageous. She's now truly standing her own ground for freedom of expression.

(Information for this post comes from The Washington Post and The News & Observer in Raleigh.)


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The Writer Daughter

Back in the 60s, my friend Connie and I used to hold long discussions not only about our fellow high school students but also, with at least as much enthusiasm, about books. From about age 14 on until our mid-twenties and the birth of her first child, these discussions were a big deal. Then I had an all-consuming newspaper job and she had a baby and a move with her new family to another state.

That daughter, in her mid-thirties and living in the Pacific Northwest, now has an agent for her first novel and an excited editor who is presenting the book to his house's acquisitions committee this week.

This news is to me gratifying beyond measure. It feels right! I feel as if it proves some sort of immortality for those long-ago conversations while walking from my house on Mimosa Place over to hang out at the shopping center on Oleander.

Somehow this development makes the universe feel less random, reminds me that everything matters. Which is kinda thrilling.


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