The Crucible of Doubt
My hosannahs have all be forged in the crucible of doubt.
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Learning Life’s Lessons
ByHeatherThere are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.
— Søren Kierkegaard
More Steinbeck on Writing
ByHeatherSometimes in a man or a woman an awareness takes place — not very often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret, but locked in wordlessness. The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplainable. And sometimes if he is very fortunate and if the time is right, a very little of what he is trying to do trickles through.
— John Steinbeck, Journals of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters
This is another installment from Steinbeck’s journals written as he was giving birth to East of Eden. It has echos from my Julian Schnabel quote when he said “That is true about all art. The conflict is to try and take what is inside of you and put it inside somebody else.”
Seize the Day
ByHeatherThis time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Newspapers vs. Journalism
ByHeatherSociety doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
— Clay Shirky
You Know I’ve Always Been A Dreamer
ByHeatherYou know I’ve always been a dreamer
(spent my life running ’round)
And it’s so hard to change
(Can’t seem to settle down)
But the dreams I’ve seen lately
Keep on turning out and burning out
And turning out the sameSo put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit one more timeFrom Take It To The Limit
I had the good fortune of seeing The Eagles in concert on Friday night on their History of the Eagles tour. Nostalgia ruled the night. Everyone from the original band was was there, and everyone was a few years older than their prime days in the late ’70s. But the music was a s good as it ever was (which is to say, ‘good but not great’). Joe Walsh, however, brought the house down with great stage energy and fantastics renditions of Rocky Mountain High, and Life’s Been Good.
Forecasting the Future
ByHeatherWe have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know — and those who don’t know they don’t know.— John Kenneth Galbraith, economist