It is snowy and cold here today (this is my husband and our dog in the woods) but not as snowy as some places. I know, for example, that folks like Ellen and Robin (check out those photos of Monty–isn’t he a cutie???) are buried.

Here’s my Darby. Despite his expression here, he really does love the snow.

Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin–there are only three years to go before Darwin Day.

Please take a minute to sign this petition and spread the word by emailing the link to friends and family.

I’ve been thinking of “Little Noises” lately as it relates to Freygate and JT Leroygate. If you write, I would urge you to watch it if you haven’t already because it might touch some nerve in you, might expose some of your own darkness, your own questions of, “what would I be willing to do to achieve validation?”

The premise is that Joey (played by Crispin Glover), leads sort of a meaningless, hapless life. As such, he tells everyone he is a writer and yet he can’t really write–either he’s blocked or he never could, I’m not sure which. However, he has this mute friend who DOES write and so when push comes to shove, Joey steals his friends poems and goes on to achieve fame and fortune with them.

I haven’t thought of this movie in years, though I loved it (I think Cripsin Glover is great. Have you seen Rubin and Ed? My god that movie is funny) but in light of all of these ethical questions about what people are willing to do to achieve fame–and more specifically literary fame–I think it’s interesting.

On top of this, sometime in the early 90s Glover put out a book called “Rat Catcher” (I think a friend of mine still has a copy of it) and it was, as memory serves, a combination of text written by him and also text lifted directly from a book on catching rats. Not sure how this relates–other than he irreverently stretched the boundaries of authorship.

Is it just me or does the opening ceremony seem like a Christopher Guest movie? Don’t get me wrong, I love both the Olympics and Christopher Guest, but I find myself laughing and I’m not sure I’m supposed to be. What is up with the cows on ice and the people dressed as cows waltzing? And the men with the flames shooting out of backpacks.

I’m baffled. What is the message here?

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Here’re the rules, regs, and where to submit.

Today, for your reading pleasure, I offer you:

SAND, SUN, GUN by Brangien Davis.

&

Penny, by Susan Henderson.

&

check out the new spork, featuring such kick-ass writers as: Pia Ehrhardt, Elizabeth Ellen, Kim Chinquee, and Jeffrey Yamaguchi.

Annie Dillard is back for another day of The Writing Life:

Nobody whispers it in your ear. It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes back and rips away your breath. You find and finger a phrase at a time; you lay it down cautiously, as if with tongs, and wait suspended until the next one finds you: Ah yes, then this; and yes, praise be, then this.

Sorry I am being so boring lately (or maybe I am always boring and you’re just being kind by popping in to visit). Am working on a project and trying to meet self-imposed goals. Right now I have to finish another 500 words before I can have a pre-dinner glass of wine. So here is more from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life:

Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.

Meanwhile, a writer friend of mine got some exciting news yesterday–the best, most exciting kind of news. And it thrills me because he is not only talented but kind. I can’t wait until his news is more public so that I can trumpet about it.

Mark Pritchard is not only a great writer and a cool guy, but he’s also extremely generous. If you’ve not been following his What Are You Working on series–then do it now. Why not start with today’s entry–the always interesting Susan Henderson.

Am reading again Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life because I must. Today I will share with you this quote:

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then–and only then–it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk’s.

Are you harboring secret fears that Ellen Meister has written you into her debut novel SECRET CONFESSIONS OF THE APPLEWOOD PTA? If yes, then you better head right on over to her blog and take this QUIZ (and while you’re there you will be treated to an excerpt of her forthcoming novel).