A Million Words

A few days ago, Nova started saying "Shut up!" loudly, emphatically, and frequently. We were puzzled and troubled by this development. We don't say that around here, at least I don't think we do. Where had she picked it up? Who was she telling to "shut up"? Well, along came this morning's batch of pancakes, and Nova started the shouting again. "Shut up! Shut up!" And then we took it out of the fridge: Syrup!

I don't remember when I first heard about The Artist's Way , by Julia Cameron. It must have been over a decade ago, but I never felt the urge to try out the program until a few days ago. It's just not my style, not what I really needed. I was pretty confident about my creative direction and the work I was doing. I was writing novels, revising them, sending them out, getting rejections, and starting the whole process over and over again. The accumulation of rejections, without a single expression of interest in my fiction writing, was moderately discouraging, but not unusual. I was prepared for it. I kept going, knowing that persistence was the key to success. I could have kept going like that, but since our return to the US almost three months ago, I just can't find the time. You might think that with all the other adults around to entertain Nova, I should have more time to write than I had in Galway, but it doesn't work out that way. There, I could write while she...

In the early 1980s, perhaps in the summer of 1983, my grandfather, Professor Henry Clay Smith, took it into his head to plant about fifty blueberry bushes in front of his house. He had the idea -- suspect even at the time -- that these blueberry bushes would provide for his grand-children's college tuition. Even with today's rising food prices and this year's excellent blueberry season, the patch could produce at most $1000 worth of blueberries in a year. In retrospect, we think that the blueberries-as-college-tuition idea might have been an early sign of my grandfather's future decline into Alzheimer's disease. But it was a spectacular season. When we arrived here in late July, the front bushes were producing a good crop, and only four days ago, in the first week of October, I took these pictures. Most of the bushes look like this: In the last row, two final bushes were still loaded with berries: Next year, as part of my orchard plan, I hope to put in a few blue...