I'm Just Visiting This Planet

First I thought it couldn't be September, now I think it can't possibly be Christmas - but the day after tomorrow really is Christmas. It's been quite a fall-in September on a writer's retreat in Cambridge, Massachusetts with DiLoPi - Patti Digh, Jennifer Louden, and Susan Piver, " Walking Into Fire " and in October (the weekend of the Halloween snowstorm) on retreat wiith Pema Chodron and Meg Wheatley at Omega . Me with Patti Digh All of this retreating has been great for my meditation practice-I bought the MP3's of the Pema Chodron retreat (Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change) and I heard Meg say that the purpose of meditation is to notice that you are thinking-I love that.  My brain is a little thought factory-it just keeps right on thinking.  Susan Piver and the Open Heart Project has helped me to direct all that thought to my breath-not easy but it does bring me a modicum of peace. So what do I wish for in 2012?  World peace, th...

I have absolutely no idea where the summer went, that's for sure. I worked, we went to Asheville, NC, I worked some more, we went to P'town and hurried back to avoid Irene, and I worked some more. Oh, I see, I worked all summer, that's where it went! How I miss the 16 weeks of vacation that I got as a faculty member! I used those vacations well, learning new things, writing morning pages, getting to the gym, doing yoga. Now I hardly ever write morning pages, I don't get to the gym as often as I would like, and sometimes I'm not sure that I'm learning anything, on this ever turning treadmill that being a dean is. But I am doing yoga, thanks to Peggy Cappy's workshop at Kripalu this past spring. Ten sun salutations every single morning, even if it means getting up at 5:45 AM as it did this morning. And now it's the first day of class, and the race is on! Good luck to all of us, students, teachers, parents, all of us.

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day. I am overwhelmed by my responsibilities and feel that I'm not up to the tasks that face me.

I’m participating in the Trust 30 Challenge in honor of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 208 th birthday-you can learn more here . Here’s today’s prompt and my response: We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live. 1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. 2. Write the story that has to be written. I just learned that I have fifteen minutes to live-fifteen minutes! What’s my story? First I tell Anne how much I love her and how my life has been enriched just by being around her, and how lucky I am that she has chosen to spend the last almost 28 years with me-that I am a totally different person because of her, more creative, looser and more "myself” than I ever would have been without her. Then I call my father and thank him for all the gifts he has given me; my persistence (some might call it stub...

Just when I thought I knew "everything" David Pogue proves me wrong. My favorite trick from his Thursday column is the ability to create a web receipts file and a pdf from an on-line receipt --who knew? Certainly not me!

I've been on a bit of a movie jag lately. Saw " The Fighter " this past weekend, and " True Grit " the weekend before that. Two excellent movies, and I'm listening to Arcade Fire 's The Suburbs-aren't I hip? ---------------- Now playing: Arcade Fire - Modern Man via FoxyTunes I'm preparing for the Academy Awards, I even have my very own ballot! And unlike other years, I've seen 70% of the movies nominated for best movie. I don't think I can sit through Black Swan, no matter how good Natalie Portman is, just give her the Oscar and be done with it. I didn't like Winter's Bone-too slow, too sad, too bleak for me. And Toy Story 3 might be a Netflix Instant Play one of these nights. Hey, I think I like Arcade Fire, and if I bought the mp3 from them, instead of Amazon, I'd saved $1.50! Oh well, it's only money. See you at the movies!

We took a trip up to Amherst this December with Vicki and Kristine to visit Emily Dickinson's house , on the occasion of her birthday . Since we were celebrating her birthday, I thought it would be fitting to also visit her grave , so we did that, too. Unfortunately this would be the last birthday celebration of this type at the house, since the anonymous benefactor has decided to reveal himself and stop handing out roses. Here's an article from December 19, 2010 from The Boston Globe: For the love of Dickinson A young man’s love of Emily Dickinson’s poetry blossomed into a tradition almost as mysterious as the woman herself. Now the anonymous donor of roses to celebrate the poet’s birthday has unmasked himself. For the past 13 years, James Fraser, a retired physicist living in Acton, has bought roses to commemorate the poet’s birth on Dec. 10, 1830. During the open house at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst held on the Saturday closest to her birthday, roses hav...