Quote of the Day -- Scott Simon

George Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” cautioned against writing with cliches or academic, corporate, scientific and polemical jargon. He believed such language doesn’t communicate, elucidate or inform. It simply strings together pre-approved phrases to sound important.

I therefore offer a vow for 2023: 

I will try not to say “skill set” when I mean skills. Or “optics” unless I’m talking about how a camera works. Or “granular” unless its sand or salt. I will try not to call a 5-minute radio story a “deep dive” unless it’s about scuba diving. I won’t say “unpack” unless it’s in reference to a suitcase, or “price point” when I just mean what something costs, or “baked in” unless it’s a chocolate chip cookie. I won’t say “inflection point” when I mean a change in direction, or “curate” when I just mean put together. I won’t say “end of the day” until 6 p.m. And I’ll try not to call almost any group of people with something in common a “community” — Merriam-Webster: People with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society — unless, of course, they’re actually living together, or at least close by.

-- Scott Simon

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Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy. -- From NPR Bio page.

Quote of the Day -- James Clear

You can't double your intelligence in one hour, but you can use one hour to write something twice as clear. And ideas that are easy to read and easy to understand will make you seem smarter. The better you communicate, the more intelligent you appear.

-- James Clear

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James Clear is a widely respected speaker and writer who focuses on habits and self-improvement. His best-selling book Atomic Habits has sold over 5 million copies.

Quote of the Day -- Eurdora Welty

My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.

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According to Wikipedia, Eudora Alice Welty (1909 – 2001) was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer, who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

Quote of the Day -- Annie Dillard

One of the things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

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Annie Dillard (1945 -- ) is an American author best known for lyrical, narrative prose. In May 2021, I read and reviewed Pilgrim of Tinker Creek:

I have no interest in being a naturalist, a botanist, an etymologist, but I was enthralled by Dillard's lyrical, enraptured descriptions of nature in all its wild diversity. I can't imagine inching on my belly through long grass filled with who knows what bugs and critters just for the chance to observe a muskrat up close, but I'm glad that's exactly what Dillard did. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek opened my eyes to so many aspects of the natural world that I've never observed or even considered, giving me a new perspective on the "natural order" (or disorder). All in all, a very satisfying reading experience.

Quote of the Day -- Philip Pullman

After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

-- Philip Pullman

Quote of the Day -- Cyril Connolly

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

-- Cyril Connolly

Quote of the Day -- Maya Angelou

I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics — New York critics as a rule — who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

-- Maya Angelou

Quote of the Day -- Flannery O'Connor

I’m a full-time believer in writing habits…You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away.…Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place.

-- Flannery O'Connor

Quote of the Day -- Cyril Connolly

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

-- Cyril Connolly

Quote of the Day -- Samuel Butler

Do not hunt for subjects, let them choose you, not you them.  Only do that which insists on being done and runs right up against you, hitting you in the eye until you do it.

-- Samuel Butler

Quote of the Day -- James Clear

 Broad ideas influence more people. 

Specific ideas influence people more.

-- James Clear

Quote of the Day -- Francois Fenelon

The more you say, the less people remember.

-- Francois Fenelon

Quote of the Day -- Joyce Carol Oates

Why some things—a word, a glance, a scene glimpsed from a window, a random memory, a fragrance, a conversational anecdote, a fragment of music, or of a dream—have the power to stimulate us to intense creativity while most others do not, we are unable to say.

-- Joyce Carol Oates

Quote of the Day -- Natalie Goldberg

In order to improve your writing, you have to practice just like any other sport. But don't be dutiful and make it into a blind routine. "Yes, I have written an hour today and I wrote an hour yesterday and an hour the day before." Don't just put in your time. That is not enough. You have to make great effort. Be willing to put your whole life on the line when you sit down for writing practice. Otherwise you are just mechanically pushing the pen across the page and intermittently looking at the clock to see if your time is up. 

Some people hear the rule "Write every day" and do it and don't improve. They are just being dutiful. That is the way of the Goody Two-shoes. It is a waste of energy because it takes tremendous effort to just follow the rules if your heart isn't into it. If you find that this is your basic attitude, then stop writing. Stay away from it for a week or a year. Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak. Then come back.

-- Natalie Goldberg

Quote of the Day -- James Clear

The trick to writing well is to... 

- take long sentences and make them short

- take confusing ideas and make them clear 

- take unrelated concepts and make them related

...without losing the main idea in the process.

-- James Clear

Quote of the Day -- Stephen Sondheim

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you’re not aware there was a writer there.

-- Stephen Sondheim

Quote of the Day -- Orson Scott Card

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.  

-- Orson Scott Card

Quote of the Day -- Ray Bradbury

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers. 

-- Ray Bradbury

20 for 2020 -- 1st Quarter Scorecard

If I don't think I can do something well, I won't try it. I seldom make New Years resolutions -- and I certainly don't share them -- because of fear of failure, especially public failure. in a probably related vein, back in the days when we wrote college papers on a typewriter (before computers or even word processors), I would rewrite the first page of a paper dozens of times until it felt perfect. Then I would start typing and the rest of the paper would just flow. And when I started doing Web pages at work, I focused as much on the formatting as the content. And when I got the "front page" right, the rest would flow.

Fast forward to 2020. As I've mentioned several times, I often listen to a podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. She and her sister Elizabeth explore many aspects of happiness, human nature, and good habits. They read widely, but they also reveal a lot about their personal lives and their foibles, which often makes me cringe. Elizabeth, in particular, often shares aspirational, even outrageous goals, and then just shrugs when she doesn't quite get there. (Although I don't think she shrugs in her heart of hearts.) 

At the end of 2017, they started a project called 18 for 2018, inspired by a listener. It was a different, fun twist on the idea of New Years resolutions. The idea blossomed, and now we're up to 20 for 2020. I've made lists but never made them public in any way. Which brings me to writing papers and formatting Web pages. I've never been able to write a journal consistently, and I think that comes partly from the inability to polish a hand-written journal and make it look pretty. Hence this blog, which I have made no effort to publicize. It's really my pretty private journal, even though I fully realize it is out there in the world if anyone bothers to find it.

I'm going to take a giant leap here and post my 20 for 2020. The year is 1/4 complete and I've made decent progress, so I guess I'm prepared to make them official (and pretty). Notice that most of them have a "2" or a "20" in them, just for fun and to help me structure my list. I've assigned the theme "Consistency and Completion with a Dollop of Compassion." As I started 2020, I wouldn't say any of those three C's was a particular strength of mine, but I hope to work on all of them.  Here goes:

MIND
1. Increase my book challenge by 20% (60 x 1.2 = 72). COVID-19 has made it pretty easy to hit a home run here. I read 25 books in the first quarter.

2. Read at least 20% non-fiction. Home run here, too. 7 of my 25 books were non-fiction.

3. Write 20 travel-related blog posts. (As a side note, the main purpose of this item is to write stories of the various artifacts that decorate our home so the kids will know their origin tales.) I'm a little behind on this one. I've only written 3 so far this year. Time to step it up.

4. Post 20 Grants in Action for HEF. Big zero. I should make this one of my social isolation projects.

5. Play the piano at least 20 minutes a day that I am home. I'd give myself a B here. It's a bit harder to be motivated when social isolation has halted my piano lesson. But I'm enjoying playing old music.

BODY 
6. Exercise 20 minutes daily. (I haven't been religiously tracking, but I'd give myself a solid A- here. I've missed a few days, but not many.)

7. Achieve Noom "Red Victory" 2 days per week. (At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, I used Noom -- partly to see what all the hype was about. It was helpful for awhile, but I really struggled with what I considered an unrealistic limitation on what Noom calls "red foods" -- basically higher in fat and carbs. It did make me think a bit more about the kinds of food I eat, but ultimately, I felt rebellion which wasn't constructive. So I discontinued Noom, and I probably need to substitute something else for this item.)

8.  Crack the 120's. This felt pretty aspirational when I wrote it, but I am making better progress than I've made in quite a few years. Hopeful... and amazing if it happens.

9. Reduce A1C by .2 at every test. I seem to be making good progress. Only my next doctor's appointment will tell.

10. Practice yoga 2 x per week when I'm in town. I give myself a B+ here. I finally found a class at the Y that I liked and then self-isolation happened. Our former yoga teacher is doing virtual classes, so I'm hoping to improve this score.

SOCIAL  
11. Have lunch with friends 20 times. Obviously, this is a problem right now. I was doing well before isolation happened. I'll have to up my game when we get back out there.

12. Communicate with travel friends 20 times. Social isolation made this one happen easily. I think we're all reaching out to our friends around the world.

13. Have 2 "cousin dinners." Zero so far. This will have to be third and fourth quarters of this year, I think.

14. Have solo outing with each grandchild 2 x. Only 1 with Charlie so far. But we've done Zoom story time with Norah a couple times.

15. Volunteer at the GV library 20 times. 7 so far this year. And now the library is closed. But I think this will happen.

RESPONSIBILITIES
16. Reduce clutter by 20%. Definitely making progress.

17. Finish 2 important documents:
      a. Blue "nutshell" notebook
      b. Advanced health care directive

      Not much progress but hoping to do both of these during self-isolation

18. Finish 2 history notebooks for each child. Again, not much progress but hoping to do these during self-isolation

19. Hang 20 pictures at the Lake. We're discouraged from going to the Lake. So zero progress to date.

20. Give myself 20 pats on the back if I finish all this. There's hope!! 

Quote of the Day -- Benjamin Franklin

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.  

-- Benjamin Franklin