Quote de jour
"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
  ~Sylvia Plath

Self-doubt for creative people is death. I had a dream last night about eavesdropping on a group of critics in my bedroom of my old home in Canada. These critics denigrated not only my writing but my painting. A dark blob formed in the pit of my stomach: a tumor of self-doubt. It could sit there and spread though out my body paralyzing me, or I could cut it out with the sharpness of a scalpel. In the dream that followed, I spread the contents of a large a sack to form an outline of a room-sized circle. The sack contained a sparkley fairy dust of jewels, stones, sequins and feathers. Once the circle was formed around me I heard the words, "healing happens." And so it did. What a great title for a bumper sticker, I thought and wasted no time Googling the name hoping no one had snapped up the URL, but someone had, and it's a lovely site  http://www.healinghappens.com
If it wasn't for the magic of something called Google, I wouldn't have found the words and images that sparked my creative process yet again. In under a dozen years, Google, a search engine has become a household verb and life-changing force. Ken Auletta has a current bestselling book Googled about the impact of Google. The official website is http://www.kenauletta.com

Every Christmas, I bake cookies for my service peeps like the mailman, garbage men, mechanic etc. I like trying new recipes, so I was thrilled get my hands on the the new 1000 page cookbook from Gourmet magazine. The venerated magazine got the axe, but this cookbook will guarantee their legacy lives on. (It also doubles as weight-lifting substitute).



If I don't find the right cookie recipe there, then Good Housekeeping has these enticing cookies.


And of course December covers always have the ho, ho, ho of red to symbolize the fiery warmth of the season of light.