Vive la (R)evolution!July is the month we celebrate Freedom, both here in the USA and in my other home country France. Yesterday was Bastille Day, the day in 1789 when an angry crowd of Parisians stormed the Bastille. Only seven prisoners were released that day, but Quatorze Juillet initiated the French Revolution and the end of the monarchy in France.Freedom celebrations throughout the world are expressed with picnics and parades, fireworks and family. And it would be...
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Why are we all so angry? Thirty years ago I spent a day in Cook County Jail in Chicago. I was there to shoot a segment for a documentary program I was producing about prisons. That day I met 25 teenage boys (most awaiting trial on murder charges) locked in a classroom with their teacher. I felt privileged to spend the day with them, and to interview a few about their experiences. Through their program with led by their teacher Charles Rankin (based on the work of Les...
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I’ve just returned from 10 days in Texas with the woman I have loved as a sister all my life. Mary Carol came with her younger brother to live in our home at 16 after spending 10 years in an orphanage. Her father (my father’s brother) and mother both died of cancer when she was six and her brother was just 18 months. Six months later I was born, so she was there as long as I can remember. You kind of think life will go on forever until a certain age. You think that the...
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Creativity is such a buzz word now, it's practically lost its meaning. In the past few decades it has evolved from artistic genius to craft making, from a talent you do or don't have to a skill you must develop to succeed in business. Every one of these ideas misses the mark, or touches only one part of it.Creativity is the force of Life itself. We see it all around us it in Nature... from the stars to our cells. It flows around and through us all the time whether we see it...
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Disappointment is the first stone on the creative path. But it’s the second stone that counts. Creativity –what I lived for – no longernourishes my soul. A few weeks ago, I made a promise to a friend. I started writing one haiku every day. It was all I could commit to. This friend calls me “The Poet.” In his eyes, what I say, how I see things, my relationship with the world is all poetry. I feel slightly embarrassed by his reflection, but I humbly agree.He takes me back to...
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