Flotsam & Jetsam

Writers: Does life leave you wishing for a giant safety pin to hold everything together? Find out how routine can help in Lifesavers for Writers. Photo: “Safety Pin, 1999, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Sydney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden, City Park, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Katherine Anne Porter, Pulitzer Prize winning writer, born May 15, 1890 by Michael J. Deas.  

In an excerpt from an interview of Porter in the Winter-Spring 1963 issue #29 of The Paris Review, she describes the voyage that launched her novel: 

It is the story of my first voyage to Europe in 1931. We embarked on an old German ship at Vera Cruz and we landed in Bremen twenty-eight days later. It was a crowded ship, a great mixture of nationalities, religions, political beliefs—all that sort of thing. I don’t think I spoke a half-dozen words to anybody. I just sat there and watched—not deliberately, though. I kept a diary in the form of a letter to a friend, and after I got home the friend sent it back. And, you know, it is astonishing what happened on that boat, and what happened in my mind afterwards. Because it is fiction now.

Want to be a writer? Follow in Faulkner’s footsteps. From a rented flat in New Orleans to an estate in Oxford, Mississippi, follow the Nobel Laureate’s progress and learn about his philosophy on writing and reading in our latest post. Pictured: The Faulkner House, Rowan Oak, the Faulkner House, now a U.S. and Mississippi state National Historic Landmark.  

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd. Petals on a wet, black bough.”

~Ezra Pound

Monday Mind Trip for Travelers: Write About Feeling Lonely in a Crowd

Friday inspiration from a city that knows how to party: New Orleans, Louisiana. Still recovering from Jazz Fest 2013! Thanks for the memories, NOLA. I’ll be back!

Gold Boat Journeys: Live. Write. Travel. Explore.

Where do you want to go? Picture it and set sail.

Climb Aboard:

faceboat

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“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”

~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan, born May 9, 1860

Photo of the bronze Peter Pan sculpture in London’s Kensington Gardens by Sebjarod for French Wikipedia. Barrie commissioned the statue Sir George Frampton to create the statue in 1912.  More about his creepy fascination with boys and troubled life in today’s Telegraph: How Bad Was J.M. Barrie?

In 1912, Sir James Matthew Barrie - author of the Peter Pan books - hired sculptor Sir George Frampton to make a statue of the boy who never grew up. Barrie kept the project a secret, with only a select few, including Lewis Harcourt, the council’s commissioner of works, aware of the plan. After it was finished, Barrie arranged for it to be put in Kensington Gardens in the middle of the night because he wanted people to believe it was magic.

And on the morning of the 1st of May, 1912, there it was - and still is.

(Source: grandenonfatmocha)

“Look at that sea, girls—all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.” 
~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

This is my brain on jet lag after four days of excess at New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Happy to be docked back at home port! #travel #jazzfest13 #laguna

(Source: dreamydummy)

Puppy by Jeff Koons in front of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. Photo by Georges Jansoone.