lovely

I was just finishing The Aurora County All-Stars, Deborah Wiles excellent new book, and was struck by the beauty of this statement:

"It is hard to see inside someone's heart unless you have an invitation, and, even then, you must agree to come inside."

quotes o' the day

Wisdom from a couple of baseball legends:

"Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand, just watching what goes on, in my opinion, you're wasting your life." (Jackie Robinson)


"Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on earth." (Roberto Clemente)

one more scan

This is the catalog card I have signed by Norman Mailer:

So Sad

Norman Mailer died today. He was 84 years old.

I am on my way out of the house and will re-write this post later, but just wanted to share the sad news that yet another literary light has dimmed. There's an article in the Chicago Tribune.

LATER: Okay, I am back and find I don't have much to add that hasn't been written, better than I could, by others. Among the many articles appearing online, The New York Times has a really good obit.

In 2000, we held an auction of card catalog cards at the library I worked for at the time. I wrote personal thank you notes after the auction to all of the children's authors who had contributed, as well as to my favorites among those who wrote primarily for adults. One of the people who wrote back was Norman Mailer, to whom I had written about my especial affection for The Gospel According to the Son. This morning, I dug through my "treasure chest" of letters and artwork from various authors and found his letter:



I feel very, very lucky to have this treasure.

One quote keeps running through my mind this day. It was not written about Mailer, but it may as well have been. It is from Shakespeare's Hamlet:

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.