“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
― Charles Dickens
“How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!”― Benjamin Franklin
"She has offered to take her-- she's dying to have Isabel go. But what I want her to do when she gets her there is give her all the advantages. I'm sure all we've got to do," said Mrs. Ludlow, "is to give her a chance."
"A chance for what?"
"A chance to develop."
"Oh Moses!" Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. "I hope she isn't going to develop any more!"
A: "Therapists, what they charge--"
B: "Horrible, that's why I quit."
A: "So terrible."
B: "So awful."
"The nature and mystery of time is a subject of long-running scientific fascination, but what about its subjective, abstract nature? In 1964, exactly a decade after creating his original Muppets for Sesame Street predecessor Sam + Friends, Jim Henson wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a short experimental film titled Time Piece, exploring in a visceral way the effect time-keeping has on all of us. It premiered on May 6, 1965 at the Museum of Modern Art and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1966."After viewing the excerpt from the film, write your reaction. What do you think the creator, Jim Henson, is saying about time? How do you think of time?
What is NaNoWriMo?
National Novel Writing Month happens every November! It's a fun, seat-of-your-pants writing event where the challenge is to complete an entire novel in just 30 days. For one month, you get to lock away your inner editor, let your imagination take over, and just create!That means participants begin writing November 1 and must finish by midnight, November 30. The word-count goal for our adult program is 50,000 words, but the Young Writers Program (YWP) allows 17-and-under participants to set reasonable, yet challenging, individual word-count goals.Pep Talk for NaNoWriMo:
In 2011, 250,000 adults participated through our main site, and 50,000 young writers participated through the YWP.
Writing Prompt: Take a peek at Open Culture's link to the quintessential vampire film, Nosferatu, which Open Culture describe as follows:"F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent feature adapts Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but just loosely enough so that it could put its own stamp on the myth and not actually have to pay for rights to the novel. Jonathan and Mina Harker? Now Thomas and Ellen Hutter. Jonathan’s boss Renfield? Now a fellow named Knock. Count Dracula, to whose vast and crumbling estate Renfield sends the hapless Jonathan? Now Count Orlok — and unforgettably so. We can post no more relevant endorsement ofNosferatu‘s enduring value than to say that it remains scary, or at least eerie, to this day. I defy any sophisticated modern viewer to spend All Hallows’ eve with this picture and not come away feeling faintly unsettled." |
After viewing the film, write your own review or your reaction to the film. Better yet, write your short story inspired by this classic silent film.
Start Scribbling!
Happy Halloween!
Believe In Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Love, and the Power of the Written Word!
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| Image Credit: The Library of Congress |
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| Image Credit: The Library of Congress |
[Joyce Carol] Oates called Plath 'our acknowledged Queen of Sorrows, the spokeswoman for our most private, most helpless nightmares.' The poem above, “A Birthday Present,” is one of the private and nightmarish poems collected in Ariel. Plath wrote it just over half a century ago as she was contemplating the approach of her 30th birthday, and something darker. The recording is from a BBC broadcast in December of 1962, only two months before Plath’s death. (You can read the text as you listen.) In his 1966 forward to the first U.S. edition of Ariel, the poet Robert Lowell made the following assessment of Plath: 'Suicide, father-hatred, self-loathing–nothing is too much for the macabre gaiety of her control. Yet it is too much; her art’s immortality is life’s disintegration. The surprise, the shimmering, unwrapped birthday present, the transcendence “into the red eye, the cauldron of morning,” and the lover, who are always waiting for her, are Death, her own abrupt and defiant death.'"
