Moving Views

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This view of Boston, taken from the beach near my house, is different every day. The color of the light, the character of the clouds, and the mood of the sky are constantly changing. The tides devour the beach and spit it out and the winds change the water's texture and the light changes its color so that some days it is gray and choppy and some days it is impossibly smooth and brightest blue.

But the skyline is the thing that really gets me. That causes me, at times, to nearly swerve off the road as I'm driving by. Sometimes the city is big and bold. Sometimes it is smaller and further away. It's like the moon--you know how sometimes it is as big as a pie and hangs low in the sky and sometimes it is a high and distant speck? We all know how the moon moves. When we were little we sat, sleepy, in the back seat, watching it follow us home.

But cities don't move. Except when they do. Is it a trick of the light? An illusion caused by tides? Something to do with air pollution? Never mind, I don't want to know. On this day the city was big and bold and yellow.

That's enough for me.

Red Socks

Ewwww.

Photo Friday: Abandoned

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This is my entry for this week's Photo Friday challenge. The theme was abandoned.

Took this picture in Marblehead at a small public boat launch. The docks have been pulled out of the water for the winter and there's all sorts of strange-looking stuff stored there. It's been abandoned for the season, anyway. It was another one of those days where the light is so beautiful that it makes everything it touches look beautiful, too.

And yeah, I know I posted this a day early. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow. And I spent waaaay too much time today trying to get this photograph posted. It's a long story, not worth repeating here.

Writing I Couldn't Live Without

Today's the last day to get free shipping on Amazon and have your package arrive by Christmas Eve. I have a feeling that Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss is going to be a big seller this holiday. And that’s great. But if you’re buying for a writer, you might want to dig a little deeper than that. Because writers already know that commas and apostrophes are woefully misused. Trust me.

Buying books on writing for writers can be intimidating. Won’t they be insulted? Well, if you buy a For Dummies book, they might be. But a classic book on writing is a sure thing. It doesn’t even matter if they already have it. Every writer I know has at least two copies of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. An extra copy just means you have one for sharing.

And what if you choose the wrong book? Well, in my opinion, there’s no such thing as a bad book on writing. You can get something out of nearly everything. But there are some books on writing that just stand miles apart from the others. They are the books on writing that you turn to again and again for information and inspiration.

Here is my list of books on writing that inform and inspire, that stand up to multiple readings, that are welcomed to my bookshelves by the bushel, the books on writing that, in fact, I simply couldn't live without:

On Writing Well by William Zinsser. Every writer should have a copy or two of this book.

Writing For Story by Jon Franklin. The best damn book on narrative nonfiction. Period.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. My all-time favorite book on creative writing. Makes me want to grab my notebook and a pen and head for a café to write my heart out every time I read it.

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Not so much a technical guide as a spiritual one, but one that you'll want to read over and over again. The writing is beautiful.

And, to round out the list, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Destined to be a classic. On my to-read-again list.

So I showed you mine. I'd love to see yours. Just click on that comments link at the bottom of the post and tell me which books on writing make your can't-live-without-it list. While I wait, I'll be praying that I didn't make any punctuation mistakes in this post. Is it just me, or does it seem like there are a million apostrophes in this one?

A Chicken in Every Pottery Class

Chickens are the new suburban pet, according to this article in today's Boston Globe. As usual, Daphne and Bobby are way ahead of the trend ...

Where the Hell is Kyrgyzstan?

[Via StuckHereWithNoTV] I don't usually do these quiz things, because the results don't usually make sense to me. But this time, for some reason, it pegged me. I totally am Kyrgyzstan: You scored as Kyrgyzstan. No one knows who you are or where you come from. There’s a very real possibility you might be a communist, although it might also just be that you’re misunderstood. Congratulations, you win the wo\man of mystery prize. What country are you?