Animals Can Seem More Pure. Without Complication,

When I Was A Kid, Halloween Was Strictly A Starchy-vegetable-only Holiday, With Pumpkins And Indian Corn On The Front Stoop; There Was Nothing Electric, Nothing Inflatable, Nothing With Latex Membranes Or Strobes.

The Genius Of A Folk Melody Or Story Is Not The Feeling That It's Original But Quite The Opposite - The Feeling That It Has Existed All Along.

In An Interesting Inversion Of Status, The Reigning Breed In The Dog Park These Days Is The Really-oddball-unidentifiable-mixed-breed-mutt-found-wandering-the-street Or Its Equivalent. The Stranger The Mutt The Better; The More Peculiar The Circumstance Of It Coming Into Your Life, The Better.

There's A Marvelous Sense Of Mastery That Comes With Writing A Sentence That Sounds Exactly As You Want It To. It's Like Trying To Write A Song, Making Tiny Tweaks, Reading It Out Loud, Shifting Things To Make It Sound A Certain Way... Sometimes It Feels Like Digging Out Of A Hole, But Sometimes It Feels Like Flying. When It's Working And The Rhythm's There, It Does Feel Like Magic To Me.

Now We're E-mailing And Tweeting And Texting So Much, A Phone Call Comes As A Fresh Surprise. I Get Text Messages On My Cell Phone All Day Long, And It Warbles To Alert Me That Someone Has Sent Me A Message On Facebook Or A Reply Or Direct Message On Twitter, But It Rarely Ever Rings.