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Thursday, June 18, 2009 - Pittsfield MA

Fluff in the Strawberry Patch, Home Farm, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, May 30, 2009
Fluff in the Strawberry Patch, Home Farm, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, May 30, 2009

It's wild strawberry season

This year promises to be a good one for wild strawberries. Plant life not adversely affected by the extraordinary rains we've had the last few days, like the wild strawberries in my field, is growing vigorously.

I think this darned leak is finally sealed?

We had another downpour last night - there were no leaks!. You can read about my long struggle to find and seal these two leaks at A Tale of Two Leaks.

Night camp

Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pittsfield MA

Wal-Mart Store #2228, 555 Hubbard Ave./Suite 12, Pittsfield, MA 01201 - (413) 442-1971

Writing From the Inside Out

A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.

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