The house I bought in 2021, while I was separated from my husband, is very much the kind of house I always wanted, with some exceptions. The kitchen is a bit cramped and the back deck is not covered or screened in, but these are minor inconveniences. What I do like is that the central point is the spacious and welcoming dining room, and that the house can be divided into four parts and even separated by doors, or five if the deck is counted. These four are the bedrooms/bathrooms area, the “parlor” and entrance hall, the dining room and kitchen, and the 25 X 25 foot family room. Yes, it is huge room and it is my space, where I study, nap, watch television, write, and sew. By my makeshift desk, really an old table bought at a yard sale, in this family room is a large window, five by five feet, through which I can watch birds gather at the two feeders on the other side of the deck. Now that I am retired, I have found that the best part of this new phase is the slowly paced morn...
Quoting Gil Crouch, Joel Miller writes: “The idea of the gift economy is fundamental in how we create social bonds, form and maintain relationships, deep or just transactional, such as with a brand through marketing activities like advertising,” says Crouch. “Writing poems, sonnets, novels, non-fiction books, articles, blog posts, all are forms of this moral and social gift-giving. The writer creates a book and publishes it because they want to tell a story. When we read the book, we are reciprocating the gift by reading it.” A piece of writing is a pact between the writer and reader. It’s a contract, and we feel betrayed or cheated when we discover the writer didn’t invest their work with the effort, intent, or skill we expected. It’s like buying a bag of chips and finding out the package is mostly air. We feel ripped off. Deepening this dynamic, Ruth Gaskovski and Peco recently discussed the “I” of the creator. “There is an ‘I’ behind a work of art,” they write. Ruth mentions ...