Map of BotswanaOne of the rewards of learning other languages is that they are gateways into another culture and other ways of looking at the world. I lived and worked in Botswana for three years during the 1970s and grew somewhat fluent in Setswana, one of the two official languages, with English as the other. […]
The stars came out full force Sunday night to celebrate a decade of Stars of Lake County. Amid a packed house of several hundreds, we were there, up front, in spitting distance of the stage. Ours was the Arts Table.
To celebrate my sweetheart’s Daniel Holland’s Art Star of Lake County nomination we gathered together […]
As we mark the fourth anniversary of the destruction and loss of lives in Iraq and the drain on the economy at home in the United States, I pray for peace. I wrote First Tulips on March 19, 2003 upon the Announcement of War.
I recall sitting in a small cafe when someone walked in […]
My father, 91, emailed a new poem this morning. He said:
“I couldn’t sleep last night after reading the disabled veteran’s magazine, so I wrote the night vigil poem. Moral: Don’t read the Disabled American Veteran’s magazine just before you go to bed. Those memories were just too real.”
You should know that “Tiger” […]
My father’s new book is out! You can find “Cattle Country and Back Trail: Two Tales from Thompson Western Series,” by Erwin A. Thompson on Amazon. Richard R. Blake wrote this review for Reader Views:
In these two books, award winning poet and author, Erwin A. Thompson, introduces the “Thompson Western Series.” His books paint a […]
There are very few birthdays I know by heart, but my sister Julia’s birthday is one of them. March 13th will always be her day. I wrote “Reaper” in 2005 when she would have turned 62, 7 months after her death. This year, 2007, 2 years and 7 months afterwards, I pause to think, still, […]
When I first met my sweetheart Daniel Holland, we started watching movies by theme and one theme was angels. “Wings of Desire” is one of my favorite movies. Ebert quite rightly compares “Northfork” to it.
This movie, now four years old, is out on DVD through Paramount Classics with excellent extras:
“Bare-Knuckle Film-making,
The construction of Northfork,
24-frame […]
From the book jacket:
“Middle Passages examines more than two centuries of African American journeys to Africa, from the arrival of the first colonists in Sierra Leone and Liberia to the heritage tourism of our own time. The book’s subjects include many of the central figures in American intellectural, political, and artistic life–Martin Delany, Langston Hughes, […]
Lake County Artists and Writers gathered at Redbud Library in Clearlake to celbrate International Women’s Day.
Lake County Poet Laureate, who hosted our event, invited us to share creative work that honored women we admire. I read a series of poems from my 2006 book Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary honoring three generations of women in our […]
