Archive for September, 2008
Journeywoman Shares 55 Travel Secrets…including 2 Riehlife tips
Journeywoman is sharing 55 travel secrets from women writers who travel around the world. Click here to READ FIFTY-FIVE FABULOUS TIPS.
Each year Journeywoman connects with female writers around the world and asks them to send one or two of their best travel secrets for their female readership to enjoy. This year they’ve harvested a bumper [...]
Where in the World is Janet? Re-design Time. Join the Riehlife Community Here.
Readers have written—even called!–wanting to know what’s going on with me and with the Riehlife site. As to both, I can say, “We are under construction. Pardon our dust.”
First, as to the site, because that’s more simple: We’re in the process of shifting from a standard blog-column with a website sidebar to a visual format [...]
Twittering away…9 months of microblogging…in 140 characters or less
“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
Twittering is like sending a telegraph or writing a haiku. Over time, the messages accrete, and the rhythms of a life become discernable. At least, that’s what [...]
Republican “Change” examined through piercing metaphor in Brody’s Press-Citizen Opinion Article
Spare Change?
In an opinion article titled Republican tactics for collecting spare ‘Change’ written for the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Alan Brody nails the Republican “Change” strategy with an on-point metaphor.
I hope you get a chance to read this…quite entertaining and shows the power of metaphor and imagination at work…to illuminate our current political process.
Creativity Tip: Now Try This!
“Now try this.”
“Let’s try this.”
“What if?”
“Why not?
“What would happen?”
Innovations in science, art, and just plain living depend on these small openings.
Have an open mind and heart.
Try things out.
Be curious.
Explore. Discover. Invent.
Go into your studio and make stuff.
Go into your study and write stuff.
Go into the kitchen and cook stuff.
Be wreckless; be bold.
Be humble; [...]
Birthday Brother, 62 years of happiness and helpingness: Gary Arthur Thompson
Gary and Patty Thompson
Happy birthday, Gary, as you celebrate 62 years of your happiness genius dedicated to being a good solid citizen, a good father and now grandfather and uncle and great-uncle and brother and son and husband, a good teacher, a good fix-it man (is hard to find)…a good human being.
Today my father [...]
Creative Corner: Advice for the Multi-Talented Creative
Dear Riehlife,
I feel swamped after my first week teaching. Is my extensive creative life outside school as a dancer and workshop leader a dodge or escape or a wish for failure for my main work as a poet? What am I in quest of? Instead of spinning off in so many different directions, I resolve [...]
“Harvey” (1950)…memorable quotes
Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” - she always called me Elwood - “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me. [...]
Learn the Music of Language to Float in Communal Space
It’s perfectly possible to not know a word of a language, but to seem as if you know the language and culture well if you know the symbolic utterances and music of a language…it’s rhythms, rising and falling.
If you know when to make sounds of sympathy and appreciation.
If you know when to exclaim in amazement [...]
Robson Reviews Riehl’s “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary”…(from Resident Media Pundit)
The poetry collection “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” by Janet Riehl is a soaring, poignant homage to family, sorrow, and the rebirth that comes with pain and loss. Written after the death of her sister in a tragic automobile accident, Riehl cobbled together her father’s mournful poems as well as her own and set out to [...]
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