Urban Zen

A friend turned me on to this website and I was inspired by the video of Kris Carr, a young woman who has stage 4 cancer, and author of the book Crazy Sexy Cancer. I heard about the book because I met the book's editor at the ASJA writer's conference in NYC this past April. I haven't read the book, but this video is inspirational. Go to http://www.urbanzen.org/ and then click on Video. The project is one put together by designer Donna Karan, and in the first video, "Voice of the patient" you hear my favorite singer-songwriter Alanis Morrissette.

I'm working on an article about mountain lions, and reading some in David Quammen's book Monster of God about large alpha predators and the fear they inspire in people, and how for better or worse they've been a part of our cultural and evolutionary history and to lose them would be a shame.

I'm also working through Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way with a few girlfriends and though we've just started, it seems like it will be a good project for me to help myself break through the glass ceiling, so to speak. I love things like this that I can do with other people to discuss progress, etc.

One thing I've realized is that literature and books really inspire me and help energize that creative side of me. I used to read voraciously as a kid, and now as an adult I rarely have time to read anything that is not directly related to articles I'm working on. But over the past year or so, I've been listening to more books-on-CDs. I actually was in a book club a few years back and did the same - listened to them all on CD. It really also does stimulate the creative side of one's brain also to keep reading new thoughts, and new ideas. I've just started listening to Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, and during my trip to Glacier actually managed to read a whole print book cover to cover. It was People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil by Scott Peck - which was utterly brilliant and fascinating. I plan to blog about these two books on The Fish Wars blog.