In case you hadn’t heard about this, Poets.org will send you a poem every day – all you have to do is sign up and you get an email with a new poem, every day.

It’s one of the best things I’ve ever signed up for online. There are days where my inbox is full of crud (to put it no higher) and knowing that there’s one beautiful thing in there makes all the difference.

This poem by David Kirby showed up today. It made me cry, like really – tears and everything – in part because I come from a family where we touch the feet of elders, but mostly because of this pair of lines:

So let this poem brush across the feet of anyone
who reads it. Poetry is
my religion—well, I wouldn’t die for it. I’d live for it, though.

I hope you enjoy the poem, too.

Wednesday, I will have the privilege of posting an interview with JC Cassels, author of Sovran’s Pawn  and the just-published sequel, Heroes End. She’s a great author, and (esp. if you’re a sci fi fan), you’ll enjoy hearing how she brought this story to life.

Thanks for stopping by!
Ina

Oh, I do love Monday coffee. It’s a rare rainy summer day here in Northern California, and I’m drinking my coffee by the open window. Outside, some brave bird (I think it’s a phoebe) is singing away and inside, one of the cats (Spot, in case you were wondering) is making a concerted effort to sit on the keyboard (so far, I’m winning).

Today’s coffee is a note about upcoming events on InOurBooks.

• Wednesday will bring us an exclusive interview with Ellen Sussman, acclaimed author of the  recently published The Paradise Guest House as well as two previous novels French Lessons and On a Night Like This, courtesy of our guest blogger and journalist, Margaret Young. Spread the word on this interview – Margaret asks the fun questions you’ve always wanted to ask your favorite author but hadn’t the nerve
• Friday is going to bring us one last prompt for the Brighter Light challenge for our young entrants (and with the help of any of our young-at-heart readers who’d like to join in) as well as a special acknowledgement for the participants of the original challenge.
• And we’ll be starting our new “indie publishing” feature, “A Day In The Life” as we move into July, for insight into working with small publishing houses and self-publishing options.

I’m so looking forward to these weeks ahead, and I hope you are too. But now, I’m going to sit down with this coffee, open a document, and write in the cool air of a perfect Monday morning.

Have a lovely day, everyone! ~ Ina

Almost from the moment of its first national publication, “Calvin and Hobbes,” the comic strip about a little boy and his “stuffed but very real” tiger had a huge fan base. Part of its popularity was the really thoughtful access to childhood that Watterson provided to his readers, no matter how far back our childhoods were. But part of the comic’s popularity, I suspect, was its insight. Hobbes, stuffed tiger or not, got to the heart of matters simply and plainly (as when Calvin chides him for his lack of ambition and Hobbes points out that while Calvin is annoyed, Hobbes is happy in the sunshine). Sometimes Calvin plays that role – sad that adults can’t see that in tearing down forests to build human homes the animals in the forest lose theirs, or suddenly aware of how playing “war” is, in the end, kind of boring.

So it’s unsurprising that any graduation address Watterson would give would be something special. As the lovely article at BrainPickings reminds us, in their brief overview of Watterson’s graduation speech to the Kenyon College class of 1990. Much of Watterson’s advice is advice that artists, especially those of us in the “budding” stage of our artistic careers, could use. The whole article is here, but I’ll leave you with a quote from the man who took five years of rejections before being offered a chance to publish one of the best comic stripes in the English.

“Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn’t in the money; it was in the work.”

The fun…is in the work. A good thought for Monday, I think.

~ Ina