37days

Life is a Verb in Manzanita, Portland, Bend!

2009-07-15T07:21:07-04:00

I'm Oregon bound tomorrow. Perhaps I'll see you at one of these readings in that fine state - hope so!

Thursday, July 16 - Manzanita, Oregon

5-6:30pm - Reading

Cloud and Leaf Bookstore (503-368-2665)

148 Laneda Avenue

Thursday, July 23 - Portland, Oregon

5:30-6:30pm - Informal (and quick!) Dinner at Laughing Planet (4110 SE Woodstock Blvd)

7-8:30pm Reading at Reed College (Sitka Lounge / 1st floor of Sitka House Dorm)

Saturday, July 25 - Bend, Oregon

5-6:30pm - Reading

Camalli Book Company (541-323.6134)

1288 SW Simpson Avenue, Suite C

[image from here]

Let me read to you.

2009-07-13T23:11:55-04:00

I have so loved traveling around this fine land of ours to read from Life is a Verb. So loved it. All my incredible hosts, all the people who came out so I could meet them and learn from them and laugh with them. So special to me. Amazing and touching and enriching.

As with all those readings, when I read at the Georgia Center for the Book, it was a special evening. Such an amazing setting and wow at the fantastic energy in the room. After dinner with a local book club, hosted by the remarkable Twitten knitter Laurie Foley, and followed by a mini-Guilford reunion with Katherine and Howard, it was such a special night.

I hope you might enjoy this recording of that evening's special reading.

Write your irresistible obituary as prelude to living it.

2009-07-12T23:05:53-04:00

Living an irresistible obituary might be easier if you name it, own it, live into it.

Readers are writing and sending in their "irresistible obituaries" and you can read them here.

If you'd like to send yours, you can email it (with a photo if you'd like) to patti AT pattidigh DOT com (please put LIVING OBIT in the subject line or I'll never see it).

Sit with truth in the asparagus section

2009-07-12T11:33:42-04:00

Sometimes the truth you need to see comes in the asparagus section.

I was speed shopping. Six items: Chick peas. Asparagus. Lemons. Avocado. Cheerios. Peanut Butter.

As I approached the asparagus, a woman I know from a writing group here in town was coming in the store. I don't know her well, but we chatted for a moment about her new book.

She asked what I was up to these days, how my book was doing.

"I'm traveling a lot," I answered. "Meeting incredible people and doing readings and having great fun, but it's always so nice to get back to my real life," I said.

"Sounds like that IS your real life," she answered.

All I want for my birthday is a paper quilt.

2009-07-10T00:26:26-04:00

I love quilts. Love, love, love them.

There is an old one in my closet, now sheer as a piece of phyllo, whose straight lines served as roads for many Matchbox cars in my childhood. There is the one my mother made me, her first. And many more. I am drawn to them.

I've thought for a long time about how I'd like to commemorate my 50th birthday. And I'd like to celebrate it by creating with you a special quilt--a paper one--for my 50th birthday. Which will be in, oh, exactly THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS.

Can you help?

Let's make a paper quilt, you and I. Get a 4x6-inch index card, or cut a piece of card stock paper that size, and make a wee piece of art on it for me. Whatever you'd like. Play! Perhaps in response to 37days or Life is a Verb, a message to me or to the universe, whatever makes you happy. A collage, a painting, a puzzle, fabric, a poem, a photograph, anything! Sign the back (with your mailing address, if you would).

Send it to me by August 10th:

Patti Digh
37days
P.O. Box 18323
Asheville, NC 28814
USA

I will piece them together into a magical paper quilt and be very very happy. I will sit and look at it for the next 50 years.

I would love that. I would dearly, deeply love that.

Love,
Patti, the 49-year-old

May I suggest this is the best part of your life?

2009-07-09T12:02:36-04:00

Inside you know what's yours to finally say. I suggest to you this is the best part of your life. - Susan Werner

Soon, I will wake up 50.

I'm not focused on 50 because I dread it, no. I'm focused on it because for years I have said to myself, "Self? You will be at your strongest and most potent and most powerful when you are 50."

I will not wake up in Chicago as planned, having eaten an amazing meal at Topolobampo, because I realized in thinking about it that I needed to wake up somewhere with a broad horizon and big sky, surrounded by a small tribe, not by two million people at the Air and Water Show in Chicago.

But I will wake up that morning after having embarked on an extraordinary six week journey from now to then (almost exactly 37 days). Life is all about patterns. Indeed it is. Some serve us, and some don't.

(My thanks to Janet Smith for pointing me to this song, on exactly the right day)

Somewhere, she's getting a kick out of the attention...

2009-07-08T22:06:44-04:00

That awesome obituary I posted for a woman named Nancy Lee Hixson?

Her son, Chris Hixson, wrote me about it.

(Scroll down bottom of the comments on that post and you'll find his note.)

Here's what he had to say:

My mother has been popping up around the web this week, but her obituary's inclusion on your site is the one that makes me most happy. Thank you all for the kind words about her life and her writing. I assure you mom wrote the obit herself, periodically sharing copies with me (over seven years) for input and review. I added only the 'Now Voyager' send-off (without her knowledge, but it was appropriate) and the thank yous to the caregivers. Everything contained in it is true, and her obit doesn't even scratch the surface of the life she lived, and that we shared with her. Thank you all for your kind words. Somewhere, she's getting a kick out of the attention.

I was so touched.

There's a copy of Life is a Verb in his future.

His note about his mom is a great impetus for all of us to get out that half-used up legal pad full of grocery lists and books we want to read some day ... and write our own obituary.

Send me yours and I'll post what I can!

Live an Irresistible Obituary

2009-07-06T18:13:46-04:00

Chapter 9 of Life is a Verb includes a section entitled "Live an Irresistible Obituary." Today I found out exactly what that means, when my friends Betsy Hilt and Joan Eisenstodt pointed me to an obituary from the Cleveland newspaper for a woman named Nancy Lee Hixson. That's what I'm talking about. Now THAT's an obituary to be proud of. Read the whole thing, all of it, no paragraph breaks and all:

Nancy Lee HIXSON

(NANCY) LEE HIXSON of Danville, Ohio died at sunrise on June 30, 2009. She was born Nancy Lee Wood in Cleveland on April 17, 1944, baptised at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Valley City Ohio, and confirmed at St. John's Lutheran Church, Independence Ohio. In addition to being a teetotaling mother and an indifferent housekeeper, she was a board certified naturopath specializing in poisonous and medicinal plants; but she would like to point out, posthumously, that although it did occur to her, she never spiked anyone's tea. She often volunteered as an ombudsman to help disadvantaged teens find college funding and early opened her home to many children of poverty, raising several of them to successful, if unwilling, adulthood. She also enjoyed a long life of unmentionable adventures and confessed she had been a rebellious teen-aged library clerk, an untalented college student on scholarship, a run-away Hippie, a stoic Sunday School teacher, a Brownie leader, a Grange lecturer, an expert rifleman, a waitress, a wife once or twice, a welder, an artist, and a writer. She was in earlier years the president of Rainbow Systems Trucking Company, Peninsula Ohio, and she drove tractor-trailers over-the-road hauling freight commodities to startled customers from Minnesota to Florida. She was the CEO of the Cuyahoga Valley Center of Outdoor Leadership Training (COLT), where she lived in a remote and tiny one-room cabin in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Despite the lack of cabin space and dining table, she often served holiday dinners to friends and relatives and could seat twenty at the bed. She lived the last twenty-three years at Winter Spring Farm near Danville where she built a private Stonehenge, and planted and helped save from extinction nearly 50 varieties of antique apple trees, many listed in A.J. Downing's famous orchard guide of 1859 - among them such delicacies as Summer Sweet Pearmain, Sops of Wine, Westfield Seek No Further, and Duchess of Oldenburg. Her homemade cider and wine were reputed to cause sudden stupor. She befriended countless stray dogs, cats, horses, and the occasional goat. She was a nemesis to hunters, and an activist of unpopular, but just, causes. In short, she did all things enthusiastically, but nothing well. After moving to Danville, she bravely suffered with a severe and disabling disorder and a ten-year battle with lymphoma that ultimately took her life. She was often confined to the home where she continued to tirelessly volunteer and donate her limited resources to needy teens in the area, always cheered by their small and large achievements. Sympathy and big donations may be extended at this time. She was predeceased by her father Dwight Edward Wood of the Ohio pioneer Wood family of Byhalia, who died in the Columbus Jail having been accused of a dreadful crime, and by her second father Ted A. Cznadel of Danville who adopted her, loved her and raised her despite it all. She is survived by her dearly beloved son, her heart and soul and every breath, Christopher Daniel Hixson of Akron, (a sterling citizen who rose above his murky childhood with a scandalous mother), and by his loving partner Mitchell Kahan. She is also survived by her mother, the opinionated and stubborn Ann Gall Cznadel; by her brother the Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Sluberski, a Lutheran minister and professor, most recently of Rio de Janeiro; by her gentle, ecological brother Gregory T. Cznadel, a quality manager of Cleveland; by her talented sister Linda R. Cznadel Hauck, a librarian from sea to shining sea, of San Luis Obispo; by her genius nephew and godson Matthew Hauck of Minneapolis; and the other half of her heart, her patient friend and backstairs lover of thirty years, David Paul Bleifus who resides at the farm. Ms. Hixson traced her lineage directly through eleven generations to Governor William Bradford of the ship Mayflower and the Plimouth Colony, and was in the process of membership to The Mayflower Society. She was a long-time card carrying member of the ACLU, the Democratic Party, and of MENSA. The family wishes to thank Dr. Gene Morris for his care, understanding and sense of humor through it all; Dr. Paul Masci of Cleveland Clinic Wooster; and Dr. Skip Radwany and the nursing staff of the Palliative Care Center at Summa for their compassion as Lee shuffled off this mortal coil. Cremation has taken place. Immediate family and friends will gather at Stonehenge on a sunny summer day to celebrate her life. Interment is in the family plot at Brinkhaven Hilltop Cemetery in Brinkhaven, Ohio, where she will await an eventual and probable slide down the cliff to the Mohican River below. In lieu of flowers, please pray for the Constitution of the United States. "Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store)…" - Walt Whitman

How about writing your own? "Where she will await an eventual and probably slide down the cliff to the Mohican River below." Just think of all the fun you can have describing your family members ("genius nephew," "gentle, ecological brother," "opinionated and stubborn mother," "her patient friend and backstairs lover of thirty years").

What would your obituary look like? What would you like it to look like?

Seeing again.

2009-07-05T01:06:34-04:00

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be see many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will. -Rachel Carson

Freedom is a verb.

2009-07-04T11:29:52-04:00

Don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression. -Gerard K. O'Neill