Inspiration

Has been hovering about me lately, taking the diverse and perhaps unexpected forms of:

Julia Child (Smith Alum, mind you):




Edward Eager's Half Magic:

"Oh, there's never only one explanation," said the rather small gentleman. "It depends on what you want to believe! I believe in believing six impossible things before breakfast, myself. Not that I usually get the chance. The trouble with life is that not enough impossible things happen for us to believe in, don't you agree?"

And Garrison Keillor's answers to Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire in the September 2009 issue:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
To be wildly, desperately, carelessly, nakedly in love, of course. Crazy, obsessive love: brooding, baying at the moon, writing daily missives to the adored. Who wouldn't want this? Even though the crash is painful.

What is your greatest fear?
That this is all there is, and there is no more.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
High-spiritedness, wit, a love of repartee and wordplay and allusion and jokes -- in other words, an English major.

What is the greatest love of your life?
The simple act of putting pen to paper, even just to write a postcard.

What is your most marked characteristic?
I seem to have a distinctive voice, and if I ask strangers where the men's room is, they say, "Oh, it's you."

Who are your heroes in real life?
Old musicians who keep doing it even if it would be easy not to: Pete Seeger, Little Jimmy Dickens, Earl Scruggs, Placido Domingo, B.B. King, Ralph Stanley.

How would you like to die?
Eventually, but not yet.

What is your motto?
"Sumus quod sumus." [We are what we are].