Does anyone else work in their car? More and more it seems I am. When Mary Rakow (The Memory Room) came on the show, she said she often wrote in her car and I thought, Hmmm. I wasn’t sure what to think of it. Now I find myself doing just that. It’s pod-like. Fewer distractions than the library. I still work at the library, at home, and elsewhere, but now the car is one more place that works for me.

Today, after I dropped Trav at school, I went to Tully’s for a grande nonfat latte, extra foam (“How much extra foam? A lot or just a little?” said the naughty sounding barristo who made me feel San Francisco was right here in Newport Beach … yay!) and then drove to UCI, parked in a radio station space, and worked up until it was time to go in and do the show.

Dennis McDougal (Five Easy Decades), on the show, said, Carry a pen and paper wherever you go. Always.

Because you forget. You think you’ll remember that snippet of conversation but you never do. Not as you heard it.

As I sat working on “A Peeping Tom Comes to Call,” two young women got in their car beside me. As they did they said something with a particular inflection, and I meant to memorize it exactly the way they said it, but I was caught up in my essay and I didn’t write it down.

But that was before Dennis came on and reminded me of what I thought I knew.

The show will be podcast in the next week or so. If you have current technology, it’ll be easy for you to listen.

So…does anyone else work in their car?

A cover story in the Los Angeles Times: “For Dutton’s books, it’s the end.”

I love this bookstore. My friend and author Diane Leslie has been a part of it for years. I had a book release party there (and at Book Soup, South Coast Plaza, now closed, too) when Pen on Fire came out.

Is NY and the Bay Area the only places where indy bookstores stay alive? Sheesh.

Here’s the story. (You can read the Times story, but you have to register first.)

Trav and I hated to leave Mammoth this morning. Already we’re planning on where to go next, for more snow.

Icicles in the morning….the drive south….the temperature outside–a rarity for these Southern Californians….

Morning view

Travis on the gondola

It’s just coming down. We could spend many more days here.



Snow has been coming down the last couple of days. Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous.

snow

my favorite
color, on the ground, in the
sky, through glass, divine snow

“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.” — Lao Tzu

“To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color, is like living in Alaska and being against snow” — William Faulkner

Y’all know I love snow, right? Travis and I are in Mammoth. He’s snowboarding and I’m back into my book (and loving the snow). If you don’t love snow, you might as well stop reading now, because what you will find are links to poems with snow in them, and photos of my morning.

Billy Collins’ on snow here and here.