Meredith Sue Willis
Author and Teacher
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Holly St. Lifer's AOL health blog
Dory Adams: In this Light
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The Compulsive Reader
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Sherry Chandler
Shelley Ettinger: Read Red
Fred First
Hanging Loose Press Blog
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Lally's Alley (Michael Lally)
Judy Moffett
Valerie Nieman
Cat Pleska
Dee Rimbaud
Save the Papers
(Woody Lewis)
Larissa Shmailo
Diane Simmons
Christopher Vera
David Weinberger
Lisa WIlliams
Loho (Group Blog about the Lower East Side)
Brooklyn Parrots Blog!
Writers' Websites:
Here's a webpage at Yahoo that I set up in about 5 minutes.
Reasonably priced author websites: http://www.webforauthors.com
Deedee
Agee
Roberta Allen
Belinda
Anderson
Pat
Arnow
Ellen Bass
Neva Jean Bryan
Ed Davis
Norah Dooley
Barbara
Crooker
Jane Ciabattari
Pamela Erens
Carol Emshwiller
Shelley Ettinger
Jane Hicks
Monique Raphel High
Tayari Jones
Nathan Leslie
Phillip Lopate
George Ella Lyon
Jeff Mann
Lee Maynard
Sara Miller
Judith Moffett
Ed Myers
Hilton Obenzinger
Lance
Olsen
Cat Pleska
Thaddeus Rutkowski
Larissa Shmailo
Juanita Torrence-
Thompson
Laura Thompson
Rhea Tregebov
Robert W. Walker
BJ Ward
Crystal Wilkinson
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More
Jeremy Osner
Art, Music, Mixed Media, and More!
Dory Adams: n this Light
Linda Adato
Tim Barnwell Appalachian Images
Rachel Burgess
Charlie
Cowger
Marian Howard watercolors
at the Davis Project
Alex Kato-Willis improvizinging on piano
More of Alex--
Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 32
Deep Listening
Ann
Olson
Dee Rimbaud
Rochelle Ratner
Kevin Scanlon
Peter Sciaino
Duane Smith
Slow Poke Comix
Tiny Tim Memorial Web Site
Randi Ward
Ella Yang
Want some great graphics?
http://ann-s-thesia.com/
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Columbia U. 1968 Page
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Those We Have Lost
This page has images and
sample writings by some people I admire a great deal for their insight
in writing or for their political or personal struggles in the world.
I am also collecting memorial links to obituaries of some of the late and great:
Glenda Adams
Hortense Calisher
Howard Fast
Stephen
Jay Gould
Bill Higginson
Andre
Norton
Tillie Olsen
Grace Paley
J.D. Salinger
John Sanford
Jose Saramago
George Schneeman
William Styron
Kurt Vonnegut
Rachel Wetzsteon
Howard Zinn
Jose Saramago, Portuguese Nobelist,
Communist, Surrealist and All-Around Wonderful Writer
There's an obituary of George Schneeman the artist in the New York Times . He did the cover art for two of my books, Personal Fiction Writing and Blazing Pencils.
Bill Higginson, poet and haiku guru died on October 11, 2008. See obituary and one of his websites. There are several obituaries on various blogs if you Google his name. I didn't know him well, but he was an important member of the New Jersey literary community for many years, and a teacher with the New Jersey Writers project. Lovely man, contributed to my newsletter a few months ago, just because I asked.
Tillie Olsen , a great working class voice
Grace Paley
A life of
literature and anti-war activism.
See her obituary.
Read an excellent piece by Suzanne McConnell
on Kurt Vonnegut as a teacher.
George Eliot
"But this imperfectly-taught
woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal
spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through
nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her -- now
that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in
any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits
at the same board and lies on the same couch with the foresaken
soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when
she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down
to her unhappy husband and spouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt,
I will mourn and not reproach. But she needed time to gather up
her strength; she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness
and pride of her life. When she had resolved to go down, she prepared
herself by some little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard
onlooker; they were her way of expressing to all spectators visible
or invisible that she had begun a new life in which she embraced
humiliation. She took off all her ornaments and put on a plain
black gown, and instead of wearing her much-adorned cap and large
bows of hair, she brushed her hair down and put on a plain bonnet-cap,
which made her look suddenly like an early Methodist."
-- from Middlemarch, Chapter 74– near end
See Shelley Ettinger's comments on Zinn at Workers World.
Howard Zinn wrote in his memoir You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (Boston, Beacon Press: 1994, p. 208) :
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Rosa
Luxemburg
" Stereotyped
terms like "reactionary" or "progressive" still mean little in art.
Dostoevsky, especially in his later writings, is an avowed reactionary,
a canting mystic and hater of socialists. His portraits of Russian revolutionaries
are malicious caricatures. Tolstoy's mystic teachings at least only
play around with reactionary tendencies. And yet the works of both these
writers have a rousing, edifying, and liberating effect on us. The conclusion
is: it is not that their starting-point is reactionary; it is not that
social hate, narrow-mindedness, caste-conscious egoism, and adherence
to the existing order dominate their thoughts and feelings; but rather
the contrary: they are motivated by a boundless love of humanity and
a deep-seated feeling of responsibility for social injustice....Indeed,
for a true artist the social medicine that he prescribes is of secondary
importance: it is the source of his art, its animating spirit, not the
aim which he consciously sets for himself, which is of paramount importance.
– Rosa Luxemburg, introduction to Wladimir Korolenki
Zora Neale Hurston
"She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted
to walk where people could see her and gleam it around.
But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set
for still bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out
of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over.
Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him
into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed.
So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little
spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over
with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt
for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all
the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her
shine."
-- From Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jorge
Luis Borges
"He
ordered a cup of coffee, slowly spooned sugar into it, tasted
it (a pleasure that had been forbidden him in the clinic), and
thought, while he stroked the cat's black fur, that this contact
was illusory, that he and the cat were 
separated as though by
a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness,
while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity
of the instant."
-- from "The South"
Special Book Deal!
Buy any book by Meredith Sue Willis by mail order and get 10% off your entire order (exclusive of tax, shipping and handling). For information on books (or to order online--no discount), see Commentary. To order by mail with discount, go to Orders.
Subscribe to Meredith Sue Willis's
Free Newsletter
for Readers and Writers:
This page has images and sample writings by some people I admire a great deal for their insight in writing or for their political or personal struggles in the world.
I am also collecting memorial links to obituaries of some of the late and great:
Glenda Adams
Hortense Calisher
Howard Fast
Stephen
Jay Gould
Bill Higginson
Andre
Norton
Tillie Olsen
Grace Paley
J.D. Salinger
John Sanford
Jose Saramago
George Schneeman
William Styron
Kurt Vonnegut
Rachel Wetzsteon
Howard Zinn
Jose Saramago, Portuguese Nobelist,
Communist, Surrealist and All-Around Wonderful Writer
There's an obituary of George Schneeman the artist in the New York Times . He did the cover art for two of my books, Personal Fiction Writing and Blazing Pencils.
Bill Higginson, poet and haiku guru died on October 11, 2008. See obituary and one of his websites. There are several obituaries on various blogs if you Google his name. I didn't know him well, but he was an important member of the New Jersey literary community for many years, and a teacher with the New Jersey Writers project. Lovely man, contributed to my newsletter a few months ago, just because I asked.
Tillie Olsen , a great working class voice
Grace Paley
A life of
literature and anti-war activism.
See her obituary.
Read an excellent piece by Suzanne McConnell
on Kurt Vonnegut as a teacher.
George Eliot
"But this imperfectly-taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her -- now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the foresaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and spouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her life. When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they were her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that she had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation. She took off all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearing her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like an early Methodist."
-- from Middlemarch, Chapter 74– near end
See Shelley Ettinger's comments on Zinn at Workers World.
Howard Zinn wrote in his memoir You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (Boston, Beacon Press: 1994, p. 208) :
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Rosa Luxemburg
" Stereotyped terms like "reactionary" or "progressive" still mean little in art. Dostoevsky, especially in his later writings, is an avowed reactionary, a canting mystic and hater of socialists. His portraits of Russian revolutionaries are malicious caricatures. Tolstoy's mystic teachings at least only play around with reactionary tendencies. And yet the works of both these writers have a rousing, edifying, and liberating effect on us. The conclusion is: it is not that their starting-point is reactionary; it is not that social hate, narrow-mindedness, caste-conscious egoism, and adherence to the existing order dominate their thoughts and feelings; but rather the contrary: they are motivated by a boundless love of humanity and a deep-seated feeling of responsibility for social injustice....Indeed, for a true artist the social medicine that he prescribes is of secondary importance: it is the source of his art, its animating spirit, not the aim which he consciously sets for himself, which is of paramount importance.
– Rosa Luxemburg, introduction to Wladimir Korolenki
Zora Neale Hurston
"She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine."
-- From Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jorge Luis Borges
"He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly spooned sugar into it, tasted it (a pleasure that had been forbidden him in the clinic), and thought, while he stroked the cat's black fur, that this contact was illusory, that he and the cat were
-- from "The South"
Special Book Deal!
Buy any book by Meredith Sue Willis by mail order and get 10% off your entire order (exclusive of tax, shipping and handling). For information on books (or to order online--no discount), see Commentary. To order by mail with discount, go to Orders.
for Readers and Writers:
Send mail
Photos found on the various pages of this web site may be used by anyone, but please attribute the source when it is specified.
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