desire line

One of the take away points from Patti Digh's book Life Is A Verb, is the human factor of desire lines. While developers and designers can put in cross walks, sidewalks and defined paths of crossing from point to point, people tend to make their own path. These paths are called "desire lines".

Pictured here, the corner of Summer St and King St in Franklin. The sidewalk shown in the distance curves around to the right. This desire line makes the long side of the triangle and cuts the corner.




Have you found desire lines?

Where?

I am curious to know, drop me a comment or an email (shersteve at gmail dot com).

Good fortune - Life is a verb

How is this for good fortune? Out for a family dinner to celebrate Dolores' birthday to PagoPago in nearby Milford.

It was Allison's good fortune to get this one!

Patti, I did not realize your book tour had extended so far! Way to go!

Mobile post sent by shersteve using Utterli. Replies.

Patti Digh - Life is a Verb update

My posting for Patti Digh's blog book tour is in the archives now but my writing project to create a sherku for each of the chapters in Life is a Verb is a little over half way at this point.

Did you miss that?

No problem, you can jump over to quiet poet and see all the LIAV sherku here.

Enjoy!

Dodge Poetry Festival 9/25 - 9/28

Festival planning who is
Reading what, when, where
Do I go to swim in words?

What is a sherku?

I haven't recently posted my poetry here, usually it is over at quiet poet. Since I am challenging myself to write in response to Patti Digh's wonderful Life Is a Verb, I decided to post this here.

If you want more sherku on or from or about Life is a Verb, you have my permission to click on over and read.

Patti Digh: down memory lane in my archives

Once upon a time, as part of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Blogosphere, I found an wrote about Patti Digh and 37 Days back in June 2005. At that time, her posting "Redefining Normal" had caught my attention. It would be the first of many.

Her one line bio gets to the point:
Whatever else I am or do, my most important job is being a mother to my two daughters.

Unfortunately, the link to the original "Redefining Normal" is broken. She did update it as "N is for Normal". The most current version is included in Life is a Verb.

In December 2005, Patti wrote "Monogram your pancakes." What started as a comment on her posting ended up more fully polished as my own post: Monogram pancakes

In March 2006, I took up one of her 37 Days Challenges. At the time, she was challenging to write short posts. As I was already writing short posts, I turn the challenge to write longer posts, to spend the time crafting the writing before publishing.

Later that month, one of my longer writings made a guest post appearance at Ronni Bennett's As Time Goes By.

In April 2006, Patti wrote about bubbles.

In May 2006, she wrote about Ocham's Razor.

In August 2006, she wrote about joint birthdays and later that month about portfolios.

In September 2006, she wrote about opening doors.

In December 2006, she wrote about holding penguins dear.

In March 2007, she wrote about Pippi Longstocking

In June 2007, she had a license plate to share


How about that for a sampling of Patti's wonderful writing? Thank you, Patti!


Do you have a favorite writing of hers to share?

Interview with Patti Digh, "Life is a Verb"

Two great events are occurring this month:

1. The theme of "Citizen publisher" is being explored at the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog
2. Patti Digh is celebrating the publication of Life is a Verb

How cool is it that they are related?

Patti Digh, the wonderful writer of 37 Days, found her intention with the unfortunate passing of her step-father. That intention, leaving a legacy for her daughters, sparked the essays of 37 Days and has also spawned a book, Life is a Verb. I believe this is one of the better examples of defining your intention, focusing your attention, and developing a community.

I was very fortunate to spending some time talking with Patti recently. Over the course of a couple of phone calls I managed to obtain a good recording of our conversation. A couple? Yes, there was some learning involved. I needed to figure out the configuration settings for the software I was using.

The first time, it kept stopping after 2 minutes. The free version only allows two minutes of a recording but I had upgraded to the paid version. Alas, I also needed to restart the application. It was not smart enough to know it had already obtained the license key.

The second time, the conversation proceeded smoothly. Patti and I had a wonderful talk. As I exported the file to an MP3, the synchronization of our two voices got messed up. It sounded like we were stepping on each others voices eager to get our words in. This was far from reality. I couldn't publish this. It did not do justice to our conversation! Into the FAQ section, I delved only to find that in my eagerness to not miss a single word of our conversation, I had started recording too early. You needed to start recording during the conversation so it could learn and synchronize the voices. Duh!

The third time was the charm, Now with practice for our questions and answers, the conversation began yet again and this time, with some minor exceptions, our voices were recorded and play back appropriately. In those spots where the overlap occurs, I think the real discussion still comes through.

Note: there is one part where I calculate it would 8 years to do all the 37 days exercises. That is a miscalculation. It is really just over 3 years, still a long time but not quite so long as recorded.

How many connections do Patti and I have? There are quite a few.

• Her stepfather passed away at 53. My mother was the same age when she passed away in 1983.
• Patti has two daughters. So do I.
• She writes haiku book reviews. This was one of the inspirations for my own development of sherku.
• Patti's stepfather passed away on October 24, 2003. Is it just a coincidence that October 24th is my wife's birthday?

We did not even get time to discuss some of these in our conversation. There will be other conversations and time to explore our connections.

So without further ado, please click to listen to Patti and I as she talks about her writing on 37 Days, how Life as a Verb came to be, and what the future holds.

I hope you enjoy the conversation!

-------------------

A recorded phone conversation with Patti Digh, author of 37 Days and her new book, "Life is a Verb". There are some minor synchronization issues but hopefully these will not detract from the overall discussion. We were not stepping on each other as we talked, the recording occaisionally makes it appear that way.

Time: 30 minutes, 42 seconds



MP3 File


----------------

The musical intro and closing highlights Jon Schmidt from the PodSafe Music Network where he has made available Game Day, one of his Powerful Exhilarating Piano Music pieces. I choose this particular piece to help provide a Scottish background to the conversation. One of Patti's wishes is for a Scottish accent. :-)

This week with Patti Digh: "Life is a Verb"

This week I will help to celebrate the publication of Patti Digh's new book: Life is a Verb.

On Monday, I will publish the phone interview I conducted recently with Patti.

• The interview

On Wednesday, I will dig into the archives of my prior writing about Patti and 37 Days.

• From the archives

On Friday, I will summarize the sherku created thus far.

• Sherku inspired by "Life is a Verb"

If you have not had the opportunity to read 37 Days, I encourage you to do so.

If you have not had an opportunity to obtain your own copy of Life is a Verb, I encourage you to do so.

In the meantime, you can find out who else is on this month's blog tour for Life is a Verb.


-------------
Note: This endorsement is freely provided. There is NO monetary remuneration involved. It is inspired by my heart, head, and soul which has been encouraged by the Patti's wonderful writing.