With Our Hooves on the Pulse of American Letters

So, the Lump is being profiled in an encyclopedia of notable writers for libraries and what not -- the encyclopedia in question sent her their already researched entry so she can make sure it is correct (besides saying I went to the University of Illinois Writers Workshop and no mention of my sainthood or Allen Ruskin, it's pretty O.K.) -- but, LOOK where they got their info from:

"Writing Fumbling proved to be an essential part of Egan's grieving process. In an online interview for Earth Goat, Egan commented that writing "was a necessary part of my grieving, as necessary as the pilgrimage was.""

Pretty nifty, eh Grendel? One day, perhaps I too will merit an interview from the "Grand Inquisitorial Evelyn Waugh of the Literary Blogosphere" and stop having to interview myself.

And, another weird thing, I'm on a professional listserv for legal writing, and the posters were having an argument over a posting referencing Jesus and praying for the Muslims and what not, and someone posted this:

"The second is to share from a book that I read about a theologian's ruminationswhile on a lengthy pilgrimage in Spain. She told the story of someone she had counselled who had suffered abuse at the hands of a religious authority figure. Expecting that person to be bitter or angry, she found that he had a remarkablegenerosity of spirit. He told her that he believed that in general, everyonedoes the best that he/she can. She observed and he conceded that a person'sbest may not, objectively, be very good. Think about it. If you look at the world as filled with flawed people who are,in general, doing the best that they can, it changes so much. Your students whodon't perform as well as you would like, your colleagues who annoy you, the check-out person at the grocery who doesn't know your celeriac from your rutabaga--they're all doing the best that they can with the talents and abilityand decision-making skill they have in that moment. Wouldn't you appreciate itif the rest of the world thought that about you?"

Basically, I thought it was a neat coincidence, and as much as I would like to get on the listserv and post the name and title of the book (with an Amazon link), I thought that would be pretty tacky.

So, I thought I'd put it up on Earthgoat to get the weird sense of a ours being a very small world out of my system.

And to make me feel like writing is still important in our Internet and television age.