Ann Voskamp

Seen & Heard Today

Ann Voskamp has hit another one over the far center wall with this piece on married love.  The whole thing is worth your time, but here’s an appetizer:

I don’t know how another man’s skin feels.

My grandmother lived that kind of courage. The kind that made a vow and had the bravery to let it age.

The wrinkled faithfulness of monogamy, it can look pedestrian, the kind that finishes well, parades up through the Arc de Triomphe, battle scarred, and the tourists just blithely shuffle by, pigeons taking to oblivious wing. She told me about this.

I remember it, nights like these.

How she said that the bravest love is wildly faithful and it falls hard again every morning. How it puts the toilet seat down and the cap on the toothpaste and winks for those already-won eyes. It knows what we seek may be found in what we already have. And there can always be this — the allure of the vows.

This — World’s Funniest Analogies — is just too good to keep to myself.  You writers will love it.

Like…

“From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.”

Excellent article from the Hoover Institute on Steve Jobs. But, more importantly, it looks at why entrepreneurs drop out of college. Consider that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had to quit college so they could go change the world.

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Seen & Heard Today

  • Ann Voskamp is one of my favorite writers. Her latest essay, “Learning to Forgive (your parents),” is classic Voskamp. Do yourself a great favor and read this wise and moving piece.  If you check click the link after today, you’ll need to scroll down to this one.
  • First of July, the Spring Hill paper published a profile of me.  I just remembered it and thought I’d pass it along.
  • Marshall Grant died this past Sunday.  He was Johnny Cash’s bass player for many years…part of the “Tennessee Two.”  I’ve read much about him and his death this week.  But this pieceby the AP’s Chris Talbot is the best thing I’ve read on him.  I thank my son, Eddie, for passing it on.I really love Grant’s remembrance here of how they — Johnny Cash, Luther Perkins, and Marshall Grant — created that “boom-chicka-boom” sound.  And, his insight that, “Our inability had more to do with our success than our ability did…”  None of them were great musicians (Grant put strips of scotch tape on the base neck so he could remember where to put his fingers).This is another reminder that we should lead with our weakness rather than our strength.  I practice that…which is very easy for me, because I have many more weaknesses than strengths!  :-)Of course, most people lead with their strength.  But our weaknesses, our “inabilities,” will make us more vulnerable and that opens us to those mysterious muses, those breezes from Heaven, that we would have missed in our “full metal jacket” mode.

    Again, good article with good insight.

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