Blog Posts for Carolyn Burns Bass

Who is YOUR worst enemy?

Carolyn Burns Bass — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:42:01 -0700

A wise possum once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." (Pogo, by Walt Kelly, 1970)What do doors have to do with enemies? Do they protect? They can be locked, they can be propped open, they can swing back and forth with no recoil. Are they barriers? Often. From what? Ourselves.I'm talking again about the metaphorical door. In this case, the gateway or barrier to your ...

Question of the Week: What doors have opened or closed in your life?

Carolyn Burns Bass — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:52:05 -0700

If you’re on the outside of the door, does that make you an outsider? I’ve learned through the years that most people feel like an outsider at some time in his or her life. It begins early, this feeling of alienation. It’s rare that a person can point to a single incident that closed the door to a place of desire or belonging. Some people block—whether practiced or ...

A Short Exchange About Doors

Carolyn Burns Bass — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:29:10 -0700

Facebook may be passé in ten years (maybe less), but for now it's a virtual pub for the global village. While contemplating my recent fixation on doors, I posted a question in my Facebook status and received this lively exchange: Carolyn Burns BassNow that I have a door on my studio, do I dare close it?Tue at 10:39am Catherine DiCairanoAnd lock it!Tue at 10:51am Ej KnappBetter not, ...

A Door of My Own

Carolyn Burns Bass — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:42:29 -0700

I’ve observed a fly trapped inside the open-slat mini-blinds of my window now for hours. It flies up and down, walks across, buzzes crazily, flies forward and smacks into a blind, returns to the window pane. How like us, trapped between two worlds, not perceiving the doors open to us. The world outside the glass, the world on the other side of the door. We see out the glass to another world, ...

Literary Diggs in South Beach at The Betsy

Carolyn Burns Bass — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:27:27 -0700

I just spent two wonderful days at the Betsy Hotel in South Beach. The Betsy sits on Ocean Drive across from Lummus Park in the Art Deco district. Recently renovated from the ground up, the Betsy is a historic property listed in the Florida’s State Registry of Historic Places. The pure white colonial facade of the Betsy shimmers among the crowd of art deco designs along Ocean Drive. ...

Clar de Lune, Susan Boyle and My Mother

Carolyn Burns Bass — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:19:03 -0700

My novel, THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER, yes, the one I'm still revising, draws much from my childhood. My father really was a sword swallower and my mother was a closet chanteuse who played piano and sang with a voice that rivaled the divas of her day. In fact, when I hear Susan Boyle, I think of my mother. She had that kind of voice, but zero confidence.The photo below is my mother playing and ...

In Honor of National Poetry Month: A Poem

Carolyn Burns Bass — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:57:35 -0700

I was silenced too long by the sound of my ownheartbeat.Joy in living and grief in the passing of love.I always knew I would write stories,but I dweltin the glow of a thirty-year literary pregnancy.Labor came on without warning.The stories I stored through a thirty year gestationnow speak through the silence, that heartbeatof fear, of failure, of success.I wish sometimes for the old stillness,but ...

Everyone has a story to tell

Carolyn Burns Bass — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:16:20 -0800

Several years ago I wrote and self-published a guidebook to help ordinary people write their lifestories. I used this guidebook, WRITE FROM THE HEART, in the classes I taught in memoir writing through our city adult education program. For the last month I've used my morning writing time to revise that guidebook and am publishing it once again.WRITE FROM THE HEART is not a book on how to write a ...

On childhood faith: Remembering Ash Wednesday

Carolyn Burns Bass — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:37:21 -0800

It’s Fat Tuesday. A day of worldwide gluttony and pursuit of pleasure before Ash Wednesday and the season of lent. Growing up in a very diverse neighborhood in SoCal, many of my friends at school were of Mexican heritage, which also meant Catholic. They went to catechism. They came to school every year on Ash Wednesday with a smudge on their forehead, a secret symbol for an exclusive club. ...

Author Linnea Heinrich Home Lost to Fire

Carolyn Burns Bass — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:11:53 -0800

There is never a good time for disaster. Put a disaster during the holidays and it seems worse for some reason. Maybe I'll rattle on about the philosophical, cultural, or emotional reasons for why disaster during the holidays is so awful, but for now, I just want to share a need with you.One of my author friends, Linnea Heinrichs, lost her home to a fire last Sunday. She and her husband purchased ...