Oscar, Oscar, Oscar!

Some grinches love to hate the Oscars but I like them, I really like them. The hoopla! The bathos! The speeches! The gowns! This year I gabbed about those golden boys on Cape Cod’s WOMR, dished on Page Six, and made my predictions on our Talking Pictures Oscar show.  I even interviewed veteran Oscar whisperer Anne Thompson for Word and Film. And while we’re in Self-Promotionville, I also wrote about novelists turned screenwriters and 2013 movies turned books for that site. Put on your highest heels and check it all out.

Good Morning, Starshine

Honest to Godfrey, as my mother used to say, these ever-earlier sunrises are making me so happy. I went to sleep last night saddled with a bevy of real-deal worries but woke with an enormous grin plastered across my features. Even at 6:15 the world was shining, the sky was rosy, and my little cat’s tiger eyes were gleaming with the pleasure I felt as well. I just love how, no matter how firmly entrenched winter still seems to be, the sun keeps greeting us a few minutes earlier each day. And while nothing is finer than clear, early morning sunshine, the real reason this makes me so glad is because it highlights my favorite fact: As long as we are on this planet, we are sure to experience change–and not all of it will be bad.

You Cannot Stop the Spring

This is one of my favorite images of Marilyn Monroe: lolling in a doorframe, awash in green, and decked out in a fur, a hopeful little strawboat hat, and a dash of lipstick. I imagine her seducing the precipice of spring as only she could. This time of year, as snow falls outside my window for the eighth time in a month, I cling to such glamour. It’s the sort only someone with Marilyn’s infectious capacity for joy and appreciation could muster.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy