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Tarot for Enlightenment

Happy Easter! Given the pandemic and the necessary stay-at-home order we are under, this is not a normal Easter. On a typical Easter, we would be getting together with family to eat a nice dinner and socialize. It would also be somewhat warmer. Instead, we are all in our individual homes doing homely (in the British sense of the word) things and it’s around freezing in Minnesota, with snow in the metro. I am writing…

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inspiration writing

Speedy Writing Assignment

During the last meeting of our local writers group, we did a speedy writing assignment. This happens when group members run out of things to share. We didn’t have any sort of assignment prepared in advance, so we took the first line of a book one of our members had with her and used that as a writing prompt. The book was The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe and the first line was: “The…

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A Manifesto for the Sensible Center

The Mini-Manifesto from Gapingvoid Manifestos seem to have been co-opted by the unhinged or extremists, but they are merely public statements of policy aims, beliefs or views. As such, a manifesto is a good way to succinctly state what guides you or your group. In 2006, I wrote a couple of manifestos for my very first blog, Filter & Splice, after reading a challenge from Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid to write a manifesto of 500…

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