I started a blog because I wanted a record of a Big Experience. When we went to Taiwan to see my daughter play in the Deaflympics (and win a gold medal), I knew I would forget much of the detail unless I wrote it down immediately.

Then we came home.... The day to day details of life didn't seem to justify a blog. And, even when they did, I am constrained by an increasingly obsolete notion of privacy. So I abandoned this page even though it seems that every self-respecting writer is blogging and tweeting.

Recently, it occured to me that I needed a place to record really good lines by other writers, the ones that make me stop and sometimes gasp and then reread with gratitude. I'd like fasten some of those lines into memory. But, failing that, I could fasten them into this blog.

Quoting an exceptional bit of prose seems better than commenting on entire articles or books. Nobody has time to read what's on their own list much less what's on the lists of other people. I simply want to acknowledge and appreciate other writers who have created an extraordinary sentence here or a felicitious phrase there.

Long ago, I wrote about a man who made an immense ball out of "bits of string... too short to save." Of course, he did save them and, in the process, created something remarkable if only as a tribute to his own idiosyncracy. He's my role model. We'll see what comes of it.