In Folly, protagonist Rae Newborn works her way out of debilitating depression by building a house. Artisan of wood in her former life, she pieces together her redemption on a solitary island in the Pacific northwest.

Rae is not only the scarred creation of her writer. She is the writer’s scars, revealed as socially useful things.

AKRON (July 24, 2010) Susan Weber joined teachers, librarians and other interested observers attending the 5th annual Akron Storytelling Festival hosted by the Akron Public Library July 23 and 24.

Summertime in Cleveland has me sprawled on the back porch like a flayed goose, awaiting the nightly visitation.

The shaman has been revered by purveyors of culture who link our storied past with a starker spiritual present.

If there’s one place on earth where joy eclipses toil and grief, it’s music.

BEDFORD (April 10, 2010) Bedford’s new arts series, ‘Creative Kids & Coffee Moms,’ featured Susan Weber this week, performing interactive songs and stories for families with young children.

There was once a wee child whose parents, in a pique of sound reflection (let us hope) said ‘no’ to his request for a snack.

‘When you see a Gauguin,’ writes Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, ‘you think, This man is living in a dream world. When you see a van Gogh, you think, This dream world is living in a man.’

Artists are supposed to be our designated crazies.

They lived oceans apart in the later days of the 19th century, Earp the gunslinger, Van Gogh the psychedelic sower.

From a distance, they could be brothers. At the moment I'm feeling a bit too boringly sane to editorialize further, but we can track their smokey trails in these two eloquent documents.

Notes from American Experience - Wyatt Earp on PBS:

‘What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.’
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield