Favorite Entries

• September 25, 1996 -- "Here's something: in the Wednesday, September 25, 1996 entry, you wrote 'Fractured Haiku'; it really stuck with me because I still remember how amazed I was when I read it the first time... I can't believe I've been reading your journal for more than four years, no wonder I feel like I really know you." -- Jim

• July 15, 1997 -- "I read your Clarion West journal last year, when I'd just found out about Clarion West and was going on a journal reading binge...yours was one of the CW journals that made the whole experience sound amazing and intense and all sorts of other enthusiastic adjectives, and I ended up applying myself. From that point of view, if I had to pick a favourite entry I'd pick one of the CW ones -- skimming back through them, I really admired your entry of July 15th -- dealing with the novel proposal critique, moving on from it and composing a great sonnet all in one entry." -- Miriam

• July 10, 1998 - "My favorite journal entry has to be Thursday July 10th, 1998. It's not the first time I read your journal, but up until then I had only been reading the entries every few days. After the July 10th entry, I made it a habit to check your diary every day. Hey, you've even surpassed my pro wrestling web sites as the first place I go to when I log on." -- James Lawson

• December 5, 1998 -- "My admittedly biased favorite would be December 5, 1998. It's got some nice rambling bits, it's got a sonnet (with a unique rhyme scheme, yet), and best of all, it has a mention of Yours Truly. :-)" -- Shmuel

• January 12-15, 1999 -- "I think that you were more open in those few days than you have been before or since. Maybe it was the survey that set you off, but in any event, we learned a lot about you." - C.J. Czelling, cjczelling@home.com

• March 25, 2000 -- "...in which you gave me and every other reader "permission to write." It was exactly what I needed to hear at the time, bringing me close to tears. There was something very liberating in your encouragement to accept the challenge." -- Chip

• July 17, 2000 -- "It's funny and reassuring and perceptive; very honest and articulate about the joys and difficulties of being poly. Plus, I always enjoy the moments when your journal gets so personal... I probably enjoy those entries more because your journal isn't a full-on 'Mary Anne's Emotional Extravaganza' every day." -- Tim Pratt, Madwaldo@hotmail.com

• September 28, 2000 -- "My vote is for the Sept. 28th, 2000 entry. It really touched me, because it was about love and longing, hopes and memories. Love of old times, old places, old friends, family. But without a lot of melancholy that often happens when people look into the rearview mirror of life. It had a wonderful mix of how the colors of the past seem more beautiful, more vivid, the way the sun rays strike and refract off clouds at sunset, and how the present flits by and becomes the past so quickly, leaving very little time for decisions and revisions. When I first read it, I thought it would make one of those perfect essays you see at the end of the Lehrer news hour, or hear on NPR. That entry also really cheered me up when I was having an awful day." -- Sunita

• November 27, 2000 -- "The last entry of yours that stuck in my mind was the one from November 27th, this year, with the comments about flying. I read it in San Francisco, on a 2-week trip there, and getting there - and back - involved 12 hour flights from Auckland (New Zealand) to LA and 1 hour flights from LA to SF. I thought about your entry while I was squashed into a United economy seat on the way back to Auckland. I tried to see the romance and the mystery of flying, but I was tired (I can't sleep on planes) and unwashed, and I couldn't see out the window (it was night anyway), and for an hour before we landed the guys next to me discussed plane crashes they had known ("they never did find out what happened to that flight in New York, did they?"). Then the cloud broke up, and we came in low over the Coromandel Peninsula with the morning sun, and everything was green and blue and beautiful...*That* I like. Flying itself... well, it's faster than driving :)" -- Miriam

• December 9, 2000 -- " If you are doing a runner-up journal entry, my pick is Dec. 9th, 2000, if only because I love flowers too. :) Have you ever heard Christine Lavin's song "Roses from the Wrong Man"? It's wonderful." -- Sunita

• December 8, 2001 -- "I hope it doesn't bother you, but this is some of the best photography you have posted, and combined with the mental picture of the "Naked Mary Anne" (by Goya?), it has to be the sexiest entry ever." -- C.J. Czelling

• July 6, 2004 -- "Jed notes that yesterday, we went sailing, though his cheerful account leaves out the fact that I managed to run us aground, and in the process of trying to get back in the water, the rudder came off, and that while poor Jed was trying to get it back on, he scraped his leg with rusty metal and probably gave himself tetanus." -- M.