Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

The other night, I had a conversation with a doctor who wants to come on next year's "Weaving Words & Women" retreat in Peru. She confessed, though, that the idea of "being creative" intimidates her. A doctor? Now that's an intimidating profession. Why is it that the word "creative" causes the pulse to race and palms to sweat? The words "create" and "creature" are rooted in the same Latin noun: "creatura." Like procreate, or bring to bear. Yet the word 'creature" isn't especially intimidating (unless its the Creature From the Black Lagoon). But we seem to think that "creation" is more about how the world was formed, than about how we desire to shape our own dreams, more about making ART, than leaving a simple track along life's path. What if we put a new spin on creativity, and on all the ways we, as human beings, express ourselves, all the ways we bring our vision to b...

Last night, for the umpteenth time, I snuggled on the couch and let myself be engrossed, mesmerized, entranced, enraged, impassioned, and yes, infatuated, by the movie Last of the Mohicans. James Fenimore Cooper on the big screen - frontier romance writ large, bigger than life, panoramas that spread from horizon to horizon, close-ups that show every vein on every leaf, every scar on Magua's face.   It's hard to find an onscreen villain more frightening than Wes Studi. And h ave you ever seen such romance as that between Hawkeye and Cora Munro?  And what about the clash of cultures?  Stolen land?  Nation against nation? Each time I watch the 1992 movie based on the second book in Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales , I ask myself if I am brave enough to WRITE BIG.  Not safe, but BIG. Fearless.  After the movie last night, I came into my office and without turning the lights on,  typed this declaration: There is nothing more beautifu...