Interview Me (me)!

Motherreader has invited her visitors to take part in the Interview Meme, which came to her via A Wrung Sponge, and which she has now passed along to several volunteers. In our case, Motherreader provided a set of common questions (1-4) and one unique question (5) for us to answer.

If you'd like to be part of this Meme, please let me know and I will come up with 5 interview questions for you.

Here are mine from Motherreader:

1. What's your favorite quote?

It's hard to pick just one -- so many funny and wonderful things have been said or written! But I think I'll go with this one for now, from William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1950):

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

2. How would you spend $1,500 that you won in a radio contest?

I would be sure to use some of it to buy myself something to commemorate the occasion. I am a big believer in that -- have something to show for it, to remember it years later. The rest would easily get spent here and there on anything and everything.

3. Where do you like to go to get away from it all?

Penobscot Bay up in Maine. I go at least twice a year, and when I'm there I am more at ease and tuned in to myself than anywhere else in the world. What does Penobscot Bay have going for it? Beautiful scenery, quiet, wildlife, old-fashioned New Englanders (accent and all), ocean, stars.... What is it missing? Jobs. Or at least a job I could do while living there. So... I live in New Jersey, and escape to Maine.

4. If you had the complete attention of everyone in the United States, but only for thirty seconds, what would you say?

This is a tough one. Having everyone's attention doesn't mean I can make them do what I say, so I guess "play nice!" won't do it. Which means I have to assume that I wouldn't be able to cause much change with my air time -- at least not directly. I think then, I'd use the 30 seconds to tell a short story about someone from my family, or some event from my childhood, that I wanted to share and have remembered. Hopefully I'd have a lot of time to prepare ahead, to come up with just the right story and to condense it to half a minute. If I had no prep time at all, maybe I'd read or recite a poem, maybe even one of my own, again just to share it and have it remembered.

5. I put you in the writer category of my blogroll because it seemed the best fit. How do you see yourself?

I was actually pretty shocked to find my blog listed under "writers" in your bloglist MR! It's true, I do write, but purely as hobby so far.

How do I see myself? As a fan mostly. A fan of children's books, of words and language, of poetry, of puzzles, and of things that make me crack up or cry.