Bill Moyers plans to end his PBS show and retire from television at the end of next April, according to Nov. 20 story in the New York Times.  That night, with no fanfare, there he was at the helm of his Journal, drawing out lessons for Pres. Obama from newly-released tapes of telephone conversations between Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson and his advisors about the way forward in Vietnam in the early days of his administration.

Last night, I had the opportunity to go to the launch party of the new book, Kirtsy Takes a Bow: A Celebration of Women's Favorites Online (Bright Sky Press, 2009).  The book, edited by Laura Mayes of Kirtsy.com and authored by over 100 online writers, is basically an anthology of some of the best online content to date.  It's the kind of book that you'll love whether you're involved in social media, or have no idea what social media is, but you love intelligent, funny or insightful writing.

"When I hear the official language [of the health care debate] it makes me suppose that this is a time when we need a lot more art that's not going to have answers that are in black and white. " Anna Deavere Smith to Bill Moyers, November 13, 2009

I was standing in my parents' kitchen eating cereal and staring into space, as I do, when my eyes landed on the refrigerator - and more specifically, the pictures on it.And the magnets, and the invitations, and the um, business card for a particular blog that no one reads because I think they still think there's a secret password to get in and hey, who am I to correct that notion? But mostly it's the photos.

I will admit in recent years, I had become very lazy when it came to photography:  with digital cameras as versatile and powerful as they are, I'd gotten very comfortable with adjusting just a few of the settings that my camera was capable of, but for the most part, I left it alone and just let the camera do its thing.  So recently, within the last two weeks, I've switched to photographing in fully manual mode -- adjusting everything from shutter speeds to manually focusing the camera, and it's been eye-opening.

Ma Li has only one arm. Zhai Xiaowei has one leg. And below is a video of them dancing. They dance into the holes in people's lives. In the wordlessness of their dance, libraries of the soul open and volumes of unutterable wisdom fly off the shelves. A knowing comes forward. We all know this. We recognize the feeling of brokenness. We know what we do not have, will never have. We know that all the pieces in the world are not whole, not complete. We know that we needed, and that we need.

When it comes to costuming my young daughter for Halloween, I am of a decidedly lazy sort:  I am all about the store-bought costume.  Oh, I do a little improvising -- a creative hair style here, glitter there (and admittedly, I am all about the glitter), but other than that, I don't really put myself out.  The result is certainly acceptable enough:

I've mentioned before my addiction to art and design -- it's a sickness, really.  I follow about 200 blogs daily, and a considerable percentage of them are written by artists.  When you follow that many, you start to think, of course, you've cornered the market on great artist's blogs, until you start to realize that's a pretty arrogant mindset, given that there are just so many artists and so many blogs out there.

As is probably very obvious to everyone who knows me, I'm pretty obsessive about design.  I don't claim to be a designer by any means, but I can't get enough of it:  I watch design shows, I subscribe to design magazines, and I comb the internet for design inspiration.  I love home decor, I love typography, graphic arts, I love it all.But in no way am I anywhere near an expert.

For this week I want to focus on people that made me smile, gave me hope or fed my brain cells. These folks reminded me that fun, creativity and exploration are worthy things to concentrate on when you get tired of reality television or adults behaving badly.

What's an actress to do when the part of Laurie in Oklahoma! or the chance to disrobe while weightless in space have gone to a younger woman? If you are Florence Henderson or Jane Fonda, the answer is to keep shining with as bright a light as ever.

The Impossible Project - formed to "re-invent and re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras" - may have accomplished just that.