A Midsummer Day’s Blog

Hello, all. I’m three days late on my promised 15th/30th schedule, but sometimes I believe these things take form when they’re supposed to.

We’re having a lovely summer day after several scorchers. I promised I wouldn’t complain since the winter here pretty much lasts till June, but when it was too humid to breathe, I complained a little.



To anyone who didn’t get the mailing about the audio of Fit from Within: it is ready and available from www.simplyaudiobooks.com. It is free for the first 30 days, but at least half of that, maybe more, has passed, so if you’d like a downloadable audiobook of Fit from Within: 101 Simple Secrets to Change Your Body & Your Life at no cost, go the Simply Audiobooks site right now.



William and I have been walking to Central Park on my non-gym mornings and climbing the rock outcroppings. We pretend it’s the wilderness. I know: pitiful, right? The park is wonderful, though. This morning we saw some kind of long-beaked water bird on one of the ponds. All the birds are friendly and we go so early it’s kind of private and very quiet. Quite a few homeless people sleep in the park, though, and that’s sad. Sometimes we’ll climb a rock and when we get to the top of it, there’ll be a guy, sometimes two or three, asleep on the hard rock. It’s illegal to stay in the park overnight, so I guess sleeping on a rock is arrest-proof in a way a ground-level bench would not be. The fact that there are homeless people seems very wrong to me. I spent my formative years when, with the exception of “bums” confined to one district of major cities, everybody had a place to live.



I’m working hard on Fat, Broke and Lonely and think I have some good stuff. Prayers appreciated. As you know, this book was not my idea and I have to trust that it was given to me to write because I really am the person to write it, that it will reach its intended audience, do good in the world, and carry me to my next indicated thing. My deadline was moved up from 12/1 to 9/15 so I’m aiming at a chapter (about 1200 words) a day. When the Muse shows up---today she did---that’s easy. When she doesn’t, it’s a grind.



The radio show is the most fun. I love it to pieces. I hope you get Sirius Satellite as soon as you can so you can listen. I think you can now get a subscription and listen on your computer so you don’t have to buy a special radio as was the case before. If you’re interested, go to www.sirius.com and see what it says. I’m techno-challenged, but I did hear this over at the Sirius studios so it should be right.





This is Weddings Week at Martha Stewart Living so my guest for Saturday will be Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, author of The Wedding Goddess: Turning Wedding Stress Into Wedding Bliss, and afterwards I’ll tape the show that will air Sunday, July 30, probably the most important show I’ve done so far. I’ll have on Imaculee Ilibagiza whom you may have seen on the last PBS special with Wayne Dyer. Imaculee survived the Rwandan genocide, although it took almost her entire family and she herself was starved and hunted for three months. During this time of going through what no being God ever made should have to, she had profound spiritual experiences that led to her knowing that she had to forgive the murderers. She prayed 15 to 20 hours a day while hidden in a tiny bathroom with eight other women and wasting away to 65 pounds. When she prayed, the fear left her. She became convinced that although evil had overtaken these people, their souls were not evil; they had done horrific things and had to be held responsible for their actions but they were still God’s children. Her book is Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwadan Holocaust. Please buy this book and read it and let it lift you up. Christiane Northrup gave a blurb and said, “This book renwed my faith in God and the Universe in a profound and real way that has changed me forever.” I so concur. I want to give it as a gift to everyone I know. We need this kind of faith and love right now, maybe more than ever.



The world situation weighs heavy on my mind, of course. Living here in New York, I know a lot of people with family in Israel and some with family in Lebanon and Syria. It is so frightening, so inexplicable. Especially after reading Imaculee’s book and seeing how absurd war and killing looks when there’s even a little space of time for looking back, the idea that it’s happening again---in Israel and Lebanon, in Iraq, in other places around the world---is totally baffling to me. One of our New York papers bore the headline today: “Hez Says US Is Next.” It was an ugly, paper-selling pronouncement but it got me to do the disaster preparedness they say everyone should. I bought batteries and canned food and bottled water. William tried to make light of it all by saying, “Why did you get cat food? If there were an emergency, we’d eat the cat.” And then he gave me that grin that makes him look about twelve years old.



Last weekend we went to a cabaret performance because our neighbor, veteran composer and performer, John Wallowitch was appearing. One of the other artists on the program was Julie Gold, composer of the moving song Bette Midler recorded, “From a Distance.” You know the one: “From a distance, we are instruments, playing in a common band. It’s a song of hope, a song of peace, a song of everyman….” It seems so apropos, so necessary. I wish it could be piped into the halls of Congress and the UN and everywhere else that people make decisions that impact the world. Julie has agreed to be on my show this fall---appropriately on Veteran’s Day, November 11. I am so excited and grateful.



And life goes on: working out, climbing rocks, writing at Starbucks every morning, tending to the rest of my multi-faceted business life at home in the afternoons. (It’s weird to call what I do a business. I mean, I make my living at it, but I don’t think of it as a business. It’s more a calling or a commitment or a passion or just what I came here to do.) My daughter Adair opens tonight in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” at the Inwood Shakespeare Festival (obviously not all Shakespeare, but all classical theatre) in Inwood Park way Uptown. We are in Midtown (in the 50s), the main drag of Harlem is 125th St., and Inwood Park where she’s performing is around 214th St. It’s hardly like New York: hilly, full of trees, but still Manhattan Island. Adair never likes people she knows coming to her shows until they’ve been up for awhile so William and Sian (William’s daughter) and Nick (Adair’s husband) and I will see it weekend after next. By then, Adair will be in rehearsals for The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, a children’s theater production in which she has the female lead.



Tonight William and I will go down to the East Village to my favorite restaurant Caravan of Dreams. We’ll have dinner with Pam Grout, author of wonderful books including God Doesn’t Have Bad Hair Days, and her 12-year-old daughter Tasmin. Pam does a lot of travel writing and this summer they’re a mom-and-daughter travelin’ team going all over the country.



Tomorrow night we’ll have dinner in the theatre district with Jack Moran, my first (deceased) husband’s eldest brother who will be in from Kansas City with his wife. He and his son Greg (a doctor in LA who does some script-writing for the TV series ER) do an admirable job of keeping Adair and me as part of the Moran family. Jack officiated at Adair and Nick’s wedding but we haven’t seen him since then.



I spoke in Orlando last week for the American Auctioneer’s Association Auxiliary, but otherwise I’m staying close to home, writing, doing life-coaching by telephone, and filling in the upcoming weekends with radio guests. My days are very happy. I hope yours are, too.



My very best,

Victoria