Keeping On

Thanks to everyone who's sent kind words about my birthday!  I've got to say, the view from 42 looks just fine. 

And while the whole world may be thrilling or griping about Obama and the Peace Prize (GObama!), I'd just like to say how good it felt that Herta Müller, 56, this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, got asked "whether winning the prize while relatively young could hurt her work" (emphasis so mine). 

Oh, yes.  Break out the Champagne.  Bring on the medal for stamina.

I like her calm response to the hoopla of the award (which she seems to be thoroughly enjoying):  "I am now nothing better and I'm nothing worse. . .  My inner thing is writing.  That I can hold on to."  I love it when people aren't swayed by praise or failure. 

I'm lifting a glass, too, because the House voted yesterday to include crimes committed due to gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability under federal hate crimes legislation, extending protection to gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, and the Senate will likely agree.  Hurray!  It's about time.

As Müller, who grew up under Ceausescu's brutal dictatorship in Romania, says, "I wanted to live by the standards I dreamt of, it's as simple as that.  And writing was a way for me to voice what I could not actually live."

Let's keep writing our way toward the worlds we dream.