There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road.
I had tried writing novels for many years, and they always escaped me. For a long time, I thought, 'It's just not in me to write a novel. It's not something I'm able to do.' It seemed like everything I wrote naturally ended at the bottom of page three. A picture book, three pages; an essay, three pages.
I have always been interested in abandoned cars. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a car, driving, and there's a car sitting in a pasture, totally abandoned. Or on the edge of a creek or something. I always wonder: why did somebody park it in the pasture and leave?
Many of the original New Deal programs required heavy manual labor. WPA workers built hundreds of schools, health clinics, roads, park facilities, and community centers. Much of what we now call our 'infrastructure' - highways, buildings, power plants, etc. - is here thanks to thousands of WPA workers.
My favorite was the one about 'Snow White'. Those funky little guys with the beards. The poisonous apple. And that cool mirror the evil stepmother used to talk to. You know, she'd ask it all these questions: Who's the nicest? Who's the sweetest... Who's the fairest of them all? And for a while, everything was hunky-dory.
Obsidian was caused by volcanoes, an eruption of steam and gas so furious that it melted the earth itself into this hard, shiny object.