Podcast with The Brilliant, Creative & Curious Wendy Hale Davis

Y'all have heard me talk about Wendy many times. She's one of the Women Who Says That Horrible Word, and we've known each other for--yowza!--a dozen years now, ever since I saw her amazing work in Jason Thompson's Making Journals By Hand (Quarry, 2000). If you've got a copy, check out pages 26 & 27, for example. See? You'd send fan mail, too, wouldn't you? [Don't give up--the little podcast player is down at the bottom there--keep scrolling!]

Wendy is one of the most brilliant people I know--not only does she know stuff, but she gets interested in new stuff and finds out about it and adds it to the vast stores of stuff she knows about. She remembers stuff. You ask her a question, and hours later you get a text with information about it that you wouldn't ever have thought of. Like for instance: recently she texted me a little after 7 am to ask if it were sunny here that day (we're both sun fanatics and are happy any day it's sunny and not so happy any day it isn't), and I told her I didn't know because the sun wasn't up (plus I was still in bed drinking coffee so couldn't really see whether it was cloudy out, but I didn't tell her that because I didn't want to sound like a total slacker), and we were wondering how much later (seconds? minutes?) the sun rises here (west and north of Austin, where she lives) than it does there. Later that evening she called me to tell me all she'd discovered about the timing of sunrise and sunset from the winter solstice to the spring equinox. I love her brain.

 Her brain decorated by fabulous hats.

Anyway, so Wendy turns 60 tomorrow (Happy Birthday, again, sweetie!), and I wanted to talk to her about curiosity and creativity and getting older. So many people I know act as if life is over after 50. Oh, sure, they keep living. But they don't LIVE, you know? They don't try new things or change their basic lives or experiment or get excited about stuff. They are not, in short, curious. And curiosity about things is what fascinates me.

Her grandfather was Elmer Davis,

 and that hat was given to her by a group at his alma mater, 

which I should remember but, of course, do not.

 A wine bar in downtown Austin

 where we spent a long leisurely afternoon tasting various flights.

A sheriff's deputy working security at Whole Foods. 

We forced him to laugh. We're pretty sure

 he thought The EGE was our handler/keeper.

Somewhere in Austin, 

doing our small part to 

Keep Austin Weird. 

In a good podcast, there's a point where I can literally feel my scalp tingle and a grin spread across my face--I know I've got something that's going to inspire someone else. Listen to what Wendy says--really listen, and you're going to realize a different way of looking at what your life can be like--at any age--young, 40, 50, 60, 70, 101.