This week my blog takes me to looking at the shape our world is in.
Perception is everything.
Wars, poverty, pollution, stress, disinformation, mental illness, greed, corruption, isolation, bigotry, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, the 6th wave of mass extinctions.
It’s a mess. Read more
Last I left you, dear reader, I had submitted my first fifty pages, query and synopsis for critique, to a NYTimes bestselling author and I was awaiting her notes. In the meantime, my husband had knee replacement surgery and I lost what was to be my bountiful writing time. But hey, life happens…
And it happened to the author / editor I was waiting for. She was busy promoting her latest book and then fell ill, but remained in touch so I always knew what was happening. While I waited, I played around with ideas for my new novel, re-read writing books, bought more writing books. And a surprise book showed up. At first, I thought maybe I lost track of my purchases, but then remembered the author saying she wanted to send me this book.
I make a lot of things. I make most of them from scratch. There’s a long list of those things and I’m proud enough to bore you with that list.
But I’m kind enough to abridge it. I like you.
Yes, I make physical things from lumber, and from plastic filament. I make breads and cakes, cookies, pies and squares. I make the odd thing from textiles on my sewing machine, I’m good enough to get away with calling it sewing, but not good enough to make clothes. Mostly I make repairs.
I also make stories. I tell them in poetry, lyrics, and prose. That makes me a writer. Read more
It has been a couple of months since my last days of paid work but my working norm of being frantic to get things done has has just begun to ease up. I was eager to get at some big housekeeping jobs that had never reached priority status before retirement. As gratifying as it was to make progress on these chores, I realized I was tackling the jobs like I had a deadline. Having now steam-cleaned most surfaces in the house, emptied drawers and closets and purged a couple of truckloads of trash to the dump and donations to the usual organizations, it is time to shift gears.
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A few weeks back, I got a text,
“Coopers hurt. Can you check him out when you get home?”
Cooper had a deep and dangerous puncture, high up inside his back leg. It tracked into his groin and was only a breath away from puncturing his abdomen. It could have been life threatening. Considering our walking track and their playground is our zig-zagging forested trails through our maple sugar bush, I surmised Cooper must have snagged a branch in the wrong spot, at the wrong moment. Read more
Hallowe’en’s origins date back over 2000 years to the Celts when they celebrated the end of the summer, the completion of the harvest and the start of the winter season. Have you realized that this ancient holiday is the mid-point between the fall’s equinox and the winter solstice? It is a time when you begin to truly feel the change of light and shorter days.
Samhain, the name of the Celtic festival, was celebrated for three days around the end of October. It was believed to be a time when the boundary between the living and dead was thin and ghosts from the dead could cross over for a short time. Celtic priests used the night to make predictions about the future and had huge bonfires as part of the celebrations. The Celts would dress in costumes to ward off the evil ghosts who might kidnap them.
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Several decades ago, before I even had a steady boyfriend, I had this weird habit of flipping through bridal magazines, dreaming about the perfect wedding, the over-the-top Royal Princess taffeta ballgown, the jovial bridal party, and spending the most romantic honeymoon hiking through the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania.
That never happened for me.
I mean, I did have a wedding–in fact, I had TWO beautiful weddings to two different people, with incredible velvet and satin dresses, and cool-but-not-that-funny bridal parties, but I never experienced the thrill of hiking through the Poconos Mountains… until this past weekend. A part of my old daydream finally did come true, slightly skewed from the original fantasy.
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What is a blog?
“Blog” : a Weblog, an online journal where an individual or group presents a record of thought, activities, or beliefs.
Here are mine on what has been one hell of a week.
Well, it must be said this past week I have not had to struggle with Blank Page What Do I Write? Syndrome.
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