Word Collage

A Journey

2012-01-26T07:23:00.002-05:00

Felicity Aston recently " became the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica, hauling two sledges around crevasses and over mountains into endless headwinds, pushing onward for 59 days in near total solitude."

Have you ever embarked on a journey? Not all journeys are of a physical nature, some are emotional, intellectual, or simply based in curiosity.

That's a good prompt.

Tired of Obsolescence ?

2012-01-17T07:39:00.005-05:00

Yearning for something out of fashion? Even Twinkies will be a thing of the past.

from Poets and Writers
Adopt a Typewriter

And if you're interested in the History of Typewriters —from the blog of oztypewriter

An Enjoyable Clip About Books

2012-01-11T08:52:00.000-05:00

I first saw this on a mystery blog.

Books

The How-To of Critiquing

2011-12-29T08:50:00.003-05:00

Andrew Burt's article :

The Diplomatic Critiquer : The Nitty Gritty Of How To Be One
provides a template that's worth reading.

The best advice is to remember to critique the story and not the author.

I always ask questions of the manuscript.

A Wish

2011-12-23T07:45:00.000-05:00

Y
ou
rWo
rdsY
ourSt
oriesA
reGifts.
WishingY
ouAllaMer
ryChristmas
FilledWithJ
oyandManyBle
ssings.
For
The
New Year

Oh, Hear the Angel’s Voices!

2011-12-22T15:14:00.007-05:00

By Cathy

I
Our Christmas tree was always a live one decorated with ornaments that almost all looked alike, lights and lots of tinsel (put it on one piece at time, don’t clump it) we trailed all over the house for months after the tree was gone. Some years we would pop popcorn (heat oil in pot on stove, add a few tbsp. of popcorn, put lid on pot, shake pot over flame until popping stops) and if we didn’t eat all the popcorn we would take heavy needle and thread through a piece of popcorn, then a cranberry, then a popcorn, then a cranberry until the garland was long enough to at least make a little loop around a few branches on the front of the tree or until the thread broke. After school or on the weekends all five of us kids would lie on the floor, fighting to have our feet nearest the hot air register (because the house with the coal fired furnace was always cold) and play “I Spy” with the baubles on the Christmas tree. I know several times if anyone guessed the ornament I was thinking of I would quickly change it to another of the same color that hadn’t been guessed yet to make my turn last longer.

Snickerdoodles and molasses sugar cookies are all I remember we made around Christmas time. Those pages are marked with grease in the old falling apart Betty Crocker Cooky Cookbook we used that now can be found on my kitchen shelf. The page with the dried apricot and coconut ball recipe mom made for gift giving is missing from the book and I haven’t been able to find it elsewhere although I have tried several different ones. Dried apricots were too expensive for cookies for us kids to eat but my apricot-loving brother and I usually snuck a couple of them. Uncle Leo wasn’t as stingy with his dried apricots. About a week before Christmas a package would arrive in the mail from him. Inside, amidst the popcorn he usually used as packing material would be a roll of apricot candy wrapped in waxed paper and some homemade fudge in a coffee can. We each got a slice of the apricot candy roll and then I think Dad confiscated the rest for himself because he was allergic to chocolate and so he wouldn’t eat any fudge. That apricot candy is another recipe I would like to find.

Sometimes we would go over to Aunt Clara and Uncle Cecil’s house to pick up cookies they had baked for us. Uncle Cecil was my maternal grandma’s brother and we called him mole-head when he wasn’t around because he was bald and his head was polka-dotted with what we thought were moles but now that I think of it they were probably just age spots. Mom usually made us wait in the car while she went into their house to get the cookies because she said us kids (five of us) made Uncle Cecil nervous (and we probably did). Aunt Clara made all kinds of delectable goodies but my favorite were the green spritz cookies in the shape of a wreath with red hots that looked like little holly berries.
There usually weren’t very many wrapped presents under the tree but we always knew we would get to open one on Christmas eve that contained new clothes to wear to midnight mass. We also knew that pajamas and underwear were probably in the gifts that were left under the tree to open on Christmas morning.

I always stayed awake until it was time to leave for midnight mass and most times so did my sister Debbie. Dad would carry the other three sleeping kids to the car. Sometimes they slept sprawled out in the pew for the entire mass and I was embarrassed and thought that they were committing a sin by sleeping in church. I couldn’t wait to hear the choir sing “Oh Holy Night” because I thought that was the most beautiful song in the world and when they sang “Oh, hear the angel’s voices…” I could swear I did. It was indeed a “night divine”. Midnight mass was the only time I can say I enjoyed going to church.

I don’t remember that we ever really wanted anything special for Christmas. We didn’t watch much TV or tag along on shopping trips so didn’t see what things there were to want. A couple of years in a row my sister Debbie and I received matching dolls only hers was blond and mine was brunette. I thought Debbie always received the prettier doll so after that I did tell my parents I didn’t want any dolls but didn’t tell them why. Thereafter I received crafty items for Christmas. I loved the paint by number pictures and soon they piled up under my bed because I thought some day I would be able to frame them and hang them but they all disappeared when I went away to college. One year I received a red loom to weave potholders and after I used up the cloth loops that came with it I had no use for the loom because I didn’t know I could buy more loops. Another year I received a real loom (belt sized) and made a few belts I wore for years. The loom is in the closet up by the computer. Another year after I learned how to sew I received yards of bright green suede fabric and I made a jacket and skirt.

I remember gifts of books too – Black Beauty, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Toby Tyler, Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. I kept them in my bookcase headboard and they too disappeared when I went away to college. One year my brother received Beautiful Joe. He pronounced the J sound like a V and we kidded him about Beautiful Voe for years. He told me a few years ago he bought a book with the cover like he remembered on Ebay.

I don’t remember where or even if we hung our stockings or even if we had them every year but I do remember a few years we received a big apple or a big orange and some wrapped hard candies in a stocking. That’s the only fresh fruit I remember eating except for raspberries we might pick from the woods when camping or a lug of peaches dad would sometimes buy in the summer.

The family present was usually a new game. The first game I remember playing was Hi Ho Cherrio and that was one of the first games I bought for the grandkids. Other games I remember were Candyland, Monopoly, Life and Coupe Ferre. We always played games on Christmas day.

The first present I bought with my own babysitting money was a bottle of Chanel No. 5 for my mom. I rode the bus downtown to Parker’s department store and rode up in an elevator that dinged and announced what could be found on each floor on the way up. I smells from the perfume counter free samples that hung in the air made me feel sick and I felt even sicker when I found out how much I would have to spend to obtain a very small bottle. Years later my husband told me that was the same first gift he purchased for his mom.

And so it was until mom and dad divorced, I went away to college, my sister got married, the rest of the family moved to Florida. Then each Christmas was celebrated in a different way, in a different place and with different people. The only constant was mom’s phone call to each of us to tell us “a check is in the mail”. Year after year we joked about those thieving postmen who stole our checks.

II
I never cared to go Christmas tree hunting. We have never had a fake tree and it has been my husband’s job, along with the kids when they were old enough, to go in search of the perfect one. My daughter Amber loved the places in the country that would allow you to cut your own tree and still drags her family out on the day after Thanksgiving to cut one down.

We could not afford to buy many ornaments for our first tree as a family so it was mostly laced with strings of popcorn and some ornaments that Helen, an elderly lady we worked with, gave us. Her husband had died and she didn’t decorate for Christmas. I still hang the surviving ornaments on the tree every year and think of Helen. I see some of the same ornaments on Ebay being sold as vintage or antique.

Our tree is now covered with ornaments made of macaroni, yarn, cross-stitch, ceramic, paper mache, wood, cookie dough, egg shells, stained glass (really plastic) and felt. Ever since the kids were little we have made some type of ornament every year and now the grandkids carry on the tradition. Also hanging on the tree along side our handmades are ornaments given to us over the years or ones we’ve picked up in our travels. We listen to Christmas music (I especially like Manheim Steamrollers) and drink hot chocolate and I think about each ornament as I hang it or tell the grandkids about the ones their parents made. And each year I think I am going to catalog the ornaments with a picture and a story for future generations but never get it done.

We’ve baked a lot of cookies at Christmas over the years. We always made sugar cookies the kids would heavily decorate with frosting, sugars and other decorations. (Some probably weighed a pound or so after they were done with them.) Sometimes we’d splurge on some chocolate chips for seven layer bars or chocolate chip cookies and a couple of times I tried to make fudge like Uncle Leo’s (do not use that marshmallow crème stuff) but it got so hard I couldn’t even get it into the pan so I gave up trying. I remember the year we had a bunch of cookies cooling on newspapers on the dining room table and one of the kids spilled their glass of lemonade over half of them and we let the ones that weren’t too drenched dry out and ate them anyway. Another year Sean, my oldest son, snuck some seven layer bars and stashed them on the windowsill in his room behind a curtain for later eating. I found them before he managed to eat them all and thereafter we referred to seven layer bars as “windowsill hider” cookies. A few weeks ago the grandkids, even Jacob who is only two and stood on a stool, made sugar cookies that probably weighed a pound each after being frosted and decorated. I ate several and so did they. (Grandma allows homemade cookies for breakfast).

For years we used to celebrate on Christmas Eve with my in-laws. My husband John is one of eight kids and each of them married and had between two and five children so there was quite a houseful in those days. Ham sandwiches and oyster stew (a giant pot of it with about five oysters total) and pickled herring were always served for supper then most everyone went into a room other than the one with the Christmas tree and sang Christmas carols until we heard a bell ring which meant Santa had come and gone and left presents under the tree -all while we were singing. (John’s youngest sister Suzy inherited the bell after the in-laws died). After opening the presents the adults usually drank beer and played euchre and the kids amused themselves. One year a couple of siblings saved all the free things they could acquire in a year and boxed them up for a gift exchange and a tradition of freebie giving was borne. Everyone looked forward to Christmas eve to see who would find the best freebie gift and what it would be.

One year I found a recipe for overnight cinnamon pecan rolls (they raise in the refrigerator overnight and you pop them in the oven in the morning) to use up fresh pecans my aunt Betty from Georgia sent us. The leftover pecans went into the freezer and I dug them out and used them again the following year for pecan rolls. And so a tradition of rolls and juice for breakfast on Christmas morning was borne.

I say every year that I’m going to make everyone a Christmas stocking like the ones my step mom made the two oldest kids after they were born but I’ve not done so yet. Everyone does have a stocking, though, and my husband and I fill the adult stockings with freebies we acquire all year, lottery tickets and other weird items like fart bombs, glow sticks, thrift store jewelry and duct tape with weird designs.

For years my sister Debbie who lives close and family have come out on Christmas day and we play games and gobble down hors d’oeuvres (and now drink homemade wine) before dinner. When the kids and their cousins were older they liked to compete at Trivial Pursuit but the last several years with the addition of a new generation we have played Outburst so a whole room full of people can play (boys against the girls) including the littlest of kids who shout out answers that sometimes make no sense but other times actually win a point for the team.

III
The Christmas tree has been beautifully decorated by my 7 year old grand-daughters, the patio door is gaudily decorated with Christmas cling-ons, a new quilt and pillowcases (handmade by me) for every family member is wrapped and under the tree, the cookies have been baked and all eaten, the Outburst game has been dusted off, the recipe for pecan rolls is on the kitchen counter, my brother is to arrive from Florida later today, the box of stocking stuffers is ready for stocking stuffing and the grandkids are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa.
Oh, hear the angel’s voices!

By Cathy

A Story

2011-12-20T20:27:00.001-05:00

A Child's Christmas in Wales
Read by Dylan Thomas

It Happened a Few Years Ago

2011-12-18T10:00:00.002-05:00

By Sharon Chiasson

I can tell this story now because they have gone. I have driven out to the cottage, and it is empty and has been unused for a long time. I never see Ena walking anymore. I feel safe again, but sometimes I have to do something, or look at something, to make sure it was not a dream. Or should I say, a nightmare.

It was Friday, late afternoon, with Christmas four days away, and I was driving toward Acton to clean up the very last details of my shopping. I saw Ena walking. I’m a nurse, and I recognized her as a local care giver. I had given her a ride before. I knew that she was walking to the train station at this time of day. She worked in the group home on Acton Street. It was cold. The day was getting dusky.

I slow to a crawl as I drive by her. Rolling down my window, I ask her if she would like a ride.

Ena is Asian and her English is limited. I am not clever with languages, so we speak in simple phrases. “Working?” I say, once she has seated herself. But I see her face now. Her eyes are full of tears and she looks ill and frightened. She nods her head indicating yes. “You sick?” I ask, again using a questioning tone. She starts to sob, and reaches into her purse. I loose my breath when she takes out a small gun and points it at me.

I ask her why, over and over. She does not answer, but motions for me to keep driving. We pass the train station and continue on Route 111. She tells me to turn onto a winding narrow road that takes us to what looks like a summer cottage, overlooking a pond.

She tells me to get out and I hesitate. I foolishly thought I was just driving her home. She waves the gun back and forth, yelling words I don’t understand and motioning for me to get out. She points to the cottage door, and I walk toward it. She is close behind me, sniffing, and softly whispering what sounds like, “sorry, sorry.”

In the kitchen, I meet an elderly man and another man, probably in his forties. Ena begins to talk with them They are all very upset, and the men seem to be surprised by my presence. The younger man angrily grabs Ena’s purse and takes out the gun. He opens it, and shows me there are no bullets in the gun. He is angry with Ena. I finally understand; the gun was not loaded.

Ena offers to take my coat, and I don’t want to take it off. She takes my two hands and holds them tightly, like she is praying, and says,“Help.”

“You want me to help you! How can I help you?” I ask, searchingly. Ena takes my hand and leads me into the bedroom.

The room is dark, and heavy with odor. I can barely see the figure in the bed. I can hear very heavy breathing. Ena lights a tiny bedside light, and gradually I can see it is an elderly woman in the bed, who is clearly in distress. She is thin, and looks poorly hydrated.

“She needs a doctor,” I say.

“No! No! No!” Ina says in a frightened pitch. “No doctor!”

“I’ll take her to the emergency room,” I volunteer,. motioning that I will drive. Again, I hear loudly “ no, no, no.”

The younger man comes into the bedroom, in response to the yelling. He listens to Ena briefly, then stands close to my face and says very clearly, “NO PAPERS!”

“They would help her at the hospital, even if she has no papers,” I offer.

He nods and says, in broken English, ”Then would be reported,” while firmly shaking his head, indicating again “no.”

I am slowly catching on. I’m realizing they are afraid of deportation. They do not have proper immigration papers and they are terrified of authorities finding out they are in this country. What a position to be in! To be in this incredible country, with so much available, and still, they are afraid to ask for help.

I turn toward Ena. She says, simply,” Help her.”

For the next three hours, Ena and I work to clean, to change, to position, to attempt to feed, and to hydrate the elderly woman. She exhibits decreased response, and needs a great deal of coaxing and positioning to be able to swallow, which surprisingly does improve. She refuses to be spoon fed, and pushes away and turns away from attempts to give her even very small amounts of scrambled egg or apple sauce. She will take coffee, but refuses milk. She does not speak, and I don’t know if she is aware of who is in her room, or where she is.

Ena and the younger man talk, and she then gives me a note pad and pencil, saying, “Store.”

I think, “Yes, I will go shopping for what they need, and give some advice, and then I will be going home.” I make a list of items for the pharmacy, and a food list for the market. I show the lists to the younger man. Without attempting to explain, he goes to my coat and takes my keys, puts them in his pocket, and leaves.

Ena brings me coffee and some bread. She moves a large chair near the bed, and brings in a pillow and blanket. “I can’t go home?” I ask.

She smiles and says, “Ok?” pointing to the chair.

I consider this situation. Can someone disappear and not be missed? Can one live so solitary a life that no one questions when absence occurs? My children live far away, my Christmas items have been mailed. Who is there to know I ‘m missing?

I am supposed to work on Christmas Day and the day after, so I have scheduled off Monday and Tuesday. So, for Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I wash, change, feed, position and cajole my elderly patient, and to everyone’s relief, she responds. The first indication that she was regaining her strength, was when she reached up and patted my cheek as I administered her morning care. We smiled at one another, and I knew she was present and aware.

She began to take the protein drink and some water, and then accepted soups and puddings. Once, after I had fallen asleep, she rolled over on her own, and was watching me when I awoke.

The older man was so relieved, he held my hands and bowed his head again and again.

We had a heavy snow storm that Monday. By Monday at noon, she was glad to sit in a chair, and was holding her own coffee cup. I felt safe with these people. I was comfortable, and well fed, and warm.

The elderly woman began to talk with her family, and it was clear that they were very pleased.. On Tuesday afternoon, the young man gave me my keys and my coat. There was no anger, only relief and thankfulness. I remember looking into their eyes as we held hands to say goodbye. They knew I would not report them.

I drove home to find my driveway cleared, my house freshly cleaned, my cat well taken care of, and fresh supplies in the refrigerator. So that’s why he kept my keys!

I spoke with my family members on Christmas Eve, and listened to details of their busy lives. We wished one another a Merry Christmas. They were unaware that I had been out of the house for four days, and I did not tell them..

On Christmas Day, I went to work and listened to everyone complain about having to work, about being hung over, about having to return things that were the wrong color or the wrong size or the wrong make, or how some relative they disliked came to the gathering and they did not speak to one another.

I knew Ena and her family were out there, frightened, but caring for one another with so much less than what we take for granted.

I could not complain about anything.

Sharon Chiasson 12/2011

Walking and Writing

2011-12-17T21:28:00.004-05:00

From The Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor

Solviture ambulando, wrote Augustine of Hippo.
"It is solved by walking."
"What is it?"
If you want find out then you will have to do your own walking.

A number of writers walk to find inspiration, story ideas, or to find help when in the throes of a story.

Carol Keeley's article in Ploughshares
Walking Writers

If You Love Letterpress

2011-12-16T07:58:00.011-05:00

An article in Spitafieldslife blog : The Print

Fascinating writing and photos and a reminder of the graphic creativity of letterpress.

Of interest Museum of Printing

Check out their poster of The Letterpress Press

P.S. I don't agree with the Tip for the Day—today

Christmas 2011 at a Slant

2011-12-14T16:57:00.003-05:00

By Elizabeth

Plaster dust hangs in the halls and coats the stairway, specific piles of papers line an edge of the dining room floor, all the bedrooms are packed with their usual fare as well as furniture, computers, books and papers from the room newly replastered. My son comes home from college in less than a week, my daughter flies to my parent’s home in Pittsburgh from Tel Aviv a few days later.

My son and I drive to Pittsburgh next week, with a stop first to see his neurologist.

Guess it would be nice to gently string some lights over the freshly painted porch. Need to: keep checking online about my latest job application, revise my resume again for improvements I need to make, go into Cambridge for a public forum on energy at MIT (part of the “intelligence-gathering” phase of my job search); witness testimony at the State House for Single-Payer Health Care; attend opening for an art show; start financial aid applications; wrap presents in widely ruled children’s writing paper; sweep and wet mop plaster dust and markings; move displaced furniture back into the newly replastered room; prepare to ask roofing contractor about his job; lower and wash twenty storm windows – make sure the upper storm is on the outside; write out the monthly budget, see therapist, acupuncturist and network chiropractor; go to gym; walk and breathe.

No time for baking this year. I’ll miss giving cookies to neighbors. Hope they understand. Good thing I made a holiday swag for the house – trimmings from trees in my yard and an old Christmas bow. (It kept sliding off the front door window so I hung it on the lamp post!)

Have a great time in Pittsburgh with friends and family: Christmas tree decorating, Hanukkah candles, wrapping and giving presents, baking and decorating cookie ornaments, gingerbread house and parties, champagne and singing. Enjoy the moments with them and toast to good health and happiness.

Be gracious with former spouse, his brother, and sister-in-law.

Christmas is such a special time. Nothing changes that.

By Elizabeth Milligan

Christmas Letter--Any Year

2011-12-13T20:24:00.001-05:00

By Marcia Cook

I know it's late. So why the delay? It's all the stuff I had to do, so as not to disappoint. Disappoint whom? Me? You? My family? Mostly myself, my own unrealistic expectations. It's Christmas! We all know what it's supposed to mean. The celebration of the miraculous birth, the perfect love, the dazzle-your-socks-off tree, the multitude of flashy gifts, the clean well organized home, the smell of fresh baked goodies, and of course, the opportunity to share with you our bounty, all we’ve accomplished this year. But don't forget the cheery dispositions.

This is what it's like here, right now. The dining room table is cluttered with unwrapped presents and bags half-emptied. On the hutch are opened, partially eaten, boxes and tins of Christmas cookies, candies and nuts. The living room tables are covered with cards, probably yours, with torn out addresses scattered among them, just in case I don't have you in my address book correctly. My son’s stocking is hung in anticipation of his arrival tomorrow night. As usual, there is way too much stuffed in the stocking, and it will soon spill out onto the hearth and he'll probably end up returning a bunch of it. The dogs will go for the chocolate Santas, foil and all, and then a trip to the vets.

The lights are up outside. Shortly thereafter, hubby managed to chew up the extension cord in the snow blower (good for a couple of loud, decidedly unChristian words to the universe). The tree is trimmed and tied to the wall to keep it from tipping over.

Strangely, I haven't gotten around to putting the crèche in place. The new puppy just peed under the piano, as I was cleaning it up, my daughter called. Distracted, I didn't adequately finish the job. Then I let the dogs out, and the loud one wouldn't come in, and I was still on the phone with my distraught daughter, and the dog ended up waking up the neighborhood. I heard the kitchen door open and close; a neighbor brought my dogs inside and slammed the door. We're praying that the bottle of wine left on their doorstep (from “Bad Dog “. . . whose name, ironically, is Angel) will repair relations.

There's leftover gingerbread dough from last Saturday in the refrigerator (hard as a rock, as the granddaughters lost interest, two dozen gingerbread people later). Daughter, granddaughters and I, went to see the 5:30 performance of the Nutcracker. They were sweet and wide-eyed and wonderful, although dinner at 9:30 at Friendly's with a three year old, was a bit problematic. The good news, I can now order off the Senior Menu. Tomorrow I will trek out to see my other daughter in the western part of the state, to deliver some presents and goodies ahead of time, so the kids aren't so overwhelmed when they arrive on Christmas day. We keep telling them, Christmas isn't just about presents, but then what do I do? Of course I overbuy each year, even though I swear I'm going to figure it out, and simplify. Afterall, it's right over my sink in the kitchen, a large wooden sign staring at me throughout the year: "SIMPLIFY". Maybe it needs to fall down and hit me on the head some night when I'm doing the dishes.

Well, I'm headed down to the basement to finally retrieve the baby Jesus, and place him in the crèche, on the fireplace mantel. Amazingly, He understands, and doesn’t hold it against me, that He is last on my to-do list. He is big on forgiveness, and knows, there’s big love under all this hassle.

Here's hoping your Christmas is real, your dogs behave, and you take time to really notice one another. As my favorite Mr. Rogers said, “The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.”

Marcia Cook
December, 2011

If You Love Bookstores...

2011-12-13T08:44:00.002-05:00

Read this article in the New York Times
Amazon and Independent Bookstores

Poetry? Prose?

2011-12-12T11:59:00.002-05:00

This is a worthwhile article on poetry's impact on prose.

John Mannone's article in Flash Fiction:

Collateral Benefit: The Impact of Poetry or Prose Writing ( and Vice Versa)

It Looks Like Christmas

2011-12-11T17:01:00.002-05:00

Larry sent this excerpt from his recently published book.

It Looks Like Christmas
--By Larry C. Kerpelman

In my recently published book, Pieces Missing: A Family’s Journey of Recovery from a Traumatic Brain Injury(Two Harbors Press, 2011), I describe how my wife sustained a traumatic brain injury after falling while jogging and the many impacts of this injury on so sensitive (and important) an organ of the body. It took three emergency room visits, two hospitalizations, one brain surgery, and months of rehabilitation for her to regain the pieces missing from her speech, thought, reading, confidence, and zest for life. The book also tells how our marriage and family persevered and survived the biggest crisis of our lives and how the human spirit and love helped us overcome this challenge. This excerpt from the book takes us to her discharge—just before Christmas—from her second hospitalization, after undergoing neurosurgery for her subdural hematoma.

Sunday, December 17
With the operation behind us, and Christmas only a week away, this evening Janna and I revisit her idea of readying the house for the holiday and, we hope, Joanie’s homecoming. Our daughter spends half an hour in our attic going through all the boxes of decorations stored there. Over the years, as our collection of ornaments and decorations grew, Joanie characteristically organized and labeled everything down to the finest detail, so it doesn’t take long for Janna to find the boxes she needs for the decorations she wants to put up and to bring them downstairs.
Before going to sleep, Janna and I (but it is mostly Janna) set about starting to make the house look like Christmas. She scurries to position around the house the brass horn, garlands, Christmas stockings, and miniature hand-crafted evergreen trees, Santa Clauses, and elves that Joanie has accumulated over the years. By the time she is finished, it still isn’t half of what Joanie would normally have placed over the course of several days’ decorating before the holiday, but it achieves its purpose: the house “looks like Christmas.”

ΩΩΩΩΩ
Wednesday, December 20
With her discharge imminent, I need to buy a tree if we are going to complete decorating the house for Christmas by the time Joanie comes back home. I spend the morning shopping for one. It can’t be just any old tree, though. Joanie always insisted on getting “a Fraser fir, as fresh as it could be,” which meant going to a tree farm to cut one ourselves. There is no time to do that now, so I go to several places to examine and then shake their already-cut trees to get “a Fraser fir, as fresh as it could be” for Joanie’s homecoming.
Janna and I agreed last night that while I was doing that, she would go in to visit Joanie this morning and then leave in the afternoon (rather than at night, as she usually did). Not only does she have to go back to her apartment, for the first time in a week, to get clean clothes to wear and to retrieve her mail, but also she is to pick Todd up at Logan Airport at eleven o’clock tonight. Since her apartment is just outside of Boston, we had agreed that she would be the one to drive in to the airport to get him.
We have not yet told Joanie that Todd moved up his planned arrival from December 24 by four days, as we thought it best for her to regain as much of her physical and cognitive functioning as possible in order to better handle the excitement of his coming in. Once I arrive at Joanie’s room, shortly before noon, Janna and I tell her the news. The broad smile and glow that light up her face tells us she couldn’t be happier. This afternoon, she sits in a chair for several hours, orders up by telephone her food from the hospital food service, eats well, walks around the halls, and allows herself to think that she might actually be discharged from the hospital and home in time for Christmas—and with her whole family around her.
ΩΩΩΩΩ
On arriving home from the hospital, I have one more thing to do before going to bed. I put the lights up on the Christmas tree and (knowing that Todd and Janna will finish decorating it once they arrive home from the airport) place upon it just a few of the ornaments Janna had brought down from the attic. As I place each of the ornaments we had given annually to our children in earlier Christmases—like the little soccer player enthusiastically kicking a ball and the ornament with the slate on it saying “For the best teacher” we had given to Janna in years past, and the miniature computer and Yale bulldog ornaments we had given to Todd—I think back to those Christmases past when we were all together. And I look forward to this Christmas present, when we will all be home together again.
ΩΩΩΩΩ
Thursday, December 21
At one thirty in the afternoon, the nurse arrives with Joanie’s discharge papers, instructions on her care and the medications she should take while recovering, and a list of the therapists who will be contacting us for follow-up rehabilitation at home. She admonishes Joanie that she will have to take it easy for quite a while to give all her bodily systems a chance to recover and reintegrate, but she assures us that recovery will come with time. With that, we wait for a wheelchair to come to take Joanie from her room and out of the hospital.
As we wait, I gaze over at my wife. Her head is bald where they had shaved her to get to the hematoma that had assaulted her brain, she still is sporting thirty stitches from the surgery, and she is pale and weak from having been in bed for so long, but she looks as good and happy as I had seen her look at any time over the past three weeks.
Soon, the wheelchair arrives to take her down to the hospital entrance. The worst thing that can happen to someone with a traumatic brain injury is to hit her head again within a year of the original injury, and I think to myself how terrible it would be if we were to get in a traffic accident while we are driving home. So when I pull my car up to the hospital entrance, we place Joanie—like a fragile egg—in the safest part of the car, the middle of the rear seat. Todd gets in beside her, and Janna goes to get her car from the parking garage. By prior arrangement, I am to drive home slowly to allow Janna time to get home before me so she can turn on the lights of the Christmas trees, the little artificial one in the breezeway and the large, real one in the family room. I would have driven home slowly anyway, given the delicate cargo I am carrying.
As we pass the Burlington Mall on the drive home, I point it out to Joanie. I want to make concrete the answers Janna and I had given to the question she asked us so many times while in the hospital, the one about just where the Lahey Clinic is located. Halfway home, she remarks, “How terrible it must have been for you and Janna to have to drive all this way to get to the hospital to visit me.” In actuality, it is only a thirty-minute drive, but to Joanie, the drive home must seem as if it were taking forever.
She also comments how strange everything looks. Over and above having been groggy and confused so much over the past several weeks, she also has been in an environment that was sensorily restricted. All that she had seen during that time were the confines of a room, either a hospital room or, when she was home between hospitalizations, our bedroom. Now she is emerging into the light, so to speak, and certainly into surroundings that are infinitely busier, with sights and sounds she’s not seen for weeks.
When we arrive home, Todd and I gingerly help Joanie out of the car. On entering our breezeway, she notices the little artificial Christmas tree we had decorated and placed there and says, “Oh, you got the little tree down. That’s nice.”
Then she walks into the house and sees the decorations Janna had put up all over the house and the Christmas tree we had bought and trimmed, its lights ablaze. She bursts into tears. She sits on the family room sofa, her eyes darting from place to place around the family room, like a frightened animal in a new environment, taking in the live Christmas tree Janna and Todd had decorated and all the other decorations there. Recovering her composure, she says, “This is so wonderful, just being here together in our own house.”
She is home at last, and, yes, the four of us are together again, and, yes, it is wonderful being all together and back home. Now begins the work of getting Joanie back to normal.

You can order Pieces Missing: A Family’s Journey of Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury at Larry’s Web site, (www.LCKerpelman.com ), or from www.Amazon.com or www.BarnesandNoble.com.

Any Stories?

2011-12-10T22:56:00.001-05:00

Take some time to write an essay, memoir, short piece about Christmas or Hanukkah .

A New Book

2011-12-09T08:04:00.004-05:00

From Richard Gilbert's blog -- excerpts of Adair Lara's book :

Naked, Drunk, and Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay by Adair Lara. 247 pages, Ten Speed Press.

collage, narration and scene

A Thank You

2011-12-04T10:06:00.002-05:00

Mysterious Paper Sculptures

There are many ways to say thank you to libraries and this artist chose a unique way.

"In mid-November, someone at the Scottish Poetry Library spotted a fresh, handwritten entry in the guest book, which said "I've left a little something for you," at the shelf marked "Women's Anthologies X."

A Master of the Line

2011-12-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

A Selection of Poems by William Staffiord

One of my favorite poems begins:

An Afternoon in the Stacks

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound.
....
**********

“I think language does bring us together. Fragile and misleading as it is, it's the best communication we've got, and poetry is language at its most intense and potentially fulfilling. Poems do bring people together.”
--William Stafford

Plagiarism

2011-12-02T08:05:00.002-05:00

After a recent spy novel was pulled from the shelves the topic of plagiarism is in the news—again.

From The New Yorker Q. R. Markham’s Plagiarism Puzzle Posted by Macy Halford

...one of the more puzzling plagiarism tales of recent memory: Q. R. Markham, the pen name of Quentin Rowan, a part owner of the bookstore...

Interesting Reading

2011-12-01T07:23:00.005-05:00

Imagine graduating from a prestigious university with a degree in English and desiring to earn your living as a writer. You apply to publishing houses in New York City and can't get inside for an interview. What now?

You start an online literary site. These are the writers and creators.
The Writers of the New Inquiry

And the online magazine:TheNew Inquiry

Something New

2011-11-27T22:03:00.003-05:00

If you look on the right hand side of the blog you'll note a box titled Tip for the Day. I'm not certain that each tip will be of particular value to you ,but I'm certain that some words will speak to some people.

Tips are just that. They may motivate you, even be a driving force or a guide. A tip may goad you in a new direction. A tip may make you stop, take a breath, and think.

Simply stopping and questioning your writing is another way to revise.

My own tip for today: ask questions of what you write. Enter into a dialogue with your words.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-22T19:16:00.004-05:00

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving

After the meal
After cleaning up
You might be interested on checking this out

From Poets and Writers
Writing Tools for Writers

I like the idea of tools-- a workmanlike ring to the word.

Writing for a Busy Time

2011-11-17T20:25:00.002-05:00

Postcard Stories

It's the time of year for Geist to run their Postcard Story Contest

"Make your own postcard using photos, drawings or images in the public domain, write a story inspired by that postcard, then send us the image and the story. The relationship between image and story can be as subtle as you like, as long as the contest judges can see the connection.

Maximum length: 500 words, fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry."

It does sound like fun. Imagine fitting 500 words on a postcard!

From Poets United

2011-11-08T22:14:00.000-05:00

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
~Mark Strand

A Reminder

2011-11-07T18:56:00.001-05:00

I'm interested in Thanksgiving pieces. Interpret that in any way you want—family, friends, memoir, historical.

Join a Community

2011-11-02T22:10:00.004-04:00

Are you a poet?
A blogging poet?

In other words do you have a blog where you post poems?
If so check out this blog: Poets United : Community of Poets

The Road Oft Traveled

2011-10-31T21:04:00.002-04:00

by Ira Smith

The private road from the Ausable Club, just off highway 73 in Keene Valley stretches 3.5 miles to the foot of Lower Ausable Lake. It snakes the narrow Ausable River valley, gracefully following the sharp twists and turns of Gil Brook’s bouldered and graveled streambed.

For decades synergism has taken place between Mother Nature and the woodsman, locked in cooperative venture, gradually and persistently crafting a work of art as each new feature is blended into the complex design.

Long ago, man hacked out a wagon trail; the course of least resistance gave it its initial form. Muddy ruts in native earth were cut deep by steel wheels. Decay of virgin tree stumps, and construction of cuts and fills, provided coarse refinement. Later, rubber tired trucks on mix of sand and clay, the tracks smoothed and firmed as speeding wheels deposited pebbled windrows on the shoulders and center crown.

Adjacent trees reached across the road, entwining long arms and fingers, and thatched a canopy. High racks on fast trucks acted as hedge trimmers for the tunnel walls and ceiling. Running cedar and miniature hemlock adorned the banks of cuts; soft ferns and grasses blanketed the slopes of fills.

In late October, leaves fell from the canopy exposing segments of stained glass blue. In the chill of early morning, mist from the brook anchored tilted sunbeams to the road bed, compelling me to step around them. The rush of air from occasional vehicles placed intricate mosaics of red and gold along the shoulders and crown, ornamental tiles glued in place.

Artistic synergism, eternal, as Mother Nature and the woodsman, take turns retouching the autumn display.

In the September 30th post Change I asked for submissions.
Ira sent in this piece.

Thinking of Self-Publishing?

2011-10-31T20:46:00.005-04:00

If you plan to or have self-published a book ,an article in today's Wall Street Journal may be of interest.

Secret of Self-Publsihing: Success by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg

"Vanity Presses have been available for decades. But thanks to digital technology and particularly the emergence of e-books, the number of self-published titles exploded 160% to 133,036 in 2010 from 51,237 in 2006, estimates R.R.Bowker, which tracks the publishing business."

Dip Your Pen into Ink

2011-10-23T17:14:00.003-04:00

AND

Start thinking of something appropriate for Thanksgiving : creative non-fiction, essay, poem, prose poem, memoir or lyric essay.

Looking for A Head Start?

2011-10-22T09:00:00.008-04:00

Mitch , from Colorado, sent this link to me.
Random Title Generator by Maygra

Imagine yourself on a dank and dismal day unable to write—stuck in that limbo area known as writer's block. You've tried prompts, but find them pallid and lacking. Head to the generator and click the button labeled Give Me Some Titles and voila a list of possibilities materializes on your screen.

One of my titles: Eye in the Light

I remind myself of a Lewis Carroll poem:
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

Non-Fiction

2011-10-19T08:55:00.003-04:00

Even if you prefer fiction to nonfiction this blog is worth reading--Imaginative Nonfiction

Synchronicity

2011-10-13T18:15:00.006-04:00

I relish the word synchronicity and especially love when I'm in its presence. A piece about Dorianne Laux's poetry appears In the latest Writer's Almanac and this evening I read a review of Laux's new book.

Review in Numero Cinq
The Book of Men

Some of her :Poems

Watch those Details

2011-10-11T22:59:00.002-04:00

Get Your Moon in the Right Part of the Sky
I never found out the moon didn’t come up in the west until I was a writer and Herschel Brickell, the literary critic, told me after I misplaced it in a story. He said valuable words to me about my new profession: “Always be sure you get your moon in the right part of the sky.”

EUDORA WELTY

It's the little errors that stop the reader right in the middle of a sentence. Often the book is closed and not picked up again.

Change

2011-09-30T13:09:00.003-04:00

Change is ubiquitous. Alberto Manguel writes about change.
Metamorphoses

Why not write your own view of change. Interpret it broadly.

Send it to me for posting.

What Would Picasso Say?

2011-09-22T19:48:00.003-04:00

Every day the WSJ runs a story on the front page that tops anything that I read in my morning paper. The stories have nothing to do with the economy or with the state of the world. Each essay is a foray into the unusual or quirky. The writing-- crisp. The lead sentence pulls the reader in..." Mark Kline's fiberglass sculptures of giant ticks and man-eating dinosaurs are the sort of fare...."

From the Wall Street Journal
Roadside Kitsch is Fun, But is it Art?

To Be Read Aloud

2011-09-20T08:34:00.003-04:00

This piece, initially introduced as an essay, maintains the integrity of a poem. Do read it aloud and listen to what the poet says about language.

From Numero Cinq Essay by Leslie Ullman

Another Way to Write a Poem

2011-09-18T18:13:00.001-04:00

Let's return to browsing in bookstores and reading book reviews—not only the reviews in major newspapers, but the reviews in small magazines that devote their pages to reviewing books that don't garner the attention of major newspapers.

One of my favorites— The Bloomsbury Review

I look forward to their small press and poetry reviews. Because of their piece about Ennui Prophet by Christopher Kennedy, I found myself thinking about prose poetry. "This is," they wrote," one of the finest collections of prose poetry in a long time..."

I found an excellent definition of prose poems at Poets.org

2011-09-17T08:50:00.002-04:00

From today's Wall Street Journal The Style of a Wild Man by William Giraldi

"...style should always be an assertion of how characters think and feel and barrel through their lives."

"Style must correspond to a character's truth."

While waiting for the plasterer to finish some work upstairs I found this article--a well worth while read on the subject of style.

Want to Write Historical Fiction? Watch your details.

2011-09-16T07:10:00.006-04:00

From Writer's Digest Thoughts on Historical Research by Michael Zimmer

Be Wary of Historical Mistakes
"Sometimes, even what seems obvious can be incorrect. Want to give a wagon train scout an 1873 Colt Peacemaker on his journey to the Montana gold fields? The odds are that if you date your story any earlier than 1875 or ’76, you’re going to be perpetuating a myth already heavily solidified by decades of Hollywood films.

Even if historical fiction isn't your genre, every writer needs to be vigilant about the details.

Do they drink pop or soda in the northeast? Are they mixing up egg creams in Brooklyn?

Pieces Missing

2011-09-14T17:08:00.010-04:00

Some of you may know Larry—either from a writing group or as a regular at the Boston Bean Coffee House. After the publication of his book I asked him to send me something to post. He sent the following piece.

In his book, Pieces Missing: A Family’s Journey of Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury, published by Two Harbors Press, Larry Kerpelman gives a first-hand account of his wife’s traumatic brain injury and its aftermath over the course of a year as she is hospitalized, faces dysfunction and possibly death, undergoes emergency brain surgery, and fights to recover the pieces missing from her memory, speech, and joy of life. “This book is at once both inspiring and informative” writes Jo M. Solet, PhD, OTR/L, of Harvard Medical School in an advance review of the book.

Although the book has just been published, Larry is already scheduled to give two talks about it. On October 16 at 2pm in the Acton (Massachusetts) Memorial Library, he will give a talk at the meeting of the Acton Historical Society. On October 24 at 7pm at Emerson Hospital’s Cheney Conference Room in Concord, Massachusetts, he will be participating in the annual Concord Festival of Authors, where he will be part of a program titled Life After Brain Injury: Havoc, Hope, and Healing, along with two other authors of similar books Concord Festival of Authors . The program will be moderated by Henry Vaillant, M.D. Both events are free and open to the public. In addition, an excerpt from his book has appeared in the September 2011 edition of Physicians News Digest.

Here is a short excerpt from an early chapter of the book; a short while earlier, Larry’s wife Joanie had tripped and fallen on the roadway
while returning from their daily walk to the Boston Bean House in nearby Maynard, Massachusett.

Joan sits in the dim, cramped office of the triage nurse in the Emergency Room as the nurse asks her to describe what happened so she can determine what to do with her next. I wait a few yards away in one of two chairs in the hallway outside the office while the nurse questions her and records the information she gives her. I manage to catch snippets of sentences as Joanie describes her symptoms: “achy all over from the fall,” “sore wrists,” “chest hurts,” and “my head aches badly.” The nurse records Joanie’s recitation and then directs us to wait in the hospital’s Urgent Care Unit across the hall.

In contrast to the old Emergency Department, the Urgent Care Unit is bright and relatively quiet. It is a new addition to Emerson’s facility, having been put in only a year before to afford more space for the hospital’s overall emergency operations. After giving the receptionist there identifying information and data about Joanie’s insurance coverage, we wait on a couch in the Urgent Care waiting room to be called to be seen.

I tell Joanie how bad I feel for her, suffering an injury while engaging in something that was meant to contribute to her health and well-being.
She expresses the same to me, and we commiserate about the irony of it all. After close to an hour of waiting, we are directed to go to a treatment room. The blood on Joanie’s face has begun to clot, but her lip and eye are still noticeably swollen. As I help her get to her feet, she cries out “Larry!” and then crumples. I catch her before she lands on the floor, and, seeing that she is unable to stand on her own, I hold
her up and yell, “Somebody get a wheelchair. We need help here!” She seems to be conscious, but she can’t stand. I begin to think this may be getting serious.

A young patient care technician appears and, between the two of us, we maneuver my wife onto a wheelchair and into a room where she transfers, with the help of the technician, to the bed. A nurse wearing a multi-floral tunic top comes in.
“I’m going to take your vital signs—blood pressure, pulse rate, temperature,” she says in a warm, caring tone. “Then one of our doctors will be in to see you.”

She records Joanie’s vital signs and leaves us alone in the room again. We hold hands and, to try to get her mind off her pain, chit-chat idly about inconsequential things we notice about the new Urgent Care center.

Presently, an emergency room physician strides in. He introduces himself as Dr. Gert Walter and asks Joan about the circumstances of her accident.

“I was jogging, my foot got caught up in my shoelaces, and I couldn’t move. I didn’t have any other place to go and fell over and hit my face on the road.” She relates this in a clear, even voice, the quaver of a few hours ago now gone.

On the basis of her description of her fall, her symptoms, the triage nurse’s note, and a brief medical history and examination, Dr. Walter orders a chest X-ray and a computer tomography (CT) scan of her head. She is wheeled to the Radiology Department to have these done and then wheeled back to the room in Urgent Care. While we wait alone in the treatment room for the results of these imaging tests, Dr. Quentin Eliason, a physician from Acton Medical Associates who is covering at the hospital for Joanie’s primary care physician this weekend, comes in and asks about the circumstances of her fall, how she is feeling, and what has happened to her thus far in the hospital. Joan’s answers are much the same as she gave to the previous physician a short time before. Dr. Eliason makes a few notes and then departs, leaving Joan and me to wonder what the CT scan and X-rays are going to show, what the physicians are going to conclude, and what the next steps are going to be. Meanwhile, my mind is ping-ponging back and forth between wanting to believe that this is just a matter of a few facial cuts and bruises and fearing that it may be something more serious.

“The chest X-ray doesn’t show any obvious damage,” Dr. Walter says when he returns a short while later. “You may have cracked a rib, but
small rib fractures may not show up on X-rays. In any event, the treatment would be the same whether or not the rib has a small crack in it, or even if it were just bruised. Right now, let's just leave it alone; if the pain gets worse, then we'll decide what to do about that rib.”

He leaves, and Joan and I are both relieved that her chest pain doesn’t seem to be anything grave. We engage in more small talk as we wait for whatever is to happen next. In half an hour, Dr. Walter comes back again and announces, “Well, now I know why you have such a bad headache. Your CT scan shows a subdural hematoma on the left side of your brain. We’ll admit you tonight and keep an eye on you.”

Read further excerpts from Pieces Missing: A Family’s Journey of Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury at Larry’s Web site, (L.C.Kerpelman ), where you may also order the book itself.

2011-09-13T12:35:00.004-04:00

The past tense masquerades in a number of guises, some rather confusing.
From Daily Writing Tips 9 Forms of the Past Tense

One of my favorite grammar books: The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordan
wrote some wonderful sentences for the past tense.

Past Tense

I moped for five days straight without touching my gruel.

Past Progressive Tense ( action going on in a previous time)

I was just minding my own business when the samovar suddenly blew up.

Past Perfect Progressive Tense( ongoing action completed before another past time)

I had been moping.

Past Perfect Tense( action completed before another time)

She had never pondered anything besides her fingernails before she met the troll.

As the pundits say--stay in the present moment.

Put This in Your Date Book

2011-09-09T08:32:00.001-04:00

Stamps Honoring 20th Century Poets

In 2012, the United States Postal Service will be releasing 10 Forever stamps featuring 20th century poets.

“With the issuance of Twentieth-Century Poets, we're honoring ten of our nation's most admired poets,” says the USPS’s Mark Saunders.

Elizabeth Bishop
Joseph Brodsky
Gwendolyn Brooks
E. E. Cummings
Robert Hayden,
Denise Levertov
Sylvia Plath
Theodore Roethke
Wallace Stevens
William Carlos Williams

Books, Print, types and more

2011-09-05T07:32:00.007-04:00

From The New York TimesFrom Scroll to....

Something very important and very weird is happening to the book right now: It’s shedding its papery corpus and transmigrating into a bodiless digital form, right before our eyes. We’re witnessing the bibliographical equivalent of the rapture. If anything we may be lowballing the weirdness of it all.

--Lev Grossman

And if you love the way print looks then take a look at this book.
Typefaces

Garfield's book isn't a straight chronological account of typeface, from Gutenberg to Gill Sans, but more of a sweeping look at the subject with special attention to the narrative facets that even non-typophiles (people, for example, who wouldn't comment on the web forum at myfonts.com) would find interesting. And believe it or not, there are actually a great number of salacious snippets that come out of the world of font...

Kelsey Oshood

Writer's Words

2011-09-01T20:35:00.005-04:00

I often read what writers have to say about the process of writing. Here's an intriguing site with lots of quotations from well known writers.
Advice to Writers

Check out an online copy of Elements of Style

Why do you write?

2011-08-30T20:15:00.002-04:00

George Orwell essay Why I Write?

Write a brief piece about why you write and send it to me.

A Reminder

2011-08-29T07:26:00.000-04:00

In her book, Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose says that “…for any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what’s superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, or especially cut, is essential. It’s satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clean, economical, sharp.”

Finding a Topic

2011-08-26T21:22:00.001-04:00

So many topics to choose. Here's an article about an unusual race.

From Believer Magazine An Unusual Race

If You Write Mysteries or Write About Mysteries

2011-08-24T15:00:00.002-04:00

"There are several opportunities for writers--new or veteran, authors or reviewers--to submit editorial material to The Rap Sheet."

Check out The Rap Sheet

A View of the Brave New World

2011-08-23T07:02:00.002-04:00

From the Guardian Are Books Dead and Can Authors Survive

A Manual on Found Poetry

2011-08-19T18:14:00.002-04:00

A How To Combine Art and Found Poetry

Joan , from California, thought some people might be interested.

On Taking Notes

2011-08-19T07:07:00.008-04:00

Yesterday I sat in the dermatologist waiting room for thirty minutes--simply waiting. My book occupied me until I noted that the young man seated to my left had the longest legs. Across the room a woman's toenails shimmered with cherry red glitter speckeled polish. I did wonder if the polish camouflaged a nail fungus.

Then a removed my Moleskin notebook from my book bag and began taking notes...

"As I started making notes, I began to notice things, things that I think others don’t generally notice. We don’t often, in “normal” life, have time, as the poet W H Davies said, “to stand and stare”, but when you do take the time, there is so much unseen by those rushing by. "
-- Tania Hershman

Grab Hold of Your Reader

2011-08-10T18:15:00.004-04:00

We all know about how the first line and the next few must catapult the reader into your piece. If the beginning is flat you may not have another chance.

Have you thought about a title for your book, essay, article? The title must capture the essence of the book and be tantalizing. So many books are picked up because the title catches the reader's eye.

From She Writes Opening Lines and Finding the Right Title

Something to Say

2011-08-08T20:30:00.002-04:00

Recently I've read bombastic Op Ed pieces that lambast the Other or editorial commentary that is intent on proving how the fault for everything resides elsewhere. Too often the pen takes on a saber like quality -- slashing away at divergent points of view.

I recently came across this blog:
Random Thoughts of a Wandering Hippy
It prods us to reflect on things that matter and does so in a crisp and well written manner.

Do check it out and read the present and past posts. If you feel so inclined do leave a comment. If you want, mention that you read of the blog on Word- Collage.

Another Look at Revision

2011-08-05T07:12:00.005-04:00

From the Boston Globe
Alex Beam asks the question: " With books evolving into digital texts, authors could go back and change stories from years ago.

But would they?"

--Interesting responses from well known and well selling authors--

Integrating Photos and Words

2011-08-04T09:42:00.005-04:00

From Spitalfield's Life an article on Salmon Smokers—replete with fascinating and informative photographs.

In fact almost every article on this site is first rate.

And a site that offers a prompt based on a Wordie.

Look What I Found

2011-08-03T20:59:00.003-04:00

I've found that creating a poem from found lines is an excellent way of discovering new connections.

The lines may be from newspapers,, books, advertisements, scraps of paper, ads, store front signs -- or any other place you find words.

Found Poetry Review

A Call for Submissions

2011-07-26T14:51:00.007-04:00

••••••••••••••••••
from A Measure of Words

Small press seeking submissions for mystery anthology with genealogy theme. Open to interpretation as long as genealogy is main theme. You never know who’s part of your family! 3000-4000 words. Deadline: 2/29/2012. Free book upon publication.

To be Published as an ebook and paperback

Send submissions to:

M. Dellafera
94 Wheeler Road
Hollis, NH 03049.

Questions?

mdellafera@charter.net
L.Watskin@gmail.com.

••••••••••••••••••••

The Background Story

Just before the year 2000 Michaeline and I sat around a coffee house pondering the difficulties of getting a short story published unless you had a name. After a sweet roll and a glass of bottled water we decided to publish a magazine. Sometimes when you don't know the difficulties you just plunge. We didn't even know how to obtain an ISBN number.

We scoured sources to find names and to get a handle on what was being read. We needed a niche—and that niche was Women's Words— short fiction. We wanted to print literary short stories by women —each story between 2000 and 3500 wds. Several other folks joined Women's Words, Katherine— who worked for a large publisher and was involved in the printing and layout of books, Kay— who was a professional copy editor as well as a free-lance writer and Dorothy as an assistant editor. Pat became our marketing guru— a job she held in real life.

We wrote up a plan and opted to try for a MA Cultural Grant—and received an initial grant which allowed us to have the journal professionally set-up and printed on quality paper.

I rented a P.O. Box and we placed a call for submissions in Poets and Writers. About three weeks after the ad appeared brown envelopes began to arrive at the post office—scads of brown envelopes. Eventually we had submissions from thirty-one states and eight countries.

An artist I knew produced the first cover.

Every weekend for months I filled a sack with envelopes and went to the coffee house to read submissions.

We submitted our first issue to The Council of Literary Journals and Magazines and on our first try we were accepted into the CLMP.

The short version is that we published two journals a year for several years. My second greatest thrill was when the Boston Public Library took out a subscription. The first thrill—the wonderful stories writers sent us.

After two years of twice yearly journals the cost of mailing the journals and the cost of printing became too high to sustain the magazine.

Several years ago we published a stand alone anthology— Friends and two years later another anthology Secrets

Now we're ready to jump into online publication with another anthology. We hope that you will join us.

Linda Watskin

A New Column

2011-07-24T07:07:00.006-04:00

The New York Times introduces a new column.

Geoff Dyers will write about Books

"Beginning this week, Dyer will write a regular column for the Book Review, “Reading Life,” detailing the ups and down of his long relationship with the written word. What do we do to books and what do books do to us? How do they delight and derange? Dyer’s encounter with one academic author’s unintentional masterpiece occurs in this issue."

The First Column

I Love Libraries

2011-07-22T22:00:00.002-04:00

When the temperature hit 103 this afternoon I took off for the library.

Here's an interesting article about libraries from the London Review of Books.I found a link to this article on Elegant Variation

Library

From a Geraldine Brooks Interview

2011-07-20T18:23:00.001-04:00

Q: What is the most valuable advice you received as a young writer?
A: "When there's no wind, row." Judith Viorst.

Gotham's Writer's Workshop

Thinking Ahead!

2011-07-11T13:01:00.005-04:00

I've just returned from playing golf and not only am I hot, sweaty, in need of liquid—but I'm also in a quirky mood.

I've never heard of this before, but someone might be interested in
The 3-Day Novel Writing Contest

"Can you produce a masterwork of fiction in a mere 72 hours? The International 3-Day Novel Contest is your chance to find out. The contest has run every Labour Day Weekend since 1977 and now attracts writers from all over the world. It's a thrill, a grind, and an awesome creative experience. How many crazed plotlines, coffee-stained pages, pangs of doubt and moments of genius will the next contest bring forth? And what might you think up under pressure?

The 34th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest takes place Labour Day weekend, September 3-5, 2011. First prize is publication, 2nd is $500 and 3rd is $100. See the rules and about pages or contact us with questions."

Scraps

2011-07-09T07:08:00.005-04:00

If you ever created a collage or found snippets of text fascinating ...
If you ever enjoyed puzzles...
Or if you find the magic of words rubbing up against one another exhilarating ...

Take a look at creating found poetry or prose poems.
FoundPoetry Review

Found poems in the New York Times
Neighbors

Short Pieces

2011-06-27T07:49:00.003-04:00

I'm in Maine on vacation --

Short fiction or flash fiction is popular-- perhaps because people want something that they can finish quickly. I think there's a place for snippets and long books that draw you in and keep you for 500 pages.

But there's something to be said for the writing a piece that is so contained.

Short fiction in Necessary Fiction

Basking in the Afterglow

2011-06-19T17:06:00.002-04:00

Anyone else have a piece that fits Ira's title?

By Ira Smith

While looking out Mother’s kitchen picture window, I am eating breakfast of eggs-over-light and toasted English muffins with pockets of real butter and spread with Mom’s homemade raspberry jam. The sun is rising on this early November day casting an aura over everything. Our distant neighbors’ house across the street glistens like hard-packed snow framed with fiery red maples against a clear blue sky. For the first time in 40 years I notice the simple beauty of their modest home.

Last night I came home from a solo, two-day, 25-mile, four-mountain trek over Colvin, Blake, Grey and Marcy - one step closer in my quest to be an Adirondack 46er, that is, one who has climbed all 46 peaks over 4000 feet. After my mother’s pot roast supper and a hot soak in the tub, my legs still ached and I was having chills from being wet with perspiration during the last two miles at dusk. I crawled into bed, closed my eyes and saw endless miles of rocky, root-filled, muddy, monotonous trails, anticipating my destination around the next bend which never materialized. My mind would not let go! When I finally dosed off, one leg would suddenly twitch, followed by a whole-body lurch. After this cycle repeated a couple of times, I fell into fitful sleep filled with a hodge-podge of dreams.

When I awoke this morning, I felt like I had partied too much. I couldn’t stand the thought of breakfast, much less, the thought of ever climbing another mountain. Setting the table, brewing coffee, getting milk and eggs out of the fridge and frying the eggs was a chore, every movement hurt. This hangover subsided as I sat in the padded kitchen chair and sank my teeth into a muffin. I felt something sweeping through me, a surge of warm blood coursing through my veins. No words can capture this being-filled-with-the-spirit feeling. I was “basking in the afterglow!”

In the afterglow, all discomfort is filtered out: stiff knees and sore ankles, stabbing pain
between the shoulder blades from heavy pack, and dull headache from not drinking enough water and not getting enough sleep.

In the afterglow, I forget my dirty skin, my scraggly beard, my scratched and bug-bitten legs and blisters on my feet. I forget the crass taste of canteen water, the indignities of making toilet, the soggy trail meals and the feel of cold, damp boots in the morning.

In the afterglow, there are no thoughts of cripple brush ripping my poncho and exposing me to chilling rainwater captured in its needles. Vanished, are memories of standing on a barren summit shaking uncontrollably as the wind sweeps across my sweat-soaked shirt sucking the heat out of my body.

In the afterglow there is a healing of the memories. The trails have dried up and leveled out, the slopes are gentle and inviting, there are no rocks and tangled roots to trip on, and the paths are carpeted with sweet-smelling needles of balsam.

In the afterglow, I marvel at the sundown display. The glorious panorama from the summit is mine. I own it! Later, down at the lean-to, the evening wind has subsided, the campfire is cheery and warm, and the supper is tasty. The gurgling brook sings an evening lullaby and I drift off to restful sleep on my bed of hemlock.

I am on my second cup of coffee now, perfectly content to sit and gaze out the window and write in my journal, to jot down every thought before it evaporates. I reread the trail guide and study the trail map to review where I have been, examining each graceful contour line for they symbolize the harmony and flow of the peace that dwells within me.

That’s how it is, basking in the afterglow! My mind is clear and perceptive. I see beauty in everything – the eggs-over-light beside the English muffins, the mug of cream-tinged coffee, the goldfinch on the bird bath beneath the white birches, Mother’s geraniums beside the loose-brick fireplace, and my neighbors modest white house up across the street.

Thoughts on the Lyric Essay

2011-06-08T07:46:00.003-04:00

I've been fascinated with the possibilities of the lyric essay.

Margaret Kimball's notes from a panel at an AWP conference
The Lyric Essay

After I've written a piece or read an essay I find myself asking What's this really about?

From Fourth Genre: Explorations in Non Fiction
Finding the Inner Story in Memoirs and Personal Essays
by Michael Steinberg

Where Does Your inspiration to Write Originate?

2011-06-07T18:28:00.003-04:00

FromPoets and Writers
Writers Recommend ways to invigorate your writing.

I collect newspaper articles
or snippets of real life stories
I write down lines from books
interesting names
geographic placenames

a litany of the unusual
catalogued, listed
waiting for a chance
to metamorphise
into a story or poem

What to Read and What to Write

2011-05-28T07:24:00.006-04:00

Ideas for writing non-fiction pieces may be triggered by the " what is happening now" events or the "remember when" events.

The Daily Beast suggests these Longform Stories

Their editors select new pieces each week.

Whenever I read a book cited as historical fiction I wonder about the veracity of the purported facts. If I'm familiar with the subject I want the facts to be accurate and I can't abide facts that seem to time travel to suit the plot.

From The Morning News Caught Telling Fiction

"The gap between literary and historical fiction is mostly a marketing ploy—at least until a novelist meets a survivor of her story’s plot. JESSICA FRANCIS KANE argues for the truth of novels."

Revision and Marketing

2011-05-18T18:13:00.004-04:00

From Gotham Writing Workshops--An excerpt from Stephen Dobyns new book:Next Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry

Revising a Poem

After your book is published there's the task of marketing.

From Flavorwire:Creative Book Tours

Wander With a Word

2011-05-13T22:04:00.009-04:00

Select a word, preferably a noun, and let that word find its stories.

The author of this piece writes about hair.

Elizabeth Dalton's story Long Hair appears in Sliver of Stones

" Mom cuts our hair. We take turns sitting on an old metal stool in the kitchen while the cold edge of the scissors traces a line across our foreheads and the backs of our necks. "

There are Still Great Places to Browse Books–

2011-05-11T20:41:00.000-04:00

FROM GEIST magazine a story about Don Stewart, proprietor of MacLeod's Books

"...Inside sits most of his inventory of per haps a quar ter of a mil lion used and antiquarian books (more than 100,000 titles), and some new ones as well. Books are crammed into every niche, alcove and cor ner of the building’s ground floor. In the nar row aisles between shelves, piles of them teeter ominously. Overly sensitive browsers might well give in to their claustrophobia or ataxophobia."

And while on the Geist site you might enjoy the Erasure Poem Contest

You Might Find Gold—

2011-05-06T08:10:00.002-04:00

From Online Colleges Search Engines for Serious Readers

There are some fascinating sites listed. It does take a bit of probing.

Maybe..

2011-05-05T08:28:00.006-04:00

Now that poetry month is finished it's time to turn to prose.

This is for those who write every day, or want to write every day--journal, short fiction, flash fiction, blog or even six word stories.

I received an email announcing the May everyday challenge. The challenge is the word "Maybe". It's actually an intriguing word and open to a plethora of possibilities.

Maybe I'll try it periodically during the month. After writing a poem a day for the month of April I'm looking forward to revising.

Maybe I'll share some insights about the process.

And

Maybe mystery fans will enjoy this British blog.Shotsmag

There's something so refreshing about British crime blogs. Check this one out- and don't miss the piece that makes mention of giving away a ticket to the royal wedding. Dry wit.

Low Residency Writing Programs

2011-04-27T08:50:00.003-04:00

One if the followers of Word-Collage is interested in pursuing a low-residency MFA in writing.

Poets and Writer's lists the Top Ten Low Residency Programs

And the next thirty-six schools :More Low Residency Programs

Do You Have a Book...

2011-04-21T19:07:00.003-04:00

Have you tried to find an agent, sent in a manuscript, received form letters telling you that —"we are not accepting unsolicited manuscripts at this time"?

Do you think your work is every bit as good as some of the books being published? That includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays—

Take heart.

Wall Street Journal article by Jeffrey A. Trachenberg :
Cheapest E-Books Upend the Chart
You may not be able to read the entire article —however—many libraries subscribe to WSJ

"The nation's largest book publishers are facing increasing pricing pressure on the digital front as the number of cheap, self-published digital titles gain popularity with readers seeking budget-minded entertainment.

Amazon.com Inc.'s top 50 digital best-seller list featured 15 books priced at $5 or less on Wednesday afternoon."

There's also information about how Amazon handles payment and distributions.

"An author can format their text and upload it directly to Amazon or hire a digital publisher to format the book and create a dust jacket image."

One author, a Mr. Locke, earns thirty-five cents for every title he sells. Each book sells for ninety-nine cents. Sounds like he wouldn't earn a lot of money. "In March he sold 369,000 downloads on Amazon." Mr. Locke markets himself and his books.

It's worthwhile tracking down the article if you can't read it in its entirety on the web link.

April 21st WSJ
Section: Marketplace
Page: B1

An Essay a Day

2011-04-16T16:20:00.004-04:00

Jan sent me the link to Spitalfields Life. Do check it out—the prose is captivating.

The writer of the blog ,who calls himself The Gentle Author, explains that he intends to write everyday about London —that is he anticipates writing an essay a day for years.

It is my custom to walk everywhere in London and I discover things on my walks, so you will also find stories here from places that are within walking distance of Spitalfields.

Like Good Deeds and Everyman in the old play, let us travel together. I promise to keep writing to you every day and it will be an eventful journey we shall have together.

Your loyal servant

The Gentle Author

If you love the smell of books and a well bound book—
Spitalfields Life: At the Wyvern Bindery

If you pause on the Clerkenwell Rd and look through the window of the Wyvern Bindery, you can witness the entire process of bookbinding enacted before your eyes. Among presses and plan chests, surrounded by racks of multi-coloured rolls of buckram and leather, and shelves of type and tools, the bookbinders work, absorbed at tables and benches, trimming pages and card for covers at guillotines, sewing and gluing and pressing and tooling, working with richly subtly hued canvas and leather, and finally embossing them with type for titles. In a restricted space, they pursue individual tasks while also engaging in an elaborate collective endeavour, sharing equipment and bench space as their projects require different areas of the shared workshop – all within a constant dynamic harmony.

If You Like Unusual Prompts

2011-04-13T12:06:00.007-04:00

I've been doing the poem a day challenge for Poetry Month. It's often a stretch—but a good discipline.

Carl, from Arizona, where I hope it's nicer than it is here today where it's pouring, sent me this link.
NewWriting Prompts

While the author of the blog suggests the prompts as prods for poetry, I think they can be used as prompts for prose.

Here's an example:

16. Make a list of ten images of things you have seen in the last 24 hours. Use all of them in a poem. I'm visualizing a lyric essay.

For those who find Agatha fascinating...

2011-04-10T23:12:00.005-04:00

Sent by Bob from Vermont

From the Guardian an article about Agatha Christie

It's a different take on the Grand Dame.

For Spring

2011-04-08T19:56:00.002-04:00

Spring Poems . From Poetry Foundation

This a truly wonderful collection of poems.

I've been celebrating National Poetry Month by writing a poem day.

All the poems are listed on my blog Word- Painting. Do stop by.

What About the Prose Writers?

2011-04-08T10:40:00.003-04:00

Since April is Poetry Month prose writers may wonder why there isn't a National Prose Writing Month. Perhaps we need a grass roots movement.

If you like prompts try these out: Fixed Forms for Narrative

Do send in any piece you write using one of these forms.

Not For Use With a Kindle

2011-04-03T07:12:00.003-04:00

I read about this link on Mystery Fanfare

Creative Bookends

Made of Light

2011-03-31T18:45:00.003-04:00

by Carolyn

"Jesus." Alison said. "Look at them."

"Them?"

"Isn't it a Them? A They?"

"Us, I think." I said.

We paused to mull that over. Considering how many of them there were, it nevertheless seemed improbable that they were not one entity. Since they were all moving together, weaving in and out. But also, and quite naturally, they were part of us.

"What would you say that is?"

"The one with the horns?"

"Horns? Ears? The chubby one."

"Um. A demon of some kind."

The creature wove over and under, over and under the others, until it too disappeared into the ceiling.

It had been difficult to swallow the excrement-flavored mushrooms. They were dried, fleshlike brown morsels, like bits fallen off a mummy. We kept gagging.

"Oh, blaugh. Ergh. Jesus." Alison spat her mouthful into one of the filmy dining hall glasses that lined the windowsill. "Maybe if we mixed them with Tang."

We rooted through her bookcase, moving spilled ashtrays and about a hundred records. Finally unearthing a jar of powdered orange drink, gummy with residue and hard to open.

"The breakfast of astronauts!"

"Astro*nuts*!"

We giggled, suddenly giddy.

Chipping Tang out of the jar was a challenge, since it had gotten damp at some point and solidified into a crystalline crust. Eventually we thought to add boiling water, and then the mushrooms, and spooned equal amounts into two teacups we found in the kitchen.

"Just hold your nose and swallow as quick as you can!"

A bit more gagging, but not insurmountable, and then we waited. Alison smoking and me reading Marvell for my next paper. Our world then was filled with nothing but time.

"How long have *those* been there?"

"I think they're always here, except now we're seeing them for the first time."

It was hard to know how many hours had passed, if any at all. Darkness had always been outside the windows and the soft light had always shone up upon the wall, creating in its yellow a net of coruscating creatures. Each warp and weft was a line of tiny beings, each different from the other and moving smoothly over and under its fellows until it eventually disappeared at the top and was replaced by a new entity weaving up from below.

That they were made of light seemed exotic yet normal, like watching a platypus through glass in a zoo. There were mammals of all kinds, dragons, cephalopods, demons, worms, butterflies, tiny humans, and all sorts of unnamed hybrids: creatures not imagined by us, but seeming to rise from a reservoir of civilizations so ancient they had come and gone without our knowing.

"So you can see them, too!"

"Yeah, it's like they're made of light. I mean....*made* of light."

We sat and watched the procession, which was endless, and happening only on Alison's wall in the illuminating swath of Alison's lamp. Each cigarette we smoked seemed to take an hour to inhale, and a fortnight to exhale, the smoke curling slowly out of our mouths like a weather system and filtering over this universe of beings, all the creatures in the world, made of light.

Carolyn ©2011

Written at a Handcrafted Words Online Workshop

Celebrate April—Poetry Month

2011-03-29T12:40:00.006-04:00

Ecco Anthology Of International Poetry

It is the editor’s wish that the range of voices collected here, “will allow us, in this somewhat unsettling time ..., to find the voice within that is strong and compelling, an instrument of poetry that—to rephrase Auden—is our chief means of breaking bread with the world.”

Poets.Org How to Celebrate the Month and Thirty Ways to Celebrate

Some Suggestions:

"Poem In Your Pocket Day: Join thousands of individuals across the U.S. by carrying a poem in your pocket on April 14, 2011."

"Poem-A-Day: Great poems from new books emailed each day of National Poetry Month. Sign up for your daily dose of new poems from new spring poetry titles."

Or Go for it and write a poem a day: Poetic Asides Guidelines and Prompts

Skin

2011-03-25T10:54:00.001-04:00

by Jan

Grandpa Timmons couldn't see well through the filmy cataracts forming over his eyes.

"Look," he would say, holding out a skinny tan arm with white blotches and scars.

"I'm a sun worshiper in Florida every winter when it gets cold up here, and these spots don't even show."

I was young enough then that he didn't expect a response. I don't think he liked children. Perhaps I didn't trust him.

. . .

As my tall father began to lose his short battle with lung and brain cancer, we could see purple veins through his thin papery skin. As he died I could finally touch his back and tell him I loved him. Tearfully.

. . .

My mother's skin felt moist and warm after her hysterectomy. She had a lot of skin as she grew older.

She hadn't wanted to linger and tried to tear out the breathing tube. I honored that wish, and spoke with the doctors. We had the doctors increase the morphine.

When she soon became silent, I could touch her cooling skin. I lay down near her on the bed. Her skin gradually grew cold and her breathing stopped.

But I didn't cry until later. Did I tell her I loved her?

. . .

"A routine checkup, Jan?", asked the female dermatologist.

I sat on the paper-covered table wearing a paper "gown" open at the back.

"Might have another problem spot", I said.

"Oh yes," she agreed, even before beginning to examine my body for skin cancer. Once one has had melanoma, skin becomes a liability.

Skin damaged by too much sun as a child. Skin sensitive to touch by lack of boundaries as a child. A body and mind only now learning to say no.

By Jan

Written at a Handcrafted Words Online Workshop

Where oh where will avatars show up?

2011-03-22T08:03:00.005-04:00

From a New York Times article New Digital Tools on Campus

"Prof. Katherine Rowe’s blue-haired avatar was flying across a grassy landscape to a virtual three-dimensional re-creation of the Globe Theater, where some students from her introductory Shakespeare class at Bryn Mawr College had already gathered online."

Check out the fascinating links—
I liked the Theatre Link

Innovative Bookcases

2011-03-21T15:21:00.003-04:00

I admit to a rather pedestrian strain. My bookcases, both the ones I bought and the two I made, consist of straight shelves in an ordinary rectangular form. Recently bookcases--or designers-- are pushing the boundaries.

This link comes via Mystery Fanfare

Unique Bookcases

Random Thoughts of Foreign Places

2011-03-18T19:55:00.004-04:00

By Elizabeth

Sao Paulo, Brazil

I remember the wooden footbridge arched over a stream of crystal water. The stream meanders over gentle hills blanketed with red poinsettias. The poinsettias in a tropical climate surprise me. Until then, I associate them only with Christmas and snow.

However, it is the kind host family I remember most vividly. In the photograph, curly black locks frame three smiling faces. The parents' arms are draped over the shoulders of their fragile adult daughter. Her face is screwed up and lopsided.

Cozumel, Mexico

Bored, I wander downstairs to see what the hotel's main lounge offers for entertainment. Back-to-back guests sit in low slung upholstered armchairs grouped around squat round tables strewn with d drinking glasses, cocktail napkins,and cigarette trays. All framed by very long drapes and tall robust ferns.

A man in black slacks, a billowy white shirt, and red waist sash, dances the flamenco on a small raised stage at the front of the lounge. The tapping, brushing, and controlled gestures of Flameco as well as the Latin music, the man's costume, and his dark features intrigue the guests.

The first empty seat I see is a front row seat. I sit there, both because getting to it is less obstrusive and because I can best appraise the dancer's style and fluency from there. When the music stops, the man asks for a volunteer to dance with him. No one volunteers. He strides over to me, takes my hand and leads me to the stage. I don't know why.

We dance. I follow his moves until the very end when he wants to close with a flourish. After turning me under his arched arm, He kneels and lifts his head. The music stops and I stay standing. I look down at him and smile. I guess I missed a cue of some sort, and I laugh. The guests laugh too, and applaud. He looks distant and annoyed.

Florence, Italy

We unpack in our small room on the third floor. Our room has high ceilings and hairline cracks in the plaster. I open the painted shutters on our window and see an octagonally shaped courtyard. It is completely enclosed. The six floors of the hotel throw a shadow over most sunlight. There are no plants. Wall-to-wall cobblestone covers the courtyard, a single and empty clothes line is strung up from windows on the first floor, and a young man in rumpled clothes and with an accordion slung over his neck plays songs for the tourists. Later, I hear that he probably traffics in drugs there.

Bath, England

Mary and I pay the attendant the admission fee to the Roman baths. Yesterday, we had bypassed a different tourist site so that we would have enough money for this one. Here, rooms upon rooms of column-surrounded corridors frame tiled baths with clear water. At the largest bath, we look at each other, slide our worn backpacks from our flannel-shirted shoulders, pull off our shoes and socks, roll up our faded jeans, perch on the edge of the bath, and slip our bare feet into the warm water. Some of the many adult tourists look down at us from between the columns, and glare.

Inverness, Scotland

Halfway down the dark and narrow kitchen stairway, I am overwhelmed by the clatter of dishes and pans being cleaned. They are from our breakfast that morning. We are all anxious to move on, but there are chores to do first. It is the way hostellers pay for their bed and board.

Last night upstairs in this castle-turned-hostel, the floors are white marble and the large windows boast views of mountains and valleys. Last night, the warden wore a kilt, spun yarns, and with great pride, held forth about the statues lining the center of a grand hallway.

In the morning, the powerful sound system in the large dormitory wakes us hostellers with Beethoven's Ninth. In the morning, the warden is not wearing his kilt and he is not spinning yarns. In the morning, armoured in his pedestrian workclothes, the warden barks out orders about cleaning his hostel. He bellows, "No one will be allowed to leave before all chores are completed to my satisfaction."

Paris, France

As payment for a summer night's lodging in the bookstore, Shakespeare & Company, Mary and I beat dustmites out of threadbare Oriental rugs under the watchful eyes of the gargoyles of Notre Dame and next to the sparkling Seine.

Liverpool, England

Wandering through Liverpool neighborhood, map in hand, looking for Beatle Street. Find it, a long and winding cobblestone street.

The buildings are shoulder to shoulder, two or three stories tall, thin, and of mortared stone. Their windows, slightly crooked, and their shutters and doors, wooden. Any color is from faded paint – brown, burnt red or dark green. The front doors open directly onto the street. The roofs are dark and pitched.

Over the door of the nightclub where the Beatles were "discovered"- an otherwise nondescript building that melts into the others - hangs a wooden carving of the Beatles' heads and the words, "Four lads who shook the world."

Besancon, France

Cavernous enclosed stadium - stale, smokey, and cold. Densley packed bleachers overflow to the floor in the center.

Most of the overflow crowd, my friends and I included, sit cross-legged, waiting for the famous rock band to transport us.

Some people are walking, others cluster. The stranger next to me passes two pans of brownies. "I hear that the hashish is very very good - a strong strain from Egypt. Help yourself and pass them on."

Looking backwards and far up, I observe back-lit silouettes of policemen with imposingly big-dogs-on-leashes marching back and forth along a window-fronted walkway. To me, it looks as if they are goose-stepping and I shudder. Then, the concert begins and colors blur and drip to the rock music.

After the concert, we walk the narrow dirt road to the train station. John, the Brit with the faded army jacket, runs wildly through the firs and snow screaming that the trees are attacking him. John's long blond hair is so clean it seems to magnify the full moon; it makes it easier for us to keep our eyes on him. We laugh a little and talk about the brownies. Someone remarks, "Oh yeah, I heard some of them were opiated."

By the time we reach the train station, John is back.

Belfast, Ireland

The center of the city is gray and eerily quiet. It is gated with large grill work that reminds me of the gates to Oz's Emerald City. The jagged skyline is Victorian. I am just off the boat and have time before the train to Dublin. Slowly, I scan the urban landscape, looking for some form of life. Seeing no one, I am about to explore further. Then, I spot a substantial policeman standing near the gate. He looks relaxed. In a sweep of his arm, he waves to me, and shouts, "Ye must be an American!" I reply, "Yes, I am!" " Well" he says "Did ye bring your bike all the way across the ocean?" I smile, wave, and head for the train station.

Dublin, Ireland

Pale skin flashes defiantly above the waistbands of their ragged jeans and the scrawny teenagers crawl over cars parked along the sloped street. They are near the old prison in Mountjoy Square, rehabilitated to be the youth hostel I checked into that morning.

I hear that once upon a time, Mountjoy Square had been a very fashionable place in Dublin. I hear that James Joyce mentions it.

At random, the teenagers bash the cars with crowbars and then flee. I check that my passport is safe and walk towards the river and to the pub frequented by Brendan Beehan.

Somewhere in the Highlands, northwestern Scotland

Three Scots, fellow hostellers, want to show me the highest pub in Scotland. It is more than a day trip to get there, so we stop in a valley to pitch camp for the night. The sky is periwinkle blue streaked with purple clouds. A phalanx of towering mountains protects the entire quiet valley, four people, two tents, and a fire. My new friends speak to me proudly of the mountains, this evening, shrouded by a deviously beautiful white fog. Local lore has it that any man who dares to wander in the mountains in this fog will lose his way. Many have died.

My task for tonight's meal is to draw water from the nearby creek. With the aid of a torch, I pause to marvel at the small fishes navigating the freezing crystal water. Looking up, I see a massive buck with majestic antlers standing at the base of the nearest mountain. The rocky ground is covered with short grass, moss, and some snarled undergrowth. The fog there is not too thick yet and its veil over the buck flutters with the wind. Holding his head high, he faces the valley, contemplates a distant horizon, then turns and disappears into the mist.

by Elizabeth Milligan © 2011

Written at a Handcrafted Words Online Workshop

Arriving at "Burial Places"

2011-03-17T22:18:00.007-04:00

I started with the idea of posting pieces from people who recently completed a Handcrafted Words workshop—but then I received a letter from a previous participant who had just returned from the Dominican Republic and posted her piece.

At Thai Chili Restaurant

While waiting for our order of Thai food Sue took out a slim book— In My Fashion, "My mother's poetry, she said.

I didn't have time to look at the book before the dishes arrived and we all started to eat and talk.

Later on Sue told me that her mother—Helen Hudson Motulsky, at the age of sixty , joined a writing group, attended writing and poetry workshops, and eventually "became an adjunct writing teacher at Danville Area Community College."

She continued to write poems for the next twenty-six years. Her topics ranged from "Dishes and the Working Wife" How do you write/ about dirty dishes? to contemplation of Burial Places.

Burial Places

I.

Stigler Cemetery
Stigler, Oklahoma

These bones grown old
could go home again,
could find a spot under the maples
in that unfenced ground.

I would know again
the people of my childhood,
names carved now in granite:
parents, friends, neighbors,
teachers, storekeepers.

Their places would form for me
a new map of my small hometown;
their names read from tombstones
my litany of love for all the years.

2.

Angel Hill Cemetery
Havre de Grace, Maryland

From its stone wall on the hill
I saw the Susquehanna as it flowed
into Chesapeake Bay.

I was young and half a continent
from home, a harsher land.
The wide water, arching bridge,
soft hills beyond soothed me then
when the world was at war.

I could be content there,
a dear friend near by,
the river moving through time,
the solace of hills.

3.

Gordan Cemetery
Danville, Illinois

I could rest here
above the season-reflecting lake,
my lodestar now for many years.

The spirit of my gentle beagle
would keep me company along the bluff,
in deep snow, among wildflowers,
when dry leaves rustle underfoot.

I would be sheltered by tall trees,
new-green, full-leaved, autumn-turned,
framed by ancient cedars.

The fishermen would not disturb me.

by Helen Hudson Motulsky

THE MISSION IS OVER BUT STILL TO BE ACCOMPLISHED

2011-03-14T18:43:00.003-04:00

By Sharon

We arrive in the evening in Barahona after a five-hour bus ride from Santo Domingo. We are a mixed mission group here to help for a week. I have never been outside North America and coming to the Dominican Republic is both a culture shock and an awakening. The bus drops us at the bottom of a rising dirt road. A truck is waiting for us and we climb into the back and hang onto the rails and overhead bars as we drive upwards toward a house. We pass through a village of, what at first looks like lean-to, shacks. Some are wood and some are cinderblock—all look in need of repair. There is no grass. The earth is pale and dry except for the runoff from spills into the roadway. These homes have no plumbing and no electricity. Some have cement floors and some just dirt floors. The children come out to yell and wave as we go by, some of the grownups do to. The tiny children are naked. There are dogs, skinny dogs, lying in hollows here and there. They do not bark or wag their tails at the children’s activity.

We are staying at the Grace and Peace Mission run by Karen and Bill Rumple. Our housing is more than adequate. We are warned not to eat or drink outside the compound. We are not to even brush our teeth with the water. Bottled water is available and it is important to stay hydrated in such a hot climate. There are 20 of us ranging in age from teens to late 60’s. Standing on the stairs looking toward the ocean we can see first the beautiful palms and flowering bushes with a variety of color, then the blue of the Caribbean Ocean, and lastly the endless mountains. The house is in a walled compound with locked gates and guards and five Rottweilers in the yard. Looking down from those stairs I can see the living conditions of the people who waved to us when we arrived.

The medical group is from MCI Concord: the medical director Dr. Ruze, nurses Nancy, Julie, Laura, Jen, Sam and myself, and mental health worker Angela. Also with us is Dr. Jenkins, a pediatrician, and his nurse Nancy from Concord Hillside Medical Assoc. The “Fun Team” is comprised of Nancy’s daughter Tracy and her friend Julie, Nancy’s friend Joann, her daughter Regan and Regan’s friend Matty and Nellie, a teenager who goes to Dr. Ruze’s church. Also on the Team are Dr. Ruze’s husband, daughter Nicole, and son Paul. Nancy’s husband Dave is a helper to everyone and took pictures of all events and situations.

The first day is spent preparing for the four clinic days to come. We are eager for information that will help us to be useful. We don’t speak Spanish or Creole—the two languages of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. We learn we will be provided interpreters when needed.

We are giving out what is called a “family pack”—vitamins, Tylenol, and a treatment for intestinal parasites. The complaint of abdominal pain is common because living with a dirt floor allows infection from parasites. We are also dispensing a “child pack”—vitamins, and treatment for parasites. If we have an infant the medicine would be specific to the need and for a condition like scabies, or fungus or temp, and we would ask Dr Jenkins to OK the treatment.

In the evening we walk through the village just below the mission house. The children are excited when we use cameras and they want to see themselves. They are beautiful and cheerful. They look surprisingly healthy. There is no sound of TV or radio as we walk. We don’t hear loud children’s games being played. We don’t hear music. The dogs don’t jump up to check us out. There are chickens scattered about, some with baby chicks in tow. There are a few goats tied in a grassless area. Litter is everywhere. It is accepted behavior to toss trash at will, wherever. There are no barrels anywhere.

The temperature cools toward evening. We see mosquitoes and a fruit fly type insect that plagues some with ankle bites. We use sprays and have been cautioned to take malaria pills before and during our stay. We turn back toward the mission house. The dorm rooms have A/C and fans and sleeping is comfortable.

Friday morning we have breakfast at 7:00 and aim to leave between 8:00-8:30. We are going to a church Karen’s friend attends. We all pitch in dragging heavy bags of supplies and medicines to the trucks. We board the open truck again and hang on as we go down the rutted dirt road and then onto the paved town streets. Stop signs are rare and the few stoplights we see are virtually ignored by drivers. What works is blowing the horn when approaching the intersection letting others know you are coming. There are many motorbikes with sometimes three or four passengers and some carrying supplies or propane tanks. A cow or dog or person may heedlessly walk into the street. By the end of our stay I had enormous admiration for the truck driver.

At the church we see a semi-finished large cinderblock building with no finished windows or doors. We set up booths to receive people and try to figure out how to dispense what we have to those who need it. The doctors each have a booth; there are two nurse’s booths as well as a space for what we call “the pharmacy.” The Fun Team sets up in a house across the road (which is where we go to use the restroom).

The families come in, each has a slip with their name and age, and later the temp and BP. Duarte is our interpreter. He is gentle and friendly and the moms tell him the complaints or problems. We process each member including the mom then tell her to go to the pharmacy to get the bags of meds that are appropriate. Treatment for parasites is the most common issue. I had some anxiety about record keeping. Later I found out Jen, working in the “pharmacy,” kept all the ID slips.

We break for lunch then do another couple of hours. During the day a large number of equipment and activities goes missing from the Fun Team supply. Karen closes the door and announces she would not open it again until the soccer balls come back. When they do, the door is open again. We need to see these events to learn about behavior here. No one is going to form a line and wait his or her turn. Karen tells of giving a washing machine to one lady and a bed to another and finding out that a family member had taken them to be sold. She denied visits until the items were returned, and they did return. The high walls and barred windows and locked gates are necessary. It is a harsh lesson with severe poverty at its source.

In the afternoon I notice uniformed guards nearby. They carry guns and wear flack vests. However there are no major problems this day. We served 250 people. The most serious medical issue was a hydrocephalic baby who would have been treated much earlier in the US. At this point in his life, there is not much to be done. We also saw a little four-year-old boy walking on his right heel and refusing to wear his shoe because of the pain from a plantar wart. We could not help that condition and could only refer him to a doctor.…

That evening we discuss the day’s events and try to figure out how to be more efficient. Listening to others experiences and points of view is always helpful.

On Saturday we go to a well-established Catholic School. They are prepared for us and we are better organized. We all notice the parents and children at this clinic are better dressed and look, in general, healthier. Duarte explains the school serves meals and they are good meals. He said he would like to be back in school to get the food.

At our clinics there is no mention of milk and we never saw any being served. There is no refrigeration, so it makes sense not to risk illness. I notice the wandering cows about the villages. They don’t look like milkers and there is no grass for them to feed on. They look skinny and are probably used for meat.

We see about 500 people at this clinic. Later we all agreed that they were generally a healthier population and most if not all of those who came to our booth were also connected to a doctor’s care. Before we leave the school, we count and pack up the meds to lessen the pharmacy confusion for the next clinic.

Seeing young teens age 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, with babies,… and grandmothers—one 92—looking after very young grandchildren. An elderly diabetic with neuropathy who said the open areas on her toes were because the rats nibbled them while she was sleeping. There are no instant solutions for these issues and I am left with a feeling of “job unfinished.”

We are all exhausted and feel oddly we as though we have been immersed in this country for a long time. There is so much to understand. The culture, the language, the expectations of the people, what is acceptable, what is usual, and overriding all is the incredibly hot climate.

Back at the house we are told not to feed the dogs or pet them. Most of the time they are quietly laying about the landings and we walk by without a response from them. They look thin and the dog sympathizers in the group cannot resist and give them the leftovers from a chicken meal. They eat the leftovers—bones and all—only to later have episodes of diarrhea, which their handlers were not so pleased about. I learn that these dogs take care of their own tick infestations. They bite the ticks off one another, finding the engorged parasites by the scent of the blood. Nature has found a way to teach survival in this climate.

Sunday we head for the beach along the southern coastline. The view is so beautiful—the blue ocean on our left and the endless peaks of mountains on the right. We are not far from the border of Haiti here on this southern shore. At the beach there is a canteen and a shaded area where we set up our tables. The portable kitchen serves a tasty meal of rice, beans, and fish with sauce. There is no sand at this beach. Walking barefoot is punishment because the stones of all sizes are burning hot. Trying to keep a foothold when standing ankle deep in the surf is difficult because the waves pull the stones from under your feet as they flow out. There are no sailboats, no ships and no seagulls. Perhaps it is the season, perhaps it is the area, I could not find an answer. As with all beach trips, we return exhausted by the sun sporting various shades of pink.

Driving to and from the beach is another feat of expertise for the driver. Occasionally, there are lines on the road. There are again many, many motorbikes and they pass, seemingly, without concern or consideration for oncoming traffic or upcoming bends in the road. Meeting a huge truck or bus is a breath-holding event. On the way to the beach, Sam has a large bee go down the front of her bathing suit and gets stung. She is able to flip it out onto the bed of the truck where it is flattened by one of Karen’s helpers. We are lucky to have dealt with the sting and the bee without ending up in a pile as a result of a sudden bump in the road. We return our grip to the overhead bars and continue on, bravely learning about what the risks are as we go.

We return, have supper, then leave to attend church. This is an evangelistic service in Spanish. We ladies are told to wear skirts or we cannot go. There is no piano or stringed music. A young lady plays a traditional drum and is accompanied by a young man scraping a metal tube. For me the rhythm is not easy to follow. The congregation is small, mixed with both parents and children. They have a number of speakers and stand for singing. When it is over they all pass by us to shake hands. We had been in this building for Friday’s clinic and they welcome us again.

On Monday we are up early again and heading for another school in the city of Barahona.We again travel via the open truck and pass a very large construction project. A new University is being built. This area of the city is more developed and older. Some, but not so many unfinished buildings.

The school is older but well maintained. They have made space available and we set up our booths. We see mostly healthy children and adults. The children look well dressed and cared for. Still there are the chronic problems of the area: parasites, impetigo, scabies, fungus. Occasionally someone will need an antibiotic, or a treatment for a vaginal infection. Clean water seems to be a problem. The toilets not working are not a surprise, and there is the omnipresent trash….

In the evening we walk around the city common to look and to shop for trinkets. There are street children who hang out near the common and beg for whatever they can get. One little boy, so incredibly filthy, is a deaf mute and we do what I suppose so many others have done—buying him food and drink—but it does not seem enough. I don’t know about orphanages there but apparently the government has closed those that it supported saying there was not money enough. I would suspect there are church associated orphanages, but I do not remember seeing any.

The day is filled with new experiences and information and when I finally get to bed, I cannot sleep.

Tuesday is our last clinic day. It is in a Pentecostal church school in another part of Barahona. Our spaces are decreased and separated by sheets, which cuts into the available light and prevents air movement. It is hot. This population has older people. A mother taking care of a 22-year-old male with Parkinson’s,… a daughter caring for a mom with Alzheimer’s—the daughter is afraid of having the disease also. The general health is good and it is not unusual for the person to say, “yes” when asked if they have seen a doctor. The group is the smallest we have treated and we are finished about 1pm.

We have received a request to stop at a home in the same community. There are nine children and an unclear number of grownups at this house. Two of the men have foot issues that have been treated and are at risk of increased infection. The neighbors crowd around to watch the doctors assess the wounds.

We meet the current family pet, a black pig, who comes when called and likes to have her belly scratched. We are told she will be dinner at Christmas time.

When talking with Duarte, he tells us there are a number of missions that come to the area. He has helped others with translating. He and his wife are starting a school/church in their community. He has a number of children who come everyday. That evening we go to his home/school/church and pass out clothes of various sizes mostly, for young children. We leave the remainder with him to pass out to his community.

With gratitude, admiration, best wishes, and hope we say good buy to Duarte.

The next morning, very early, we leave for the airport in Santo Domingo. We need extra time to allow for any type of hold up that may occur during the drive. After our final ride in the open truck we travel by bus for the five-hour ride to the city. Twice during the trip we are stopped and inspected by police who are looking for Haitians in the country illegally. I am told if they had found any they would have been taken off the bus and pressed to pay money to be allowed to continue.

On the ride to Santo Domingo we pass green fields of sugar cane, crops of bananas, plantains, mangos, coconuts, yams and potatoes. Sugar is the main export. Coffee is also harvested in the Barahona area and a number in our group bought it for return gifts.

There are two seasons in the Dominican Republic. The dry season is from December to April and the wet season lasts from May to November. Hurricanes usually occur from June to November. The temperature is hot all year. The wet season is the hottest, making the air very muggy.

We spent our time in the southern part of the country in an especially poor area. We could see the tall smokestack of the sugar factory in the distance. In these poor areas near the city of Barahona there is no consistent attention to water, health, education, roads, rubbish, or electricity. These poorly built communities suffer from what looks like hopelessness. The lethargy is as evident in the animals as in the people. I did not see any children from the community near us going to school. Only once did I see a few boys wearing blue shirts and carrying books walking along one of the city streets.

I feel like any amount of help is worth giving. But I leave feeling there is so much more to do.

Sharon Chiasson
February 2011

Sharon works as a nurse at MCI. She had taken an earlier Handcrafted Words workshop

Imagine Smelling All the Books...?

2011-03-11T09:33:00.002-05:00

When artist Rachael Morrison started working at the MoMA Art Library she decided to smell all the books.

An article in the New York Magazine states her reason, (it) "... is rooted in capturing the ephemeral."

There are 300,000 books in the collection. She’s smelled 150 so far. Each entry is logged in pencil in an accounting ledger.

Perhaps she'll write a book about the experience?

White Porcelain by Ira Smith

2011-03-10T19:47:00.009-05:00

May 1937

" Mom, did you see the bathroom? It has a tub and a sink in there!" My parents and I had just moved in to this $15 per month house on elm and maple-lined South Main Street with a view of Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains of Vermont. I was six and a half years old. There were clean cabinets with counter tops and a chrome-trimmed, wood-burning stove in the kitchen, a carpeted living room with a coal burning stove with mica glass in the door, two upstairs bedrooms with hardwood floors and roomy closets, and a handy ice box in the shed just outside the kitchen door. There was a white porcelain tub, sink and toilet in the bathroom. Mother was filled with joy!

Dad was content too - he had a tool shed and a large fertile garden to work in. I was excited - there were adjacent woods to play in and three boys two doors down to play with. The lush lawn in the back yard had a stone fireplace for summer cookouts. We were all happy!

The landlords, Frank and Margaret, were old friends. They had been living in this house and had just moved next door to live with Frances, Margaret's recently widowed mother. They became extended family and I referred to Frances as my "third grandmother."

Summer of 1933

Just the three of us moved into a two-story, side-by-side duplex on Sisco Street. Mother would no longer slave over a hot stove for a bunch of in-laws. The plain interior consisted of a kitchen, dining room and living room plus two bedrooms upstairs. There was only a toilet in the only bathroom at the top of the stairs. We had to wash up at the kitchen sink. There was no bathtub! We took turns taking our Saturday night baths in a metal tub near the kitchen stove where the hot water kettle was handy.

The house was heated by the wood stove in the living room and the one in the kitchen. Sticky, black creosote was always seeping out where the long kitchen stovepipe entered the chimney. One night, the chimney caught fire. The volunteer firemen came and dowsed it but the ceiling sagged with water. Mom cursed as she vigorously poked a hole through the plaster and lathe with a broomstick to let the water out.

The open stairway to the bedrooms was in the dining room. It had a landing half way up where I visited with Joyce who lived on the other side of the thin wall. While doing laundry, Mother visited with Joyce's mother, Ethel, through the gaping hole in the partition that separated the two halves of the cellar. The great fire of 1936 engulfed the main block of stores in the village. I remember Joyce, her brother, Kline, Ethel, Mom and I watching the aurora in the night sky from our shared front porch. Dad and Joyce's father, Walt, labored all night as volunteer firemen.

We didn't have a car. Once a month we trudged up to Elmer's house on Depot Street to pay the rent. He was a slow-moving landlord; it was like pulling teeth to get him to fix our leaking roof. Mother was tired of maneuvering drip pails.
Dad worked at Ralph's garage fixing cars, changing tires and pumping gas. He did occasional gigs with Ralph's seven-passenger Buick chauffeuring rich summer residents on scenic tours through the mountains. Dora's bar across the street from the garage was a magnet at quitting time. Dad often stopped at Dora's for just one beer which often turned out to be two or three. One night I spanked daddy cuz he came home late to a cold supper. Mommy was awful mad and he made her cry.

Late May each year, Dad ambitiously spaded his large garden with a round pointed shovel. He grew a wide variety of vegetables and Mom canned them, a key supplement to Dad's meager income.

Our street should have been named School Street, for the district school with all 13 grades was just up the street. I started Kindergarten when I was not quite five - the youngest kid in the class. Mother walked me to and from school the first few days.

One August when I was six, Mom and I walked to the Essex County Fair which was just beyond the school. While meandering along the busy midway, a concession barker said, "Hey miss, bring your little brother over here and buy him a toy." The compliment weakened her resistance and she bought me a rubber dagger.

October 1931

The three of us moved in with Grandma Bertha, Dad's recently widowed mother, in her home north of the village beside Hoisington Brook at the foot of Ledge Hill Road. Mother called it "the little house in the hollow with the outhouse." She was appalled - no indoor toilet! Dad's three younger brothers ages 12, 19, and 21 lived there as well. Because Grandma worked long hours cleaning houses, Mother's first real taste of married life at age 21 included taking care of an infant, and cooking and laundering for six people while recovering from a hysterectomy.

July 1930

Mother, aged 20, and Dad, aged 24, were married July 28, 1930. When I was born on December 8, the local newspaper said that Mom and Dad "were the proud parents of a bouncing baby boy" which is remarkable for a 17-week preemie. We stayed with Mother's parents, Louie and Della in their new home on their 40-acre farm in South Westport.

Ten months after I was born, Mother was hospitalized with serious complications from childbirth and underwent an emergency hysterectomy. With the state of medicine in those days, it is a wonder she survived. I grew up as an only child.
Circa 1925

In their mid-teens, Mother and her brother, reluctantly quit attending the one-room country school to help Grandma on the farm. Grandpa was rehabbing in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Saranac Lake. Later, she went to live and work in the village as a chambermaid in the resort hotel. That is when she began dating Dad.

Ira Smith © 2011

Written at a Handcrafted Words Online Workshop

Let's All Gather at the Tableby Cathy

2011-03-09T20:27:00.011-05:00

Grandpa made the white oak dining room table and chairs before I was born. He also made to match a radio stand, a glass front hutch that showcased Irish knick-knacks and some of the ceramic dishes grandma painted, and a buffet that was always topped with piles of stuff and never food.

Leaves could be added to the table to seat sixteen people comfortably and I never saw any of the leaves ever removed. Grandma taught me how to set the table properly – to set out forks, knives and spoons even if all the utensils wouldn't be needed for the meal and to set out cloth napkins instead of one communal towel. My favorite tablecloth was one grandma embroidered with lazy daisy stitched flowers. As a child, it was more difficult to put a clean tablecloth on the long table than it was to make a bed. On Sundays during the summer the table was always full of relatives and the table was usually laden with garden produce - ceramic bowls of creamed peas and potatoes, corn on the cob, cole slaw, sliced tomatoes, home made rolls, Aunt Marie's sweet pickles and pickled beets, and a platter of carved up and well done beef roast or burnt hamburgers that looked like lumps of coal. Dad said grandma never could learn how to cook after they took away her wood stove and gave her gas. There was usually cake for dessert and the adults then drank coffee, except for grandma who poured herself tea from her pink and gray mottled tea pot. But if the priest came to dinner she would use her gold trimmed white tea set- the one that now sets on the shelf above my kitchen window. Meals at the table always began with "Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts..." and ended with "May I please be excused".

One time at the table Aunt Burnette, grandma's sister, demonstrated her napkin folding skills and folded her napkin into various shapes. The grand finale was a bra that she held up to her chest. All of the adults laughed except for grandma who had a horrified look on her face that I will never forget. I think I had a look of embarrassment since I had just begun wearing a bra. Another time Uncle Leo played a trick on Aunt Burnette and served hot dogs for lunch on a Friday back when it was a sin for Catholics to eat meat on Fridays. He let all of us know the hot dogs were made of fish before she arrived and told us to keep the secret. She watched us all eat our hot dogs while she made every excuse to abstain, never once reminding us it was Friday. When it was time for dessert the secret of the fish hot dogs was revealed and Aunt Burnette and everyone laughed. It was fun and I was honored to be in on the joke. Everyone in the family enjoyed jokes and tricks except for grandma.

The adults often played dominoes at the table but if they played bridge they got out the card tables. Uncle Leo taught me to play Pyramid, Clock and Klondike Solitaire at the table. Occasionally Aunt Marie would make mints for a wedding and cover the table with green and white sugar coated leaf shapes that tasted like toothpaste. At the table Grandma showed me how to lay out turquoise broadcloth and pin to it pieces of a Simplicity jumper pattern, matching arrows to the straight of grain. And after it was all cut out she set up the sewing machine at the end of the table, showed me how to thread it and watched me sew.

One day the table burned in a house fire and it was never replaced.

When I bought my own house I bought a used dining room table with one leaf and four chairs that swiveled and rotated until the kids twirled each other in them one too many times. Then I bought some old rusty restaurant chairs, sanded and painted them with Rustoleum and covered the seats and backs with maroon upholstery fabric that was cheap but didn't match anything else in the house.

In the early days most of the food served at our table was made of pasta or rice – a variety of different meals made from recipes I copied from library cookbooks. We didn't eat these things because we were vegetarians or thought they led to a healthy lifestyle. We ate them because that's all we could afford to feed our family of five. Sometimes I would add turkey I had picked from boiled "39c per lb." turkey legs. If it was summer we supplemented our meals with sugar snap peas, green beans or tomatoes from our tiny garden. Our favorite summer meal was sweet corn dripping with butter and sliced tomatoes.

The kids rolled, pounded and cut homemade playdo at the table and little pieces would drop, harden and hide in the shag carpet below their chairs if not vacuumed or picked up right away. At the table we played Candyland, Crazy Eights or Uno with the kids and after they went to bed my husband and I would sometimes play Canasta or Cribbage. When the kids were older they played one game of Monopoly that lasted several days and left the board set up at the end of the table. Other times there would be a partially assembled jigsaw puzzle at the end of the table and everyone, including visitors, could not walk by and resist the urge to try to

I worked on reading exercises with a dyslexic son at the table, grew impatient with a daughter who couldn't understand math homework at the table and watched a son with a lot of energy run around and around the table like a dog chasing his tail. I did my homework at the table while the kids tapped my shoulder endlessly for a snack, a drink or because "Johnny is bothering me". Over the years at the table we have blown out birthday candles, colored Easter eggs and laid out chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven on newspapers to cool. One time my son spilled a pitcher of lemonade on a table full of Christmas cookies but we ate some of them anyway after they dried. Sometimes we covered the table with blankets and made a tent below where we fell asleep while we all listened to scary old radio shows on the cassette recorder.

After the kids left home I started collecting '50s tablecloths and cabbage rose pattern depression glass dishes and would buy all the nice cloth napkins I found at the thrift store. After the granddaughters were born and old enough to reach the table they would help me set a fancy and proper table even if there was no special occasion. Once when a friend and her mother and granddaughter came to visit and the table was all set for brunch, one of my four-year-old granddaughters greeted the visitors with "be careful at grandma's table so you don't break the dishes". And so, no dishes were broken.

Next week my granddaughters will help me make and ice a cake. Later in the day my grandson will be seated at the table on a booster chair and be presented with a cake with two candles as we all sing "Happy Birthday". Then we may play some games that include all the kids or we may just talk at the table while the kids run around.

Cathy © 2011

Written at a Handcrafted Words Online Workshop

Looking for Prompts?

2011-03-07T10:39:00.004-05:00

from Poets and Writers Poetry & Fiction Prompts

From Flash Fiction Chronicles Flash Fiction Prompts

A Children's Book

2011-03-03T21:23:00.003-05:00

I'm busy typing away on my wireless keyboard and oblivious to the people in the coffee house when a woman stopped at the table and said, "What is that?" My IPad on its easel and the accompanying wireless keyboard attract attention every time I set it up. I gave my usual explanation—even put in a plug for Evernote and how everything synched.

Within a few minutes I knew that she had been a Special Needs teacher and recently wrote two children's books. I invited her to send me some information—which she did. I've not read the book, but know that there are a number of readers who write for children.

"Vocabulary, history lessons hidden in story of playful Siamese cats— Elizabeth Cygan brings to life a pair of adventurous cats to help expand children’s vocabulary in A Tale of Two Tails: The Adventures of Ben and Bel

– Two playfully mischievous Siamese cats, Ben and Bel, are on a
mission to teach children some new words in A Tale of Two Tails: The Adventures of Ben and Bel (ISBN 1439273936).

As literacy rates continue to plummet in the United States, Elizabeth Cygan aims to further educate school-aged children.

With each chapter, Ben and Bel find themselves encountering a different crazy adventure, and Cygan hopes readers will learn throughout the journey. Whether the cats deal with a catapult or a giant catastrophe, Cygan aims for the funny felines to help readers expand their vocabulary.

Intended for readers to get more than a vocabulary lesson, A Tale of Two Tails also aims to provide history lessons behind Siamese cats and Old Siam, where they originated. Ben and Bel soon begin to run the house, creating all kinds of lovable trouble.

“Since I have tested and advocated for special-needs students, I’ve seen the kind of material that works for children,” says Cygan. “Right now, there’s a surplus of books that have high interest, but with low vocabulary. This book will engage them and also supply them with a wider range of words to use daily.”Besides her two cats at home, Cygan cites the 16 countries ahead of the United States in educational achievement as her inspiration behind A Tale of Two Tails. The author points to studies reflecting that many students and adults find difficulty in reading simple books and newspaper articles. Cygan hopes to offer readers an educational yet entertaining tale with Ben and Bel, but also seeks to provide a tool that will help work toward the reversal of the country’s illiteracy rate.

A Tale of Two Tails: The Adventures of Ben and Belis available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels.

About the Author:
Elizabeth Cygan has undergraduate degrees in English, history and education, and graduate degrees in history, business and psychology. She has worked as a special-needs teacher and counselor in elementary schools, and writes a column in The Sudbury Town Crier. Cygan is married with two sons and two grandchildren."

March 7th—The Tournament of Books

2011-02-26T08:51:00.006-05:00

I find that reading is my best teacher.

On March 7th ", the Seventh Annual Tournament of Books presented by Field Notes, and sponsored by Powell’s Books, will begin.

Which means that by the end of March, one book will have survived 17 judges, four weeks of blood sport, a Zombie Round determined by our readers, and one final matchup to be crowned that most serious—and seriously demented—of awards in contemporary American letters: The Rooster."

The Tournament of Books

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

March 7 The Pre-Game Primer
With Kevin Guilfoile & John Warner
Opening Round

March 8 Sarah Manguso
Freedom
v. Kapitoil

March 9 Jennifer Weiner
Room
v. Bad Marie

March 10 Rosecrans Baldwin
Savages
v. The Finkler Question

March 11 Anthony Doerr
A Visit From the Goon Squad
v. Skippy Dies

March 14 Andrew Womack
Nox
v. Lord of Misrule

March 15 Jessica Francis Kane
Next
v. So Much for That

March 16 Matthew Baldwin
Super Sad True Love Story
v. Model Home

March 17 Catherine George
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
v. Bloodroot

March 18 Opening Round Recap &
Quarterfinals Preview
Quarterfinals

March 21 Matt Dellinger
TBD
v. TBD

March 22 Elif Batuman
TBD
v. TBD

March 23 John Williams
TBD
v. TBD

March 24 Kate Ortega
TBD
v. TBD

March 25 Quarterfinals Recap &
Semifinals Preview
Semifinals

March 28 Hamilton Leithauser
TBD
v. TBD

March 29 John Roderick
TBD
v. TBD

Zombie Round

March 30 Michele Filgate
TBD
v. TBD

March 31 Radhika Jones
TBD
v. TBD

Championship

April 1 All + C. Max Magee
TBD
v. TBD
The Rooster

World Book Night

2011-02-25T08:48:00.003-05:00

A Million Books

From the Guardian

"World Book Night was inspired by the success of World Book Day, which last year distributed tokens to schoolchildren for 600,000 specially printed books. With each of the volunteers set to give away 48 books, and another 40,000 to be distributed by the organisers, a million books in total will be given away on 5 March. The event has already attracted endorsements from many of the biggest names in print, including Alan Bennett, John le Carré and Mark Haddon, all of whom are scheduled to appear at the Trafalgar Square reading. The other authors scheduled so far are Edna O'Brien, DBC Pierre, Philip Pullman, Lemn Sissay and Derek Walcott.

Organisers say the Trafalgar Square event will be followed by hundreds of events around the UK on World Book Night itself, details of which can be found on its website

"

Check out the Twenty-Five books to be given away. It'd quite an impressive list with links to a synopsis of the book and something about the author.

Toni Morrison

2011-02-20T21:10:00.003-05:00

On February 18th Toni Morrison celebrated her 80th birthday.

In 1993 she received the Nobel Prize for literature—the last American to receive that honor. Acceptance Speech

A Fascinating Essay

2011-02-19T09:01:00.002-05:00

I was reading the Elegant Variation, Mark Sarvas's blog, and he mentioned this essay by Paul Collins.

From the Lapham Quarterly—
Vanishing Act

Writers Read

2011-02-18T07:11:00.005-05:00

From NPR You Must Read This

The books they select are often books that I'd be unaware of—or books that no longer are on "the front burner" —if they ever occupied that spot.

And there are a number of familiar books.

Writers and Their Inspiration

2011-02-16T18:25:00.005-05:00

Thirty-one writers talk about how they discover their stories.

A New Antholgy

Finding the Words

Ten Questions for the Editor Jared Bland

I recently found this wonderful list of Alberto Manguel's 100 favorite books