AKA: We’re All in It Together After my brothers, Jim and Dan, died, I went through an identity crisis, which caused me to question why I lived in Virginia when the rest of my family was in Massachusetts. One factor that complicated my distress was that, besides my husband and sons, no one in my […]
It was a busy weekend. I attended a Dance Free, a Celtic Music Concert in downtown Floyd, worked on a poem in preparation for my Writers’ Workshop Monday evening, and put the Museletter, a local monthly publication, together. Not only did I collect submissions and cut and paste 10 pages of the Museletter together, as […]
Bibliotherapy means using the reading of books (or the watching of movies) as a way to heal yourself, gain insight, or solve a problem. ~ from The Sibling Connection Suppose you were struggling with grief after losing a loved one, and so you sought out a grief counselor for guidance. Because it is often less […]
1. I drive to Christiansburg about 3 times a month for things I can’t easily find in Floyd. Otherwise, I shop locally. 2. The first Christiansburg Wal-Mart was built on an arboretum owned by Virginia Tech. 3. When a K-mart went up soon after it, someone painted “ON THE 8TH DAY WE PAVED IT” in […]
My friend Mara reminds me that when we both worked at the bead shop in Blacksburg, I taped poems to the cash register… It’s all I can do… not to… say “Buckle my shoe”… after “one, two” …when I’m counting out the money… She writes a poem for me… We play scrabble…because we are both…poets […]
1. Caught red handed. 2. Pretty in pink 3. Hands up! This is a stick-up 4. Simon says: Do this. _________________ fill in your own caption. Photo: Sunday walk on a Blue Ridge Parkway trail. Joe wants to take my picture and says, “Take your hands out of your pocket. I want to see your […]
AKA: Have Art Will Travel My eldest son, Josh, and I share a love of art, and we especially like creating it from unlikely everyday things. When it comes to art, I’m a late bloomer. The extent of my childhood exposure to it was flour and water paste, crayons, and homemade paper dolls. In school […]
“She spends more time with people she doesn’t even know than she does with those she knows,” my husband said to friends we were having dinner with when the subject ‘what have you been doing lately?’ and then blogging came up. “Not more time,” I protested, and then added with a laugh “…about the […]
AKA: 2 Pink Tutus It’s like meeting a friend of a friend of a friend; one blog link leads to another, and soon I’m lost in cyberspace on an unfamiliar blog and I can’t remember how I got there. I clicked a link on somebody’s sidebar because I liked the name, “A Sense of Wonder.” […]
AKA: Ode to the Muse 1. I’m still waiting for the Muse to write me a blank check. 2. I once described the Muses as “shy as a wallflowers” and “as fickle as a cats already fed.” 3. I can write without the Muse, but it’s like watering my garden with a hose in the […]
Have you ever been to a peace march or felt strong enough about something to protest? I was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. I followed the first Gulf War and the devastating effect the sanctions had (primarily on children) intently, and I wrote political commentaries on the subject. I never thought Saddam […]
The following poems were inspired by the wind storm we had this past weekend. Up here in The Blue Ridge Mountains of Floyd, we lost our power, and at times I was writing this by candlelight. ~ The Lashing Unleashed wind lashes slapping through branches of innocent trees that cower like children in fear of […]
