Month: July 2022

As I prepare to begin a word journey through Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini tomorrow, I’m packing my suitcase of all the things I’ll need along the way, including a list of the things for which I am grateful. The Gratitude List on p. 117 of the book inspires me to remember to have a thankful heart always, but particularly as I journey through these months ahead. A common saying is “a lot of what you see depends on what you’re looking for,” and I agree – – it’s all about the readiness for change and commitment (as I wrote this last line, a redbird appeared on my feeder – a colorful, eye-catching nod from my mother in the Heavenly realm – for whom I’m always on the lookout).

My Gratitude Suitcase

1. A kaleidoscope, to remind me that every twist of perspective is beautiful. As Rainer Maria Rilke said in Letters to a Young Poet, “There is not more beauty here than elsewhere…..but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere.”
2. A library card, for tapping into all the books that have shaped me, and that allow me to connect to new writing like an elaborate social network of thoughts and ideas.
3. Traveling shoes – (okay, okay – – 3 pairs: well-broken-in Birkenstocks, hiking boots, and dress flats) to remind me that some days there’ll be a climb, some days I’ll have to burn the candle at both ends and work really hard, and some days there’ll be peace and relaxation, but that the journey is best when there’s a great blend of them all.
4. A camera, a Pilot Varsity fountain pen, a journal, and a laptop – to keep me writing and using the photographs and narratives to preserve the memories of the moments that matter so I don’t forget.
5. A snapshot of my writing community – there are so many writers with whom I’ve connected over the past several years in various writing communities – the Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com, Slice of Life and Two Writing Teachers, This Photo Wants to Be a Poem, and the Magic blog at http://www.sharingourstoriesmagic.com. We encourage and inspire each other, and we give each other wings (special thanks to Margaret Simon for reaching out to encourage me to provide a Padlet so that readers who participate can interact and share their own blogs, responses and resources). I love everyone in my village, and if you’re reading this, you’re one of my inspirational friends, now one of my travel buddies if you’re on this reading journey with me.
6. Earbuds – to create the spaces of silence or white noise where I need to collect my thoughts and write.
7. Glasses – to see the good in everyone, everything, everywhere in the world.
8. An extra pair of underwear for the laughter and Kleenex for the tears – to remind me to feel emotion with all my heart, even if my bladder budges a bit with belly laughs. To feel joy and sorrow, to feel awe and wonder, to be moved to new places takes some heavy lifting of the heart and soul.
9. A tiny mirror – not only to check for any chia seeds from my breakfast shake stuck between my teeth, but also to remind myself that although I am only one small part of humankind, my actions can make a powerful difference in the lives of others and in the world. And to be ever mindful that when others look at me, I want them to see someone who cares.
10. Hands to reach out – because that’s the whole point.

What are you packing in your Gratitude Suitcase?

Please feel free to use the Padlet to share your own blog posts, resources, and responses related to Dictionary for a Better World so that others can comment on your posts, connect, bloom, and grow together!

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

If you and I were to meet for lunch or coffee and go venturing out into a city to explore its history, cultural events, music, art, food, landscape, landmarks, architecture, and all the rest of the flavors that make a place worth tasting, like fresh-squeezed lemonade from a sugar-rimmed glass, we would probably agree that one of the first shops we’d want to visit along the way would be a book store. I can guess, my friend, that you’re a reader – with an insatiable appetite for taking in the world through your heightened senses when you’re in a new, exciting place.

Like me, you probably find your sensory awareness is at its peak when you travel. At home, you get around on autopilot, knowing your way but barely able to recall the finer details of the familiar paths you drive to work or to school. But when you travel, you probably find, as I do, that you notice everything, right down to the sizes and shapes of the sugar packets on the restaurant tables. You smell the diesel fumes of city buses when you’re from the rural countryside, and you hear sirens and horns when you’re used to hearing only windchimes and birds and crickets and the rustling of the tree leaves in the wind. You smell the food trucks wafting their mouth-watering aromas to tantalize the taste buds – and you study the landscapes like paintings, appreciating every horizon, every shade of blue sky, every mountain, every valley, every harbor or lake, taking it all in. You photograph what must seem like the most mundane things to the locals, but to you are your cherished timestamped travels, memory fingerprints that you don’t want to forget. Sights that made you pause and appreciate the world.

And perhaps most of all, you watch and wonder about the lives of the people who live in this place that is not where you live. You imagine their schedules, their jobs, their favorite places to eat, and whether they even need to own a car to get to work. Do they buy their groceries in a once-a-week trip to the store, or do they shop the fresh markets on the way home and purchase each day what they will cook that evening, carrying it all home in one single paper sack, hugging it like a teddy bear the last block home? And do they buy fresh flowers for their tables? What music plays in their living rooms? What books line their shelves?

In that bookstore we decided to visit, you already know, even without thinking about it, which sections you’ll visit in 1-2-3-4 order. We may separate to browse the store and meet back in 30 minutes, or you might go to the same spots in the same order I go: travel, pets and nature, science, and poetry. If we were really shopping together, I’d tell you about the book I just purchased for my grandchildren: The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid by Dylan Thuras and Rosemary Mosco (You can download a free teacher’s guide here). I’d grab my phone and show you how I subscribe to their website because I find the world so fascinating that I want to see every corner of it, and the daily emails help satisfy my constant craving for travel. So I bought the children’s version of the book for my grandchildren, hoping to stir in them a rich curiosity about the world, to develop a love for it and to appreciate the need we all have to get outside of our own bubbles and experience moments and slivers of living for brief times in different places. To inspire wonder. To see the world. To want to embrace the favorites of everywhere.

And then I would show you a few pictures of my grandchildren that bring joy to my heart.

My husband and I often see a beautiful sunset or some other lovely thing and text a random picture of our view to the other. The response is, most often, “thank you for not being selfish with the sunset,” or “thank you for sharing the Batman Building (in Nashville).” I think it’s a lot like the reasons we send our grandchildren postcards every time we go anywhere and sometimes even from right here at home~ to say I wish you were right here with me seeing this place, sharing this moment.

I want to give my grandchildren my same loves of reading and traveling, and writing it all down to remember all the whens. But how do you give someone the world? How do you create the awe-inspiring concept of a world that is enormously, majestically huge when you’re little and your world is mostly your house and your yard with those black swallowtail caterpillars eating all the fennel along the fence, but then suddenly becomes a small world, after all, right about the time your feet stop growing?

I think you give someone the world the same way I’m told you eat an elephant.

One bite at a time.

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

As I hoist the sails on a book and word study that will take me through personal meditations through the end of September, I can’t help thinking about all the walks of faith that make our hearts, lives, and world a better place. As a P.K. (preacher’s kid), I was raised to respect and value people of all walks of life, including those whose choices and beliefs are different from my own. My father still models what it looks like to embrace diversity as he stands at altars, sharing moments beside ministers of other denominations and religions in joining couples of different faiths in matrimony. Most pastors don’t do this, making me extra-proud of my dad.

It would be impossible for me to ponder a better world without first acknowledging that I am firmly rooted in the belief of a higher power. As I write about what the words in Dictionary for a Better World mean to me and how they inspire me to want to engage in acts of kindness and compassion, I also want to celebrate my brothers and sisters of other faiths in their beliefs and efforts to do the same. I join hands with friends of all faiths as we all work together to create a better world and to leave a legacy of hope for future generations.

If it all truly boils down to faith, hope, and love being the Big 3, and the greatest being love, then I’m choosing love as my guiding lens. As I set my focus on each word in this book and share how I (as one single person) can use the words to make a difference in the world around me, a diopter lens, like the ones on those high-powered binoculars that bring an object into focus at various distances, will help me add another dimension to my own reading of the book. I’ll be thinking about respect and acceptance and zest and compassion and all the words for a better world through the lens of love – a love of all people, a love of our earth, a love of our world. And when my heart is a fallow field sodden and softened with love, the seeds of these words and their ideas have room to take root, to bloom and grow. To make a difference.

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

As I prepare to dive into the poetic forms of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z* by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini, I think back on the anxiety I have felt at times across years of writing poetry and hosting poetry prompts on Open Write days at http://www.ethicalela.com. The writers in our group have been guided into offering positive and encouraging feedback so that we nurture writing spirits throughout our times of writing together. We share what resonated with us, the lines that spoke to us, how we connected, and the observations we made about the way the poems were written. Even though we know that others will offer positive remarks, there are times that we all feel a sense of reluctance as we begin writing, even though writing is a passion for many of us.

As a former runner, I often dreaded the running itself – – it took a lot of self-discipline to make myself run some days. But each time I finished, the endorphins prompted my next run. Crossing the finish line of a 5K or 10K brought about such a feeling of success and personal accomplishment that I’d often have my next race scheduled by the end of that day’s race. A recurring knee injury keeps me from running these days, and I miss the celebration and festivities I felt at those running events.

I think writing is a lot like that. Once writing fever takes hold, there’s no turning back – even though it takes self-discipline and effort to feel a sense of accomplishment and success when I write a poem, essay, or other writing task. Writing in a group with other writers and being part of a reading audience, I grow by allowing the texts of others to become mentor texts. I’m inspired to try certain techniques or styles in my own writing, always acknowledging those who share their original ideas.

But the important thing is to write. As I prepare to respond to the words and pages of Dictionary for a Better World, I remind myself : not all of my responses have to be perfectly polished like a shiny apple. Good writers have taught me that sometimes I need to give myself ten or fifteen minutes and see what I can accomplish in that amount of time as a quick write. The daily habits of reading and writing build reflective writers. Reflective readers and writers build a better world!

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world or the whole world needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

Back before Covid when I was many pounds lighter and running 5 and 10 K races a couple of times a month, a friend and I crossed the finish line of the Atlanta Women’s 5K on a sunny April morning and drove directly to Krispy Kreme on Ponce de Leon Avenue to find the hot light on and the donuts ready to replenish all those calories we’d just burned.

As we chatted over swirl-steaming hot coffee and fresh, warm donuts, we discussed the book we’d both been reading – The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. We talked about the urge we’d felt to get in a boat and row, to feel what the character felt and understand a thing or two from the perspective of that seat in the boat, and how thrilling it would be to contact a local university with a rowing team and ask if there was a chance we could have an opportunity to take a quick lesson. We talked about how fortunate we were as readers to feel the spark to make an idea come to life – – how we had the power to feel our lives could be enriched by a book.

As high school English teachers in those days, we dreamed of offering Adventure Book Clubs, in which we would read a book and engage in an adventure inspired by the book. Our next dream was to hike part of the Appalachian Trail, which begins on Springer Mountain, a short drive from our town in rural Georgia, after reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. Although neither of us has hiked the Appalachian Trail or rowed in a crew boat yet, we have offered an Adventure Book Club based on the book Finding Gobi, about the dog that ran alongside ultra-marathoner author Dion Leonard in the Gobi Desert. After reading the book with a small group of students, we invited an animal control officer and an animal rescue director to speak to our book club, and we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the local veterinarian’s office to ask questions about how they care for dogs. We found a text of interest and allowed it to spark new pathways of discovery for us – and we showed students the places that books could take us, modeling that same sense of lifelong learning that we hoped to instill in them as young readers.

That’s how I connected to this book and truly embraced their passion when the authors, on page 110 of the book, talked about how their idea for this book was born. They’d been in an airport in Michigan when their event was cancelled and had been talking in the airport about their plans for another book. Dictionary for a Better World came about because of the ideas of Irene Latham and Charles Waters – – and their work to make it happen (along with illustrator Mehrdokht Amini). They also shared how stepping outside their comfort zones with new forms of poetry helped them to appreciate new challenges along the way.

A book* with the power to change. Stepping outside of a comfort zone. An adventure hunt of looking for insights, allowing words and thoughts to spark personal growth. That’s all part of the journey that awaits in the next couple of months as I ponder the words and ideas waiting in this book. I am spending this week opening my mind and my heart to be changed. I express my thoughts on my blog and share my experiences, and welcome your sharing as well.

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world or the whole world needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

I’ve been thinking about how to study a book to make a real difference, and for me, I think it’s association and application. That’s why for the months of August and September I’ve come up with a plan for celebrating each word in the book. This is my plan for devouring them:

Date	National Event	Word
August 1	National Respect for Parents Day	Respect
2	National Ice Cream Sandwich Day	Intention
3	National Georgia Day	Diversity
4	National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day	Experiment
5	National Work Like a Dog Day	Service
6	National Play Outside Day	Nature
7	National Friendship Day	Hate Epitaph
8	National Happiness Happens Day	Reach
9	National Book Lover’s Day	Pause
10	National S’mores Day	Fuel
11	Global Kinetic Sand Day	Vulnerable
12	National Julienne Fries Day	Listen!
13	International Left Hander’s Day	Xenial
14	National Creamsicle Day	Dream
15	National Lemon Meringue Pie Day	Tenacity
16	National Tell a Joke Day	Laughter
17	National I Love My Feet Day	Upstander
18	National Ice Cream Pie Day	Yes
19	National Soft Ice Cream Day	Acceptance
20	Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com
21	Open Write
22	Open Write
23	Open Write
24	Open Write
25	National Kiss and Make Up Day	Forgiveness
26	National Women’s Equality Day	Equality
27	National Just Because Day	Freedom
28	National Thoughtful Day	Mindfulness
29	According to Hoyle Day	Netiquette
30	National Grief Awareness Day	Compassion
31	National Trail Mix Day	Exercise
September 1	No Rhyme Nor Reason Day	Zest
2	National Lazy Mom’s Day	Shero
3	National Bowling League Day	Team
4	National Wildlife Day	Wonder
5	National Cheese Pizza Day	Humility
6	National Read a Book Day	Empathy
7	National Grateful Patient Day	Gratitude
8	National School Picture Day	Ally
9	National Teddy Bear Day	Courage
10	National Swap Ideas Day	Open
11	Patriot Day/National Day of Service & Remembrance	Hope
12	National Just One Human Family Day	Belonging
13	National Celiac Disease Awareness Day	Question
14	National Live Creative Day	Create
15	Greenpeace Day	Justice
16	National Play-Doh Day	Peace
17	Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com
18	Open Write
19	Open Write AND National Talk Like a Pirate Day	Voice
20	Open Write
21	Open Write
22	Dear Diary Day	Etymology of Progress
23	Teal Talk Day	Dialogue
24	Ansley Meyer’s Birthday- Abecedarian Poetry	World of Better Words
25	National Daughter’s Day	Love
26	Situational Awareness Day	Extra Word: Safety
27	National Day of Forgiveness	Release
28	National Good Neighbor Day	Extra Word: Neighbor
29	Urban Wildlife Refuge Day	Extra Word: Refuge
30	National Love People Day	Kindness

During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world or the whole world needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

At the beginning of 2022, I made a series of blog posts on my choice of my One Little Word intended to sharpen my focus throughout the year as a challenge for personal growth. My word choice was Listen. You can read my OLW posts here, here, and here, which share the OLWs chosen – and the reasons – by friends and family as well.

Listen was selected to be like a little toy poodle with a pink collar and blingy-bougie leash, cleanly groomed, smelling of strawberry rosebud shampoo, daintily prancing all sure-footed, the kind you could take with confidence into a china shop, knowing there’d be no damages.

Instead, my word turned out a lot like that great dane in the movie The Ugly Dachshund that was secretly slipped into a litter of dachshunds as if no one would be the wiser, until the truth became clear. Listen is no strawberry poodle word – it follows me like a clumsily lumbering beast into fragile places that force me to take careful steps, assessing the catastrophic potential for any missteps.

Words are like that ~ like beams of sunlight through a dense canopy of trees ~ illuminating the dark places in random rays of light on the leaves, bringing awe and wonder to moments that may otherwise go unnoticed. Words have power to show, to guide, and to prompt change, understanding, and compassion in our lives. As I write through August and September, I’ll pause daily using Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters and consider the power of words to shape my life, dedicating a day to each of these words and considering other words I might add to my own personal lexicon for change:

acceptance, ally, belonging, compassion, courage, create, dialogue, diversity, dream, empathy, equality, exercise, experiment, forgiveness, freedom, fuel, gratitude, hate, hope, humility, intention, justice, kindness, laughter, listen, love, mindfulness, nature, netiquette, open, pause, peace, question, reach, release, respect, service, shero, team, tenacity, upstander, voice, vulnerable, witness, wonder, xenial, yes, and zest.

If you haven’t read this book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship, sharing insights on the words and the response opportunities that the authors create in the book.

singing potatoes

jazz and blues, loaded with cheese

eyes peeled for troubles

*Nonsense Poetry, a Haiku inspired by the word Laughter from Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini (2020, Carolrhoda Books).

During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine the world needs. I’ll be offering insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join in and make August and September a time of deep personal book friendship by responding to the book. A few teachers, upon hearing my plan for the book study, will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

I need a compelling

a thinkplace of dwelling

inspirations a’ swelling

***

I need a word fountain

a languagey mountain

for meanings a’ countin’

***

I need a blank page

such wild thoughts to cage

and time to engage

***

I need my three Schnoodles

spoiled schnauzery-poodles

curled-up love noodles

***

I need a soul-flame

a passionate aim

such wild thoughts to tame

***
I need glitt’ry toenails

to color the details

blue Curacao cocktails

weekend getaway

oldest state park in Georgia

dog-friendly cottage