Category: Experience

Posted on

Route 66: June 2023

Normally I’m reluctant to stay in old motels, preferring a good, clean Hampton Inn with doors that open into hallways instead of out directly into the world. But as we did our research about the things to do ( don’t miss Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, for example) and iconic places to stay along Route 66 when we drove from Chicago to Albuquerque in June of 2023, we learned that we’d be missing a big part of the Route 66 experience if we ruled out motels. So we stayed at the Wagon Wheel in Cuba, Missouri and the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, New Mexico as two of our “iconic motel” choices.

These motels have largely been “redone” over time to make improvements in plumbing and HVAC systems, but they have preserved the retro feel of the rooms, right down to issuing metal keys on triangular keyrings that have the room number on them. If you’re planning a trip down 66 anytime for the 100th Anniversary of The Mother Road, I highly recommend The Blue Swallow Motel. And if you’re into souvenirs, you can buy a keyring to take with you!

Stays and Sprays on 66

Blue Swallow Motel

Cadillac Ranch spray painting

Route 66 fun!

Posted on

Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

Our host for the third and final day of the July Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Glenda Funk of Idaho, who inspires us to write clerihews. A clerihew has four lines with an aabb rhyme scheme and focuses on a person. You can read more about this form and read the poems of others here. Like Glenda, I took liberty with the poem. I created mine about a group of people rather than just one person.

My People

community of writers
inspiration igniters
fine-tune words through a lens
as we breathe through our pens

In keeping with my travel theme for July, I’ve also unearthed a photo of our trip to Colonial Williamsburg from July 1976. Hard to believe that this was taken a half century ago, but here we are. We’ve come a long way, Baby……but I’m not sure whether we’ve moved forward or backward.

Colonial Williamsburg, 1976

While Mom was taking this photo, my brother, Dad and I were posing on a cannon in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia in 1976, during the nation’s 200th birthday month. Like so many families nationwide, we visited our nation’s capital and Colonial Virginia during this iconic year in our nation’s history.

Cannonball

family cannon

snapshots, time-stamping our place

in this history

Posted on

All of the Above: A Journey of Next Steps

Glenda Funk of Idaho is our host today at www.ethicalela.com for the second day of the July Open Write. She inspires us to write poems featuring our chosen meaning of the word wave after looking at all the definitions of the word. I chose the traditional hand wave. I’m about to give a big one.

Waving from the Wayfarer

everyone keeps asking me

what I’m going to do in retirement

when maybe the question

should be what I’m

not going to do……

because I’m choosing

Answer D: all of the above

I’m going to do it all

waving from the Wayfarer as I go

Posted on

An American Sonnet: Knit One, Purl Two

Glenda Funk of Idaho is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the first day of the July Open Write. She inspires us to write Double Consciousness American Sonnets, which are looser forms of the traditional Shakespearean or Petrarchan Sonnet with the Volta, or shift, around line 8 or 9. Come visit the page today and read the poems of others, and perhaps write your own to share!

Hands knitting a multicolored wool sock with wooden needles indoors

Instructions for Knitting a Poem

knit one, purl two, I hook words as I write

cool peace, with shades of panic-level fright

these variegated colors of yarn skein

like phases of moon cycles: wax and wane

crack of thunder harkens a derecho

aftermath: look up and see a rainbow

cast on, bind off ~ weave from all this SABLE

knit one, purl two, count along a cable

change skeins ~ dye lots show unstable jogging

tug trail legs: necessary frogging

sometimes we can’t undo what has been done

new leading legs knit common threads as one

a cozy mitten pair: rich mosaic

poetry can change the dull prosaic

Posted on

Journey to Knowing

We’ve all heard it said that love is blind, and I’ve sure been a champion and a victim of that a time or two. But when it comes to our own family members and their relationships, it hits home in deeper ways. Someone I care about has recently broken off a year-and-a-half engagement. I’d had my suspicions about things when the wedding planning never got started and there was a wrinkle or two of bickering for a week or so another time, but I kept praying that things would work out as they should. And they did. The one who said, “I didn’t break it off sooner because I just kept hoping it would all work out” has experienced that rocky road of discovery where we must accept that even love that is blind can still see the truth when it has looked long enough.

Journey to Knowing Another Person

who we see is

who we choose to see

who we want to see

who we believe we see

…but are we ever really right?

Posted on

Journey Through Reading

I feel deep gratitude for the seeds of my sprouting love of poetry from an early age. A Child’s Garden of Verses (received as Christmas gifts in both 1971 and 1972) by Robert Louis Stevenson and Childcraft Volume 1 Poems and Rhymes are the books of poetry that made me love poems so much that I hid in my closet with a flashlight to read them. I had a sleeping bag and pillow set up much like a tent or secret fort, and that was my poetry hideout. A cozy nook, away from the noise of the house and the cares of the world.

Here is a Shadorma (3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable pattern) using a selection of words from some of my favorite childhood poems.

Windy Verse

lion-like

usher of the month

windy roars

fiercest storms

step into this poetry~

it’s a real word storm!

Posted on

Priorities….or Polarities?

Today, I am writing from a prompt in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. This card asks us to make a list of our priorities – – what pulls us in different directions, and what is our strength and our weakness. And thenI reread it….wait, no, the card says polarities. I first read it as priorities. Let’s give a rhyming hashtag poem a whirl today!

Polarities

#firstthisway

#thenthat

#theydon’tneedme

#…..untiltheydo

#pusheast

#pullwest

#nottheleast

#notthebest

#shove left

#shuffleright

#workallday

#dreamallnight

…..and turn off the alarm and keep dreaming

Posted on

Embarking on Retirement: The Next Journey

Retirement

I’ve found the door

started looking last year

made my way through the room

straightening my files

smoothing my skirt

changing shoes

grabbing my hat and sunglasses

moving toward the portal

reaching, turning, pushing

toward the next chapter

Posted on

Traveling the Journey


Looking in the Mirror

I look in the mirror

see the gray hair

see the neck wrinkles

see the crow’s feet

see the lazy thyroid laying down on the job

and thank God I’m here to show the wear

Posted on

Disney Dads

Back in 1974, we took a vacation to Walt Disney World with another family who were close friends of my parents. At that time, Dad was the pastor of First Baptist Church on St. Simons Island, Georgia, and his friend Joe Fennell was the husband of the organist in our church. Our mothers were close friends. In fact, when I hadn’t had chicken pox by the time they wanted me to have it before I got older, their children got it and our mother arranged for us to go and play with them so that we would contract it. Tiffany, standing third from left in this photo (next to me, the tallest kid in the green shirt) freely shared her germs. I kept a scar right between the eyes well into my teens from a popped pox.

The popcorn cart reminded me of the popped pox as I sort through pictures of travel this month. While I’m not particularly a fan of amusement parks, we made such wonderful memories there even when the Disney parade was nothing but a few characters walking down Main Street without lights and music and all the thrills of a big parade.

Disney, 1974

Popcorn, Pox, Pops

Disney popcorn cart

between-eyes popped chicken pox

posing with two Pops