Category: Gratitude

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The Power of Connection in a Slice of Life Neighborhood- Slice of Life Challenge Day 22, Stafford Challenge Day 66

Special Thanks to Two Writing Teachers
The windows should all be open, but Gemini didn’t listen.

A week ago, Lainie Levin posted an announcement that I wish could be reposted every day. Below, she states that engaging with others is the single most powerful thing that builds community during this challenge.

I emailed her immediately to ask if I could repost this announcement. She readily agreed.

Which brings me to a connection that stopped me in my tracks. I was having a conversation with the Poetry Fox as we were working out the details of his visit to Georgia from North Carolina. I asked him to describe what his events look like, and he told me that he sits at his typewriter and writes on-demand poetry for people who give him a word. He said, “And really, it’s not even about the poem. It’s about the connections I make and the people I get to meet. Those moments of connecting with someone are what it’s all about.”

I’ve thought about this again and again as I have returned to the conversation and the blog announcement and reflected on the power of connection. This community would be nothing without it. I realize that when I wake up during March and get to open the blogging windows and drink my coffee with an entire community and we’re all talking to each other about the slices of our lives and what is happening, there is power in these moments. We may all be tired and worn thin some days, but I know things about you – the people in my community – and I know many of your family members and how you spend time.

I know Paul likes to cook and actually likes Brussels sprouts (I thought I was the only one), Glenda likes to travel and has a voracious appetite for adventure (and will be having quite an adventure today – – I won’t spoil her surprise, but be on the lookout for something uniquely and colorfully …..uplifting)! Denise hikes in the desert and has a stargazer window in her house, Fran watches birds and is teaching her little granddaughters to love them too, Maureen also has two young granddaughters who love music and art and the outdoors, Peter is beginning to grieve the loss of a loved one and many of us are keeping his family close in our thoughts, Barb loves poetry slams and art exhibits and spending time outdoors, Sally checks in on her mom and has a granddaughter with new shoes, Margaret lives on the bayou and has the cutest ducks that jump into the water on jump day, and Joanne loves flowers and gardening. And I’m getting to know each of you, too!

Even though we all live in different places across the nation and beyond, I imagine a high rise brick apartment building where we’re all sitting in an open window chatting, waving, greeting each other at the start of the day, and smiling, rather like we might look from windows on the cover of the New Yorker if someone illustrated all of us in one drawing. We’d see floral window boxes for the green thumbs, cats and dogs with the animal lovers, and food cooking on the stoves of the culinary artists. We’d see children playing with grandmothers and, in a Paul Fleishman Seedfolks-ish kind of way, we’d all be connecting, contributing in beautiful ways to the community vegetable garden and sharing what we have to share, helping as we can, reaching out as we have needs that others can help meet.

Connection. Conversation. Sharing. Caring, Responding in kindness. Giving. Living.

Because that’s what community and connection are all about, and it’s also what writing is about – – reaching the next person. Not the word choice, not the capitalization of proper nouns, and not the run-on sentences (which, like Brussels sprouts, I love, by the way).

Thank you for these marathon days in March where we build our own neighborhood, and the Tuesdays throughout the year where we keep in touch! And to the owners of the Slice of Life apartment building for letting us move in for a month, rent-free, a huge debt of gratitude is owed for all of your hard work in keeping the lights on and the water running.

You each make a difference!

Slice of Life Challenge 

Slice of Life Challenge
community connections:
open your windows!

pour a cup of tea
share family recipes
show trip photographs

compare hobby notes
reveal hopes and dreams
share fears and shed tears

open your windows!
connect with fellow writers
plant seeds. water them.

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How to Plan a National Poetry Month Event in Your Town and Throughout All The Land- Stafford Challenge Day 65, Slice of Life Challenge Day 21

Special Thanks to Two Writing Teachers

Last year, Denise Krebs asked me to share what I had done to plan a National Poetry Month celebration in my rural Georgia town. Today, I’m sharing a list prose poem (I think I just totally made that combo form up) of How To Plan A Poetry Event In Your Town. I’m currently, still, and always in the planning stages, so these are some of the things I’ve done to plan this year’s event (and last year’s too). At the end of April, I’ll share a picture tour of these events that began in February this year (we couldn’t wait…). Stay tuned.

Painted canvas in the palette of awakenings poetry – ready for lettering!
21 Steps to a Town Poetry Celebration: A List  Prose Poem 

1.  Ask the local Arts Council to pick a theme that fits your town. Imagine the infinite possibilities when they pick Awakenings after two years of the same theme of Bloom. 
2.  Say a prayer of thanks that your community works together to make poetry happen and has given you the title The Crazy Poetry Lady. (Move over, Crazy Cat Ladies!)
3.  Ask a friend to write a poem on the theme (the one who writes a book instead).
4.  When he writes the book, set him up with a poetry reading and book signing event.
5.  Ask another local poet to read and sign his new book, too, in the coffee shop. 
6.  Think back to Fran Haley's post on The Poetry Fox and invite him to town with his Fox suit and his vintage typewriter to bang out poems in under 70 seconds when folks throughout the land give him a word and then watch them be amazed when he stamps it with his little fox paw print, suitable at once for framing. 
7. When he agrees to come from North Carolina, create canvases for the Chamber of Commerce windows of all the poets' verses. Paint the backdrops in shades of sunrise awakenings. Pretend you are a New York City window dresser and borrow easels and  buy fishing line and eye hooks to hang the artwork, then stand back and wonder if any Crazy Cat Ladies will loan you some poetry cats
to curl up in the window display. 
8.  Set up a Progressive Poetry Walk around the town square (read it in sections on stands). Since people will come throughout the land to see the fox, they’ll need something to read while they wait in the long line. 
9.  Make YouTube shorts of directions on how to write poetry for those who think they can't.
10.  Set up community poetry writing kiosks with QR codes to scan for directions and create a community Padlet to showcase the writing online. 
11.  Ask the Georgia Poet Laureate to come read her poems in the coffee shop, too. Jump out of your skin with excitement when she sends you two poems that will appear in her new book and allows you to put them on a canvas in the Chamber window. 
12.  Plan an Open Mic night so those throughout the land can come listen....read.....recite. Note that 2 other community partners planned them without your prompting this year….and smile that your seeds are blooming. Pray your garden will grow and grow theoughout the land. 
13.  Bask in the glow of what poetry does in a town and a state and a nation and a heart. 
14.  Invite all your writing group friends to  come to 1828 Coffee Company on April 25 at 6:00 to read their poems and drink the best coffee in all the land with you. Because Glenda Funk keeps a suitcase packed and ready, you know. 
15.  If they can't be here in person, invite them instead to record themselves reading a favorite poem or one they've written and send it to you or upload it to YouTube so you can make a QR code and put it in frames all around your town and throughout the land. 
16.  Create canvases of their verses to go in the Chamber windows, too, on your theme: awakenings. 
17.  Wonder why you haven't created a collection and put it out on Amazon.  
18.  Start a Word document of all the poems you'd put in a poetry collection on your theme.
19.  Decide to self publish a short collection and choose a title and create an action plan. 
20.  Bask in the joy of poetry and all the healing it brings to a heart and a town and a state and a nation and a world and a universe.
21.  Don't wonder where you'd be without the gift of poetry.  You don't even want to know.

and then wonder if you can rewrite 21 into a poem all its own…..try a Haiku….

you don’t want to know
where you’d be without the gifts
of life-changing verse

its healing magic
reaches in, awakens souls 
throughout all the land 

…
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March Open Write Day 2, Slice of Life Challenge Day 17, The Stafford Challenge Day 61

Special Thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Challenge!

Katrina Morrison of Oklahoma is our host today for the second day of the March Open Write at http://www.ethicalea.com. You can read her full prompt here. She explains that misheard lyrics are called Mondegreen. I’m a fan of Coxy.Official, and when the whole bed is shaking with my laughter at night, my husband knows I’m watching Nathan Cox on Tik Tok. He’s the king of music Mondegreen, and so thanks to Katrina, I now know this misheard lyric genre has a name. Coxy’s short clips are for adults, and it’s not the words as much as his reactions that get my tickle box turned over. Now it makes me want to go find the exact lyrics for all those songs I often mis-sang growing up. I was never sure whether Clapton was saying she don’t ride, she don’t ride, she don’t ride cocaine or she’s alright, she’s alright, she’s alright cocaine, but either way you sing it, it works in the song.

My poem is about a text that became our own new phrase shortly after we married.

Photo by Torsten Dettlaff on Pexels.com

Loyding On Purpose Now

notification
his familiar text ding~ I
knew what it would say

same time, each morning
and his words never get old
or lose their meaning

I pulled up his text
unaware it would become
our new word for love

his ear-clogged iPhone
or else his autocorrect 
sauced up his message:

I loyd you, he’d sent
over and over I laughed
trying to respond

in all-cap letters
I replied: I LOYD YOU, TOO
we’ve been loyding since

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Countryside Charms – Slice of Life Challenge Day 14, The Stafford Challenge Day 58

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for inspiring writers.
Photo by frank minjarez on Pexels.com

Countryside Charms

daffodil daybreaks rouse meadow-mist eyes
bluebird sings blessings with praise-reverent cries

daylily sunbursts coax seedlings to rise
paint carpets of clover in emerald surprise

marigold sunsets kiss rolling hill skies
lift sweet bedtime prayers on wings of fireflies

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Luc-Bat Family Gatherings – Slice of Life Challenge Day 13, Stafford Challenge Day 57

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for inspiring writers.

As I move through the challenge of writing a poem a day for a year, I’m trying different forms and experimenting. Today, my poem for The Stafford Challenge is a luc-bat, a Vietnamese poetry form that alternates six and eight syllables with internal and end rhyme scheme. I refinished my late grandmother’s table recently, and I often think about all the family members who have ever sat at this table – and all the stories told here. I wonder, sometimes, whether family members in Heaven get passes to visit and check on the living. And whether there is a kitchen full of spirits listening in, checking on us to see what we’re doing.

I hope so! 

Family Gatherings

table transformation
for our congregation of folks
family pride evokes
stories build laughs and jokes from past
so those long gone will last through time
ancestors living ~prime of life
conjured husband and wife ~spirits
pasts with presents - - its future
gatherings to endure ages

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Huitain Graham Cracker Purity – Slice of Life Challenge Day 11, The Stafford Challenge Day 55

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for inspiring writers.

Our three schnoodles aren’t spoiled, but they do expect a hand-fed breakfast every morning, so my husband gives them bites of graham crackers or Teddy Grahams. As they were sitting by the fire on Sunday morning having their royal feast, I wondered about the origins of graham crackers. I was thinking that perhaps since the Huitain is a French form of poetry and poodles are a German breed but are the national dog of France, then maybe if the crackers were of French origin, I could work all of that into a poem and serve it up like a fresh-baked croissant, all buttery and warm.

It was not to be.

I learned more about graham crackers than I should know.

Boo Radley and Ollie eating graham crackers

The crackers do not have French origins, and they were not invented to feed little dogs a healthy breakfast snack. They were invented by a preacher, Reverend Graham, who baked them to dissuade physical affection. I got quite an eye-opening education about these seemingly innocent little wafers. Who knew? 

Huitain Graham Cracker Purity

three schnoodles when hungry like graham squares
breakfast with Dad inspired Mom to inquire
to see where they started, these squares and bears
***
oh my! a sermon: brimstone and hellfire! 
to repress our deepest carnal desire
crackers were baked to dissuade our urges
to keep us out of the funeral pyre
***
stay dressed! eat crackers! say NO to merges!
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Daffodil Swing Choir – The Stafford Challenge Day 54, Slice of Life Challenge Day 10

Many thanks to Two Writing Teachers for giving writers space to bud and bloom!
The earth laughs in flowers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today’s poem is a triolet, inspired by Barb Edler’s post yesterday. Before Barb’s mother died, she planted daffodils, and these are Barb’s favorite flowers. I, too, lost my mother (December 2015) and miss her very much – my mother’ s favorites were wild petunias and yellow roses. When I need to count blessings and decompress, I take my keys off the hook by the door and start up my little blue Caribbean RAV4 and go riding the country roads. I look for the blooms, the rolling hills, the hawks on wires, the cows in the meadows. It puts the world back in perspective for me – – I am here but for a blink of an eye, and whatever is worrying me, too, shall pass.

Today, let’s remember our mothers who have gone before us but who still wave to us in flowers! We still see you, Moms! #flowerhugs

Daffodils on Highway 109 in Meansville, Georgia

Daffodil Swing Choir Triolet

countryside daffodils dance and smile

their friendly welcoming rural hellos

across hills and meadows, mile after mile

countryside daffodils dance and smile

swaying in their swing choir style

robed in greens and sunshine yellows

countryside daffodils dance and smile

their friendly welcoming rural hellos

#countryside charm. #daffodilsmiles. #momsstillspeak

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What’s Worth Getting Dressed For? Stafford Challenge Day 48, SOLC Day 4

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for building a network of writers worth getting dressed for!

It was that kind of morning here in rural Georgia. I’m an hour south of the world’s busiest airport, but believe me – – nothing was busy here in my small town this morning. Low 60s, overcast with a light mist, and my husband and his brother were installing a motion sensor light over their dad’s garage about a half mile across the Johnson Funny Farm where we all live ~ something that has been on their to-do list since Christmas, but things kept getting in the way. That’s why I didn’t bother getting dressed to be anywhere.

My 80-year old father, a retired minister, was preaching in my childhood church, so I was streaming him on YouTube, kicked back on the couch and flanked by three snoozing Schnoodles. I imagine if anyone was watching through a hidden camera, they’d have thought we’d had a Saturday night party and were still recovering, moving slowly if at all, still in our pajamas.

Actual photo of a Sunday morning sermon-snoozing Schnoodle (Fitz), flanked upside down on the couch cushions next to me

***************************************************************************************************

Glenda Funk’s text came right as the service ended. She’d sent me a photo of her coffee mug a few minutes earlier, since my post was about my dogs on Sunday.

My text conversation with Glenda, who reminded me of the Slicer Meet-Up on Sunday

Thoughts of one particular Slicer Meet-Up came rushing back, the one where I was in California for the NCTE Convention and asked some random people on the street if they were going to the Slicer Meet-Up, and they stared at me like I was packing a blade before hastily walking off in the opposite direction.

I ran for the closet and threw my tousled hair up in a clip, setting a new personal record for putting on a bra and a shirt and looking alive. Boo Radley snuggled in on my shoulder as he usually does, and I took a deep breath and found the email reminder with the Zoom link from Stacey. Sure enough, there it was. I entered into a breakout room with Group 2: Sonia, Pia, and Glenda. We talked about our plan for writing through the month and how we were feeling, but we didn’t get to the part about what we wanted to get out of it. We were having too much fun chatting about the grace we give ourselves in making the timing of our writing and our reading work for us as we navigate the currents of writerhood.

After leaving the Breakout room, we shared our conversations and then had the opportunity to talk with another small group about these questions:

Questions from our Slicer Meet-Up Breakout room

I was in Group 1 with Kristen, Stacey, and Pia this time, and we talked about the way we choose the blogs we read and how we comment on them. Pia shared that she likes to consider the equity of comments; she looks for blogs needing comments, and those are the ones she reads. Kristen talked about managing her time with reading, writing, and commenting and is working on these parts of the Slicing Life right now, Stacey talked about the importance of first draft writing – to share organic slices of life and resist the urge to blog to perfection.

Seventeen Slicers shared an hour of conversation and getting to know each other, offering tips and sharing what has worked for us. Some like to set a timer, some read first to find the inspiration to write, some gravitate to those they know while visiting new bloggers, too, and some read for what we find we need that particular day. As we comment, we like to find connections and keep blogging conversational as we build relationships with other writers and feel the sense of belonging take root in this sacred space of writers all networking, encouraging and inspiring each other.

To Glenda, thank you for the text reminder since I had missed the email reminder. To Sonia, Pia, Glenda, Linda, Pia, Trish, Betsy, Carol, Kristen, Alice, Juliette, Barb, Cathleen, Stacey, Vanessa, and Amy, I want you to know that the hour I spent with you was most enjoyable. You are ALL worth getting dressed for, and I can’t wait to get to know all of this month’s Slicers better as we share our lives and inspire each other throughout this month!

Check out today’s homepage of Two Writing Teachers for a photo taken by Trish Emerson of Sunday’s Slicer Meet-Up Zoom attendees!

Slicer Meet-Up

Slicer
Meet-Up
sharing, inspiring, considering
writers encouraging each other
networking
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For I Will Consider My Schnoodle Ollie – The Stafford Challenge Day 47, Slice of Life Challenge Day 3

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for inspiring writers to write each day!

Several years ago, I led a poetry workshop for teachers in my district using Mary Oliver’s Dogsongs as our text, inviting participants to write mirror poems inspired by the late great poet. One of my favorite poems in this collection is For I Will Consider My Dog Percy, which she wrote about her own dog following the form of Christopher Smart in the 1700s in his poem Jubilate Agno, or For I will Consider My Cat Jeoffry.

L-R: Fitz, Ollie, and Boo Radley in February 2024

Over the years, we have adopted several rescues, and they appear frequently in my writing. They’re all named after favorite Literary figures. We have Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, because he was abandoned and found behind a door, an outcast of his original people. His rescue organization named him Einstein for his matted and untamed hair when he was found. I wrote a For I Will Consider poem about my Schnoodle, Boo Radley.

We also adopted a badly-abused (mostly Schnauzer, but some poodle) Schnoodle named Henry at the time, who had road rash and a broken leg that required surgery to save and eight weeks of intense physical therapy with his foster mom. We followed his journey back to health online, and prayed they would place him with us. When the news came, we eagerly met the foster mom and welcomed Henry into the fold, renaming him Fitz for F. Scott Fitzgerald, the party animal author. Turns out, he’d been correctly named as transcendental Henry David Thoreau, because he doesn’t party. Here is a poem I wrote about my Schnoodle, Fitz.

Which brings me to King. He was a young stray found on the streets of north Georgia, and he was supposed to be our girl. I’d put in a request with the rescue about a year prior to welcoming King, but the rescue called one day to let me know that they had a Schnoodle who met all the matching criteria as a good adoptee for us….except gender. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to meet this boy who needed a home but who had been turned down by two other families. It only took seconds. King was renamed Ollie for my favorite poet, Mary Oliver, and rode home with us that very day we’d hopped in the car for the 3 hour drive to meet him.

I’ve never written a For I Will Consider poem about Ollie, so today is the day especially set aside for my trophy dog we call the baby..

For I Will Consider My Schnoodle Ollie

For I will consider my schnoodle Ollie.

For he was a young stray running the streets, a real canine gangsta.

For he was named King like royalty, taken to a foster castle.

For he was rescued, brought to our Funny Farm with his one true love: a ball.

For he was renamed Ollie after Mary, who loved dogs through and through.

For he needs no bells and whistles when simple will do.

For he realized all too soon he had brothers vying for position. 

For he rejected all possibility of being low dog.

For he rose like a king to the throne.

For we call him the baby.

For he eats sheets.

For he listens for empty K-cup boxes to hit the floor....(for he eats those too).

For he bites ankles and eats Ada Limon poetry books.

For he places one paw on the head of his brothers (sibling annoyance tactic? or knighting?).

For there is no such thing as a quick pee when there are things to see.

For he "kicks" the ball with his nose like a gauntlet at our feet.  Throw, he commands.

For he catches popcorn mid-air.

For he fully belongs in our tribe.

For we whisper to him:  you're the best dog we've got.  

For he returns our love with royal full-face kisses.