Category: Literature

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4th Friday Retirement Adventures – August

Retirement officially began four weeks ago, and there are both upsides (travel in the RV) and downsides (having to replace a wheel – not a tire – on the RV) to this new chapter. At the beginning of my first week off, I used a green spiral notebook like the one in the image above to make a list of all the things I wanted to do — something enjoyable each week, blending in some new hobbies and routines as well.

Here are some things I’ve enjoyed in my first official four weeks of retirement, as teachers and students have returned to school (#1-7 I blogged about two weeks ago):

1. Mahjong 101

2. Rag Quilting

3. Morning Walking

4. Yoga

5. Friends of the Library Book Fair –

6. Local Bookstore Book Club

7. Summer Reading Poetry Book Club

The past couple of weeks have included two getaways in the Wayfarer along with a few other new endeavors. Everyone kept asking what I would do in retirement, and I’m so eager to share the ways I’m enjoying it! I have 100 things on my list…..so I continue sharing the list:

8. Postcard Poetry Fest – I signed up to send at least 31 postcards out to those who joined the Postcard Poetry Fest 2026. I have written over 31 original poems and have mailed them to my assigned recipients. It has been exciting receiving postcards from all around the world – many with original works of art on them by the artists. I’ll share the postcards I mailed and many of the ones I received in the coming months.

9. Wayfaring to FDR for camping….and…..10. Wayfaring to Margaritaville for a concert – We went to our favorite nearby state campground for a weekend on a remote campsite and enjoyed the fun and frustration of an unplanned hike. The following weekend, we took the Wayfarer to Lake Lanier to camp at Margaritaville RV Resort and saw the Eagles tribute band The Long Run. We rented a golf cart to get to the venue, and we learned the next morning that Boo Radley is not a candidate for riding in the golf cart because he cannot mind his own damn business and loses his mind and acts a fool.

11. Mahjong 102 and Free Play – I added a new segment of learning Mahjongg by attending the second course of lessons and engaged in an evening of open play at the McDonough Truett’s Restaurant with my friend Christian. We are riding around places meeting new friends and sharing the joys of “going Mahjongg.” I won my first game last Friday, and Christian swept all three games the night we drove over to McDonough.

12. Zinnia Arrangement – my sister-in-law who grows zinnias has brought me several batches, and I love arranging and rearranging them in my mother’s pitchers. I received an extra-special arrangement when I checked the mail last week. My friend Glenda Funk from Idaho created a watercolor painting of zinnias when I wrote a poem about them, and she framed the print with my poem as a retirement gift, along with a gorgeous boho blanket from Natural Life, a really cool pen and toothbrush holder, and a bracelet from Thailand – and the most heartfelt card ever! I shed tears of joy opening it, thinking of my friend who is so giving and has been suffering such pain in her leg lately. These are treasures I will cherish – so personal and meaningful.

13. Fabric Postcards – I’ve been working on creating fabric postcards for Postcard Poetry Fest for the next round. I sent out a few to see how they would hold up in the mail, and my small group of Stafford Challenge writers all received them and they held up fine.

14. Porch Sitting – I’ve enjoyed late morning coffee with my sister-in-law Bethany and an evening visit with my friend Jayne, who brought me a retirement t-shirt gift. Porch sitting and visiting is a great way to adjust pacing.

15. Lounge Pants Spree – I ordered lounge pants for each day of the week so that at least I could change into clean pajamas each day, but I ended up keeping only one set. I’ll add them more gradually so I can be sure of the fit instead of ordering online. My writing friend Margaret is changing my thinking, though. She says she replaced loungewear with activewear, and perhaps I should consider the same. There are some yoga pants that do not fit quite as tight as leggings, and those would work for me better than the tighter fit.

16. Novel Writing with Nick – I met a friend and fellow writer in Eastman, a couple hours south of here, to go through the first round of edits for the unfinished book left by my father that we are co-authoring. We look forward to bringing this novel to print in the coming months.

17. Kindred Spirits Book Club – I have a Goodreads personal goal of 60 books this year – – (it’s fitting….it’s the year of 60)…..and my Kindred Spirits sisters (missing one of us in the photo below who are the regulars) and I met at our local coffee shop to discuss the August selection: Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden. Our book choice for September is The Sideways Life of Denny Voss. Currently, I’m finishing Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth and I can’t turn the pages fast enough to see what happens next.

18. Barnes and Noble Virtual Book Club – I was looking for a way that my daughter in Nevada and I could connect in a book club, so we participated in the reading of a Brazilian thriller author’s latest book, The Secret Dinner. We downloaded the book on a Tuesday and had 48 hours to read it before the Barns and Noble Monday Mystery event. It’s definitely a great way to participate with family readers across the miles. The novel was disturbing in its subject matter, but reading outside the comfort zone is what readers do sometimes.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be busy. One excursion that we will take this weekend will likely be one of my favorites of all time….. (hint: It will take place in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday night).

Art borrowed from a Facebook posting

Retirement II Haiku

it’s a fresh chapter

new adventures, living strong

~ sing love like Dolly!

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The Bean

The Bean in Eastman,

Georgia: perfect spot to write

a forthcoming book

Here’s a secret I’ve been holding back: Dad left an unfinished manuscript, and it looks like it’s going to make it to print. For years, he’d been telling folks that he was working on a book. He shared snippets here and there of the plot line and the general story, rooted in the setting of a second home he and Mom owned along the Sapelo River down in McIntosh County.

At his funeral and visitation services in June 2025, many people asked what would become of the book. My brother and I searched his computer and found a few threads of story ideas for this book, but nothing more than a few scattered breadcrumbs. And then our good family friend Nick Doster, the last person to sit with Dad before he died and who brought him the Braves cap he’s buried in, produced an outline with story notes.

More like a piece of bread than a breadcrumb. But still far short of a loaf. Then, Nick offered to work with me to finish the book….which, really, felt more like starting the book by sowing the seeds of ideas and hundreds of tiny quilt squares together to see where the patterns emerged. Like me, Nick is always reading and writing. His most recent book is a western, and he has been talking with the screenwriters about a screenplay, which has consumed a lot of his time lately. Getting to retirement has consumed a lot of mine. So for about six months now, we’ve been working here and there, chatting on weekends and plugging in August as the time we’d get together to do our first productive round of editing of the whole manuscript.

The Bean in Eastman, Georgia was the halfway point for both of us, so we picked a day and met there. We took over the coffee shop and the free wifi yesterday to chisel away a few more steps toward the finish line. We’re still far from finished, but the fun of writing is another part of retirement that makes me happy. These large chunks of time to be able to write and think and edit are a great way to spend a day.

Today? A little more editing, a search for more comfortable swivel stools with backs for the Mahjongg table, a morning walk on the treadmill before it’s too hot, and a great movie my aunt recommended on Netflix for later this afternoon: Arthur the King. I’m so glad I didn’t wait to retire – – what a blessing to have the gift of time to spend the days doing what we love!

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Virtual Author Conversation with a Brazilian Thriller Writer

Retirement affords time to do those things I’ve been meaning to get around to doing, and one of them is attending more virtual author events. As I searched for upcoming opportunities, I discovered that Barnes and Noble has a Mystery Lunchtime series, and I signed up to hear Raphael Montes discuss his latest book – The Secret Dinner. I hopped on to order the book, only to discover that it would not be released until two days prior to the event. That left one option: Audible. Neither my small town library nor our local bookstore would have the book available in hard copy in time for me to get it.

One of my daughters decided to join in on the book talk Thursday and reminded me on Tuesday, release day, by text: Do you have your audio? Today’s the day! I used an Audible credit and began listening. I was not prepared for the ride of this book.

Jeneva Rose, American author of thrillers, moderated the discussion. She introduced the book and the author, and the discussion began. She asked questions of the author, including the ones we added to the Q&A.

With such a dark subject matter in this book, I was not expecting the laughter and joy of this author. I enjoyed his Brazilian accent and his way of putting things in such an enjoyable way, and I enjoyed the time reading the same book with one of my daughters and having the time to talk about it with others. Even though we are many states away, it’s a great way family members can share our common love of reading and participate in book clubs together even if we aren’t sitting around a bookshop on couches to talk about what we loved most about a book. And what we liked least about it, too.

reading has a way

of reaching across the miles

to keep our hearts close

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A Found Poem

Sometimes when I’m reading a book, I find a poem on the page. It’s addictive, and I can’t help myself – – I’ll circle the words and create a found poem. And yes, I do this directly in the book, and I write the poem on the page. If I place it into a Little Free Library or pass it along, another reader will stumble across a poem in all that prose – – and maybe it will bring a smile. I used to get in trouble for writing in books all the time when I was little, once writing my name in red crayon on the covers of all of them, and the badassery of writing in books has never left me.

Here is one from page 88 of The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, translated by Alison McCullough.

Visions

past

the open windows

the astonishing visions

open through the landscape

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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!

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On the Day I Was Born – July 8

During the last week of June, I had the amazing privilege of traveling to Portland, Oregon to visit the archives of the poet William Stafford at Lewis and Clark College as part of The Stafford Challenge Poetry Conference. I learned that people often ask to see the actual hand-written notes and poems that he wrote on the day they were born, and so I did the same.

Archive Haiku

William Stafford:

I visited his archives …

my birthdate writing:


Here is my best transcription of this page from his handwritten notes on the yellow pages in the photos that follow, below.

8 July

We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.
Lost as leaves are, in the fall, each
has all its guarantee: sun, air wind.
I take the fall.

Maybe someone found all this language
the world brings. Not a snake but a stream
through the air, or maybe little waves
nothing holds — anyone in this town fear
news the ants work on? News peeled off
the yellow car that left here this morning; news
trotted among sounds, under the bridge. I felt
the snake across my feet in the bus. And watched
the conductor act calm, as required by the state.
The fox I stole gnawed : inside my coat. Men
act so free: “No fox I stole has ever bitten
me.”

Forsaken liberal, I stamped the curb:
every cause I ever found

has had my vote. Now the animals
prefer their keepers to the kept or freed.


8 July 1966

Seasons mark the brain: a shaft
of spring has always hurt what winter
held. I see beyond the plate and
feel the foxes well. No angel, no
prophet rides with me, but animals.
Keepers are enough too and they live well;
To feed that fox I commit to walk through hell.

every day
Lizards and liberals both low and

adaptable, come back to their holes and love it there.

Such great song scared the birds;

they tiptoe – winged away

Pascal fell through a million windows,
a little kid too smart to be saved by
stupidity.

Though the handwriting is challenging to decipher and does leave some questions, I hang on the first two lines:

We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.

Yes, these periods of waiting often seem frustrating, challenging, and even pointless at times. Some days we feel we are merely holding on. But we wait, knowing our work is flourishing. Knowing that the best is yet to come.

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Homeless in Portland: Outside the Zone

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Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon

I was in Portland, Oregon at the first annual Stafford Challenge Poetry Conference, and I’m not sure how one can feel exhilarated and exhausted at the same time, but I did. The days of writing held such magic here in the Pacific Northwest. From Powell’s City of Books to Lewis and Clark College to the Willamette River and the 30th floor of the Portland City Grill, I’ve breathed the air of artists everywhere.

This is a city of literature, visual art, music and dance. Have you ever been immersed in a city so filled with the unexpected?

But one humanitarian challenge is the homeless population here. All these years I’ve walked past, minded my business, tried not to look. But something has tugged at my heartstrings on this trip, and I’m rethinking my stance. Something must change.

Outside the Zone in Portland, Oregon

oh my ~ he was there/ on the street / outside Powell’s City of Books in Portland /this young man/

locking his white-blue eyes with mine/ pleading / Excuse me, Ma’am? / as I walked past/

outside the zone/a few blocks later it smacked my heart wide open/ this is someone’s child/ a mother’s baby boy/ and I? I have neglected this soul / a disco ball of fragmented pieces/ reflection’ll do that/

refracting in pieces that scatter and haunt my being as I walk on/ ripped apart / outside the zone/ wanting even now to return to hear his story/ a sermon of life there on the street/ giving more than he requests/ listen: he has a story/ we all have a story/

this poem knows regret can do a 180/ change a line like an edit/ a tide of change/ one small act of knowing someone/ asking their story/ seeing, listening, validating humanity/ on a concrete city sidewalk/ where someone needs a human outside the zone/ to enter the zone and see them, hear them, understand them

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Summer Travel Companion for the Open Write

Leilya Pitre of Louisiana is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the June Open Write. She asks us to write a poem about the person we would choose to ask to go traveling with us this summer if we could take someone. I’ve been awaiting the release of Lauren Hough’s Monster of a Land for months. She takes a Travels with Charley journey, modern day, with her dog, Woody Guthrie. So instead of pre-ordering, I waited to buy the book at Powell’s City of Books in Portland. This bookstore is an entire city block and when you’re waiting on a book about a monster of a land, it makes sense to buy it in the monster of all bookstores.

Let’s Go, Lauren Hough!

a Steinbeck-like is Lauren Hough
an author I would ask to go
to join my summer travel band
to see this Monster of a Land!

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Watercolor Welcome: Lemon

Confession time. I was trying my best to wait to read the book I chose to read for Sally Donnelly’s Summer Reading Club, 44 Poems on Being With Each Other by Padraig O’Tuama, but I have not been successful at all. A new book of poetry, for me, is a lot like that bag of M&Ms I try to hide from myself but that won’t quit calling my name until I give in and devour the whole thing. Forbidden M&Ms are like words of poetry – – I can’t quit until the last word in the bag is gone.

And so I have read, savored, pondered, written, and I haven’t gained all the pounds of the chocolate, but I’ve consumed all the delicious indulgence of the page. There’s no sense in feeling the guilt of reading the whole thing early ~ I read it and my clothes still fit, so I’ll celebrate the power of poetry to bring joy and inspire new writing.

I’ve been watercolor painting on weekends, and I decided to take Wendy Cope’s classic poem The Orange on page 224 in the book and allow it to inspire a poem and painting of a lemon, using Cope’s same iambic beat and stanza form. Already, I’m wondering what each poem in this book can inspire in art forms: photography, collage, jewelry design, mosaic, and a million other creative possibilities. I am re-reading already. A huge thanks to Sally Donnelly for inviting us to be part of a kindred gathering of readers.

The Lemon

while camping, I painted a lemon

its colors all citrus-y yellow

curious campers came calling

waving and smiling warm hellos

and that lemon, it brought conversations

of campfires and families and fun

once strangers, now neighbors chit-chatting

on sunshine-y site 301

the “ap-peel” was really surprising

my painting was not all that zesty

but colorful palettes paint friendships

I love my new lemon-y besties

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A Cento Poem

It’s hard to believe that after today, students in our school system have only 12 days left until summer. The time crunch of finishing out this year has us all scrambling to wrap up the loose ends of one school year and pick up the new ones for next year – – I feel pulled in two different directions, but as I told my husband years ago when he couldn’t figure out why I was so moody at the beginning and end of a school year, “Circle August and May on your calendar, and remember that those are the months I’ll be slightly frustrated about most everything.”

I have a few more Centos I was working on in March that I had left unfinished and have now completed, and this one today is from Sophie Diener’s collection Someone Somewhere Maybe. I wrote this one for three dear friends who are moving on to new chapters in their lives next year, and I couldn’t be happier for them after the year they’ve had. For C, A, and S. One of the most wonderful places on earth has changed, and they are ready for better days.

Burning Bridges

I think I need to remind myself

I hope that you are happy

I will explain my anger:

a bridge that’s been burned.

Taken from: Birthdays; Hope You’re Happy; When I Lay Down the Pen; Seasons