Category: Reflection

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January 31: War and Peace

My friend and writing buddy Glenda Funk of Idaho joined the slow readers’ group of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy for 2026. I’d read about this on a blog post by a writer in our Tuesday group and been intrigued. Sharon Roy was choosing to write a haiku after each of the 361 chapters., where readers read one chapter per day and listen to a podcast about it. The irony! War and Peace in haiku! I smiled and secretly wished I’d joined but feared I was too late. Next year, I told myself.

Then, I sent a picture of a stack of books through a text exchange asking Glenda which poetry book I should read next. Glenda is the most voracious poetry reader I know. She is a fast reader and is a good matchmaker to suggest the next book based on poets she knows her friends like and those she thinks they will enjoy next. She shared that she was still reading Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan because she is also reading War and Peace.

And that’s when it happened. Her next text had me joining a Substack group to be a slow reader this year.

Here is actual text footage of how a reader gets sucked into a challenge like War and Peace :

Screenshot

You know those movies where someone misses the train and has to run down the tracks and make a jump for it, praying they catch hold of the book party caboose? That was me. Instead of getting on at the station when it was pulling out on January 1, I waited until the last possible time to feasibly begin – – around 8 p.m. on January 30. Flailing hands and flying hair in a flurry of free-spiritedness like who cares if I have to read 31 chapters of War and Peace to catch up with everyone else? Like I’m some sort of reading ninja. I’m not. I have 31 chapters of War and Peace to read, and now I’m in a war zone with myself looking for some peace.

Perhaps I will use my silent reading hour this morning that I was going to use at the Silent Book Club on the Zebulon square in 1828 Coffee Company to catch up. Extreme weather caused its cancellation, so now, instead, I’ll be reading all all day at home, apparently with snow falling, by the fireplace with my own home brewed coffee in the way I always dream,. Or maybe I’ll finish Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover, this month’s Kindred Spirits reading group pick. Or, perhaps – just perhaps – I will pick a poetry book to devour. A Bit Much by Lyndsay Rush has my eye. Let’s face it: most likely it will be all of the above.

What are you reading today?

Tossing you a snowball – stay warm!

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January 30 Blue Ridge

One of my favorite places to visit is Blue Ridge, Georgia. It’s nestled along the northern edge of the state within lunch-driving-distance of both Tennessee and North Carolina, just beneath the upside-down T lines where three states meet. Mercier Orchards is there, and you can buy a peck of Georgia apples year-round. Or you can go to the Blue Ridge Arts Center and learn how to make stained glass and look at all the art on display. Afterwards, you can stroll all the shops and find practically anything you might want to buy – a cabin, a canoe, a leather purse, a pair of handmade earrings crafted by a local artisan, and all the best in outdoor survival gear. You can even catch the train downtown and take a ride through the Nantahala Forest and go to Bryson City, North Carolina, all comfortable in a train seat with a book as the scenery changes throughout the journey. No matter what you choose to do in Blue Ridge, it’s a lovely way to spend a day!

I wasn’t taking the train yesterday, though. I was doing something far more adventuring. I was visiting an elementary school media center as we gather ideas for our own updates in our county to connect them to our reading initiatives. All the while, though, I was thinking about that train. How reading takes us places in time and space. In a library, you have the world at your feet, and if you aren’t in Blue Ridge long enough to take the train, you can read The Book Thief and travel by rail through another country, straight through history. Or you can choose The Polar Express and sip hot chocolate on the way to the North Pole. Or you can go somewhere warm – like Poppy and Alex in People We Meet on Vacation, which I just finished by audiobook earlier this week during another bout of vertigo.

When I met Tillie the Library Turtle, I stepped off the train and out of the vacation and waded into a stream in New England with Sy Montgomery and Matt Patterson, flashing back to Of Time and Turtles. Libraries are filled with little worlds, all rolled up into pages and pages and memories – and that is great in Blue Ridge and everywhere else!

books take us places

no matter where we are now

books give us the world

Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

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January 29 Brussels Sprouts, Smoked Salmon, and Eggs


This cold weather has my memories of Alaska swirling like magic-dust snowflakes of wanderlust. I’ve been there twice, both times on cruises – so even though I tasted none of the “local” flavors of the non-touristy places in the nation’s largest state that was anything but a folly, both times I’ve indulged in that spectacular smoked sockeye salmon that is sliced thin and served with eggs, capers, lox and bagels. We’d go to brunch, and they’d serve it as an early tea time with breakfast for late risers being more of a light lunch.

The cold weather brought the memories, but the threat of power outages last week brought shopping for things we could eat with minimal preparation. I found a good brand in Publix over in Peachtree City and gave thanks for the fish, imagining it swimming upstream to spawn, trying to avoid the fish-spearing claws of grizzly bears out there standing on those shallow rocks as ribbons of fresh red fish flitter past their feet. The one I was holding made it back home to do its one last thing before ending up in a sliced and packaged fillet.

I always boil all of our eggs prior to a winter storm. We’ve discovered that they keep fine in a cooler on the back porch and can feed us for days on end. And when we put a little sliver of salmon on top, it’s just the ticket for an Alaskan meal right here at home in middle Georgia!

Sockeye Tanka

red sockeye salmon,

boiled eggs, roasted Brussels sprouts

Alaskan dinner

right here in middle Georgia

mid-week special treat

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January 28: Traumatic Tanka

I’m writing today’s poem using a Write the Story prompt to create a Tanka, which is a poem of 5 lines with syllable counts 5/7/5/7/7. I used Matthew 18;22 as inspiration for the final line of the poem.

Prompt: Mash Up Two Classic Fairy Tales into One Story

Words to be Used: fireplace, sword, grove, stoke, underbrush, mourn, seven, friendship, cardboard, giver

Fairy Tale Slain

green grove of friendship

stoke the fireplace with a sword

mourn cardboard ashes

givers lurk in underbrush

no seventy times seven

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January 27: In the Middle of a Long, Cold Winter

This company also publishes “Write The Poem” which I will also share in an upcoming blog post

I was browsing through our local used bookstore on a lunch break last week when, on my way out the door, a book caught my eye. Its title, Write the Story, glimmered in gold lettering down the spine, as if to plead: Hey, over here! See my sparkle? Take me home with you!

Already reaching for the doorknob, I changed course and went back to check it out. I expected a how-to on the writing process. Instead, I discovered the hidden treasure of a delightful writing challenge. Each page bore a titled topic with ten pre-determined (seemingly random) words to be used in the writing of a story.

The pages appeared to be blank except for one on which someone had penciled a story to satisfy one singular challenge and apparently moved on with life, abandoning the book and donating it to the bookstore, where it now rested in my hands. Treasure, indeed!

Poems to be written. Winter seeds of poetry, all scattered between the covers of one book. Destined for me, cast off like a stray no one else wanted, knowing all the while that a cultivator of words and writing would be most likely to pick it up, fall in love with it, take it home, and feed it.

I bought it and realized that other members of my small-group Stafford Challenge writers must have a copy. When we commit to writing a poem a day for a year, we all need a little prompting from time to time when the well runs dry or life gets too busy to think deeply like a poet. Once back inside the car, I turned on the heat and warmed up. I ordered three more copies online from the parking lot to send to Glenda Funk, Barb Edler, and Denise Krebs upon their arrival. Then I took a few snapshots to send them in the mean time.

Today’s title: In the Middle of a Long, Cold Winter

Words: opera, redeem, razor, lungs, grace, futuristic, tread, vest, powder, milkshake

In the Middle of a Long, Cold Winter

like that one lingering note

concluding a futuristic opera
treading frozen spring water

winter cleanses our lungs

razor-sharp alveoli icicles fall
sun breaks out in a crescendo
of seasonal transition
melting the white powder
milkshake from the mountainside
grace of its forgiving kiss
beckoning crocus, groundhog-like peepers
stretching up through frozen ground
ready to crawl out of bed
emerge from quilted slumber
shed their corm-sewn bud vests and
sing a new song



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January 26 – A Found Poem

Today, I’m using a comprehension strategy to get to know a book character by writing a found poem. I’m taking words and snippets off the page and writing a character poem about Basil Cannonfield from Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. In a classroom, this can help students remember characters; in the adult world of reading where we read books with so many different characters, a journal of character notes comes in handy to keep them all straight.

Basil Cannonfield

street performer

tips welcome

soulful, folksy voice

Chalice regular

total-body singer

teacher-turned-musician

poor either way

girlfriend Katrina breadwinner

in his thirties

tousled, shoulder length hair

scraggly beard

attempted mustache

sister’s caregiver

robbed by her ex

eccentric or genius?

both: definitely both

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January 25 – Mallory’s Birthday

she’s growing up fast

thirty nine years old today……

still my baby girl

Happy birthday to my first-born child today! She’s a kid at heart, and she loves to read. When she was little, we’d pile up on blankets or beds for book picnics – – she, her sister and I would do nothing but read all day long while the boys were out fishing. Last year, she read 144 books, stomping my 20 down to a pancake compared to her skyscraper. She still calls them her “chapter books.” Today, instead of raising a glass to my daughter, I open a book. It’s what we do best in our DNA.

Happy Birthday, Mallory!

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It’s Snowing Books!

One minute we’re expecting snow along with the ice storm of the century, but the next it’ll be 75 degrees and sunny. There’s a chance of snowfall, ranging anywhere from 0″ to 145.” I’ve heard it all this week, and I guess it’s safe to say we’ve prepared for all or nothing, just as they’ve said: prepare for the worst, hope for the best. And The Weather Channel is the best place to find a time loop where you live the same ten minutes on repeat. It may well be the portal for time travelers to take a jaunt in time somewhere far more stable than here.

I’m not sure what I’d take with me, but no matter where I am, all I really need are books, dogs, a comfy chair and a cup of coffee. My TBR stack is taller than I am, and I keep reading blog after blog after blog. This morning, Tom Ryan’s Substack featured the most joyful photos I’ve seen all year ~ his dog Emily (Samwise in the background) leaping for joy. He and his two dogs have just move to Cape Cod from the White Mountains of New Hampshire and are walking the woods where Mary Oliver wrote much of her poetry.

Today will be a day of quiet, peaceful living here on the Johnson Funny Farm an hour south of Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, right on the flight path where we use our Flight Tracker app to check where all the planes have left and where there going. Fun times. Quiet: at least, that’s what’s planned, but things can go sideways here pretty fast. Fifteen times in the past five minutes, there have been earth-shaking gunshots out here in the deep rural country ~ deer? ducks? Who knows? The important thing is that the dogs are here tucked safely in our bed, the gas logs have plenty of propane, we’re stocked up on candles and have 12 pouches of tuna, a dozen boiled eggs, and cheese and crackers. And instant coffee.

Let the reading commence! Wherever this day finds you, even if your power goes out, I hope you stay warm and cozy.

the book is better

than any movie ever

our own minds film scenes

pennies, nickels, dimes

won’t buy a movie ticket

reading a book: free!

I’m currently reading Theo of Golden by Allen Levi.

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Verse Novels Make Me Smile

For the next 3 weeks, I’m taking our media specialists on tours of different media centers in our state to gather ideas for updating our own media centers. We were on a tour today when one middle school media center had a section completely dedicated to verse novels – and a poster definition, too! I felt my whole heart warm as I looked at the fabulous display and smiled – –here is a media specialist who is curating a collection for a kid after my own heart. Yes! I’m cheering!

verse novel fever

starts with but one heartwarming

poetic story

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A Game Changer

I work in an open space that used to be a midde school library, now converted to the District Office and divided with partitions into cubicles. The partitions don’t reach the ceiling, and there are no doors on the cubicles, so sometimes conversations make it challenging to stay focused and mind my own business.

A colleague suggested noise-cancelling ear buds – – said hers were “a game changer” for focus, especially when working with data and reporting.

I considered it. But it’s hard to have a pair of ear buds at home and a pair at work and feel like it’s worth springing for anything new that might be just a smidge better. Still, I checked my ear buds, hoping they had a noise cancelling feature I hadn’t yet figured out. They did not.

As I started looking at noise cancelling options, I came across a pair of headphones, not earbuds, on sale. I’d seen a good many passengers on a recent flight wearing these – in the airport and even as they boarded the plane, some even wearing them straight through the three hour flight. What was I missing?

I decided to take a chance and try a pair. If I didn’t like them, I could always send them back. They were over 50 percent off, and from a reputable brand. Most important, they were noise-cancelling, and they came in faint rose petal pink!

I’m not sure whether it’s their petal-pinkness or their noise-cancelling magic, but my colleague was right – – –these are 100% a game changer. As a bonus, I recently discovered Kate Baer’s writing playlist, so this is my go-to for sustaining focus. My work buddy has helped me find a way to enhance my work experience with calming music.

I’m simply grateful.

It’s the little things

that matter ~ coffee, music,

great books, and kind friends.