Do you love journals and pens? Are you a particular-type-of-pencil snob? Are you drawn to notepads, Post-It Notes, notecards, and writing tablets of all shapes and sizes? If you said yes to any of these questions and you’ve ever had a secret wish to write poetry but aren’t sure how to start, I might can help.
I want to provide a link to a special book that is a completely free download herein digital form or a cost-of-printing book form here. Each chapter is filled with poems that explain the type of poetry, a prompt to get you started, instructions, and a mentor poem to show a sample by another poet for inspiration.
If you’re looking to set a goal of writing, this book can launch your new healthy habit!
Mo Daley of Illinois introduced the X Marks the Spot poem in one of our monthly Open Writes through Ethicalela.com. To write one, find any page of print and make an X from corner to corner or across any part, then list the words the X touches. Using one, a couple, a few, some, most, or all of those words, write a poem. I chose a recent essay by humorist David Sedaris, “And Your Little Dog, Too,” for my X and used chained haiku for the form.
Here are the words I listed:
unconscious hole bent sells past shout seemingly walking foot mountain addicted leg snarling registered recreational pushed realized obnoxiously illicit downtown
Come sit right here by me if you’re a reader. Settle in, pour a cup of coffee, and let’s have a book chat. I want to hear what stories have kept you reading this year, and how your reading has inspired new adventures.
I’ll go first. Right now, I’m reading Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson, which will be the January 2026 pick for our Kindred Spirits book club. It has me on the edge of my seat at every new twist and turn. I especially like that the setting is taking me back to our trip to Woodstock, Vermont in November of 2024, where we had one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had in my life, complete with Vermont maple syrup that was made from the trees on the property where we were staying. A friend and member of the Kindred Spirits book club recommended Woodstock as a stop on our trip after NCTE last year, and we used her exact trip itinerary from a trip she’d taken with her daughter in planning our own. While my husband and I were in Woodstock, we took some time to go exploring a few back roads while we were there, and I have some of the setting assigned to places we saw, such as the famous bridge. It’s hard to imagine that a crime like the one in this book could happen there, but where there are humans, there will be crime. This book inspired me to wrap up in a blanket I bought from the Vermont Flannel Company while I was there and to pull up the photos from that amazing trip and add them to the new digital photo frame my daughter sent us for Christmas. Oh, to go back there!
The Kindred Spirits dive into exciting fiction, and this group tends to gravitate toward thrillers. Once we’ve finished reading a book, we plan some sort of adventure to go along with what we have read so that we allow our reading to inspire new discoveries. You can see our reading choices and adventures from 2025 here. We’ll be meeting December 19 to put the first six months of our 2026 list together. I’d like to ask for your favorite book recommendations. Please help us out ~ which books have you read recently that you savored, and what made you fall in love with them? Also, have you ever been part of a reading retreat where everyone reads a few books and then drives an hour or two to a mountain lodge for a weekend to talk about those books, read more books, sit by the fire, eat delicious food, visit a spa, and shop in the stores on the town square? We’ve heard of those retreats and are thinking of trying one sometime this year, so we’re all ears for your most exciting book experiences as we plan a few slices of life.
A street scene of Woodstock, Vermont
My husband sits by the fire of the Woodstock Inn as we wait to eat dinner
My second favorite shop in Woodstock, where I bought our favorite blanket (the bookstore was my favorite)
We’ve needed for about 2 years to redesign our front hardscape bed when the river rocks we’d put down many years ago began looking dated and worn. Instead of taking them up, we left them as the base, killed the weeds, and laid new landscape fabric over the top of the lackluster layer. We began the process a month or so ago, knowing that pacing would be important for us at our ages. Still, we wanted to do it ourselves because we’ve always enjoyed creating a vision and making it happen – – together!
We started with bright white rock (which will turn a light gray in about 6 months), curving one edge of the rock to prepare for the next layer. We also wanted to use black rock and possibly some pine straw as a way to blend some landscape into the hardscape – pine straw not really being the first choice, but a budgetary consideration and trade-off for the black rock I really wanted to be able to include in the overall design. It’s a lot like building a house – – you have to make some sacrifices to realize some gains. We added a barn scene Christmas flag and moved the American flag to the Purple Martin pole while we clean out their house, and added a faux boulder to the mix. A few solar pathway lights, a couple of my late mother’s birdbaths, and a pre-lit Christmas wreath with a sparkly red bow completed the design we’d needed to update for a handful of years. We pulled out the elephant ears and the jasmine that was everywhere, even climbing onto the roof.
Our goal was to create a low-maintenance garden look that doesn’t require a lot of weeding or fluffing. Our budget was to not break the bank. But with rocks being $12 a bag and covering the space of the bag itself times 2, we were only within budget for the white rock section. Added plants will only happen minimally henceforth, and only in pots so that we can keep the pruning and weeding under control and raise the pots if we can’t bend.
The finished hardscape
We’re satisfied with the finished look, and more than happy that the front bed work will carry us to the next decade….and now, once we’ve let our backs recover for the winter, there’ll be the beds in the back of the house that will need some attention come springtime. For the first time in my life, I see why senior citizens choose condominium living complete with groundskeeping fees. It’s tempting. Very, very tempting.
Ornaments made by Joy, bearing our group name and holding a miniature version of each of the books we’ve read this year
Last night was our first annual Kindred Spirits Book Club Christmas Party, and six ladies celebrated a year of reading 11 novels and one month of daily poetry with dinner and dessert, games, gifts, and laughter. We even chose our first book of 2026 (Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson) as we picked our seats for the movie The Housemaid, which we will see together later this month as a book-related adventure.
Our book club came as a granted wish of one of our reading sisters who had been attending a book club sponsored by one of our community partners when we were grant recipients of an initiative to build literacy in schools and communities. This community partner experienced a change in its leadership when its organizer took a different job, so our book club sister Janette came up with a brilliant idea. She suggested that we pick up the pieces and read the books that were purchased, and then, to preserve the integrity of the grant, to fill the Little Free Libraries with these books once we finished reading them and having our meetings.
At first, we weren’t sure whether a book club would take root, but we took Janette’s idea and extended an invitation in January 2025 to read a book and meet at our local coffee shop a few weeks later to discuss it. We found some universal book club questions and were thrilled when six of us came to talk about it. By the time we finished the first couple of books, we had enough momentum to choose books not provided through the grant to continue the club all year. Fast forward to December, and we’re still going strong.
We were not all diehard readers when we embarked on the journey. A couple of us knew we needed books – – and adventures that are sparked by things we’ve read – – but what we didn’t know is how much we needed each other. We’re a classic example of an eclectic group of women with different reading tastes, in different stages of life, with a range of life experiences. But we’re drawn together by books that unify us and common themes that allow us to share our own perspectives. And when human hearts find the right books and the right space, they bond as readers with a sweet kinship. Like us, they are Kindred Spirits.
This morning, I celebrate a year of reading with Janette, Joy, Jill, Jennifer, and Martina. Here are the books we’ve read in our club this year, in order, along with the adventure we shared (a few of us belong to other reading clubs, but here is our list):
January – The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend
Emerald Chandelier Tea Room Brunch
February – Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
Mexican Restaurant Night
March – The Wedding People by Alison Escape
Cake Tasting
April – The Last Flight by Julie Clark
Airport Dinner with a bag of 3 things we’d bring if we changed identities
May – First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
Played Two Truths and a Lie
June/July – The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Made Indoor S’mores
August – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
All wore green on an outing
September – One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury
Shared 9/11 Stories of Survivors and Victims
October – Regretting You by Colleen Hoover
Dinner and Movie Night
November – The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
Dinner and Movie Night
December – The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan
Christmas Party
Selected Poems for National Poetry Month
Wrote poetry
(Full Disclosure: Not all of us liked or would recommend all of these books to others – but in true book club spirit, we stayed the course and kept turning the pages).
In our first book of the year, a character was always making tea, so we visited a tea room for a Saturday morning brunch. At our party, we played the Left, Right, Across game with the story below (feel free to modify and use it for your own book club), and each of us took home a mismatched teacup and saucer in the bag that ended up in front of us. We played Mad Libs, had a wrapped book swap, and had a gift exchange as well, and we can’t wait to see what 2026 brings!
Don’t miss the photos of our book club through the year under the story.
A Book Club Christmas Party
It was the evening of the annual Christmas Dinner party as members of the book club arrived and settled in right on time for what was left of the day. Last spring, with books left over from a grant, they stacked their hands right together in a huddled pledge to read across the year. They’d started right away with The Beautiful and the Wild, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, and The Wedding People, which left them all wanting more adventures like tea parties and movie outings and even driving slap across the county to the airport with packed bags. They shared what they’d take with them as they sat across the table after reading The Last Flight. They even read across genres that included poetry. They had some books left, so they dove right straight into First Lie Wins, The God of the Woods – which they read across the summer months – and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, each reader thinking secretly of one or two of the books, “well, geez, that’s one I might have left out of the lineup” right before starting the next books ~ One Tuesday Morning, Regretting You, The Housemaid, and The Book Club Hotel. Eleven books across the span of the year, and here they were right at the table, celebrating all their different tastes in reading while gathering each month to read books they may have left out of their own lives except that they yearned to be right there discussing books together with their reading sisters, appreciating how their reading tastes, though often a mixed and mismatched bag, revealed all those moments of having just the right book at the right time because that’s what books do – they unify. Each realized, across the span of the year, that reading together is just the right medicine for the soul. In the perfect spirit of solidarity, they clinked their cups before heading right back home already dreaming of the next gathering, and as each guest left, they felt right at home in their book club family, where they fit snugly and belonged, as precious and interesting as fine mismatched china.
In the cellar of 1828 Coffee Company, where we hold most of our monthly discussionsKindred Spirits Book Club From L-R: Jennifer, me, Martina, Joy, Jill, and JanetteAt the movie Regretting You after reading the book by Colleen HooverChristmas Gifts and mismatched teacups and saucersAt the Emerald Chandelier Tea RoomAt The Emerald Chandelier Tea Room after reading our first book of 2025At our Kindred Spirits Christmas Party, 12/5/2025
One type of poem I’ve been writing this year is a gift basket poem – – what would I give a recipient in any given month of the year? For December, the choice is clear: it’ll be filled with seasonal snowy white wonderland things.
If I were giving you a gift basket I’d go with winter white!
you’d receive a sherpa lounge throw, electric and soft ~ three settings to warm the winter chill
a Paperwhite Kindle, Signature edition with stories your heart to fill
and a candle, glowing bright in the darkest night, a flame for the windowsill
Our host for Spiritual Journey Thursday for December is Jone MacCulloch, who shares a quote by Thomas Merton to inspire reflection and writing: The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Jone invites us to share what we are doing in these days of December to promote periods of silence and reflection. You can read her full post here at this link.
I had lunch with a couple of friends this week who are looking more forward to the holidays this year than ever before. They’ve cut out a toxic personality from their lives, and they say life has never been better. I celebrate them and share, with permission and in poetic form, their sentiments from our conversation. Sometimes holidays require us to consider our own mental health, and this year is that year for them. They’ve cut all ties and have moved on with their lives in healthier ways. I couldn’t be happier for them.
They say they don’t miss a dozen iterations of a
salad not even on the menu or
the barely audible low talk with fake
victim eyes, polished nails tapping a
coffee mug
they don’t miss
making plans they never wanted in the
first place or the never-ending reach for
attention or the Bible whippings from
a pious mouth-hole
or her.
They don’t miss
her.
They don’t miss all the presumptions or her
sickening fundie baby voice or the conclusive
expressions of the Dunning-Kruger con artist
or the mission that something needs to be
fixed and she’s the sole savior to do it.
No one misses her.
No one wants to fix her broken world.
They mostly see her as a mosaic of
toxic personalities, there
in a heap of jagged
edges just waiting to cut her next victim
this narcissistic it’s-all-about-me princess of her
For the first few years of being grandparents, we overdid it a little with Christmas. Let me rephrase that the way my husband would say it happened: for the first few years of being a grandparent, I (me, singular) became Santa with a full sleigh at Christmas. My heart grew too many sizes to contain all the joy, and it flooded the living room in presents for our grandson.
My second, forever, current, and final (in that order, and all the same) husband is still taken aback at times with the flurry of people and number of gifts under the tree at Christmas. He grew up the eldest of three siblings, and the age span took him out into the working world and out of the home while they were still growing up. He was married for a short time, and he and his first wife have one son. If he remembers ripping wrapping paper and other Christmas chaos, those sensory elements of sounds, pitches, and squeals of laughter have evaded him up until he is reminded once again of the reality of noise when he is in the midst of multiple children.
I was married for the first time on this very day forty years ago when it fell on Thanksgiving Day, at 11:00 a.m., before anyone sat down for a turkey dinner as we slipped out on our honeymoon. The best thing to ever come of that marriage that lasted 19 years – other than the lessons learned and my former mother-in-law’s amazing recipe for cranberry orange relish – are three children, their mates, and their seven children, along with the hope of generations to come. The second best thing was that I learned to play a mean hand of euchre, a popular card game played widely up in the northern part of New York State.
By the time my second, forever, current, and final husband and I married, our blended family of four children were practically grown, except for two still finishing high school. They wanted mostly clothes, electronics, and cash for Christmas, and they knew by this time how to sleep late on Christmas morning. Our lives were mostly quiet until grandchildren came along, and suddenly the wonder and surprise of young children returned. And so did all the festivity of Christmas!
When the second grandchild came along, I had to cut back on the Christmas shopping. When the third came, even more. By the time the fourth was born, we needed a system and some ground rules to try to avoid breaking the bank. With the fifth, we tried the first system that worked, but by the sixth it had already changed. With the seventh grandchild’s arrival and plans to retire someday, we think the current system will work but have an alternate plan for retirement when it happens.
So many of my friends ask how we do it, even pre-retirement, with seven grandchildren. And through trial and error over these past 15 years, I’ll spare the journey and share what works for us. It all began when my paternal grandparents used to give each of their grandchildren cash on Thanksgiving Day. My grandfather, who had lived through the Great Depression, served as a pastor, and made his fortune in railroad stock but who had always lived as if he’d had nothing, had kept cash envelopes in his shirt pocket, and as the opportunity presented itself, he’d spent time with each of us to tell us how proud he was of us and to give us Christmas money. As a teenager, it meant the gift went further with the sales – we could pick exactly what we’d wanted from them and could get something better, marked down (the year of the Sony Walkman comes to mind). But as a young parent, that Christmas money was a total game changer. For so many years, that check meant my own children had a visit from Santa. I learned from my paternal grandparents that giving money is not impersonal at Christmas, as many folks may believe. I learned that in the ultimate spirit of giving, sometimes the gift of greenery makes the difference in the way others are able to focus on giving and not merely receiving.
That’s why our adult children get greenery at Christmas, before Black Friday. Cash. I’d been too proud to tell my grandfather all those years ago that it made the difference in my own children’s Christmas, but fast forward to this past week: one of our four said to me what I wish I’d said to my own grandfather – – this makes all the difference, and now Santa can get busy. Because adulting is real, and parenting somehow makes it real-er.
That’s half of the system that works. The other part is in a fun jingle I heard somewhere along the way, and we’ve been using it ever since. We asked our children to create an Amazon list for each of their children, with their first name and the year. In that list, they include a selection of items in these four categories: something they want, something they need, something to wear (in the correct size), and something to read. And from there, we are able to use the list either for the exact item or for an idea of something we shop in person to purchase. I’ve given up on coded gift wrap, too, in a different pattern for each child – – now it’s just one of those glorified plastic bags decorated all in Christmas colors, and the four items go all in the same bag, one for each child on the years we are able to get together in person. On years when the children are with other family members and we FaceTime, the Christmas bags make it easier for the parents to organize the gifts and keep them hidden in their homes until Christmas. On years we are together, it means I’m not up wrapping at all hours of the night.
This system may not work for everyone, but it works for us, and when others try to grasp how we “do” Christmas with seven grandchildren and four children all in four different states from Atlantic to Pacific, I tell them: we have a budget and a system, and we stick to it. It does not take away from the Christmas cheer – – it keeps it in perspective! Most of all, it keeps this Nana from trying to outdo Santa, and that’s important to the real Santa.
If we find that in retirement our jingle needs a trim, I’ve thought ahead to the next system. It may sound something like this as the grandchildren reach their teenage years – something you want, plus something you need that’s either something to wear or something to read…..or greenery. We’ll see what the years bring.
On this Black Friday, happy shopping! May you find the perfect gift for everyone on your list, no matter what your system is, even if your system is no system at all. And may you find parking spaces close to every store if you are an in-person shopper.
…above all
no matter the level
of festivity and chaos and noise
may you find moments of
peace and quiet meditation
keeping the real reason for the season
at the heart
of it all
All of us, except for one grandson who did not make the October trip with us
Common Threads 