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Ready to Greet a New Grandson!

I made the trip Friday night from Georgia to Tennessee, and on Saturday morning from Tennessee to Kentucky. Although it’s a long and tiring trip, especially driving it alone and at night, it has been worth every second for all the joy and excitement! I’m here in Western Kentucky, just a few minutes from Indiana, to celebrate the forthcoming arrival of my new grandson, Silas Haynes Neal. He’s something of a triple miracle ~ his parents overcame their own personal struggles, and then their best choices led them to each other. They found love. They found blessing. They drew two families together to love this little bud on our family tree who will surely have us all wrapped up in his sweetness and charm before long.

Their first dates were picnics and hikes here in Yellow Creek Park, so this is where they chose to be showered with blessing again. I noticed children swinging, playing on the playground, laughing and stealing with delight as I drove into the entrance of this park. What a fitting place – a place holding the history of their own romance and the future of their son’s play. An outdoorsy place that stamps the love of nature and outdoors right into the imprint of his name’s meaning – Silas Haynes Neal (woodland) – and the theme of the nursery – – woodland friends. A place where the grandmothers embraced wearing jeans and woodland colors, keeping the festivities relaxed and simple, focused on others like two Marys in a Martha world. The very things we hope for our grandson.

But we did do a Martha thing or two. The first gift was a knife and cake server set, engraved with his name, to be used from the baby shower to the birthday cakes to the wedding cake and any other cakes throughout his life. There will always be a memory of the grandmothers at celebrations – – grandmothers who, from before his first breath, prayed and hoped for his happy future with much to celebrate, even when we are no longer here to cut the cake.

gift from his grandmas~

a personalized cake knife

engraved with his name

for celebrations

through all of his lifelong years

to know he belongs

a child loved, wanted

here on the family tree

woven into the

personalities,

yarns of who we are, taking

our bloodlines as his

And I hope, truly hope, that his fun side shines through – – that someday, just like his father, he takes the silver elastic band from a gift and puts it on his head and smiles on – because that’s where the joy is found, in being a little silly and not too rigid and serious.

I’ve extended my stay to be able to enjoy more outdoor experiences and beauty of nature with these two today. We’ll visit the Western Kentucky Botanical Gardens and stroll through the pleasant breezes forecast for the day. The leaves are just beginning to change, and the feel of fall is crisp in the air. It’s a perfect day for all the best that life has to offer!

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A Baby Shower!

snap lots of pictures

celebrate the baby bump

slice the woodland cake

today my baby

will be showered with love for

her own little boy!

tomorrow I will

share the excitement we had

in Yellow Creek Park

as my new grandson

Silas, whose name means woodlands,

leaps with wombful joy

growing strong to meet

his loving family who

can’t wait to hold him!

I made the trip late Friday night, leaving work at 4 p.m. and planning to drive to Chattanooga before stopping to sleep. Even though there have been two major hurricanes in the Southeast in the past week or so, I hadn’t predicted the fully booked impact on hotels. There was no room in the inns for me. Not in Chattanooga, not in Manchester, not in the second exit after Manchester. It wasn’t until Murfreesboro that I found the proverbial “one last room,” and I eagerly and exhaustedly took it, continuing the rest of the trip yesterday morning after a restful sleep.

My worst fears flashed when I got to Owensboro to check in for a few days here, only to be told at the first hotel that they were booked. Thankfully, I found a room on the second attempt at a nearby hotel and checked in after a full day of scouting for fruit and vegetable trays, baby game prize gifts, and the perfect woodland-colored jumper and sweater set to show off the little one growing in my daughter’s cute belly.

This baby is a healing miracle for her and for her love. They found each other, despite all odds of their challenging journeys, and two families come together today to help them prepare to become not only a couple, but also a family.

The grandmothers got together to give our Silas a cake knife and slice server engraved with his name: Silas Haynes Neal. This set will be used at his baby shower and at his birthday parties in years to come, with the hopes that he will also use it as he cuts the groom’s cake at his own wedding someday – and we hope that if we are no longer here to be physically present, then there will at least be some small part of us present in spirit on that day as he celebrates.

For today, we are here and we are anticipating his arrival at the end of 2024. We couldn’t be happier!

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Exhaustion

exhaustion sets in

unlike little cat feet fog

more like lion paws

I’m exhausted. Fall break begins today, and I’m ready for a rest.

I’ll travel to Kentucky for my daughter’s baby shower and spend time with her the first part of the week, perhaps doing some light hiking in her favorite state park and helping them find things for their new home. Then, I’ll come home and attend a book discussion group on Weyward by Emilie Hart and work on my writing deadlines for the book my writing group has coming out in 2025.

Normally, I don’t count minutes at work. I’m not a clock watcher for any other reason than being on time for meetings and deadlines.

Today is different. I’m ready to give my mind a break and enjoy some cooler temperatures in northern Kentucky. I’m ready to see some leaves changing color and feel the breeze nipping enough to make me zip my jacket.

I’m ready to rest.

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Culvert Kitty Cat

culvert kitty cat

living the dream in the park

…..until chased by dogs

Here’s what happens when dogs go walking in a state park and encounter the feral cats that live in the underground tunneled culvert system along the edges of the roads:

We were out walking the trails in the state park and were on our way back to our campsite when they spotted a cat basking on the side of a ditch. Our dogs were on leashes and are nothing but curious, but I fear for these cats with the wildlife and the dogs not on leashes. We saw several of the cats that people have mentioned seeing in this state park. The cats appear to be well fed and mind their own business, but I worry for them because of extreme weather and extreme people. Ollie wanted to play, but this cat wasn’t having it. I’m a bit worried that if they don’t trap these cats to spay/neuter them, then this park will be covered up in cats within a year’s time.

It seems like the culverts would be the perfect situation for trapping them and getting them fixed. And as much as camping folks seem to love our pets, I would imagine that an appeal for small donations would bring a quick response to pay for the necessary procedures. I do hope that someone is thinking ahead and doing the feral cat math before they take over.

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It all screams fall!

Stone fireplace in the FDRoosevelt State Park Registration Office

crisp feel in the air

decorations, breezes, temps

on the cusp of fall

Even the candles remind us that there is a perfect Autumn Day to be lived.

The candles say it, the decorations declare it, the large stone fireplaces sing out, and it all screams fall. Everywhere I looked, there were signs: wildlife scurrying in a cool-temperature kind of way, people milling about with jackets, and food servers arriving at tables with bowls of soup and chicken pot pie.

There’s nothing like the welcoming in-between seasons of spring and fall for those of us who love the bridges from one phase to the next. The cool-not cold, and the warm-not-hot of the outdoor comforts that allow us to be outdoors in the fresh air, taking in the slight changes that are happening all around ~ these are the best times of all.

The decorations are up in places to welcome the change of seasons.
We like to sit outdoors with coffee and muffins and have a breakfast picnic on the mountain overlooking the valley at F D Roosevelt State Park. Just birdsong and the occasional group of motorcyclists out enjoying the day.

Chicken Pot Pie on the menu at the Country Kitchen at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Ga.
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An October Reminder

get your mammogram

{{Breast Cancer Awareness Month}}

~reminding my friends~

I finally got my cycle of mammograms to October, the most popular month to get a mammogram! I took a half day, and at first didn’t make the connection – – I wondered why the lobby was more crowded than I’d ever seen it. Then I remembered: it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Everybody’s here for the squeeze.

But I’m completing the whole triathlon. I’m getting bloodwork, having the mammogram, and having a colonoscopy all in the first two weeks of the last quarter of the year.

When I finished my annual screening with close to 30 pounds of pressure on each side top to bottom and sideways (according to the digital readout), I had the strangest urge to go celebrate with a pancake breakfast. Instead, I thought about my recent bloodwork and the results that my sugar should be considered before making any spontaneous breakfast moves. Once I’d removed the gown and gotten my girls repositioned and safely strapped back into their carseats under my shirt for their travels through the day, the mammographer thanked me for coming, giving me a pink cup to help me carry the message.

This coming week, I’ll take the table for the other end and take a nice nap while the nature walk for polyps commences. I’ll try not to dwell on last year’s trip along Route 66, where we stopped in Missouri at the Uranus Fudge Factory. I’ll think instead on the first time I had a colonoscopy and decorated my @$$. And at all costs, I’ll resist the urge to stop for fudge on the way home. (And for the record, I do not want a brown mug from the Colonoscopy Department to match the pink one from the Mammography Department in the picture above).

To all my friends and readers: get your tests done, and try to find a way to make the dreaded medical visits we put off a sparkly checklist accomplishment.

Onward!

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Tails on Trails Weekend Walks

they love to take walks

to go “tailing on trailing,”

as state parks call it

Fitz, Ollie, and Boo Radley take to the trails and paths of state parks

Our three Schnoodles enjoy taking to the trails. In Georgia, the state parks have a program called Tails on Trails, and you can even get a t-shirt for yourself and your pups to identify yourself as a Tailer-on-Trailer.

Our boys may look all nonchalant about it, but don’t let them fool you. They live for this. Boo Radley could not settle himself down for all the things he was trying to take in, and Fitz had to pee on every upturned leaf and then kick dirt and pine straw up in a confetti nature parade behind him as he scratched off. He and Ollie tried to scale a vertical cliff like they were mountain goats or something.

Come with us for a few moments as we walk. The band of brothers will lead the way.

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inspiration ~

I saw this social media post with a haiku plus 3 syllables, and it inspired me to take action:

Photo taken from a social media post about writing poems

My Response to the Leaf Writer

I did what you said

I found leaves and rocks, penned verse,

left for others to

discover….

We were camping at FD Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia, and the leaves are starting to change. I found an assortment of leaves and rocks and took the advice from the

post.

Mary Oliver verse on a rock

This writing on the rocks makes me think of my time in Asheville at the Grove Park Inn, which has been fiercely and steadily on my mind over the past week. I’ve heard much about Biltmore House, but very little is out there except for a statement that I could find on the Grove Park Inn’s website. Besides the old caged elevator and the mega-sized fireplaces with rocking chairs lined up in front of them, one of my favorite things to do at the Grove Park Inn during my visit there was walking around and reading the quotes from books etched into the rocks in the lobby. Perhaps this rock with its lines of poetry is one small way to keep the city of Asheville and its devout love of the arts close to my heart as they heal.

I do hope that The Grove Park Inn finds a way to temporarily host the National Gingerbread House Contest in November this year to another location if they are unable to have it there – which I’m sure may be next to impossible. My vote is for Atlanta, and I’d love to buy 15 tickets and bring the children and grandchildren!

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Book Talk Continued, an Illustrated Reverse Haibun

I shared, they listened

we engaged in the need for

more writing to heal

My haibun today is in reverse – my haiku is first, my narrative is second, but I’m also adding pictures to make it an illustrated haibun.

The evening kicked off with Craig Logan’s welcome to TUAC and introduction, and then I was honored to share the journey of my writing group’s most recent books after the publication of Bridge the Distance and Rhyme and Rhythm: Sports Poems for Athletes. I printed these notes and placed a copy on the podium to guide me through the evening.

Book Talk Agenda and Talking Points – October 3, 2025 6:30 p.m. TUAC – Thomaston, GA

Agenda Timeline

6:30 – Welcome/introduction/talk

7:00 – Stop talking and take Q and A, Drawing for free books from David’s Bust Vase

7:30 – Reception, Meet and Greet, Book signing

Talking Points

Thank you for coming!

Land Honorarium of Place, Native Tribes, People, Our Stories (keyword for the evening)

In The Beginning: 

Write before Read   – – the photograph of Dad’s stacks of books/me as a baby seated among them/ him studying/ firm roots in books and language

Crayons – writing in the books, or how I to read and write using Crayola names of colors

Childcraft – Harold Monro “Overheard on a Salt Marsh” Poem fixation, and….

a Child’s Garden of Verses – two copies by age 6

Checklist Book:  Memoir, my first book – Father, Forgive Me: Confessions of a Southern Baptist Preacher’s Kid

The Middle: 

Mother’s death, NCTE Convention, and Sarah Donovan with The Groups at www.ethicalela.com that emerged ~

Bridge the Distance (Oral History Project through Oklahoma State University)

                        Rhyme and Rhythm (an invitation to an anthology – read Golden Shovel)

And then……we coded prompts since 2016.  Predominant themes emerged:  Healing, Assessment, Community Spirit, Technology uses, and Teachers’ needs for shorter texts and stories

Who wants to work on which books?  We made groups.  

  • 90 Ways of Community by Sarah Donovan, Maureen Ingram, and Mo Daley (Read poems from here) – Mo Daley’s poem – “She Told Me Many Months Later”
  • Just YA an anthology of over 15 writers
  • Words that Mend: The Transformative Power of Writing Poetry for Students, Teachers, and Community Wellbeing and The Authors
  • ePoetry by Sarah Donovan and Stefani Boutelier was picked up by a a major education publisher and will come out in 2025
  • Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas: Humanizing Formative Assessment for Grades 6-12 by Sarah Donovan, Barb Edler, Kim Johnson, Anna Roseboro, and Gayle Sands is under contract with Routledge and will come out in 2025

The Conclusion:

Keep writing – set a timer – tell your story. Write it down. SHARE it. Your story matters.

Q&A

*Photos shared with me by Bethany Johnson and Briar Johnson, and I am ever appreciative of my sister-in-law and my husband for their outpouring of love and support!