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.
Have you ever wondered whether you could write daily?
Do you love poetry and prose?
f Are you strapped for time and wonder about the commitment?
Wonder no more.
Come on, take my hand and walk down the shore. See the beauty?
Join the Year 3 kickoff of The Stafford Challenge today. It’s not too late to sign up, and you may just ask yourself what took you so long to join. This writing circle is completely free (you can make a donation only if you want – and I did not donate until the 3rd year). You will meet writers from all over the world, be inspired by them, and have the option to join a small group writing circle (you can join with others you don’t know or form your own like we did), where you will share and form some of the closest long-distance relationships you’ve ever had. Even if you don’t consider yourself a strong writer – – or a writer at all.
Come on, stick your big toe in the water. It feels refreshing in here.
My small writing group meets the first Monday of each month ~ Barb Edler of Iowa, Glenda Funk of Idaho, and Denise Krebs of California. We catch up on life, we talk about what we’re reading and what we’re writing, and we share our poetry. Sometimes we write during our Zoom. You know that poem The Cure by Kate Baer in her latest book How About Now? It’s how I feel about my writing circles. This is so much more than breakfast.
Today is the kickoff, and you can sign up at this link. I would love to see you there today. I’ll send you a wave from my tiny screen.
Come on, dive in! You can swim or float, and either is divine.
Reading and writing circles in my life that started as groups but quickly became those who are now friends and sisters enrich my life in ways that bring depth and meaning to ordinary days. At the end of this week, one group will celebrate the finale of the second year of The Stafford Challenge, led by Brian Rohr in memory of William Stafford and will kick off year three with a launch party the next day. I’ll be there for both, but at first I wasn’t quite sure.
I didn’t participate in a small writing group with this larger group during its first year, deliberately waiting to feel the climate. Once you’ve participated in a few groups, you realize that there are some unhealthy ones out there and that it’s always best to stand back and take a long, hard look at who’s at the party and how they’re behaving before deciding whether to go all in and put your heart out there.
By the middle of the first year, I could sense that the larger group had plenty to offer, but I was still hesitant to take part in a small group with such an eclectic mix of personalities. I prefer positive people still growing as writers, and I’d sensed that there were a few who perceived themselves as professional poets with red pens, ready to offer venomous feedback on everything that didn’t align with their thinking. The few times I ambled into the Facebook group and posted a poem, it reminded me of a small town social media group with spiked collars and leather jackets and on…something, maybe steroids or stronger, and that simply wasn’t for me. I’d written a poem about my daughter’s birthday, and one lady accused me of being a racist because I’d used the expression gypsy vagabond. I took the poem down, satisfied that I’d finally confirmed that the idyllic pond was trolled by poet-devouring piranha.
I realized it wasn’t just me when one of my writing friends from my favorite larger writing circle shared that she, too, had experienced a troubling exchange in that group. Fast forward, and it turned out that four of us whose groups spanned to other circles were looking for a small group to continue in The Stafford Challenge, and so we formed our own that meets on the first Monday night of each month. We share what we’re writing, what we’re reading, what we’ve written, and what we’ve read. We talk grandchildren and husbands and children and pets, and we talk life. We inspire each other to keep writing, and we nudge each other to try new forms and techniques. We encourage and empower. There are no red pens.
That’s how I learned of Kate Baer. My friend Glenda Funk, a retired teacher from Idaho who travels the world with her husband Ken and is an avid reader who is also owned by some extremely spoiled and entitled Schnoodles, shared Kate’s book of found poems I Hope This Finds You Well, and I joined the fan club instantly. I didn’t think Baer could put out a better book of poetry, but Glenda mentioned last week that she’d just finished the latest Kate Baer, How About Now, and I finished it in one sitting yesterday. By the end of the day, I might have ordered one of those blue shirts on her website shop – – 1-800-How-About-Now. And the print of that favorite poem, How About Now, that you can read here.
And of course I surfed around, looking for more to dig deeper into Kate’s life and inspiration. The best reading I found was this interview https://cupofjo.com/2025/12/11/kate-baer-house-tour-pennsylvania-poet/ where we learn just how common her life is, and we realize that this is the way of the truest poets – the gifts of seeing the wonder in the simple things and being able to share it in words to tug at the hearts of readers with such enormity.
Consider my heart tugged, and consider me grateful for all the readers and writers in my life who offer such joy. You are what I think Kate Baer refers to as The Cure. Which, by the way, is my own personal favorite poem from her latest book.
P.S. I wanted to share one Substack author’s link about Kate’s Found Poetry in I Hope This Finds You Well.
Gayle Sands of Maryland is our host today for the third and final day of the January 2025 Open Write. She inspires us to write holiday versions of the viral I Am poem, a template for which you can find here. You can read her full prompt, mentor poem, and the poems of others here. There is a whole movement that emerged from this poem, and the I Am Project page can be found here.
Haynes Homestead Holidays
I am from the sequined felt stockings
of oranges, nuts, and candy cane dreams
From Life Savers Story Books that weren’t at all and a
red-headed Chrissy doll in an orange dress
but never that Lite Brite I wanted
I am from the Island Padre’s pastorium
under the Live Oaks with a round disc tree swing
the one with the brick fence
and a chalkboard in the back yard
for playing school with stolen chalk
I am from the daylilies no one ever saw
and the oleanders I feared would kill the dog
from the ever-blooming Christmas cactus
generations deep
until I killed it
I’m from Christmas Eve Candlelight Services
from singing Silent Night in a congregational circle
in the dark, cold churchyard
From Joneses and Hayneses
one side complete chaos, the other complete order
from junk drawers galore to every spare nail and screw in its place
I’m from the silver tinsel tree
with Sears Wishbook presents wrapped in Santa paper
and fruitcake cookies we pretended to like
from high noon resentment
and questions that weren’t meant that way
I’m from driftwood and oyster shell Nativity sets
from going with the flow to cloistered
I’m from deep South Georgia roots I’m glad I escaped
preferring mountains over islands and choices I never had
From Lowcountry boil with Old Bay on Christmas Day
From the preacher granddaddy taking candy from a lady
on Bourbon Street trying to pray with her
to the other granddaddy I caught nipping from the bottle in the garage
From the uncle drunk in a train wreck who lived to see jail
from seven storage rooms of too much stuff I never want to see again
.
………except maybe those cereal box California Raisins
the ones that stood proudly on Noah’s Ark
when the kids played Save the World, those raisins
Gayle Sands of Maryland is our host for the first day of the December Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us to use photographs to inspire poems today. You can read her full prompt, along with the poems of others and their responses, here.
Gayle inspires us to walk into a photo and to be present in the photograph in some way—as a bystander, as one of the individuals in the photo, or as someone coming upon the scene. She says, “Use the photo as your starting point and open your senses. What do you see and/or hear? Is there something you can taste or smell? What sensations do you feel? Is there any movement? What thoughts come to your mind as you engage with the photo? Vintage photographs are a good source of inspiration.”
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)
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
Last weekend, we wrote kennings with Mo Daley of Illinois as part of the November Open Write through http://www.ethicalela.com. A Slice of Life blog inspired 6-7 poems in last week’s post. I combined two forms today: a kenning in 6-7 format (six words, seven words) as I think ahead to our Thanksgiving plan next week. Since we spent time with all of our children in for a week in October, they will be spending time with other family members during Thanksgiving this year. We’ll be in a camper in a state park in a back corner campsite with a fire going, the dogs in their portable pen, and books in our laps in our camp chairs. Hopefully, there will be warm blankets involved to guard against the chill of the air.
What will we be reading? My husband will be finishing Killing the Legends by Bill O’Reilly, and starting Killing the Mob by the same author. I’ll be finishing The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life by Helen Whybrow, and starting the next book my book club will be reading. We drew a slip at our monthly meeting last night from everyone’s suggestions to determine the next club choice: The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan.
We’ll duck quietly into a favorite local restaurant in the area where we will be staying, and we’ll prepare to-go plates of turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, and all the fixings on Thanksgiving Day, then return to our hideaway to eat by the fire. We will be feeling grateful, blessed, and relaxed. Since we were all together with all the kids and grandkids in October for a glorious week in the mountains, we won’t have the feeling that we should be anywhere else. Finally, after Dad’s death in June and all the long weekends of travel to his home on the coast to clean out storage rooms and have sales, we will be able to enjoy some much needed down time for the better part of a week.
Common Threads 