Tag: books

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Falling In Love with Theo of Golden

I’ve recommended Theo of Golden to everyone I know, with this sense of urgency: stop whatever you’re doing and read this book.

So when my sister-in-law had turned the last page and both scolded me for not revealing the impact the book would have (I won’t give specific spoilers) and in the next breath thanked me for recommending it, she was eager to visit the coffee shop and see the portraits that became the inspiration for the book. Fountain City Coffee is an hour from our family farm in rural Georgia, so we made plans to take our husbands (who are brothers) and go to the coffee shop on Sunday, February 15. Though we’ve been to or through Columbus, Georgia on many occasions (my own brother was born there), we wanted to see it through the lens of this amazing book – the art on the walls of the coffee shop, the Riverwalk and adjacent bike shop where Theo and Ellen go for a ride and talk about the bird nest on the bank, and the little bookstore.

It was a stroke of magnificent timing that my writing friend Sally Donnelly of Arlington, Virginia sent me the link to Katie Couric’s interview with Allen Levi, the author of Theo of Golden in the comments on her blog post. I’d hoped to watch it but had an event with my in-person book club in my home that evening and couldn’t watch the live interview. Sally knows what a fan I am, and it was simply the best Valentine ever to watch that interview. I’d hug her if she were here!

I’ll be taking plenty of photos and maybe even doing a few recorded clips as well, and I’ll plan to blog about this experience on Tuesday morning. As I write, the rain is pelting down in heavy waves on this 48-degree morning here in rural Georgia, so I hope it has blown over by the time we make our jaunt west to the state line that divides Georgia and Alabama. If you’re having the same weather we are having, it’s a great day to run by the bookstore on the way home from church and grab a copy of this book and then sink down into a chair by the fireplace and devour it!

Happy reading ~may

all your books take you down new

trails and adventures!

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Making Cookies with the Kindred Spirits

If you don’t have a book club in your life, go find you one – or better yet, start one – that likes to read across a variety of genres, gather and discuss books, and be so inspired by them that there is that one little thing or two that makes you want to do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do, see, taste, or experience. People who say that books can change your life aren’t joking; my father always said that if your book isn’t changing your life, it’s time to change your book. His words were never more true than yesterday, on what was his first heavenly birthday.

That’s one of the reasons that in the Kindred Spirits Book Club, we squeeze every drop of life from every book by allowing it to take us to new places. I think back to that first book we read together in January 2025, The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend, and one of our group members noticed that one of the characters was always serving hot tea. We found a local tea room and paid them a visit one Saturday morning. One year later, we’re still going strong, seeking the full adventure that’s ours to claim as we find it between the pages.

Our last book of 2025 was The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan, and one group member noticed that the chef in the book was always talking about her cookery books. It inspired us to want to take some sort of food class – a charcuterie board class, a cooking class, or some type of cake or cookie decorating class. We found the answer right in our own small town. A retired teacher created a cookie business as her next chapter and now travels the surrounding area with her own personally-designed cookie decorating kit, setting up in homes and giving groups the opportunity to create together.

L-R: Janette, me, Joy, Jennifer, Chris Tyree, and Jill (we were missing: Martina)

We called our friend Chris Tyree of Cookies by Chrissoula, and we set Friday, February 13 as our cookie decorating party, complete with a chili dinner and the fun of togetherness – in pajamas, sweats, and slippers. We laughed, we concentrated on cookie details, and commiserated over the woes of the world. If a cookie broke, we learned how to glue it back together with icing – discoveries that become metaphors for all the broken places in our own lives. Just slap some sugary sweetness in between the jagged edges and put it back together and keep going. In a world of tension and deadlines, frustrations and disappointments, we counted our blessings and considered the icing on our cookies, so to speak.

books and friends steer swift

currents, keep us anchored as

we share adventures

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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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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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Year 3 of The Stafford Challenge Kicks Off Today

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.

writing, belonging

to a group of likeminded

poets, anchors me

Come on. I’ll be waiting.

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Monday With Dreams of Reading

I Think I Taste The Next Chapter

Monday morning arrives

I pour coffee

take a sip of life

check the clock

the clock

the clock

the ticking

to-be-done clock

and ask myself

do I work to support

my reading habit?

because there are

libraries

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On Kate Baer’s Latest Book: How About Now?

How About Now?

Kate’s done it again ~
written her best poems yet

…..dessert poetry!

how about now kate baer

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.

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Open Write Day 3 of 3 December 2025 with Gayle Sands of Maryland

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

that knew all along

they were going places