Tag: Reading

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Celebrating Life, Observing Thanksgiving

On this day last year, we were waking up in Plymouth, Massachusetts and heading to Plimoth-Patuxet Museum to have Thanksgiving Dinner in the spot where the Pilgrims and Native Americans had it for the first time all those years ago. It was a highlight of our trip through New England on the heels of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention, which was held in Boston in 2024.

After the end of the conference, when Ada Limon had delivered the final keynote speech, we’d taken the ferry back across Boston Harbor to the airport and rented a car. We headed up to Kennebunkport, Maine for a night, then across New Hampshire to Woodstock, Vermont for a night, then to West Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and finally to Plymouth each for a night before completing the loop back to Boston, turning in the car, and flying home. We still talk about the fun we had on that trip, just the two of us, seeing New England by car.

Yesterday, true to small town living, we were out at our local Ace Hardware Store buying ten bales of pine straw to go by the shrubs in the front bed when we saw Briar’s brother standing in front of the only grocery store in town, holding his bag of heavy whipping cream and a Coca Cola in a bottle and talking with a friend. He ambled over to the car, where we sat reminiscing on the trip we’d taken down Route 66 a few summers ago. Along with his wife, the four of us had rented a car at Midway Airport just below Chicago and embarked on the journey, completing half of Route 66, which runs from Illinois to California, and flying home from Albuquerque after one full week of a carefully-segmented trip that allowed time for taking in the main sights we’d wanted to see.

We need to finish that trip, his brother said, and we both agreed.

This Thanksgiving is different. We were supposed to be camping on our favorite campground in one of our favorite sites, but vertigo got in the way of being able to pack the camper and keep the reservation. It got in the way of shopping and doing anything other than being still all week. We cancelled our camping plans, and I took to my favorite chair with Audible as the great world spun all week. At least when I’m down and out, I can have some sense of normalcy through story – – and travel, vicariously. This week, I’m at the Maple Sugar Inn spending time with the ladies in the Book Club Hotel. They haven’t read a single page in their book club yet, but these characters do have some interesting lives.

I’ll hit pause on my book around 10:00 to shower and dress, and to meet my husband’s brother and his wife at a Cracker Barrel an hour away from our home deep in rural Georgia. None of us felt like cooking – and even the thought of all the bending involved in cooking and baking sends me spinning in orbit. It’s simply not the year for that.

It’s a year for being home and taking it easy – going nowhere that involves a suitcase, letting others cook, and savoring the simple pleasures of home. A day for sitting next to the fire under the flannel blanket we bought last year at The Vermont Flannel Company in Woodstock, all warm and comfortable, counting my blessings. It’s a day to reflect on the week we spent in October in the mountains of Tennessee with our children and grandchildren, and a day to call and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving as they celebrate this day with other family members.

And it’s a day to remember those who are no longer with us. Mom left us in 2015, but this will be our first Thanksgiving without Dad. It’s a game changer when both parents are gone. I miss all those who taught me how to observe holidays and to be able to appreciate them without the rigid anchors of tradition making them feel any less special. Today’s quiet stillness and Cracker Barrel dinner is every bit as meaningful as last year’s dinner in Plymouth.

and so I sit in

my green chair, reflecting on

Thanksgivings past while

counting my blessings ~

browsing Kindle, Audible

for my next great trip

because over rolls

turkey and cranberry sauce

and pecan pie, we’ll

talk books, and that’s a

festive way to celebrate

~ turning the pages ~

Last Year’s Table Setting

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November 21: A 6-7 Kenning

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.

And for this, we are ever so grateful.

Thanksgiving 6-7 Kenning

we’ll dwell in a forest-castle

get lost in page-turners by the fire

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November 19: Silent Book Club Sidlak

Books people were reading on Monday night at the Silent Book Club

My friend Denise Krebs of California introduced the Sidlak form yesterday in her blog post. She explains that it is a 5-line poem, and the syllable count of the first four lines are 3/5/7/9, and the fifth line contains a color and any number of syllables. You can read her Sidlak here. My poem for today will take this form, about a new experience: a silent book club.

My friend and fellow book club member Janette Bradley and her husband Chris attend a silent book club, and they invited my husband and me to come read for an hour in a fudge shop on a Monday night. We arrived and sat down at their table, then ordered ice cream (my husband) and a cold mocha coffee (me) before we began reading silently for one hour on the clock. It was a great way to read completely undisturbed, and we plan to attend again on an upcoming silent book club month. If you haven’t tried, this, I’d urge you to find a silent book club near you and attend one. I like that there was no pressure to have read chapters ahead of time and no need to discuss whatever books we chose to bring. It was low-stakes, and we thoroughly enjoyed it!

Silent Book Club Sidlak

silently

we read for one hour

from a book of our choosing ~

Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life

set in Vermont’s Green Mountains heals the soul

*A special thank you to our friends Janette and Chris for inviting us to the book club!

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Book Club Pick: Regretting You

first we read the book~

then, our club met for dinner

before the movie

I never laugh as much as when our book club gets together! The books we read and the times we spend talking about them are a balm for my soul.

People have asked me how we “do” our club, because there are so many ways to structure a book club. First, we decide on a book based on someone’s recommendation. We’ve already picked dates through the end of summer and have marked them on our calendars so we guard our time. We sent out digital invitations so we don’t plan any other meetings by accident. Priorities.

Once we know our book and our next meeting time, we read and try not to talk about it with anyone reading it so we don’t give spoilers. Our regularly scheduled gathering spot is our local coffee shop, where they have all the best coffees, a few food items, and the best downstairs couch circle anywhere in town – the kind of leather couches you slide down deep into and wonder if you’re ever going to be able to get out once you get in. The kind with a big coffee table in the middle so there’s room for mugs and plates and stacks of books. We go there and pull out our general book questions as a discussion guide. Sometimes we use questions designed specifically for a book – – like at our most recent gathering, when I’d forgotten to bring the list of universal book questions. Another group member pulled up a set online that we discussed.

The part so many book clubs don’t “do” that sets our club apart is the action part. Every member of our club has a streak of adventure dwelling in our hearts, so we like to think of something the book inspires us to want to do, and then go do that thing. For example, in The Beautiful and the Wild, one of the characters was always drinking tea. One of our members found a local tea room and went for brunch to try different teas, even trying on all the hats and a pair of gloves, too. In The God of the Woods, the characters ate s’mores, so we met for appetizers at the home of one of our members and made s’mores. Having the adventure part adds to the experience of any book, because we do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do on any normal day of our lives. We stay young.

Our latest book, Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You, was released as a movie this month, so we made it our October selection and met for dinner and a movie. We spent as much time discussing the movie and the differences between the book and screenplay, and we were still talking in the dark theater when the manager came in, turned on the lights, and said he was “surprised” to see us there. He was shutting the place down. We were just glad we didn’t get locked in the movie theater overnight. We imagined the headline with humor and horror: Local School District Employees Earlier Reported Missing Found Locked in Local Theater Overnight.

Our next book is The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. The movie comes out December 19, and of course we all have our Regal apps for movie tickets up and running and have booked the date. We’ve decided to leave after the credits finish rolling – – just in case.

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What are you Waiting For?

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt asks the question, “What are you Waiting For?”

Today I offer you a tricube. It’s three stanzas of three lines with 3 syllables.

Let’s Just Be Real

I’m waiting

to retire

next chapters

exciting

relaxing

traveling

reading books

in sweatpants

until noon

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July Gift Basket for the Bad Ass Book Club

This month, I’m sharing some of Dad’s conversations in his final days, and in one of them that you can hear at the bottom of this post, he revealed a surprising thought about how we feel about folks from time to time. His revelation reminded me of a poem that I wrote recently for a small group of women in one of my writing circles.

My Stafford Challenge group meets the first Monday of each month by Zoom to chat and write together, and we’re a group of women who enjoy reading as much as writing. I’ve been writing a form each month called Gift Basket writing, where I choose three things I’d give a person in a gift basket for that month. This one is dedicated especially to my Stafford Writing Group sisters – Barb Edler of Iowa, Glenda Funk of Idaho, and Denise Krebs of California. At the time I wrote this, I’d recently stumbled across a book club I’d love to join, even for the name alone, and there is actually a summer camp in Maine for its readers – this is a real thing. My dream summer is going to this book club’s summer camp, and I’ve added it to the bucket list.

Bad Bitch Book Club

if I were giving you

a gift basket

I’d make it a

Bad Bitch gift basket

to welcome the storms

of the world~

you’d receive

a t-shirt that says

BAD BITCH BOOK CLUB

complete with

a membership to

the Bad Bitch Book Club

(yes ~ it’s a real thing

with its own dot com)

and a mirror

so you’ll always

see the

baddest of the kick-ass bad

right in the palm of your hand~

knowing your Bad Bitch sisters

have your back!

It’s okay to have a BB attitude sometimes……even my preacher Dad in his final days confessed that there are times we are all a little bit badass. You can listen here:

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#VerseLove Day 9 – with Britt Decker of Texas – Depending on When You Met Me

Our host for the 9th day of #VerseLove2025 is Britt Decker of Houston, Texas, who inspires us to write. a poem about who we were at various times in our lives. You can read her full prompt here. Maybe you’ll come write with us today! I’ve chosen a list poem for today’s poem.

Depending on when you met me, you would have known

I was a wild preacher’s kid running amok with a

cast of characters that weren’t Southern Baptists ~

that I became them in my closet with a flashlight

obsessed with the words, the characters, the places

in Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes

the book with the gold and pink banded spine

where they lived on pages but came alive

in me ~ and stay with me still

I’m Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee

I’m a sugar plum tree at the Lollipop Sea

I’m a little turtle climbing on the rocks

I’m Wee Willie Winkie, crying through the locks

I’m a water nymph with green glass beads

I’m a goblin in the marsh, howling in the reeds

I’m Mary, Mary, quite contrary

I’m a little puffin on an island in the sea

I’m a gypsy, a gypsy, earrings in my ears

I’m a cave boy with a spear hunting prehistoric deer

I’m the Raggedy Man with a wobble-ly calf

I’m the Ice Cream man with a cart full of laughs

I’m Young Melissa sweeping a room

I’m an astronaut….3, ….2,…..1……BOOM!

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Girls’ Getaway to 1811 Sunflower Farm Cottage in Rutledge, Georgia

We get away a few times a year to

read,

write,

talk,

s

sleep,

eat,

think,

work crossword puzzles,

adventure,

travel,

lounge,

sip wine, and

laugh late into the night.

This time, my sister-in-law and I rented an old farmhouse from 1811 in Rutledge, Georgia for two nights. I’m sharing the photos below. If you ever need a place near the University of Georgia but on the backside of nowhere, check out the 1811 Sunflower Farmhouse on Airbnb. We entertained the ghosts and wondered what their lives were like with 12 children living in the upstairs loft like Laura and Mary of Little House on the Prairie days.

From the time we saw the daffodils greeting us at the front stoop, we knew we’d found a friendly place to spend a couple of nights. The front porch confirmed it, with its lazy rocking chairs and climbing vine with a bird nest hidden in the foliage, looking a little bit like a Goldilocks house without the bears.

We opened the rustic door to the welcoming charm of the antiquated farmhouse and were swept back to 1811, imagining the satisfaction of the new homeowners of a bygone era, who have long since departed this life. The second set of owners had 12 children sleeping in the loft upstairs.

There were no building codes in 1811, and I understood at once after climbing and descending these steps why they threw all the youngsters up there. I went up long enough to get pictures and admire the ceilings and antiques up there, but after my fall on the steps at work a few years ago when I broke my ankle, I held on extra tight. 1811 held elements of danger everywhere. I could not stop thinking about fire and falls, and those were just the two obvious threats.

This is the bed where my sister in law slept, figuring that she was less likely to bang her head on the ceiling if she had to get up in the middle of the night and make her way down to the bathroom on the first floor.

This is the bed where I slept (I’m older than she is, weigh more than she does, and those steps were too steep for me – so I took her up on the offer to sleep downstairs). It was cozy and warm thanks to the electric heater (a look-alike fireplace) tucked into the fireplace at the foot of the bed. The farmhouse does have central heating, but the lack of insulation made the heaters extra-appreciated with the ever-present chill in the air! I’d predicted that with an old house like this, I would need my heated throw, and it sure came in handy!

The front and back doors had different latches to hold them shut at the top and the bottom, but we still had to use the stuffed pillow at the foot to keep the drafts out. Thank goodness for a sister in law who can figure out the tricky latches of yesteryear.

The nostalgia is real, and the tub is beautiful, but let me be clear and completely transparent: this tub ain’t for old people with hips and knees on the verge of collapse. I got to the point where I had to rinse off, but I showered quickly and exited this beauty of a tub. A long soak with salts and bubbles was out of the question. I would not want to climb in and out of an old tub often.

On the description, we noted the farmhouse had a kitchenette, but we were disappointed when we arrived that it was not to be found. Not until one of us went to the bathroom, only to discover that the kitchenette is tucked away – a tiny space all its own behind the water closet (you can see the edge of the toilet in the lower left of the photo). We were glad we finally found it, since we’d stopped to get groceries (yogurt, milk, cheese) so we wouldn’t have to leave if we didn’t want to go anywhere.

I worked a crossword together with my oldest daughter, who lives in Las Vegas. I’d send photos and she’d send answers, and I’d update what I had added. It’s nice having the time to enjoy the unexpected small surprise moments that you can capture on a getaway when you finally have a little time for enjoyment on your hands.

And we all need more of that!


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The Silver Lining


during the coming reign, a friend says

she’ll turn off all news and stay in

and read more books than ever

and snuggle with her dogs

and I understand ~

I think she’s found

the silver

lining

here

**I’ll be reading with my book club (we met tonight at our local coffee shop on the town square to discuss The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend) and sharing Goodreads reviews with my one of my daughters as we continue in the tradition of reading ever since she was little. Somewhere in all the buzz happening around us, there is a portal to another world in the pages of great books.

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2025 Book Club Picks

If you’re ever in the small rural county in Georgia where I live, you might find yourself at one of the two traffic lights we have, right along the courthouse square. You’d look at the historic buildings lining the square and wonder about the curious little shops and what all goes on inside once you stood back long enough to take note of the intricate patterns in the old brick facades. There’s a bank, a couple of hair salons, a coffee shop, a donut shop, a few boutiques, a couple of restaurants (every small town in Georgia must have a good barbecue joint), a dentist and an optician’s office, a realty office, a mercantile, a Chamber of Commerce office, and…….{drumroll, please}………my favorite: a bookstore, A Novel Experience. Click here to check it out.

It’s not just another familiar bookstore. This one is magical, with its historic interior brick walls with rustic plaster repairs, a creaky wooden floor, a refrigerator where you can have a free water if you need one (there is wine in there, too, and a coffee bar), a circle of eccentric mismatched comfy chairs by the back door so you can sit and talk or write or knit or….just sit, and the most amazing lineup of books for the monthly book clubs. They have a few different clubs, too, which meet at different times and focus on different interests so that there is a club for everyone.

I got there on their first day of business in 2025, and I saw that they had their books already chosen from their last meeting of 2024. They’ll create cards that readers can take to put on their refrigerators to remind them of which book is scheduled for which club for which month, but I took a snapshot or two of the “rough draft” of the lineup with the cards that tell what the books will be. Some of them have not even come in yet.

This is the place I go when I need the calm reassurance that there is still peace to be found in a place other than my own home. I swear, I think they have some kind of essential oil that is called stress-free small-town down-home-rooted belonging or something. Every bit of hurried pace disappears right when you walk in. Of course, I’ve lived here long enough to know all who work there, and this shop is one of several places that still greet customers by first name. It thrills me when I walk in and Karen throws her hands up and says, “Hi, Kim!” Chris does, too, and they stop to talk to their customers with sincere interest in what is happening in our busy lives.

What are you reading this year? I’ve started the year with Rosamunde Pilcher’s book Winter Solstice, but I’ve already cheated and delved into the movie. I finished The Beautiful and the Wild over the break just as the year turned, and we’ll have our office book club to discuss that one January 21. I started James, and I’m halfway finished. If you have any recommendations, please share. I tend to prefer nonfiction that reads like fiction or that spotlights travel or nature in some fresh and unexpected way. Sy Montgomery is always, always a favorite. I’m looking for a few readers who can recommend some amazing reads, and I hope you’ll be one of them!

If you’re ever here, call me and I’ll run right down to the shop and meet you for coffee or wine and book talk, ’cause that’s how we do things in small towns here in Georgia.

our local bookstore

announced its monthly choices

for each reading club