not for one second did I take this
ice day for granted ~ nope, I read,
sat by the fire, sipped green tea,
snuggled our spoiled schnoodles,
threw on the throw,
observed the birds,
worked crosswords,
prayed prayers,
napped
By the Fire Nonet
A Calm Christmas: Clearing a Path for Dreams
This December, I’ve been slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), and in her final chapter of this book laden with the peace of the season, Chapter 10, Kempton encourages us to plan and dream in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. clearing a path for all good things to come our way. The week between these holidays is what Kempson calls The Hush – – the best time of year for reflecting on the past years’ blessings and dreaming about the bountiful blessings that the coming year will bring.
This week brings some of the most delightful times of the year – the time we gather with family to celebrate Christmas. Yesterday, we took our three Schnoodles on a long walk around the farm on their favorite trails to celebrate Winter Solstice by keeping close to nature. Today, we will begin our first gathering of the season with our oldest grandson, who will turn 15 in February. This week will also bring the birth of our seventh grandchild in our family. As we clear paths for dreams, we are blessed beyond measure to build those dreams with the grandchildren that we love and hold so dearly today. For tomorrow, they will be holding their own grandchildren and sharing the stories of their own lives.
The Hush is more important now than ever in my day to day life – particularly the older I get. I need to carve out an every-weekend Hush, if only for a day. I’ve realized that what I see and hear in the news and on social media, what I read in books and magazines, and even in my own conversations with others can prompt the most horrific nightmares. It’s why I have to be so intentional about what I allow to enter my mind and heart. It’s why I don’t read horror genre books or watch scary movies anymore, as I once did. It’s why I read more Mary Oliver poetry and books like A Calm Christmas.
Take last night, for example. Yesterday as we finished having lunch, my husband casually showed me a photograph of four planes he’d taken this week as he was waiting on a recipient of a delivery. The planes were flying parallel, but they were emitting trails that were all of the same length and looked more like horses racing on a track where the inside horse is a set distance just ahead of the second, each horse a distance ahead and aside from the next, as if running down the straightaway on a racetrack.
He told me that he finally had seen with his own eyes why people might be persuaded to believe in the chem trail conspiracy. I examined the otherwise benign photo, and sure enough – these were not passenger jets, because generally they follow a flight path. They tend to stay in line, as I’ve watched through the windows at night from my bed just southwest of the Atlanta Airport. There is a seasonal shift in the tree line from my vantage point, but the planes have flown consistently above certain branches of the trees, always in a straight line, and there are usually about 2 minutes between the blinking lights of these planes. They don’t fly side by side the way his photograph showed. I have watched the planes for years as a relaxation tool – much like counting sheep, only counting planes.
Naturally, with a headline that had popped up when I was logging into my office computer network earlier this week, I’d seen the start of a nightmare. I should have known one was coming. The headline assured the world that World War 3 has begun. With all of the drone footage recently, a cup and half of this toxic cinnamon-sugar story was added to the mix, blending and swirling in the most obnoxious way in my dream, too.
I was standing on the lawn of the office in my dream (keep in mind that my office has no lawn, so this was a different space). Apparently, we all liked to go outside and eat (in real life, we either eat together at tables or go out to lunch), but we stood instead of having any picnic tables outside anywhere. I could see four glowing red/orange mini nuclear weapons about the shape of softballs, positioned much like the planes in the photograph, coming at me from the sky as I stood there in the dream, and I heard the voice of our PowerSchool Coordinator’s voice announcing that “We have been The Pirates,” to our community, as a final sign-off since she had seen the oncoming missile attack as well and was making our final phone call to say goodbye to all the families and students we’d served in our area in rural Georgia.
I ran for cover behind a bush, knowing it would not matter, and after surviving the nightmare attack, I stood up, charred, recognizing that in my condition I would not survive much longer. I looked at the rubble of the building and how disaster had struck in this small area, and then began walking home along a nature trail, peaceful and covered in evergreen trees and bare limbs where birds were all gathered in great number on the branches, singing and chirping as if nothing had happened.
I stopped and thought about them. They knew. They knew, and they had flown outside the realm of danger to avoid the exposure to the radiation. This was their survival technique.
It occurred to me that I need to be more like these birds – to be vigilant and aware of what I allow to seep into my mind, because it will blow up in the most unexpected ways. I must be the gatekeeper of all that goes in.
My husband asked why I’d been awake earlier. I told him never to show me scary photos again, and he chuckled, remarking that he didn’t see how the picture he’d shown me was scary.
And then I explained it all to him.
He has agreed: no more pictures that might cause me to lose sleep and wake up as a signed-off Pirate on a charred countdown clock.
I could use your most comforting book recommendations as my next reading. I’ll be listening to books that bring peaceful assurance on Audible as I make my way north this week to Kentucky to swaddle my new grandson and rock him in my arms, praying for his safety and health all the days of his life. Prayer. Needed now more than ever in our lives and in our world.
A Calm Christmas on Winter Solstice
This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), and in Chapter 9, Kempton encourages us to consider a vision for the year ahead with intentionality.
Today was a slow-to-rise day, a day that started with a bit of a Netflix binge to get a few more episodes of the latest season of Virgin River in, sipping coffee and nibbling pumpkin bread in bed with the dogs asking for one little bite – and we did share with them. We have finished our stocking shopping and grabbed the last few items we needed from the grocery store, so now we are home and happy to be in for the day.
On this Winter Solstice, we got out into nature by taking the dogs on a walk down their favorite trails in their Christmas sweaters, since it is cold here today on this first day of winter. The time outdoors on the day when the Earth finally has its eyes closed all the way is a gift, especially since it is a Saturday when we are both off work and can amble leisurely in the greenery. Tomorrow, the eyes of the world begin springing back on their way to wide-open life again, a little at a time.
This is my day to think about my One Little Word for 2025 – it’s decision day for me.
As my One Little Word for 2025 continues to knock, I haven’t fully given it the time to visit me and chat with me in some sort of a job interview like I’m looking to hire as I normally do with the words I choose. This one just came to me and continues to rise to the top.
This will be the first year I haven’t chosen an actionable verb and will instead take an adjective if I choose the one I think will become my word. And I’m not abandoning PRAY – it still begins my day each morning as I drive to work. No radio, no audiobook – – my car becomes my prayer chamber, and that is an established habit that will not take a detour in place of a different word.
I will have a challenge for myself, too – an actionable verb I do weekly to go along with my One Little Word. More about that in a later post.
What’s your word for 2025 going to be, if you know yet? I love how people and their words choose each other.
A Calm Christmas: Comfort and Joy in Contemplation of Spirit
This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2020), and in Chapter 3, she presents ways to seek comfort and joy in winter by seeking our natural rhythms and learning from nature.
To contemplate ways to simplify and nourish our spirits, Kempson encourages us to go gently into winter mornings by tiptoeing to the kitchen, light candles, meditate, or write as self-care measures. She asks these questions:
How could you simplify your home, schedule, digital life? How can you nourish your mind, body, spirit, and loved ones, and what rituals will see you through winter?
So much can be simpler. I once heard that if you feel stressed and need to hit the reset button, spend a half hour in nature. But those who are really busy should spend an hour. Sometimes we don’t have control over simplifying our work schedules or the digital life that work requires, but when home is the haven that allows the respite at day’s end, there is much to be loved. I walk my dogs along a path my husband keeps cut on the farm…and would you believe I go in my flannel pajamas and boots, praying all the while that a delivery truck doesn’t come calling while I’m out in my loungewear? We drink cinnamon orange tea in the evenings in winter, and while we don’t have a real log fireplace, we keep the gas logs going if it’s anywhere below 60 degrees outside. These are the ways we nourish ourselves, and the simple rituals are what will take us through winter. Sometimes, doing as little as possible on weekends is the order of the day, letting the book stacks speak their stories to us as we read the day away.
One of my favorite thoughts in this chapter is “the sounds of winter are cracking in poetry, wind in the trees, rain on the roof, a spitting fire, the thump of a log falling away from the flames, rustling paper, mulled wine poured steaming into a glass, the rhythm of the weather forecast calmly announcing that the storms will rage on.”
That’s the epitome of hygge at its finest – in its best season to be fully experienced as a way to embrace the season of winter.
The Real Age Test
I had the privilege of visiting three second grade classes this week as teachers in our system complete their Science of Reading modules required by the State of Georgia under its new legislation.
In the first class, one student asked, “Have you ever been in a classroom?”
That should have been my first sign.
I replied that I had, and it all started once upon a long, long time ago and lasted for many years.
She looked at me suspiciously, then asked with a hint of sass, “So you can handle us?”
Oh, the joys of second grade. They tell it like it is, and nothing gets left unsaid.
Forget any “Real Age Test” your insurance company has ever asked of you. There’s a real-er one, and here’s all you have to do: step into a primary school classroom for three hours. Three hours is all it takes to get yourself into real trouble, as any of the guests aboard the SS Minnow would remind us. Ironically, being shipwrecked on a desert island seemed it would be paradise by the time I slugged back out to the parking lot each morning.
How did I ever do this when I started teaching in the late 1990s with a full class of second graders, three children and a husband and so much laundry at home, when one played soccer on a travel team and we traveled most weekends as a family and stayed in hotels AND I didn’t have Clicklist at the grocery store where I could click my order in and pull up and wait for them to come running out with the cart and load me up?
How?
HOW??!!
This, my friends, is the Real Age Test. I passed with flying colors as someone who is really aged.
I slumped back into the driver’s seat, one building away from my office and allowed myself five minutes’ peace, hoping no one walked by and saw me in such a state. I wrapped my arms around the steering wheel and let my head rest on my forearms. I prayed. I prayed I hadn’t pulled a muscle bending over to sit down in the tiny chairs or, more likely, hefting myself up out of them. I prayed there were still 19 heads to be counted in the room I’d just left and that there were not a few running loose in the building somewhere and that I wouldn’t get a phone call shortly, asking about any missing children.
The Real Age Test. Like cheese, I’ve discovered my moldy edges and the holes I didn’t used to have. My denial has come to an end, and I have accepted that I am truly aged.
I feel it in my bones.
But I did take away a great compliment: when I was doing a read-aloud, they were mesmerized. They said, “You do it so good.” Apparently, I sparkle as a picture book reader. And that makes it all worth it.
Spiritual Journey – December 2024
Scrolling in search of the next book to read on an upcoming flight, my right thumb becoming numb, I came to a screeching halt on Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May.
This, I nodded approvingly to myself, thinking of all the exhausting change that 2024 has brought. This may be just the medicine my soul needs right now.
Many of the changes life has brought throughout the year are positive ones, but even good change requires a period of adjustment. The not-so-good changes, even more so.
I clicked the Kindle sample download and examined the Table of Contents, organized in chapters by the seven cold months of the year starting in October and ending in Late March. I read the reviews on Goodreads and delved into the sample text, asking at each decision point whether this would be the best investment of my time and cognitive energy – since both are forever fleeting.
After finishing the sample, I knew this was the book for me. I downloaded the full book.
I realize I’ve struck book gold when I find a book that has me hanging on each sentence, savoring its power and meaning as I apply it to my life and feel the peace it brings. Each thought, it seems, fits like a glove when I’ve found the right book for the right time. It’s like a medicinal salve, like Candy Cane chapstick on parched lips whipped sick by the wind.
All at once, my breathing deepens and my heart slows from its racing pace. I feel my tongue stop pressing against the roof of my mouth in its usual stress-pressure position. My shoulders drop and my neck muscles loosen. I read May’s soothing words as I consider the approaching winter break:
“Winter is when I reorganize my bookshelves and read all the books I acquired in the previous year and failed to actually read. It is also the time when I reread beloved novels, for the pleasure of reacquainting myself with old friends….In winter, I want concepts to chew over in a pool of lamplight—slow, spiritual reading, a reinforcement of the soul. Winter is a time for libraries, the muffled quiet of book stacks and the scent of old pages and dust. In winter, I can spend hours in silent pursuit of a half-understood concept or a detail of history. There is nowhere else to be, after all.”
And in this, I can rest with full hope and anticipation that the gas logs and my heated throw will bring needed warmth. My dogs will bring peace and deep comfort as they vie for snoozing position next to me, and my books will bring the golden silence and space my heart needs as I sip a cup of honeyed hot tea and reread: …. there is nowhere else to be, after all.
My next book will be Calm Christmas by Beth Kempton. What will you be reading, dear friend, in the sweet, snug nook of home, in the nestled bliss of nowhere else to be?
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Please link your blog posts in the comments below, and thank you for reading today!
Slice of Life and EthicalELA Writing Groups in Boston
If you asked me to share the highlight of this year’s NCTE Convention in Boston, I might think for a few moments before landing on an answer, for there is much to consider.
I’d think about the keynote speakers, and how I had the fabulous opportunity to hear Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson share her story and offer signed books so that attendees can all read more about her journey. I stood in that book line for well over one hour, chatting with a writing friend, happy to have the right to read and the freedom to choose it. I did not complain, either, like I do in Wal Mart when there is a long line.
I’d think of Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live and Weird Barbie and Ms. Frizzle voice fame and also getting a copy of her new signed book.
I’d think of the trade book author signings – meeting them, sharing a photo op, and wondering about all the unique ways they sign. I’d think of the sessions – trying to pick just one each time – and the poster and mini sessions offering shorter chunks of learning time.
I’d think of the iconic green couch and the surrounding cityscapes with the vast array of restaurants and historic landmarks.
I’d think of the quiet moments of reading and writing, and I’d think of the wide webs of networking and meeting new friends.
I’d think of the excitement of sharing the five books my writing group has written over the past year, and the way it feels like we are walking on a cloud every single time we get to open the pages of them and share them with others – and presenting on two of them at this NCTE Convention. I hope that the two that will be published by Routledge Press in 2025 will bring us back to NCTE next year in Denver to present on those titles as well.
I’d think, too, of the Boston Writing Marathon Workshop that was being held at the same time as my presentation and how Richard Louth, the founder of the writing marathon and leader of the workshop, ran for his handout (I felt like I might cry) because I was hungry for the experience and needed to know more – and how I’d emailed him and he’d responded, inviting me to join in and share my writing. He’d even suggested a peaceful place to go and write – at Boston’s “Grub Street,” a bookstore/coffee shop/ cafe with a top floor for writers at work. I’ll feature my visit to that shop in tomorrow’s blog.
The highlights would be hard to determine, but I wouldn’t have to think long before responding that the most heartfelt highlights of NCTE are found in the connections – – the sharing of stories, dreams, and ideas. Breathing the same air as 7,800 other educators who are all passionate about their careers and their love of reading and writing is empowering. Planning a session with a virtual poetry writing group, then presenting together and meeting for dinner is energizing. Having dinner a second night with yet another writing group (my blogging friends from Slice of Life) is the icing on the cake. To meet those face to face with whom you’ve read and written over the years is a gift – one that continually reminds us that the simple act of finding the beauty in an ordinary moment and sharing it in writing so that we can all be present across the miles – and then holding togetherness in person – is as humanly highlighting as it gets.
Gladys Taber and November
Indian Pudding
a new recipe to try
for Thanksgiving Day
My father, an avid book collector, introduced me to Gladys Taber’s writing years ago, and I fell in love with her instantly. He has always had the uncanny knack of matchmaking book lovers with books that become favorites.
Sometimes I like to go to my collection on the shelf of my reading room and pull a Taber book and read random passages. Many of her books are organized by month or season, so I find that no matter where I land in her seasonal offerings that mirror mine on our farm in Georgia, I am there – right there with her – in Southbury, Connecticut.
From Still Cove Journal: November
“November is a month when the chill blustery days and long cold nights are hard on dieters. Green salads are fine on hot summer days. but the very sound of the wind from the Atlantic against the big window makes me think of a real breakfast of sausage and buttermilk pancakes with first-run golden maple syrup. By suppertime I forget I am a non-dessert eater, and when I go out to eat, I often order Indian Pudding. I have had many very fine puddings, but almost never an authentic Indian Pudding. So I like to share the recipe my mother and grandmother used:
Bring 4 cups of milk to a boil in the top of a double boiler. Gently stir in 1/3 c. yellow cornmeal and cook 15 minutes. Add 1 cup dark molasses and remove from heat. Add 1/4 c. butter, a teaspoon each of salt, cinnamon, and ginger and 1/2 c. seedless raisins. Place the batter in a greased baking dish. Then pour 1 cup cold milk over it. Bake in a slow oven for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Serve with hard sauce or cream or even vanilla ice cream.
The main thing about the real Indian pudding is the cup of cold milk poured over…..”
I’ve never made Indian pudding, but it sounds divine. I’m making a shopping list now to try it, perhaps for our Thanksgiving lunch at the office a week from Tuesday. There’s something magical about an old recipe that seems to conjure up the spirits of those long dead and welcome them back to the present. If we ever do discover time travel, I’m fully convinced that the portal will be through an old recipe box, long forgotten, hidden in the corner of an attic, and one that comes alive like Frosty the Snowman’s magical hat.
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!
On Hearing the News
one of my adult daughters
still calls novels
chapter books ~
on hearing
our family news
she texted:
there I was
listening to my own
chapter book
in my own
little world
of someone else’s
little did I know
there was another
story unfolding
in my own….
I smiled and replied
this could be the start
of a new chapter…….
