Tag: town square

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A Sunday Well-Spent and a Poetry Invitation – Slice of Life Challenge Day 12, Stafford Challenge Day 56

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for inspiring writers!

Sunday was a day well-spent! We watched my dad preach in my childhood church via YouTube, and I texted my brother and his fiancee to check on them as they travel to New Orleans for the week. We had breakfast with our schnoodles by the fire, and then I painted 18 canvases to dress the Chamber of Commerce windows for National Poetry Month. Finally, we had a wonderful Zoom gathering arranged by Lainie Levin to meet other slicers face to face and enjoy conversation.

Part of my role in my school system is to oversee the L4GA Literacy grant, which offers funding for literacy events in the community. National Poetry Month is a fabulous time to plan some Open Mic nights, author poetry readings, and writing workshops. Last year, we created a progressive poetry walk around our town square, featuring a local poet’s poem he’d written about our rural town to the theme of Bloom!

For this year’s theme, Awakenings (our local Arts Council chose this year’s theme), we’re switching from a progressive poetry walk to a window dressing, thanks to our sensational Chamber of Commerce team, who has agreed to allow us to decorate the windows as a town square feature this year. These canvases will have poetry written on them in black letters.

If you are looking for a slice topic sometime this week and enjoy writing poetry, I would love to have some short poems (4-6 lines) on the theme of Awakenings. I’m curating a collection of poems on this theme by living poets to feature in our window. Some will be local poets who share readings in our coffee shop, while others will be from right here in the Slice of Life or another writing group….maybe you! I’ll change them out from week to week, so if yours is featured, I’ll share a photo of your poem on display sometime at the end of May on a Tuesday slicing day. You can add your poem in the comments on any day of my blog throughout March.

I’m sharing our palette color scheme below. 

Poetry Invitation Elfchen 

painting
bright canvases
National Poetry Month
local business window dressings
~ awakenings ~
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Autumn Walk

I had a meeting in our local coffee shop yesterday and treated myself to a Hex Latte while projecting next year’s budget and goals with a community partner. From inside, the vintage paned windows make the outside world look a little bit like a dripping realistic painting – the kind of windows that have candles and snowdrifts in the winter and don’t have 20/20 sharp focus. It’s like I’m in a world of my own in there.

I confess: I was.

I had a moment, looking across the town square, when a brilliant flash of fall colors caught my eye. “I’m walking this square when I leave here. I’m sharing these pictures with others – this Hallmark Movie charm this time of year is too beautiful to keep all to myself,” I decided, right then and there in the middle of a business meeting.

We finished. I walked along, thinking in Haiku, as I mostly do. Here is part of my walk that I’m sharing with you:

charming small town vibes

fall displays on courthouse square

spiced chills in crisp air

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Savoring Saturday – Coffee and Books

What is missing from many of our days is a true sense that we are enjoying the lives we are living.  It is difficult to experience moments of happiness if we are not aware of what it is we genuinely love.  We must learn to savor small, authentic moments that bring us contentment. – Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy

Some Saturdays, we get up and head over to the local coffee shop on our town square. My husband orders coffee, a cinnamon roll, and a slice of breakfast casserole. I take my Optavia breakfast fueling along with me and order black coffee. We sit at a table near the fireplace, where we chat and enjoy the meanderings of those, like us, ambling about town on a Saturday morning.

When he has extra errands to run that will take an hour or so, he’ll drop me off at the back door of the bookstore across the square, where the comfy chairs are circled around an oval coffee table, and I’ll gather a handful of books, grab a Cherry Coke Zero from the store fridge, and throw my feet up and read.

The place is magical from the moment you walk into the store. The smell of books greets you, and the floors creak under your feet as you browse the shelves. On the walls, there are watercolors and photographs by local artists for sale, and on the counters there is also handmade jewelry and other gifts. The new books are up front, along with the book club books that are lined up according to the month they’ll be discussed. The heart of the store is the used books – $3 for paperbacks, and $5 for hardbacks. And the lighting is warm and welcoming, giving the perfect ambiance for comfortable reading. Sometimes they play slow jazz.

I go straight to the travel and adventure books to see if there is anything obscure that grabs me, and I begin my book stack there. I mostly hang out in the nonfiction, perusing the shelves and searching the spines for titles that spark my interest. When I have one armful’s stack, I glance at the fiction and keep moving toward my chair – the one with the matching ottoman. I plop down, throw my feet up, pop my Coke top, and take a long swig as I begin with first glances at the books. What’s in the Table of Contents? When was it written? What does the back cover say? What’s the format, and do I like it? Is the print big enough? What do the pages feel like? Does it smell real?

I’m picky.

Two members of my writing group have recently books – Starting From Scratch, about teaching poetry, and Kitchen Table Wisdom, about womens’ wisdom from ancestors with answers. I order these, and then I chat with two of the owners. Karen leads the writing group, and we share what we’re writing. I meet her daughter and grandson. I speak briefly with another owner, Chris, who is headed out for lunch, but always asks what I’m reading – so I tell her I’m reading around the United States, and I’ve just finished Stephen King’s On Writing for the New England states and am narrowing down my choice for the Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Wyoming states. I’m leaning towards Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore.

Today, I narrow it down to two books: The Iditarod Fact Book and The Happiness of Pursuit. And then I wonder: How am I going to meet my goal of getting down to two and a half bookcases if I bring more home? I think there is math involved: if I get rid of more than I take in, will it work? Somebody who can do math, please – tell me that it will. These are small, authentic moments that bring me contentment – – and books are what I genuinely love.