AKA: We’re All in It Together After my brothers, Jim and Dan, died, I went through an identity crisis, which caused me to question why I lived in Virginia when the rest of my family was in Massachusetts. One factor that complicated my distress was that, besides my husband and sons, no one in my [...]
Bibliotherapy means using the reading of books (or the watching of movies) as a way to heal yourself, gain insight, or solve a problem. ~ from The Sibling Connection Suppose you were struggling with grief after losing a loved one, and so you sought out a grief counselor for guidance. Because it is often less [...]
1. I drive to Christiansburg about 3 times a month for things I can’t easily find in Floyd. Otherwise, I shop locally. 2. The first Christiansburg Wal-Mart was built on an arboretum owned by Virginia Tech. 3. When a K-mart went up soon after it, someone painted “ON THE 8TH DAY WE PAVED IT” in [...]
My friend Mara reminds me that when we both worked at the bead shop in Blacksburg, I taped poems to the cash register… It’s all I can do… not to… say “Buckle my shoe”… after “one, two” …when I’m counting out the money… She writes a poem for me… We play scrabble…because we are both…poets [...]
1. Caught red handed. 2. Pretty in pink 3. Hands up! This is a stick-up 4. Simon says: Do this. _________________ fill in your own caption. Photo: Sunday walk on a Blue Ridge Parkway trail. Joe wants to take my picture and says, “Take your hands out of your pocket. I want to see your [...]
AKA: Have Art Will Travel My eldest son, Josh, and I share a love of art, and we especially like creating it from unlikely everyday things. When it comes to art, I’m a late bloomer. The extent of my childhood exposure to it was flour and water paste, crayons, and homemade paper dolls. In school [...]
“She spends more time with people she doesn’t even know than she does with those she knows,” my husband said to friends we were having dinner with when the subject ‘what have you been doing lately?’ and then blogging came up. “Not more time,” I protested, and then added with a laugh “…about the same [...]
AKA: 2 Pink Tutus It’s like meeting a friend of a friend of a friend; one blog link leads to another, and soon I’m lost in cyberspace on an unfamiliar blog and I can’t remember how I got there. I clicked a link on somebody’s sidebar because I liked the name, “A Sense of Wonder.” [...]
AKA: Ode to the Muse 1. I’m still waiting for the Muse to write me a blank check. 2. I once described the Muses as “shy as a wallflowers” and “as fickle as a cats already fed.” 3. I can write without the Muse, but it’s like watering my garden with a hose in the [...]
Have you ever been to a peace march or felt strong enough about something to protest? I was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. I followed the first Gulf War and the devastating effect the sanctions had (primarily on children) intently, and I wrote political commentaries on the subject. I never thought Saddam [...]
The following poems were inspired by the wind storm we had this past weekend. Up here in The Blue Ridge Mountains of Floyd, we lost our power, and at times I was writing this by candlelight. ~ The Lashing Unleashed wind lashes slapping through branches of innocent trees that cower like children in fear of [...]
Tiny Shrines 13 Cups: A book by Acourt Bason ~ To open this book is to step through a threshold into a world of moon counting, tea leaves brewing, translucent colors, and kind stars. Printed in a small quantity and using local resources, it’s a handwritten work that includes poetry, journal entries, I Ching configurations, [...]
The following are the answers to yesterday’s “Liar Liar Pants on Fire” Challenge: 1. I have hitchhiked before. We called it “thumbing.” It was the late 1970s, and I was probably inspired by the lyrics of the song Me and Bobby Mcgee… Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained…It rode us all the [...]
Liar Liar Pants on Fire returns to Loose Leaf. Below are 4 things about me, one of which is a lie. Can you pick out the lie? Winners will be posted. 1. I’ve hitchhiked before. 2. I’ve rode in a helicopter before. 3. I have a pair of ruby red slippers like Dorothy’s. 4. I’ve [...]
“Drop by drop we cry a river of tears and the earth is washed with our love.” ~ Jan Seivers Mahon, reader of the “Jim and Dan Stories.” I received an email recently from a subscriber of the Museletter, the monthly community forum that I co-edit. She was thanking me for my written contributions that [...]
1. Last week when I drove to Christiansburg I had to slam on the brakes on Route 8 because I was looking at this woman on the sidewalk whose purple jacket caught my eye, which made me think maybe I should have a bumper sticker that says, “I Brake for Purple.” 2. On another occasion [...]
Break into the peace within…hold your attention in silence…and in the world outside…you will ably master the ten thousand things… ~ Lao Tzu This is my Satsang Group. We meet once a week to study the 8 point meditation program as taught by Sri Eknath Eswaran. All of us mediate for at least 30 minutes [...]
