When the golden rule cashes in
love doesn’t turn the other cheek
It hangs its head in shame
Turns over in its grave
And no one rests in peace
waiting for the meek
And no one will be saved
when national pride
and the almighty dollar
are valued above
‘love thy neighbor’
_______Colleen Redman / Poets United / Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads
1. If there’s an umbrella at an event, I’ll find it. In this case the event was Floyd’s 2107 high school graduation. Story and photos coming in the Floyd Press this week.
2. How long will it take for your trash to decompose after you’re gone? Some things you toss in the trash will have a longer life span on this planet than you will. Plastic water bottle can take up to 450 years. Plastics may never fully disappear, scientists say. When plastic trash is dumped into the ocean, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces known as microplastics. Fish and shellfish eat these particles, and people who eat seafood are consuming them too. More HERE.
3. I can’t see you but I know you’re there. Listen HERE.
4. “I can’t see you but I know you’re there” was something I said to Joe when we first met. We were at a bonfire.
5. “It’s a big enough umbrella. But it’s always me that ends up getting wet.” – The Police
6. “We’re all in the same boat. Keep the boat afloat” is a chant I remember from the March on Washington to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
7. I’m posting this because I want it in my filing cabinet: “There is no such thing as not voting. Not voting is voting. It is voting to hand hour power over to someone else whose interests will be opposite to yours and who will want to use that power against you.” -Eric Liu founder of Citizen University and author of You’re More Powerful than You Think: A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen.
8. “The handwriting is on the wall. Our problem seems to be widespread illiteracy.” – My Dharmacratic friend Will
9. I’m more of a thinker than a feeler, and sometimes I have to think my way to my feelings.
10. Some stories are like card games / and you’re holding someone’s ace / You want to give it back / but not be seen / You want to even the score / but not at the expense of another / You want the royal flush / and not the bluff / of being loved – Read Secrets in its entirety HERE.
11. At the “From Bach to Bluegrass” concert that I attended over the weekend, I told Maestro David Wiley that he reminds me of a surfer. As a conductor, he surfs the emotion of music. And he knows when the big waves are coming. Stories and photos coming in next week’s Floyd Press.
12. Her name is Laura, and she proudly announced that she was born in 1917, but when asked how old she was, she referred to herself as being 100 years young. And she was! During her interview with the local paper, she was asked what the secret of a long life was. She said her mother told her not to drink, smoke, dip or chew or associate with people who do, so she tried to do that. – Read more about my “Birthday Buddy HERE.
13. Look what the ocean dragged in HERE.
________Thirteen Thursday
-The following first appeared in a recent issue of The Floyd Press
Tour-goers of Glenanna, the historic home of Sam and Dolly Moore, got a close-up look at its original antique furnishings, pre-blight chestnut floors and a converted gaslight with a wire chain that was used to pull the fixture up and down for lighting.
They learned about the history of the home, which was built in 1849 for Dr. Tazewell Headen and his wife, Mary Tucker Stewart Headen, the sister of Civil War General J.E.B Stewart, who was born in Patrick County. “He’s bound to have been in the house because his sister lived here,” said Sam Moore, whose family has owned the property for five generations and whose mother grew up there.
The home was one of the featured Floyd treasures of a Community Treasures Tour, a historic properties tour hosted The Old Church Gallery, The Floyd County Historical Society, and the Floyd County Historic Preservation Trust on Saturday, April 22nd. About twenty people toured Glenanna.
In the parlor, Moore explained that the room was traditionally reserved for “greeting the preacher,” laying out the dead or for weddings, including his parents. He pointed out an old (1856) piano and told the story of how it came to be in the house, referring to it as “Floyd’s first piano.” He was not allowed to play in the parlor as a child, he said.
There were no original closets, but most rooms had built-in cupboards called “presses.” In one part of the house, Moore showed where Dr. Headen saw patients, who entered from a side door. Dr. Henry Howard, a later owner who bought the home at a foreclosure auction in 1869, also saw patients in that part of the house.
From a porch, which was added on by Moore’s great-grandparents in 1900 and closed in when Moore renovated the house (primarily from 2000 – 2002), Moore spoke about the property’s out-buildings, which include an outdoor kitchen, stables, a smokehouse and a well house. “Back in the 1800’s you had to be self-sufficient, cool your milk in the well house and raise your own food,” he said. There was also a large garden, about half-an-acre.
Moore grew up in Blacksburg, but frequently visited his grandparents at the home. “There was a menagerie of animals out here. When I was a kid I loved to come to see what was new, guineas, chickens and geese,” he said. They raised hogs and kept rabbits. Today the Moore’s have two horses, Moonshine and Debbie.
Other features of the tour, which took place in conjunction with the New River Valley Give Big Fund Raising effort, were The Old Church Gallery, Oxford Academy and The Ridgemont, Floyd’s first hospital, which today is home to Floyd County Historical Society’s offices and a museum.
Another tour of Glenanna is scheduled for June 24, which will benefit the Floyd Center for the Arts. – Colleen Redman
Photos: 1. Glenanna was built by brick mason and Irish immigrant Henry Dillon. The bricks were made in Floyd, somewhere behind Slaughters, Moore said. The home is listed on both the Virginia and National Historic Registers. Moore did not know the origination of the name. “It was always called Glenanna,” he said. 2. The original gaslight still hangs in the foyer. 3. In the parlor, where Moore’s parents were married, Moore (in yellow) showed tour-goers Floyd’s first piano, made in 1856. Moore had the piano repaired but said that pianos weren’t perfected until later and that the early pianos never sounded good. 4. In the dining room, Moore spoke of the different colors of coats of paint that the home’s table went through before it was returned to its original wood. 5. Dolly Moore explains how this original bed, which was Sam’s mother’s, was stored in the attic in pieces and how she had to scrape off a black coating to refurbish it. Dolly has been the home’s chief decorator. She made the drapes in the home and keeps the gardens. 6. Sam Moore said the Glenanna phone was in use until 1955. He still remembers the phone number, “Floyd #67,” and how calls were made through operators.
_______Our World Tuesday
Some stories are like secrets
that we gave up for adoption
We want to claim our children
but have forfeited the right
So we wait to be asked
by those who want to know
We hope for reunion
and to feel complete
Some stories are like the iris
that I discovered as a girl
growing by an abandoned house
that we all thought was haunted
Exotic like an orchid
that didn’t belong
I only ever picked dandelions
for my mother
Some stories are like card games
and you’re holding someone’s ace
You want to give it back
but not be seen
You want to even the score
but not at the expense of another
You want the royal flush
not the bluff
of being loved
______Colleen Redman / Poets United / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Post notes: “Secrets” is part of Packing a Suitcase fore the Afterlife, a 34 poem collection that probes the questions: ‘How much does the essence of one’s psyche weigh? Is the soul the one carry-on that we can actually take with us? In the end, what do we value and what do we leave behind?’ The book is being published by Finishing Line Press and can be pre-ordered HERE.
I knew attending my friend Garry’s mom’s 100th birthday party would be a good way to celebrate my own birthday too. It was the first time we met, but we were both born on May 17th and so, shared a bond right away.
Her name is Laura, and she proudly announced that she was born in 1917, but when asked how old she was, she referred to herself as being 100 years young. And she was! There she is (above) getting a kiss on either side from her sons.
During her interview with the local paper, she was asked what the secret of a long life was. She said her mother told her not to drink, smoke, dip or chew or associate with people who do, so she tried to do that.
Later, I told her I thought that her smile had something to do with her long life. She told me a smile was something you should always give away.
Laura’s friend Kristen stopped by to wish her a happy birthday. Kristen does Laura’s nails. The last time she did them, Laura invited her to the May 17th birthday party. It was an easy date to remember, Kristen said, “Because my birthday is May 17th too!”
“Happy Birthday, Laura. It was a pleasure to meet you. You brought some good belly laughs and inspiration to my day. What a priceless gift.”
1. Today I learned that sparrows don’t care who is watching but pretty birds hide from view.
2. I took the photos in this post from inside my birdwatcher’s box that the boys made for me. I can get in and out from the back and there’s a stool inside to sit on. Photos are HERE.
3. I don’t take a pill for depression because I don’t want to lose the lesson / Most fear is distortion / Some sadness is golden / and sometimes the best singing is blue.
4. But where is my bluebird of happiness / my wonderful world of blue sky? / I imagine them off living a new life / with those who take them for granted.
5. Birds show up in 4 of the 33 poems in my new chapbook Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, and more if you count chickens.
6. “There’s a difference between art and entertainment. Entertainment is really about forgetting about your life and art is about remembering your life.” – Father John Misty
7. The Little River Poetry Festival is back! Building on last year’s inaugural event, this year’s festival is scheduled for June 9 – 11 and will take place in the meadow of On the Water kayaking during the day and the Floyd Friends Meeting House at night. The festival is hosted by Norfolk published poets and Poetry Society of Virginia members Judith Stevens and Jack Callan and will showcase featured readers, workshops and open mics. There will be opportunities to explore ekphrastic poetry (descriptive poems inspired by art or scenery) during a kayak trip, a hike to the Buffalo and a birdwatcher’s nature walk. “Poets with heart” is how Stevens describes this year’s readers and workshop presenters, which will include several regional poets, including Floyd Countian Colleen Redman, who will be reading poems from her recently published chapbook Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife Saturday afternoon. – More from the story on the LRPF that appeared in The Floyd Press last week HERE.
8. It’s my birthday, but, because I’ve been trying to limit my sugar intake, I actually asked not to have my special birthday carrot cake by chef Kelly, but now I’m regretting it. My grandson Byrce’s birthday is three days before mine. No cake from that party either, but I’ve been singing “number nine, number nine, number nine” to him. He’s a Beatles fan so he gets the reference.
9. I like to lie about my age by a year. I call it buffering. Yesterday I got interviewed about my poetry book by a reporter for The Hull Times, the local paper from the town I grew up in. I thought about lying about my age (by one year) if I was asked, but then realized that anyone in Hull that remembers me also knows what class and what year I graduated high school. (He never asked but I realized if he did, I’d still come off a year younger because the interview happpened the day before my birthday.
10. Poverty is a preexisting condition. So is moral decency – or lack of it. – My Dharmacratic friend Will
11. THIS Website Will Mail Your Ashes To The GOP If Trumpcare Kills You. Really.
12. It’s never too late to put flowers on the table / to let the song birds of your childhood/ sing like Jericho through middle age.
13. The grass may be greener on the others side but it still needs to be mowed.
__________Thirteen Thursday
A poem unwritten
is like a dream forgotten
that haunts you to remember
throughout the day
It’s like sugar in a packet
opened but not used
that sticks to the paper
and won’t pour
_________Colleen Redman / Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press newspaper on May 11, 2017
The Little River Poetry Festival is back! Building on last year’s inaugural event, this year’s festival is scheduled for June 9 – 11 and will take place in the meadow of On the Water kayaking during the day and the Floyd Friends Meeting House at night.
The festival is hosted by Norfolk published poets and Poetry Society of Virginia members Judith Stevens and Jack Callan and will showcase featured readers, workshops and open mics. There will be opportunities to explore ekphrastic poetry (descriptive poems inspired by art or scenery) during a kayak trip, a hike to the Buffalo and a birdwatcher’s nature walk.
“Poets with heart” is how Stevens describes this year’s readers and workshop presenters, which will include several regional poets, including Roanoke’s Luci Merlo and Floyd Countian Colleen Redman, who will be reading poems from her recently published chapbook Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife Saturday afternoon.
Some of the out-of town featured readers include Maddie Garcia of Chesapeake, Star LaBranche of Norfolk, Tanya Cunningham of Williamsburg, Jill Winkowski of Yorktown, Serena Fusek of Newport News, Jay Scott Wilson of Virginia Beach, Don MacKellar of Suffolk, as well as Callan and Stevens.
Music goes well with poetry. Callan hopes musicians will perform along with poets at the open mics, which he calls “the core of the festival.” “Bring anything you have that is creative,” he says, adding that he likes to cross boundaries to connect people through different mediums. Bring a poem you wrote, read a favorite by another poet, or read a chapter from your novel. Writers at all levels are welcome, Callan said.
A 20 x 40 foot performance tent will allow the festival to go on rain or shine. Callan suggests that attendees bring lawn chairs, snacks, a pen and notebook, hiking gear and dress for any possible inclement weather. Mornings and evenings will be broken up with “Walt Whitman Yoga” and
meditation and time for contemplation and renewal will be scheduled in. Meals will be shared at local venues. Some primitive camping is available. Artists can set up their wares for sale for a $25 vending fee.
For $15 a day (drop-ins welcome) or $45 for the three day weekend, attendees can share their poetry or come to soak up the natural setting and creative expression of others. Callan is enthusiastic about the inspiration and interactive exchanges that the festival provides. “How many new poets will we meet that we didn’t know before?” he asks.
Post Notes: Read how the Little River Poetry Festival came to be HERE and about last year’s inaugural festival HERE. To view a complete weekend schedule (from 3 pm Friday to 3 pm Sunday, visit littleriverpoetryfest.com or follow them on Facebook.
– Crying During Acupuncture is a poem I wrote in December and posted here. It was published in February with the below back story at Poets United, an online community site for poets who blog. The poem is included in my book, Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, published by Finishing Line Press.
I lost two brothers a month apart in 2001. It was a complicated grief that wrenched my heart and changed my life in a way I didn’t know was possible. I inhabited my grief fully and wrote a book about it, called The Jim and Dan Stories.
In 2016, I lost my sister and my mother nine months apart. The grief was once again complicated, but so different. It was slower to penetrate, as if it had to go through scar tissue to be fully felt. I’ve been processing the losses incrementally through dreams and poetry. Every nerve I’ve been able hit and every emotion deepened has felt like a gift that I’ve chosen to welcome.
The poems I wrote following my sister’s and my mother’s death fit well as part of a collection I had been working on, Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife. The collection is a distillation of my life, a tracking of the inner and outer journeys of growing up, aging, care-giving and weighing life’s inevitable losses.
The poem “Crying During Acupuncture” was a turning point. About 6 months ago, some of the cartilage in my knee wore out, causing me to limp with pain. I used the experience to tap into my survivor’s guilt, as well as some delayed empathy for the pain my mother and sister, who both had bad knees, endured.
My knee has greatly improved, mostly through a series of acupuncture treatments. During a recent intense session, I noticed that my acupuncturist had inserted a lot more needles than usual and that the connections and sensations were strong. I asked him if all the needles were for my knee and he answered that he was also responding to and treating other imbalances he found by carefully taking my pulses.
It’s not the first time that I’ve experienced an emotional release during acupuncture. Some of the points when stimulated do result in an opening of the heart and a release of grief. I don’t cry easily (as my sister could) but I cry easier than my mother, a stoic hard worker of German descent.
So the tears came. The first single tear that rolled down my cheek was the one I focused on. It was completely unexpected and spontaneous, and was more beautifully bittersweet than sad. There was a window in my view, and I watched the tall wheat colored grasses bend in the wind as meditative music played in the background. It was timeless, and as if childhood disappointments and the tensions that had collected in the last years before their deaths (related to my mother’s decline and her care) dissolved.
After the session, when I got home, I grabbed my copy of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytales and re-read the Snow Queen. It was a formative story that my father, who died in 2005, read to me when I was a child – the only story I remember that was read to me. So much of it was over my head then, but I never forgot the part about the love between a little girl and boy who played together.
The boy got a piece of mirror made by demons in his eye, and it distorted the way he viewed the world. He was eventually kidnapped by the Snow Queen and lived in her cold world until the girl traveled the world and found him. When she did, the boy was so happy to see her that he cried, and his tears washed out the mirror speck. I let my own tears purify and save me, the way he was saved at the end of the story.
The pearl necklace in the poem is also a reference to a formative life experience. When I was in second grade, my mother clasped a string of her pearls around my neck for school picture day. It was a gesture that stood out, and I remember feeling beautiful and seen as special by my mother. With her death, it feels like our circle of family, worn from previous losses, has given way, as if the precious parts that once existed tightly together now exist more loosely on their own.
Crying During Acupuncture
Pricked at birth
The sting still hurts
Now my stiffened knee
is loosening
Now one tear falls
for two losses
A mirror speck
that holds the past
The tear my mother
couldn’t shed
The one my sister
couldn’t hold back
It swelled then slipped
like a clean drop of rain
Like a gem of truth
snapped from a necklace
Down my cheek
in un-distorted release
A precious pearl
hard earned
-Colleen Redman / Poets United
Note – You can pre-order Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife HERE.
1. “We’re not here to do the big things. We’re here to do what we can.” – Nikki Giovanni, speaking at the 2017 Artemis literary journal launch.
2. Nikki and I have a few things in common, such as: We both love Bonnie Raitt. We both have had a seizure. We are not that friendly but like people, and we both write unpunctuated poetry.
3. My six-year-old grandson Liam: Nana, you ask a lot more questions than Hopa does. Me: That’s because I’m curious. Liam: Like me? Me: Yes, so if you describe me you can say I’m a little curious. Liam: You’re a lot curious.
4. It’s in the Bag: This year my son Josh, a 16 Hands member, hosted guest artist Joey Sheehan, who has done the show with Josh more than any other guest artist, but not quite as many times as Alex Baldwin has hosted Saturday Night Live. More HERE .
5. Poet David Whyte refers to the stage of life I’ve documented in Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife as ‘apprenticing ourselves to our own disappearance.’ Psychologist and motivational speaker Wayne Dyer once said, ‘I’m 71. I’m cramming for the final exam.’ And I’m writing poetry that lets the psyche guide the itinerary because “the days are small / packed tightly together / Not much room / for last minute changes.” – More HERE.
6. I like people; I just don’t have to see them all the time. -Neil Young
7. This (right) is how we love The Kind, and how we power nap as a family after dancing a non-stop hour to their songs.
8. And THIS is my friend Deb’s arm. I only have freckles.
9. I heard David Whyte speak and read poetry in 2014 at an event titled “What is Your Beautiful Question?” This is an excerpt from I blog post I wrote about it: My own beautiful question is elusive. I seem to answer my question before I can ask it and the answer I usually get is similar to Whyte’s response to a woman in the audience who was dealing with acute grief. “There is no need to know the meaning. Let yourself be fully disorientated. Face the depth of grief. We’re trying to choose one or the other rather than let things mature.” He spoke about the “ancient human intuition” that our loved ones are still here as a witness to our lives. And, although to know where they are is beyond our knowing, the conversation with them does reestablish itself and sometimes matures. – More HERE.
10. Mara shares a birthday with Pete Seeger, which made celebrating her birthday with poets and folk singers at Lucie Monroe’s Open Mic a good alignment. My birthday is in May too and coming up soon. I share mine with the Ayatollah Khomeini and Enya. – More HERE.
11. “My boss is my muse. If I had an idea for a song, I’d get up right now and go.” – Neil Young
12. A poem unwritten is like a dream forgotten that disturbs you throughout the day, like sugar in a package that’s opened but not used. It sticks to the paper and won’t pour.
13. Best End Zone Victory Dances HERE.
_______Thirteen Thursday
Mara shares a birthday with Pete Seeger, which made celebrating her birthday with poets and folk singers at Lucie Monroe’s Open Mic a good alignment.
My birthday is in May too and coming up soon. I share mine with the Ayatollah Khomeini and Enya.
I don’t know what’s going on here but I like to imagine that Mara has a big candle for the birthday cupcake Chelsea presented her with.
Chelsea and Bill did a jazzy java set that ended with Bill playing a Beatles song. Check out Chelsea’s poetry chapbook HERE.
I started my set with a quote by Paul Gauguin – I close my eyes in order to see – because the performer before me sang a song about Gauguin, his father’s favorite artist.
I was feeling introverted and rusty at the poetry reading thing, but once I got started I was fine and it was a good chance to try out my material from Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, which is being published now by Finishing Line Press.
There were some blasts from the past there, old friends and familiar faces I remembered from my days working at my friend’s Blacksburg bead shop, Seeds of Light, thorough the ‘90s. We were happy to see our Floyd friend Bernie, who performed THIS original song, among others.
I can’t remember if we officially sang Happy Birthday to Mara (reading in the clip above), but I did read THIS poem, which I wrote for her.
Once again our house was transformed over the weekend into a pottery gallery for the latest 16 Hands Studio Tour, spring 2017.
This year our son Josh, a 16 Hands member, hosted guest artist Joey Sheehan, who has done the show with Josh more than any other guest artist, but not quite as many times as Alex Baldwin has hosted Saturday Night Live.
Some of the pots, like these ones made by Josh, were too big to be put in bags.
But we didn’t have any pots this year that were big enough to put baby Pearl in to. Putting children in pots for photo-ops is a tradition at our house.
Someone commented that the artisan studio tour is also a tasting tour of treats.
At one point I think there were three baby tour-goers in the mix.
And at least one puppy.
Where’s the cinnamon? I call this a spice rack, but it’s really an exhibit display that Josh made of all the different wild clay he’s dug in North Carolina. Watch a video of Josh talking about it HERE.
This year tour goers were provided with tickets to stamp at each of the different studio tour locations, kind of like walking the Camino and collecting stamps to show that you completed the pilgrimage. The fully stamped 16 Hands tour tickets were turned in and eligible for door prizes, pots of course.
On either end of the porch, Joey and Josh’s wood-fired pots looked like display bookends.
My house, a log cabin, looks like it was made to be a pottery gallery.
The tour wound down by late afternoon on Sunday. See you back here for the fall tour! / Our World Tuesday
The days are small
packed tightly together
not much room
for last minute changes
I don’t like cruises
I’ve never been on one
I don’t like to gamble
or get my hopes up
about an afterlife or God
I fear the waiting room
where people cough and no one talks
and there is no proof of heaven
I don’t check my bags
because the subatomic particles
that look like me
are afraid of losing
and disappearing
Poetry is my passport
in the mother tongue of a universe
that’s only 4% visible
and 96% dark riddle
I can write poetry
but can’t take it with me
because science has proven
my suitcase is an illusion
filled with mostly empty space
______Colleen Redman / Poets United / Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads
Post note: The above poem is one in my collection called Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife that is currently being published by Finishing Line Press. It can be pre-ordered HERE. Read some reviews and background HERE.
That’s a picture of me packing a suitcase for the afterlife, sorting a few years of poetry into a collection, one that reads like a memoir, explores the weight of loss, rummages through my childhood closet and is informed by dreams. I’m picking and choosing what fits and distilling the rest to its essence.
Poet David Whyte refers to the stage of life I’ve been documenting as ‘apprenticing ourselves to our own disappearance.’ Psychologist and motivational speaker Wayne Dyer once said, ‘I’m 71 and cramming for my finals.” And I’m writing poetry that lets the psyche guide the itinerary because “the days are small / packed tightly together / Not much room / for last minute changes.”
Memoirist, poet and novelist Jim Minick nailed it when he described the poems in Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife this way: “Loss tempered by wonder, love radiating like the moon (“a bowl fired by the sun”), these poems track a life, playful yet dark, frank and funny, yet somber. Along with the “Scrabble dictionary in the backseat” and the “kaleidoscope in the glove compartment,” your suitcase is ready, keep it close by.”
-To purchase a copy of Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife by Colleen Redman, you can pre-order a copy online at Finishing Line Press HERE, or send $14.99 (check or money order+$2.99 shipping) to Finishing Line Press, PO Box 1626, Georgetown KY, 40324.
1. When we do what we were made to and follow it to a completion, when we offer our work as a way to touch others, it opens the way for more.
2. “Sometimes the line will agree with the sentence and sometimes the sentence will argue with the line.” Claudia Emerson
3. The Pope gives a Ted Talk.
4. Blog comment I posted last week: I grew up next to a penny candy store AND the beach, but I still need that bubble machine to make life complete.
5. “Interestingly, both (J.R.R.)Tolkien and (C. S.) Lewis seems to have found Disney “vulgar.” Tolkien says he “infantilised” fairy tales. . . . One serious objection of both these authors to Disney seems to be in the depiction of dwarves as cute and comical figures. In the original Snow White, these are dark figures from the region of id inhabiting the dark forest of her unconscious, who help her overcome her evil mother archetype and find independence. Dwarves have always inhabited the twilight zone between good and evil in fairy tale and fantasy; Disney made them cute – an unpardonable crime!” –From the Joseph Campbell Facebook Group Read The Movie Date That Solidified J.R.R. Tolkien’s Dislike of Walt Disney. –Blue Country Magic
6. My introduction into the world of archetypes came when I was a girl by way of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. To this day Rumplestilskin and the Snow Queen repeatedly show up in my poetry. When I first saw the kiln at the university where my potter son was a student, memories were stirred of Hansel and Gretel pushing the witch that had imprisoned them into the oven. When I’m in the garden, I watch rabbits and wonder which one is Peter. Because of the story of Cinderella, a pumpkin will always be magical to me. – More from Once Upon a Time HERE.
7. Does THIS choke you up?
8. What do you see HERE? “Everything you see is your brain’s best guess. Once you have made sense of this image it is impossible not to see it again.”
9. Strangest Headline this week: He did Nazi that coming: Sebastian Gorka loses job in Donald Trump’s White House
10. “Patriarchy plays the Trump card. Reality calls its bluff.” – My Dharmacratic friend Will
11. For at least 100 days / I’ve been drowning in a swamp / a snake oil con of billionaires / burning bridges and rattling sabers / while trying to convince me / the world is flat / I’ve mourned the disregard of facts / of common sense and science / I’ve felt threatened, held hostage and robbed / watching corporate give-aways / and environmental protections signed away / like broken treaties / like blankets spreading small pox … Read The First 100 Days in its entirety HERE.
12. There would be no other reason for me to get on four-wheeler at this stage of life other than that my nearly 9-year old grandson Bryce invited me to HERE.
13. I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives. Anonymous
_____________Thirteen Thursday
