From wanna-be to blogger--5 year anniversary

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                It’s Sunday night, February 9, 2014—a special date in several ways. According to my haiku calendar, in 2010 it was 20 degrees with snow on the ground. In 2011, it was snowing. Thirty-two degrees in 2013, and today, 29 degrees with snow still on the ground (until the afternoon). After the low, low temps of the past few weeks, today, it seemed actually warm.

                One more important (to me) event: Five years ago, I began blogging.

                In early February of 2008, I wrote a piece titled, “If I were a blogger . . .” At that time, I knew only two bloggers, both friends: former landlady Sally Dixon and Dennis Price, an Arkansan-turned-Texan. (He calls himself “the Texican.”) He kept at me, and when I finally set up a blog, he offered support by getting his friends to "comment."

                So far, though, I haven’t received any invitation from magazine editors to use any of my posts, like the literature on the advantages of blogging promised. Oh, I take that back, Gayle asked me to do a guest post on her blog, which I promised to do this month. But right now, she’s just a blogger like me. And a 90+-year-old writer from Missouri asked me to put the word out (on my blog) about her first novel coming out Tuesday, Water Under the Bridge, by Verna Simms.

                Now, five years later, many bloggers I know are out there in blogger-land, including most of the members of Central AR Writers.

Why blog? Jane, a blogger from Rector says, “Writing feeds me. It wasn't until I had the time that I began to write out of daily experiences, sharing what spoke to me. The response from readers encourages me to look deeper into each day.”

A blogger from Clinton: "Today marks the second anniversary of my blog, named "Freeda Baker Nichols, My True Sentence." As a poet and writer, I share poems and short fiction as well as photos. Blogging allows me to share my writings with people around the world. That's awesome! Their feedback encourages and brings me happiness. Although it's time consuming, my blog is worthwhile and keeps me writing."

                Here is another blogger, Christa. "Pat, I was a reluctant blogger. I had written the column for the paper since 2005 and when they started offering blogs I simply graduated to putting my column on the blog. Then I became excited about it and have 3 other blogs that I don't really update as often as I should."

Dot from Beebe writes, "I find blogging a good writing discipline for me, an appointment I need to keep. I also enjoy the instant gratification of finishing a project, no matter if small, and putting it out there. My blog (First Person Limited) is not designed to be an expert's view or opinion of anything; I like that freedom, too."

Gayle (aforementioned) says, "Blogging 1) keeps my mind on writing.  Knowing I need to keep a schedule keeps me on my toes and my attention on writing. 2) Perhaps the best thing is I am more aware of things around me, always wondering if they would be good subjects or how I could use them in a post.3) A nice side benefit is that I'm getting better at quick edits! ( and I'm craving to get better at photography, now, too... so I have my own photos to use)"

                Other friends have blogs, too, but I'll save their thoughts for another time.

 

Letters—sent and not sent

 

            Dear Heloise, I read your columns faithfully. I’ve gotten some good hints. What I need to know is the secret way to hold the can—and my mouth—when I go to open the lid with a new Continental brand electric can opener.

While making venison-based chili, I tried to open a can of regular chili, a can of tomatoes and a can of chili beans— to only the grinding sound of the machine. I tried more than several times, so I ended up using the hand-cranked opener. I just about unplugged the new-ish machine and tossed it out.

Later, making cheese dip, I thought I’d try it one more time. Lo and behold, it opened the Rotel tomatoes and the regular chili without a groan, grind or whine. Now, Heloise, tell me: is there a robot inside that decides when to work and when not to work?

Dear Linda, How do you like J. as bell director? I'm impressed that he counts so quietly. Last week, K. asked him to count out loud all the time, but others of us demurred. He agreed to call out a measure number now and then. I tried to get C. to come play bells, but she won't leave the Wed. nights' activities at her church. Wasn't Andrew a hoot last night? He was in his glory playing both his and Mark’s BIG bells!!  

Dear Sis, I gave blood after church and didn't get outta there till 1:10. Sorry, I wanted to hear you sing whatever it was you sang today. Maybe next time. The tech said I had great blood pressure (120/80) and a great iron count (14.5). If my pint will save 3 people, I'm glad to give it. The little boy in FL with the flesh-eating disease died, the tech said. But Kali seems to be responding, Thank-You-Lord.

Dear Gloria, Thanks for your letter wanting an autographed copy of A Journey of Choice. I will mail you one--hardback ($25), softback ($15), plus $2 mailing. Do I have your address?  Oh, and thanks!!! I'm always ready to sell a book. xoxo

            Dear Sandy, Thanks for your congratulations on my accepting the newly-vacated position of poetry editor for CALLIOPE. Isn't that what I asked for several years ago?  But only if she ditched him, or he ditched himself. Sounds like he's a prima donna. Thanks for your encouragement. C. said she preferred that I take it.  So I did!!!!  

            Dear Billy, Your debit card and an invoice from HSU for $302 came in the mail. Shall I send them on? Can you pay the invoice? I've already made two payments for this term, each over a thousand dollars. Let me know the answers--either by text or by email. Do you still have the PO Box at Henderson? 

            Dear Dot, Talya's dropping by Monday on her way to Helena; I've spent all morning on the computer working on restoring/updating my lost stuff. I could use the extra day at home prepping for fall/T. Since I've already given you your birthday gift, I'm OK with F.'s suggestion for the writers not to meet until November. UNLESS, you think we ought to meet face to face.        

                Dear Readers, these letters are across time from the present to the fairly recent past.  Only one was not sent. PL

If I were God – a Dr. Frank Crane essay

 

 

                Yet another death—this time a cousin two years my elder. His graveside service was local. Nothing to do but layer on the clothes, pull on gloves, secure a scarf to a hooded, long raincoat--all to withstand the cold. The robed minister admitted he wore his topcoat underneath.

                The emotions that came with so many deaths so quickly left me bereft of column material. I turned to my resources and found something that seemed appropriate.

 Dr. Frank Crane wrote eight volumes of four-minute essays. I have volume eight, published in 1919,but no information of how I came to own it. Here is the essay that caught my eye.

                “There is an old epitaph that runs: ‘Here lieth David Elginbrod. / Have mercy on him, gracious God, / As he would do if he were God, / And You were David Elginbrod.’

                “Maeterlinck makes the old man in Pelleas and Melisande say, ‘If I were God, I would have pity on men.’

                “Omar somewhere wishes that he might grasp the sorry scheme of things entire and remould it nearer to his heart’s desire.

                “If you were God, what would you do? Not that you impeach the divine wisdom, criticize the Omnipotent; but what changes would you make in men and things?

                “If I were God I would enter all men’s breasts and take out the will to war.

                “I would eliminate hate from every heart, and give every one ‘good-will toward men.’

                “I would make cruelty, fraud, and injustice loathsome to every creature, so that none would do deeds of that kind, nor think such thoughts, any more than he would cut his flesh or eat nauseous stuff.

                “I would make men’s appetite crave only such food as is wholesome for them, and cause them to turn sick when they are about to eat or drink too much.

                “I would make every man and woman loving and loyal, and have every Jack find his Jill and live happily ever after.

                “I would allow only enough children to be born to maintain the population to a sufficient number, and have them all live free from disease their allotted span.

                “I would make death a luxurious and desired experience, when death’s time comes.

                “I would do away with the motives of money, fame, and pride, and make every man’s desire be to serve well his fellows.

                “Every person should receive the same wage, ‘to every man his penny,’ and the only emulation should be for superior helpfulness.

                “I would put in every human soul enough intelligence to control and balance its passion.

                “I would make every woman beautiful, and as good as beautiful, and all men brave and honest and true.

                “Every child should be happy and obedient.

                “I would remove all lions, tigers, snakes, and fierce carnivorous beasts, and would cause human beings to abhor flesh food, so that none should any more kill.

                “I would have born into every human creature’s nature a dominant passion for the good, the true, and the beautiful.

                “I would have all humanity co-operate and organize for their mutual welfare, each for all and all for each, and take away the lust of contention.

                “When I read this over I said to myself: ‘Why so hot, little man? Perhaps, after all, that is what God is doing, only He is not in so much of a hurry as you. Be still. And wait. For a thousand years are in His sight but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.’

                To which I could make answer in no wise, except in the deep and ancient cry of the Hebrew poet: ‘How long, O Lord? How long!’”

                Pat, again: Here endeth today’s lesson. Thanks to the Rev. Dr. Crane.

Too many deaths lately; too close

 

 

                Not two hours after I mailed a “Thinking of You” card telling him how much I appreciated him, I found out that Frank “Corky” Chenault had died. “Mr. Chenault,” younger than I, was my principal at Eastside Junior High during the 1980s. His and Linda Jo’s grandson and my granddaughter are in the same grade and we saw each other at school events, the most recent being the 6^th grade’s choir concert in mid-December.

                Just a week earlier, Jean Adams, musician extraordinaire, died at age 90. Jean and I had lots of experiences together—MacDowell Music Club and the Saline County Choral Society for two. I accompanied her flutist daughter Judy on the piano for many of Judy’s local performances.

                On January 9, a beloved United Methodist minister and journalist, Dr. John S. Workman of Conway, died. He was religion editor at the Arkansas Gazette. I inherited his books, Fireflies in a Fruit Jar, and Open Windows. The latter was a gift to my mother from her Sunday School class in 1988. Each member had signed it. All but the teacher have now died.

                But there’s more. I read the daily paper top half first with the bottom folded under. The second column of the day’s obituaries began this way: “Corning; from Hendrix College in Conway; and from Duke University Divinity School in 1962. He pastored churches in the former North Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church and in Missouri… Lynn crafted mountain dulcimers….”

                I keened and wailed longer than ever I’d done. He was another of my early “boyfriends.” Lynn McSpadden of Mountain View had died at age 76.

                When I was a senior at Hendrix and he was a junior, I was in love with him. If he’d asked me, I would’ve married him in a heartbeat. But he was smarter than that and it didn’t happen.

                Later, when friend Pat Guthrie and I made a trip to the Folk Center in Mountain View, we saw Lynn in his dulcimer shop. Since I taught folk music to middle grade students, I purchased one of his lap or mountain dulcimers—whether at that time or later, I forget—which I still have.

                The saddest part about this was a paragraph in the obit that his wife, Mary Catherine, or one of his children added. “If you do not smoke, or use tobacco in any form, don’t start. If you are already a smoker, QUIT NOW! Emphysema is a miserable disease.”

                During the early 1990s, when my friends and I visited the local VFW regularly, I met a woman named Margaret, whose body was invaded by cancer. She eventually died. I wrote a Butterfly pattern poem for her. I am updating it and reprinting it here in memory of the four saints I mourn today.

 

FOR CORKY, JEAN, JOHN and LYNN

Four lambs have passed through death’s bright door;

They will not feed again before

They visit God,

Whose shepherd’s rod

Has pulled them gently from this side

Of pain into God’s healing tide.

 

                Feelings of sympathy too strong for words go out to the Chenault, Adams, Workman and McSpadden families. May the strength of faith and the love of friends bless and keep them all. Amen.

A mild winter day takes us to the attic

from Google images 

 

 

                From six to 58 degrees—in just a handful of days. From an icy attic to one comfortable to work in, to re-store Christmas decorations.

                When the weather read single digits, I allowed the 3 feral cats to come inside with the 3 tame ones. Three of them chose to go to the attic. One of them stayed for over a month—food, water and a litter box provided. Finally, the cat came back, uh, down, and spent days and nights hidden in one corner or another of the front rooms. Then, after two weeks, it finally arched its black, longhaired tail and walked out the front door where it's been ever since.

                Children that I know (including me) have always been fascinated by the attic. At the last, Mom refused each request for permission to go there. But I remember the pleasure of going up Grandma Flossie’s back stairs.

                When I was a child, our attic was not safe for anyone but Dad. Two-by-fours (insulation I don’t remember) and a few one-by sixes laid over them comprised the flooring.

An ancient typewriter sat on that floor that somehow I managed to get to. Hmmm. A budding writer at that age, do you suppose? We’ve heard stories about Dad tossing an old wall-hung telephone out the attic window. For the longest time, a Victrola graced one corner.

At some point, Dad floored the entire place and sheet-rocked the sides and ceiling. Probably when we needed more bedroom space. But he assured us until his dying days that a bathroom could NOT be built into the attic. And, he added, he was a carpenter and knew what he was talking about. God rest his soul.

For many family members, using the attic for storage was a given, whether you lived here or not. A port-a-crib belonged to a sister whose boys are now in their forties. An over-sized runner-up trophy from a Miss Benton pageant so long ago the two sisters (60-somethings) who had entered could not remember to whom it belonged.

Dressers and books go back four generations––some from my maternal grandmother’s, some from who-knows-where. Cardboard boxes are full of Mom’s college papers and projects. During the 1960s, she attended ASTC (UCA) on Saturdays and in summers while she taught first grade on an emergency certificate. This, after her eight children were in school. God rest HER soul.

Kid Billy and I hauled down a coiled wire bed spring that went to ABC Salvage. A metal bed frame and mattress—now quilt-covered—lean against a wall.

Two ironing boards—mine and Mom’s—are set up. One is for stacking stuff on and the other to use as intended.

Old copies of Better Homes and Gardens and Look are worth a bit online, some issues more than others, of course.

In the few weeks of spring and fall, the attic makes a good writing space. Windows on the north and west provide plenty of light during the day.

 Here is an attic poem written several years ago that won two first and two second places when it was new. It also scored a 4HM in NFSPS’s contest, which is a feather in my cap, so to speak.

 

 

THE ATTIC – (a Foster Sonnet)

 

 “With restlessness of childhood, underscored

by weeks of ice and snow, no school demands,

 I beg for Grandma’s leave to spend some time

 beyond the mystifying door. “We climb

the narrow, testy stairs where treasures’ hoard,

 in paint-peeled chests and mothballed trunks, is stored.

When eyes adjust to garret’s gray, on hands

and knees we snake across the hinterlands,

 dirt daubers’ buzz in dormered warmth no threat,

 spy shoeboxed photographs./“In flannelette,

 I sit on Grandma’s lap. Her stories spill

like water from the back porch pump until

 the clump of boots in lower hall cuts short

 our winter trip to attic’s warm resort."  

--PL, c 2014, lovepat press

By the numbers in 2013

 

 

                January is the time when it’s easy to wonder what in the world we accomplished last year? Did we carry our weight of the world by helping others? Did we matter to anyone? Are we just taking up space and marking time?  Gee, I hope not.

                There is so much emphasis on volunteering during one’s retirement years, yet I resist mightily—unless it means going to UMCOR in Baldwin, Louisiana. I’ll DO that as often as I can. But I mean weekly, monthly, like some folks do—Rice Depot, SCJCOHN (Saline County’s food/clothing/assistance, etc. organization).

                Recently I congratulated a woman on turning 90. “I hope I live till 90,” I said. “Volunteer,” she answered. I guess I’ll die before I age to 90. I figure I volunteered to raise a grandson for 23 years. But I may be bragging up the wrong tree.

                So, to convince myself of whatever worth I may be to the world, I’ll go to the calendar and my writing ledger. Hmm. Maybe part of my value is singing in two church choirs and playing in two bell choirs.

Maybe it is sharing my poetry and prose with folks via email and Facebook. In January last year, I logged in 48 pieces of writing. I helped the economy by buying $200 worth of writing supplies and registering for a retreat in northeast Arkansas. And I read seven books or journals.

By the end of February, I had critiqued 28 pieces of writing for the two writers’ groups I belong to, sold three books, written 90 pieces and traveled 175 miles in writing-related activities.

A former neighbor, Mrs. Marshall, who said she never read a book because she couldn’t see what she’d accomplished afterwards, would call me a lay-about and a sluggard if she knew how much time I spent/spend reading. BUT, she had a point, I guess. She wanted to SHOW what she’d done.

Hmmm. How DOES reading help one who wants to share in the improvement of the world? I went straight to Google and typed in “How does reading help one feel like he’s helping make the world a better place?”

www.lifdev.net gives eight benefits, which might be considered going around the mountain to get to the original thesis, but… here goes:

    1. Enhanced smarts. Keeps us sharp as we age, hence, no drain on the taxpayers for medical care. (LOL)

                2. Reduced stress. So we don’t react snappishly or meanly to those we meet.

                3. Greater tranquility. Keeps me from cussing the computer, the cats, those who litter MY FRONT Yard…

                4. Improved analytical thinking. (I had to type in a different question to Google.) Three of nine entries from www.criticalthinking.org on how to use critical thinking were to “reshape one’s character, deal with your ego and redefine the ways you see things”. And I add… In the world around you.

                5. Increased vocabulary –easier to work the crossword puzzle! And helps us be better listeners.

                6. Improved memory! If your memory needs “mojo,” try reading more.               

                7. Improved writing skills—for those emails and blogs and letters to grandchildren and newspaper editors…

                8. Helps prioritize goals.  ….. Maybe I’ll begin to see the advantages of volunteering.

                As usual, reader, I got sidetracked from my original “goal,” so maybe I’ll have to finish next week. Have a good one!

END OF THE STORY; END OF THE YEAR

~Ice Sculpture contest entry~

from an email

 

  CONTINUATION OF LAST WEEK’S POST: How the months were named, from The Test and Study Speller, 1921. In olden times, there were only ten months. We got through the first six. Now for the last four.

“September comes from “septem” meaning seven.

“October comes from “octo” meaning eight.

 “November comes from “novem” meaning nine

“December comes from “decem” meaning ten.

 “After a great many years the Romans divided the year into twelve parts instead of ten. They added the two new months to the beginning of the year and called them January and February.

“January was named in honor of their god, Janus. It was thought that he sat at the entrance to every home guarding it from harm. He had two faces; one looked into the house, the other looked out. It may be that the Romans believed that Janus sat at the entrance of the new year, looking back over the past and forward into the future.

“February got its name from a holiday, called Februa, that [sic] came in the middle of that month.

“Again many years passed without any changes in the names of the months. But after Julius Caesar had become the ruler of about all the world that was then known, the Roman people honored him by giving his name to what they had always called their Fifth month. That is how we have July.

“After Julius Caesar came the great Augustus Caesar. The Romans wanted to honor him also so they called the month following July, August.”

            Okay, reader, that’s the whole story. Now, we open the storybook of 2014. How will each of ours read, I wonder. Mine will begin with A for “awe.” It’s amazing how fast each old year passes. I expressed that feeling several years ago with the poem below. It has the look of an acrostic and the pattern of a “Farewell” (suggested by the late Benton poet, Anna Nash Yarbrough) with the subject of “a farewell to someone, something or some condition in 7 unrhymed lines. The syllabic line-count is to be: 8-8-8-6-6-6-4."

  FAREWELL 

 G-alloping swiftly, as on fire;

 O-ver minutes, hours and days,

 O-beying nature’s agenda,

D-ashing through time down the

B-ackstretch of December,

Y-ou daze us with speed—an

E-ntire year gone.    [PL]

But looking ahead is the order of the day now, so how to improve on last year to make it healthier, holier, happier, hardier? That’s our challenge.

Happy New Year.

 

c lovepat press 2014