May is Motherhood Memoir Month, a time to celebrate motherhood by writing about it. Or maybe you don’t feel like celebrating- write about that. Maybe you’d just like to read some tall but true tales until you get inspired, or yarns for commiseration. You’re welcome to read mine. With six…
Today is the last day of May- what a month. I focused on words, writing a lot of words, a redemptive story. I got distracted and sometimes felt disheartened, probably a lot like you. But we press on. We realize it is a privilege to be able to press on,…
I was out walking on a trail near our house this morning, putting one foot in front of the other, when I looked up and saw four sets of big eyes looking back at me. A small herd of young bucks stood less than 20 feet away. I came to…
The bees seem to have settled into the hive. I can’t say for sure unless I open the hive and I’m not going to do that, so for now I cross the stream at the bottom of our backyard and gaze over at the log hive, which has a healthy…
The bees of yesterday are still outside the hive we put them in-deciding whether they want to move in, or cleaning out the hive and repainting for the Queen? We don’t know. We watch and wait. Such diversion. Meanwhile, I write, some. Not a lot. I often think, “This is…
Today a friend said she had two swarms of bees at her house and I could come get one if I wanted. But it was about 20 feet up in a tree. I like a challenge. The hub was reluctant, in the middle of a project… but he’s a game…
The bee swarm we “rescued” last week off the curb at the corner of a main thoroughfare didn’t make it. And I don’t know why, although I have some theories. And as writers, not all the words we write are going to make it out into the world. It doesn’t…
Picture yourself as a tree. All day I’ve seen myself re-cast as a tree and it has been my best new thought, drawing me toward the sky, a seeker transforming the air we breathe. I love trees. Last week I posted this quote from John Muir: I have never seen…
When her only brother went off to the Korean War as a medic, my mother was a junior in high school. They lived in the small town of Geneseo, Illinois, southwest of Chicago, near Davenport, Iowa. Born late in the lives of my grandparents, my mother’s older brother was also…
In Seurat’s pointillist painting, La Grande Jatte, notice how everyone is arranged in small groups with some distance between them? I never saw it quite like this before, but living through a pandemic changes your view on just about everything. Is there a piece of art that represents how life…
The process of writing first drafts is a lot like climbing a mountain for the first time according to C.C. Humphreys, an author who spoke to Willamette Writers recently. He’s written eleven novels with more to come and he speaks with that charming British accent, easy listening. I heard the…