Reaching for the Redwoods

Once upon a time I began to live among Giants, ancient, long lived beings of another race entirely.

And then I began to photograph them and bring my friends and family to visit them and to rest in their shadow.

Many times I climbed upon their fallen and mourned a loss or stood astonished to discover a new life bursting forth from a fallen corpse.

My children and grandchildren became so accustomed to their size that only giants appeared nirmL in their eyes.  I still seek out their companionship when I grow weary and need peace. For awhile now I have not been writing much, but I'm back at it and sensing the completion of a picture book about redwoods happening in time for Christmas gifts.  

Groundhog's Day

 Mostly, I want to say that I can't believe it is already one full month into 2015 and once again one of those almost forgotten holidays that still means a lot to me.  Here we have not even had winter yet.  My April flowers are blooming and there has not been one morning that I had to scrape the frost on my car window.  The grass is green and the weather ranges from high forties to mid seventies.  While I enjoy that, it makes the idea of next Autumn a bit worrisome and makes it feel doubly strange to bewitching Happy Groundhog's Day to anyone.

 But Groundhog's Day has too much meaning in my life for me to ever forget it.  My great Grandmother was born on Feb. 2, 1875 and my Nephew was born on Fev. 2, 1972 and I loved them both intensely and sobbed broken heartedly when they died, Little Grandma at 98 and Cody, far too young.  So there is a shadow on this day every year now, but also the joy of having loved so well.

 Here is the weather we have been having in one picture.

 and the skies and flowers are so, very spring-like already

 But this last weekend I did get to get on the road with a bus full of Brookings Harbor Music Students and go up near Portland, Oregon for the International Competitive Collegiate A cappella, West quarterfinal.  It was a lot of bus time but on beautiful roads and a lot of concert time, but so talented and varied that we had a great time.

 I have also just finished a nearly 3 month, long term Substitute teaching job with really wonderful students and a chance to be creative with paint and writing and kids.  My favorite kind of way to spend time.

and even though I haven't finished a new book recently, I have been back at the typing and dreaming and there has been progress on Duffy's Third trip to Uhrlin.  He still has a lot to do but this time he isn't as young or as alone.

So there you have it.  My life has been fun and creative and semi-productive.  I hope yours has as well.  Welcome to February.  And to Cody, and Little Grandma, you are remembered.

Another Birthday

 Every Year they roll around and I do my best to ignore them. Birthdays that is.  Even as a child, I remember being more embarrassed by the expectation that other people would treat me special and insecure how to handle it gracefully, when I spent a lot of my time avoiding being the center of attention.  The little girl I was, was teased a lot, and rebuffed for saying hello, or looking too long at the other, more popular kids.  It was hard to believe that people wanted to make my day special, so I always doubted it, thinking that if kids came to my party, then it was because they wanted to play in the park across the street or because their parents made them.

 I pretty much avoided being in the spotlight, and even on my wedding day managed to sneak away and get married with only my parents, grandma and brothers attending at the last minute in an upstairs office above main street.

 So now, the fact that I have friends and family who have loved me so long, and so completely that I can stand up and say, "Today is my Day!  Look at me!  I am loved."  I can put on the funny hat that demands attention and stand in front of a classroom and demand attention for myself. I can walk to a podium and tell you all about myself and why I love the stories and beauty in this world.

 That is because this world is more full of good people than I ever suspected as a child, and now when I celebrate my birthday, I celebrate another year of being ME surrounded by YOU.

 The world is made up of good and bad, but my 51 years convince me that it is always possible to see the good if you look, and always possible to choose to let other people see the good in you.

 and you know, I'm looking forward to the rest of my life, to the stories I still have to tell and to the people I get to share them with.  I'm good at being an audience and listening to your stories too.

Happy Birthday to me, and thanks to all of you.

Today is the Middle Of NaNoWriMo, or 25,000 Words

Just My Books and I

Candles from my Dad and Grandma to guide my way

 Writing has changed from when I first began thinking seriously that I could write a book. Well, no, I'd been thinking I could do it since I was a toddler, but getting started, Now That was a different matter.

     I began with a blank notebook and a stack of note cards and a trip to the library to dig into the multi-volumed encyclopedia set of course. This was how I had begun writing all those required papers back in Jr. High, and High School, and at College.

    Now I sit at my computer or tap on my hand ha
eld device and when I need to answer a question I don't have to drive to the library, or even walk across the room to get a stack of notecards, and when I need to know how to describe Mr. Vesuvius in detail, I can read other people's descriptions, or see their paintings, pictures and video.

     When I started my Nano Novel I was already knowing it would be a conversation between two boys, one living in the days leading up to the 79 AD eruption of Mt. Vesuvius at Pompeii, and one living in the months before the 1980 eruption of Mr. St. Helens. But I am a Nano "Pantster" meaning I don't outline ahead of time, but take my characters and a faint idea and we jump off the Nov. 1st cliff and fly by the seat of our pants toward the goal.

     So I have spent some time writing, alternating with time on Google earth seeing street view and satellite views of the volcanoes. I have watched you-tube video of kids snowshoeing on Mt St Helens and of a determined old man who died because he wouldn't be evacuated since he was a Mile and a huge forest say from the volcano and his mountain wouldn't hurt him.

     Then I have taken every day at work, and grabbed a scratch piece of paper and on every break and lunch time, written or sketched in my novel. So some editing happens there, when I type from a pencilled written piece first, but editing is not supposed to slow down the passionate rush of story this month.  Oh, and neither is blogging.  Oooooopsy daisy.

My sons loved the same picture book I did
Look Out for Pirates
So I made them a poster with their faces

My life has been filled with books, and it started with these, the kids picture books that were always abundant in our house even when we were low on money for almost everything else. On the wall is the quilt from my crib that my grandmother made for me.

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be
I had a Mother who read to me.
  --Strickland GillianOr 

Continuing The Challenge of April

 Well, as you can see, I have continued to Follow through with the Technicolor April Challenge on the 365 Project site.  I love the feedback and the camaraderie I find there. In my "real Life" the people I surround myself with are wonderful and have a lot in common with me, but are not very visual, so they don't get all fascinated and excited about colors and photographs and another amazing sunset.  365 lets me share that passion with people who do want to see yet another photo of my flowers, dog, birds, kids, trip and on and on.

I have not followed through on the poem a day site at NaPoWriMo although I love poetry and keep following and reading the work of some excellent writers there.

I have been writing still, not poetry, but that other writing challenge going on at CampNaNoWriMo, and if you want the info and the links to all those challenges, they are in the last post that I put up here.


Without editing, I am working to stretch a few ideas into my third Duffy Barkley Novel, and some days hating it and some days having fun with it.  The reason the challenge works for me is that it tells me its ok to go ahead and write crap on the days it isn't working, because by just showing up at the keyboard, even when it isn't fun, I will eventual  find that zone where the ideas flow and it is fun

So here is a sample of what I have come up with there again. Have a sip of tea and see if you can enjoy the story snippet.

 “You remember the first time I was here and my little sister was injured and I was worried about getting back to her?” She nodded even though she had never met Izzy. His return to earth had altered his on timeline so that Izzy had never been injured, but it had not effected Uhrlin, so here they still shared Duffy's memories of what had happened and what he had told them during his first visit, the first time he was nine.

“Well Izzy is missing, and my Great-Aunt, . . .”

“Margaret?”

“Yes. They've been gone three days. I was hoping they were with you.” Aunt Peg had been in Uhrlin as a young girl, before she commonly used the nickname, Peggy.

Oh-oh-ing and Smelter and the other older generation in Uhrlin still remembered her fondly but Oh-oh-ing was shaking her head. “No. I am afraid we have not seen them.” When she saw Duffy's shoulders droop, and his face go slack, she put a finger under his chin and tipped his head so he was looking into her eyes. “You found our missing Princess, and you helped clear a great woman's name from the charge of treason. If you have been brought back here, then they are probably here. Uhrlin is large but you have friends to help you with all that you must do.”

Duffy sighed, “It is hard to always be the one who has to ask for help, the one who has to do the undoable things, the cripple with a task that seems to have no place to start.”

Oh-oh-ing's eyes gave him sympathy, but no mercy. “Of course it is hard to be you Duffy, it is hard to be anyone. We all have our burdens and the times when the energy to make the effort seems impossible. Then we keep making the effort until we die and our children keep on in our place.”

“Oh, thanks a lot!” he muttered sarcastically.

“You are welcome.” She answered sincerely. He looked up in time to see her mouth twist into a smile that was part amused, part sympathetic but wholly without unkindness. Then she used both of her hands to push her mane back from the sides of her face and when she dropped her hands to his shoulders again her face was serious.

“I don't know what we do next,” Duffy said, with nevertheless, a bit more hope than before he had been reminded that he wasn't alone.

April Challenges me

  

Today Is April Third and there are so many fun things about this spring month if you love writing and photography as much as I do.  There is a photography challenge at the site where I post a photo a day, 365 project, to shoot all the colors from the song Joseph's Coat

 I have stretched it further by deciding to work on my editing on the selective coloring front.  So far the colors have been red, yellow and green with tomorrow being brown, but to make it through the month there are also some color names I had to go to google images to figure out exactly what color that even was.

my project http://365project.org/pandorasecho/365/2013-04

Mauve, Russet, ochre, and what is the difference between, red, scarlet and crimson?

see the challenge here http://365project.org/discuss/themes-competitions/17191/technicolor-april

 This Month is also CampNaNoWriMo, as I mentioned in my last post, if you want to write a quick and dirty rough draft of a whole novel http://campnanowrimo.org

And I have been working on my 3rd Duffy Barkley Book, but this time with the twist that his sister goes and Duffy is left behind when the other world calls.  Here is an unedited excerpt of what I have so far

Izzy could see that something had changed long before she got out of the lane where she had wandered to check the mailbox at the top of the cornfield lined, gravel drive. She slipped through the gate and ran along the concrete walk beside the detached garage. She leapt up the steps and ran across the grey porch, her feet on the weathered boards kicking up a few of the loose flakes of dark green paint that remained. She pulled the screen door open and let it fall into place again behind her with a bang. “Aunt peg? Aunt Peg!”

Her great aunt turned away from where she was pumping water into the enormous sink using an old fashioned hand water pump to send the cold, clean, well water spurting through the trough and over the corn and potatoes she was washing.

“Well child? What has gotten you so stirred up?”

“The Tree! The top has been blown off.”

Peg did not have to ask which tree, although the farm was filled with many trees, black walnut trees and pine trees and apple trees, but Peg knew that when Izzy said “The Tree” it meant the cedar tree that stood in a group of cedar trees just to the left of the kitchen door.

Since Izzy had come to spend the week and two weekends with Peg, she had made her own perch high up in the top of the tallest tree in the cluster. She climbed nimbly up through the branches which circled the trunk so uniformly spaced and of such a similar thickness that they could have almost been a man made ladder. Then she straddled the thick branch at the top, where lightning had carved a saddle and pulled out an apple or a bag of pickle flavored sunflower seeds and a book and took her break at the top of her world.

Peg dried her hands on a dish towel and hung her apron on the hook by the door. Then she took her cap from another hook and strode out onto the sun bleached porch to see for herself. She scanned the tree and the ground around it. True the top of the tree, maybe a good ten to fifteen foot of tree, was gone, but she had not heard it crash, and furthermore, there was no broken limbs or shattered trunk around the ground. She watched from the porch as Izzy ran down and kicked of her shoes and hauled herself up onto the lowest, forked branch and began to climb. Then Peg gasped, Izzy kept climbing but she began to disappear, first her hands as they reached above her, then her arms and head and shoulders and finally her bare toes as she pulled herself up and into the blue sky as if she had merely kept climbing into a fog.

It might have looked unbelievable but Peg had no trouble believing her eyes, so she wasted no time standing there and telling herself that it was impossible. Impossible was something Peg was on close speaking terms with.

Peg ran down to the base of the tree and called up it as if she were merely scolding a naughty child. She called to someone who was not her ten year old great-niece, “Ivor, whatever you are up to, you need to get her back here. Now! Safely! Ivor!”

She waited, then when all was silent she slapped her hand against the rough trunk of the tree and tried to imagine explaining to her niece that Peg had lost her daughter. No, she couldn't do that. She kicked her own shoes off and gripped the branch just over her head and began to climb.

and for those who write in images and bursts of feeling more than in long narratives, it is also a month to try writing a poem a day with NaPoWriMo 

http://www.napowrimo.net

 I love all these ideas and you can see that I have started the technicolor-april challenge and I've been working on getting up the enthusiasm to make my novel happen, but there is also a part of me yearning to combine the images and the poem a day and see if I can do a children's book.  I am a glutton for punishment.

Plus I need to work-out and eat healthy even more when writing keeps me chained to a desk even ,ore than usual, oh and sleep and pay the bills.  is it true after all, that "April is the cruelest month" (thank you T. S. Eliot) raising desires where they seemed to have died, showing you the hibernation you have been sleeping in, and not quite giving you enough time and energy to fulfill them?