Writemex

Thanksgiving Food for Thought

2007-11-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was talking long-distance to a 38 year old friend, the mother of two young children, who told me that this summer she revealed rather unexpectedly and compulsively, while visiting with long lost relatives whom she had never before met in person, that her favorite word was "fuck." Rather than blanch and stumble in blind shock and embarrassment off her assumed wide, shady and conservative mid-western front porch, they fell in line with her preference and celebrated the occasional and surprising likeness of family.

Her comment reminded me of an experience one of my best friends had over thirty years ago in the mid-seventies. She was in the Winn-Dixie in her small Bible-belt community, where her husband held a politically important job and she had already set herself up as a little strange by opening the town's first Montessori Pre-school. Both family incomes depended on a reflection of propriety defined by rural-southern-Christianity. As she pushed her cart through the aisles this particular morning, her three-year-old trailed behind commenting, fortunately with a heavy lisp, on the items he recognized on the grocery shelves. "Fuck, fucking, fucking corn flakes. Fuck, fucking, fucking Cheerios." I had suggested to her the year before that she used the f-word a lot in front of her children. She pointed out that she didn't say it any more often than I said "shit." Okay. For the next decade at least she stammered out f-f-f-fudge everytime the occasion called for her favorite expletive.

This afternoon, I was reading the blog of another 40ish person, whose writing I like very much. He wrote that it had been suggested that he was using the "f-word" too frequently in his blog, probably by someone who works for him and wants to protect his assets.

Now the word fuck doesn't have much to do with Thanksgiving in my recent experience. There was the year my then 17 year old daughter felt compelled to use it at the Thanksgiving dinner table in the presence of her grandmother. While I nearly went into convulsions, my mother barely blinked and ask her granddaughter to pass the dressing. (Her reaction was the same, a couple years later when my daughter's tattoo, which she had been hiding from her grandmother for at least 18 months, peeked below her shirt sleeve at another family dinner. It should be noted that had I said "fuck" in her presence or even "shit" as a full grown adult parent on the verge of being a grandparent or let a tattoo slip into her view, she would have had plenty to say.)

We humans often think we know all we need to know of other by the many categories into which we so eagerly put people; we road-block learning and the sharing of ideas by myriad criteria and silly judgements. You would think we'd realize from the wide variety of people who are comfortable these days with the f-word, if from no other indicator, that we are as Maya Angelou has said, "More alike than we are different" and that we all lose by labeling, categorizing. Today I found the Thanksgiving message I intend to share with my friends, relatives, acquaintances and loved ones of all ages, mid-western, southern, liberal, conservative, whatever label they may be peeking from behind or burdened with by others. I'm sharing it with you too. Click Here. Then read the November 18th post.

Memoir Writing Books

2007-10-31T10:35:00.000-06:00

I just came across Kay Porterfield's site on Living and the Creative Process. She says: The creative process is a powerful, transformative tool for healing our minds and bodies, our relationships and our world. Each one of us carries this ancient medicine inside.Kay Marie Porterfield, M.A.

One valuable thing she includes on her site is a list of books on memoir and journal writing found at this link http://www.kporterfield.com/journal/Journal_Memoir_Books.html.

After three years, I am once again facilitating a memoir writing workshop in Puerto Vallarta, November 24 - December 1. If you are interested in memoir, recording family history, or journal writing, then join us in the sand and sun of Mexico for a week exploring our relationships and our world, hopefully healing and expanding our minds and bodies. For more info: www.BelleCora.com/Workshops.html.

Teen Writing Contest

2007-07-20T13:30:00.000-06:00

STATEWIDE CONTEST FOR 14-19 YEAR-OLD NEW MEXICO WRITERS

The deadline for the Santa Fe Short Story Festival's writing contest for teens is coming up, August 3. I'm excited about the idea of the festival and particularly about this great opportunity for young writers in New Mexico.
I just recently spent time with a wonderfully creative group of teens in Colorado, where I conducted a workshop on creative writing and also a play writing workshops. They came of with surprising ideas and just performed their original play for a group of young children involved in a reading program at their local library. It has been awhile since I worked with teen writers. I had forgotten how inspirational their unbounded energy can be. I'm sure the short stories the Santa Fe Short Story Festival gleans from this contest will also be inspirational.

If you know a young writer be sure they get the following information: Original stories up to 2000 words in length postmarked by August 3, 2007 will be considered for the $500 grand prize, the $250 award for the runner-up, and two honorable mention awards of $125 each. The stories will be judged by an impartial panel of judges with writing credentials. The cash prizes will be awarded at a featured presentation and reading at this year's Santa Fe Short Story Festival, October 4, 5, 6. Professional actors will provide dramatic readings of the four prize-winning stories at the awards ceremony. There is no entry fee for the contest. Please see www.SantaFeShortStory.org to obtain the competition rules, the required story submission form, the complete call for submissions, and answers to frequently asked questions. This is the third year of the festival and the second year of the short story writing contest. The competition is open to ALL 14-19 year-olds in New Mexico, not just those enrolled in high school.

Internet and Writing, Caregiving, Sanity

2007-07-11T10:13:00.000-06:00

It’s a strange new world today, that of webs and nets that are not only invisible to the naked eye, but that are morphing and being manipulated continuously by people most of us would never have had any contact with a decade or so ago. Like all the significant developments of man, there is the positive and the negative side to the new cyber world we live in.

The Internet is accessible to all economic and education levels. It only takes a half a dollar in many underdeveloped countries for a person to walk into a cyber café and sign on to the internet for a half an hour. This ability changes the perspective, the awareness, the goals, the possibilities and the self-esteem of a whole generation world-wide. It makes the world a smaller place, our differences, values, morals more obvious, but as we are exposed to them less scary, more manageable.

For the writer, the Internet has opened possibility of making a lonely job less so. Whole communities of like minded people develop with our technology and meeting your writing group doesn't neccesarily mean you go down to the coffee shop anymore. Though I still prefer it.

My last two and half years have had an odd shape of solitude, yet of feeling I was never alone. I was the primary caregiver for my mother, who passed away several weeks ago, (thus the long absence from blogging). I spent most of the time alone in the house with her. A good deal of that time, she was not present. So though I was alone, I wasn't. I guess the Internet saved my sanity. It gave me a connection to the world. Let me feel as though I was still fully present in my own work, yet it also gave me opportunity for escape. I learned a lot. Alot about the way the Internet functions, the vast variety of uses, the scary lack of control and how you can fool yourself into thinking you are accomplishing something...when maybe you aren't.

I know first hand the Internet is not always used for what we Westerners consider the common good. In fact there is a large faction of very clever users around the world, perhaps more motivated in third world countries, whose goals are to damage in some way users in developed countries. I try to remember the positive aspects and possibilities of this new world, when I am inundated with ever evolving and more clever scam emails and with spammers who find new ways around filters and new ways to waste my time.

One Chapter at a Time

2007-05-27T08:43:00.000-06:00

Recently, I was encouraging a friend who had lost momentum and confidence on a book length project. I suggested "fear of book" as the problem.

For years I limited myself to magazine articles and short stories, because the idea of a book length project overwhelmed me. I had ideas for books, I might even get the first couple of chapters on paper. Then the day would come when I'd allow free rein to "monkey mind", as New Mexico writer/writing coach Natalie Goldberg calls our internal critic. Next I'd open the bottom file cabinet drawer and drop that idea into the abyss. My internal critic told me that writing a book, fiction or non-fiction required myriad details and consistent writing through out...can you really do that, Martie? "Uh huh, I thought not!"

Then came the day when I signed on the dotted line...I would complete a book on contract. Not so easy to drop in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. I had no choice but to face my fears. In doing that it occurred to me that if I could write a decent sentence, a decent paragraph, a decent article or short story, I could write a book. It is after all just a matter of stringing a group of sentences together. A book I told myself is written one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time.

The book is better if those sentences, those paragraphs are consistently interesting and well written, but they aren't all going to be. Every few thousand words most of us write something boring, convoluted, redundant or maybe even ignorant. But, hey, what are editors for? I don't mind any more making an editor's day. In fact, I am pretty sure I can do that rather consistently and still get to the end of a book, one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time.

A Dark and Stormy Night

2007-05-21T13:10:00.000-06:00

In checking through a list of writing contest deadlines, I came across this statement:
"The official deadline is April 15 (a date that Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories). The actual deadline may be as late as June 30."
Following a link, I was treated to; "The contest accepts submissions every day of the livelong year." "Wild Card Rule: Resist the temptation to work with puns like 'It was a stark and dormy night.'" And, "Finally, in keeping with the gravitas, high seriousness, and general bignitude of the contest, the grand prize winner will receive . . . a pittance."

As you might have guessed, I was on the website for the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest where "www means wretched writers welcome." The contest was named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton whose 1830 English character, Paul Clifford, generously provided the words "It was a dark and stormy night," for 20th century English teachers.

If you are trying to avoid your blog, your journal, your unfinished manuscript, that deadline ticking ever closer, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest website will provide a half an hour's diversion. I particularly enjoyed the TheRules page.

If you are interested in submitting your 50 words to this annual contest your invited to send your entries to:
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Department of English
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA 95192-0090, or

"To inflict your BLFC entry electronically, digitally [go to the website] and stimulate Bulwer's nasal member" including your name, phone number, and addresses and e-mail address.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Becoming a Writer Seriously

2007-05-18T07:35:00.001-06:00

I just stumbled (yes my usual mode of negotiating the Internet) on to a wonderful "blog" on writing for writers. Unlike my own, which acts as a tool of exploration of my own experiences as a writer and hopefully passes on some interesting information, ideas, inspiration to other writers, this blog is loaded with practical information.

Titled Becoming a Writer Seriously; Tools and Trade Secrets for Aspiring Writers, the blog was conceived and developed by friend and fellow member of the Puerto Vallarta Writers Group, Tom Colvin. Though Tom refers to Becoming a Writer Seriously on the About Us page as a blog, it is to me a full-fledged serious website. This last statement may further expose my confusion in the cyber world...oh well.

Becoming a Writer Seriously promises to provide software, tools, secrets and how-to information for writers, screenwriters, novelists. Tom says, "In gestation for over a year, this blog was launched the first week of January 2007. To avoid overload on vistors & subscribers, major posts will be uploaded only once or twice a week, along with whatever tidbits about tools and trade secrets for writers come to light. Emphasis will be on detailed descriptions of HOW writers can utilize available TOOLS to best advantage. Over time, the blog will also provide an overview of the various pieces comprising the BUSINESS side of writing. Our aim is to become an indispensible resource & reference on the web for writers."

Check it out and let me know if you find it helpful.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Play Writing with Teens

2007-05-13T07:59:00.000-06:00

Like every subject I am interested in I just discovered there is a confusing number of website related to play writing and teens. I thought I was feeling rusty when I facilitated a creative writing workshop for teens this winter. Hadn't worked with that age group for several years. Now I have been asked and agreed to work with a group of teens who will create a stage production for the entertainment of children in their local libraries summer reading program. I am an old teacher. I am a published writer. I have edited a variety of writing projects including plays and truthfully I used to think myself quite the thespian when I would stage, write and direct my younger brothers and cousins through productions based on my favorite comic strips. But, I still felt I needed a little guidance on this project.

Still confined to the house 90% of the time as caregiver to my elderly and ill mother, I naturally looked to the Internet for my research. Again, I am reminded of the Tower of Babel (see my blog post titled Babel, February 7, 2007 ). So, please, old teachers and active writers, which source of guidance would you suggest for assisting teens in structuring a play?
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Anne Lamott's Good Writing

2007-05-06T13:44:00.000-06:00

I read recently in a review of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, that she said that the very first thing she tells new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth.

I was thinking about first words when I came across this review, because at the time I was preparing for a writing workshop that I had been asked to teach with a group of teens. I hadn't conducted a teen writing workshop, for several years and was feeling a bit uneasy. I had written at the top of my notebook page, "Writing is about painting pictures with words." That was about as far as I had gotten with my preparatory notes.

It was a familiar, comfortable group of words for me. I'd been using the image to open workshops for years for children through adults. I think I first used the sentence in a classroom of dyslexic pre-teens who were convinced that because they could not spell, could in fact barely read, that they could not write. It was an image they could grasp and in which they could find hope. We can all describe, paint pictures with words and if our image is not as finely crafted as that of other's or satisfying to our own ear, we can work it over.

I love Lamott's Bird by Bird and the truth of the statement "...good writing is about telling the truth." I'm not sure I would open my next teen workshop with it, however. I'm not sure truth gives teens much hope. But, I have been placing it at the top of my own pages of images for the last couple of months.
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Fuzzy Writing from Fuzzy Memoires for a Fuzzy Period

2007-05-04T09:04:00.000-06:00

A friend from Marine-on-St. Croix, Jimmy Johnson, pointed out to me one spring about twenty-eight years ago, that this is a fuzzy time of year. Well, not exactly fuzzy! Maybe, he said blurry!

Everyone knows my memory is not so great today as it was three decades ago. What I do remember is that we were standing on the steps of the Lutheran Church (what else) in the nearby town of Scandia on an April morning. Neither of our families belonged to that church. It being Minnesota, we had our own perfectly good Lutheran Church in our own Scandinavian community of Marine just three miles down river. I think the Johnson's were Catholic anyway. I can only guess that we were in Scandia for a wedding, a funeral, or a Minnesota cultural exchange program for our children. Ya, you betcha, let's show the kids how those northern Lutherans do things.

Jim pointed towards the trees in the park. He said he loved the particular shade of green that occurred for only a few days in spring as the trees start to bud. Then, he said it gives everything a blurred quality, as though you had slightly crossed your eyes. It was a passing comment to a neighbor. It stuck with me, maybe because there was joy and passion in the observation, or maybe because the poetry of it took me by surprise. I thought of Jim as a jock, with interesting political views, who liked to joke. However, for most of three decades, I've watched for those days every spring, where ever I am, but not this one.

I've been doing one of the hardest jobs of my life for most of two years; caring for my elderly mother who has multiple health issues, the primary two being cancer and dementia. I never expected the job to go this many months, nor would my mother have wanted to live to the debilitated state her diseases have brought her. Unfortunately, her mind did not survive in tact long enough for her to make the deal of surrender with her spirit. Now it is out of her hands and ours. I say of her physical survival, "she is a mean little Irish machine." No, not Scandinavian.

The last two months have been the most demanding and, as things progress naturally, the next weeks will each be harder than the previous. Some time early in March, with spring approaching, my vision went fuzzy, figuratively. I've spent the two months since plodding through the damp, smelly, sticky, silent tasks of care giving, fuzzy day after day, wondering each morning if it would be the last. Days have blurred into weeks and the weeks into two months.

Suddenly, this morning I see that the leaves of the Maple tree in the front yard are wide, approaching jade green. They're defined, identifiable by several sharp points on each as descended from the Maple leaves of last year. I've missed that crossed eyed lime-hued blur of spring, two months of positive writing and two months of writing this blog! I have been writing, as I must, whiney poor me bits, and the basic stuff to make my deadlines. I have taught a couple of workshops. But, this morning's message for me is that it is time to sharpen my focus, emerge from the fuzziness of a spring unobserved and keep living. My mother would want that.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

An American Wife by Playwrights Blomain & Downend

2007-03-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

I attended a workshop with Karen and her photographer/playwright husband, Michael Downend in West Cork, Ireland last summer at the artist's and writer's retreat, Anam Cara. I have also sat in on several short writing presentations of Karen's and Michael's at our writing group in Puerto Vallarta.

The two most important lessons I've learned from Karen, however, is to honor myself with some indulgence each day, if it is only a few minutes sitting on the beach. And, to aggressively protect my writing schedule. Now obviously, I couldn't have possibly gotten to this advanced point in life without previously having been exposed to these two concepts. I've even put them into practise for fairly long periods of time. But, they are lessons I seem to forget as my life rolls and changes and that I need to be reminded of repeatedly. Karen's inspiration comes from the fact that she is a living daily reminder of these important guidelines. She doesn't talk about how she should allow time for herself, about how she should not allow the distractions of life to interfere with her work as a writer. She just does it. And there is the inspiration!

I am so pleased that a joint project of Michael and Karen's, a play they wrote together the first year I met them in Puerto Vallarta, is opening this month in Pennsylvania at the Scranton Northeast Theatre Pennsylvania. Titled, An American Wife, the play runs March 21 through April 7. If you are in the area or can get there, it will be a wonderful evenings entertainment.

Writing Workshop Discount in Puerto Vallarta

2007-02-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

BelleCora Workshops has been running a February sale on their website; 10% off if you register for any of their 2007 workshops, classes or tours during the month of February. That means there are two days left in order to take advantage of this sale!

I happen to know that there are still some spaces available for the two writing workshops offered in Puerto Vallarta in April. Women Writing on Co-dependence is scheduled for April 14-21 and Memoir Writing is scheduled for April 21-28, 2007. BelleCora Workshops mission is to support established and emerging writers and their workshop fees reflect that. Go to www.BelleCora.com/Workshops.html for more information on these two April writing workshops in Puerto Vallarta. Write on the beach, warm your toes in the sand, smell the night-blooming Jasmine, gorge on fresh mango. One April I counted 10 varieties of mango in my small neighborhood market. The air was thick with their sweetness. Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Silver Sage Writing Contest

2007-02-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

Trois Riviere Fiction Writers (TRFW) announces the opening of the Silver Sage Excellence in Writing Competition for 2007. "This is a chance to get your writing in front of professionals in the publishing industry," says Roberta Summers, president of TRFW.

The contest categories include historical fiction, contemporary fiction, and children's novels. All genres within these categories are welcome with the exception of futuristic and erotica. No short stories, poetry, or nonfiction will be accepted. Enter by submitting the first twenty pages and a one-page synopsis of your original, unpublished novel by the June 1, 2007 deadline. There is a $15 fee per entry. Complete rules and submission guidelines can be found at the organization's website http://www.trfw.net/ or call Roberta at 505-325-4338 for more information.

Published authors will read and critique each entry. Editors will judge the three finalists in each category. The overall Silver Sage winning entry will receive a monetary award and plaque. In addition, a cash prize will be awarded in each entry category.

Trois Riviere Fiction Writers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping new and established writers and is located in northern New Mexico .
For more information on the organization email Gloria O'Shields http://b5.mail.yahoo.com/ym/bellecora.com/Compose?To=goshields@earthlink.net.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

The Secret on Oprah

2007-02-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

I guess the world knows that I have been recording the words most significant to my life from the Oprah Winfrey Show for going on 13 years. After digging through my old notebooks for those words, while designing and editing I Heard it on Oprah...Words of Wisdom and Inspiration for Living for BelleCora Press, I got more efficient with my afternoon archiving past-time.

Having to find those words that were inspirational to me for that book, scratched in yellowing notebooks among the grocery and to-do lists, my thoughts and ramblings, plots of short stories never written, telephone numbers with no name attached, appointments with no location noted, etc., gave me the inspiration to do it a better way. I bought a simple two-days to a page date book that I keep handy when watching Oprah. I am still sometimes caught unprepared and make notes on the edge of a carefully-folded-to-frame-the-crossword-newspaper-page. Or like yesterday, I had to jot down things I wanted to remember from Lisa Ling's report on the fishing children in Ghana on the back of the packaging for a Touch-Light from the dollar store. But this post is not intended to be a testament to my inefficiency.

When I heard that The Secret was the subject of the Oprah Winfrey Show on Thursday, I wisely, if I do say so myself, grabbed a tablet. I knew that there would be more I wanted to remember than would fit in the 4"x4" space of my Oprah Show assigned date book. I filled four pages of that tablet and felt buoyant after the show. That evening I went over the notes and realized that this was all information I already had, as I am sure many viewers did. What was significant about the show and special about the DVD is that it crystallizes all those bits of information, those different ways of expressing the Law of Attraction. For we in the instant gratification, push-button age, it compiles thought and learning in an easy to absorb caplet, a segment of time we are accustomed to sitting through to receive ideas.

Will it be easy to practice, to focus on, to remember? For some, of course; for others, probably not. Will it replace in depth spiritual study and the beloved books in your "seeking" library? No. But it will supplement and enhance them. And, I am going to focus on being grateful that there are those who took the time to share.
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Babel

2007-02-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd publish a list of my favorite writing prompts in this blog. Out of curiousity, I Googled "writing prompts" and almost 3 million references popped up. When I see numbers like that connected to a relatively obscure subject I wonder, are we global humans so busy generating sources of information that there is no one and no time left for consumption of that info? Are there more generators than consumers of information? If we are all talking who is listening? Is the internet the modern day Tower of Babel?

That brings me to the question, certainly not a new one in the short history of the world wide web, is quality of info and research drowning in a sea of cyber trash? Is fact becoming so obscure as to be next to impossible to glean from the muck? Throughout history educators and researchers have provided human kind with the information that has moved civilization forward. True, many were influenced by the agenda of governments and religion. Even so they provided a source that could fairly easily be checked out. Today the average guy or gal is exposed to information at the touch of the button. We can in our delight with the instant response forget to consider, as my mother loved to say, "the source," and accept on our computer screen information that does not reflect quality of research or reliability of source.

We are already living in a world where the line between fact and fiction, entertainment and news, advertising and product capability is blurred. I find the possibility that we are all talking and no one is listening, all writing and no one editing, a frightening prospect.
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Two Gals with Heart in Mississippi

2007-02-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

This morning I happened to catch the story of a beautiful grassroots effort of giving on the Sunday morning T.V. Show on the Hallmark Channel, titled Naomi's New Morning. Naomi Judd is the hostess.

Two women Annie Card and Tammy Agard ventured to the Gulf Coast from different areas of the country to volunteer their time to assist victims of the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005. They met by chance while working with the Red Cross in Mississippi and found that they were experiencing a similar gift from giving their time and energy to the victims and felt a similar drive to do more. They founded Mississippi Home Again, a non-profit project through which they supply families with appliances and furniture.

Their story is so inspiring, their effort so needed that I am recommending to BelleCora Press & Workshops that a portion of the funds we raise in 2007 for the victims of the 2005 Hurricane's go to their project. More about BelleCora's fundraising project.

Getting homes cleaned and repaired or finding new ones to buy or rent is only a part of the battle for the thousands of families still homeless or struggling financially as a result of the 2005 hurricanes. Replacing appliances and furnishings that were destroyed or lost is a financial burden most families can't yet deal with. Yet, how do you feed a family, do their laundry without a stove, refrigeration, hot water, etc. Mississippi Home Again is filling that gap. Using donated funds to purchase, deliver and install the basics to the homes of newly resettled victims. Go to their website and read about this unique project.
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Jane Perna: Courage under Pressure

2007-02-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

Today is my friend Jane's birthday. We celebrated a number of our birthdays together in Puerto Vallarta including her significant big five-0. Jane Perna died of breast cancer July 10, 2005. She had battle the disease into remission twice since I'd known her. She gave the third episode a courageous effort.

As a breast cancer survivor, Jane was a fearless travel companion, with an unflappable spirit and a practical outlook. We traveled in Mexico together a many times and sometimes found ourselves in some unusual situations that many would consider dangerous. A year after her first diagnoses and treatment, along highway 200 on the Pacific Coast, we gave a third class bus driver a name we of a town we wanted to go to. The driver stopped we got off. The bus pulled away and we found ourselves next to a rickety wooden bench on the side of the highway surrounded by jungle, not a building much less a town in sight. We later learned that the town we were heading to had a completely different name than we had thought. The experience developed into something akin to a scene out of Apocolypse Now. We headed down a jungle trail toward what we hoped was a beach town, or the very least a beach restaurant. As we rounded a curve, loud rock music poured from the black window holes of moss covered abandoned buildings high above the jungle trail, followed by the appearance of men in fatigues watching us from afar. When I pointed out the obvious, we were in a vulnerable situation, Jane said, "Look at that yellow butterfly." Then added as though it were the same subject and held the same weight of importance to her, "I'm not wasting any of my life on fear."

Several years later, Jane was recovering from a masectomy, when we went to Mexico City for a few days with a long list of museums we wanted to see. We had an equally long list of warnings from friends about the biggest city in the world; the food, the water, pickpockets, theives, assaults, don't go on this street, don't walk in this district, don't ride the bus, don't ride the subway, don't take the taxis. We stayed a block and a half from the main plaza and the cathedral, which we had been warned against, and took in five museums in two perfect days. Each day we made a plan of how we would carry our valuables.

Then came the day we would go to Freida Kahlo's Blue House in Coyoacan. It was too far to walk from our hotel. Which mode of public transportation should we take, having been warned against them all? Finally, we decided on the subway, known as the Metro, as the method that was the least complicated. Jane was considerably shorter than I. On the Metro, where there had been a problem with pick-pockets, we planned that if we had to stand, I would hold the bag with our money, passports, etc., in front of me and she would stand in front of me.

On board the Metro we assumed our positions and began scanning the other passengers watching for potential theives. We bumped along for a few miles, watching passengers get on and off, and just as I was relaxing, Jane jammed her elbow into my ribs. "What?" I was alert once again. She whispered loudly, "Look at that woman in the first seat by the door." The woman about forty years old, wore a beige suit and heels. She had her purse open on her lap, held a compact in one hand and was applying makeup with the other. A professional commuter on the way to work. In a disgusted tone, Jane asked, "How is this any different than riding the subway in New York or Boston?" Since I'd never done either, I couldn't be sure, but Jane, an easterner could. "It isn't! I've had enough of this. I'm going to ride the bus back from Coyoacan and I'm going to eat in the mercado."

I called Jane "The Reporter." I was the writer, but she but me to shame as a fact finder, especially about people. After chatting with someone for thirty minutes she would know more details of their life than I had learned in years of knowing the same person. She was never afraid to ask a questions. She should have been a journalist.

In September of 2004, she visited me in Santa Fe. She'd been diagnosed again, this third time with involvement of her organs and was already being treated. She said she would be on chemotherapy the rest of her life, a challenge of managing discomfort while maintaining quality of life. Some people she said had lived as long as 18 years in this way.

Jane's, son a talented musician was playing with his band, Anti Balas, in Santa Fe. We went out to hear them. At two o'clock that morning on the way home, we came upon an accident on a dangerous stretch of highway under construction near the Santa Fe Opera. The road was closed and we were informed that we would have to wait until the accident was cleared to pass through. Waiting was too much for Jane's curiosity. To my horror, she got out of the car and walked to the accident scene. I loss sight of her small white head in the blinking lights and the shadows of emergency workers and policemen. Surely, I thought, they will send her packing right back to the car where she belongs.

It was a good ten minutes before Jane returned, because Jane seemed to belong everywhere. She had the details, one car accident, one mortality, speed seemed to be indicated, but there didn't seem to be alcohol involved. She described how it had happened as though she had brainstormed with the investigating officers. "Gary said that as soon as the county coroner arrived they would move the car and we would be on our way."

"Who's Gary?" I had to ask. Gary Gonzalos! He was a sheriff's deputy, who grew up in Los Alamos, had two children and had been with the sheriff's department for three years. Sure enough, within a few minutes a car marked Santa Fe County Coronor came slowly along the shoulder of the road past the line of waiting vechicles.

Jane's disease management program did not take her through 18 years, but only nine months. I wanted to believe that her curiousity and her passion for life were enough to keep her alive, but even those testaments to a courageous spirit could not check a disease that was determined to take her. That February the cancer had moved to her bones. I knew she had a significant doctor's appointment one day in February and I called her from Puerto Vallarta. She was on her way home from the appointment and pulled over to tell me the news. It was the only time I ever heard Jane cry.

As hopeless as her situation seemed to be, she did not let it stop her from following her son and his band to Amsterdam that Spring and coming home full of details to share. I couldn't begin to list the things I learned from Jane. If the "here after" is anything like it was painted for us in Sunday school, I imagine Jane Perna is standing with St. Peter getting the details of every arrival's passing, as soon as they pass through the pearly gates.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Writing on the Beach

2007-01-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

In the southern Rockies we are looking at our 7th week-end snow storm in a row. The last few have been puny compared to the strength of the first few we experienced over the holidays.

I've spent three to five months of the last 12 winters in Mexico. Originally, I went there to work on a writing project and kept returning in the winter with a writing agenda. During the last few years, when friends or relatives arrive for a visit in Puerto Vallarta and are ask how winter has been going, they generally report that it has been so mild to be almost non-existent. So the wrath of this winter is a bit unexpected.

Suprisingly, I am finding it easy to keep to a writing schedule, especially on those days when the flakes are falling outside. Still a person can't help remembering writing on the beach and Bougainvilleas. For some info on writing workshops in Puerto Vallarta go to www.bellecora.com/Workshops.html.

Victims of 2005 Gulf Hurricanes

2007-01-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

I know it seems like an old tired subject. Apparently, the president thought so when he didn't address it in his state of the union message. I am still seeing astonishing images in my mind by reading the statistics of recovery coming out of the Gulf Coast area. Try picturing these!

When the Brookings Institute published it's statistics of economic indicators regarding the recovery from Hurricane Katrina this January, reflecting December 2006, I was stunned by one postive indicator. 649 damaged homes had been razed in New Orleans that month, more homes than you find in one of the hundreds of thousands of small towns in the U.S. with populations of around 3000. We all have some connection to a town that size; we grew up there, our grandmother lived there, we passed through one on our way to the family cabin every summer, we went home from college with a roommate one week-end to her so sweet main street U.S.A. home town. Imagine that town completely flattened, gone. And we are just imagining the area of razed houses in one month, December.

According to the January report 4200 damaged homes have been razed since Katrina made land fall in August of 2005. Now you are talking about the disappearance of a town with a population of between 16,000 to 24,000.

Finally, when officials in the areas of the Gulf Coast touched by the Hurricanes of 2005 spoke publicly about their frustration that their situation was not addressed in this week's State of the Union, I heard another startling statistic. One governor said that 13,000 families, not individuals, families still do not have permanent housing as a result of the storms. The source is not as reliable as the Brookings Institute statistics. Still it gives you an image.

Multiply conservatively by an average family size of 4, we are talking about the population of a small city, over 50,000 people, half of those children. To put a personal reference on that number. In the mid-sixties, Pueblo was the second largest town, behind Denver, in my home state of Colorado with a population of around 50,000. I live in Santa Fe, the oldest city and the oldest government seat in the country, whose population only exceeded 50,000 in the last decade of the 20th century.

Time heals all wounds? Maybe the devastation of the Hurricanes of 2005 is fading from the memories of those of us who were not directly impacted. I doubt, however, that time helps families heal when they are still homeless. Let's not forget that there are approximately 50,000 people, 13,000 families, according to some estimates, without homes.

To support my favored fundraiser for Housing Relief for these families, go to www.BelleCora.com/I-Heard-it-on-Oprah.html. This is the website of my publishing group where we are distributing an inspirational journal to raise funds for housing relief. Many other businesses and organizations are dedicating profits from useful products to Hurricane Recovery. You can find them on the web. Or go to the sites below to learn more about helping and about resent recovery statistics.

http://www2.oprah.com/uyl/katrina/uyl_katrina_main.jhtml Oprah's Angel Network Housing for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Learn what and where building has and is taking place and how you can help.

www.habitat.org/local/ The official site of Habitat for Humanity.

www.habitat-nola.org/ The Habitat for Humanity site operating in New Orleans

http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/200512_katrinaindex.htm To see all the reports from the Brookings Institute on Hurricane Katrina, to learn more about the research work of the Institute or to receive their updates.

http://www.gnocdc.org/KI/ESKatrinaIndex.pdf - Executive Summary PDF of the Brookings January 2007 report on Katrina Recovery, as quoted in this blog.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Creative Inspiration

2007-01-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

I was reminded about how widely writing prompts are used today in classrooms, writing workshops and on the net for writer's to access from there home computer, when I googled the phrase and got a response of almost 3 million. I have used writing prompts for students as young as third grade and, of course, as old as my oldest adult student.

It seems natural to look outside ourselves for the creative stimulus. But with that realization, I remember the words of prolific abstract artist Stefan Lokos, when he approached the frequently asked questions“What inspires you? Where do you get inspiration?”

Lokos produced work daily without interruption all of his life. Students, artists and collectors often asked him about his inspiration. His answer was always the same.“I do not get inspired.What I do is paint everyday.I first put the blank canvas in front of me. I stare at it.I see that it intends to stay blank....I take a deep breath and urge myself to put a little color on it.I make a few stokes, then something comes.

Nike had the shorter translation of Lokos' words, "Just do it!"

For more information on the life of Stefan Lokos and to see his paintings on line go to www.StefanLokos.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Thirty-One Words by Writers for Artists

2007-01-23T10:40:00.000-07:00

New Mexico Culture Net sent out an interesting publicity release for Crane Bill's Books of Albuquerque. It was a call for entries for their upcoming desk-top note pad for artists. They are looking for submissions with these three requirements 1.) must be prose 2.) multiple submissions accepted, and 3.) must be 31 words, no more no less. The title of the publication will be 31. Deadline April 1. Payment if your submission is selected is in copies only. I am not sure what the significance of 31 words is, but the challenge is interesting. Mostly, for this writer, a challenge to decide what subject area to attempt to write something meaningful or entertaining or beautiful in 31 words.

And here's my link to technorati for this blog
Technorati Profile

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Valentine's Gifts

2007-01-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

I looked around this morning, just coming out of the self-induced fog of "the Holidays," to discover that not only are we on the eve of the next big commercial holiday, but that I have become a purveyor of Valentine's Gifts.

It's true! How it happened is a strange and complicated tale. I am sure, as a woman of "too many words," (as my then 7 year old son once labeled me) I will reveal that tale to you one day. But for today, when you're tossing about for the perfect good book for your valentine, consider the true romance, Still Life with Violin. Or a gift that is both inspirational and functional by my design, I Heard it on Oprah. Both available on-line at www.BelleCora.com.

Still Life with Violin is a true WWII story of romance and courage set in Europe, the Middle-East and North America. I Heard it on Oprah...Words of Wisdom and Inspiration is a multi-use book, ie. journal, sketch book, travel diary of inspirational quotes heard spoken by guests of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Both are available as paper back books and as ebooks at www.BelleCora.com. All profits from the Oprah journal fund Humanitarian Relief, specifically in 2007, Housing Relief on the Gulf Coast.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

The Peace of Anam Cara Writing Retreat

2007-01-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Near Eyeries on the Beara Penninsula, South Cork, Ireland.

Is it any wonder that owner, Sue Booth-Forbes' New Year's greeting was "May we all be in awe of silence in 2007."

For more information on AnamCara go to www.anamcararetreat.com or

see their 2007 schedule of workshops on this blog, January 15, 2007.

Blackmailing Oprah & Other Ridiculous Tales

2007-01-17T13:56:00.000-07:00

I read an article from an internet news source in recent weeks about the arrest of a man who allegedly was trying to extort money from Oprah Winfrey by threatening the revelation of information gained from a former employee of Harpo, Inc. based in LA. The man had taped conversations with the former employee and a spokesman said he maintained that the information in the tapes would damage the career of the public figure referred to on the tapes, apparently Oprah.

The accused at his arrest maintained that it was all a misunderstanding. I haven’t seen any follow up press, but I have to express here my first reaction which was, “Get out a town!” Blackmail Oprah? Could anything be more ridiculous?

I am put in mind of the time over a decade ago when New Mexico mystery writer Tony Hillerman was awarded writer of the year by the Mountain and Plains Booksellers and as such was obliged to give the keynote address at the annual awards dinner. The room of curious writers and adoring readers crowding the ballroom of the historic LaFonda Hotel in Santa Fe, waited to hear how he had so consistently turned out book after successful book using what was everyday in the cultures of the modern west and the Navajo and Hopi peoples as place, time, setting.

Being the colorful eccentric that, as a successful writer, he has a right to be, Mr. Hillerman chose not to discuss his literary successes and failures, his muse, his style in his address. Instead he moved from his place at the celeb table at the front of the room to the microphone and revealed that he wasn’t going to give a speech but would be sharing some newspaper crime stories he thought amusing. Local ones at that, things we aspiring writers could have read in the Albuquerque Journal or the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Mr. Hillerman, probably bored to death with giving inspiring keynote addresses around New Mexico, couldn’t have done well with elaborate notes anyway in the semi darkness of the romantic old ballroom, and he’s not really noted as a charismatic public speaker anyway. Even so there was an audible gasp of surprise, followed by a sigh of disappointment from the table of writers and editors I sat with. Next to me the book reviewer for the local public radio station put her notebook back in her bag. Mr. Hillerman bumbled around with the mic, his glasses, his drink glass and some notes that may have been on napkins, in an endearing way for a few seconds, then opened a newspaper. There was an uncomfortable feeling in the room as he started to read a short article that at its end had the room rocking with laughter. He had our attention.

The article was one of those tiny bits on an inside page that most of us pass right over. This one may have described a thief who rode up to a drive-up teller on his bicycle and demanded money, mentioning menacingly that he had a gun. The teller ducked down behind her counter crawled into the bank and sent the security guard out to nab the guy and his bike while the police were in route. Another story, which he was reminded of by a note on the napkin, told of the misbegotten robbery of a vending machine in an all night laundry mat. The thief got away his fuzzy image on the security camera, but his not so fuzzy footprints in the snow led the police right to his front door. Hillerman at some points when delivering a vignette of the stupidity of those who would steal from others, was so amused he had to stop and sip a drink of something, which wasn’t clearly visible in the “semi-darkness of the romantic old ballroom.”

At the end of an hour, Hillerman had enjoyed himself immensely and most of the audience was suffering from side aches and shortness of breath associated with long bouts of laughter. The venerable writer did have a message for writers in the audience. The everyday and the overlooked, particularly in the newspaper, are wonderful sources of plot, setting and character for fiction. His other message not particularly for writers was “What are people thinking?”

I have to ask what could a would be extortionist be thinking if he targets Oprah with a blackmail scheme? How are you going to ruin the reputation of a woman who has put her every foible, shortcoming, demon and personal tragedy on national television daily for twenty-one years? Why would a woman, whose success has been based at least in part on that openness and in encouraging her audiences worldwide to address their most embarrassing and challenging problems, succumb to threats to reveal hearsay from a former employee? The accused incidentally, met the former employee at a LA cocktail party. Even we hicks no not to believe anything you hear at a cocktail party.

Oprah’s audiences know she is no saint. Those who may have been nursing that illusion surely got over it when she allowed herself to be filmed with Gayle on a road trip last summer, in which compared to Gayle, our dear Oprah, showed her whiney, spoilt side. She didn’t have to allow that to be broadcast. Obviously, who she is is who she is willing to present to the public. Whether you agree with her belief system or not, you must admire her courage in presenting herself honestly to the world and her generosity in encouraging others to heal and grow while doing the same.

Blackmailing Oprah? For intelligence factor, it ranks right there with robbing the Laundromat on foot on a dark but snowy night, doesn’t it?

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Irish Writer's and Artist's Retreat Schedule

2007-01-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

I had a relaxing and inspirational experience last June at Sue Booth Forbes wonderful facility in South Cork, Ireland, Anam Cara. She has just issued her 2007 Schedule of unique workshops. Check them out!

ANAM CARA WRITER’S AND ARTIST’S RETREATWORKSHOP SCHEDULE

Anam Cara (www.anamcararetreat.com) is a residential retreat, providing the time, space, and creature comforts to support your focusing on your own project and doing your best creative work. In addition to individual retreats, we are once again offering workshops.

All workshop participants will be housed either at Anam Cara or at lovely B&Bs within a short walking distance. (Transportation will be provided if the weather isn't co-operating.) Breakfast is served where you are staying, and the workshops, the mid-day and evening meals, and evening entertainments take place at Anam Cara. For more information about the workshops, availability, registration, rates, and deposit policy, please get in touch with the contact person indicated in the Calendar below.

CALENDAR
#1 Your Authentic Voice
Leaders: Roxie Thomas with Mary Lynne Jamison
Arrival: 2 June
Departure: 9 June
Contact: Sue at anamcararetreat@eircom.net;
Roxie's web address is www.roxiethomas.com.

#2Developing Personal Style and Expression in Painting
Leader: Mary Nadon O'Neill
Arrival: 23 June
Departure: 30 June
Contact: Sue at anamcararetreat@eircom.net.

#3 Writing from Within
Double Rainbow: Haiku and the Spiritual Dimension
Leaders: Maeve O'Sullivan and Kim Richardson
Arrival: 14 July
Departure: 21 July
Contact: Sue at anamcararetreat@eircom.net.

#4 All About Writing! For People Interested in Becoming Writers or for Writers Who Want To Move Forward in Their Work
Leader: Susan DeBow
Arrival: 25 August
Departure: 1 September
Contact: Susan at SusanKDeBow@aol.com.
Her web address is: www.susandebow.com

#5 Rediscovering Our Connection to Beauty: An Expressive Arts Workshop
Leaders: Denie Whalen and Inge Evers
Arrival: 22 September
Departure: 29 SeptemberContact: Contact Sue at anamcararetreat@eircom.net.
Denie's web address is: www.newyorkexpressivearts.com;
Inge's web address is: www.wvevers.dds.nl

ABC News: Rubik Cube cerca 1973?

2007-01-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

ABC News on-line through my Yahoo home page is showing a video this morning of the world's fastest cube solver. But...they were a little too fast putting the facts together on their story. They note that the cube arrived on the pop culture scene in 1973.

We Boomers may be having a hard time keeping the details of our everyday life clear as we hit 60, but some of us are still pretty clear on the 1960s. I remember spending many nights and many hours in the summer of 1968, in the red vinyl booth of an all night downtown Denver cafe, drinking coffee and trying to solve the Rubik cube.

My friend's and I used my almost empty writing notebook (I thought it looked good even before Natalie Goldberg's, Writing Down the Bones, to be writing in a cafe) to record the various combinations of twists to start the pattern that we hoped would solve the cube. Obviously, we should have been drinking Coors instead of the caffeinated grog of an all night diner. But, then I might not have remembered so clearly that that was 1968.

Puerto Vallarta Writing Workshop February

2007-01-11T08:26:00.001-07:00

Here's complete information on the Writing Workshop scheduled for February and sponsored by my favorite writers' group, yes, The Puerto Vallarta Writers Group. There's still room and I just saw some incredible fares on Frontier Airlines to PV this week. They are calling the event:

For the Writer Inside Each One of Us!

The Puerto Vallarta Writers Group will host its second annual Writers Weekend Workshop, February 2-4. Whether aspiring writer or polished pro, and no matter where your writing interests may lie—poetry, fiction or non-fiction, stage or screenplays—there is something in this program for you.
For the Weekend Workshop, the process of writing has been broken down into four steps; Generating Ideas; Finding Your Format, Following Through, and Getting Into Print.
Heading the impressive list of keynote speakers is Karen Blomain, international writing conference presenter, author, and poet. Karen, a native of Pennsylvania, has received two PEN USA Syndicated Fiction Prizes and numerous fellowships and residencies. She has published four volumes of poetry and has edited an anthology of regional poetry. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and has conducted writing workshops in France, Ireland, Austria, Russia, and throughout the United States. She and her husband, writer and photographer Michael Downend, have written a play whose equity production opens in Pennsylvania in March, 2007. Karen is gifted with an aura that simply inspires. She will present the themes, “Generating Ideas,” and “Following Through.”
The other featured speakers are the co-founders of two of the oldest writers groups in Mexico, those in Ajijic, on Lake Chapala outside Guadalajara, and San Miguel de Allende, in the central highlands of Mexico. Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez—known to his many friends as Alex—is the editor of “El Ojo Del Lago,” one of Mexico’s most successful English language periodicals. Living and working in Hollywood for 25 years before moving to Ajijic, Alex has written stage and screenplays, has seven novels to his credit, and has also written, produced, and directed several feature length films. Having mastered so many of writing’s most challenging styles, Alex is the ideal choice to address the topic “Finding the Format.”
Last, but by no means least, noted international author Susan Page from San Miguel de Allende has written four books on relationships, and a publishing guide for writers. Susan’s books have been translated into 20 foreign languages and have sold over a million copies in the U.S. and worldwide. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, and others. Excerpts of her work have appeared in People Magazine, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Redbook and scores of other publications. Susan is a natural to comment on the major preoccupation of all writers—“Getting Into Print.”
The weekend includes a Friday evening Wine and Cheese reception, a Saturday Buffet Dinner at La Hacienda restaurant, and a Sunday afternoon Author Book Signing at The Lazy Lizard on Los Muertos beach. All this, including the dinner, is offered for a Registration Fee of only $700 pesos (about $65 U.S.). Registrants can purchase guest tickets for the dinner Saturday evening dinner while quantities last for an additional $220 pesos per dinner.
The Workshop will be held at the International Friendship Club, conveniently located a block north of the Rio Cuale on Insurgentes Avenue, above the HSBC bank, in the heart of downtown Puerto Vallarta.
A complete Workshop Schedule is attached to this email, as well as a Registration Form which can be filled out and brought with payment to any January meeting of the Puerto Vallarta Writers Group, held Saturday mornings at 10:30 at the International Friendship Club. Information is also available online at http://www.pvwritersgroup.com/.
Out of town inquiries should be directed to Dan Grippo: http://bellecora.com/ym/Compose?To=dangrippo@yahoo.com; Puerto Vallarta telephone: (322) 222-7819; U.S. (Vonage) telephone: (312) 637-9629.
Space is limited, so please act now if interested

About Oprah Inspiring Giving

2006-11-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

Stumbled on to the post "Oprah encourages Philanthropy," on the Wordpress blog Non-Government Imagination. As one who has been encouraged and inspired by Oprah and those volunteers and givers she has featured on her show, I appreciated it and started exploring other posts on the blog. It is a great site to get clarity and information about philanthropy and other stuff too. Click here to go to the Oprah post.

I Heard it on Oprah...Wisdom & Inspiration

2006-11-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

Inspiration, Motivation and the Color Purple

This year I turned sixty. What better time to consider old goals, inspiration, philanthropy, Oprah and the color purple.

I knew when I was a child that at this time in my life I would dedicate my time to helping those in need in places far from home. This may have been more the influence of visiting missionaries at my grandmother’s Southern Baptist church in Sayers, Texas than actual intuition. Their visits to that country church were the first time I'd seen still color photos projected on a screen. That screen seemed, from my front row seat next to my grandmother, as big as the screen at the drive-in theatre. Most of the visiting missionaries brought their photos from a place they called Africa. I could see that Africa was as far away and as strange as Mars. The huge color images and their reports of the “good” they did in far away Africa were very compelling to an eight year old.

My next ambition to do good came when, through television, I heard about the poor in the coal mining regions of Appalachia. When I grew up, I would go there and be a beloved teacher. By this time I was ten and we had moved from my father’s family home in San Antonio, Texas to my mother's family home in the coal fields of Fremont County, Colorado.

My maternal grandmother entertained me with tales of her childhood in the mountains of Tennessee, which I knew was part of Appalachia. In my mind, however, her Tennessee and our Colorado coal mining community were completely unrelated to the poor mining families who needed my help. Eight years later, when I returned home from college one summer to find a Vista Volunteer installed in our midst, I realized for the first time that those who needed help were also in my back yard.

In 1957 Hurricane Audrey struck the Gulf Coast. The news of devastation reached us in the rural mountains of Colorado, despite our access to only two semi-clear T.V. channels and one fuzzy one that had problems projecting over Pikes Peak. I was eleven. I remember by father saying, “A guy ought to load his pick up with food and water and go down there.” Yes, when I became an adult I would do just that. When natural disasters struck the unsuspecting, I would immediately go to the site and share what I had. The vision of myself driving a pick-up didn't meld with my other vivid fantasies of myself as a grown-up, but no sacrifice was to large when it came to doing good.

When Katrina struck the Gulf Coast I was already in a place away from my home volunteering my time. My 84 year old mother has extreme memory loss related to dementia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a heart murmur and a tendency to small strokes. Her home in Southern Colorado is 300 miles from my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My brothers and I are determined to keep our mother in her home as long as possible, though she isn’t sure now whose house she lives in and doesn’t remember our names. She refers to me as “that girl who is always doing what ever she wants” as though that is a bad thing. My brother who is a Major General in the Air Force she refers to as “that big man who is all about business.” My youngest brother, who has lived within a few miles of her all his life and since our father’s death sixteen years ago has been on-call to her, is known devoutly as “Him.” While we are all involved in her life, for most of the last year I have been the live-in caregiver.

Professionally, I have been a secondary teacher, magazine editor and writer, taught writing workshops, developed after school and summer enrichment programs, done graphic design. More recently I’ve helped others get their stories, their memoir, on paper as a ghost writer or a collaborator. Sometimes those projects make it into book form (example: Still Life with Violin, BelleCora Press, 2005). Writing and publishing has allowed me to stay with my mother and oversee her care, while still working.

In my childhood vision of myself as a caregiver, I was not sitting hours on end in my childhood home, trying to probe the fog of my parent’s mind and her jumbled dialogue. Instead, I was at the ready to rush to the site of the latest natural disaster and administer heartfelt attention. On television I have seen the on site response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005 and the generosity of celebrities and of everyday people. I’ve made my own small contributions and wanted to do more. I’ve been astonished at the creativity young and old have had in raising money, goods and services for Gulf Coast relief and fascinated at how their ideas seemed to sprout out of the air. I’ve been astonished and touched at how they have made those ideas work for the benefit of many.

Finally, my own idea came in the middle of the night. I can't say I dreamed it as much as I just saw it. The concept arrived so completely formed that I could not ignore it. Yet, I did mull it around for a few weeks; alternating between thinking it was an inspired idea to wondering if I might be sued by Oprah. I emailed the show, did hours of research on line trying to determine if it was a legally viable project or if it was even an original idea. I procrastinated....then I opened a fortune cookie that said “Look to the color purple for luck this week.”

My vision of a lasting flexible use book of inspiration with the title, I Heard it on Oprah, involved the color purple. Go figure! It involved Oprah. It was purple. Maybe I was dreaming. Where ever it came from…I saw shades of purple and grey on the cover, and pale lavender pages. Oprah says the universe speaks to us first in a whisper, then a nudge, then.... I ate the fortune cookie and decided that I had better make some effort on this vision before I was hit with something large.

The consistency of the Oprah Winfrey Show’s format of valuable, thoughtful information, is why we so often hear among our girlfriends and some guy friends, too, “Did you know..?” …or “Listen to this great saying”…or…”Have you read…heard…seen?”,,,, Followed by “I heard it on Oprah.” In the summer of 1996, I was watching the Oprah Winfrey Show when the guest said something so significant to my life that I was stunned. I picked up my notebook and recorded what he had said. Since then I have been in the habit of recording the valuable things I hear on Oprah.

I chose sixty of those inspirational quotes…because, yes, I turned sixty in 2006. But, more than that, I didn’t want a daily quote book. I wanted the receiver of the book to have time to contemplate the thought…more of a weekly thought….but hey one gal’s weekly inspiration may be another gal’s ho-hum…so I threw in a few more to cover those ho-hums.

BelleCora Press is handling the production/publishing and distribution of my design. Together we will be donating some labor and all profits from sales in 2006-2007 to existing Gulf Coast Hurricane Relief projects. Though we do not have the exact figure right now, it appears that that donation will be between $7-9 per book. In late 2007 we will make a decision where profits from 2008 sales will go, perhaps Africa. Profits from this project will always go to humanitarian relief.

For more info or to purchase go to the publisher's website. I hope you find inspiration in this book.

Writing Prompts and Bull Durham

2006-08-26T08:50:00.000-06:00

Writing prompts interest me lately. In a recent writers workshop, I took down by hand, with pen on notebook paper the instructors list of 25 writing prompts. It seemed a small labor and a significant writers’ tool. This morning I entered “writing prompts” in the www.Google.com search window. In under ¾ of a second the first ten of 9,690,000 web entries related to writing prompts popped onto my computer screen.

Writing prompts didn’t just come into my consciousness. I’ve used them for years in teaching both elementary and secondary writing enrichment courses and in adult writers workshops I have fascilitated or attended. My recent interest was sparked by Karen Blomain, last winter when she related an idea another writing friend was using. He was having a significant birthday, 40 maybe. He made a list of 40 significant people in his life. His intention was to choose from the list each day as a stimulant for his writing.
I was stuck. I hadn’t written anything that wasn’t whiney for two months. As we walked along Basilio Badillo in Puerto Vallarta toward the beach, Karen offered the idea. I had been allowing the end of a large project and some emotional garbage in my life, including my upcoming 60th birthday to block my creativity. I thought a list of significant people was a great idea and announced to Karen that I was going to make a list of 60 individuals in honor of the big birthday.

I did start the list, but I have yet to write about one. It seems what I really needed was to be reminded that it’s a simple game to cite one of my favorite movies Bull Durham , “You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you, catch the ball.” Writing is a simple game. You put the tip of the pen on the paper and keep it moving. Just starting a list of possible subjects, knowing I would choose one and write about it each day was enough to get my pen moving, my imagination jumping.

Writing prompts, I know, are not written just to get our pens started. They serve to open areas of our psyche and connect them to our creativity in ways we might not otherwise have found. But, what about those nine million websites relating to writing prompts? Will it ever be necessary for another prompt to be written? Seems like the bases are covered.

Writers' Voices on September 11

2006-08-23T14:43:00.000-06:00

With the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the U.S. looming, we can not help but reflect on how the events of that day impacted life in this country and most parts of the world. Our wounds still tender, it would be easy for the nation’s anger to be rekindled and or its malaise to fester anew as attention is refocused on that moment in our history. Yet, there have been many responses by writers around the world and particularly American writers that provide a salve for this still raw experience. This may be the perfect time to turn to those calm hopeful voices.

In September 11: American Writers Respond, an anthology edited by William Heyen, Etruscan Press, 2002, one-hundred and twenty-seven writers from diverse cultures within our country examine in one of several genres and a variety of perspective the events of September 11, 2001. Among those included in this anthology are the respected short story author and novelist John Updike, the equally respected writer and New Yorker Erica Jong, storyteller, poet, musician Joy Harjo, whose Oklahoma Muskogee roots and connection with the American Southwest provide a unique voice, and Karen Blomain, a university writing instructor, who has documented the lives of first and second generation families in the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania in poetry.

At the debut of the book in late 2002, a year following the events, reviewer Joe Lockard wrote “The difficulty of writing about September 11 will continue to be how we can avoid the simplicities agitprop, and ultra-patriotic banalities of official culture that demean its centrality in the politics of these days. Anthologies like this one are a start towards reclaiming the meanings of the event towards shaping a popular post-September 11 history.” September 11: American Writers Respond takes readers across the tapestry of American sub-cultures and forces us to see the impact the tragedy had on people other than the stereo-typical middle-class middle American, both within and without our borders. One of the clearest contributions in this vein is the essay "Sisters", by Karen Blomain.

In Blomain’s essay two sisters are spending a morning together shopping in a flea market when news of the attack begins to move through the booths and aisles. What setting is more universal in whatever century, by whatever name, market day, the souk, the bizarre, the mercado, the flea market? The American sisters come to understand the meaning of the tragedy and mourn along with Russian, Korean, Latino, and Middle Eastern people within the flea market. The reader experiences empathy and respect for all cultures and sees, through the pictures painted by the sisters' experience, beyond the events as an American tragedy to the world wide tragedy. As Bruce Bond writes in an essay included in this anthology, "The challenge of all politically charged art is for the authority of the work to reside not merely in the situation, charged as it is by ready-made pathos, but in the quality of spontaneous imaginative participation in that situation." Blomain skillfully helps the reader participate in the events with out the ineffective repetition of the morbid details. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay Sisters.

Karen Blomain, poet, novelist, essayist, educator has used writing to document her reaction to all the expected significant life experience, i.e. birth death, love, discovery, heartbreak, joy. Yet she just as skillfully touches universal topics and international events with the subtle hand of a poet and a life long observer. Her poetry, found in two published volumes, two chapbooks, and numerous anthologies and literary journals, runs the gamut from whimsical verse to deep observation. Most proud of her work with other writers, Blomain holds a MFA from Columbia and has taught in the Creative and Professional Writing Program at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania since 1990 and in workshops nationwide and globally. She will conduct a writers' workshop titled Personal Writings: Memoir and Poetry in Santa Fe, New Mexico September 15-17, 2006. For more information visit www.BelleCora.com or call 505/310-0703.

Obsolete Lessons in a Writer's Life

2006-08-22T09:30:00.000-06:00

This morning I am writing with a view of my recently planted wild flower garden off the front patio. Morning birds sing. The locust are starting to buzz as this August day warms. My coffee mug, from a writers workshop I attended this summer atAnam Cara in West Cork, Ireland, sits to my left. It is in front of the printer connected to my laptop computer, but safely away from the exit line of the printed page. It's a lesson I learned hard and long ago and one of several in my writing life that is now obsolete.

I remember when I learned that paper quality was related to weight. Twenty-pound being the desired quality when submitting a manuscript. No erasable paper or onion skin accepted. I remember what a relief it was to have one of the new self-correcting typewriters. No more erasing or feeling around the edge of the typewriter for the typing eraser or looking under the notebook from which I was transcribing handwritten manuscript. No more discovering that the tiny bottle of correcting fluid was dry, just when I was about to snatch the last page from the machine and run breathlessly into the post office with my addressed Manila envelope at 4:58 pm. I remember discovering that dried out correcting fluid could be reactivated with water!

I remember my first typewriter with memory...It could retain about three lines of type, it could back up and correct exactly what you told it to. It had a line delay and could actually make a correction before the type went down, if you caught it in time. I remember when my neighbor, Ginger, who was married to a high tech kind of guy employed by what was then known as Sperry Univac, got a computer set up in her home. It took up one end of the living room. She allowed me to compose and print my weekly column for the Marine-on-St.Croix Messenger on it, saving me at least a couple of hours of frustrated time with my electric typewriter a week. When I made a typing error I only deleted the offending letter or letters. She counseled me that it was faster to eliminate the whole word or even the whole line. If I decided to change a word like more to or, I would only delete the m and the e. I just couldn't bring myself to waste...what? There was no more typing ribbon, no more white out solution, no more typing eraser. Somehow I couldn't get beyond the years of training and the concept of waste. I am still inclined to delete only the m and the e. I suspect that sometime in the future we, the human race, will discover that there is a limit to the capacity of cyber memory, like we discovered later rather than sooner that there is limit to potable water on the planet and a limit to how much polluted air our atmosphere can neutralize.
I remember sitting in my office/den/my husband's office/my husband's stereo center at four o'clock in the afternoon with wine in a one of a kind hand thrown coffee mug that Connie, another working from home Mom, had made. I had the big white stereo ear phones on and the volume on the Japanese made stereo tuner, which Mike had bought in Turkey in 1970, turned up as loud as it would go. The dial was set precisely to a spot between two local FM stations on the dial. I had learned that the white noise was just enough to allow me to concentrate on editing, while blocking out any disaster that might occur in the living room where my children and a half dozen neighborhood kids watched Sesame Street.
I remember the single most important lesson I ever learned as an at home Mom/freelance writer. I learned the lesson through the experience of my first electric typewriter. The electric return was powerful, fast and made me feel efficient and real, a real writer. The sleek machine had a carriage that was longer and lower than that on my manual typewriter. In fact, the top of the carriage was the exact height of my favorite coffee mug. It could hit an average mug solidly about an inch and half below the rim and tip the contents, whether coffee or red wine, onto neatly stacked manuscript pages with surprising speed. I went from productive real writer to a disaster sopping Mom in under 7 seconds more than once, until I learned to work with my coffee to my left.

Memoir Writing: Remembering Emotion

2006-08-18T08:34:00.000-06:00

Gloria Ziolkowski called yesterday to say she enjoyed reading Still Life with Violin, a memoir I published with Inge Lokos last year. Still Life with Violin is about Inge's life with her husband,Stefan, a romantic story set in post World War II Europe and a story of the courage WWII women needed to move on and to allow romance in their lives.

When I signed the inside cover of Gloria's copy, I wrote "To old friends, they're the best." A silly, not very original inscription...but, hey, we were in the post-gorging haze of our semi-annual Schezuan Shrimp lunch at the Jade Cafe in Florence Colorado, where they feel compelled to cover their 10 inch diameter entree plates and I feel compelled to eat all. Later, thinking how unwriterly of me, how lazy my imagination with that inscription, but how unembarrassed I was because I meant it and because I've known Gloria so long that I can be lazy and unimaginative with her, I realized that she is not just an old friend.

I've known Gloria for 50 years this very week. She is my oldest girl friend. I knew her before we thought about having boobs or wearing lipstick, when we still played with paperdolls and ran to grandmother's houses after school for cookies. The first Pitzel I ever saw I consumed in her grandmother DeCarlo's kitchen, where she answered in English the questions Mrs. DeCarlo put to us in Italian.

Gloria's last name hasn't been Ziolkowski for at least 40 years, but that is hard for me to absorb. I remember how accomplished I felt when I learned to spell her last name, a name long and foreign to my ears! And it began with the last letter of the alphabet! We'd just moved from a San Antonio, Texas suburb to a small coal mining town in the Wet Mountains of Colorado, populated mostly by Polish and Italian families, when I met Gloria. Everything was foreign to me there. I was accustomed to the Southern Hispanic culture of Texas, where my father's family had thrived since before the battle of the Alamo. I could eat TexMex all day and pronounce any word you put in front of me in Spanish, though I probably didn't know what it meant. But these Polish and Italian names and words! And the food!

Remembering all I learned in the tiny town of Rockvale, Colorado fifty years ago, brings me to the current popularity in writers workshops and book publishing of memoir writing. The publishing industry is embracing not just the unusual adventurous life but that of the ordinary person told in memoir. As young adults the lives of others seem exotic, much more interesting than our own. Just now I am beginning to appreciate the rich texture of my own childhood and what that brings to my writing as a middle aged adult.

I've learned that it is not how exotic the locations or dramatic the experiences of a life that makes good memoir writing, but the honesty of the images. I've learned in working with people like Inge Lokos, developing their memoirs as a collaborator or a ghost writer, that it is not just the clarity of the image of an experience, but the clarity of the emotion that accompanied the experience and the courage to put that emotion on paper, that makes the story. We need detail, as much as can honestly be attached to an experience of time and place, but in memoir writing we also need the courage to revisit emotion and embed it in the image, as well, in order to compel the reader to turn the page to learn from and value that ordinary life. For information on writers workshops featuring memoir writing check out www.BelleCora.com/Workshops.html.

Last week over lunch, I realized that while I was eating my first pitzel in the early fall of 1956, it wasn't just the sound of Italian words coming to me, the shiny scrubbed linoleum floor, the steam and smell of bubbling sauce on the stove or the exotic licorice flavor of the thin, crisp cookie that was embedded in my memory. There was the exhileration of fear in my first visit to Mrs. DeCarlo's kitchen. Gloria is a caregiver. I guess she always was. I was reminded that I went with Gloria that first time to check up on her Grandmother because her Grandfather had been buried a few days previous.

My mother's sister had died the year before. My brothers and I never visited her in the hospital during her long illness, nor were we included in the funeral. We weren't to talk about it to our mother. She might cry. That was the extent of my experience with death. Now I had been invited by this smiling, energetic new friend to visit a woman in her kitchen who's husband was dead, as though it were not only a usual thing to do after school, but a responsibility. In the dialogue of my childhood such a visit was intruding, rude, not a child's place and certainly something I wouldn't be allowed if I asked first. Boy, oh boy, with my stomach flip flopping, I was in step with Gloria down the school hill, over Oak Creek, across the tracks. I wasn't going to miss an opportunity this scary. I'm going to have to beg Gloria to let me rewrite that incription.

Read about Still Life with Violin and a sneak peek of the first chapter on the BelleCora Press website. It can be ordered from BelleCora Press or from Amazon.com.

Writing, Sitting and Walking

2006-08-12T10:20:00.000-06:00

Just discovered from the Natalie Goldberg website, which I mentioned in a previous post, that Natalie is giving what sounds like a fascinating workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico in mid-September. The title is compelling enough, The World Comes Home; The practice of Writing, Sitting and Walking. But, in addition, it is scheduled to be held at the beautiful Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. Unfortunately, I will be writing furiously with Karen Blomain in Santa Fe at her writers workshop, Personal Writing; Memoir and Poetry, September 15-17. I am sure there will be more serenity at the Upaya Center. But that is for another time in my writing life. My muse needs Karen's capable prodding right now. Though, I know I will feel a tug toward the hills north of the Plaza that week-end. Writing, sitting and/or walking, whatever moves our hand across the paper or the keyboard...let's do it.

Memoir Writing & Reality T.V.

2006-08-10T04:59:00.000-06:00

I started teaching a writers workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about eight years ago, which I called Writing the Memoir. I'm still not sure why I felt inspired to develop that workshop. I had done some ghost writing recently for a couple of people who wanted to publish their version of their life's successes and failures, which probably helped lead me to the concept. It may have been that I saw a niche and needed some extra money. Certainly, there was a bevy of inspiring writing instructors in Santa Fe at the time competing for the aspiring writers attention, most with wonderful credentials and equally wonderful workshop ideas.
I remember that poet Joan Logghe was facilitating an on-going free workshop for people touched by AIDS called Writing from the Heart. I thought it a brilliant and generous concept. Also, I think there was a fair bit of buzz about journaling, journaling workshops, combining self-examination and creative writing, coming out of our decade plus with Natalie's Writing Down the Bones and following on the heels of the Artist's Way,which may have motivated me. At this point, you maybe thinking, ho-hum, this blog is about how sluggishly my memory is this morning, and that you would recommend I pop a gingko and get myself to the Santa Fe Baking Company for a shot of caffiene.
While the gingko and Santa Fe Baking Company caffeine couldn't hurt, I am actually puzzling this morning on how movements of thought develop universally and drop out of the collective consiousness on to unsuspecting individuals like myself. Knowledge grows on itself; ideas have a snowball effect. Nothing new there. Memoir and biography have been with us in literature at least since the Bible, right? But, it appears to me that interest in this genre has grown considerably in the last decade and the subject has become more and more the life of Everyman, rather than of extra-ordinary man or woman. Recently, I've become aware of a new term in the writing industry to cover, I guess, memoir,journaling, steam of consiousness and some forms of poetry...personal writing. The poet and novelist, Karen Blomain, uses it in her upcoming Santa Fe writers workshop title Personal Writing; Memoir and Poetry. I like the term. I think it is inclusive and gives everyman the comfort zone he or she may need to bring out the writer within. However, I can't help wondering what our apparent growing interest in memoir writing means to fiction.
"Truth is stranger than fiction," it is said and we seem to be living more and more in a world focused on the strange, the bizzare for entertainment. Take prime-time television. There are actually week-nights in some areas, when the only scheduled situation comedies or dramas are re-runs. Have fictionalized versions of the life of everyman become too tame for entertainment? What we seem to appreciate collectively is the bizarre as demonstrated through reality television and the ordinary man or woman, willing to do anything for that 5 minutes of fame. Where does that leave literature...has literature always been just memoir in sheep's clothing? Was Everyman, the 15th Century morality play we slogged through in English Literature 101, really a memoir?

Writers Workshop in Santa Fe

2006-08-07T07:34:00.000-06:00

I'm looking forward to an inspiring writing workshop with Karen Blomain in Santa Fe in September. Poetry and Personal Writings is the title of this three day, over a week-end workshop sponsored by BelleCora Press & Workshops, September 15-17. Karen, like many women, came to a writing career a bit later in life, after the kids were in school, etc. That doesn't, of course, mean she came to writing later in life...I believe there's a writer in most of us the day we leave the womb, just waiting for the skills and the opportunity to put our words and observances out there for the world to share.

Karen's writing is thoughtful, honest,sometimes humorous and often surprising. Her poem "Old Broads" is an example. You can read it and learn more about Karen's writing and teaching career at www.BelleCora.com/Writers.html

I've had a couple of workshops with Karen, most recently at AnamCara in Ireland. Her style of teaching/facilitating is warm, accepting, nourishing and, at vital points, challenging. She doesn't allow anyone to sit around and wait for that previously mentioned opportunity. I hear there are still a couple of seats left in Santa Fe. For more info on this workshop go to the Workshops page of the BelleCora website. Write on!

Radio Plays

2006-07-17T10:45:00.000-06:00

At AnamCara Art and Writing Retreat in County Cork, Ireland, I recently heard Michael Downend, American playwright and photographer, speak about the resurgence of radio plays. It's a genre and/or a venue that most of my generation has very little experience with. Oh, I've seen the old movies in which a group of movie actors are acting as though they are radio actors, standing side by side reading into microphones from a script, the sound man off to the side adding affects. I have a memory of begging to hear the Jack Benny show on radio on Sunday night. Our first TV came into the house about 1950, when I was four years old. I couldn't have been a fan of Jack Benny long or of radio plays. I don't think there was much time between my awareness of the radio as spoken entertainment and my imagination and attention turning to T.V. and the Howdy Doody and Pinky Lee shows.

For me over the last 35 years radio entertainment has meant NPR and in particular Prairie Home Companion. Michael Downend sees an increase in the use of radio plays in the U.K. as well as a smaller but increasing demand in the U.S. As a listener, I like the idea of more drama and comedy available on more stations. As a writer, I am fascinated with the process of learning how to write and market a radio play. I can think of a number of subjects that would seem to lend themselves to the genre. The question is can an old prose writer drop all the descriptive phrases and bring characters to life and move plot with only dialogue and a few sound affects?

Writing or Avoiding?

2006-07-13T08:08:00.000-06:00

If I am blogging about writing, am I actually writing? Or is this an avoidance tactic a bit more sophisticated than washing the dishes or eating, less social than holding my capless uniball fine point on the patio at Starbucks in Santa Fe or going to Los Muertos Beach in Puerto Vallarta, my lonely notebook buried in my bag under sunscreen and other non-writing essentials. I think if I consulted my writing coach, Karen Blomain, whose Personal Writing Workshop I attended in Eyeries, Ireland last month, she'd say yes. Yes, you are writing! Okay then let's blog!