On Making Beautiful Music with THE PIANIST FROM SYRIA Aeham Ahmad

I recently read a beautiful memoir: THE PIANIST FROM SYRIA by Aeham Ahmad, in which the author shares how the famous photograph of him doesn't tell the whole story. The Syrian civil war continues to break my heart, but I loved learning about Aeham's life as a pianist, particularly his relationship with his father, who was a blind musician.

Here's a passage I found particularly relatable in my cello-life (emphasis mine):

"Playing the piano is hard work, even for the most talented musicians, and I never was one of those. If you're tense, you just can't get the sound right. Then your playing becomes robotic and dry; you stumble through the music with stiff hands. Each attempt to wrestle with a piece of music is doomed to failure.

     "So. Once more from the beginning. Take a breath. Relax your joints, let your hands go soft, let them hover above the black-and-white landscape of the octaves, loose and free. Let your fingers gently descend. Find the right moment, let the current of the music take you. Let it become your heartbeat. Throw your fingers onto the keys like an artist splashing paint.

     "By that time, I had learned to play more sophisticated piece. For six months, Irina Bolushouk had me practice Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor, op. 23, no. 5, a difficult piece with a complex rhythm. The prelude seemed to dance across the keyboard from bass notes to treble, through all keys and tonalities My hands had to perform countless seamless transitions, and it was exhausting just to hit the right keys, like mastering a high-wire act.

     "Day by day, I worked on the piece, line by line. First, I only sang the notes. Then I worked on the left hand. Slowly. Then a little faster. Then the right hand. Then both hands, very slowly. A little faster. If I made a mistake, I had to start over. And over, and over, and over. Twenty, thirty, a hundred times. Then on to the next line. Then the next sheet. Then I had to put it all together. Another mistake! Start over. Try making it sound more alive. Week in, week out. It was like building a house from pebbles."

A Poem for a Cat Named Snickers

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink for Roundup. 

I'm in with a quick poem I wrote earlier this week after we discovered Snickers (a neighborhood cat who has adopted us) sleeping in the bird bath. Fortunately Paul was able to snap a picture. SO CUTE!

Cat Bath

Forget water –

this bird

bathes in sunshine

and falling leaves,

dreams

of tomorrow's 

                       chase

- Irene Latham

Snickers

Probably I should mention that Snickers is quite the hunter. She has become a bit kinder to the birds and squirrels since we put out one of those gravity feeders. Now that she knows our porch diner is open 24/7, we more often find her sleeping somewhere around the house.

Another note about Snickers: Paul and I had started calling her Jolene, after the famous song by Dolly Parton. But then... our son informed us that his girlfriend had already named the cat Snickers. So to honor her, we went with that. We are not quite sure to whom the cat belongs (she was wearing a bell collar when she first started appearing in our yard), so who knows what her other names might be? Could be fodder for a whole other poem... thanks so much for reading! xo

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The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: SEWING

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

SEWING

wee me with a sewing card

I am the daughter of a seamstress, who is a daughter of a seamstress, who is the daughter of a seamstress. Sewing is in my blood! Though I must confess: my skills are quite basic, especially compared to the artistry of those women who came before me. 

I went to sleep many nights to the hum of a sewing machine only to wake to find a beautiful dress hanging from the doorframe. My mom takes pride in her craftsmanship, too – no mismatched seams, no shortcuts. Her vision is clear, and she strives for perfection. (She learned to sew and competed with great success through her local 4-H program.) At one time she taught sewing classes. 

I have fond memories of going with her to the fabric store, where we would search the pattern books for just the right one. She'd let me go to the giant drawers and locate the correct pattern in the correct size. And then the real fun would begin: my mom never followed the pattern's suggested fabric lengths. She knew she could use the fabric more efficiently, so she always had less fabric cut than the pattern called for. When we got home, she'd trim those thin pattern sheets and lay then across the fabric in all sorts of creative ways – very much like piecing a puzzle. And she always ALWAYS had enough fabric. Even better, there was always fabric left over. I can still see the triumphant look on her face when she'd beaten the pattern once again. 

And oh, the bins of leftover fabric! Mama always imagined the glorious things she'd create – if only she had time! These days she rarely has a chance to sew, and she recently told me her machine is in need of updating. She still has all that fabric, though – just waiting.

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: SCHOOL

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

SCHOOL

Of course I have a ton of school memories from the multitude of schools I attended (by the time I was 14 we had moved 9 times and I attended 11 schools). Here's a list:

Pre School -    Home schooled by Mama - We called it Cinderella’s School. Students were Irene & Lynn - mostly during our time in Saudi Arabia.

Kindergarten -   1^st half of year @ International School in Riyadh, SA and 2^nd half @ a church in Hendersonville, TN

First Grade -  Padgett Elementary in Lakeland, FL

Second Grade -   3 weeks @ Lewis Elementary in Ft. Meade, FL - promoted to Third Grade …..

Third Grade -  Lewis Elementary in Ft. Meade, FL

Fourth Grade - 1^st half of year @ A.H. Roberts Elementary in Livingston, TN, 2^nd half of year @ Folsom Elementary in Folsom, LA

Fifth Grade -  Folsom Elementary in Folsom, LA

Sixth Grade - Covington Middle School - Covington, LA

Seventh Grade - William Pitcher Jr. High School in Covington, LA

Eighth Grade - Hewitt Trussville Jr. Middle School in Trussville, AL

Ninth - Twelfth - Hewitt Trussville High School - Trussville, AL

College  - Samford (1 semester only) and UAB in Birmingham, AL, then University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) for MSW

But perhaps my best school memories are of playing school with my sister. At our home on Willie Rd. in Folsom, LA, there was a small (yellow?) outbuilding in the backyard that our parents allowed us to use one room of for a playhouse. Whenever we played school, I was almost always the teacher. (I am the oldest, and Lynn has always been a very agreeable playmate.) Our style of “school” was much more like Little House on the Prairie (the TV show) than what we experienced in real life. Which means it was FUN!

My favorite teacher was my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Fattig, who had in her classroom a bathtub filled with pillows where we could read. Heaven! 

Aside: My forthcoming book NINE: A Book of Nonet Poems includes a poem that features Mrs. Fattig. I hope to locate her between now and then so I can tell her what an impact she made on my life.

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: SANDWICH

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For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the prompts found in THE BUTTERFLY HOURS by Patty Dann. I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

SANDWICH

For most of my school years, I brought my lunch (in a lunch box when I was young; brown paper sack when I was older). 

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For most of those lunches, what I packed was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: chunky peanut butter with apple jelly. Such a simple pleasure! I still love chunky peanut butter, but it's been a long time since I had apple jelly! I think I'll remedy that soon.

A memory from our honeymoon: we were on a day-diving trip off the coast of Little Cayman. When it came time for lunch, they passed out the sandwiches, and you got what you got. I got salami, which isn't my favorite. I turned to Paul and said, “you got ham.” He traded sandwiches with me, without a word. Sweet man!

Another sandwich-memory: Paul has a Sunday lunch sandwich tradition. While he's fixing his sandwiches (the fattest peanut butter and jelly sandwiches you've ever seen!), he sings a little song: “It's sandwich sandwich sandwich time!” He's been doing this FOREVER. We realized what an impact this had when our son Andrew was filling a sheet with answers about about his father (maybe for Father's Day?). For the prompt “what is your father's favorite food?” Andrew wrote: “sandwiches.” :)

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I Pledge Allegiance to the Lake (poem)

photo from the boat,
minutes before sunrise

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Linda at TeacherDance for Roundup, where she is featuring the cover reveal of DICTIONARY FOR A BETTER WORLD: Poems, Quotes and Anecdotes from A to Z written by myself and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini, coming Feb. 4, 2020 from Carolrhoda Books. We are so excited to see the book making its way into the world!

And now for today's poetic offering. A few weeks ago I shared about the book INK KNOWS NO BORDERS and suggested it might be a meaningful identity experience to write a "pledge of allegiance" poem after the last poem in that anthology, "self-portrait with no flag" by Safia Elhillo. Here's what I came up with:

I Pledge Allegiance to the Lake

To its still, green-hush mornings,

its goldburst afternoons.

To its abundant skies lifting geese,

eagles, herons, and iridescent

ballets of dragonflies;

its reliable shores of pebbles, sway-grass

and sunwashed turtles;

its friendly crappie, bass, and bream.

I pledge allegiance to the lake's splash
and hum, its ever-changing face:
sometimes dimpled, sometimes soft as sand.

To its laplap July lullaby,

its keen January whistle.

How eagerly it climbs! How quietly it recedes.

And for the breezy peace it brings,

the secrets it swallows,

the boats it kisses and skin it bathes –

to the beauty for which it stands:

one small body of water

tucked in the tail of the Appalachians,

with freedom, reflection

and refreshment for all.

- Irene Latham

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The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: SALTWATER

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

SALTWATER

I have plenty of saltwater experiences, thanks to countless visits to my grandparents' home in Port St. Joe, Florida. We loved fishing with Granddaddy off the canal banks, and sometimes in the boat in open water. My sister was often the best fisherman among us! Granddaddy would clean and fry the fish in an outdoor fryer. If we were lucky, there were also oysters (Granddaddy's favorite!).

We also loved playing on the beach at Mexico Beach and even better, on Cape San Blas where the dunes are mountainous and the beaches often empty. One summer our visit unfortunately hit at the same time as a tide of jellyfish. Oh the agony of being repeatedly stung in neck-deep water! How long the swim to the shore! I wrote a poem about it once, called “Year of the Jellyfish.” It's kind of a dark poem, or at least menacing. While I prefer to focus on the wonderful parts of my childhood, it wasn't always sunny. Sometimes there were jellyfish.

And sometimes there are jellyfish skies!

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: ROAD (poem)

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

ROAD

The favorite road of my childhood was Willie Road in rural Folsom, LA, where I lived for five years. Sometimes my friend Kim and I would ride our horses two and a half miles past horse farms and country homes and trailers to the R & R store at the end of the road. We had a crush on the boy who worked behind the counter. His name was Leo.

We chose the home where we currently live, in part, for the road it's on. It's shady, with just the right amount of hills and flat spots, and has lots of woods and few houses. Paul and I walk it at least once a day and marvel at the beautiful world.

A few years ago I wrote “Self-Portrait as a Country Road” after "The Road" by Edgar Degas. Roads are definitely part of my identity... and I drive A LOT (and enjoy driving!). This past year I put 35k miles on my car. :)

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: RICE (poem)

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

RICE

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white rice

because it's unassuming

brown rice

because it's bold

wild rice

for its peaks and valleys

Jasmine rice

for the way it perfumes

the evening

Basmati rice

for its the way

it sings of forests

yellow rice

because saffron

is a river that flows

both sweet and savory

black rice

because it's really purple

black rice because

it's forbidden

black rice

because of that place

on the coast

where I first shared

black-rice sushi

with you

- Irene Latham

Learning from Dr. Seuss

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday (the 13th)! Be sure to visit Laura (who has a brand new book in the world!) at Writing the World for Kids for Roundup.

I am away from my desk, but I wanted to pop in with some words of wisdom from Dr. Seuss, as I've just finished reading BECOMING DR. SEUSS: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones. I learned a lot about Ted the man and Dr. Seuss the writer... and I found some valuable advice for writers and poets currently trying to get published in the children's market.

a favorite Berenstain Bears title

When Geisel and Phyllis Cerf (his editor) joined forces to create Beginner Books, who should walk into his office but the Berenstains, with what would become THE BERENSTAIN BEARS series. Here's what happened:

Ted, Helen, and Phyllis Cerf greeted the Berenstains warmly. Then Geisel immediately started asking pointed questions about the “internal workings” of the bears. “We need to know more about them,” said Geisel. “What are they about? Why do they live in a tree? What does Papa do for a living? What kind of pipe tobacco does he smoke?”... Geisel didn't necessarily want the Berenstains to include all that information in the story, but he wanted them to have an absolutely clear grasp of their characters and their world -- that “local insanity” that made Dr. Seuss books so oddly coherent. “It was slowly dawning on us that Ted took these little seventy-two-page limited vocabulary, easy-to-read books just as seriously as if he were editing the Great American Novel,” the Berenstains said later.

“Think short sentences,” Geisel instructed them as he picked apart their plot telling them it had a good beginning and ending, but no real middle. And nothing it seemed, was too small or unimportant. Even the length of the lines of text mattered; lines had to look good on the page, and to the extent possible, be of similar length.

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On their way home, the Berenstains wondered what Ted must think of them.

“You know,” said Stan, “I don't think he thinks about us at all. I think all he things about is the work.”

----

Here's Dr. Seuss on writing verse for kids:

The difficult thing about writing in verse for kids is that you can write yourself into a box. If you can't get a proper rhyme for a quatrain, you not only have to throw that quatrain out, but you also have to unravel the sock way back, probably about ten pages or so... And you also have to remember that in a children's book a paragraph is like a chapter in an adult book, and a sentence is like a paragraph.

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And what were Dr. Seuss's wishes for children who read his books?

“Ultimately,” said Geisel, “I'd prefer they forgot about the educational value, and say it was a lot of fun.”

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What, indeed, was (is) the point of it all? Why did Dr. Seuss do this work? Why do any of us do this work?

“Just to spread joy,” said Geisel, then broke into a wry smile. “How does that sound?”

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Perfect, Ted! Just perfect!

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: RIBBON

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

RIBBON

Mama with her (many) ribbon-winning
Jersey cow named Penny.

My mother was quite the 4-H ribbon queen for sewing, public speaking, dairy and beef cattle. Alas, I did not follow in her footsteps! In 4^th grade I won a blue ribbon for my science fair project on Mendel's theories of genetics. My display board was homemade (by my father), and heavy, thanks to plywood and quality hardware. With my mother's help, I covered it in purple felt (my favorite color). A poem I wrote about a different aspect of this experience appears in the Poetry Friday Anthology for Science -Fourth Grade published by Janet and Sylvia of Pomelo Books.  

Science Fair

The graphics
I created and pinned
to the felt board

explain why my eyes
could never be brown,
my hair only blond.

I wonder if Mendel's
theory of genetics
also applies to why

I'm shy
and can speak
to the judges

only in a quavery voice
that betrays my shaky
hands and knees.

- Irene Latham

My senior year I earned the Social Studies ribbon, which was awarded to the student with highest grade average across the school year. I've always felt it's somewhat revealing, as I've always enjoyed learning about history and culture, and also somehow prophetic, in that I went on to earn degrees in social work and to write books about experiences around the world.

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: RECIPES

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

RECIPES

Grandma Dykes would rather
cook than be photographed. :)

The recipes I most cherish from my childhood all come from Grandma Dykes:

hoe cakes – no one knows what this is, so we changed it to “corn bread” in mine and Charles' forthcoming DICTIONARY FOR A BETTER WORLD (basically fine white corn meal -- and yes, brand matters! -- mixed with hot water a bit of salt then fried in in iron skillet)

butternut cake – Grandma would wrap this cake in aluminum foil, freeze it, and send it to our family through the mail.

sour cream cake – I featured this recipe in LEAVING GEE'S BEND!

chocolate pie – I can remember Grandma stirring the chocolate on the stove, and how the smell would fill her small pine kitchen...

Coca-cola cake – this is comfort food for me! I love how you cook and pour the icing over the top of the cake.

Some recipes I cherish from my mother-in-law Bobbie Latham:

cornbread– gold, I tell you, gold! (recipe below)

chicken and dressing – I'd never had dressing I liked until I had my first holiday with the Lathams back in 1990. The key is the cornbread, which is why I'm sharing it.

cranberry salad – I still make this, even though none of my guys eat it. :)

When we do scrapbook weekends, my mom always brings her famous ambrosia – heavy on the grapefruit, as she is and always will be a Florida citrus grove girl. I love it! (Mama, if you're reading this: Happy birthday!!!)

Another great thing to do with grapefruit: cut in half, sprinkle with brown sugar, put in the oven and broil until the sugar gets melty.

For other fruit and veggie recipes, please see the back matter in my book FRESH DELICIOUS. :)

and now....

Bobbie’s Buttermilk Cornbread

1 c. Aunt Jemima buttermilk corn meal mix

1 c. buttermilk

¼ c. canola oil

1 egg

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Heat oven to 415 degrees. Mix together above ingredients. Place 3 Tbsp. butter in large iron skillet. When it begins to brown, pour in cornbread mixture. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove cornbread from skillet - put on plate. Melt 1 Tbsp. butter in skillet. When it begins to brown, flip cornbread and put it back in skillet for 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

Marguerite Henry Summer Reading Report #2 (books 8-16)

Earlier this summer I shared my Summer Reading Report #1, which included some favorite quotes from books 1-7 by Marguerite Henry. 

Today I've got the rest of the collection which includes a Newbery winner and two Newbery honors! I really enjoyed reading these books again. However, it wasn't all wonderful: one book I didn't enjoy all that much. And in another I found some inappropriate treatment of First Nations people. Read on!

GAUDENZIA, PRIDE OF THE PALIO

"June! The hallway into summer. The season for strong happenings, the season for living."

"Gaudenzia wanted to race every moving thing – a rabbit skirting the edge of the road, a hound streaking for a bird – the bird, too. Her friskiness, her eagerness to go filled him with a pride so strong he had to whistle to let the steam of his happiness escape."

JUSTIN MORGAN HAD A HORSE (Newbery Honor book)

"To please his other, Joel tried to eat, too. But even his favorite pumpkin pie was flannel in his mouth."

“'Yeah,' then saddler agreed, 'when it comes to running, a pulling horse is slow as a hog on ice with his tail froze in.'"

“'And I'll give you a green meadow with a creek snakin' through it. And I'll give you a fine stable with a thick bed of straw. And I'll give you sweet hay, and all the corn and oats you should eat. And I”ll give you a blanket in winter. And I'll rub you proper night and morning.'”

KING OF THE WIND - Newbery Medal winner

[pretty sure this book is why I fell in love with Arabian horses!]

"As Agba stood on watch, his mind was a mill wheel, turning, turning, turning. He trembled, remembering the time he and the mare had come upon a gazelle, and he had ridden the mare alongside the gazelle, and she had outrun the wild thing. Agba could still feel the wing singing in his ears."

“When Allah created the horse, he said to the wind, 'I will that a creature proceed from thee. Condense thyself.' And the wind condensed itself, and the result was the horse."

MISTY OF CHINCOTEAGUE (Newbery Honor)

“'Facts are fine, fer as they go,' he said, 'but they're like water bugs skittering at op the water. Legends, now they go deep down and bring up the heart of a story.'”

"The Phantom broke at the start, her cold weaving along behind her like the tail of a kite."

"Maureen watched the sun slide out from behind a low cloud and make diamonds of the raindrops on the grass. She turned her back on it. How could the sun shine when things went wrong?"

"The air went wild with greeting. Deep rumbling neighs. High joyous whickers. The stallion and the mare were brushing each other with their noses, talking together in soft little grunts and snorts as animals will."

MISTY'S TWILIGHT

"A freshly raked track at sunup is almost a holy place Hoofbeats playing soft music on wet tanbark. Barn smells- harvest hay and grains – mingling with drying compost, and over all , the pine-tree fragrance of Kritter Korner. In the ring only one splashily marked pinto pony holds center stage."

“'What,' the mother asks, 'is the breeding of this spunky little ballet dancer?'

Almost in concert Kathy and Sandy reply: 'She's a direct descendant of Misty of Chincoteague!'”

MUSTANG, WILD SPIRIT OF THE WEST *– about the fight to pass the Mustang Bill to protect wild mustangs from being overhunted (This is the one that I didn't enjoy all that much, because a lot of it was about the legal process... though of course I appreciate the work done to protect the wild mustangs!)

“'Remember, Pardner,' he said with gruff tenderness, 'don't fire your gun unless its loaded.'”

"Pa always said, 'Scatter enough seeds and some are bound to sprout.'”

"Grandma always said, 'Time's got a lot of elastic to it. The way you feel inside makes all the difference. It's like one of those fat rubber bands. If you're havin' fun it's got no give at all, goes fast and light. But if you're waitin' on somethin' or somebody, it stretches till doomsday.'”

*my least favorite so far.

SAN DOMINGO: THE MEDICINE HAT STALLION - depiction of First Nations people in this book is inappropriate

“'The past is a bucket of ashes. Let us improve upon the present. What be your needs now?'”

"He had been scrubbed so clean by his mother's washcloth of a tongue that his body markings were distinct and curiously beautiful. Pure white he was, with a cluster of red-brown splatters on his rump and along his belly. It was as though some Indian paintbrush had created a mystical design on his body."

"And so the invisible tie-rope between the tightened and strengthened."

SEA STAR

"Cautiously, as a child who has lighted a firecracker comes back to see if it will explode, so the foal came a step toward them. Then another rout of wild curiousness, and another. When Paul and Maureen still did not move, he grew bold, dancing closer and closer, asking questions with his pricked ears and repeating the with his small question-mark of a tail."

STORMY, MISTY'S FOAL

"Each birth was a different kind of miracle."

"A flush of light I the northeast brought him sharply awake. He peered through the siding and he saw Misty lying down, and he saw wee forehoofs breaking through the silken birth bag, the head resting upon them; then quickly came the slender boy with the hindlegs tucked under.

He froze in wonder at the tiny filly lying there, complete and whole in the straw. It gave one gulping gasp for air, and then its sides began rising and falling as regularly as the ticking of a clock."

WHITE STALLION OF LIPIZZA

“'I don't want this morning's experience to be so beautiful it will break your heart. It may be only once in a lifetime for you.'”

"He felt all at once on the brink of something deep and wonderful. He was here, actually here, about to see the mystery!"*

“'Our school is a small candle in a troubled world, If we can send out one beam of splendor, of glory of elegance, it is worth a man's lifetime,?'”

* I totally want to see the mystery! I am now on the look out for an opportunity to see the World Famous Lipizzaner Stallions... even if I have to go all the way to Vienna to do it. :)

... and that concludes my 2019 summer reading project. Yay!

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: PRAYERS

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

PRAYERS

I grew up in the Episcopal Church where the same prayers are repeated during the service each Sunday. (available in the Online Book of Common Prayer) While I no longer attend church, I can remember verbatim many of the prayers I heard so often during my childhood – and those words never fail to bring me comfort and joy. I also remember with great fondness our family's tradition of holding hands around the table and someone (usually my father) saying a prayer before the meal. This year during ARTSPEAK: Happy! I wrote an "Autumn Prayer" that reminds me of my childhood. And here is a prayer (from the Book of Common Prayer) that I remember so fondly:

62. A Prayer attributed to St. Francis
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is
in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: PLAYGROUND

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

PLAYGROUND

wee me hanging from the (very old!)
swingset in my Dykes Grandparents'
side yard (Port St. Joe, FL)

Most vivid in my mind: the backyard swing set and our church playground (where I brokemy arm).
Also the time in 6^th grade when I was on top of the school monkey bars, and my mom walked past me unexpectedly. (She was there for something regarding my brother Ken.) This might not have been a big deal, except that day I wasn't wearing the clothes I left home in. On the bus ride to school I had changed out of the uncool homemade dress into a friend's much cool-er outfit (which I can no longer remember, but I do remember shimmying into the pants... good thing about a dress is it's easy to be a quick-change artist!). So when I saw my mom, my heart froze. I knew I was busted. She greeted me with a tight mouth, and I had the rest of the day to imagine the punishment waiting for me when I got home from school.
This was a dramatic moment in my relationship with my mother, who was hurt and disappointed in me (and wrote me a 4 page letter I still have expressing all of her feelings). But. It was essential in me becoming... me.