I thought I was pretty adventuresome when I hiked down and up the Grand Canyon at age seventy-six - a feat I had put first on my Bucket List nine years before. Well, Jane Bertrand's proclamation of wanting to reach the high point in every one of our fifty United States certainly beat me out. And I'm happy to say I was very glad to read her memoir You Started What After 60?: Highpointing across America about her extraordinary accomplishment. Please welcome Jane during her WOW! Women on Writing virtual book tour. Here Jane Bertrand traces her love of hiking back to Girl Scout Camp Natarswi, located at the foot of Katahdin in Maine, the Northern terminus for the Appalachian trail. After attending college out-of-state, she would return annually for her two-week sacrosanct vacation in Maine. Over the years she would continue to climb Katahdin, first with her sisters, later with her own children, and finally with adult friends who shared her love of the mountain. Yet not … [Read more...]
May flowers and memories (small stones)
I just finished my tenth month writing small stones. The only break was during my husband's Grand Canyon accident and recovery in November - December 2016. Here are my May small stones, including a couple of photos I posted with the words. By the way, the admin of the small stones Facebook page, Ger O Neill, creates a new name for our group every month. Last month the name was May flowers and memories. This month we're writing Jewels of June. May flowers and memories May Day and the beginning of mental health month. A great day for people watching and writing at a little café. Congress is trying to decimate mental health care. If they pass the amended American Health Care Act (AHCA), millions of Americans will lose their mental health coverage. Please tell your congress representatives to vote No on AHCA. How can so many things in my house go wrong at the same time? My stove cooktop, a water heater, and dryer are all dead. And service people are nowhere in sight. … [Read more...]
Poems from the latest Poem A Day challenge
I have to confess right from the start that I didn't finish the November 2016 Poem A Day (PAD) challenge. I was so caught up in my husband's recovery from his Grand Canyon accident that writing poetry during that time was the last thing on my mind. However, I wrote a poem a day for the first fifteen days. Here's a couple, including the prompts I wrote to. Write a wire poem. A wire poem could be about something that needs wireslike maybe a robot, TV, or automobile. But birds huddle on telephone wires, people wire money to each other, and kids can get wired off of too much candy and/or caffeine. In fact, I'm surprised I haven't written more wired poems over the years. Birds on the Wire It fascinates me To see those birds Up there on the electrical wires. Don't their little bird claws Perched around those strands Of metal get hot? They don't seem to mind their perch. It's where they come to meet their friends, Learn the latest gossip, And take a short break From their … [Read more...]
Getting back into the writing groove
Our Grand Canyon adventure and my husband's healing process have taken me far afield from my writing life. Everything just seemed to stop on November 16. Interesting that I had carefully packed some paper and a pen so I could write a journal entry after my walk down the Grand Canyon that day. Unfortunately I never used them after hearing the news of my husband's injuries and the challenge I faced in getting back to the rim and to the Flagstaff Medical Center to be with him. However, in this past week I've sat myself down at my writing desk and managed to write a couple of poems in response to Robert Lee Brewer's poem a day challenge that ended on November 30. And it felt good to poem (as Brewer likes to say) again. I am also putting together a new chapbook that I'll submit for the Frost Place contest that's due on January 1. Though I'm not back to my writing in full force yet as you can see from how long it's been since I wrote my last post here, I'm getting back … [Read more...]
Erasing an item from your Bucket List is OK!
I started my Choices blog in November 2007, and one of my very first posts was entitled The Bucket List. And first on the list was climbing down into the Grand Canyon. For the life of me I can't tell you why that was such a prominent item. I do know after finally completing the climb down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, spending the night at Phantom Ranch, and then climbing back up this November 16 and 17 2016, it would have been much better to erase that item from my list and move on to less rigorous and dangerous endeavors. One of my friends completed the climb a few years ago. She warned me not to take the steeper though shorter trail, Kaibab, but to go on the so-called "less steep" Bright Angel trail, which we did. She mentioned the steepness but not the trail's narrowness and the very rocky and slippery terrain (perhaps when she was at the Grand Canyon the trail was less rocky). It goes without saying how close the trail is to massive cliffs on one side. Though none … [Read more...]
One more bucket list item ready to be checked off
When I started this blog way back in November 2007, it was all about checking off things on my bucket list. And in the years since, I've kept at it pretty well - except for the elusive hike down the Grand Canyon, which was the very first thing on my list at that time. That is until today. We finally got reservations at Phantom Ranch - the place at the bottom of the canyon where we'll stay the night in between the hike down and the next day's hike back up. There is no way we could do the hike down and up in the same day. Unfortunately it's not until next November - November 16 - coincidentally one day plus nine years since I wrote that blog post. Well, I'm just as excited as if I were going to go on that hike tomorrow. Just think - I have a year to train. And yes, okay. I'll be realistic. Anything can happen in a year. But having the reservation - not an easy thing to come by - makes it seem very real even now. … [Read more...]
Revisiting the bucket list
When I first started this blog back in November 2007 its purpose was to write down a list of things to do and places to go before I die in homage to the movie The Bucket List. And even though this blog has become much more than that I post photos and poems here, I write about my writing life, I report on special happenings always in the back of my mind is the question: how am I doing in checking off the things on my list? So I went back to two of my earliest post and copied the lists below. And I've commented on each one so you and I will both know what I've accomplished. And then I've written down a few more things mainly about where in the world my husband and I want to travel before we're unable to travel anymore. That's the thing. I feel very strongly lately that my time is very finite, so I need to make every moment that I have left count. My Garden Buddha The List Climb down into the Grand Canyon not done yet, but still on the list. Go to the parts of the … [Read more...]
