Time to Stand and Stare

There has been very little time to "stand and stare" the last few weeks. I knew October would be a challenge when I realized I had scheduled four out of town trips in three weeks with my job. Add a writing conference and remember to breathe. 

I have officially resigned as editor of the Bugler. At a farewell dinner, my bosses presented me with the Order of Saint Maurice for contributions to the Infantry. I was so delighted, as very few women receive the award, and honored to have served our Infantrymen for these last eleven years.  

MG (Ret) William B. Steele, me, and COL (Ret) Richard Nurnberg

I worked the COMO (Council of Media Organizations) conference a few weeks back. The Delaney booth was next to a booth with three magicians who drew quite a crowd. Tell me just how you compete with the big bad wolf and a live bunny rabbit!

By the time I made it to the writing conference, Southern Breeze WIK in Birmingham, I was too tired to take photos. Matt de la Pena was an excellent keynote speaker. I taught a class on the Nuts and Bolts of writing for children, roomed with the effervescent nonfiction wonder, Heather Montgomery, and can't say enough thank you's to Joan Broerman for being the wonderful hostess she is. 

Last week I drove down to Albany and presented Stride Academy, a pretty cool adaptive learning product, to a curriculum director one day and a room full of librarians the next. And this week I held a teacher preview day at Coweta Charter School where I packed up half my office and carted it to Senoia, Georgia (location for the Walking Dead--the town, not the school!)

Only a few more days to manage and then it's vacation! I love vacations in November. I am planning to do an awful lot of standing and staring.

Leisure
by William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Irene Latham is our host today for Poetry Friday, so travel over to Live Your Poem and celebrate her 1,000th blog post with lots of poetry. 

Poetry Friday is Here!

On this Poetry Friday, the temps are finally dropping a bit here in the deep South, at least at night. The squirrels are bounding over my yard like acorns will never fall from the sky again. And it's time for the county fair.

Last weekend hubs and I flew to visit our grands in San Antonio where we took in the Comal County Fair. The biggest hit was the incubator with chicks pecking their way into the world as we watched mesmerized. The next attention grabber was the three-gallons of milk squirting into the collection jar attached to the milking machine attached to the cow. Three gallons in about four minutes!

My nine-year-old granddaughter had to squench up her toes to keep her slightly too large cowboy boots on her feet as she flew around in the sky on something called OMG! My sweet oldest didn't really want a ride and gave his coupons away to a little girl whose father couldn't afford tickets. Gotta love those kids. For the little boys, it was the roller coaster!

So my offering for today is from the American Sign Language Slam, a delightful interpretation of
"The Great American Roller Coaster Poem" from Season 5, ASL Slam Poetry Spots. The poem is read by Stella Bugbee, Lucianna Burse, Laura Ciporen, Cristina Collier, and Raul Draganac and directed by Andy Biskin.

Think cotton candy, snow cones, and the clatter of wheels on a wooden track. Hot dogs, merry-go-rounds and livestock!




Add your link below!

Poetry Friday: I Love Gardens

I live near one of the most beautiful gardens in the Southeast, Callaway Gardens. When I was a kid, we called it Ida Cason's, i.e. Ida Cason Callaway for whom it's named. We went to the lake with the largest man made beach to picnic and swim. When my children were small, we went for beach days, bike rides and hiking through the acres and acres of woods. Two of my children got themselves engaged there. I was nearby the gardens recently for an appointment and decided it was time I had a season pass again. I had forgotten just how much I love this place. There is such peace to be found in a garden.

The swing in one of my favorite spots.

Inside the Sibley Horticultural Center

One of the stained glass season windows. This one is summer. 

This is the garden: colors come and go
e.e. cummings

This is the garden: colors come and go,
Frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing,
Strong silent greens serenely lingering,
Absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
Upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
Of harps celestial to the quivering string,
Invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap

Read the rest here.

Tabatha Yeats hosts the roundup today at The Opposite of Indifference.

Poetry Friday Poems for Social Justice

Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice is a fine collection of poems for high school students, edited by Gail Bush and Randy Meyer and published by Norwood House, a small independent educational publisher.  A poetic journey through 20th century poems moves the reader down a road "leading toward action for social change."

Our library specialist at Delaney, the company I work for as a sales rep to schools, chose this book as one of the best of the fall collection for the library market.

Poets represent the diversity of American culture and include Tupac Shakur, Wendell Berry, Kenneth Rexroth, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, Ishmael Reed, Assotto Saint, Fawaz Turki, Natasha Trethaway, Gary Soto, Mary Oliver, and many more.

While reading through the poems, I discovered a poem by Lee Herrick that drew me in. I had not read Lee's work before. At his website you can find other poems from this wonderful poet.

jap

by Lee Herrick

windshield to windshield
we are parked
like matadors,
pumping gas at the am pm.
It is a normal afternoon in the valley
like all afternoons in the valley,
split between modern duty
and the desire for something better.

We are in the same world.
I pull in and
face you, but
my sunglasses shield my almond
eyes, and what you don't realize
is that I see you
in your red anger,
your believed anonymity
your life boiling you to this ugly place,
where, in the pain of inarticulacy,
your vomit words,
like swords,
hurled at me:

god    damn     jap

I look down at my chest
my almond eyes open wide
breath sputtering
blood dripping.
I pull it from just beside my heart
and I still stand.

This is where racism begins
in the throat
at the station
in the heart of valley afternoons.

I hold your bloody words,
walking to you slowly
with sword in hand.

Read the rest here.

Stop and visit with Laura at Author Amok for roundup.

Bugs!

After this guy sat down beside me yesterday, bug poems were on my mind today! I'm still not sure what he is, but his camouflage makes him look like a pine cone bract.

Photo: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

The Insects' World
by Ethel Jacobson

Insects are creatures with three pairs of legs,
Some swim, some fly; they lay millions of eggs.
They don't wear their skeletons in, but out.
They come in three parts. Some are bare; some have hair.
Their hearts are in back; they circulate air.
They smell with their feelers and taste with their feet,
And there's scarcely a thing that some insect won't eat:
Flowers and woodwork and books and rugs,
Overcoats, people, and other bugs.
When five billion trillion keep munching each day,
It's a wonder the world isn't nibbled away!

Bugs

by Ogden Nash

Some insects feed on rosebuds
And others feed on carrion.
Between them they devour the earth.
Bugs are totalitarian.

What Do You Suppose?

Anonymous

What do you suppose?

A bee sat on my nose.

Then what do you think?

He gave me a wink,

And said, ‘I beg your pardon,

I thought you were a garden.’

Tara has the roundup at A Teaching Life.

Talking about WIK

I will be teaching the Nuts and Bolts workshop for beginning writers at the upcoming WIK conference in Birmingham, hosted by Southern Breeze, SCBWI. I'm delighted to be over at Jodi Wheeler-Toppen's blog today for an interview.

Find out more about WIK and the editors, agents, and other wonderful writers who will be there.

To find out more or to register, visit https://southern-breeze.net/

You can meet other members of the conference faculty by following the WIK blog tour:

Aug. 28   Author Matt de la Peña at Stephanie Moody’s Moodyviews

Editor Lou Anders at F.T. Bradley’s YA Sleuth

Aug. 29   Author Doraine Bennett at Jodi Wheeler-Toppen’s Once Upon a Science Book

Author Robyn Hood Black at Donny Seagraves’ blog

Aug. 30    MFA program director Amanda Cockrell at Elizabeth Dulemba’s blog

Illustrator Prescott Hill at Gregory Christie’s G.A.S.

Aug. 31   Author Heather Montgomery at Claire Datnow’s Media Mint Publishing blog

Editor Michelle Poploff at Laura Golden’s Just Write

Sept. 3    Author Nancy Raines Day at Laurel Snyder’s blog

Author Jennifer Echols at Paula Puckett’s Random Thoughts from the Creative Path

Sept. 4    Editor Dianne Hamilton at Ramey Channell’s The Painted Possum

Author Janice Hardy at Tracey M. Cox’s A Writer’s Blog

Sept. 5    Author / illustrator Sarah Frances Hardy at Stephanie Moody’s Moodyviews

Agent Sally Apokedak at Cheryl Sloan Wray’s Writing with Cheryl

Sept. 6    Author / illustrator Chris Rumble at Cyrus Webb Presents

Little Dog, Lost

It's the first Poetry Friday since my blogging hiatus, and I am so excited to tell you about this lovely novel in verse, Little Dog, Lost by Marion Dane Bauer. Her book, On My Honor won the Newberry Honor Award. If you haven't read that one, you really should. Marion's new book is illustrated by Jennifer A. Bell. Jennifer's soft charcoal/pencil drawings (at least I think that's what they are, not being an artist) throughout the book capture the heart of the story. You can see by the cover that this dog has character.

Click this link, right here, and buy yourself a copy. You really must read it. You won't be sorry.

It's the story of a lost dog...

Little black dog with brown paws
and a brown mask
and a sweet ruffle of brown fur on her bum
just beneath her black whip of a tail.
Satiny coat.
Ears like airplane wings
that drop
just at the tips.


a boy whose mother refuses to let him have a dog...

Mark had wanted a dog
for as long as he could remember.
He had asked for a dog.
He had begged for a dog.
He had pleaded and prayed and whined for a dog.
Once he'd even tried barking for a dog.
All to no avail.

and a scary old caretaker who lives alone in the town mansion...

Charles Larue was a small man,
no one to be afraid of,
really.
Unless you were afraid
of the great bush of his white eyebrows
or the great beak of his nose.
But to be afraid of those,
you had to ignore
the sweet, sad eyes
between eyebrows and nose,
eyes as blue as a Caribbean sea.
And you had to forget
the way Charles Larue walked
when he emerged from the house,
hands thrust deep into his pockets,
head bowed
as though against a bitter wind
even on the sunniest summer day.
An you had to pretend you didn't ntice
the shy way he glance up
and then away again
when anyone came near.

Just tell me you're not dying to know what happens!

A beautiful book, full of surprises right up to the very end.

Betsy hosts the round up today at I Think in Poems.