Category Archives: Reading

June 28, 2025 · 2:37 pm

Common Threads Lead to Joy

From Top to Bottom: Sierra Boggess and Emily Jewel Hoder in the revival production of “The Secret Garden” at Center Theatre Group / Ahmanson Theatre February 19 through March 26, 2023.
Photo credit: Matthew Murphy of MurphyMade

As a way to identify the activities that bring me joy and find ways to incorporate more of them—more often—into my daily life, I recently completed a writing exercise. It morphed into several disparate, yet ultimately connected and delightful experiences. I had so much fun with it, I just had to share!

Here is the prompt: “Write a letter to your childhood hero. You won’t actually send this letter. Tell them about what has brought you the most joy in each decade of your life. Don’t think too hard about the answers. Write the first things that come to mind. Reread the letter. Do you see common threads?” -Brittany Polat, PhD. Journal Like a Stoic, c2022.

Choosing who to write to was an intriguing part of the process. Who, I asked my little girl self, is your hero? The name that sprang spontaneously to mind was Frances Hodgson Burnett. Of everyone I could have chosen, for some reason I chose a lady author, a woman I’d never met and in fact could never have met because she died thirty-two years before I was born. She may have left the earthly realm, but she was very alive to me. She spoke to me through her books. The Secret Garden was my favorite, and I have continued to love it my whole life, cherishing it through rereads, watching all of the movie versions, and attending the play.

Before writing my letter to Frances, I did a bit of research on her life, and what a full life it was! Born in 1849 in England, impoverished at age four after her father’s death, Frances eventually traveled with her mother to live in a log cabin in Tennessee during the American Civil War. It was writing that finally lifted her out of poverty. She was a highly regarded author who published fifty-three novels and owned homes in both England and America (Gerzina, Gretchen H. “In the Garden: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett.” Shakespeare Theatre Company, c2024).

This research into Frances’s life inspired me as I wrote to her about the greatest joys in my own life. The common threads became very clear. Family, friends, nature, wildlife, pets, reading, writing, and learning showed up consistently throughout the decades. These are the things that spark the most joy for me.

Frances with her sons

With this in mind, I agreed to an unplanned day-long trail ride with my husband on a day I had planned to spend doing laundry and vacuuming the house. Seems like an easy choice, venturing out into nature with my guy rather than doing chores, but I honestly might not have agreed to drop everything and go if I hadn’t just completed my “joy inventory.”

Though housekeeping and organization didn’t make themselves known in my letter to Frances, they are important to me, nonetheless. I find it difficult to get to joy in any kind of untidy environment, whether in my own home or anywhere else. Still! I managed to say yes. As a bonus, I thought I could write about it afterwards, thereby including another of my favorite activities in the event.

Here is the result:

Off highway vehicle trails abound in the high elevation areas of the entire Toiyabe Mountain range and extend down into the valleys and basin below. We have an old side-by-side Rhino that can climb just about anything at very low speeds and peaks at 30 miles per hour on a flat road going downhill (a situation not often experienced here). Our chosen route for the day was to begin at our home in Austin, travel to Big Creek Campground, and then continue over the mountains into the adjacent valley to the east.

My guy and the Rhino
Big Creek
Soon to be up and over the top!
Groves Lake

Along the way we experienced the expanse of the Reese River Valley over exposed rocky trails and into and over the mountains with multiple stream crossings, aspen groves, meadows, and significant elevation change. We passed by two campgrounds (Big Creek Campground and Kingston Campground) and Groves Lake, winding up in the charming Kingston community where we were welcomed by the wonderful ladies of a Monday Mahjong groups that meets at our friend Linda’s house. There we were treated to a delicious lunch and lively conversation before heading back over the mountain. Friendship, another joy inducing ingredient added! It was a lovely day.

Old Kingston Ranger Station
Linda and the Mahjong Ladies welcomed us in!

From the initial moments spent reading the prompt in my journal it was indeed a joy to experience the results of contemplating a childhood hero, writing to her, thinking about my life in decades, and saying yes to an impromptu adventure.

It would be wonderful to read about your hero, and the joys of your decades. Who would you write to? What insights about joy might your letter reveal? If the spirit moves you, please do give this little project a go! You might find yourself delighted by the results, as I have done. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Happy Writing!

Joy and Adventure live inside–
and out!

Lori

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March 8, 2025 · 4:45 pm

Surviving Sue Review and Traces in the Snow

Today in the Reese River Valley. My photo.

Two consecutive snowstorms, and the sun sparks diamonds on the snow-hushed surfaces here in Austin and in the Reese River Valley just below us, giving us time to read, to wander, to cook, and to write.

Walking after a snowstorm is one of my favorite activities, along with walking in a warm rain, or on a starry night, or along a tree-lined lane at the height of autumn. It’s like walking inside a dream, a vision, a movie . . . all of it a magical changing work of art. This has been that kind of a weekend. An appreciated and needed balm for the eyes, ears, heart, mind and soul.

Our footprints going down our driveway last winter after a similar storm in Austin, NV. My photo.

After today’s walk, I finished reading Dr. Vicki Atkinson’s memoir, Surviving Sue: An Inspirational Survivor’s Story About a Daughter and her Life with a Mother Who was Riddled with Alcoholism, Alzheimer’s, Anxiety, Depression, and Munchausen’s. Vicki is a fellow blogger, one I follow and read with pleasure, always knowing I will find something positive, real, and insightful in her posts. Vicki is generous with her readers, sharing of herself, her humor, her highs and lows with an empathic interest in our perspectives.

This is Vicki’s voice, and it shines on the pages of her book. She is a profoundly kind-spirited woman who grew up learning how to turn the injury and injustice of her mother’s mental illness into something bigger than her own pain. With keen intelligence, her father’s and sister’s love, and later through her own family and probably also due to her dedication to her studies, Vicki survives and thrives, and she does it without ever compromising her own values.

Vicki’s Wonderful Memoir

Vicki’s compassion for her mother is more than challenged over the years, but somehow, she stays the course of doing what she believes is best for everyone concerned. For those who don’t know Vicki or haven’t read Surviving Sue, I’d like to stop here to encourage you to read it for yourself. This story is worth your time. It may even affect the ways you view some of your own experiences, past or present. It may soften your heart. It’s a beautiful book, and an engaging read.

Surviving Sue, Eckhartz Press, Chicago. Copyright © 2023. Vicki’s Blog is victoriaponders.com. Vicki also shares a podcast with her friend and colleague, Wynne Leon of Surprised by Joy (Blog). Their podcast, The Heart of the Matter can be found at sharingtheheartofthematter.com.

Now it’s time for the cooking part of the day. I’ve got an eggplant, lots of spices, cheese, pasta, greens, and tomatoes. Oh, and wine.

Should be a beautiful night.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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Filed under Books, Commentary, Nature, Reading, Seasons, Uncategorized, Voice, Winter, Writing

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January 25, 2025 · 4:25 pm

And Then Came 2025

At “The North Pole”

Sky Park at Santa’s Village

Skyforest, CA

I headed home from my holiday travels at the end of December, heart-filled with the love of family. I was tired, but happy in the distinct way grandmothers know well. I had just been given a multitude of irreplaceable moments with my best beloveds . . . Tiny hands holding mine, some still so small, and some growing too fast. Also bigger hands and hearty hugs. Teens and twenty-somethings updating me on their lives. Strong, beautiful, and grown. Smiles. Laughter. Storybooks shared. Snowman crafts. Game playing. Sleepy cuddles. All of it so cherished.

After tearful goodbyes, I checked in for my flight and went in search of a new journal at the airport gift shop, thinking I could begin it on January 1st. Last year, returning from my Christmas trip, I had purchased one there, and it had been a terrific addition to my writing life. Alas, this time nothing spoke to me, probably because I already had it in mind that I wanted a guided journal like the one I used in 2024 (The Breathe Journal 52 Week Guided Planner) and they didn’t have anything similar.

Once home, my usual routines resumed, but with more than the usual spark of wonder and worry that a new year brings. This was not going to be just any new year. Apprehensive, sad, and often angry, too, I knew that I was going to have to work hard to maintain my usual optimism and good will. Honestly, my optimism was at one of the lowest levels I have ever known. Somehow, I was still hanging on to my feeling of good will in all my daily encounters. My genuine love of the people I see during the course of a regular week’s activities lifts me up. But when I was at home reading the news, I was feeling helpless and exceptionally low.

Mr. P and I stuck to our walking schedule, which we know is a nonnegotiable necessity, and I was happy to return to my library job and to church on Sundays. These things always help. Still, I knew I needed to get more writing in, and was stuck—am stuck—as far as my historical fiction manuscript goes, so I searched online for a new journal. I found and ordered Journal Like a Stoic: A 90-Day Stoicism Program to Live with Greater Acceptance, Less Judgment, and Deeper Intentionality by Brittany Polat, PhD.

By the time the journal arrived, we were more than halfway through January, and I was physically unwell. I am only into my third day of using it, but I would say it is helping me in the way that almost any honest attempt at writing truthfully from my heart and mind can do. It focuses my mind with reading, questions me with depth, and sets a task before me. I like it.

From the book: “Stoicism is a philosophy of life in the fullest sense. As a framework for daily living, it can guide us in every decision we make, from our career choices to what’s for dinner tonight. What’s more, it helps ground us when we’re living through what feels like unprecedented times.”

The kitty is also interested in stoicism.

The three disciplines of stoicism are logic, ethics, and physics. The four virtues of stoicism are wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. All these things I can get behind, believe that I mostly already embrace them. I say mostly, because I am ignorant when it comes to physics, and historically slack when it comes to temperance. Still! I am in. I will faithfully read and respond to the prompts in the book. I will write honestly.

I plan to continue with the other things in my life that sustain me: my love of friends, family, community, church, library, nature, reading, art, music, cooking, and pets (to name a few). And I will write the occasional blog post! I love connecting with all of you!

Cheers

To us! To a year of introspection and growth, and to a lifetime of love-motivated action and purpose. God Speed.

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September 30, 2024 · 3:38 pm

Embrace Autumn: October’s Beauty in Nature

Hello, October!

Suddenly the leaves turn red, yellow, and orange; the night temperatures dip into the thirties, and I enjoy sitting in my front yard both in the morning and the early evening. Ahhh . . . those morning coffees and evening wines . . .

The steeple front, right, is on the old Methodist church, now our community center. The steeple across the canyon (you may have to zoom in if the image is too small) is on St. George’s Episcopal church, where I attend. Sunday services have never stopped at St. George’s since the church opened in 1878.

Just a month ago it was much too hot to sit here for any length of time. It is an unusual yard, not yet shaded, one that we created by tearing down an old carport that covered the entire front of our old parsonage for sixty years. This reclaimed space has an incredible view of two one-hundred-plus-year-old church steeples and an impressive hillside on this, the northern end of our section of the Toiyabe Mountains, but no large trees yet. We have planted an oak, a cottonwood, and a blue spruce there, but they are small still.

That evening wine.

Our little town of Austin, Nevada is located in central Nevada’s sparsely-populated, history-rich Lander County in  “. . .the Toiyabe Range, a mountain range in Lander and Nye counties, Nevada, United States. The range is included within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The highest point in the range is Arc Dome (11,788 feet, 3592 m), an area protected as the Arc Dome Wilderness. The Toiyabe Crest Trail runs along the Toiyabe Range for over 70 miles, and is one of the most challenging and secluded trails in the United States.”  U.S. Forest Service, www.fs.us.gov.

In October, we venture out on the mountain trails, we get supplies ready for the long winter to come, and we sit in quiet reverie, grateful for nature’s hush. Enjoying the splendor. Soon, it will be too cold to sit out here without a coat. Soon, there will be more time inside, tending the fire, cooking large pots of soups and stews, reading, and writing.

This gradual gathering of the special autumn light, the relish we feel as we take it in, and our own eventual inner-directed shift is a very great gift as the seasons change, I believe.

Mostly Marigolds! Some of my favorites.

Here is a poem of great beauty by John Keats on the season:

 “To Autumn”

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

  Steady thy laden head across a brook;

  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

  Among the river sallows, borne aloft

    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Written September 19, 1819; first published in 1820. This poem is in the public domain.

Hello, October! And Welcome!

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March 18, 2024 · 3:25 pm

Gone to Soldiers

a short review

pexels photo

I finished several books recently, one of which I had been reading for months in between other, less hefty titles. The hefty one is an older release (c1987), WWII historical fiction, Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers. A wonderful book—rich in authentic detail—an amazing amount of research had to have gone into this devastating and sweeping novel. Having written two (as yet unpublished) WWII era novels, myself, I am beyond impressed with everything Piercy brings to life here.

Gone to Soldiers tells the stories of ten men and women who served in America, Europe, and the Pacific in vastly different ways: a war correspondent, an intelligence office for the OSS, a Japanese code breaker, a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, an artist who fights with the Resistance in France, a woman who leads Jewish children to safety over the Pyrenees, a Marine struggling to stay alive in the Pacific, a Jewish teen from Paris sent to America before France fell, and her American cousin.

I have read a lot of WWII and Holocaust related fiction and nonfiction over the years, but somehow I missed this one. My brilliant friend, Sandy, sent me a copy, and I am so glad she did. It is not an easy book to read. Many of the scenes are incredibly vivid and tragic. Some of them were known to me from other sources, but a couple of them depicted battles or situations of which I was not aware.

I was particularly affected by the scenes in the Pacific, I believe, because my father served in the Pacific theatre, but talked about it so little that I never had a clear picture of what he went through. This book made me more aware of the horror he faced and makes me want to know more about his service.

I recommend Gone to Soldiers for its unblinking portrayal of the realities of war, ignorance, prejudice, love, and loss. It is an important book for men and women who seek to understand and remember our shared history—to mourn and honor those lost, to refuse to fall back into dangerous patterns of racism, prejudice, and misogyny, and to continue to work toward the vision of a safe, equitable, and free land for everyone.

“TODAY THE GUNS ARE SILENT. A GREAT TRAGEDY
HAS ENDED. A GREAT VICTORY HAS BEEN WON. THE SKIES
NO LONGER RAIN DEATH – THE SEAS BEAR ONLY COMMERCE –
MEN EVERYWHERE WALK UPRIGHT IN THE SUNLIGHT.
THE ENTIRE WORLD IS QUIETLY AT PEACE.”

GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR


Radio address to the American people from the USS Missouri, following the Japanese surrender ceremony, September 2, 1945  (FROM WWW.NPS.GOV)

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July 29, 2023 · 5:53 pm

What I’m Reading: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Hello, Readers! I just finished The Midnight Library and wanted to linger over it a while longer. One way to preserve and examine a recent experience is to write about it. Another way would be to get together with my friends at the Austin Ladies Book Club, but it’s been a busy summer and we are on hiatus. Here then, is my short take on Matt Haig’s “whimsical” novel (as The Washington Post aptly calls it).

It’s an intriguing little book, chockful of tiny little chapters, each one the piece of a puzzle containing alternate lives for our damaged, yet clever and likable heroine, Nora Seed. It’s midnight, and as Nora’s consciousness flickers between life and death, a wise and kind librarian directs Nora to endless books of possibilities—the myriad different paths her choices may have led her, and may lead her still.

This is a puzzle many of us have played in our minds, and often, as in The Midnight Library, we move these pieces around in the wee hours of the night.

Imagine if I had…      What if I hadn’t…      If only I could go back and change…

Regrets.           Lost opportunities.                 

Shame.

Like Nora Seed, I’ve had plenty of these, and being the imperfect human I am, I continue to accrue new ones regularly. It can be a heavy load. The nights can be very dark.

Sometimes, a book can help. Some night soon when I drift off to sleep, perhaps I will find myself in a magic library like Nora’s. After all, I often have vivid dreams where things I experience in my waking hours revisit me in interesting and revealing ways (sometimes horrifying ways, too, but this isn’t that kind of book, thank goodness). So it could happen. Maybe tonight.

The Midnight Library is an obvious win-win for me, the lady lucky enough to run the local library and the lady who finds reading and writing endlessly captivating. It is wonderful for all the right reasons. Fun, and funny, too. Sweet, sad, insightful, and smart—it’s a little volume that may just lighten your heart.

If you read it, let me know what you think!

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May 12, 2023 · 3:51 pm

The Library

The Library by Jacob Lawrence, 1960

     It is a small library in a small town. It sits on Main Street in a 150-year-old building that also houses a pub. Both the library and the pub are in the process of renewal, endeavoring to revive their historical importance, their usefulness and vibrancy, their centrality to our community. I began working there last week, and immediately felt a satisfying appreciation at the completion of a circle, which joins both my journey and destination…of coming home, of continuing to matter, and also, of an immediate and curious closeness to my deceased father, who I recalled had loved it when I worked in libraries before, and to his mother, my children’s librarian grandmother, Lorene.

     Nonny Lorene died when I was an infant, but I was given her name, a small collection of children’s books, and a legacy of library lore which included the often-told story of how she, a widow, supported her two sons, her spinster sister, and various other relatives throughout the Great Depression, the only one left with a steady income during those hard years. Her library job saved the family, I was told. There could be no better job. For that reason, and many others, I believe that, and so even though Dad and Nonny have been gone from this earth for many, many years, I feel their presence in my little library, and know that they are pleased.

     It feels right. I love every minute I spend there—reading the shelves, looking up classification numbers, typing up spine labels, adding genre stickers, covering books—touching them, reading them, smelling them, discovering new titles and authors, revisiting the old. Planning a new computer corner, training soon on our newly purchased county-wide circulation system, looking forward to story times and book signings, all that and so much more. There is nothing like a library.

      I’ll end with the wisdom of Carl Sagan:

     “Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”   ― Cosmos

      And E. B. White:

      “A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.”

Quotes from Hooked to Books, hookedtobooks.com. “50 Inspiring Quotes About Libraries and Librarians”

by Grace Plant, accessed 5/12/2023.

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August 23, 2017 · 2:53 am

My Teaching Voice

Since leaving Lake Arrowhead three years ago I’ve been having trouble hanging on to my voice. And not just my voice really, but also my words. Sentences and paragraphs and pages of text I should be writing but that I push aside for a good novel or a movie or a great new recipe involving bacon, sweet potatoes, rigatoni, mascarpone cheese and fresh sage (this, a recent distraction—the dishes are still soaking in the sink).

I’m sure it’s not only that I am in mourning.

Some of my writing inertia could be due to a mind busy with other things—new things, like teaching college speech and all that entails… learning innovative technologies, tackling a new curriculum, slugging through online faculty required “teaching”courses, trying to lacquer my wild mane into some semblance of what my imagination believes a professor’s hair should look like…oh so many time consuming diversions.

Still, I know I should also be writing creatively.

I’m sure it’s not only that I am in mourning.

When I left Lake Arrowhead, a pain planted itself firmly behind my breast plate and I can’t shake it. I can’t walk it off, though my dear husband and I take many beautiful nature walks every single week. I can’t read it off, though I take time to immerse myself in many an enjoyable book. I can’t yoga it off, or massage it off, or wine it off. It is sewn in, gorilla glued, bolted; it is chained to my heart.

But that cannot be the only reason I do not write.

I did, in fact, write quite a bit a year and more back. (The book is about Lake Arrowhead.)

SouthernCAjuly2015 001

Lake Arrowhead, CA

But I’m sure it’s not only that I am mourning.

I adore Wisconsin, and the weather here suits us perfectly. The vast greenness of the place in summer, the orange-red-yellow-green autumns, the take your breath away white frozen winters. A lake so big it looks Pacific. Lake Arrowhead, amplified.

Mourning comes to some of us for a visit. For me, without my children and my grandchildren, it stays. It has moved in to the quaint little Cape Cop home on the tree-lined avenue where we now live. It’s here to stay.

There, I’ve said it.

Missing Lake Arrowhead means missing a million moments that can never be regained—with my kids, with my grandchildren, with my friends, with all the people I was so fortunate to know. And as much as I love the cardinals and Canadian geese (and I love them a lot!), there is something sad about knowing that I will never happen upon a bear or be awakened in the night by the ungodly howl of a pack of coyotes closing in on its prey.

So, my voice began to falter a while back and has gone somewhat quiet of late.

My husband began to worry, so I finally forced myself to sit and write tonight, but as little as this accomplishment is, and as much as I love him, I cannot give him much of the credit for bringing me to my chair, for opening the blank page, for placing my fingers on the keys and letting them speak for me, expose me, help me… nor can I take any of the credit myself.

It came not from knowing that I should do it, it came instead as a magical gift from a miraculous profession.

Teaching.

Thinking I needed more family photos on my office walls, I drove over to Walgreens this afternoon to pick up some photographs I had ordered. They are beautiful photos of our newest granddaughter, Adaline Lorene, and her big sister, Jasmine, who visited us here in Wisconsin this past June.

As you can see, they are worth the ache. My girls.

     Anyway.

On my way back out to the car I stopped to ask a young man (who was coughing uncontrollably as if he might be choking) if I could help him. Just a simple, “Are you okay? Can I do anything?”

The young woman next to him, obviously his companion, said, “I recognize that voice! Do you remember me?”

The coughing continued, but she ignored it. She walked toward me. “I heard your voice and I said, ‘That’s my speech teacher!””

Of course, I remembered her, a lovely person and a good public speaker, animated and organized. We hugged. Her manfriend, ignored, coughed his way unaided to their car.

“Does he need help?” I asked. “Does he need the Heimlich? Because I’ll do it.”

“He’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see you.”

She recognized my voice. Here, in Kenosha, a town of roughly 100,000 people. She recognized my voice.

It seems silly, perhaps. To place so much value on recognition. But I do. I suddenly felt a little less alone. The sharing of a past. In Lake Arrowhead, a teacher never goes out without encountering a former or present student, which sometimes unnerved me. I never realized how important it was to my self-image, to my belief that I was connected to the community. I knew that I loved my students, but I didn’t perhaps understand how much I needed them.

Today I was given back a small piece of my voice, reflected through a young woman’s memory. I still feel the pain, I still crave the everyday closeness of my grandchildren, and I still miss the bears, but I can write, and that’s a soft and soothing salve for my soul. I’ll take it.

FallWinter2015Mostly 200

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Filed under Depression, Gratitude, Lake Arrowhead, Nature, Reading, Teacher, Voice, Wisconsin, Writing, Writing Advice