Full Moon Writing

Photo by Tom Tackett for "From the Desk - Writings under a Full Moon" (left to right) Ali, Emily, Sue, Denise



I have belonged to a small writing group of four women for about three years or so. In the past year we have been working on pieces of writing about the full moons, which have a different name each month. The challenge was to come to the group with a piece of writing about the moon.

During this year we all faced trying times and sometimes did not get our assignments done in the exact month they were due - but eventually we all finished our work and will be publishing this book of writing in the next few weeks.

We'll introduce the book to the public at the gallery opening reception of Ali's retrospective of a lifetime of her art work - which includes these written pieces in the "moon" book. The reception takes place at the Box Factory for the Arts in St. Joseph, Michigan on July 30.

It has been so much fun working on this project with these creative women and I'm so looking forward to seeing it in the printed form. (Ali is creating special artwork for both the cover and the title pages for each of our sections in the book.)

We've recently added a fifth member to the group, Judy, and we've decided to begin another year-long group project - this one with the theme of "birds." We can write anything we want - but a bird has to appear in it somewhere. Sounds like a challenge (not so much for Sue, who is an avid birder) and we begin next month when we meet at Ali's for our July session. (And no, I won't be tweeting!)

I'll write more about this as we progress. Bye, bye birdie!

Saturday Evening Poetry

I’m here at my desk in our little cottage tucked in among the trees. I’m wearing pj’s and an old cardigan sweater while I munch lasagna and salad from a local Italian restaurant and listen to folk music on the computer. Tom is in the other room watching television and flipping back and forth between NASCAR racing and Olympic curling, two things I can leave more than take; so I’m free to sit here and write.

It’s been a difficult week of too much work not done, too much worry about my sick mother, too many visits to accountants, too much ice and snow, and a touch of stomach flu. It’s the very last few days of February and I’ve reached the end of my tolerance for winter, I simply can not wait for it to be gone!

But tonight it’s warm and cozy in the house, most of what bothered me during the week is behind me, and we have nothing pressing to do, nowhere we need to go; leaving me free to “jammie-up” early and contemplate poetry.

I’ve been thinking lately about my life and how I am perhaps not doing the most ideal job of managing it. I still feel so frantically overwhelmed much of the time, I waste too many of my hours in the company of people I don’t care about, doing things I’m not passionate about; leaving too little time for my life’s desires; to see people I long to be with.

Tonight, in my quiet den, I’m writing about the western National Parks that we have visited. When I give myself time to think about those places, I remember the sense of peace I feel whenever we are there. Certainly much of that calm probably comes from having no list of chores and priorities, but a lot comes from the great expanses, the far off vistas that make it nearly impossible to feel closed in. That make issues like deadlines, meetings and a parent’s mortality seem manageable some how, as if they will all fall into place in God’s good time, without further bruising my soul.

One early evening last May we were spending time in Arches National Park and it was raining off and on. Arched over Balanced Rock, in perfect contrast to the navy blue sky, was a rainbow. I stopped to talk to a ranger for a few minutes. She said that Arches was not always as perfect as it was that evening. It could be very hot and many rescues of over-come hikers were needed during the summer season.

But not that day.

“Today is a good day to be a ranger,” she said.

On the road outside our home, cars travel by occasionally heading off for perhaps a more exciting Saturday evening. But inside I sit and contemplate poetry. I decide to take that ranger’s bit of advice and apply it to my life. It won’t always be easy. It will get very hot and many rescues may be needed.

But not this day.

Today is a good day to be a writer.

Chasing Hemingway's Shadow

Thirty years ago when my husband Tom and I were on our honeymoon in northern Michigan, we stopped in to a bookstore in Petosky and saw a shelf of books about Ernest Hemingway. It turns out that Heminway's family had a summer cottage in the area and he spent every summer for the first 22 years of his life there.

I minored in American Literature at a Michigan university, and somehow I missed this information. But this started a fascination with this author that has lasted all the time since. From that point on I always felt a kinship with him, although we simply could not be more different.

Obviously he's a man, I'm a woman; he was born at the start of the 20th century and I was born in the middle; he traveled the world starting at a fairly young age, I've never been out of the United States (except for Canada, and I'm not sure that counts); he was a literary genius and I'm ..... well, more on that later.

I have a collection of about 40 books about Hemingway and it grows every year as people continue to write about him. But despite all that, just a few weeks ago I discovered something amazing that I had never heard before.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY RECEIVED THE PULITZER PRIZE ON THE VERY DAY I WAS BORN - May 4, 1953.

Is this some kind of sign?

It has been my wild-eyed dream that I receive the Pulitzer Prize for my work. Ever since I first heard about it, which was probably when I first started studying journalism nearly 40 years ago, I've been wanting to be on the receiving end of one of these prizes.

Not for fame and fortune, because most people who receive them have neither, but for the acknowledgement that my writing is good, that I'm special at what I do, that this brain I have struggled with all my life - fearful that it's just not smart enough - is capable of being extraordinary!

Although I'm happy and content with my life, sometimes in my dark moments it's hard not to feel like just an ordinary person, leading an unremarkable life in a small, unimportant town. Why would anyone be interested in my work? A Pulitzer Prize would negate all that.

I would have to travel to New York City. I would have to buy a fancy outfit. I would feel incredibly shy, nervous and tongue-tied. All the sophisticated people would think, "how quaint, it's hard to believe there are still simple, unspoiled people like her in the world."

Then I would return to my small town, my beloved family, my cozy writing studio in a renovated box factory and I would be content to carry on, knowing that at the end of my days my obituary will carry the words, "Pulitzer Prize winning author," just like my buddy Ernest.

Beginning with History

Me on the balcony of The View Motel, Monument Valley, May, 2009

August 5, 2009
I'm finally getting back to my blog to begin. It's terrible to set something up in March, then find that it's August and time has slipped past.

But to start, I have very specific interests and they are writing, quilting, the arts, and history. Nearly everything I do has a connection to those things.

My husband and I live in a renovated cottage in Michigan only a few hundred yards from Lake Michigan. We have three children, two sons who are grown and out on their own, and one daughter who is in college. This past year when my daughter left for college is the first time in 28 years that we have not had at least one child in the house.

It has been a year of adjusting to that concept, but also a year of opening up to all the possibilities I put on the back burner while I had kids on my mind. This blog is a recording of this time and these discoveries.