To Understand War, Celebrate Peace

Celebrate Peace – 18/52, BlackBerry 52, Golden Valley, Minnesota, May 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. It’s Memorial Day 2011. The skies over Golden Valley are green and gray. Rain pelts the freshly splashed grass seed. The lawn has been mowed. The cedar branches that bent to the ground in the last [...]

Read Full Post »

WRITING TOPIC — MY FIRST BICYCLE

My First Bicycle — Morristown, Tennessee, BlackBerry Shot of C-41 film print, Morristown, Tennessee, April 1959, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Do you remember your first bicycle? Did you learn to ride a bike in the 40′s, 50′s, 60′s, or 70′s? Were you sporting a Schwinn, Raleigh, or Western Flyer, 24 or [...]

Read Full Post »

Nesting & Resting Mother — Don’t Be Tossed Away

Mother Mallard, BlackBerry Shots, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, April 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Day in and day out humans race from place to place; nature sits rain or shine, not tossed away for that one wild chance — ducklings on Mother’s Day. NOTE: I’ve been checking on Mother Mallard every day [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE — DEATH & DYING — 15min

By Judith Ford This is, I think, the first year I’ve begun to accept the notion that I will one day die. Not that it’s been a big secret. I watched each of my parents die. My mother, who was always the dramatic one, died peacefully, while my father, who’d never been much for self-expression, [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE — DEATH & DYING – 15min

By Teri Blair 15 minutes into the grief group I knew it was a mistake. There were still two hours to go, and the stranglehold around my neck was suffocating. It had been, as every attempt had been, an honest effort at finding my way around my father’s death. When he was alive, I thought [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE — DEATH & DYING — 15min

By Bob Chrisman An old friend called on her way back home from a weekend with her partner, son, and grandson. “I have some bad news and some good news. Which do you want to hear first?” “Let’s get the bad news out of the way. Maybe the good news will soften the bad.” “I [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE — Death & Dying – 15min

I had thought by the time I did this Writing Practice, we would be well into the green of Spring and Winter would have died a slow death. It’s green. But on the second day of May it dropped to 30 degrees. Ice crystals fell from the sky and pinged the windshield. I am still [...]

Read Full Post »

May Day Self-Portrait: Searching For Spring

May Day Self-Portrait: Searching For Spring – 16/52, BlackBerry 52 – Week 16, Golden Valley, Minnesota, April 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Medium: original BlackBerry photo from April 28, 2011, processed in Photoshop Elements. Happy Beltane! Glastonbury is celebrating big time. As is Circle Sanctuary in Wisconsin. In Minnesota, we woke [...]

Read Full Post »