Posted in Body, Bones, Essay, Growing Older, Life, Practice, Seasons, Wake Up, tagged aging, Bob Chrisman, red Ravine Guests, the process of aging, writing about growing older on May 9, 2008 | 22 Comments »
By Bob Chrisman
Last fall, determined to catch the color changes in the leaves, I watched them turn from green to yellow, orange, and red. I would sit on the window seat in the front room and write about the colors.
One day…suddenly it seemed…the leaves had all turned. When did it happen? I had been watching [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Bones, Culture, Death, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Love, Memoir, Photography, Place, Relationships, Spirituality, Travel, tagged Beverly Donofrio, Catholicism, cemeteries, grandmothers, honoring the dead, honoring the past, Looking for Mary, mothers, New Mexico, Raton, religion, Virgen Maria, Virgin Mary, visiting graveyards on May 3, 2008 | 35 Comments »
Mother Mary as in a Dream, Raton, NM, photos © 2008 by
ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Last Wednesday afternoon I found myself in one of the best spots I could imagine, with my parents and oldest sister, and in the company of my beloved grandparents and best-ever uncle. We were in the cemetery in Raton, New Mexico, [...]
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Books, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Memoir, On the Road, Relationships, Spirituality, Writers, Writing, tagged An Evening with Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott, Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird, books about spirituality, Carolyn Flynn, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, Operating Instructions, Ruth Stone, spiritual paths, Traveling Mercies, UCLA events on April 9, 2008 | 33 Comments »
By Carolyn Flynn
For red Ravine
SAGE Editor, author and redRavine.com contributor Carolyn Flynn recently attended “An Evening with Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott” on the UCLA campus.
To loosen up before writing a new book, Elizabeth Gilbert invites one person to join her and live inside her head. She says she wrote Eat Pray Love as a [...]
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Posted in Architecture, Culture, Dreams, Essay, Film / TV / Video, Fotoblog, Gratitude, Life, Photography, Place, Relationships, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged Bill Irvine, history of the Parkway Theater, Independent theaters, Joe Senkyr, Minneapolis, Minnesota, movie theaters, movies, Parkway Theater, profile writing, red Ravine Guests, Teri Blair, the theater business, vintage on March 28, 2008 | 43 Comments »
By Teri Blair
Parkway Marquee, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
In 1989 the Academy-Award winning Cinema Paradiso was released. The Italian film takes place in a post-World War II Sicilian village, and chronicles the friendship of a young boy, Toto, and the town’s gruff but lovable movie projectionist, Alfredo. Toto [...]
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Posted in Body, Death, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Jugular, Love, Personal, Photography, Practice, Relationships, Writing, tagged Bob Chrisman, death of a mother, hands, honoring death, red Ravine Guests, writing through pain on March 27, 2008 | 28 Comments »
By Bob Chrisman
I took a photograph of my mother’s hands before the visitors arrived at the funeral home. When she was well, she cared for her hands and nails everyday, but that stopped in the nursing home when she lost the strength in her hands and arms. Her nails grew long and dirty. That bothered [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Art, Authors, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Life, Memoir, Photography, Poetry, Practice, Relationships, Structure, Topic Writing, Vision, Writers, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged giving back, gratitude for community, red Ravine Guests, thank you, writing community on March 23, 2008 | 17 Comments »
Piglet Bearing Gifts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2007, photo © 2007 by SkyWire Alley. All rights reserved.
I’m afraid the photograph of Piglet gives me away — I’m a little late posting this piece. I had wanted to get it out in January. You know what they say about the best laid plans.
Still, it wouldn’t be right [...]
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Posted in Body, Essay, Family, Growing Older, Memoir, Practice, tagged hair, memories of hair, red hair, redhead, writing about hair on February 8, 2008 | 26 Comments »
By Robin
There’s a story about my birth that was told fairly often when I was growing up. It’s a short story, and involves hair.
When my mother was pregnant with me, my father was asked by a friend what his preference was: a boy or a girl? His answer was that he didn’t care if it [...]
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Posted in Culture, Essay, Photography, Politics, Secrets, tagged 2008 Presidential primaries, Barack Obama, Democratic Primaries, Hillary Clinton, what influences how we vote on February 3, 2008 | 30 Comments »
Obama on stage, February 1, 2008, Kiva Auditorium, Albuquerque
Convention Center, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
I got a call yesterday from Mom. She wanted to know what I thought about Barack Obama.
“He was good,” I told her. I went to see him speak on the economy, in an auditorium where I’ve seen George Winston, Joan [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Culture, Essay, Jugular, Personal, Photography, Place, Politics, Structure, Vision, tagged A Presidential Primer, Barack Obama, get out and vote, Hillary Clinton, Minnesota Caucus, MPR Select A Candidate, politics in America, Super Tuesday States, the politics of primaries, the structure of U.S. politics on February 1, 2008 | 61 Comments »
New Mexico To Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I’m not a very political person. I don’t follow politics, and haven’t since my more radical days in the 1970’s. But this year has been different. I’ve been energized and inspired by the candidates on both sides of the fence. [...]
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Essay, Family, Love, Personal, Practice, Relationships, tagged black widow spiders, love of spiders, totem animals on January 29, 2008 | 36 Comments »
By Sharon Sperry Bloom
QM and YB got me thinking about what my totem animal might be.
I’ve always had cats, my whole life, and I’m uncomfortable without one in the house right now. I think we probably have exchanged a few traits along the way, like a love of solitude and sleep.
I love dogs, especially the [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Authors, Bones, Creative Nonfiction, Death, Dreams, Essay, Practice, Quotes, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged following your dreams, kids & creativity, living as a writer, Monkey Mind, Ray Bradbury, writing practice, Zen In the Art of Writing on January 13, 2008 | 15 Comments »
I wonder if the 8-year-old girl, who was sketching at the Frida Kahlo exhibit a few weeks ago, will someday look back with wonder like Ray Bradbury. It could happen.
Sometimes I am stunned at my capacity as a nine-year-old, to understand my entrapment and escape it.
How is it that the boy I was in October, [...]
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Posted in Essay, Family, Fotoblog, Gratitude, Love, Maps, Photography, Place, Quotes, Relationships, Skies, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged American history, birthdays, Chrysler Building, E. Elise, Ellis Island, Emma Lazarus, Empire State Building, Going To New York, historical places, New York City, NYC photoblog, original Liberty flame, red Ravine Guests, Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus, writing by young authors on December 26, 2007 | 27 Comments »
By E. Elise
Liberty’s Torch, visit to New York City, August 2007, photo © 2007 by R3. All rights reserved.
It’s my Granddaddy’s birthday. We were going to New York by train. In New York we’re going to see the Statue of Liberty, and the “Vampire State Building” as my cousin, Isaac, used to call it.
My family [...]
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Posted in Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Family, Food, Laughing, Place, Wake Up, tagged coffee, coffee beans, essays about coffee, humor, OmbudsBen, red Ravine Guests, social beverages on November 28, 2007 | 19 Comments »
By OmbudsBen
Yesterday Part 1 ended with my newsletter story “Coffee Muggings,” about the misappropriation of coworkers’ coffee cups. Little did I know, that was one of the more peaceful brew-hahas the stimulating bean would initiate for me. This was back in the years B.W. (Before Wife), and for a while I dated a lively young [...]
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Posted in Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Family, Food, Laughing, Place, Wake Up, tagged coffee, coffee beans, essays about coffee, humor, OmbudsBen, red Ravine Guests, social beverages on November 27, 2007 | 35 Comments »
By OmbudsBen
I’ve known a lot of women who rely on coffee for ignition. A kind of starter fluid, rise and grind. In my experience, it’s enough to draw a tenuous gender distinction, so long as I draw it carefully, or at a safe distance. Of course coffee can be starter fluid for men, too, but [...]
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Posted in Essay, Family, Gratitude, Home, Life, Love, Personal, Photography, Practice, Relationships, Silence, Spirituality, Vision, Wake Up, tagged be still and know, Beth Bro Howard, Buddhism, Christianity, Iraq, living the answers, mother's love for her son, peace, Prodigal Son, red Ravine Guests, religion, return from war, soldier, Thich Nhat Hanh, unanswered questions, veteran on October 22, 2007 | 23 Comments »
By Beth Bro Howard
Be Still And Know, altar offering at the retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh,
August, 2007, Estes Park, Colorado, photo © 2007 by Beth Bro
Howard. All rights reserved.
On August 25, 2007, while on retreat with Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh in Estes Park, Colorado, I was prepared to ask a [...]
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Posted in Art, Bones, Dreams, Essay, Family, Growing Older, Life, Love, Personal, Practice, Vision, Work, tagged abstract art, Albuquerque, artists, becoming an artist, Black Market Goods, painting, red Ravine Guests, Sharon Sperry Bloom, the creative process, the practice of art on October 16, 2007 | 44 Comments »
By Sharon Sperry Bloom
Under Your Voodoo, 27″x 22.5″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.
Vloop, 18″x 24″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting © 2007
by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.
Untitled, 20″x 16″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.
War, [...]
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Posted in Essay, Family, Film / TV / Video, Home, Memoir, Personal, Practice, Relationships, Topic Writing, tagged cleaning rituals, folding clothes, memories, mothers and daughters on August 28, 2007 | 16 Comments »
I have a picture in my head of Mom. She’s wearing soft denim shorts to just above her knees. Her hair is in curlers, a red bandana tied around the curlers, a cigarette on her lip. Next to her, on the floor, is a flat metal ashtray, the kind that folds like tin when you bend it. [...]
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Posted in Art, Bones, Culture, Essay, Gratitude, Personal, Spirituality, Structure, Vision, Wake Up, Work, tagged being productive, finishing what you start, Saint Lucy, Santa Lucia, unfinished projects on August 23, 2007 | 41 Comments »
Half-baked Chicken, a paper mache-in-progress chicken started years ago, photo © 2007 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
I have a retablo painting I did of Santa Lucia carrying her eyeballs on a plate. Saint Lucy is the patron saint of the blind, the saint to invoke for clarity. Vision. She is my favorite saint, possibly because of [...]
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Books, Death, Essay, Holding My Breath, Jugular, Life, Personal, Place, Reading, Wake Up, Writers, tagged bridges, English teachers, funerals, how literature enriches life, Minneapolis bridge collapse, Mr. Schminda's Book List, Our Town, red Ravine Guests, Teri Blair, The Bridge Of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder on August 8, 2007 | 45 Comments »
by Teri Blair
Years ago, I was given a reading list by my 11th grade English teacher. I was in the college prep class, and the list of 100 or so books were ones he wanted us to read before we graduated from high school. It wasn’t just his idea. He told us a committee of [...]
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Posted in Art, Art of Rebellion, Culture, Dreams, Essay, Fotoblog, Jugular, Life, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Spirituality, Travel, Vision, Wake Up, tagged Art, Casa Azul, Culture, Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo Centennial Celebration, Laura Stokes, Mexico, Mexico City, painting, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Photography, pilgrimage, red Ravine Guests, social justice on July 30, 2007 | 14 Comments »
By Laura Stokes
Casa Azul, the home where Frida Kahlo was born, lived, and died; July 2007, photo © 2007 by Laura Stokes, all rights reserved.
Acting on dream and impulse, we found ourselves in Mexico City last weekend at the Frida Kahlo Centennial Celebration at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. I had read [...]
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Posted in Bones, Creative Nonfiction, Culture, Dreams, Essay, Family, Jugular, Life, Memoir, On the Road, Personal, Place, Politics, Relationships, Structure, Work, Writers, Writing, tagged agents, Agents & Editors Conference, Austin, Carolyn Flynn, conferences, editors, red Ravine Guests, Texas, Writers, Writing on June 21, 2007 | 33 Comments »
By Carolyn Flynn
I keep telling my father to go away. But here he is in Austin, Texas, on the sign at the construction site one block from my hotel. FLYNN it says in all caps, Flynn Construction, and it’s red, white and blue like the logo for my father’s home building company. Just like it, [...]
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Posted in Bones, Culture, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Home, Life, Love, Maps, Memoir, Nature, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Topic Writing, Travel, Writing, tagged ancestry, Augusta, Clarks Hill, Eve Street, Georgia, history, Memoir, Savannah Indians, Savannah River, The South, Travel, water, Writers, Writing on June 17, 2007 | 10 Comments »
-Savannah River from the Bridge, Augusta, Georgia, June 8th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
“It seems I have always lived near rivers and trains.”
The day we went to Eve Street, I remembered I hadn’t taken any photographs of the Savannah. I had zipped off a couple of shots of the 5th Street [...]
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Posted in Essay, Family, Growing Older, Life, Love, Personal, Relationships, Topic Writing, tagged marriage, marriage as a treatment for depression, marriage rituals, rituals of love, the art of compromise on June 5, 2007 | 21 Comments »
Remember the song we sang in grade school?
Kim and Buck-y
sittin’ in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes Love
then comes Marriage
then comes Baby in a Baby Carriage.
Then Kim turns red; Bucky, too. They both say Nah-ah, and we all say Yeah-hah. Then everyone scatters on the playground.
The rituals of Love. For a long time I thought they were more [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Body, Bones, Books, Creative Nonfiction, Dreams, Essay, Film / TV / Video, Jugular, Life, Love, Memoir, Money, Personal, Practice, Secrets, Spirituality, Topic Writing, Vision, Work, Writers, Writing, tagged Betty Crocker, detective stories, Emma Peel, Help Wanted, jobs, Lincoln, Miss America, red Ravine Guests, Sharon J. Anderson, writing about jobs on May 21, 2007 | 48 Comments »
By Sharon J. Anderson
Fantasy Jobs (in chronological order)
Miss America
Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”
Maria in “The Sound of Music”
Nancy Drew
Sherlock Holmes
Archeologist
Barbara Bain in “Mission: Impossible”
Stephanie Powers in “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.”
Diana Rigg in “The Avengers”
Margaret Mitchell and/or Scarlett O’Hara
A keyboard player for Carole King, Judy Collins or Joni Mitchell
Ayn Rand
A gang member in “A Clockwork [...]
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Posted in Essay, Growing Older, Haiku, Life, Personal, Place, Relationships, Topic Writing, Work, Writers, blogroll on May 18, 2007 | 6 Comments »
Do you want to know something strange? For three years I worked on the fourth floor of my company’s five-story building and never saw the guy who sat in the cubicle next to me.
I heard him on the phone almost every day. I knew when he was talking to his ex-wife by the way he’d [...]
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Posted in Culture, Dreams, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Home, Memoir, Personal, Place, Practice, Relationships, Structure, Topic Writing, Vision, tagged Connecticut, Greenwich Country Day School, John Webster, mentors, Nat Worley, private schools, red Ravine Guests, teachers on May 14, 2007 | 8 Comments »
By Nat Worley
Image of John Webster, Former Headmaster of Greenwich Country Day School. Source: The Spire, 1962 yearbook of Greenwich Country Day School.
Greenwich Country Day School. Old Church Road, Greenwich, Connecticut. My mother taught second grade at Greenwich Country Day for three years before I was born in 1965. In those years, John Webster was [...]
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Posted in Culture, Essay, Jugular, Life, Love, Personal, Relationships, Secrets, Sex, Travel, Writing, tagged affairs, benefits of being a mistress, great sex, Laurie Lesser, married men, red Ravine Guests, single women, Til Death Do Us Part on April 16, 2007 | 11 Comments »
By Laurie Lesser
He turned to me as we approached the driveway of the cozy bed and breakfast just outside of Torrey, Utah, and said, “Oh, by the way, your name is Patty.”
“Huh?”
“When I was making the reservations the guy asked for my wife’s name, so I naturally said Patty.”
“Naturally.”
I had to remember to be Patty [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Books, Culture, Essay, Jugular, Life, Love, Money, Personal, Politics, Reading, Spirituality, Structure, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged Amazon Women's Bookstore, anti-Semitism, children, dominant culture, gender, Money, Politics, power, religion, Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade, The New Wealth of Nations, women on March 25, 2007 | 4 Comments »
I saw Riane Eisler at Amazon Bookstore last night. She wrote The Chalice and the Blade in 1987. As I commented in Saints or Sinners, she has a new book out, The New Wealth of Nations. It took her 10 years to write it. It took her 10 years to write The Chalice and the [...]
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Posted in Authors, Books, Culture, Essay, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Holidays, Home, Laughing, Life, Love, Maps, Memoir, Nature, On the Road, Personal, Place, Relationships, Structure, Things That Fly, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged CliffsNotes, Cupid, Essay, heart, Kool-Aid, Midwest writers, Nature, Nebraska, Nebraska writers, Platte River, sandhill cranes, Ted Kooser, Valentine, Valentine's Day, Vise-Grip, Willa Cather, Writers, Writing on February 14, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Around 3000 people live in the city of Valentine. If you fired up your GPSr, programmed in 42 degrees, 52′, 25″N, and 100 degrees, 33′, 1″W, slid the homing gadget into the plastic grip Velcroed to the dashboard, and drove in the direction of the crosshair blips on your map of light, you’d arrive at [...]
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Posted in Essay, Life, Personal, Practice, Structure, Work, Writers, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged fear, process, writer's block, Writers, Writing, writing practice on January 23, 2007 | No Comments »
I finally broke through. Out of all that anxiety, fear, whatever you want to call it. It was after Liz and I went to see Jean Shinoda Bolen, the Jungian psychologist, writer, feminist, at Amazon Bookstore last Friday. After that evening, everything cracked open.
It wasn’t so much what she said – as what she reminded [...]
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Posted in Essay, Personal, Practice, Wake Up, Work, Writers, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged Essay, fear, process, writer's block, Writing, writing practice on January 23, 2007 | No Comments »
I am in la la land this morning. I had such a hard time getting up. The darkness wanted to hold me. I’ve been in hibernate mode. A few weeks now. Maybe since Christmas. The days are short. The nights long.
When I think of writing an essay, I draw a blank. I scare myself. What [...]
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Posted in Architecture, Culture, Dreams, Essay, Fotoblog, Home, Maps, Personal, Photography, Place, Structure, Topic Writing, Vision, Writing, tagged A Place To Stand, Bohemian Flats, finished pieces from writing practice, Gold Medal Flour, history of Minneapolis, Mill City Museum, Minneapolis landmarks, Minnesota, Mississippi River, Natural Wonders, Spirit Island, St. Anthony Falls, the Stone Arch Bridge, West River Road, writing about place on November 28, 2006 | 3 Comments »
Gold Medal Flour, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Winter 2003, C41 negative print film, the building is now the Mill City Museum, photo © 2003-2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I’m pulled to write about the ordinary, the two mile chunk of land surrounding the Mill City Museum in a place once deemed “The Flour Milling Capital of the [...]
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Posted in Creative Nonfiction, Culture, Death, Essay, Holding My Breath, Home, Life, Memoir, Personal, Place, Politics, Writers, Writing, tagged 1963, assassination, Bryan Woolley, Dallas, JFK, Just the Facts, M'am, Memoir, November 22, Politics, school, teachers, the 1960's, Writers, Writing on November 22, 2006 | No Comments »
On the early afternoon of November 22nd, 1963, I was sitting in 3rd grade at a wooden desk drawing hearts with a BIC pen. It was 2:13 on Friday. I couldn’t wait for the weekend. My 3rd grade teacher, Miss Wells, wore pleated skirts that flowed behind her and she was tall, with slender limbs, [...]
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