Posted in Architecture, Art, Books, Great Places To Write, Haiku, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Skies, Structure, Writers, Writing, tagged cities, Fifth Street Towers, libraries, Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis Skyline, the practice of haiku on May 7, 2008 | 9 Comments »
Refraction, downtown Minnesota Central Library, March 2008, during Talk of the Stacks. Ali Selim and Will Weaver discussed the making of Sweet Land. The moment this photograph was taken, they were sitting to the left, signing books. The curved blue lines are the Fifth Street Towers. Photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
blue light [...]
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Posted in Art, Bones, Doodling, Great Places To Write, Practice, Relationships, Structure, Vision, Work, Writing, tagged 1 Year Anniversary of red Ravine, blog launch, red Ravine, the work of blogging on April 7, 2008 | 37 Comments »
One Year Today, celebrating the one-year anniversary of red Ravine, pen and ink on graph paper, doodle © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
QuoinMonkey: I can’t believe it’s been a year since we launched red Ravine!
ybonesy: Me neither. It’s felt more like ten. (laughs) Just kidding. But I am amazed at how much energy it [...]
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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 25 Things, Great Places To Write, On the Road, Photography, Place, Things That Fly, Travel, tagged airplane shots, cell phone photography, plane rides on February 27, 2008 | 9 Comments »
I get up at 4:10 am, the latest possible time I can rise and get dressed, make a cup of coffee, brush my teeth, warm the frost off the car, and still make it to the airport 45 minutes before my 6 o’clock flight.
The plane is almost empty. I sit alone on row 12, over the wing. [...]
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Posted in Death, Film / TV / Video, Food, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Holidays, Laughing, Personal, Quotes, Seasons, tagged A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story, Bob Clark, celebrating the Holidays, Holiday classics, Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, never eat December snowflakes, nostalgia, Peanuts, snow, Vince Guaraldi, winter on December 24, 2007 | 17 Comments »
A Charlie Brown Christmas, snippets on YouTube by FlyingForGlory
Patty: Try to catch snowflakes on your tongue. It’s fun.
Linus Van Pelt: Mmm. Needs sugar.
Lucy Van Pelt: It’s too early. I never eat December snowflakes. I always wait until January.
Linus Van Pelt: They sure look ripe to me.
I love to watch the snow fall. I’m a [...]
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Posted in Bones, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Love, Photography, Place, Practice, Quotes, Relationships, Spirituality, Structure, Taos, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged Jeanie Bernard, Katherine Reynolds, Lois Palken Rudnick, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Melissa Studdard, Natalie Goldberg, Petroglyph Practitioners, petroglyph rock, petroglyphs, Sally Sontheimer, the practice of writing, Utopian Vistas, writing community, writing groups, writing process on December 17, 2007 | 20 Comments »
The story begins like this…Five hundred years ago, the large petroglyph rock that marks the border of the courtyard of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos was placed there by the Tiwa Indians to help anchor the energy of the Pueblo Mountain, from whose Blue Lake they trace their origins as a tribe.
The petroglyph [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Books, Culture, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Home, Photography, Place, Practice, Quotes, Seasons, Silence, Spirituality, Structure, Taos, Vision, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged Beginner's Mind, Buddha, December, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, meditation, Natalie Goldberg, New Mexico, religion, Rohatsu, Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, sit like the mountain, sit-walk-write, solidarity, Taos, winter, Writing Down The Bones, writing practice, writing retreats, Zen on December 4, 2007 | 31 Comments »
Afternoon Meditation, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
In writing practice this morning, ybonesy and I both wrote about sitting in solidarity with our writing friends at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos. Most Decembers, Natalie holds a writing retreat during the period around [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Bones, Culture, Death, Family, Food, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Holidays, Laughing, Life, Personal, Photography, Practice, Random, Relationships, Spirituality, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged 1 Year Birthday of red Ravine, All Souls' Day, anniversaries, birthdays, celebrations, Day of the Dead, Food, Halloween, Happy Birthday To You, rituals, writing relationships on November 3, 2007 | 25 Comments »
Day Of The Dead Birthday Celebration, detail of Halloween bouquet, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We went out to dinner at Mysore Cafe in Uptown to celebrate a friend’s birthday last night. It was All Souls’ Day, day after All Saints’ Day, and both days following the Celtic rooted celebration [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Practice, Writers, Writing, tagged Annelise, Laura Stokes, red Ravine Guests, Shira, Writers, Writing on November 2, 2007 | No Comments »
We’re well into Fall, and our July guests have rotated off the Guest Writers & Featured Artists widget on the sidebar. You can still locate their pieces by typing their names into our Search bar. Or by clicking on Guestwriter or Guestartist under Contributors on the sidebar.
Thanks to our guests on red Ravine who support [...]
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Posted in Food, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Photography, Random, Relationships, tagged Dairy Queen, ice cream, Mudslide, Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, writing relationships on October 26, 2007 | 8 Comments »
Twin Peaks, at a Dairy Queen in southern Minnesota after a hot day of geocaching, August 2005, photo © 2007 by SkyWire. All rights reserved.
Vanilla (sans flecks) for ybonesy. She makes me smile every day.
-related to post, White Bread Revival
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Posted in Food, Great Places To Write, Memoir, Photography, Place, Quotes, Random, Writers, Writing, tagged Ann Patchett, diners, Memoir, Mickey's Diner, Minnesota, St Paul, Truth & Beauty, Writers, Writing on October 24, 2007 | 7 Comments »
Mickey’s Diner In The Rain, Rainpainting Series, outside Mickey’s Diner near the Fitzgerald Theater, St. Paul, Minnesota, October 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It’s been a long couple of weeks. Mr. Stripeypants has started to eat hard food again and seems to be on the mend. (Thanks for all the good energy [...]
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Posted in Authors, Books, Creative Nonfiction, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Memoir, Photography, Practice, Reading, Writers, Writing, tagged Authors, Candyfreak, community, hands, Minneapolis Central Library, Not That You Asked, Steve Almond, Writers, Writing on October 12, 2007 | 28 Comments »
Writer’s Hands III, hands of Candyfreak author, Steve Almond, signing a copy of his latest book, (Not That You Asked) Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions, Minneapolis Central Library, downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It’s late and I’m tired. But I wanted to write a short note. I just got home [...]
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Books, Creative Nonfiction, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Home, Photography, Place, Practice, Structure, Vision, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged interviews, Natalie Goldberg, Writers, Writing, Writing Down The Bones, writing practice, Zen on October 3, 2007 | 36 Comments »
After listening to Natalie Goldberg’s new interview on ThoughtCast, ybonesy and I wanted to pass the information along to our readers. But we first wanted to take a moment to reiterate our gratitude for the teachings that Natalie has passed down to us. Our vision for red Ravine was born out of our writing practice [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Bones, Books, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, On the Road, Photography, Place, Practice, Structure, Taos, Writers, Writing, tagged artists, Diebenkorn, Harwood Museum of Art, mentors, Natalie Goldberg, New Mexico, painters, painting on September 25, 2007 | 9 Comments »
Diebenkorn In New Mexico, Taos Mountain in the background, Taos, New Mexico, July 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
When I was in Taos in July, we carpooled over to the Harwood Museum of Art to see Diebenkorn In New Mexico. When I was looking through my Taos photos last night, I realized [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Practice, Random, Writers, Writing, tagged June, red Ravine Guests, Writers on September 18, 2007 | 6 Comments »
Summer’s almost over, and our June guests have rotated off the Guest Writers & Featured Artists widget on the sidebar. You can still locate their pieces, however, by typing their individual names into our Search bar. Or by clicking on Guestwriter or Guestartist under Contributors on the sidebar.
Again, we’d like to thank all of our guests [...]
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Posted in Art, Bones, Culture, Great Places To Write, Photography, Random, Relationships, Spirituality, Structure, Vision, Writers, Writing on September 17, 2007 | 10 Comments »
The Rainbow Room, view out the window, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, July 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We started red Ravine with the vision that all writers break through to the writer within and create room in their lives to write: a place to sit in silence, a practice [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Books, Culture, Dreams, Fiction, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Memoir, Photography, Place, Random, Structure, Writers, Writing, tagged F Scott Fitzgerald, famous writers, Fitzgerald Theater, Minnesota, St Paul, vintage on September 16, 2007 | 14 Comments »
The Fitzgerald, St. Paul, Minnesota, April 2007, photo © 2007
by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Last April, I went to see Galway Kinnell at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul. As my friend and I left the theater after a magnificent night of interviews and poetry, I turned and snapped this shot.
I am fortunate to live [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Body, Bones, Culture, Dreams, Fotoblog, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Life, Life In Letters, Personal, Photography, Practice, Silence, Spirituality, Structure, Taos, Vision, Wake Up, Work, Writers, Writing, tagged Agnes Martin, artists, good-bye letter to Agnes Martin, Harwood Museum of Art, Joanne Hunt, New Mexico, red Ravine Guests, Taos, the mountain will find you, the practice of writing, Zen on August 27, 2007 | 21 Comments »
By Joanne Hunt
Agnes Martin Room, Harwood Museum, Taos, New Mexico, August 2007, photo © 2007 by Kevin Moul. All rights reserved.
Dear Agnes,
I’m back in Taos. It’s February and as I slow-walked from Mabel Dodge this afternoon, I scuffed through snow still lying on the ground. I’ve paid my seven dollars to gain entry to the [...]
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Another month has rolled by, so our May guests have rotated off the Guest Writers & Featured Artists widget on the sidebar. You can still locate their pieces, however, by typing their individual names into our Search bar. Or by clicking on Guestwriter or Guestartist under Contributors on the sidebar.
We’d like to take a moment to [...]
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What have we done with them? Stuck them in closets? The backyard? Where, oh, where are red Ravine guest writers and artists?
Well, we keep a sidebar widget — Guest Writers & Featured Artists — that has guests from the past three months. Guests whose posts are older than three months are rotated off the widget. [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Body, Bones, Books, Culture, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Home, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Silence, Spirituality, Structure, Taos, Travel, Wake Up, Work, Writers, Writing, tagged Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Natalie Goldberg, New Mexico, retreats, Taos, the practice of writing, Writers, Writing on July 11, 2007 | 9 Comments »
-Mabel’s Dining Room, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, July 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It’s summer at Mabel’s. The wind whipped through the cottonwoods after a hot, muggy day. I was drenched in sweat while giving the presentation on When the Emperor Was Divine. And then, the rain came. A [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Bones, Dreams, Great Places To Write, Nature, On the Road, Photography, Place, Quotes, Relationships, Skies, Spirituality, Travel, tagged Georgia O'Keeffe, Ghost Ranch, images of The Pedernal, The Pedernal on July 8, 2007 | 24 Comments »
Georgia’s Mountain, view of The Pedernal taken from Ghost Ranch main building July 7, 2007, photo © 2007 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
In June of 1934, Georgia O’Keeffe visited Ghost Ranch for the first time. She purchased the house where she’d been staying on the ranch in 1940.
Of “The Pedernal,” the flat-topped mountain in the [...]
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Posted in Bones, Great Places To Write, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Nature, On the Road, Place, Poetry, Practice, Taos, Travel, Wake Up, tagged Ghost Ranch, Haiku, New Mexico, Practice, Taos, Writers, writing retreats on July 6, 2007 | 7 Comments »
I found these haiku in the pages of a notebook I was rereading from August of 2006. Has it really been almost a year? They were written at Ghost Ranch when I got separated from the writing group after lingering too long at the pond. I sat on the prickly ground, alone and silent, chewing [...]
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Posted in Authors, Family, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Holidays, Money, Nature, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Spirituality, blogroll, tagged family vacations, Ghost Ranch, Kitchen Mesa, New Mexico, photos of Ghost Ranch on July 5, 2007 | 20 Comments »
This is the second year in a row (which I suppose is long enough to call a tradition) that my daughters and I are spending a week at Ghost Ranch. I lived 44 years in New Mexico before ever laying eyes on Kitchen Mesa. I don’t know what took me so long to get here, [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Body, Bones, Books, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Photography, Place, Practice, Silence, Structure, Taos, Vision, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged Natalie Goldberg, Reading, Writing, Writing Down The Bones, writing practice on July 4, 2007 | 11 Comments »
-Mabel’s Place, Lawrence windows, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
A friend of mine told me she’s been rereading her old writing practice notebooks. She said it took her splat into the face of Monkey Mind; she also discovered a few gems.
Inspired, I started reading [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Family, Great Places To Write, Home, On the Road, Photography, Place, Practice, Random, Silence, Skies, Spirituality, Structure, Taos, Wake Up, Writing, tagged Mabel Dodge Luhan House, New Mexico on June 23, 2007 | 9 Comments »
-Inside, Outside, view from Ansel Adams room, April 2007, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
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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 Bones, Books, Culture, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Personal, Practice, Random, Relationships, Structure, Word Of The Day, Writers, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged Goonaday, keep the hand moving, writing community, writing groups on June 16, 2007 | 5 Comments »
I remember the first time I thought about writing with other people. A friend at work had asked me to join a writing group that was meeting once a week in my neck of the woods. The invitation was tempting, but I turned it down.
I was a new mother and as much as I longed to write, I had [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Family, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Home, Life, Maps, Memoir, Music, On the Road, Personal, Place, Practice, Relationships, Secrets, Structure, Topic Writing, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged Augusta, daughters, Georgia, GRITS, Memoir, mothers, Music, research, Savannah, The South, Writers, Writing on June 6, 2007 | 29 Comments »
A train whistle howls in the distance. I hear it every night at the same time. A night owl growl out the window. It comforts me. A ritual I’ve come to expect. Hearing. Ears. Sights. Smells. The smell of the sweatshirt I’m wearing, a combination of both me and Liz.
The taste of the sweet tea on [...]
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Posted in Bones, Doodling, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Holding My Breath, Laughing, Personal, Practice, Random, Structure, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged doodles, Gratitude, red Ravine, ten thousand hits, Writers, Writing on May 20, 2007 | 14 Comments »
This weekend red Ravine passed the 10,000-views mark and, well, we wanted to shout out to all you readers: Thanks for clicking! We went live on April 7, and we’re having a blast.
What all this has to do with Back of the Napkin? Nothing, except I happened to doodle on one. But that’s the beauty [...]
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Books, Culture, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Home, Life, Love, Maps, Money, Nature, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Skies, Spirituality, Things That Fly, Topic Writing, Travel, Wake Up, Writing on May 18, 2007 | 7 Comments »
I spent much of today on planes and in airports trying to get back home from a short trip. I was in transit longer than the time I spent at my destination.
It was dark and bumpy flying into Albuquerque tonight, but it gave me peace of mind knowing el Rio Grande was below me. (The photo [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Doodling, Dreams, Family, Great Places To Write, Holding My Breath, Laughing, Life, Personal, Politics, Practice, Random, Wake Up, Work, Writing, blogroll on May 15, 2007 | 16 Comments »
My 15-minute practice on Place; that topic post is due today
Walk through the house next door and sit in each room; we close on it today, and tomorrow it will belong to someone else
Draw the hummingbird that’s been buzzing around in my head
Go for a walk on the ditch behind my house just so my [...]
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Posted in Authors, Culture, Great Places To Write, Photography, Place, Practice, Silence, Spirituality, Structure, Taos, Wake Up, Work, Writing on April 28, 2007 | No Comments »
–Drip, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo by QuoinMonkey, all rights reserved
-Detail photo from the Wake Up series
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Culture, Family, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Money, Photography, Place, Practice, Random, Relationships, Silence, Skies, Structure, Taos, Things That Fly, Travel, Vision, Wake Up, Work, Writing on April 28, 2007 | 4 Comments »
-Wake Up, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo by QuoinMonkey, from the Wake Up series, all rights reserved
When I went to Taos last year to write, I rediscovered photography as a practice. I attended 4 silent writing retreats with the same group of writers over a year period. When you make [...]
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Posted in Art, Culture, Great Places To Write, On the Road, Photography, Place, Practice, Random, Silence, Taos, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged cafes, Caffe Tazza, Great Places To Write, New Mexico, Taos, The Good Stuff on April 28, 2007 | 1 Comment »
-The Good Stuff’s In Here, Caffe, Tazza, Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo by QuoinMonkey, all rights reserved
From my Great Places to Write series. The light is right, the cast of characters stimulating, the air is full of French roast, artists, poets, and musicians. You can sit inside or out. And they don’t care if you [...]
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