Back-To-School Sales — A Writer’s Paradise

Tools Of The Trade (On Sale), Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 
 

Back-to-school sales are a bonus for writers. Liz came home last night with presents in tow: three full-sized college ruled notebooks for Writing Practice and five colorful 4 1/2 by 3 1/4 Composition notebooks with marble covers (my favorite for carrying around in my pocket). The large notebooks were a penny less than 4 bits; the small ones only 19 cents. (Hint: a bit is 12.5 cents; 2 bits is a quarter.)

Last night I put the small red Composition notebook by my bed. It came in handy when I woke up at 3 a.m. with insomnia. I grabbed it and wrote down these haiku (senryu) floating around in my head. I had hoped the rhythmic counting would help me get back to sleep:

 
 

Insomnia haiku (II)
_____________

crumpled white paper
word remembrances of love
regurgitation
 
10 sleepless monsters
rambling around in my head
flat Insomnia

beyond Milky Way
a random act of kindness
what it takes to love

 
 
 

 
 

I hope everyone is taking advantage of the back-to-school sales to stock up on writing supplies. Paper products are our Tools of the Trade. What kind of notebooks and pens do you love? Where can we get the best deals?

 

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, August 13th, 2009

-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC – TOOLS OF THE TRADE, haiku 2 (one-a-day)

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Poem For The Trees (Keepers Of The Light)

Antique Lights, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve. Our cat Chaco, who we discovered last week is chronically ill, is resting comfortably in the bedroom. He spent Winter Solstice in the emergency hospital. We brought him home from the vet yesterday along with three prescription medications and a bag of fluids we’ll be administering subcutaneously over the next few days. Dr. Blackburn says he’s a fighter; he’s walking better, eating more regularly, and his little Spirit has more life than it did last week.

We’ll take him back on Saturday to see how his vitals look. In the meantime, we are learning to care for a chronically ill cat. It goes without saying, Liz and I haven’t been getting much sleep. So the energy for posting has flagged. But then I ran across this inspirational poem by Russell Libby.

Described by kindle, site of the Northern New England Bioneers, as “a farmer, a selectman, an economist, a poet, and a visionary builder of local, organic food systems in Maine and beyond,” he seems like a man close to the Earth. Since 1983 he and his family have grown organic food for friends and family at Three Sisters Farm in Mount Vernon, and his Maine roots date back to 1635, when his forebears settled in the colony.

His poem reminded me of all the trees that lose their lives this time of year (31 million Christmas trees last year in the U.S. alone). Many Christmas trees come from tree farms these days (500 Minnesota tree farmers expect to harvest 500,000 trees this year), though I have been known to go out and cut my own from the forest of a friend’s ancestral lands. Fresh pine is the smell of Christmas for me. And I love sitting in the dark and staring at the lights on the tree.

Since we haven’t had time to put a tree up this year, I thought I’d post these photographs of the antique Christmas lights mentioned in The Poet’s Letter — Robert Bly. It was at Poetry Group that night that our friend Teri shared a story about how her family discovered the lights hidden on top of a rainwater cistern in the basement of a Minnesota farmhouse that has been in her family for generations.

Trees provide balance and structure for the thousands of lights that burn brightly this time of year. I am grateful for the untouched land, places preserved for old growth forests, trees with skins that will never be touched by an ax or saw.

Here’s one last quote for the trees I found in an Alice Walker book, Anything We Love Can Be Saved — A Writer’s Activism. It’s printed below a black and white photograph of a man with his arms stretched wide around a tree. It’s a good time of year to remember what is worth putting our arms around.

This photograph of an Indian man hugging a tree has been attached to my typing stand for years. Each day it reminds me that people everywhere know how to love. It gives me hope that when the time comes, each of us will know just exactly what is worth putting our arms around.

   -Robert A. Hutchison

 

Holding The Light, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2008, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

American Life in Poetry: Column 194

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Father and child doing a little math homework together; it’s an everyday occurrence, but here, Russell Libby, a poet who writes from Three Sisters Farm in central Maine, presents it in a way that makes it feel deep and magical.

Applied Geometry

Applied geometry,
measuring the height
of a pine from
like triangles,
Rosa’s shadow stretches
seven paces in
low-slanting light of
late Christmas afternoon.
One hundred thirty nine steps
up the hill until the sun is
finally caught at the top of the tree,
let’s see,
twenty to one,
one hundred feet plus a few to adjust
for climbing uphill,
and her hands barely reach mine
as we encircle the trunk,
almost eleven feet around.
Back to the lumber tables.
That one tree might make
three thousand feet of boards
if our hearts could stand
the sound of its fall.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Russell Libby, whose most recent book is “Balance: A Late Pastoral,” Blackberry Press, 2007.

Reprinted from “HeartLodge,” Vol. III, Summer 2007, by permission of Russell Libby. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

-posted on red Ravine, Christmas Eve, Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

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The Law Of Threes

By Bob Chrisman


My mother and her three sisters believed in the Law of Threes. Well, actually they believed in a “hard” law and a “soft” one. Let me explain.

The basic Law of Threes states that all bad things happen in groups of three. Only bad things, never good ones. The hard law states that if a death places the law in motion, the next two events must involve deaths. The soft law allows for a bad thing (not a death) to happen and then two more bad things, which could involve a death or two, although deaths are not required to fulfill the soft law.

I thought for the longest time that only my mother and her sisters believed in the Law of Threes, but I found out I was wrong.

A college friend called me to say that his 92-year-old mother had died. I expressed my sympathy and made all of the appropriate noises. I couldn’t help but think that his mother’s death had fulfilled the Law of Threes started by the death of another friend’s 92-year-old mother in early February and my own 92-year-old mother’s death at the end of that month—a perfect example of the Law of Threes. Inside I felt guilty for even thinking that way.

When I went to the house to pay my respects to my friend and his family, I sat on the sofa next to his youngest sister. She told me how much she would miss her mother and then paused.

“You know, Bob, I worry about the next two deaths that will follow. Who will die?”

She must have seen the look of surprise on my face because she quickly explained, “Deaths happen in threes. At least that’s what my family always said.” What a relief to know that other people believed in the Law of Threes.

“I understand,” I said. “Let me tell you my story.”

When I was little, my mother would fix my breakfast and then sit at the kitchen table and read the paper while I ate. I knew something was up when she would “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” before closing the paper, folding it, and heading for the phone.

“Faye, did you see where Mildred Shunkwilder died yesterday? You know her. She was in Vera’s class in high school. Yes, yes, that’s the one. She married the Sweet boy and they moved to his parents’ farm. Yes, I know. You better call Annie. I’ll call Vera. We can all keep our eyes out for numbers two and three.”

She would place the receiver of the old black phone back in the cradle and shake her head. “I wonder who the next two will be.” She would then call Aunt Vera to place her on alert.

Phone calls flew back and forth. The sisters watched the newspaper. They contacted relatives and friends for information about people from whom they had heard nothing in years. When they discovered someone else who they all knew had died, they would breathe easier yet they didn’t relax until the third death had occurred. Then life for the sisters would return to normal, for a while.

My Aunt Faye fell victim to the Law of Threes in the late 1970s. My Aunt Vera joined her group of three in the late 1990s, followed by my Aunt Annie, who died a few years later. Even as their numbers grew smaller, they carried out their death watches. Finally, my mother was left alone to keep track of the law, but by then she was in her 80s and people she knew were dying all the time.

Even when she resided in the nursing home she would greet me with the news of the latest death. “You know Herbie died, didn’t you?” Herbie was a distant cousin by marriage. His second wife lived down the hall in the same nursing home. “That’s number two. Woodie died last month.” I waited for news of who was number three. I think Emmett, another church member, completed the law a couple of months later.

Then my mother died—number two in the series of three. The Law of Threes wasn’t completed for another five months, at least as far as I knew.

My friend’s sister looked at me after I finished my story. “Would you mind if I borrowed your mother’s death and the death of your high school friend’s mother to complete my three deaths?”

I couldn’t deny her request. I gave her those deaths. You don’t want a Law of Threes—especially not a hard one—hanging open.




Bob Chrisman is a Kansas City, Missouri writer whose pieces Hands, Growing Older, Goat Ranch, and Stephenie Bit Me, Too have all appeared in red Ravine. Hands is about the death of his 92-year-old mother.

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10 Things I Learned Last Weekend (Solstice x Number)

scratch paper haiku, written with the shaft of a feather,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, Summer Solstice 2008, all photos © 2008
by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

              

ONE        1 frog + 1 toad =
                2 reams of good luck

Saw two frogs last weekend. One was this size (a toad). And one looked like this (a frog). The tree frog hopped out of the pond at Summer Solstice and spent some time with us on dry land. I now know the difference between a frog and a toad.

 

 

               

TWO       2 insurance adjusters + 1 friendly couple + 1 smiling contractor =
               1 new roof

The toad appeared right as our contractor and two insurance adjusters (a husband and wife team from Kansas) arrived on the scene to inspect the roof. I saw that as a good omen. The toad’s skin looked like the bark of a tree. I thought it was a moth and brushed it off the deck table. It jumped. That’s when I knew it wasn’t a moth. I slid the slick, 4-color binder with the roof estimate under her belly and moved her down under the garden day lilies. She had bright orange skin where the leg meets the body, the same color as the day lilies.

 

 

 

THREE    12 hours + 1 summer storm + 1 green tree frog =
               13 moons + 100 rocks + 1 gargantuan chorus

The second frog was a single green tree frog. She strolled proudly by the Solstice fire ring near a tumbled pile of birch, calling back and forth to her friends in the pond. One frog sang out. A few thousand returned the favor. This continued long into the night.

 

 

 

FOUR      1 summer solstice here =
                1 winter solstice there

Self-explanatory. We are one world.

 

 

 

FIVE       1 fireside story from 2 shaman lips =
               4 Tibetan nagas

Nagas are snake spirits, cobras. They live in or near water — deities of the primal ocean and of mountain springs; also spirits of earth and the realm beneath it — dragons of lakes, ponds, and oceans. They protect the Buddha and like to come up through the feet. Buddha took his sword and cut a valley into 4 parts = 4 Great Nagas. Nagas eat frogs.

 

 

 

SIX          1 drumbeat in the rain =
                10 drums in dry heat

It poured in the middle of Solstice. We stood under a cluster of cedars, watched sheets of rain crest over the pond, and kept drumming. The skin of a hand-stretched drum changes tone with the humidity. When the air is saturated with water, one beat can resonate deeply and hang in the air. Close to the fire again, the skin pulls hard at the wood frame. The mallet bounces off hide in short bursts of sound.

 

 

 

SEVEN     shedding 1 old skin =
                much harder than you think

 

 

 

EIGHT    4 marshmallows + a 2-pronged stick =
               3 marshmallows splat on the ground + 1 mean S’more

 

Hershey’s S’mores (Indoors or Outdoors)

4 graham crackers, broken into halves
2 Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars (1.55 oz), broken into halves
4 marshmallows

Outdoors: Place chocolate bar half on graham cracker half. Toast marshmallow over grill or campfire (supervise kids if they’re doing this); place over chocolate. Top with second graham cracker half. Gently press together. (Recipe from the cardboard on the inside of a Hershey bar)

Indoors: Place graham cracker half on paper towel; top with chocolate bar half and marshmallow. Microwave at Medium (50%) in 10 second intervals until marshmallow puffs. Immediately top with remaining graham cracker half. Gently press together. Repeat, serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

 

 

               

NINE      1 alligator + 1 panther =
               get along just fine 😉

 

 

               

TEN        25,000 humans + stones aged at 3000 years B.C. + 1 Salisbury Plain =
               Summer Solstice at Stonehenge 

Some people’s Solstices are way wilder than mine! Stonehenge, on the Salisbury Plain about 90 miles southwest of London, was built over three phases between 3,000 B.C. and 1,600 B.C.  Cremated remains and burials continued for at least 500 years. It is estimated that at least 240 people were buried at Stonehenge. More than 750,000 people visit every year.

 

 

                                 

 

 BONUS:  Incubate magic

 

scratch paper haiku

train whistle marshes
summer solstice grabs the light
and turns it to dark

 

 

 

-posted on red Ravine, Friday, June 27th, 2008

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There Comes An Age (2654)

There comes an age,
when stains on the front of my sweatshirt
drawl, “I don’t feel like working” –
my mouth is dry and thirsty
my back aches

– must be (52).
 
There comes an age
when I don’t care what people think –
vanity takes a backseat to wisdom and sensibility,
falling in love doesn’t hold the same
steamy juice

– just another kind of love.

There comes an age
when you can only count on you,
standing on your own two feet
is preferred to being taken care of,
and writing is the only thing that matters.

There comes an age
when hair grows thick inside the ear,
tufts eek out the edge of the nose,
fingernails grow misshapen and brittle,
calluses defy the serrated file

– gray outshines the natural.

There comes an age
when a romp in the hay stiffens the blood,
love is more powerful than hate,
the irritation you feel,
a lone grain of sand in an oyster shell

– a pearl rolling in a silver bowl.

There comes an age
when the most powerful people stand least exposed,
humility slinks through desperation,
underground:

Tom cruises low in the Maldives
suddenly (6″) taller than Holmes;

Kramer burns his crosses
ex-megalaughbuster –
bad manners, poor taste,
and racist hate.

O.J.’s dead and buried, killed
by the two-faced blade of Rupert Murdoch –
“If I did it, I want the world to know
I’m covered in bad blood.”

– what the hell are people thinking?

There comes an age
when the truth matters more than lying,
Santa red makes a comeback, your favorite color
like it was at age (6), tenderness and fragility
outweigh the need for tough love.

There comes an age
when strength is not measured in pounds pressed at the bench,
clear-sighted has nothing to do
with (5) layers of cornea,
visionary does not extend beyond (30) years.

There comes an age
when humility and grace trump privilege and fame,
money is something I want enough of, without being greedy,
good and bad traits of women and men
become the same damn thing.

There comes an age
when I want to laugh at my failures,
hail them as successes –
soar down the hill on a hot shiny disc
spewing freshly mowed powder;

but snow flies blindly
in the cold face of reason,
falls flat on ice-burned lips
lapping it all up, only to discover
the thirst has already been quenched.

There comes an age
when silence speaks louder than words,
the tough get going
and the meek inherit the earth;

– (230) years later
the Framers return,
Jeffersonian voices booming
through British clairvoyants named Lisa:

“Yes, you’ve made a grievous mistake. No, those witches weren’t supposed to be burned at the stake. And the (300) lost languages of the indigenous peoples? – No, not supposed to be traded for steeples.”

a muddy, booted sole plunks down
on a tiny piece of granite –
Plymouth Rock –
“the most disappointing landmark in America”

There comes an age
when stinky cheese seems less stinky,
a single glass of Merlot is all it takes
to put you over the edge,
and laughter’s more important than sex.

There comes an age
when it’s harder to hold a shape, any shape,
the weight of the world piles on
over Thanksgiving waists –

I don’t want to haul an evergreen home,
to celebrate Christ’s birth, not one silver fir,
or spend the entire weekend baking turkeys
and mashing potatoes; but I will
watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

There comes an age (2654)
when Pisces plummets
into Aquarius full bore –
the mossy air of the (11th) sign
fanning watery flames –

What’s Going On never loses its punch,
the Fifth Dimension no longer reigns,
a hollow remnant of a parallel Universe
or a Grammy production of Bones Howe fame.

It’s Thanksgiving week (2006)
I’m restless, not bored,
older, feeling young

hopelessly forlorn
and quietly strong.

My heart hurts – I’m in love,
full of hope and promise
for (2007), year of the Fire Pig.
 
My stomach churns –
the head says, be quiet.

Full.
Empty.

Alone,
surrounded by Souls
life could not have imagined.

Lost is a place,
I’ve found my true calling.

There comes an age –
when I have to let go.

Wednesday, November 22^nd, 2006

-post from writing practice, PRACTICE – There Comes An Age – 15min 

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