Writing - the ups and downs

     THE HELP by author Kathleen Stockett tells the story of a group of black maids working for white families before the term Civil Rights was ever born. Before the race riots. On the cusp of when the southern part of our country erupted into a period of hate that spread across the nation. As I moved into the story of the complicated lives of these women, I could taste their joy and smell their fear emanating from the pages. I felt their heartbeats. Their unease became mine. At times, I felt the need to look over my shoulder. This book is much more than fiction. It’s the many faceted tale of what really went on in the South. It was a time when black children were turned away from white schools, while their black mothers were at the homes of those white children baking bread for their supper and rocking their little sisters and brothers. At the time, I was growing up in West Virginia, sitting happily in the safety of my living room watching bandstand with Dick Cl...

BUTTERNUT WISDOM From an essay by Gladys Taber Family Circle  - September 1982     I sat in the sun the other day while the dogs dug up the lawn and thought about work. I wasn’t working. I was just thinking about it. I have found that when I cannot possibly accomplish everything I am supposed to and feel an unbearable pressure---as all homemakers must---if I just stop, life goes better.     I get a good book, make some spiced tea and sit down on my own corner of the sofa or in my favorite lawn chair. I let life settle in around me, and that is the only way I can express it. After 20 minutes or half an hour, I go back to the mechanics of living.  AND at days end I am just as far along as if I had not stopped to think. Another of her thoughts: time for thinking is a gift one can give only to one’s self. Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have over the years. When I've had it with my life some days -  I have only to sit down wit...

Why is it that some days we move forward and some backward? As for me, I believe  it's because I don't have a plan. Or I haven't  this summer. The days are flitting past  like fireflies in the night, their illusive lights blinking, "Come - follow me." And there I am running behind them - an imaginary Mason jar stretched out in my hand trying to catch each one.  "Come back sunny days," I call, "so that I might use you as I planned all last winter when I lived beneath my cozy couch blanket." This was to be the summer that I got things done. Great things! The summer of accomplishments! I was going to rework one of my novels and make it into, well, into something other than what it is. I was going to finish some short stories that had been languishing in the desk drawer. I was going to get a natural tan, not too much, but just enough to not look sickly. I was going to sit on the quilt my grandmother made in the shade of the big tree...