A Learning Tool

Get Your Head Out of the Clouds . . .

For writers in the Asheville area here's a chance to take a positive step toward improving your writing skills!

Registration is open now for the various terrific classes offered through the Great Smokies Writing Program and beginning as early as August 30. Go HERE for more information.

The class I'm leading is SYNERGY CENTRAL -- an advanced creative prose workshop offering students the chance to have up to fifty-four pages( eighteen pages at a time) of their work -- fiction, non-fiction, memoir, or any combination thereof -- critiqued by their peers and line-edited by the instructor. 

 There will be brief in-class writing sessions but the focus will be on responding to each writer's work with thorough and constructive critique. It's been my experience that the synergy emerging from groups like this can inspire, energize, and propel a writer to the next level.

The class will meet at The Asheville School on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 8:30, beginning August 30.

This could be the start of something big!

Sweet Morning Light

Cranky Monday -- Only Two . . .

Only two of the many spelling/usage errors that I've noticed recently.

 One is Woah! used in the sense of Stop! or Hold on there!  Shouldn't it be Whoa! as said to stop a horse?

The other is Here, here! used to signify agreement.  This is awfully common but I looked it up to be sure that I was correct in believing it should be Hear! Hear!

I was. It derives from Hear him! Hear him! -- used in approval during a speech. Kinda like spontaneous Amen's during a sermon.

What about you? Are there any annoying bits of ill-used language that make you grit your teeth or reach for a red pencil? 

Two Birthdays

Yesterday Ethan came up from from Atlanta for a quick birthday celebration in his honor. Unfortunately he's even more camera shy than I am and has made a pronouncement that if I put his picture on my blog, he will de-friend me on Facebook. So I'll have to be satisfied with a picture of his birthday cake and the pretty flowers Claui brought up.

Josie, on the other hand, isn't afraid of being photographed and it was her two month birthday.  My, how she's grown!

Aileen didn't accompany Ethan -- the logistics of their two dogs and our two dogs are tricky. So it's a quick visit and he'll be heading back to Atlanta today for another birthday celebration.

But it was nice to have most of the family together, however briefly. And fun to listen to the brothers talking animatedly, late into the night.

Found Gifts

Ray -- a Drop of Golden Sun

I'm getting up earlier these days to make it down to Josie's house in order to start my baby-sitting duties at 8. I set the alarm for 6 because if there's one thing I dislike more than getting up early, it's rushing.

Early rising gives me time to fill the bird feeders, eat some breakfast, peruse my email, post my blog to Facebook, and skim through the online NY Times. 

Being with Josie now is almost like a meditation -- paying attention to what I'm doing now. Sit on the porch and look at things, bottle, diaper, cuddle, silly faces and sounds, and repeat.  All with a background of Yo Yo Ma and Bach's cello suites,

When she sleeps, I read -- currently THE BRENDAN VOYAGE about the effort to replicate the fabled voyage of St. Brendan from Ireland to the New World in a curragh -- a traditional craft made of hides stretched over a flexible wooden framework -- or I write --(I'm working on a short story at the moment.) 

I know all this this will change and evolve -- there will be a lot less sleep time. But we'll learn together as she grows. 

Doe -- A Deer -- A Female Deer

I still love seeing deer -- such beautiful critters. This one is quite bold -- browsing in our little orchard at mid day.  Just as she is most days.

John has so far managed to thwart further attacks on the vegetables with electric fencing and net cover ups.

With all there is to eat on the mountain -- including wild apples -- it's just sheer perversity that makes her hang around our cultivated areas.

Oh, and there were half a dozen turkeys just above her but they moved away too quickly for me to get their pictures.

Random Shots and Pink Carharts

by Claui

Grandmothers Up!

Today Claui goes (reluctantly) back to her work as a home care nurse and her mother Nancy and I take on new careers as baby minders. We are going to begin by splitting the days between us -- I'll mostly do mornings since I'm nearby and she'll do afternoons. 

I've been instructed in the bottle warmer, the car seat, the white noise machine, the baby monitor, the swaddling technique . . .  et cetera, et cetera.  And I'm really looking forward to this as Josie is developing and interacting (flirting) more and more every day.

Plus, it's good for elderly members of the tribe to prove their worth so that they won't get abandoned on an ice floe when food grows scarce.