Time to resolve

The year is drawing to a close and it is time once again to reflect back on the events of the past twelve months. This year has been chuck-a-block full. Over full. Way too much! Some good and unfortunately some very sad. In spite of it all there has been beauty and joy, and when I have found it, I've grabbed onto it and relished it. The one lesson I firmly learned was to give up playing the "what if" game. It simply doesn't matter and it is just a waste of mental energy. The "Why?" game isn't one you should play either. Sometimes there is no answer, and why make yourself miserable trying to find one? Here's where the Serenity Prayer comes to the rescue:
      God give me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Resolving can mean to solve or to break down into component parts. Instead of resolutions this year I want to seek solutions in order to resolve the "problems" in my life. For example, getting organized. Once and for all I must get organized, I'm tired of living with my current technique of piling. Piles no longer work for me because I waste way too much time sorting through them looking for what I want. It's stressing me out too much! So I've pulled an "oldy" but goody off the shelf, Julie Morgenstern's  Organizing from the Inside Out. Confession time, I never managed to get through it the first time which is probably why I still haven't gotten organized. Well that may be one reason. What I think is really the answer is found in this quote, "Organizing from the inside out means creating a system based on your specific personality, needs, and goals. It focuses on defining who you are and what is important to you as a person so that your system can be designed to reflect that. (page 13)" Up until now I didn't really know who I was or what I wanted in life. I was living based on what I thought people expected of me. No wonder I couldn't come up with a system for myself. Here is where the resolving comes in, the breaking down of my life into its component parts so that I can observe them and fashion them into a new whole. This past year has been one which has challenged me to see myself in a new way and to redefine who I am. It is the work of this new year to express what I've learned and put it into practice.

The days are getting longer again

3:00 pm on a December day
look how low the sun is in the sky

I'm a couple of days late with this post, but on the solstice I was laid low with a seasonal cold. My son brought it home from school and my own students were sitting in class with their colds. I was bound to catch it as my defenses were worn down. We are approaching the time when last year my father fell ill and the devastating news of Stage IV lung cancer was given to us. The days were definitely dark then for all of us. It was over quickly when Dad passed away on February 1st.

I'm listening once again to Rosmund Pilcher's Winter Solstice on my iPod. I first read this book when it came out back in 2000. I was a fan of her other books The Shellseekers and particularly September which I've read a couple of times. I purchased my iTunes copy last December so I could listen to it once again plus have it to enjoy every December.

It is a story tinged with lots of sorrow. There are tragic losses of life and of loves. But then there is healing and starting over. It is the same with all our lives. Last year we didn't get to celebrate Christmas with my parents as my father was hospitalized before we could gather, but we did bring him his Christmas presents to open. This year we prepare to celebrate but with heavy hearts. Yet life goes on and doesn't the solstice prove that. At the darkest point of the year the earth begins its movement back towards the point where the earth's axis will tip us towards the sun again. In the end of Pilcher's story all her characters take up the broken pieces of their lives and begin to fashion something new. So too will my family. We will begin new traditions holding onto some of the old and incorporating the new. It will never be the same, but it will be good.

New Year's Eve

I know I'm a little early to be writing about December 31st but I finished Mitch Albom's The Time Keeper the story of Father Time. *** Spoiler Alert*** It is a twist on the old story of It's A Wonderful Life. It was a bit predictable but worth reading as a good reminder of what is truly important in life and the sin of trying to control our time here on earth. What was hard for me was his choice of his two characters who had their future's revealed to them while time was stopped in the middle of their act of suicide. The young teenage girl is a carbon copy of my own cousin who took her life at the age of 18. The second character an older gentleman with cancer was very much like my grandfather who was dying of cancer chose to take his life (cancer treatment in 1969 isn't what it is today). When I read the story I wondered if Mitch Albom had been reading my personal journals. I've always wondered if my loved ones could have known what life would be like after their deaths if they would have gone through with their actions. It's easy to write a story where there is a happy ending, but what about when there isn't? Our family story has been one of heartbreak, but also of triumph over tragedy. For those who suffer from this type of loss, it gets better, but the unanswerable question of why will still haunts.

Winter's coming

Frosty leaves

On Saturday afternoon we went for a walk in the woods and in patches the morning's frost had not yet thawed as evidenced by the pictures I have taken. It was a beautiful day for a walk, but we had to plan appropriately since the sun would be setting early. As we approach the winter solstice so we come to the day of the year with the shortest amount of day light here in the Northern Hemisphere. The Northern Hemisphere is tilted furthest away from the sun in its annual orbit. Man has used the key points in the earth's orbit to mark time - winter and summer solstices, and the autumnal and vernal equinoxes. They have made their calendars and built their temples/monuments to keep track of these days (think Stonehenge).

Now to continue with my December theme of books to read and re-read, I am currently listening once again to Ngaio Marsh's Death of a Fool.  This time we find Roderick Alleyn detecting the odd death of an old blacksmith who had been playing the role of the fool in a ritualistic winter solstice Morris Dance call the Dance of the Five Sons.

Frosted oak leaves

The ins and outs of village gossip, old traditions, and the fine art of police work all play key roles in this story. I am a huge fan of Marsh's fine dialogue and rich descriptions of the countryside. Plus she has such fine characters, and in her own words they are all "proper masterpieces."

The books we are not ready to read yet

It was a book I thought would be just right up my alley. I found it at the library, it was a memoir (a genre I love to read), it was about England (I am an Anglophile and my sister is currently living there so I thought it would be good to learn more about the country), and it hinted at being funny. Here you go read the back jacket blurb for yourself (Ben Hatch Are We Nearly There Yet?)

It started out okay. In fact it was good. But then a certain incident was inserted into the narrative and my foreboding nerve was stimulated. Something was around the corner and I wasn't going to like it. I kept going. Then it struck like the blow that I received just last January 2nd - Stage IV Cancer. There is nothing that can be done. There are only months. Enjoy what time you have left. I'm sorry Ben Hatch, but I had to put your book down and return it to the library. My pain was too raw and I had no space in my heart to carry yours as well. I was still trying to process my own grief. I have a great deal of empathy for you but I couldn't go on.

There are several of those stories over the last few months I have tried to read. Long before Dad's illness I had read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Pausch shared with us the challenge of living out the end of one's life fully knowing of the outcome that awaits someone who's cancer can not be cured. I thought I could handle reading his widow's memoir Dream New Dreams. I'm sorry Jai Pausch but I couldn't do it. Watching my mother's grieving and knowing the pain she was going through putting her new life in order, I couldn't bear another widow's challenges as well. Perhaps one day I will be able to go back and read these memoirs by these talented writers and learn from their life lessons but for today I have my own story to process and write.

If on a winter's morning the traveler arrives....

Note the sticky tabs of learning

Okay I realize that it is not yet winter, the solstice is not until Friday, but it feels and looks like winter outside today. I sat cuddled under a blanket with my morning cup of coffee and finished Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler just a few minutes ago. It has been one of those intensely rich readings, nourishing and challenging to the brain. He closed the book with a discussion amongst some readers at a library as to the meaning of reading. Each declared their own personal philosophy of why they read and yet as a reader each one made perfect sense to me. We read for all different reasons, yet all our reading is interconnected. It is a matter of our brain chemistry. As discussed, the new reading that we do is connected to what we have previously read. Just like the synapses in our brain are connected, so too are the memories of the things we have read. Haven't you experienced that yourself? As you read you are reminded of something, what was it? Was it in a book? Or a movie or TV show (remember they all started as a written word hatched in the brain of a writer)? Maybe even an event in your life since writers take and fashion the world into their creations. It has been a book that has made me think. I have had to think about my own reading while I've been reading.

The beauty of marking a book while reading is to go back and see what you marked. Don't you know that when I looked at the very first sticky tab, there was the start of the final discussion that the book ended with. Fancy that! A circle was started and completed. Would I have had that insight, had I not been tempted to mark that early passage because it struck me as such a profound thought? I could have finished the book with the memory of the ending most prominent as it was the last stimulus in my mind. Again brain chemistry is to blame. Pathways must be built and strengthened for strong permanent memories to take hold.

One other thing that attracted me about this piece of work was his allusions to matter and the chemistry of the world. Twice he relates the "matter" of a book: words, sentences, grammatical structure to the elemental particles of matter: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Or at least that's what I interpreted from those passages. Writing and reading are real and have substance just like that which makes up the universe. Underlying these two things, writing and reading, is the energy of the universe waiting to be explored and released, a universal truth that runs through us all since each of us is made up of the same matter. We are all just star dust which was generated when the universe expanded with a big bang, and there was light.  

If on a winter's night ....

I chose Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler thinking it would fit into my theme of winter or Christmas stories, little did I know it wouldn't be any such thing but something even more. Calvino died in 1984 when I was just graduating high school and going off to college. I would not have chosen this book to read at that time in my life. Do you think books find us when we are ready to read them? Something like the old adage that the teacher will come along when the student is ready.

I read the first page while standing among the stacks at the library and thought it sounded fun. The whole first chapter deals with you the reader. The conditions for reading must be just right before you can proceed. Are you the right temperature, if not get a blanket or open the window. Is the light level right, the noise levels (tell the family to pipe down), do you have something to drink at hand, are you sitting in the right chair? Finally when all is right with you and your world you can begin.

Now this book doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the library so I can not highlight it, or write in the margins. This is where I must praise the inventors of the post-it-note, they have expanded their product line to include these tiny pop up strips that come out of a highlighter which I can't use on this book, but I can stick a harmless tag on a page where I have found something I want to jot down later. This book is starting to have a collection of these little tags sticking out all over it.

This morning I came across this quote written by a character who is an author suffering from writer's block, "writing, must be the respiration of this reader, the operation of reading turned into a natural process," (p. 169). This thought piggy backed on a previous post about books being the oxygen to a reader. Here it is the act of writing that provides the breath of the reader. I am going to digress once again into my passion with biology. Only some organisms breathe, and that act is called respiration. Yet all living things must make energy in order to carry out their life functions and this is cellular respiration. To make this energy they must convert the food that they make (photosynthesis or chemosynthesis) or consume (herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore) into energy in the form of ATP. This process can take place in the presence of oxygen (aerobic respiration) or in its absence (anaerobic respiration).

Okay bear with me, biology lesson over. All of this made me think, is writing more like the act of photosynthesis where the inspirational light (for plants it's the sun) is stored in the words of the book (like a sugar molecule) which when read (cellular respiration) releases its energy once again within the mind of the reader? The law of conservation of matter/energy states that matter/energy is neither created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction it simply changes its form. So, are reading and writing the two sides of the equation? The creative energy of the writer becomes the energy of the reader. As a reader I know that what I read stimulates me to think in new ways. To apply lessons to my life. To share what I have read with others. As a writer isn't that what I hope to do for others as well. The energy of my thoughts seek to be shared with others. "If we assume that writing manages to go beyond the limitations of the author, it will continue to have a meaning only when it is read by a single person and passes through his mental circuits. Only the ability to be read by a given individual proves that what is written shares in the power of writing, a power based on something that goes beyond the individual. The universe will express itself as long as somebody will be able to say, 'I read, therefore it writes." (p. 176)

Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler, translated by William Weaver, Harcourt, Inc. 1981

Getting ready for Christmas vacation

Small tree decorated with
little bird flower picks.

I made a trip to the library tonight to bring back those items that were due and to pick up the next batch of reading material. The best thing about the trip was knowing that I have Christmas vacation starting a week from tomorrow at 2:39 pm. I can come home and enjoy my family, my home, and some much needed quiet time. Plus all that lovely free time for reading snuggled up by the wood stove with a warm mug of coffee, tea, or cocoa and the glow of the Christmas tree lighting the room. I've chosen a variety of new titles to read: Mitch Albom's - The Time keeper, Peter Mayle's - The Marseilles Caper, and Tony Danza's - I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.

I've a confession to make as well. I love choosing books to give my mother as gifts because she always lends them to me afterwards. It's embarrassing to admit I pick things I know that she and I will both like.

A village Christmas Mystery

Thomas Kinkaid church with
Nativity Scene

 I finished listening to Rhys Bowen's The Twelve Clues of Christmas over the weekend. A pleasant English village mystery featuring the aristocracy, the lord and lady of the manor, the local inspector, the villagers - vicar and his wife, butcher, publican, postman, switchboard operator, the villian, and the spinster who has her finger in everyone's pie. There were an awful lot of bodies in this one. Then I got to a certain point and I could see the pattern behind the crimes. Yay me! I thought I knew who was the criminal as well.  Turns out I was right. Won't give away the plot or the solution. Read or listen for yourself.


Thomas Kinkaid designed pieces
that were part of a floral centerpiece

My little village consists of five little houses designed by the artist Thomas Kinkaid for Teleflora and FTD as the focal point of floral centerpieces. As my grandmother got older it was harder to find an appropriate gift so I got in the habit of sending her flowers at Christmas and these arrangements were a real favorite. Unfortunately, my grandmother (now 98 years old) is living in the nursing home where she doesn't have much space for knick knacks. I now have the collection and enjoy them all the more for knowing that they brought her joy and now they do the same for me.

Proof that Reading is Necessary for Life

Alan Bradley's newest
Flavia de Luce Novel and Holiday Mug

And I quote from the character of Ophelia (Daffy) de Luce, page 205 of Alan Bradley's I Am Half-sick of Shadows, "Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver...take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles." There, see right on the page was the proof I needed to support my honest belief that I would die if I couldn't read. Books are like oxygen, and the mitochondria in our cells can't carry out cellular respiration without it (oxygen that is not books). Cellular respiration is the way in which glucose in the blood stream is broken down into carbon dioxide, water, and transfers the energy from the broken chemical bonds to the energy carrying molecule of life called adenosine triphosphate, commonly known as ATP. Bet you didn't think you'd get a Biology lesson from this posting did you, but let's face it if you enjoy Flavia's antics you probably enjoy science enough to appreciate her passion for chemistry.

I myself am a fan of chemistry (I should be since I spend much of my day teaching it and biology to high  school students) and love to read about Flavia's plans for using her knowledge to outwit her sisters and the criminals she encounters. I won't spoil the out come of this story for you except to say our spunky gal Flavia comes through in the end.

As an aside, pictured with my copy of the newest Flavia novel is a holiday themed mug full of coffee. Caffeine, readers does not give us true energy, only food which is converted into ATP for all of life's energy needs can do that. Caffeine is a chemical that can play with our nervous system speeding up the activity of certain neurotransmitters and giving us the impression of energy. Watch out for it, too much of a good thing can be harmful.  Of course except reading. Then again, "She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain." - Louisa May Alcott

Inspiration for writing

A wise piece of advice I saw in a book one day was Betsy Woodman's quote "Never go a day without turning out a line." (p. 165) from her book Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes (Henry Holt & Company c. 2012). They were words used to encourage a writer. It was in this story that I learned that the Hindu God Ganesh is the god of writers.
I did a quick search to learn a little more and discovered that Ganesh is the Elephant headed god and is the Remover of Obstacles and the Lord of Beginnings. He is attributed to be the patron of the arts and sciences. Once I had read this I felt a kinship to Ganesh. I am a lover of the arts and of science and at this time in my life (mid-life that is) I truly find myself in a position of beginnings. Not to mention there are many obstacles in my life that I feel the need to be removed so that I can move forward. Isn't fascinating that Ganesh is responsible for these two duties, often we can not begin something new until we remove the obstacles of the old. Lately, I find that I am the biggest obstacle to my new beginnings. I'm trying to cling to the old ways which have not been working for me and hoping things will change, talk about the definition of insanity.

"It seems a bit mad," she said.
"Mrs. Laird," said Ramachandran, "the thing with madness is it often works much better than method. And when method fails, madness is absolutely essential." p. 133-134.

I like that. We're all a little mad here. (Thanks to Alice and her land of wonder)

Father Christmas and a Christmas Mystery

I am in the middle of Alan Bradley's newest Flavia de Luce novel titled, I Am Half-sick of Shadows. If you are not familiar with this series I highly recommend them especially if you are a science geek. Flavia is an eleven year old girl who has taken up an interest in chemistry following in the footsteps of a great uncle. Flavia's lives in the family manor of Buckshaw where she dabbles in the chemistry lab in the abandoned east wing. Most often she likes to brew up all types of terrible concoctions in order to get even with her two infuriating older sisters.



Images of Father Christmas
better known as Santa Claus

In this story she is out to capture Father Christmas in order to prove that he exists. Her sisters have told her that he doesn't. She has brewed up a batch Birdlime hoping to coat the chimney hence trapping Father Christmas. In the meantime holiday festivities are starting up and a movie crew is in the house having rented it as the backdrop for a new production (Flavia's family is a little hard up for cash at the moment and her father is trying to raise some by letting the house). The murder has occurred, sorry no spoilers here, the police have been called in, and Flavia's ready to give a hand to solve the crime. It's a good read. Plus as a chemistry teacher it's a tad bit of a busman's holiday.

These are all examples of cross stitch ornaments featuring Santa that I have done over the years. Most of them are Dimensions Designs.

Christmas is a coming...

During December one of my favorite things to do is read or re-read stories with a Christmas theme. For example, Ngaio Marsh's Tied Up in Tinsel is one of my favorites. This story feature's Agatha Troy, the artist wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn, taking a turn getting mixed up in the middle of a crime. Rory, as his wife calls him, only enters the story mid-way through. The story takes place in the fabulously restored home of Hilary Bill-Tasman who has hired ex-cons (murders to be exact) to serve as his staff. Everyone is preparing for the Christmas holidays, decorating the house and tree, cooking up delicious goodies, drinking hot toddies, taking brisk walks on icy moors, and someone is plotting murder.

This weekend we decorated the tree which reminded me of one of the scenes from Marsh's story where Troy and Bill-Tasman are decorating the Christmas tree in an all golden theme. Pictured here is an example of a vintage ornament that came to me from my grandparents. These were produced by the Shiny Brite company which closed its doors in 1962. I have also included a picture of the boxes. One box features Uncle Sam shaking hands with Santa Claus endorsing these decorations as American made. Want to read more and learn about these interesting ornaments? Visit http://www.sheilazellerinteriors.com/tag/shiny-brite-ornaments

Pink Shiny Brite

Packaging for Shiny Brite Ornaments