Bonnie is a Denver-based author whose interest in writing led to her career in nonprofits doing public and community relations and marketing. She’s worked for libraries, directed a small arts organization and managed Denver's beautification program. Simultaneously, she’s been a free lance writer with publications in local, regional, and specialty publications for news and features. Her main interest now is fiction writing, and her pieces have won several awards.
Birthdays and holidays when I was small were times for presents. One thing I learned quickly, however, was, like Animal Farm, some people were more equal than others when it came to the gifts they received. Kids got noisy, shiny, interesting things you could move, tinker, manipulate or fantasize with. Move up the age spectrum and the goodies got less impressive. Books, recordings and clothing constituted the bulk with occasional jewelry or kitchen appliances thrown in to relieve the tedium.
The worst, most pathetic offerings had to be to grandparents. They’d sit nearly immobile in overstuffed chairs, a small smile plastered across their lips, pathetically grateful for whatever disgusting trinket came their way. Their tiny pile of gifts contained smelly, boring items that deserved to be thrown in the trash as soon as they got home. I wondered how they could use ten bottles of scented lotion, four boxes of scented powder, and seven bottles of scent. Pity always filled me, and I dreaded the day I’d be a grandparent.
Well, here I am. And, yes, I’ve begun to receive those dreaded items, but now I think they’re not so bad. Why is that? Because I already have nearly everything I want, and virtually everything I need. Even art, which I love, or handmade crafts, which always impress me, I no longer am tempted by. Yet I know that formalized occasions include acknowledgement of close relationships of all types.
So there must exist a socially acceptable method to accomplish this. Hence gifts.
Also hence the prohibition against looking too closely at the offerings. If we examine a goody intently, we may decide we don’t care for it. Or it’s too big. Or the wrong color. Or not our style. Better to simply offer a gracious acknowledgement.
Logically if there’s a gift receiver, there’s also a gift giver. We don’t want to offend these friends, relatives, associates, so don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. When given a horse, it would be bad manners to inspect the horse’s mouth to see if it has bad teeth. This can be applied as an analogy to any gift: Don’t inspect it to make sure it matches some standard you have, just be grateful! Irrelevant what the gift is, as long as people give and receive appropriately.
After a party or holiday, kids always race toward their friends to ask, what did you get? They provide a list of their booty and compare the loot with their friends. As we approach adulthood, we discover it’s more fun, as well as blessed, to give as well as receive. Most of us stop keeping score. And as the years go by, the loot is less and less important.
So how do you know you’ve reached the age of awareness? You start getting consumables. If your parties feature candy, coffee, tea, flower (potted or bouquets), perfume, powder, lotion, cookies, popcorn, baking kits for bread, you’re pretty much past the excitement of surprise. Rest content. All of these can be used up or given to grateful friends or service organizationraffles. You won’t have to find storage space, and you’ll provide joy to the givers.
The other night I settled down to watch a courtroom drama. In the story, defense attorneys in a gun violence case try to bribe a jury. As a writer of fiction, I know that authors get to construct a world of such extremes that few of us would want to live there. So it was with this movie. Both hero and heroine and the bad guy attorney set out to get what they could, double crossing each other to the tune of $15 million, which was the price for buying the jury’s verdict.
Let me tell you about my own experience of jury duty. While called several times, I’d never been selected before. So it was as a complete novice that I entered the jury room and met my fellow citizens who would rule on a drunk driving case.
The defendant aroused some compassion. She was a pharmacy student, and conviction could have ruined her career. But as the case unfolded, it became clear that she acted deliberately to try to deceive police. Taken to the police station for driving erratically after leaving a bar, she refused to take a breathalyzer test. She promised to take a (supposedly more accurate) blood test at a nearby hospital and submit the results. She knew that the level of alcohol in the bloodstream lessens after several hours and so she waited to go to the hospital. She did not realize that the hospital would note the exact time of the test, and report this to the police.
In the jury room, we jurors got acquainted. We worked in construction, the post office, and in real estate. We were young and old, homebodies and partygoers, and people who enjoyed a drink or two. We were not judgmental. But we had to be. We discussed the case carefully. We talked about our values. We talked about the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions and for being honest. The young defendant had not injured or killed someone (though that was sheer luck) and so some of us struggled with the idea of hurting her future with a guilty verdict. In the end, we felt her lack of remorse and the fact that she’d tried to use her professional knowledge to escape the consequences of breaking the law must lead to a guilty verdict.
What I learned from my days as a juror was this: most people recognize what is right and what is wrong. Meet random strangers in a jury room and you’ll come out, as I did, full of hope for your fellow human beings. Still, criminal cases provide fodder for the writer. We have to create situations where characters do stupid things. That’s because no one wants to read about perfect people. We
can all sympathize with a girl like our defendant, who was only as foolish as any of us. But we, her peers, found her guilty, because not to do so would make a mockery of the law.
Margaret Ann Spence
Margaret Ann Spence’s novel, Lipstick On The Strawberry, will be published by The Wild Rose Press in 2017. She blogs at http://www.margaretannspence.com.
“Comfort food.” A phrase to describe nibblies we crave when we’re sick, depressed, and out of sorts. Often based on nostalgic or sentimental feelings, especially from childhood, valued by the diner. This describes dishes like mac & cheese, chicken soup, apple pie, tomato soup, fried chicken. While comfort foods do bring comfort, I’ve found another activity that accomplishes the same end without calories. Comfort books.
Often books read in childhood or adolescence, sometimes a volume from adulthood that I’ve read over and over, they function like an old friend. I greet them with a cry of recognition and close them with a sigh of satisfaction. For me, this means they aren’t terribly complicated and at least some of their characters are pleasant, interesting and good. Needless to say, they wrap up happily. Other people include more challenging or depressing material. It’s up to you.
I’ve discovered a number of my childhood favorites are now in the public domain. This means I can locate them as free ebooks. I recently reread Heidi and Tarzan of the Apes, and made some discoveries. I still loved the description of Grandfather toasting cheese over the fire in Heidi. (Hmmm, is there a relationship to mac & cheese?) But there many more descriptive passages of the mountains, flowers, snow, city, that jumped out as good writing. Tarzan, too, contained much more illustration than I recalled, as well as action and developments that moved so rapidly they can serve as examples to improve my own writing.
The first book I learned to read on my own has become a comfort book. I was so enamored of The Backward Day,the story of a little boy who gets up and puts his clothes on backward and sits backward at the table and walks backward to school, my first-grade teacher had me visit other classrooms and read it out loud. I’d love to locate a copy of The Wonderful Visit to the Mushroom Planet, discovered in seventh grade and the impetus for my fascination with some science fiction since. Another series in the scifi genre, the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, distracts me in times of political crisis and gives me a positive vision of the future.
Since I realized that many of the oldies are, indeed, available as free ebooks, I’ve downloaded more. The Five Little Peppers, Anne of Green Gables, Wizard of Oz, Black Beauty. A number of websites provide free electronic versions. If you search Amazon for titles of old favorites and add “free,” you can usually find them. Project Gutenberg specializes in converting public domain books to ebooks at no charge (https://www.gutenberg.org) as do others (http://www.freeclassicebooks.com, www.manybooks.net, etc.). Mysteries, romances, history, philosophy, plays, an endless stream for your pleasure and comfort.
I thought I invented the term “comfort book,” but I find through a search, others also know the concept. If you go online, you’ll find sites to guide you to these readers’ individual lists. And next time you need a little emotional comfort, try an old book favorite. Heart and soul, you’ll feel better, and you’ll add zero calories.
Nearly every headline I see this time of year makes a statement about new beginnings: “It’s a New Year––A New Beginning,” “New Beginnings––Jumpstart Your New Year” and on and on. I hear these words each year. Am I really starting over or just rewinding for a rerun of last year?
The opinions about fresh starts and new beginnings are as varied as the persons voicing them. Several years ago a wise suggestion came my way with a new perspective on this “new beginning” concept. Instead of focusing on a redundant resolution routine, how about taking inventory on what I’ve attempted, accomplished, achieved the previous year and then becoming intentional about improving in the new year?
Now that’s something I could grab and actually follow through all year long. My inventory items include:
How many books did I read?
How many new people did I meet?
What events, experiences did I celebrate?
What obstacles did I overcome?
What new thing did I learn?
What unfinished projects will I complete THIS year?
Was I an influencer or an agent of change? How? For whom?
Each person’s inventory list will be as unique as his personality and creativeness allow. This approach to a new year energizes me more than staring at a list of resolutions that lose their luster by springtime.
By kicking off a new year with this method, I’m not excluding the past year, but instead building on it. My past is part of the foundation on which I will begin building this new year. As a writer, I’m always writing new chapters. Isn’t that what 2017 will become? Another chapter in my life’s story? How will it read by December 31st?
I do appreciate the opportunity to start fresh in January. It gives me the chance to ask “what if” as I peer into the months ahead. What if I stretched myself to try something new (rock climbing comes to mind for me this year)? What if I stopped talking about the next book I want to write and actually begin the outline and then sign up for a class on How to Write a Book in 30-Days?
The holiday hassles are past. Now is the time to change our tune from Deck the Halls to The Beat Goes On and get into the rhythm of the New Year and create New Beginnings.
What’s your “what if?”
“There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
~ C.S. Lewis
By Connie Pshigoda
Connie is a natural health consultant with over 40-years experience, guiding her clients into healthy lifestyles and new beginnings using simple, real food seasonal recipes. Her award winning Wise Woman’s Almanac: A Seasonal Guide with Recipes for New Beginnings that Never Go Out of Season may be purchased on Amazon. Visit her at http://wellnessforallseasons.com
Despite my name (and as far as I know barring furtive inroads in the night), I have no Irish blood or ancestors. However, I married a man who’s 100% American-Irish and soon I became steeped in the history, literature and outlook of the bold Fenian men and women who once struggled for independence and still support republican principles. St. Patrick’s Day, that annual reminder of all Irish, invites everyone in the US to become part of the fest, as I did. But what, really, are we celebrating?
Not green beer or rowdy parties. Neither fist fights nor silly hats. From St. Patrick and down through the centuries, the Irish struggled to break from traditional and abusive powers to establish new, sometimes radical, systems of government and society. They took centuries to create a separate government for a part of their island and homeland, at times educating their children under bushes because they were prohibited by the Brits from sending the kids to established schools. They were passionate about preserving their culture, their freedom, their self-determination.
Accomplishments accompany passion. History, indeed life and people around us now, support this idea. Many other qualities, too, such as hard work, creativity, and vision may be important. But passion drives the whole kit and caboodle. Those with passion might ignore the limitations of law, tradition, even human biology (think of Edison and da Vinci, notorious for short sleep cycles) to pursue their dream.
If we translate this passion into fervor behind a social movement, we see similarities. Those committed to their vision ignore deprivation, poverty, separation from families and friends, violence, imprisonment, even death. St. Patrick certainly did. And people can legitimately feel this decision is justifiable. The caveat: can this commitment cross the line from positive to destructive?
Terrorists are driven by zeal, but most of us agree they go waaaaay too far. There is a line beyond which violence and coercion usurp whatever good might occur from supporting their beliefs. A passion for what’s right, however that’s defined, a group’s protectiveness of its people and principles presents a quandary for any social or political unit working for change. Including the Irish. The IRA promulgated thousands of deaths and injuries while pursing their goal of an independent Northern Ireland.
I’ve pondered the question, “How far should someone go in defending his beliefs?”and decided I deplore all violence and coercion. Instances like 9/11, Sandy Hook, Isis attacks, Charlie Hebdo should not occur. Obvious? No. “The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history,” said Finnish environmentaist Kaarlo Pentti Linkola. And US Senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater said in 1964, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
I disagree. This St. Patrick’s Day I’ll be ready to swap spit with those passionate about their principles, but not those willing to fall into violence and terror. I think Saint Patrick would be of the same mind.
Birthdays and holidays when I was small were times for presents. One thing I learned quickly, however, was, like Animal Farm, some people were more equal than others when it came to the gifts they received. Kids got noisy, shiny, interesting things you could move, tinker, manipulate or fantasize with. Move up the age spectrum and the goodies got less impressive. Books, recordings and clothing constituted the bulk with occasional jewelry or kitchen appliances thrown in to relieve the tedium.
things. That’s because no one wants to read about perfect people. We
Bonnie McCune, author 