September on the Road, #1

Kansas sky, Flint Hills on Highway 400

It has been about six weeks of being on the road, going here and there. Some of it has been fun, some has been stressful, some of it has been sad. We have seen so much of the Midwest from Kentucky to New Mexico and everything in between. This last week was sightseeing and watching the fall harvesting and noticing the earth gradually transition into autumn. Farmers harvested corn with combines that looked like massive creatures from outer space. Soybeans, sunflowers, and cotton waited their turn for the harvesters. Yellow was the predominant color as the Midwest was a carpet of wildflowers in shades of saffron, gold, lemon, and shades of raw sienna. Dashes of lavender and sumac in shades of brick dotted the roadsides.

In Kansas fields were covered with tufts of cotton bolls just a few weeks away from picking. If you thought King Cotton was only grown in the Deep South, you would be surprised to see these fields of cotton growing around Pratt, Kansas. It is a grade of cotton that produces strong fibers being used for weaving into denim.


In Santa Fe we visited a Saturday Farmer’s Market. It was wonderful, rich in color, textures, and foods of autumn harvest. Beautiful and abundant, the stalls were full of ristras, long strings of red chilies. Vendors were roasting chili peppers and they tasted

wonderful. DH does not like spice or heat so I left most of the things there, but oh, how I enjoyed looking. I did bring home chicos (dried corn), Anasazi beans, and pinon nuts from the region.

And have you ever had lemon cucumbers?


We were lucky to have perfect weather which made for the most beautiful skies. In Kansas the spaces widened out and the sky covered us like a blue shawl fringed in white clouds. As we got to New Mexico, the skies lived up to their fame of a New Mexico Blue.

Until later....

                                                    
                                                  High Road to Taos under New Mexico sky

Writing Pays

Writing is hard work and it pays little cash for many of us. More and more publishers are cutting fiction and poetry from their pages. Many ask to publish our work for just the byline, saying we are building a portfolio with them. For every John Grisham, Danielle Steele, Janet Evanovich, there are thousands of writers out there shoveling coal in the writing mine while working a day job.

Becky's contest picture

 But for me, writing pays in many other ways. This weekend it paid with a pair of socks for the coming winter when I won a 100 word writing contest at the blog of Becky Povich (Please read my win at www.beckypovich.blogspot.com). Becky sponsored a 100 word contest based on an autumn picture she had taken in Iowa. Of course it was fun to win the socks, book and other things in the winner's circle, but the work started paying when I had fun writing the piece--and it was fun! This is my second online win at a blog after winning another writing contest a few months ago with Donna at http://donnasbookpub.blogspot.com.


It is also fun and amusing to write the 100 Saturday Centus sponsored by Jenny at http://jennymatlock.blogspot.com. Becky led me to this one too. Every Saturday I say I will not get distracted by those 100 words Jenny prompts, but before I know it, the vacuuming waits, the lunch is on hold, or the mowing is accomplished while my mind is elsewhere writing in my head. These Centus prompts of Jenny's are plain fun, fun to read and fun to write. Try it sometime, but I warn you, they are habit forming.






Another fun writing experience this weekend was exchanging emails with Linda O'Donnell (http://lindaoconnell.blogspot.com). Linda and I both write poetry among other things, and Saturday we bounced some poems off each other. What fun to see another writer's work in progress, to see how their work takes shape. What pleasure to share your own work and see it through another's eyes, as together you work over the words, make them take shape.

I have never stood in a room with any of these women; I have never even heard their voices on the telephone. I had no mutual friend to link us. I found their blogs while searching for writing tips or writing links. So I consider that my writing or the love of it paid me with new friends, something money can't buy. Writing pays me sometimes in headaches, sometimes in frustration. But usually it pays with fun, friends, and a frolic with words. Sometimes it pays with publication plus a little cash, and sometimes the pay off is a contest win. Sometimes writing pays with new socks, but it pays!

*********Two copies of the October issue of St. Anthony Messenger just arrived in the mail. On the poetry page is a haiku of mine...yea, I tell you this writing can be fun!

Saturday Centus #20, Play Ball!

This is Saturday Centus . The prompt must be used word for word somewhere in the story on not more than 100 words.The prompt is highlighted. For complete rules see:http://jennymatlock.blogspot.com. I have highlighted this week's prompt in piece below.

Play Ball!

Shelly finished weekend reports for her boss, folded the last load of laundry and started to vacuum when she tripped over the puckered football, slightly deflated like herself. How many times had she asked Tad to pick it up this week?


She lost her temper, aimed her clenched foot, swung, and connected with a chair leg. Blood squirted over the carpet while her toe transformed into a ripe blue plum.


"This is never going to come out," she thought as she scrubbed at the spot on the worn carpet.


She heard Tad and cronies slam car doors returning from the game. “Out damn spot,” she heard Macbeth in her head as she rubbed the blood deeper into the fibers.


 

Rejections and Dead Poets

New Mexico, photo by Mike Myer












Blogger Linda O’Connell (http://lindaoconnell.blogspot.com) encourages writers to practice patience when waiting on news about the progress of their possible publication. It is good advice, and while I usually toss my pieces out into the publishing world and then wait for results, I sometimes feel antsy with impatience on a certain piece or project. How can those editors not get back to me quickly with a powerful and positive response!



This weekend, I got a rejection from Cappers that I had almost forgotten I had submitted. It was a unlikely piece maybe, but it touched on Route 66 info which is popular right now. But the real news in their rejection was that they will no longer be printing fiction or poetry. How sad, another story source bites the dust. I think good fiction is so necessary. A good story is entertaining, informative and lets readers try on situations in their own mind, to see alternative responses to circumstances that life throws at us. Poetry is important as well. A little here, a little there is the music or song we often miss in our daily living. Good poetry is like a tiny, joyous bell in our ear.


Thanks to poet Denise Low (http://deniselow.blogspot.com) I was made aware of a new poet event wwhen I read about a 1st Annual Dead Poets Remembrance Day. It is a poetry reading across the nation at the graves of American poets. The date is October 7th, 2010 and you can read more about it here:  http://deadpoes.org/DiaDead.html.


“We are launching this tour in order to encourage groups of people in every state to get together on October 7th to honor our dead poets by reading at their graves,” said Walter Skold, the founder of the Dead Poets Society of America. Reading will be done at the graves of the graves of some of the most and least-well known poets in the US, including Robert Lowell, Donald Justice, James Whitcomb Riley, John Trumball, and Sarah Whitman among others. Denise Low, former poet laureate of Kansas, is number 18 on the list of state poets laureate who are endorsing the celebration of Dead Poets Remembrance Day.

Due to many things, I haven't written a thing for weeks other than disjointed emails and checks to pay bills! But I have hope, always hope. Tonight I finally got to sit down with two literary journals and thumb through their jewels. In the back of the latest issue of River Styx is an announcement that the 2011 Schlafly Beer Micro-Fiction contest is open until Dec. 31. Ah, that is lots of time yet-500 words in four months? I might make that one. The nice thing about this contest is the $20 entry fee, a steep one but it gets a subscription to River Styx so writers win for sure. For info go to:http://riverstyx.org/contests/index.php

Cars in the Family

When I was a kid, our second car was a 1939 Chevy Dad bought off a friend. It had scratchy seats on little bare legs, and the back seat was stifling in summer. The radio didn’t work, but the horn did, and it was reliable on cold winter days when other cars wouldn’t start. Over the years, it began to rust and Dad decided to paint it. I looked forward to seeing a new coat of the original shiny black, but when Dad brought it home, the car was bright turquoise! Not what a teen who wants to go unnoticed wants to ride around in.

Paint history was to repeat itself when DH decided to paint our 1967 short bed pickup. We had picked the truck up at a school auction and knew its history. The original paint was a subtle yellow, but over the years it faded to a dull hue. DH decided to paint the truck while the kids were in junior high. They had visions of shiny black or maybe fire engine red. He choose a muted cocoa; they kids thought the shade of brown a color to gag on…being males, they renamed the truck The Rolling Turd. Forty three years old, the truck still serves well, but it does need a new coat of paint. It is under discussion.

Cars and trucks have always been important topics of conversations. Men sat around at family reunions discussing mileage, time they made, or highways they drove. My paternal grandfather was a mechanic, in a time when that meant wrenches and not computers! He always drove Hudsons, sleek sloping cars that reminded me of bugs. My maternal grandfather always went for sporting or dandified cars. Family history talks about his yellow Stutz Bearcat, but of course I never saw that one. When he died, his care was a fastback Mustang .

When High Hill Press posted a picture of a rusted old car resting in a field and asked for a story about it, I couldn’t resist. Publisher Lou Turner put my story up on her website with the picture. Check out High Hill Press at www.highhillpress.com and read my story while you are there. Thanks, Lou!

Teacup Tuesday/Cups on a Stick

When my paternal grandmother died a few years ago, my friend Mary opted to not send the usual flowers or potted plant. She sent me a gorgeous cup and saucer to memorialize my grandmother. I kept it on the counter and used it constantly; I enjoyed it. One day something fell out of the cabinet above, landed just right shattering the plate to smithereens without even chipping the cup. Another friend knew of someone who was making these cups on a stick for a gift shop. Pat took my remaining cup to her and had it fixed for my planter. Not all was lost.

Several years ago in a gift shop, I bought a cup and saucer on a salvaged table leg. Originally meant for a bird feeder I think, I used mine to plant a succulent (hen and chicken in) or left it empty during the summer. I loved it, but every year a little more wood rotted away, even though I pulled it up for storage every winter. This summer a chunk broke out of the saucer. Hum, squirrels? Age? A falling tree branch, maybe?


Anyway, DH had some wood in the shop that he tried turning some legs for me. They aren’t as thick and the turning is not as ornate or smooth. The wood did not turn well on the lathe, but that is fine, since we were painting shabby chic white anyway. Now that we know how easy they can be done, we can whip out some more. One of these is for my sister, one is for a friend, and one will replace mine. I hope these workout well, and that maybe we can make more. It is a great way to recycle cups with chips or issues that keep them from being used on the table but are too good to trash.

Autumn Is Coming....

Light rain threatens now after an early sun. Can it be mid-September already? Stepping out on the deck is almost chilly as the nights cool and days warm. There are no longer singing wrens; in fact, there is very little bird song and no wing flutters in our bird baths now. But at dawn there is a boisterous chorus of crickets chanting autumn on!

Crisp days make for nice tea parties on the deck which require hot tea and cookies, cakes, and goodies! Autumn means pumpkins...and pumpkin pie! Autumn brings out fire pits which means hot dogs on a stick, roasted over open fire and burnt marshmallows spongy on the inside and filled with smoke. Autumn means a Maple Leaf Parade here and many other fall festivals that show funnel cakes and maple syruped things. Autumn means football games which bring out hot sugared pecans, popcorn, and hot cocoa.


What does autumn mean where you live?