Monday Mish Mash

When I saw Rebecca's classy newspaper hat on her website a few days ago, I was reminded of my comic paper broach. A friend bought it for me at a St. Louis crafts fair a few years ago. I still love it! Visit Rebecca at http://thriftystyleatsixty.blogspot.com where you will find a lot of clever ideas!

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When I first started blogging, I was leery of what to say and what to put out in cyberspace. I would not allow anonymous comments. But last week I went into settings and changed some so anyone could post a comment without being a follower or registered with Blogger. I am always glad to see comments from around the country, around the world.

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I've been reading Lynne Hinton's latest novel, Pie Town. I have read her other books like Wedding Cake and Friendship Cake. Her stories are always pleasant and easy reads, ones for carrying in your purse and having handy for any spare minutes. Pie Town drew me because it has a New Mexico setting, a favorite area of mine. The novel starts a little slowly, but it is all a set up for the faster pace that begins to pop about mid-book. Without revealing too much, the story is about brokenness and healing. Hinton, an ordained minister of United Church of Christ, writes beautifully of Catholic faith in New Mexico and reminds us that God can be known by many names.

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DH and I took a little ride to the Mennonite store outside of town yesterday. Coming back we stopped at a garage sale on the spur of the moment. Quite a supply of odd and useless things! I did buy this Haviland bowl for $2.00. I know, it is really a soup tureen and should have a lid, but it is so pretty as is! Yes, a small chip in the rim, but it will work for a nice planter indoors or out, although making it a planter will cover the pretty little flowers that are scattered on the bowl's inside.

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I  wait for news on Storm Country, and meanwhile I get nice emails from folks still wanting to donate books for Joplin. I have a new contact who wants to donate a couple thousand novels; so this week I will see what connections I can make for her.

With weather writing in mind, some of my readers might be interested in the following writing op:

SOU’WESTER, a literary journal founded in 1960 and housed at Southern Illinois

University Edwardsville, will be devoting our next special issue (Spring 2012)
to the weather. Weather is quite a celebrity, after all – grabbing the headlines
when it’s feeling particularly unruly or whimsical. Weather has its own TV
station and its own dot.com. In the Midwest we talk about the weather with
noteworthy frequency and ardor. Yet some days, the weather is diffident, serving
as little more than a decorative (or not) backdrop of banal clouds and sky. But
it is always there.


As editors, we anticipate seeing different sorts of weather portrayed (bucolic
spring days, dark and stormy nights, etc.). But we’re hoping for variety in the
broadest sense. That is, we hope to be surprised by the many ways (subtle to
profound) in which weather has informed, inspired, or rained on your poetry,
prose, and uncategorizable written works.


Our general submission guidelines apply. Please limit your submission to a
maximum of five poems or one prose piece at a time (under 8,000 words
preferably). We will also consider a suite of two or three flash fictions.
We will read for the Weather issue until it is filled. Please check our website
for updates. We are also still accepting general submissions for the Fall 2011
issue; we expect to close this reading period sometime in October. Again, please
check for updates before submitting.
SOU’WESTER only accepts submissions through our online submission manager. When
you submit, please identify whether the submission is for the Fall general issue
or the Spring special issue on weather.

http://www.souwester.org

Claudia/Had to Know

Last Saturday in August so this is the last Saturday Centus for August! Jenny tossed out a weird one today. I am late but finally had a little something that came to me while fixing lunch. For complete rules to play and for more 100 word Centus writings. go to: ttp://jennymatlock.blogspot.com/2011/08/saturday-centus-surprise-im-pregnant.html

                                          

                                    Had to Know

Today was the day. It would be a test, one her friend warned her against trying. Jerrod wasn’t ready for a baby, but Mallory’s biological clock was running out. Jerrod had every reason in the book for not starting a family while he promised he would someday. Was he faking his true feelings? Mallory had to know.



That evening she met Jerrod at the door, looking chipper, and with a chilled glass of red wine in her hand.


Surprise! I’m pregnant!


Jerrod’s expression turned to stone. Resentment charged through his eyes, anger rumpled his lips, Mallory’s answer was written all over his face.

Book Blurb/Taos Tea

Absolutely amazing this morning! It was 61 degrees when I stepped out on the deck as soon as light was showing. I brewed tea and grabbed reading materials as fast as I could. Delightful! Of course, now at noon it is alreayd 94 again, but with the memory of 60 degree air still fresh on my skin, I can tolerate the heat.

I am slow on the book blurb today, but I didn't want to miss again. So here goes with a little ditty for the photo that Lisa posted. For more blurbs and writing rules to play, go to http://www.writinginthebuff.net/2011/08/book-blurb-friday-26-dangerous-game.html

Taos Tea

As soon as Mellie Fangrove saw the stucco building on the High Road to Taos, she knew she wouldn’t be returning to Cincinnati. She didn’t know if she could convince the locals, much less the tourists, to stop for her cranberry muffins and hand-made scones, but she was determined to try.

The local ranchers, wearing chaps and spurs, did stop in at her shop "High Mountain Hot Buns", but they wanted black coffee with their raisin scones. She didn’t give up though. She brewed a pot of dark, rich tea every day even if she had to drink it all herself.


Then one day tall and rugged Chic Montonya walked in, his dusty Stetson pushed back on his forehead, boots crusted with sheep manure and said, “Ya got any Darjeeling?” Mellie lost her heart. Had she finally found gold and riches in northern New Mexico? Only time would tell….

Blue Willow Woes

It is after 7:30 p.m. and my computer tells me it is still 100 degrees outside. Do I hear the same weather song today in August that I heard all of July? Yep, and I’m mighty tired of the music. It was also windy today which is unusual in August. It is now quite dark at 6 a.m., but it is a little cooler then. By the time I get flowers watered and bird baths filled, it is tea time and light enough to read. I would have ridden my bike this morning, but I was up a little later than normal.



I baked some sugar-free blueberry muffins before the heat began to compete with the air conditioner. They were rather ugly things because the blueberry color ran throughout the batter, but they were tasty enough to overlook their appearance. I will make them again someday when a toasty oven will be appealing on a winter’s day.

Yesterday I designated Blue Willow day in the spirit of weeding “stuff”. It was an exercise in futility! I dragged out two bins in the living room and then added pieces from the bottom of a hutch. I ran out of living room floor and had no idea what to do with the pieces. I have more in the top half of the hutch, in the kitchen cupboards, on tables throughout my house. I couldn’t part with any, didn’t know how to organize it. I have 37 dinner plates in the kitchen area alone. We use them daily but still that is a lot of plates!

Anyone who knows me knows my love of Blue Willow and the history behind it. When I was a child, I had a perfect set of child-sized Willowware made in Japan. I was child who always took care of her toys, and there wasn’t a chip in any piece. A five year old friend came to play. We put out a tea towel tablecloth, set every piece on my child’s table, and put marshmallows in the tea cups. She wanted to show me a trick. She grabbed the tea towel edge, said Abracadabra, and pulled. I screamed even louder than the sound of that breaking china.

Santa brought me a new set the following Christmas but it wasn’t Willow. He could only find a nice floral, lovely, but…. After I was married, I had a nice set of ironstone and another of pottery, but when I saw a Blue Willow cup in a flea market, I remembered my first love. The search began and DH got into it the Willow saga too. We have picked up pieces here, there and yonder. That is why I have so much and why it is a jumbled assortment of odd pieces.

A few years ago, I found a pin and ear rings made of Blue Willow at a craft show. Now if you go online you can find Broken Plate jewelry made of all kinds of china pieces. Most of it is very expensive due to the silver it is trimmed with today. I would be willing to trade some of my chipped pieces for a silver trimmed piece, but no takers locally. So while I had the chipped pieces out, DH did try his hand at shaping some pieces that I think will work as pins. We are still thinking of creative ways to use the chipped and broken pieces of Willow Ware, as I cannot toss them out. But then again, we have to have room left in the house to live here too!

Have you seen Broken Plate Jewelry in your area or are you a craftsman of such pieces?

We are sliding into almost the last week of August which seems impossible. July vanished under a blanket of searing heat that blistered the shrubs and grass to ochre shades. Then August shambled in with its normal scorching heat, made tolerable by being ten to fifteen degrees less than July.

Normally, I use Labor Day to switch the house over from the red and blues of summer, but due to the jury summons, surviving intense heat, and a few other factors, I took today to bring out pumpkins and sunflowers, to reach for yellows and oranges of autumn. It seems the seasons fly by anymore.

I have been digging in drawers and closets as I change things in the house. We have a rule here that if we bring in one thing then two things have to go out. Lately, we have been lax in following our own guidelines which has resulted in bursting closets and having things in the house we can’t even find. I watch my older friends and family divest themselves of material possessions and think I should do the same while I am the one able to do it, not leave a mess for my kids to sort or throw on an auction wagon. I think of the many tea cups, tea pots, pretty baubles, and stemmed glasses that I don’t need. None of my children or nieces will appreciate the old farm house sugar bowl stained by many families’ use or the knife rests that decorated many other wives’ table before me. Then again, I love using my things even occasionally and hate to part with them. So I part with a few, stash a few, make changes a little along.

One of the changes this weekend was my tableware. Years ago my Gran gave me a box of pretty flatware for my wedding, but I put it away. Hubby had a nasty habit of using the spoons like shovels and bending them in ice cream. We had received another set of flatware for a wedding gift as well. It was sturdy like a tool but ugly. I never liked it, but it served me well through hubby and sons. This weekend, I put the ugly utensils away and put the pretty spoons in the drawer. (Hubby now knows about an ice cream scoop too!)


I need to go through all my dishes and sort out the chipped and cracked. I need to organize the tea pots and eliminate the ones I don’t ever use (which would be hard because I brew in each one once in a great while). I need to reduce the number of tea cups down to a manageable number. Ah, but all of that will have to be another day!

The new issue of Victoria magazine came this weekend. That meant a sit down for a while to linger over lovely pictures and daydreaming over other homes with lovely dishes. The homes must be larger than mine, have more secret places to stash things. Victoria is one of the very few magazines with an end piece. I always read the last page essay of magazines first.


A few years ago, the changes began slowly but were the forerunners of print media changes. First the end page became a full page photo, maybe with a quote. Then the end page became a collection of bits and pieces, or a few questions for a celebrity, maybe even a puzzle or joke. Oprah, Southern Living, and Victoria are three magazines that still end with a thought-provoking essay or commentary.


Do you read the end of a magazine first? Do you even read magazines anymore?


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This writing op seems to have a pricey entry fee, but it might interest some of my readers.
BRIGHT HARVEST PRIZE

Best Midwest Writing 2012
The postmark deadline for our new writing contest has been extended to Tuesday, November 1, 2011. The 2012 Bright Harvest Prize is open to all writers in the Midwest (or with ties to the Midwest). Award consists of cash prizes and publication in an anthology distributed nationally, including to select agents. One grand prize for Poetry ($250) and one grand prize for Prose ($250). Honorable mentions and notables published along with grand prize winners in anthology; all selected entrants will receive one copy of anthology. Anthology publication date in early 2012.
Entry requirements:


• Cover sheet with name, address, phone, email, category entered and brief bio with statement on entrant's Midwest connection


• Poetry--up to 3 poems per entry, 40-line limit per poem


• Prose--up to 3,000 words; excerpts from longer works accepted, but indicate on cover sheet


• Manuscript double-spaced (single-spaced for poetry is allowed) with single space between punctuation and .3" tabs/indents.


• Entry fee(s) enclosed with manuscript or paid online


Entry fees are $20 per entry for Poetry, $20 per entry for Prose. Entry fees are nonrefundable. No previously published or simultaneous submissions, no email submissions. No limit on submissions, but each entry must have a cover sheet and fee enclosed (or transmitted online via PayPal or Aquarius Press Storefront). Methods of payment accepted: PayPal (to Aquarius Press), our Storefront, www.aquariuspressbookseller.net or check/money order payable to Aquarius Press ($25 fee on returned checks). No entries will be returned, so do not send originals. Enclose SASE postcard for confirmation of receipt of manuscript; enclose a #10 SASE for notification of winners.

All judges' decisions are final. Judges reserve the right to not select a winner in either or both categories. Works selected for the anthology must be provided in Word or RTF formats via email before publication. Entrants authorize Aquarius Press to use his/her entry in promotional content as needed and to make light edits as necessary for publication. Entrants may withdraw entries from consideration at any point before the contest end date but request must be made in writing.
Winners will be announced in late November 2011.
Postmark deadline is November 1, 2011. Send four (4) copies of entry, along with $20 fee to:
Aquarius Press
PO Box 23096
Detroit, MI 48223
Attn: Bright Harvest Prize

Book Blurb/Those Left at Home

No, the heat hasn't driven me so crazy I see snow! This is the picture Lisa posted today for Book Blog. It does look cool and refreshing, but I am NOT in any hurry for winter again. While not the sizzling heat of July, the heat this week has been typical of August in Missouri. Early mornings we could grab a few hours reading on the deck, but by lunch we were driven inside again.

On top of the heat, the washing machine has been down. Hubby is a do-it-himselfer which can be a double-edged sword. When he finally got it fixed last night, he had jarred so many water deposits off in the filters that water would not flow. So this morning he worked on that and in twisting the knobs, broke a pipe. Thus today was PVC glue and clean day!

As the week ends and I can do laundry tomorrow, I took a stab at Lisa's book blurb picture. Wish I had more words, but I followed the rules of 150! For complete rules and more blurbs to read, go to Lisa's blog at http://www.writinginthebuff.net/2011/08/book-blurb-friday-25-coltranes-promise.html

                                                                Those Left at Home

Snow fell as Ruth Snyder stepped off the metal steps of the passenger train, which wasn’t unusual in Vermont during November. She knew enough to expect the possibility of being snowbound a couple of months with Richard’s parents. It would be a perfect time to get acquainted with the Rileys.



It was 1943. After meeting Richard in the Connecticut USO canteen, a whirlwind courtship, and then a hasty wedding, Ruth found herself a lonesome military wife six weeks later.


Now Richard was flying B24s, the famous Liberators, in the Pacific. The hazardous planes flew out over the seas near Japan, each flight more perilous than the last. When his mother wrote asking Ruth to come to Vermont for the holidays, she thought it was an ideal time to meet his family.


Was she prepared for his tight-lipped Yankee parents, a brother home from Europe without his arm, and even Richard’s old girlfriend?

End of August's First Week

The first week in August has ended and the air has cooled. Energy returned somewhat. Then that jury summons for the months September and October came and set me back on my heels! What? After a long winter, almost nonexistent spring, a killer tornado season, recording-breaking heat strong enough to feel like cannibals had us in a stew pot over an open fire, and now someone is dampening my autumn! I picked myself up off the floor and began to get organized.


I was already slowly returning to writing, but now I have hit the rewrites this week like Aesop’s ants working around a grasshopper. A chat with an editor gave me new energy and focus plus the jury summons threatened my days enough that I have been getting up at 5:30 am to start work. I have bugged my sister-in-law for proof reading; I took pages to the Writers’ Guild for advice. Finally this morning I sent off my second (did you hear that, second!) western story to contest. Now I must return to rewriting a story the editor asked for rewrites on, and I am half way home with that.

Last night’s Guild meeting had a low attendance, but we seemed to get more done than usual. I found the conversation invigorating, but then I had pages on the table so the talk was more personal. Often some of our members talk too much on off topic subjects. How do you handle that in your writing groups? Last night, I took a timer for our Brag Session section of the meeting! I gave each member two minutes to tell what they had submitted and what had been accepted. At first the members snickered because most there weren’t offenders.

They were good sports about the timer and no one needed the full two minutes.

A writing group is a double edged sword. If you aren’t careful, you spend too much time talking about writing or sponsoring writing programs that you aren’t producing writing. I had planned last night to do some Free Writing, but our critiques were too long. I moved Free Writing to next month’s agenda, hoping to help spur the more non-productive member into action. Do your writing groups use Free Writing programs? What program have you had impressed you as most beneficial? Any ideas for me?

Also how do you draw in new and exciting members? Our guild has dwindled some, and I would like to pump new blood into this group. Any ideas on how to draw a writer to the group who is experienced enough to be an asset to others but still needing support himself from others?

At noon we picked up our friends for lunch to thank them for help when the tree fell on our deck a couple of weeks ago. They chose a new place to us, The Red Barn and Hen House Bakery. It was packed with eaters, a sure sign of good food. The menu was full of wonderful old things like chicken fried steak and homemade potato chips…and pies, pies, pies! Ate too much!


Then we drove around in the little town where we were  and checked out a flea market, found some garage sales, and a junk store. We came home with a $3 apron, a $4 wooden chair, and two Stone Hill wine glasses for $1. It was a bargain day.

Just as we got home, thunder rumbled in and soon a light rain fell. Just right for a snooze. It has been a long day but such a good one. Does writing to start the day make everything go better?


I have had literary fiction in Rosebud and can say it is a nice publication. Below is a writing op for scifi writers.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Prize For Imaginative Fiction -- original works of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, or horror; 4000 words or less. Awards: Grand prize: $1,000, 4 runners-up receive $100. All winning pieces published in Rosebud. Entry fee: $10. Rosebud acquires first rights for the five winning entries.



Deadline: September 1, 2011. Info: Acquisitions: J. Roderick Clark, editor, Jrodclark@rsbd.net. Guidelines on website at
www.rsbd.net