Poet John Haines (and no Haines is not named after him, but that would be something, wouldn't it? An Alaskan town named after an Alaskan poet) wrote, "Good poems come from roots." So do good lives.

Happy Tuesday, as my friend Dr. Marnie would say.

I am on the self-improvement plan to prepare my heart and head (and I suppose body too) for the coming six weeks or so of final edits on my new book (or at least I hope they will be final...) I did the January no wine thing, and now I'm practicing a daily meditation with Sharon Salzburg (It's not just the two of us or anything, and while she kindly blurbed Find the Good and her quote is on the cover, we have never met. We've never actually corresponded. She is sending a big group email with the guided meditation in it.)

John Straley writes that "Winter hardens us. These are its terms. It does not manifest its own hardness inside us, but stiffens the stuff we are already made of." I suppose you can take that two ways, hard like iron or death, or as I prefer, like the hardening off of seedlings so that they can bloom, produce fruit, and not wither in the wind or  just up and die when night falls and the temperature drops or things don't quite work out the way they had planned.

On our daily walks with the dogs my friend and I talk about all kinds of things-- politics to be sure, and the weather, and life and death (she is a hospice administrator and I write obits) and mindfulness and drinking wine ( we did some fasting for four weeks) and the people we care for and worry about, and what about that duck the girls found on Main Street and brought to the Haines Animal Rescue Kennel? Or the eleven puppies Tammie's daughter's dog had at her house while she was dog sitting for her? Or

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.” 
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.” 
― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

When I heard that Mary Oliver died my first thought was "Who will be that voice in my life now?" and the second was "Only 83?"

We begin every writing day together:

I went to Juneau for Epiphany ( Sunday January 5 we celebrate the arrival of the three wise men or Magi who followed the star to Bethlehem), and stayed on vacation for another week. On Epiphany at our church in Haines  we have a little party with a cake, which has an ovenproof ring or baby Jesus baked into it, and the lucky person who gets the slice with the prize hosts a party before Lent, which usually is the pancake supper on Shrove Tuesday.

He noticed this woman at the salad bar and she was standing perfectly still and her face was blue and so he Heimliched her and it didn't work so he shook her upside down and out popped a green olive. The manager said their lunch was on him.

I have been writing acrostic poems for the kids -- and they are a hit, except when I drop a letter from a name -- at least I only missed two and they were in middle names, but one was Lende and spelling that wrong caused a lot of laughter. It is easier to write these on my typewriter, but I'm giving it a go for you--  it was so wet and windy my camera could hardly take this photo, so I couldn't send a pretty postcard.

A New Year's Wish 

December 31 2018