After Fifteen Years…

Lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been filtering much of what’s going on in and around me through the lens of the events of 9/11. I imagine many of you have been, too.

Back in those days, I served as editor of a magazine called Monday Morning. It was a publication of the Presbyterian Church (USA). During that time, I lived in a very special time zone known as “magazine time.” Sitting down to write involved quite a bit of trying to figure out what would be going on in the world about a month later when a particular issue actually made it to the readers. Christmas and Easter were easy. General Assembly. Back-to-School. You get the idea. The hard part was dealing with the things we couldn’t anticipate.

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To everything there is a season…

I love back to school time! I have ever since I started first grade without benefit of kindergarten. I was way ready. I was going to learn to read! In fact, the oral tradition in my family holds that I returned home after that first day of first grade and swore I was never going back. I’d been there 6 whole hours and no one had taught me to read yet!

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Caution…Grammy is learning new things!

On Monday and Tuesday I wrote recipes. I’m about done with the bone broth recipes and have moved on to lots of yummy things to do with that freezer full of broth once you’ve got it. The possibilities are nearly endless!

Wednesday brought a bit of a calendar melt-down, followed by a video meeting with Dr. Scott Mills, the Chief Evolutionary Officer from Planet SARK. If I were to tell the truth, I’d admit that the whole video meeting thing still weirds me out some but I’m getting better. (I seem to have early childhood camera traumas that still need some work!)

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Newfies Are Good At Helping!

Hi! It’s me, Sarah!!!

Mom’s doing that thing she calls writing again. It must be fun because she sure does a lot of it.

Sometimes I kind of wish she’d do a little less. She doesn’t really want to play football with me when she’s writing and she says, “Wait, please,” a lot. I know those words!

Right now she’s writing about soup. She says that’s why the house smells so good. I like soup. Sometimes she makes me some of my very own. It has things I’m not allergic to in it. (Whatever that means!) And it’s supposed to help my back and hips feel better. Mom said she’d even put the recipe for my soup in her book. Maybe I’ll be famous!

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All I’ve Got…

I would imagine you’ve noticed that it’s been a crazy week in the world. Well, many weeks and months, I guess. Years, even…

There are all the routine attention grabbing things in life. New ways of eating. A lot more shopping. Sarah, our Newfie, got stung by a bee, right in the corner of her eye. She’s fine now. (Really!) Things to write. Things to edit. Things to plan. Things to read. Things to wash and water and fix. A new mailbox to install. (The door fell off the old one.) And a different door that suddenly doesn’t close right. Soup to make. Appointments to keep. Travel schedules. Well, you get the point.

Then there are the big things for so many of us. The truck bombing in Nice. The racial issues we face as a nation of human beings. The political chaos that is running rampant in America. Hunger. Violence. Homelessness. Bigotry of all kinds. Climate change. This morning, Baton Rouge, again. And on and on and on.

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To Everything There Is A Season…

The other day I was weeding through a bunch of my pictures on the computer. (Understand that this is progress for me! I’m still really a shoe box kind of person!) It seems the more the writing grows, the more art I need, and thus, the more skills!

One picture really struck me. You know, one of those ones you look at and say, “Awwww” and move on because it wasn’t at all what you thought you were looking for? I moved on and went back and moved on and went back quite a few times. And then I began to wonder what this picture was saying to me.

As you’ve probably guessed, that’s me on the left, Mom in the middle, and my sister, Molly, on the right. It’s possible that this is the only reasonably decent snapshot that exists of the three of us since about the time I started first grade and decided I hated having my picture taken.

The obvious question is, why this picture, now?

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Bike riding and life…

Back in the dark ages before Angry Birds and tablets, bikes were a big thing. At least for me!

My first 2 wheeler was used and red and rusty. My folks didn’t believe in training wheels and this was long before bike helmets. It took me a while to get the hang of it. Now I know why!

I’ve spent the last 15 years or so learning hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming (NLP). One of the first things learners must wrap their heads around is the seemingly counter-intuitive notion of focusing on what you do want…on where you’re going, rather than focusing on what you don’t want.

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