Also, I feel she's discussing totalitarian regimes of all types...but my brain went straight to the Third Reich.

"The Spirit of a Woman: Intimate Stories to Empower and Inspire" created and introduced by Terry László-Gopadze with 31 storytellers...women writers you've read and heard of and some you've never met in print. My story "Sliding Glass Door" in this collection tells of friendship lost and friendship found...and how my heart expanded in both the finding and the losing.

My story is honored to be in such magnificent company!

Click here to read my post on the Woman Spirit blog titled "Connecting to Our Wisdom Selves".

As Angeles Arrien says in the forward: “Our unobstructed creativity is the ambassador, connected to the mystery, that allows us to release the courage, vision, wisdom, and love needed to create a future world that works for everybody.”
www.angelesarrien.com

The Spirit of a Woman is a celebration of courageous women living spiritual lives in challenging circumstances. They are spiritual optimists and activists. Some have used the backgrounds of their cultures and religious traditions to lead richer more meaningful lives. Some have moved from one faith to many faiths. Others have left tradition behind to encounter spirit in new and wonderful ways. And each of them sees life as a sacred trust.

The women, who wrote the stories in this book, come from many nations, ages and personal histories. They have encountered the difficulties that are part of a fully lived life, and they have seen them in the light of eternity and the wholeness of creation. Instead of fleeing the unknown, they have honored the mystery and faced fear with faith. They see closed doors are openings to new choices and possibilities.

They tell us how love and prayer, forgiveness and hope, dance and serving others have transformed and healed them. They invite us to live our dreams and speak our truths, and when we have read their stories, we will know that we can.

The poetry collection "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary" by Janet Riehl is a soaring, poignant homage to family, sorrow, and the rebirth that comes with pain and loss. Written after the death of her sister in a tragic automobile accident, Riehl cobbled together her father's mournful poems as well as her own and set out to document the ties that bind and the things that matter most.

Interwoven with collections of family photographs are meditations on the importance of family and the comfort of kin. Using memories and recollections as her foundation, Riehl's poems are heartwrenching and triumphant. Many of the poems read as journal entries, and diary submissions. There's no belletristic prose or coruscate syntax, it's simple, it's original and straight from the heart.

Though the book obviously caters to those who have experienced a similar loss, there is a resounding conviction in her writing that allow her words to enter into the hearts of the reader. Much like Jane Brox's family memoir "A Thousand Days Just Like This One," Riehl retraces family steps while revisiting classic bits of dialogue. An example of this is in "Catechism":

Mother: "Dad Died?
Janet: Yes.
M: When?
J: Maybe forty years ago.
M: Why didn't I know about it?
J: Maybe you forgot.
M: That's possible. What else is possible?
J: I don't know, Mom.
M: Where are they now?
J: Up in heaven, I guess."

Though the book's center is initially Riehl's mourning of her lost sister, it's the pieces about caring for her ailing mother and her recollections of her Midwestern childhood that leave an indelible mark.

One of Riehl's better poems is "Praising Mother":

Your magnolia petal soul bobs down the creek
Navigating shallows and peering into depths
Delicate titmouse feather Mama, same as those
Miniature birds you feed
Before they dart into ground places.

No, Riehl's book isn't a New York Times bestseller and no, it probably won't garner glowing reviews from the folks at Harper's and Kirkus Review, but Riehl's work is both reflective and significant, and those two aspects are enough to earn this book a positive recommendation. More information on Riehl is available at her Web site www.riehlife.com.

A Coming of Age Story of a Girl and a Country

While set in Botswana and praised by Alexander McCall Smith as a "striking portrait of one of the world's most beguiling countries," the deeper subject of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle turns out not to be Africa at all. Rather, Robyn Scott has written a searching portrait of the limits of individualism and an exploration of education in its several forms.

Ordinarily, the problem with being idiosyncratic is that there you are, all by yourself. In this story, however, there's an entire clan of stark, raving individuals who totally delight one another and somehow come together as a family of eccentrics. I knew a family much like them when I lived in Botswana for three years in the 1970s, learning to speak Setswana.

What constitutes a good education? What makes a family, a culture, a nation? How does the individual fit into these gathering units? What is the trajectory of a marriage? What are the limits of change? How is the dignity of a human being colored one way or another? Searching for Robyn Scott's views on these basic questions kept me reading. Clearly, this is more than an exotic memoir of a faraway country and people having nothing to do with the rest of us except to entertain.

It is with a sense of homecoming that I enter Robyn Scott's Twenty Chicken world. Her family is one of a maverick breed of outlanders that has loved this country and contributed to Botswana's peaceful and harmonious development.

Seven-year-old Robyn came to Botswana in 1988, about 11 years after I returned to the United States. She was homeschooled by her mother until 1995, when her formal education began. A successful adult, she appears to have suffered in no way from her early fluid education of learning by doing, by observing, and by being read to.

Graceful asides define Botswana's history, culture, and challenges, including the AIDS crisis, which is told in frank language. Written mostly from the point of view of a child, this is a coming-of-age story of the best kind. As Robyn matures, she takes us through Botswana's changing fortunes in the Selebi-Phikwe area of the Limpopo River and later on a game farm closer to South Africa. This is an environment that both embraces her and allows her to grow up on her own terms.

Twenty Chickens is particularly good at describing Botswana's plant life and wildlife and the freedom of the bush land. The narrative is complemented by photos, a rough map, endearingly drawn icons, and glossaries of Setswana and Afrikaans. An index would make the book even more accessible.

One of my favorite sections is Chapter 16, The Whole Family's Half of an Island. Here, more than in other chapters, we are given a direct sense of Botswana culture and relationships and the heartfelt hospitality lavished upon extended family, even if part of that family is white. There is playfulness and ingenuity here, and a demonstration of natural Batswana diplomacy which is wonderfully revealing of this quiet people living in a vast land.

AUTHOR ONLINE BIBLIOGRAGHY

Authors Den

Buy "Images in Scarlet" here... and buy Fly with the Mourning Dove here.

Velda's website

Velda's blog 1

Velda's blog 2

Documentary video (highly recommended!)

Today, the Tusas ranch in New Mexico is on land where Edna originally lived in "Fly With The Mourning Dove". It remains a working ranch where horses and cattle graze the high country through the summer months before being transferred to Antonito, Colorado where the other ranch is located. Her father bought the Colorado ranch in 1949. In those days the cattle were driven on the trail, now they are transported by semi-trailer trucks. Edna continues to manage both ranches at the age of 94.

Tusas River Ranch

Tusas River crossing at ranch: The opening paragraph of Fly With The Mourning Dove speaks of this bridge:

?In this, my ninetieth year, I've returned once again to the New Mexico ranch I'll forever call home. To this day, I get a thrill out of topping the hill between the sagebrush flats and the Tusas River valley. In the early light of dawn, the adobe house waits in the shadows far below, and I hurry to reach it, the car's tires clattering over the wooden bridge that spans the Tusas river. I park, get out and move through the yard. Over the
Sangre de Cristos, the sky is splashed with a brilliant glow that spreads crimson over the mountains.

Ranch horses Some of the horses that pasture on the high desert at Tusas during the summer. They had been brought down to help with the roundup of cattle.

Ranch In Snow

1940s My mother took this photo from the highway above the ranch. This is much how the homestead appeared during the winter months. Edna's mother Cassie lived there for an entire winter alone, with only a cat and a horse for company while Edna's father worked for the narrow gauge railroad because they needed money to keep going. Edna was with her grandparents in South Dakota.

Rio Grande River

Rio Grand River cuts down from the north through the center of New Mexico. The narrow gauge railroad from Colorado to Santa Fe, New Mexico ran alongside the river with stops such as Taos Junction, where Edna and her family detrained to take a wagon to their first homestead in Fly With The Mourning Dove.

Galardia commonly known as Indian Blanket carpets much of the high desert, growing from crevices and apparently from rocks. Though I've tried for years I can't get the flower to grow in our lush and wet Arkansas Ozarks.

Narrow gauge Railroad from Antonito, CO to Chama, New Mexico Today a narrow gauge railroad takes tourists on a breathtaking ride through the San Juan Mountains. It would be much like that first trip taken by Edna, Cassie and Finas Smith in Fly With The Mourning Dove

IMAGES IN SCARLET

Cerrillos, (Little Hills) New Mexico on the Turquoise Trail, once known as the capitol of New Mexico This would have been a thriving turquoise town during the time of the book, Images In Scarlet after the Civil War. When we visited during researching in the late nineties, little was left but one small business that sells gems from the mining past.

Cattle Country and Back Trail: Two Tales from the Thompson Western Series
Erwin A. Thompson
ISBN: 0-595-40228-3
Publisher: iUniverse
$17.95 US
Reviewer: Gordon Randall

Buy on "Cattle Country and Back Trail" on Amazon by clicking here.

Randall begins his review by saying...."Turns out that Cattle Country and Back Trail by Erwin Thompson grabbed me by the horns like a champion roper and tied up my attention tighter than a piece of wet leather. Though it may be fiction, the author sure has a knack for this genre ‘cause I was immediately drawn into the action quicker than a drunk gun slinger on Saturday night. Thompson paints the picture with vivid descriptions of the rural countryside as well as the muddy ruts of old western towns. Thompson knows people, too. He takes you inside every character’s head so you understand where each of them came from, how they got where they are, what made them who they are, and why they act the way they do. He would have been a great cowboy psychologist!"

Click here to read the preface of "Cattle Country and Back Trail" on Amapedia.

At the Mercy of the River: An Exploration of the Last African Wilderness by Peter Stark

"There is always something new coming out of Africa."
--Pliny the Elder

I'm participating in the Adult's Reading Kid's Stuff at the library again. I love that I can get prizes for reading this summer too! Also, with children's literature I can read it in a day sometimes. Since I'm reading to the boys anyway, it's nice to get two free milkshakes, what I choose from my prize list, and be entered into the raffle drawing at the end of the summer. T. is keeping track of his reading this summer. A. is ahead because he just has to listen to 5 books a week and sometimes we read that many in a day. At the end of the summer when they complete the program, they each receive a free book of their choosing from a wonderful room filled with new books of all types.

Two books I've just read are both by Pam Munoz Ryan. She also wrote the "Becoming Naomi Leon" book I read last summer. Yesterday I read "Esperanza Rising" and today I read "Riding Freedom" before getting out of bed this morning. (Very unusual I get to stay tucked in with a book, but today I did and it felt so good. Snuggles our cat kept me company.)

"Riding Freedom" made me think of Grandpa. The very first paragraph said about the main character, "When she was nothing more than a bundle, she surprised her parents and puzzled the doctor by surviving several fevers. Folks said that any other baby would have died, but Charlotte was already strong."

Then at the end of the prologue it was said about her, "Since the day you were born, you've been determined as a mule and tough as a rawhide bone."

There were more gems of wisdom throughout the book about not giving up and being determined and driving a six horse team. "Riding Freedom" won a lot of awards that were listed in "Esperanza Rising" since it was written after "Riding Freedom".

My writing pal Ernest Dempsey is also known fondly on Riehlife as "our man in Pakistan"---you can find many blogposts about his work on Riehlife under "Read On" and read his poems under the "Writing Matters" archive categories. I asked him to tell us the story behind the creation of his new book TWO CANDLES. I wondered how he found the connection to My Lucky Guitar Press.

Ernest says: "I have been publishing my short fiction in Skive quarterly magazine off and on. Mathew Ward, editor of Skive mag, started his own press 'My Lucky Guitar Press' and was open to book submissions. So I sent him Two Candles. He liked it and agreed to get it published. That's how Two Candles was born."

I love the writing tip that emerges from and links to the title of Ernest's new book. Just think...you can start a writing practice in any circumstance. Ernest wrote in turbulent times and found writing poetry a way to center his soul and find calm, strength, and peace. ---JGR
____________________________

Ernest Dempsey (looking quite ernest!)

THE STORY BEHIND "TWO CANDLES"
by Ernest Dempsey

The summer heat is building up here and it’s about 40 C in Peshawar, Pakistan. Still I feel so cool! Reason? Well, my second poetry book Two Candles is here and I am all joy! It is a collection of 74 poems, published by My Lucky Guitar Press (Australia).

LIGHTING TWO CANDLES

The title ‘Two Candles’ has quite a story behind its origin. Some months ago, in winter, I had a few candles in my room to light the place in case of a load-shading episode. One night, I just felt like writing a poem and doing so in candle light.

So I switched off the electric bulb and let my creative flow along with my pen on paper in the aura generated by candle light.

TIP FOR WRITING PRACTICE...ESTABLISH RITUAL AND ROUTINE

Thus started a writing habit that lasted for a couple of months. I got used to switching off the light, lighting two candles (instead of one) and write a poem or sometimes two poems daily at night in my hostel room.

SIGNIFICANCE OF TWO CANDLES?

Why two candles? Primarily because two candles gave more light and somehow they looked more beautiful and soothing than one. I suppose that by making this choice of lighting two candles instead of one was, unconsciously, finding my way of countering my solitude and loneliness.

However, it never occurred to me who this second candle potentially represents. I never consciously thought of it until last night. And it is of course no one else but my brother Shais who is my second self, my half being. And then I wrote to Matt this morning to include a dedication page in the book, dedicating this collection of poetry to Shais. That is the story behind Two Candles.

Click here or on any of the red text live links to read more about Two Candles.