We can dialogue with objects and use them as our muses in learning more about place and ourselves in relationship to place. Several presenters at the Story Circles Network “Land Full of Stories” conference brought objects with them as prompts. In one workshop I attended the objects were displayed on top of a table. I…
In the “Always Coming Home” workshop I gave at the Land Full of Stories Conference we began by generating a list of writing topics we could write on when we returned to our homes. Each woman had a new journal to write in with a rose on the front in full bloom–her homecoming journal. We…
One of the pleasures of the Story Circles Network “Land Full of Stories” Conference I just came home from was meeting Cindy Bellinger. I attended her workshop on journaling, bought her new book on journaling, and enjoyed having her participate in my workshop “Always Coming Home.” Her website describes Cindy as “a Western girl through…
My father wrote this poem recently for his mother’s friend, Susie Bernheart. He says, “Susie was Sweetheart of the Ag Club, and anywhere else she went at the University of Illinois in 1903. In addition to her nice looks and gracious manner she was intelligent and courageous. Her loyalty and her friendship was as solid…
Critique. I dreaded it. I hated it. I learned from it. And, finally, I was fortunate enough to encounter a teacher, Betsy Davids, who fully understood what critique really meant and what its purpose really was. She saw critique as a form of appreciation, as a time of joining with the piece and giving back…
Everything I learned about critique, I learned in art school. My art school used to be called the California College of Arts and Crafts, in Oakland, California (for those of us who studied fine arts) and San Francisco, California (for those who studied design and architecture). Curiously, in recent years, the college opted to drop…
The earth is old. Nothing lasts. All life is kin. Different eyes perceive different worlds, and much remains hidden. Ours is an age of extinctions; ours are the hands of the destroyers. Grief and beauty are knotted together. Curiosity and imagination are fundamental human forces. So are fear and hatred, passion and compassion. None of…
BUS RUN by Janet Grace Riehl (from Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary) My drumbeat feet round the corner of our private road that rushes down towards the river. A bulldozer a decade past shaved off the sharp bend in the road to reduce the odds that downhill cars crashed into uphill cars. We trudged up this…
GULLY by Janet Grace Riehl (from Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary) I raise my head from the ground where my eyes were glued to avoid tripping over my feet. A cleft joins the two curves of the hill, a dimple that marks its face like Cary Grant’s. Matted grass cushions my steps pattering over yesterday’s mud….
Here are some of the early lesssons I learned growing up on the land of Evergreen Heights…about sex, alcohol, and protecting your territory from intruders.–JGR GATED COMMUNITY (from Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary) Three gates protected our hilltop kingdom. One at the bottom, just past the No Trespassing sign. One at the top, just short of…