Iconic Moments are defining life moments we hark back to. On the downside, they may be idealistic images that keep us from being grounded in the now. On the upside, they can serve as guideposts in our lives…to follow what was best and brightest…and create more Iconic Moments to draw from, as Treasured Touchstones. How…
I reviewed this book for Story Circle Book Reviews (reviewing books by, for, and about women) and the review appears on Amazon. It’s good for the book and the whole shebang whenever you mark a review “helpful” there. Love it, if you would…..Janet ____________________ A Coming of Age Story of a Girl and a Country…
These eight men comprise a Portable Village. They bring the feeling of the village and the values of the village to the American Stage, so longing as we are and so needing this as we are as a culture. Click here to view and here video on You Tube with Ladysmith Black Mambazo performing. My…
Portable Village is a phrase that came to me in 2002 when I gave a talk at the Writers Center in San Rafael, California, on “Celebrating an African Experience.” Friends from New Mexico, Lake County, and all around came to support me in this event which combined readings, a slide-talk,good food, and a ceremony in…
In my 60th year, I set out for Africa, the continent that transformed my life when I first sojourned there thirty years before. I’d waited half a lifetime to return, and could scarcely believe that the waiting…the exile…was finally over. Yes! It’s true. I’ll be 60 at the end of December. Yes! It’s true. Africa…
I talked to a 6-year old girl after watching TV. She said, “TV sucks my brains out.” I talked to parents who grew up in the country and small towns. They told me: 1) They’d identified core values they received through their country and small town childhoods. 2)They committed to transferring those values 3) They’d…
My mother’s father farmed pigs. Courtney Johnston loved his grandkids. As we ran to him, he’d welcome us in his arms with the endearment: “My little runts!” You have to know that “the runt” is the littlest pig of the litter. And the youngest grandchild was ever his “runt.” What we do shapes our language….
Family reunions were especially big for my father’s father, J. Arthur Thompson. My brother Gary has taken up the family reunion mantle. He and his wife Patty host an annual family get-together at their lakeside home outside Jacksonville. Besides the ample good food from the garden, joking around, hearing about the crops, the haying, the…
Janet Riehl with “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” Marcy Burns has been a “friend of the book” since Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” came out in 2006. She found it through Dan Poynter’s list, reviewed it, and set about becoming a friend of the book, my work, and me. On my trip to Riverside last winter [click…
Velda Brotherton takes us on a tour to New Mexico today in photos…related to a polished third-person memoir of Edna Smith Hiller…told in “Fly With The Mourning Dove” and her wild, fun romance novel just re-published by Authors Guild…”Images in Scarlet.” (All photos courtesy of Velda Brotherton.) AUTHOR ONLINE BIBLIOGRAGHY Authors Den Buy “Images in…