Inspired

After a three-week hiatus traveling abroad, it’s terrific to be back at my kitchen-counter desk.  I have so many fun challenges to tackle right now!  Several writing projects have me fired up — some are already underway and more are incubating, brewing and otherwise demanding attention!

When Kisa originally helped me set up the Dark Horse Books blog (could it really have more than two years ago now), one of the advantages was how quick and easy it was to write just a few words to update folks. So, rather than spending more time than I have at the moment, I will just share this:  2011 is already shaping up to be a fascinating and fulfilling year and it’s only six days old. 

And for a little historical perspective, this is a shot taken in a centuries-old monastery in Meteora, Greece (the monks used these giant casks to hold water at these remote sites atop limestone spires.) 

To one and all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Opting for the landscape rather than a portrait

When we were first married, Peter and I often sent out photo greeting cards for Christmas. Always something corny, goofing around. However, now that we’re near our 30^th wedding anniversary – and some days the years show more than we’d like (!) – we prefer the beautiful view from our front porch more than a shot of the two of us.

This year I’m using Shutterfly, an on-line service that truly understands personalization.

I love this classic photo of the sunrise over the Tetons to the east of our home! I’m going to combine it with a multi-lingual wish for peace, and voila, we have a special card we can use all year.

Shutterfly makes it easy, with customized text and inside layout, and they use cardstock from sustainable forests. It only takes a few minutes.

See the design I’ve chosen (Spread Peace, by Yours Truly) and 288 other affordable and fun cards here.

Pleased as punch…

… to “announce” that as part of my duties as editor of Teton Home and Living Magazine,  I’ve started blogging for LifeInTheTetons.com.  Yesterday I posted my first note there — the link will take you directly to “Striking Gold” — all about a litle road trip Peter and I took last weekend to Virginia City, Montana. Check it out!  (This is one of the photos NOT posted elsewhere.)

I’m quite inspired by this spot. In fact, they hold two “grand balls” each summer and attending one of those — complete in garb from the 1860s — is looking like an addition to my very own personal “bucket list.” (Must admit I’ve never actually put something like that together, but the notion of dressing up and learning how to dance like they did in the Civil War — and doing it in a preserved historic setting — has a LOT of appeal!)

While you’re at the LifeInTheTetons site, be sure and see the REST of it, too; it’s a marvelous capsulization of Jackson Hole and Teton Valley, with helpful links to lots of other information about this area. And if you go to the TH&L page, you’ll see pieces from the last issue of the magazine, a commemorative of the publication’s first ten years, including a story I wrote  several years ago (“Craftsman Built”).

And if  THAT’s not enough, you can see more pix of the road trip to Virginia City in a photo album (with that name) on my FaceBook page — AND you can become a fan of  LifeInTheTetons.com on FB too.

Happy traveling!

Feb. 7

Didn’t read much this week, but I did finish The Wet Engine by Brian Doyle — a book that will live on and on in my heart. (And I’m so looking forward to meeting Brian in April!)

Absolutely too many jewels to share…

Here’s one:

“Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.”

Another starts two-thirds down on page 123. It, like a few paragraphs from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, I will share and read aloud and never forget. 

In the acknowledgements, Doyle credits his friend author David James Duncan as being “the man who wants to live heartish and not headish,” and goes on to “assign homework” to read his other books among others — which to me just proves that writers must surround themselves with good writers (and continue reading.)

I’m also inspired, this morning, by another friend, another writer, who’s thinking of joining this crazy blog world, too.  She sent me a beautiful piece she’d written, which is, like the Wet Engine, staying with me as I type these meager words.

To her, I say come on along!  To you, I say, thanks for making me (my reading, my blithering, and as of a few hours ago, my cooking!) part of your life.

Happy reading.

A poem to ponder

I wrote this poem for a mid-April Poetry Slam at Dark Horse Books last year, and just found it in the files I’ve transferred from the bookstore. It hit quite a chord and decided to share it here. All part of life’s journey, I guess…..

At My Age

The number of weeks in a year,
The number of playing cards in a deck,

I’ve survived my father’s passing,
My mother losing her memories but not her smile,
Two good friends; old, old friends;
Nearly all my aunts and uncles,
My parent’s generation:  just about all gone,
And many loved ones and others who’ve passed my path
(Jon Benet’s mother and Jean from Jackson, who spoke Greek
when we were in Piraeus all those years ago.)

I am 52, and I can’t believe it,
Except when I see my mom’s face in the mirror in the morning,
The face I remember from when I was about 12,
And my teeth now look like hers did, and my legs do too,
But my eyes remain holding the glimmer of my daddy,
Gray-blue when I’m tired or stressed.

And I wonder if I’ll live to 91; it’s only 39 years away.

Copyright Jeanne Anderson 2008