Happy 2012!

Writing Goals for 2012 anyone?  I would really like to see this blog take off as a place to test out poems, short snippets, thesis statements, anything we would like a read on!  Any ideas? 


I finished the final edit today on Morveren Sea Queen for Sorita d'Este's anthology on Faerie Queens.  Now comes the "anxiously awaiting feed back part."  I submitted it early, so I have time for re-writes. 

 On the same day I got a post on an anthology for Moon Books on 21st century pagan experience.  Something else right up my alley.  I forwarded the link to many many pagan writers or hopeful writers, so perhaps this will be the catalyst they need and Moon books will get the response they were looking for!

So my goals this year include:
1. Finish Identity and the Quartered Circle before we go to England. 
2. Write a chapter for the aforementioned anthology.
3.  Find my novels a publisher.
4.  Boost this blog into a real influential site.

That ought to keep me out of trouble.  Well, maybe not.  What do you mean to get up to this year?

Generosity at Solstice

 

If you read Anemone's Assays or my facebook writer's page, this is a re-wind.  

I admit I have been completely turned off the seasonal holidays by the TV commercials, the lack of personal compassion and real thought behind gifts.  this year--maven of the holiday trees, stuffed animals, and toys bedecking the halls--I left all the "stuff" in the attic.  Eric and I simply feel disconnected from it all.  The hubbub is so distractingly irrelevant to us.   

Still, there are some wonderful things that warm the heart and get me excited.  Arranging for my teenage grandchildren's gifts is one of them.  I can't say much right now because Mikayla might read this and spoil the surprise for herself, but I'm just sayin' I like what I did! Finding the right way to say to those two young people "You are so talented, and have all the possibilities of life at your feet!" makes my day.  I hope it makes theirs.

The other tradition I am keeping is the family donation to Heifer.  Mikayla and Bradley help us go through the Heifer catalog and pick out our family gift to people who really need it.  I think last year it was chickens, ducks and goats.  Maybe sheep this year?  I don't know.  I'll have to wait for Christmas to see.  If you are not familiar with Heifer, follow the link and see what great work they do.   I like that they give to families, get the kids involved and build on the promise that the breeding animals will result in gifts to others in their community to do the same.  I think this makes a real difference.  This year they have gifts which can be ear marked for families in the US given the rising level of poverty and need found in our own borders.  In either case, Heifer will send gift cards to your friends and relatives if you give in their name.  That's what we do.  The adults in our world have enough stuff and are truly blessed.  We take what we used to spend on gifts people didn't need and give the money to Heifer. 

In addition to the family gift, each year I follow the lead from  Nathan Bransford's  Third Annual Heifer International Fundraiser and offer to match hits on my blogs or this year on my Facebook writer's page that reply to this post.  I will donate $2 up to a $500 cap (total)  for each hit on these announcements.  Just reply below with a word about who you are, a wish for the New Year and whether or not you have ever heard of or given to Heifer International.  Matching your gifts is over and above the donation our family does, so call me on it!  I'll make good!  Solstice Blessings to all.  Have a blessed holiday where ever you are and what ever you celebrate. (Give me a few minutes to get the other blog posts up.)
Find me at:
Anemone's Assays or on Facebook at Dorothy L. Abrams-Writer

Setting Up a Facebook Writer's page

I knew I had to do this sometime, but I did not expect to do it now.  Then I needed to give a website address with my bio for the Yule Anthology from Pagan Writer's Press out next month.  They accepted two of my pieces: Winter Solstice Story (a song poem about Persephone and Demeter) and The Spirit of the GiveAway )an essay about the Native American custom of the GiveAway Blanket and how we used it at the Web.  I could only offer one link.  I have two blogs, this one on writing and Anemone's Assays on paganism in the 21st century.  What to choose what to choose? 

I opted to set up a FaceBook Writer's Page under my own name Dorothy L. Abrams   and put the blog titles in my bio.  Those can be Googled.  Or Binged.  Or Yahooed.  A writer's page was quicker and easier than setting up a whole website which is on my to do list. 

Then I had to decide what to put on it.  A simple start was to post some poem I never expect to publish.  A few haikus, a birthday poem I wrote for Eric a few years ago.  Then I started posting snips about my writing process.  Bingo!  Suddenly I know what I am doing.  What a relief!

Now you can lick on my name and "like" me.  Sounds so 5th grade doesn't it?  Yet this is the process.  If you are ready to post your writerly world in public on Facebook, go "create a page"  currently hidden in the small print at the bottom of your home page.  click and follow the directions.  It is literally that simple. 

Happy self-promotion, my lovelies.

Voyage of Purpose by David Bennett and Cindy Griffith-Bennett: A Review for Amazon

Voyage of Purpose: Spiritual Wisdom from Near-Death Back to Life by David Bennett and Cindy Griffith-Bennett

“Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, God took an engineer by the hand…”  Well with apologies to Fiddler on the Roof, the joy of the tailor Motel Kamzoil infuses David & Cindy Bennett’s book.  Bennett has journeyed into the Light and returned with messages of hope for all of us:  There is life after death.    The power of eternity forms and informs our earthly existence. The worst of diseases can be healed.  Learning to be open hearted and loving is a life long journey of joy.  

I knew most of David Bennett’s story before I read the book.  I found it as enthralling as it was the first time I heard it.  My favorite part is about the scent of roses from a holy relic, something I would discount if anyone else told me.  This book erases the line between possible and impossible. It gives the Reader's faith a booster shot.  I highly recommend Voyage of Purpose as an antidote to the doom and gloom of current events.  I’m giving it as a gift to my entire list of people for Yule so they can understand miracles still happen.  

Avebury Cosmos by Nicholas R. Mann--a review for Amazon

Avebury Cosmos by Nicholas R. Mann opens the doorway we always knew was there at the stone circles.  Behind that doorway is the answer to the question “Why?”  Mann provides star charts, reconstructed graphics of the hills and rivers along with our ancestor’s construction projects to help us understand their sacred space.  He examines three circles in one place: the earthworks and stones at Avebury, the hills surrounding that complex, and the stars which circled Avebury in each of 3 millennia BCE when these monuments were constructed.  Therein lays the answer to why?  The Avebury complex is the Milky Way. 

From the chalk white ditch to the sealed Long Barrow to the last elevation at Silbury Hill, Mann illustrates in detail how the builders saw their skies and how the skies were changing because of the precession of the Equinox.  The stones reveal the changes in the sky.  The stars slipping below the horizon out of sight indicate the reason for changes on the ground.  Kennet Long Barrow was sealed as the celestial changes were nearly complete when it no longer marked the constellation we call the Southern Cross.  Silbury Hill was erected as a last ditch effort to memorialize that vanishing constellation.  From the first earthworks at Windmill Hill to the final building of Silbury Hill, the ancestors labored for three thousand years to bridge the gap between the Gods and Humankind.  It was a collective cooperative effort.  Mann understands that the Ancestors interacted with the sky.  They built a bridge for connection with it.  Avebury was not an observatory for the advancement of science, something we would more easily understand.  It was a testament of their relationship with the night sky.

Nicholas Mann has given us a fine accounting of this bond with the celestials. He is careful, more careful than I, to avoid ascribing motive or spiritual principles to his analysis of the land and stars.  Given the generations upon generations of celebrants at Avebury, he explains that the site is inclusive.  It allowed the people to explore their relationship to the Cosmos in myths that made sense to them.  Still, he offers the reader sufficient basis to draw some spiritual conclusions from their own experiences with the World Tree, tiered shamanic worlds and the circle.  I delight in his observation that Avebury is itself a quartered circle, marked by Cygnus and the Southern Cross on the north-south axis and by the ecliptic crossings of the Sun on the east-west axis against the constellations of Sagittarius and Gemini. I cheer his recognition of the Axis Mundi encircled by the Milky Way as the World Tree.  These acknowledgements fit my own cosmos, but Mann leaves room for all of us.  The work is scientific.  It is footnoted and indexed.  It lacks a glossary of scientific terms.

 Avebury Cosmos is highly recommended for the student of history, the neo pagan seeking to re-create sacred space, or the curious tourist in Avebury who asks “what was this all about anyway?”

Weather changes haiku

Good sleeping weather
No fans, no air, so quiet.
Awake waiting dreams

Abandoned Tracks on Lasher Road 9 July 2011

photo by Eric A. Reynolds


Abandoned Tracks on Lasher Road  July 9, 2011 DL Abrams

Hidden in the weeds, red rusted rails

Stretch through the summer woods like any track.

They draw me on around the bend past limits

Posted by authorities to find the

Elderberry trees and mullein plants as

Tall as me.  Inner devae hold their

Power in waste spaces, tucked away from

Observation, roads, and traffic lights. I

Barely hear the highway and lie down on

Grassy spots with leaf green spirits. If I

Journey on this Unknown Trail across

Forgotten land, I’m taken out of mind on

Rusty rails of ill used thoughts to God and

Leave you all behind. I go ahead.



Notes:  I asked Eric to take a picture of the tracks while he was out.  He took several, and this is the one nearest my intent for a poem. Frankly, we were both surprised at how overgrown they had become.  Thus, this poem is entirely different than I had anticipated.  We shall have to find a busier track for the poem I had in mind!  Thanks to Bev for the "leafy green spirits" phrase.