Particularities of the Ordinary
- At July 17, 2023
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
8
Particularities and Meaning
When I was thirteen, dad gave me a small garden plot to tend for a year. It was six feet by six feet, tilled to make plantings easier. This fertile plot of earth received my attention for a year and before long, a window of wonder appeared. I started to notice details in the garden – a small city of vermin burrowing and crawling on their knees and fliers with tiny helicopter blades buzzing the grass.
At a young age I loved poetry and thought what’s important was looking for the extraordinary and exceptional. But “noticing” particularities of the ordinary made life feel bigger, more significant. Noticing the everyday brought up memories and meaningful connections sometimes from experiences years ago or, maybe a few minutes that wouldn’t have been accessed without paying attention.
Read More»What Can Cranes Teach You?
- At April 12, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 10
“Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”—Mary Oliver
Photo by Jeanne Dill.
The cranes’ visit.
Last week, on a side road off Nebraska Interstate 80, I heard them first, the “music of an angelic avian chorus” as naturalist Paul A. Johnsgard describes the strains of the sandhill cranes. For more than a thousand years, five hundred thousand cranes have come to Nebraska and refuel in the harvested cornfields along the Platte River Valley consuming corn and other grains.
The cranes’ thin, pointed black bills move up and down like pistons and, while their heads blink red, they pick clean the harvested fields. When you see them from a distance—all those legs and elbows—they look like the moving parts of a great overheated threshing machine.
What can cranes teach you?
Read More»It’s 2018–What Are You Reading?
- At March 05, 2018
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 2
I have always loved book recommendations: the summer reading lists our teachers gave us each May, the books chosen for Oprah’s Book Club—remember those? And recommendations found in newspapers and magazines. So, each year when the Nebraska Center for the Book announces its “One Book, One Nebraska” selection, I pay attention.
This year, that “One Book” we are encouraged to read is Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry. It’s published by Backwaters Press of Omaha, edited by Mary K Stillwell and Greg Kosmicki, and contains poetry from over 80 Nebraska poets. These include former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, Ted Kooser, former and current state poets, Bill Kloefkorn and Twyla Hansen. As well as award winning poets Marjorie Saiser and Don Welch, and many others.
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