Linda M. Hasselstrom's Blog, page 3
December 21, 2019
Keeping Winter Solstice: How Epiphanies Happen
The following is a chapter from my book The Wheel of the Year: A Writer’s Workbook (2015, Red Dashboard). The book is structured with sixteen essays, one for each of the eight seasons of the year, covering two years. This essay is from Year One. Enjoy.
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December 20-23: Winter Solstice (Yule)
Celebrating Yule: How Epiphanies Happen
Short gloomy days. Long cold nights. Living in the country, my retired partner and I find ourselves easily adapting to the season. As nights grow longer and days...
November 28, 2019
The Relatives Who Live in My Head
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The Relatives Who Live in My Head
show up just as I slide into memories
of grandmother’s smile as she basted the turkey.
They crowd into the kitchen
without invitation. They say
it’s just not Thanksgiving without
Milly’s broccoli and cheese casserole.
The truth is, none of them ate any of it.
Milly, my mother, elaborately ate one spoonful
that day, and we ate the rest for a week.
The relatives who live in my head say
it’s just not Thanksgiving without
Hazel’s oyster dressing. We all took...
August 7, 2019
Want to talk to me?
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Write me a letter, with a real stamp on a real envelope. Or even an email.
Don’t call. I won’t answer.
I used to have a listed telephone number in my retreat house, where people paid for solitude and silence to work on their writing. The message on that phone said that the phone was never answered by a human being, and asked that the caller leave a message, or reach me through my website or Facebook pages.
Yet year after year, that phone rang while some writer was trying to work. I silenced...
July 22, 2019
What Is a Blurb? And Why You Should Care.
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one . . .
(Stay tuned for what this has to do with blurbs)
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A blurb is a short description of a book, movie, or other product, written for promotional purposes. The blurb is usually presented as if it were written by a colleague of the author, or another professional in the same field, lauding the book without expecting any compensation.
In reality, the book’s author or an employee in the marketing department of the publisher may actually write the...
July 9, 2019
The Writer: Watching Nature Operate
NOTE: I wrote this blog in 2015, four years ago, but the similar conditions this spring—unusual rains—prompted me to slip back into this memory, still relevant. So far in 2019, our heaviest rains were in May, though this essay speaks of heavy rains in June. And just as in 2015, thistles are everywhere. I must also note that we now only have one elderly Westie, Toby; Cosmo died in February. Toby, mostly deaf, no longer has any enthusiasm for catching voles, though he still trots a few steps af...
June 19, 2019
Golden Coyote
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Last night after my bath, I was sitting outside cooling down when a couple of helicopters flew overhead. They were no doubt flying at some legal altitude, but in the prairie darkness, they seemed very low. Their choppy rumble shook the house and the deck. Even the concrete and the moon seemed to tremble a little.
I knew that what I was hearing was Golden Coyote in action. Every year, South Dakota’s National Guard hosts one of the largest and longest-running military exercises in the nation....
May 26, 2019
Memorial Day, 2019
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South Dakota, because it is so rural, has many small cemeteries in various parts of the state that may not receive the kind of attention provided at larger—and more costly—cemeteries. In some cases, there may be no group or individual who takes responsibility for cleaning trash out of the cemetery. Memorial Day is a good time to search for these cemeteries. You might provide a learning experience for your family by visiting a cemetery. Death is always with us, but often children are not expo...
May 13, 2019
Book Remarks — Cowboy Life: the Letters of George Philip, by Cathie Draine
[image error]Cowboy Life: the Letters of George Philip, edited and with an introduction by Cathie Draine; afterword by Richard W. Slatta; illustrations by Mick B. Harrison. South Dakota State Historical Society Press, (Pierre, S.D.) 2007.
George Philip was a cowhand, and as my uncle Harold might have said, clearly a “helluva hand.” But he was also a lawyer whose writing is strikingly literate and well organized, making this book a rare treasure of Western lore. During the 1930s, Philip wrote to his grandc...
May 6, 2019
What Shall I Wear?
Clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them.
— Marc Jacobs
The last time Jerry and I went to town, we did our usual town chores: got groceries, picked up some lumber for his building project, exchanged my library books.
When we got home, we both changed clothes before we went out to walk the dog. The clothes we wear to town are a bit nicer, more coordinated, and cleaner than those we don at home.
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Later in the afternoon I visited a ranch woman from this community who lives with her daugh...
April 29, 2019
Planting Peas and Writing Poems
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This poem happened precisely as it says: in early spring, I decided to plant some peas in the rich earth of my biggest garden.
The month may have been as early as March; I was probably thirty-five years old. Bundled against a cold wind and shivering, I hoed a furrow down to black earth beneath the melting snow. Then I began dropping peas into the broken ground, enjoying the way the green shriveled shapes slithered into crevices. Each time I finished a row, I straightened up and used my hoe t...
