Irene Latham's Blog, page 178

THE ART OF LOSING THINGS

Happy Poetry Friday! Roundup is at Language, Literacy and Love. And come back next Friday, when Roundup is HERE! I'll be giving away some volumes of poetry for all you word-lovers out there.

So, onto today's poem.

I've been losing things lately. At first it was little things like a novel left in a hotel room. Or my cell phone case (who knows where). Then I very nearly ran out of gas. (Ummm, distracted much?? That hasn't happened since I was a teenager!) And now I've graduated to bigg...

LONG LIVE TAYLOR LAUTNER

What I found after almost-thirteen-year-old-niece-who-is-beautiful-and-precious-and-amazing left the house:



Adorable, huh?

FIVE FOR FRIDAY

1. This week I visited the art museum in Myrtle Beach, where the quilts of Gee's Bend are currently on exhibit. What a lovely museum and fabulous staff! Here's museum director Pat Goodwin introducing Carla, a museum volunteer, who gave an introduction of my book that pretty much left me tear-streaked and watery-eyed the rest of the day. Simply lovely. THANK YOU.


2. I put in some stiches! The museum had this quilt set up as a community project, so after my presentation, my auht Ruth Ann,...

EMBRACING MY INNER BARBIE

You might have guessed by the fact that I wrote a book about a girl who wears a sack dress and no shoes that fashion is not quite my thing.

In fact, I don't think I owned a Barbie doll ever. I was a baby-doll kind of girl and never really understood my friends' fascination with Barbie. I was too busy pretending to nurse my babies and rocking them and pretending with my sister that we ran a daycare and one day none of the parents came back, so the babies were ALL OURS. And that was a good th...

DRINKING WHITE THOUGHTS

Welcome to another edition of Poetry Friday! Roundup is at Carol's Corner. Check it out... I promise it will be a white-hot spot in your day.

Speaking of white-hot... wow, some pretty intense heat this week. As we sat out last night in the front yard watching the fireflies dance, I thought of this poem:

Back Yard

by Carl Sandburg (1916)


Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-nig...

CHARM QUILT UPDATE

So I've been working on my 2010 quilt project. Youngest son Eric and new kitten Maggie have been helping A LOT. We decided to go with a diagonal color wash, which I really love. The final square count will be 729.

Bad news: I ran out of fabric!
Good news: Eric and I went to Hancock's yesterday and will hit Joann's today. :)

Don't you love it??

LIVE YOUR POEM

Happy Poetry Friday, everyone! Roundup is at The Poem Farm.

I haven't been writing poetry in the past few weeks because I am hard at work on another MG historical novel about an orphan boy and an orphan dog in the 1880s.

I have, however, been honoring my little bedside plaque that says, LIVE YOUR POEM. Are there any wiser words? I love those three syllables so much.

What have I been doing?

Hanging out with my family.
Washing the dogs.
Holding the new kitten.
Piecing my charm quilt.
Cooking. Usi...

WATER WATER EVERYWHERE

Hey, remember that drought we had a few years back?

Well. Not this summer. And I for one am pretty happy about that. Even though it made for a wet evening at THE MIRACLE WORKER. It also made it an adventure complete with umbrellas and wet britches and frizzy hair. We had a blast!



And who remembers being young and dashing out into a late afternoon gullywasher? I've written poems about just such a scene:







And what about fun in a creek? These pics were taken at Butler Creek where the rocks ar...

HELEN KELLER FESTIVAL, HERE I COME

So. Lots of fun stuff in store this weekend, thanks in large part to dear writing friend Pat Weaver.

Pat's an amazing gal. And I love going to Florence to visit her, even when nothing else is going on.

This weekend I'm taking the whole family with me -- first to eat supper with Pat and her husband Ronnie and niece Amy, who is a new high school graduate and an amazing writer. I'm super-pleased to be publishing one of her poems in an upcoming issue of Birmingham Arts Journal!

Then we're seeing ...

MY FATHER, ON HOPE AND FAITH

For nearly two years my father has been living with cancer. Emphasis on LIVING.

He's an inspiration, and I am so proud he imprinted me with the philosophy found in the piece of writing that follows: an essay written by my father that will soon appear in the Bismarck Cancer Center newsletter.

Thanks, Papa, for so graciously allowing me to share it here. I love you, and Happy Father's Day!

Faith and Hope…Choices?

It's not at all strange that those of us who are cancer survivors generally report ...