Sydney Avey's Blog, page 9

Finding your best self: I just dropped in…

Seeking my best self,“I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” Remember that ditty? I had a flashback to the Sixties whenwriter and educatorDavid Dark challenged thosewho, in their quest to be widely read and greatly admired,evade the hard work of discovery. He exhortedusto dig more deeply into our attention collection. “Have you experienced your experience yet?” he asked.

We sat on uncomfortable chairs in the majestic chapel on the campus of Calvin College, light glint...

Historical and Creative Adventures:Two Book Reviews

Historical Adventures–The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton: Novel, by Jane Smiley

Reading books written in or about past eras brings perspective to present day conundrums. Is America more polarized than ever? Not according to Lidie Newton’s experience in the Kansas Territory of 1850. At that time, the issue that divided the country was slavery. Smiley’s engaging narrative explores the challenges of trying to live peace...

Alien Landscape: Finding charm in peculiar places

To my eyes, Arkansas is an alien landscape. After many visits to the Ozarks to see my sweet mother-in-law, I still approach the terrain as if I were a curious extraterrestrial.

Places I call home stretch from the California coast to the Sonoran desert. The textures of my worlds are soft redwood bark, gnarled oakwood, and crunchy pine needle carpets, sand and sea, spiny cactus that house wrens, sport vivid blooms in season, and give mute testimony to nature’s resilience.

The north central part...

Family proverbs–time for a refresh?

Family proverbs, catchy sayings that hitchhike on the transport of family values, pass down through generations.

Proverbs, popular sayings that express commonplace truth or useful thought, pass down through the generations. What grandma said to you in your growing up years she likely heard from her grandma. Catchy sayings hitchhike on the transport of family values that travel from one generation to the next.

Family proverbs are effortless ways to address an observed behavior. When I prodded...

Great Giveaway: The tyranny of thrift

A painful crossroads in the Great Giveaway, but these items have outlived their usefulness.

In the name of thrift, we save stuff

Our parents practiced thrift. They saved everything and passed it down with the tacit agreement that we would do the same.Those of us raised by the greatest generation have some literal baggage to deal with.

To avoid the physical stress, mental exercise, and emotional pain of dealing with stuff,we stash ithigh on our shelves. Weshove itdeep in our drawers. Our close...

Breathe: Forgiveness

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The breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4

Forgiveness is popping up everywhere as a tonic for what ails us. The healing...

Book Review: Seven Brief Lessons On Physics

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was tempted to read this book because a reviewer praised it for elegance, simplicity, and the author’s ability to speak about science in poetic and philosophic terms. Having complex (to my unscientific brain) material explained in language I am more familiar with was refreshing. Rovelli has the skill of the most accomplished news writer to write clear, direct sentences and give examples that are easy to understand and v...

Discipline: The Struggle to Put Pen to Paper

Discipline your inner writer: A book list

A friend of mine has a lot to say but struggles to put pen to paper. Writing is a discipline in the deepest sense of the word.

The Free Dictionary defines discipline as “training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement.” A writer’s discipline consists in part of developing habits that unleash creativity and hand it a pen. The goal is to hone our abilities through pr...

Book Review: Girl Reading

Girl Reading is agem I found in Powell’s Book Store in Portland, OR. The first attraction was the profile of a graceful girl in a reading posture. In this short story collection, Katie Ward builds worlds set on a timeline that reaches back into antiquity and forward into a frighteningly foreseeable future. The presence of books is a fragile thread that holds the stories together.

I enjoyed the author’s creativity. What fun she must have had moving throug...

The Great Giveaway: Clearing the brush to find the path

When you can’t see the path for the pests

In some seasons of life, your feet can’t follow the path underfootbecause it has gotten so overgrown. You plodalong,trip on tangled roots, get whipped by prickly shrubbery and thrown off balance by piles of debris underfoot. Lurking in the debris are little bugs that suck your blood. Short of lighting a match, how do you deal with overgrowth?

These days, it’s the bloodsuckers that bother me most–the swarms of appeals for attention that trigger annoyan...