Pamela Foster's Blog, page 13
April 27, 2013
Xenophobia and Xcaret
Xcaret used to be a gem at the butt-end of a sand path off a dirt road in the Yucatan Peninsula. White sand beach. Wild Manatees in clear cenote waters. Now it’s a tourist trap in Mundo Maya. But still paradise, worth a day’s vacation and the bag full of pesos it’ll cost to enjoy the pee-poluted waters. Visitors have brought money to a patch of Mexico that had nothing but natural beauty and poverty when Jack and I towed a 35 foot trailer onto the beach just north of Xcaret back in ‘91.
B...
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April 26, 2013
Wild Thing
Reblogged from Pamela Foster, Author and Speaker:
“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.”
I cannot.
Last night friends and I celebrated the birthday of a wild and witchy woman. Many of you know about The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pen, a group of five women authors in which I am delighted to be a part.
Well, yesterday was…
April 25, 2013
‘V’ is for Vulture
I’ve always liked vultures.
These giant birds get a bad rap. For some reason that’s never been clear to me, we admire hawks and raptors which swoop down from above and sink talons into unfortunate mice and bunnies, but abhor buzzards which do nothing but act as efficient waste disposal units.
It has to do with our fear of death, I think.
InNepal bodies are wrapped in green bamboo leaves, placed on a bier and lit on fire so the ashes sink into the river. In Tibet my friends, the vultures,...
<!--[if gte mso 9]><!--[if gte mso 9]>April 24, 2013
Usual, Ordinary Beauty
Life is filled with ordinary beauty.
The soft gray of a female cardinal swaying on a wind-rustled lilac bush.
A silver moon veiled by clouds ragged and thin as midnight prayers.
Nature offers these gifts freely.
Love carries its own blessings.
This weekend Jack and I strolled the farmers market. An ordinary Saturday. Except that, when your husband has PTSD and what doctor’s call mild dementia, and diabetes, and has had several small strokes, well, a day wandering the market is not to be tak...
<!--[if gte mso 9]><!--[if gte mso 9]>April 23, 2013
Tease
In high school a girl who kissed and kissed and kissed and never went any further, was a tease. And we all know what kind tease.
But, in a way, that label is a good example of our tendency to ignore the perfectly wonderfully experiences life gives us in order to push and strive and slide our way to some new experience we’re promised will be even better, more wonderful than what we’re doing right now, this moment.
Looking back, those kisses were pretty darn good. In lots of ways they were...
<!--[if gte mso 9]><!--[if gte mso 9]>April 22, 2013
Somersaults and Silly Stuff
I have a clear memory of my grandmother pulling weeds in her backyard. It was late summer because the branches of the plum tree behind her hung rich with purple-black fruit. Pink and white and bright orange oriental poppies fluttered in a border and the grass sparkled the emerald green of a rainy Pacific Northwest summer. The day shimmered with the silvery afternoon light seen after a hard rain.
I’m feeling silly today, Grandma said. And then she pressed the top of her gray head onto the soft...
April 20, 2013
Roaring Winds of Rohwer
image by J. Ota
As a writer of fiction I do my best to enter into every scene I create. I work hard to get correct the tastes and sounds and smells and sights of life that my characters experience.
But, every once in a while, life in all its rich, grand, sumptuous variety, reminds me how difficult it is to show the fullness of sensation in ordinary living.
Most of you know I visited Rohwer, Arkansas a few days ago. Rohwer was the site of a Japanese Internment camp during WWII. I’ve read several...
April 19, 2013
A Queenly Quest
Queen–a woman noted for her beauty and accomplishments.
Quest–a journey in pursuit of a lofty goal.
Maybe The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pen should change our name to The Literary Quest of the Traveling Queens.
Okay, maybe not. But, truly, the words we use to define ourselves are important. This past weekend I was lucky enough to travel with my friend and Sister-Queen Jan Morrill to Little Rock Arkansas where we were gifted with the privilege of a guided tour of the work of Wendy Maruyama:Execu...
April 18, 2013
Performance Anxiety
The oldest advice ever given a wannabe writer was probably,Write what you know. Well, okay the second oldest advice following, Just shoot yourself and get it over with.
A few weeks ago, in one of those moments of insanity for which I am locally infamous, I agreed to participate in the A to Z blog challenge and write a post a day. I agreed to do this for two blogs. The one you’re reading right now and for my newer wounded warrior wife blog.
Seriously, what was I thinking? Two posts a day and wri...
April 17, 2013
Oh My, George Takei
George Takei is best known for his role of Zulu on Star Trek and for his newer tag line, “Oh my” delivered with his trademark deep voice. But long before he was the engineer of the Enterprise, he was swept up with his family and imprisoned, along with 120,000 others, based solely on his ancestry, his skin color, and a few telling physical characteristics.
This sounds like a bad TV science fiction script, doesn’t it?
In the months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, approximately 120,000 Japanese A...
