Winter Solstice

(photo by Todd Ehlers http://www.flickr.com/photos/eklektikos/3231838631/)

It's Winter Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere--the shortest day, and this year, a very cold one. It's 2 degrees F as I type this. I join many of you in being thankful that the days will start getting longer. Gimme sunshine!

To mark the occasion, I share with you a poem based on riding the school bus to school for 6 years through the countryside.

(photo by Bjorn Watland, http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjornwatland/6014216259/in/photostream/)

A Rural Ride

Cold winter mornings,

The yellow school bus

bumps along gravel roads,

loading children,

one farmstead at a time.

The sun pinks the sky,

Sheens the snow,

Steams the lake.

In the pastures, cattle’s breath

Rises like prayers.

copyright 2013, Jane Heitman Healy, all rights reserved

(photo by ed_needs_a_bicycle http://www.flickr.com/photos/omcoc/8315302454/)

Please share your winter memories in the comments section!

This poem also lives on poet David L. Harrison's Word of the Month blog, where everyone is invited to try writing and posting a poem based on a word that changes each moth. Come and play! 

(Internet Explorer 11 seems to have hijacked my Thanksgiving post. If any of you have experience in dealing with IE11 and blogger, let me know. So, I'm trying this on Chrome and hoping for a better result.)

The Journey of a Lifetime

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step~Lao-Tzu, Chinese philosopher

Life is a journey, not a destination~Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet.

And so this month, I am participating in the journey of PiBoIdMo (picture book idea month), the brain child of author Tara Lazar. The purpose is to record a picture book idea (or ideas) each day. At the end of the month, the more than 1,000 participants will cull their best ideas and set to work, turning it into a manuscript worthy of submitting to a publisher.

We have a Facebook group where participants can encourage each other, and Tara has invited well-known guest bloggers to her site to encourage inspiration, creativity,and productivity. And we're half-way through!

Different people use different methods to record their ideas. Here's my notebook on the cusp of Day 1:

We are focusing on writing, with the understanding that much of a picture book story is told through the pictures. One new book getting a lot of attention is a beautiful wordless book, Journey by Aaron Becker. Here's a review from Kirkus and from Horn Book.

My amateur cover photo gives an inkling of the book's grandeur.

I love this wordless book because each reader can bring him- or herself to the story, a story that the reader can create and tell, a story that changes with the age and circumstances of the reader. It's a story unique to that reader at that time. In this book, a girl uses a red marker to "draw" herself out of her situation, which gets her into other situations that require drawing out. Well, isn't that just like life?



Find the book at the library or bookstore and see what story Journey tells you--and then continue your own journey.

Goodbye, Daylight Savings; Hello, Standard Time

Puppy Watson and I are still on Daylight Savings time. An extra hour of sleep? I don't think so! He wants to play at 4 a.m. and needs to go out at 5 a.m.

(photo: By Matteo Ianeselli (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Trento-Mercatino_dei_Gaudenti-alarm_clocks.jpg)

Not all of our clocks got changed, so I am wandering around trying to orient myself, and asking the question the group Chicago asked all those years ago:


How is your household adjusting to the time change?

Life's a Peach!

(photo copyright 2011, Jane Heitman Healy)

It's peach season! Fortunately, our local supermarket is selling lugs of peaches from Talbott Farms in Palisade, Colorado, my old stomping grounds in the Grand Valley. They were expensive, but worth it for more than just their flavor. A taste of a Palisade peach is, well--

This Peach

This peach glows
Like a gold nugget,
One side red-orange, sun-swiped,
One side shaded
Yellow.

This peach overflows.
Bites of flawless fruit slip
From the red stone. A flavor fountain
Of juice glazes my chin, my
Hands.

This peach goes
A thousand miles, tucked
In a lug and trucked, to meet my lips
And bring the taste of
Home.

(copyright 2013, Jane Heitman Healy)

(photo copyright 2011, Jane Heitman Healy)

What flavors make you think of home?

For more peachy goodness, see this post from last August.

The Dog Days of Summer

It's been months since I've posted here due to a number of things, but I'm baaack!

Here we are in the dog days of summer, that sultry time in July & August before the crisp snap of fall. In our case, the weather is temperate, but we are in the dog days literally, having gotten a new puppy.

Watson (named for Sherlock's sidekick and the five-time British Open winning golfer, Tom) is 1/2 Golden Retriever and 1/2 English Cream and full of puppy playfulness.

A visiting friend said, "He looks like some storybook dog."

I had already thought of this--Biscuit of the series by Alyssa Satin Capucilli.

What do you think? Is there a resemblance?

The children's lit world is full of wonderful dog characters--Clifford, Wishbone, and Carl, to name three. Which dog characters are your favorites?

Here's a list by Publisher's Weekly blogger Elizabeth Bluemle.

Enjoy your dog days!

Book Spine Poetry--National Poetry Month

The above photo shows my first Book Spine Poem. I don't know who invented Book Spine Poetry. It's a version of "found" poetry, I suppose, looking at your bookshelf and deciding what titles could go together in what order to make some kind of sense. In any case, it's fun!

Is it real poetry? Hardly ever. Could it become a good poem? Possibly. You never know what phrases might spark an idea, a metaphor, or a line.

Here's another:


Look around your bookshelves and see what you come up with. Post your results in the comments!

For more Book Spine Poetry, see children's poet, Kenn Nesbitt's page.

Hope, Spring, and National Poetry Month

(By William H. Majoros (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The calendar has said "spring" for about 3 weeks, but it seems slow in coming here. We are encouraged by the flocks of robins we see hopping around. Geese and other birds are on the move. Tulip leaves have popped through the earth, and a few green blades of grass are showing through the brown. All of these things spell "hope" for me.

Here's how New England poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) saw it:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.


What signals hope for you?