SPRING and TRANSFORMATION! (Maggie)

Abara cadabara!  It's Spring!  Yeah, just like that.  I mean, I shouldn't be surprised.  It happens this way every year.  Yet, every single time I'm just so bubblingly, deliciously delighted I can barely sit still.  And that's literally.  I've been outside, walking, running, I've been inside on my elliptical, and today I'm planning some upper body and ab work.  Because it's Spring!  And everything in me is eager and giddy and restless and ready for rebirth.  I think it's because everything in the earth is doing likewise, at least where I live here in the northeast.  The snows are melting, the rivers are flowing higher and faster, the sun is shining, and sometimes the rain is falling to push things along at a faster clip.  And all those gorgeous little beings in the ground are feeling it.  They're quickening.  They're squirming.  They're coming alive, slowly, but I'll bet the crocuses and snowdrops and dandelions and blades of grass are as eager and restless as I am.  The trees don't have to be as patient.  Already there's a red haze taking over the forested hillsides--it's the tiny nut-red buds that will eventually bust open and unfurl and become lush green leaves.  This is the first week I've felt 50 degrees since last year, and just now the weatherman said we could hit sixty today!

I'm turning cartwheels!!!!

And I'm busting forth with the spring, too.  I spent the final two weeks of winter pretty sick, and my couch potato-ness, which had been getting a little bigger than I liked (causing my ass to do likewise) really took over.  Two weeks, on my back, blowing my nose and taking Nyquil.  Chicken soup and tea and stillness.  UGH!  No wonder the cabin fever was growing by leaps and bounds right along with the virus, whatever it was.

No more, though.  The healing came, as I knew it would, and it seems like the Spring came right along with it.  I'm sure there's a co-relationship there, but I don't know what caused what.  At any rate, I'm better.  Better than I've been all winter, or that's my perception anyway.

As always happens in the Spring, I'm fired up about fitness, and a whole group of woman have joined me on a yahoogroup I call Maggie's Health and Fitness.  We're sharing tips and tricks, reporting our daily progress to one another.  Half of us have decided not to step on the scales until April 1, to see our results all at once.  Others are still weighing in on their regular schedules, and we're going to compare notes in April.  There's a lot of encouragement, and every now and then, challenges and prizes.  If you'd like to join us (free, no catches,) send a blank email to maggies-health-and-fitness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

But this isn't a commercial for my fitness group.  It's about Spring.  And my feeling that the more in touch and in tune with Mother Nature we are, the more we move and change with Her.  If there are any big changes you've been wanting to make in your life, the easiest time you will ever have to make them, is during the changing of the seasons.  Transformation is all around you, and it's far easier to get into its vibe and just go with the flow of it all.  Everything is changing now.  

The earth is waking from a long slumber.  Bears are emerging from their hybernation.  Buds are budding.  Birds are changing homes.  Animals are shedding their old coats.  We are emerging too, from the long, silent winter, when rest and contemplation are our natural tendencies.  And we too are changing.  We can play on that, pump it up, use it to our own benefit.  Spring is a time to reclaim our youthful exuberance, because Spring is a child itself.  Everything is young and new.  We can gain more energy, decide to totally change our wardrobe, change our bodies, change our hair, change our attitudes, and change our habits.  As the snow melts away, let everything you no longer want to be a part of who you are, just melt away with it.  As the sun beams down, imagine it heating and warming the seedlings deep inside you.  The ones you've been thinking about all winter long.  "I wish I were more (fill in the blank.)"  Those are the seeds.  You planted them just by wishing them, and now is the time when they can begin to stir.  Spring is breathing life into them.  They're real.

More than ever, I'm feeling excited and eager and just itchy with anticipation about what this year is going to bring.  I have been since January 1, but now, oh, now, it's more powerful than ever.  Spring is here.  Nothing but goodness and beauty can possibly come with it.  

Okay, so what are my plans for Spring?  First, I'm going to get my body back to precisely where I want it.  I know how, it's not hard, I've done it before.  That's in progress already.  I'm not all that far from it anyway, not bad at all, really. Spent the day at Aria on the Avenue yesterday, and was getting checked out by the whole crew at the muffler shop where we stopped on the way home.  I'm good.  I like me.  This is just some tweaking.

I'm going to write some fabulous stories this spring.  Two are already in progress, a novel and a novella and they'll both be done by summer.  

I'm going to spend a lot of time kayaking, and hiking, and anything else that seems fun to me.  

I'm going to find easy, fun ways to promote the summer releases without driving myself crazy over it.  And they'll be effective.

I'm going to stop wearing jeans and t-shirts all the time and start dressing more like--oh, I don't know.  A fairy or a woodsprite or Stevie Nicks.

Oh, there's so much more.  Lawn projects.  A coy pond, maybe.  A camper to look for--oh, I want a big monster bus like Jerry and Esther Hicks have, so that we can hit the road with the dogs, and even add a custom built lizard habitat, so Forest can come with us.  And lots and lots other fun, fun things.

I'm not going to worry about any of it.  I'm just going to let it flow, and all will be well.

What are your plans for this glorious Spring?

Maggie

Back In Time (Tara Taylor Quinn)

I've spent a lot of time back in time lately. The last couple of weekends Tim and I have taken trips along the Ohio River, stopping in small towns that used to be thriving metropolis' but are now populated by a few hearty citizens that must drive long distances to and from work because there are miles and miles between the small towns and there is no industry or business in the towns to support its citizens. I figure some of the them are retired. Maybe some are on public assistance. Or maybe they're all writers and can work from anywhere. The towns do have post offices.

And they are steeped in history. Every single one of these towns have antique shops. No grocery stores. But there will always be an antique shop. And we stopped at every one of them. We look, and where appropriate, touch. We talk about the lives, the people, the times when the things were new. We talk about craftsmanship. And lifestyles. And we wonder if maybe back then they had things a little more in control than we do now.

It used to be that the tobacco industry supported some of the towns along the Ohio River. Both on the Kentucky side and on the Ohio side. We've traversed both sides. Where once the big barns bore fresh paint and supported enormous amounts of drying tobacco, the edifices are now slats of rotted grey wood in various stages of ruin. A few of the barns are still standing intact, but not many. Most have slats missing, many of them are crumbling in parts, fallen down, like a person trying to stand upright with an elbow on the ground. And the grand farm houses are also in disrepair. More of them are abandoned than not. The ones that are not are in need of coats of paint - in the best case scenarios.

The other big business along the Ohio River was shipping. Shipping goods. Literally. With ships. Or rather, steam boats. The Ohio River was once a metro way that supported whole towns in style. From boat building (the steam boats had to be made and they were built right there along the river) to loading, unloading and distribution, the Ohio River was busy twenty-four seven. From farm goods to pianos, the area produced and shipped enough goods to support parts of two states. As we drove along, as we stopped and looked at the grand old homes, and their contents, I kept imagining the women, in their full, deep colored skirts, waiting for their own ships to come in. Waiting for whatever man made her heart flutter. And then, hopefully, sing. I thought about the parties. The anticipation. The babies. The hopes and dreams. I wondered how any of them would feel if they could see the towns now. I wondered how shocked they'd be to see what was once thriving be struggling so hard just to remain in existence. And I wondered if those towns will slowly just die out, as their people have.

I've been living in the past here at home, too, in a different way. I've been judging books for the RITA contest. (The Emmy's of the romance writing industry.) This year I was sent several historical novels. I don't generally read the genre, and I've seen that I'm missing out on some truly rich stories. I'd love to tell you my favorite book of the year. But judging has to be anonymous so I cannot. I'd never heard of the author. I hope her book wins. She told a story of the old west. Of a woman of privilege plotting her adventure in the west before she settles down and marries the man her father has chosen for her. Nothing particularly new or compelling about that. But after you've read the first couple of paragraphs, you're there, in 1800's, thoroughly enjoying the heroine's wiles as she finds a way to get on that train. Feeling the grit on her pristine, tailor made clothes; smiling at her dismay as she learns what the real world feels like, as she sits with commoners; and enjoying her plunk as she doesn't let any of it deter her from her goal. I loved living life with her. I loved the times. They were less frenetic. They had to be. It took a long time to get anywhere. To communicate between cities took days. There was a lot more time for deep thoughts to take root, for the things that really mattered to settle upon you.

Today, we can outrun just about anything. Distractions from deep thinking abound. We don't have to stop very often and think about things that matter because there is so much around us, vying for our attention, our time, our thoughts, that we can just go ahead and let them take us on the merry go round until we fall exhausted into bed. And then we get up the next morning and jump on the ride again. We get from A to B in minutes, across the world in hours. And we can take our little hand held pieces of technological wonder with us and keep our brains occupied, distracted, busy the entire time. Instead of thinking we can play games. Talk to friends. Surf the net. Instead of sitting with someone for days on a train, actually looking in a person's eyes as we get to know him or her, we converse through little handheld devices. Entire relationships are conducted on the things. Heck we can even take these little things and mail letters while we're driving. So the commute to work doesn't even have to be time to think anymore.

So when do we reflect? When do we slow down and get in touch with the inner beings that are here to thrive and to grow? When do we actually fully experience all of our experiences? When do we learn from what we've done? Or from what others have done?

Sometimes I see us all as a bunch of chickens running around with our heads cut off. And maybe that's the challenge of this generation. To be able to reflect, and grow and experience life to the fullest while running around headless. Or maybe it's to be able to use and enjoy all of our modern day conveniences and devices, to explore all of our opportunities while keeping our heads on.

As I spent time in the past this week, I stumbled on something else and want to leave you with it today. (The link might ask you to open and save and tell you that the file could be corrupt. It isn't. It's I-tunes. If you save, it gives you an option to open and then it plays. In the meantime, I'm trying to get it in a different format to make this easier!) The recording is not good. It's ancient technology that Tim and I managed, this week, to record to a CD. (We wanted it on my mom's ipod for her trip to Israel.) As a disclaimer, this is a church song, recorded in a much simpler time. It's not here as a message of particular beliefs, but as a more broad reminder of what was. And what still is - a need within us to connect to our core selves and to know that our choices mean something more than just a moment in time. It took me back to my roots - not in a religious sense, but in the sense of being aware that life is more - deeper - than a moment, deeper than possessions, or doing. Deeper than just now.

And in a more personal sense, it took me back to my childhood where, many many nights I fell asleep listening to this voice in my home. More often than not, the songs were secular, not religious. But it wasn't about the songs. It was the voice.

This is my past. Back in time. My daddy.

/01%20Abide%20in%20me.mp3

What Every Little Girl Wants (Suzanne Forster)

A powder pink Hello Kitty Assault Weapon, of course.



I came across this picture on a political forum where all points of view are encouraged in the hope of finding common ground. It’s a great idea and one I wish would be encouraged more widely, including on our national political scene. But unfortunately, in this age of partisan politics, common ground sometimes turns into forty miles of bad road.

According to the rifle’s designer, it’s an actual semi-automatic weapon that was created as a protest against the assault weapons ban that prohibits the sale of military-type weapons to civilians. The rifle was customized from an AR-15 with the goal of alleviating the fears of the designer’s “fellow citizens and gun-banning legislators.”

I didn’t believe it was a real weapon when I saw the picture. It looked exactly like a toy. I thought the picture might be photo-shopped, but the designer provides evidence that it’s a working rifle with a second picture that shows the gun dissembled, with all its working parts. Designing a dangerous semi-automatic that looked like a child’s toy didn’t seem like a good idea to me and I said as much in my comments about the pictures.



I should probably make it clear that I’m not an activist for or against gun ownership. If people want to own guns and use them safely and responsibly, I’m fine with that. But apparently the ban on military-type assault weapons is controversial with some gun enthusiasts—and the most frequent argument I’ve heard for ownership of these guns is self-defense. Some people feel strongly that they need the equivalent of an M-16 in order to protect themselves. I can imagine situations where that might be true, but I decided to do some research to see how likely it was that the average person might require a weapon that can fire up to 800 rounds of ammunition a minute.

According to an article called “The Six Most Feared but Least Likely Causes of Death,” almost everyone fears terrorist attacks and being murdered. Those two fears are in the top five, but how likely are we to get murdered?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 250,000 people were murdered in the world in 2000, out of a population of billions. Compare that to the 6 million people who died of cancer in the same year.

Even more people feared dying in a terrorist attack, but what are the odds of that happening? Well, they’re one in 9.3 million, which is a slightly greater than the risk of dying in an avalanche.

From the same article, here are the “Actual Leading Causes of Death”:

“An unhealthy diet is actually a leading cause of death in the United States.

Biggest fears aside, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that uncovered the actual leading causes of death in the United States (in 2000). Overwhelmingly, these causes stem from our own, modifiable behaviors.

Tobacco (435,000 deaths, 18.1 percent of total U.S. deaths)
Poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths, 16.6 percent)
Alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths, 3.5 percent)
Microbial agents (75,000)
Toxic agents (55,000)
Motor vehicle crashes (43,000)
Incidents involving firearms (29,000)
Sexual behaviors (20,000)
Illicit use of drugs (17,000)”

You can read more here: http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/0...s_of_death.htm

Looks like we should all start watching what we eat and exercising! We’d live longer and it might even calm our fears.

But getting back to the Hello Kitty rifle, I was actually surprised at the reactions to my comments about the pictures. The gun enthusiasts who responded were highly indignant. I was called ignorant and a gun phobic—-and many of them defended the pictures, even though one poster admitted the gun looked “cute and cuddly.” Some argued that it didn’t look like a toy. Others said lots of toy guns look real.

The former is really a question of perception. It may not look like the toys I grew up with, but my concern was that it could easily be mistaken for a toy because of the pink color, the flowers and the Hello Kitty decal on the stock. The latter argument doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not sure how toy guns that look real are a rationale for real guns that look like toys. Personally, I’m not fond of either. I’d prefer that toys be clearly differentiated from weapons that can injure or kill people.

One gun expert who had children said he has guns that his daughters are allowed to use under supervision. He also said if those guns were ever misused it would be a failure of parenting and education, not an issue of the cosmetics of the gun.

I agree with his points on education and parenting, and I have little doubt that his children know everything they need to about gun safety. But what about the millions of kids whose parents aren't going to take the time to teach them about guns, not because they're negligent but because guns aren't a part of their life? Out of curiosity, I Googled "Hello Kitty AR-15" and found forty-plus pages of images associated with the gun, including pictures of little girls with assault weapons. Alarmed, I checked out the designer’s blog at blog.riflegear.com and was relieved to discover that the rifle was one-of-a-kind and not available for sale.

Okay, that’s the end of my spiel. I don’t usually get into hot button issues, but this one bothered me. Not because one person designed a custom powder pink semi-automatic rifle. I know many gun enthusiasts are as passionate about gun safety as they are about the Second Amendment, so I was surprised to see such passion in favor of a dangerous weapon made to look like a toy, whether that was the intention or not. Hence, the irony in the title of my blog.

Sadly, there wasn’t much common ground to be found on the topic, which is why I decided to blog about it. There must be some way those of us with sincere concerns about gun use and safety, especially where kids are concerned, can talk to those who are avid gun collectors and enthusiasts without anyone becoming indignant and calling each other names. It’s a conversation we really should be having because I’m sure the one thing we all have in common is a desire that the world be a less dangerous place, even if we envision different ways of achieving that.

Suz

Crunch Time (Anne Stuart)

I have been a very busy girl this week. I somehow got the impression that I had to write 20 pages a day to finish my book by March 15th, but it turns out I have to write 11.66666666 a day, which is much more doable. Especially since my average is about 15.

Midweek I had another crisis, as I realized I was supposed to get copy edits and what they have instead of galleys for two books, plus I have to write a novelette due the end of the month, plus another book starting April 1st.

On top of all that, I was hoping to go on a trip with my darling husband, out to Tahoe to see my niece and SF to see my daughter.

So I printed up a daily schedule, factored in the other things I have to do (like see my mother) and what amount of work I need to do, and suddenly everything fell into place.

It also helped that I've been watching Toby Stephens as Rochester in Jane Eyre, and oh my is he delicious! Perfect hero material.

I figure another nose to the grindstone week, and I'll finish the book in a mad blast on Saturday. I always muscle through to the end, writing fiendish amounts. It just seems to work better that way.

For a while I was bribing myself with sewing, but then I'd write 20 pages and be too tired to sew. I did order a bunch of fabric that I didn't need from eQuilter, but apart from that I've been pretty well-behaved.

Still, when the draft is done I'm really going to need to celebrate. I'll play the 1812 Overture, I'll dance around the kitchen, I'll be happy happy happy. And then I start revisions.

No rest for the wicked.

A Very Happy Birthday (Pat)

My mom's 100th birthday was a terrific success, thanks to all of you. She received over 100 birthday cards (we're up to 133 now and more are coming). Each day brought a new batch which meant she was constantly reminded of the upcoming birthday. She read every one, and most several times. I wish you all could have seen her amazement that so many people cared. I might note that the nursing home was astounded by the number of cards. The lovely receptionist said I made her job easy. On every piece of mail she just had to mark Room 315. No sorting necessary.
I also brought her a balloon every day for a week. They included two singing balloons. You punch them and they sing. One was an ordinary "Happy Birthday" song, the other a rock and roll Elvis version. There wasn't a soul in the nursing home that didn't know there was a big 100th birthday.
Sixteen people attended her party at the Memphis Jewish Home, including her two children, Three of her four grandchildren, and spouses, six of ten great grandchildren (with spouses) and a yet unborn great, great grandson, the sixth William Potter in six generations. Mom, who had been slipping away more and more this year, was awake and beaming.
She loved every moment, especially putting her hand on her great granddaughter-in-law's (Sarah Potter)stomach to welcome the latest generation.
And finally we have my great niece, Beth, looking through a gift book with mom. Beth (niece #2 as she calls herself) was the official photographer for the event, and I thank her for these pictures.
All in all, it was a wonderful affair, made even more glorious by the participation of writers throughout the country. The best part of being a writer is this very giving community of writers and readers. I love you all.