Winter Greetings

Well, it's official--I'm a terribly inconsistent blogger. While I have been busy with projects and end-of-the-year holiday madness, I think another reason I haven't written anything here in a long time is that I, along with the garden, have gone dormant, at least in some regard. It would seem that winter is a good time for all living things to turn inward, to reflect, and to process everything that's been gathered over recent months.

On a side note...after becoming enthralled with the symbolism of trees, I found The Meaning of Trees: Botany History Healing Lore by Fred Hageneder at the library. I have retreated into the book during these dark, cold days. One of the most mesmerizing passages I've come across is, "The Welsh goddess of the hawthorn once walked the empty universe and her white track of hawthorn petals became the Milky Way." With the hawthorn on my mind lately, I now see hawthorns everywhere, when I never noticed them before. Their red fruits decorate the branches like fairy-sized ornaments. Isn't that how it often is? The world is full and vast...if only we knew what we were looking for, we might find it among us.

May you have a joyous holiday season, and may you indulge in winter's dormancy to emerge into a healthy and wondrous 2009.

Weather Report

Steady rain today. Family and friends in Wisconsin report snow. For them, the poem "Snow" by Naomi Shihab Nye. Here you will find an interview with Nye, in which she says:

Number one: Read, Read, and then Read some more. Always Read. Find the voices that speak most to YOU. This is your pleasure and blessing, as well as responsibility!

It is crucial to make one's own writing circle – friends, either close or far, with whom you trade work and discuss it – as a kind of support system, place-of-conversation and energy. Find those people, even a few, with whom you can share and discuss your works – then do it. Keep the papers flowing among you. Work does not get into the world by itself. We must help it.

...

There is so much goodness happening in the world of writing today. And there is plenty of ROOM and appetite for new writers. I think there always was. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Attend all the readings you can, and get involved in giving some, if you like to do that. Be part of your own writing community. Often the first step in doing this is simply to let yourself become identified as One Who Cares About Writing!

Thoughts on the Hawthorn

Saturday I had the pleasure of attending a workshop presented by George Ella Lyon. I'm still digesting the material (perhaps more on the writing and discussion later). In the morning she shared a book called The Wisdom of Trees: Mysteries, Magic, and Medicine by Jane Gifford, which is based around the Celtic Ogham Alphabet and which attributes a tree to each moon of the year (a tree zodiac, if you will).

After the workshop, I did some brief searches about this intriguing idea. Here and here are two links that provide additional information. My point is not to focus on whether the Celtic tree calendar is based in truth or myth, but rather to consider the power of trees and our connection to them. My birth tree is the hawthorn, and there just happens to be one in my front yard. For the last two years a mockingbird has nested there. The hawthorn offers small white flowers in May and red, berry-like fruit through the winter.

I'm trying to figure out what is so special about a tree, aside from the obvious--that it gives food, shelter, oxygen--and I think, for me, it might be its physical presence, how it is rooted in the earth, grounded, sturdy, and at the same time reaching skyward, growing up and out, claiming the surrounding space. It is a model for how I'd like to live my life, connected to the past while being fully present in this moment.

December!

Somehow we've slipped into the last month of 2008, and once again I'm trying to figure out where the year went. I'm winding down the day with a cup of tea (if you're in Madison, check out the macha teahouse) and listening to my favorite holiday song.

Giving Thanks

The poem "A List of Praises" by Anne Porter.

Talent, Opportunity, Time

As one might suspect, no single factor dictates success. This article (edited extract from Outliers: The Story Of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell) examines examples of "outrageously talented and successful people" and muses on what factors shaped their success.

Here's the part that really grabbed my attention:

This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

The Gift of Community

This week I had the pleasure of attending the last fundraising event this year for the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Once again, words seem inadequate to describe how this place has contributed to my development as a writer.

The building itself is magical, not to mention the people who staff it and volunteer. Some of the Carnegie Center's offerings include writing, computer, and language classes; tutoring, youth, and family programs; and exhibits, readings, and other special events.

While I may never feel completely at home in Kentucky, the flickering moments of belonging I have experienced have been among members of the region's unique writing community, most of whom I met through the Carnegie Center. Community--a sense of belonging--is one of the Carnegie Center's greatest gifts. It is as if an orb weaver crafted an intricate web, and written into the center of the web is the Carnegie Center, all the silken strands radiating from that center.

You can read the Carnegie Center's blog here.