Matt and Marianne's Book Launch

Hey guys, mark your calendars now and come join us!

~ Marianne

FULL MOON

It was time to take Simon for his bedtime walk. I put on a sweater and a jacket. It's rather cold outside. At night when I am tired, I feel it more. I step out, with Simon, start to walk, look around, No Simon behind me. I look back and he sits on the stoop with that stubborn look at his face which translates into: “I'm not going.”
“OK”, I mumble, we're not going then, fine, I didn't want to in the first place.”

The fresh air felt nice, though. It wasn't as cold as I had expected. The wind seemed down. I looked up, and WOW!!! The full moon, bold and bright was speeding by. Or so it seemed. Better no traffic cop look up, I thought, this moon is in for a speeding ticket!!! But how can this be?

Then I saw the clouds, long stringy clouds, that seemed not to move, that made the moon look like it moved, but really it was those clouds racing by, in a continuous motion. Never ending clouds. The moon stood still. Why are the clouds racing like that? (They still are, while I am writing this.) There is hardly any wind. What makes those clouds move? I have never ever seen the likes of it before. I phoned Nigel. And he was looking at it too, and was just as puzzled.

But it is a beautiful moon, and an interesting phenomena. I stood looking at it for a long time. Simon watched me watch it, and sighed a deep sigh when I finally came in. He was ready for bed. No howling at the moon for him!

PET PEEVES

It's October! Only the 23d. Not even Halloween yet. Although you couldn't tell by store decorations. In Malls Halloween is all around you. But, maybe that's close enough, Although it already started last month. That's definitely too early in my humble option. (Can an option be humble? Oh well, sneak that literary fracture in, on account that it sounds good to me. OK, OK, make it opinion then, sjee!!)

I needed some eating stuff for supper. So I enter the mall across the street. THE GREAT CANADIAN SUPER STORE!!! ( Yeah right!!!)

It took a while before I clued in. I almost started humming along with the piped in music. Oh, it was soft, and not throughout the store yet. Just greeting you at the entrance where displays of fire logs, with warm flames showing on the boxes, are stacked in seating fashion and all kinds of huggable ( the computer speller doesn't like that word.) teddy bears, and other woolly stuffies sit around at them, cozily, inviting...

What? What is that music I'm starting to hum to? Oh no!!! CHRISTMAS SONGS!!! Not CHRISTMAS!!! Groan!

I though maybe I should complain. How do you complain? Well, you can obtain a survey sheet, to record how “WE ARE DOING.” Where can you obtain that? The sign by the door tells you in very small print that you go to customer service. CUSTOMER SERVICE? That's where there are always long line ups. 'cause they not only take in complaints, exchange non satisfactory items, make up for boo boos that were made at the cash register, they also rent out equipment people have to sign for, and they also sell lottery tickets. And mostly only one person is there to take care of it, and mostly that is a person who is clued out about procedures and has to call in for help, when you insist...

Oh, forget it. Let them play Christmas music in spring, I'll plug my ears and try to get out as fast as I can. (Quite a feat when you figure how large the store is, how far everything away, how badly things are priced, and how badly the shelves are stacked...)

Can we go back to corner stores ? They may close Sundays. If you really are in need, you may knock on the back door and your friendly neighbour who lives behind the store, doesn't mind to reach you what you ask for. Tomorrow, or the next time you're in the store, you can pay for it. It doesn't break church or Sunday laws that way. And if that doesn't work, you pick up a pitcher or cup, and find another next door neighbour and borrow some sugar or vinegar, or so. Why not? Some essential neighbourhood gossip is exchanged for free.

Wild Thing​

ABOUT READING & WRITING

Wow, where am I?

This is the first time in a very long time that I was so caught up in a book that I could not stop reading, and everything else fell by the wayside. It's like living in an other world, and your own reality world is the stranger. That's the place where you are sleepwalking, being there, but not really. This day is a marvelous day, an Indian Summer day, to sit in the sun, feel the gentle warmth, smell the spicy aroma's of maturing nature, and just be carried away into the other world, but still a compatible world, a world where you feel familiar, but where you learn about, and from, others and therefore more about yourself too.

And I wonder again. Why, often I read books, where the subject matter interests me, where I want to keep on reading, but they really do not hold my attention without forcing myself. I think of other things to do, I make many pauses, I fall asleep, I am bored in a way, but still want to know...

So many rows of books in book stores, in libraries. How few that really, really capture you into that other world, that really is your own at the same time.

Are some books good, but badly written? Like good grammar and so, but without lure? Are there stories that are forced? Like not really coming from the depths of a soul? Sort of like someone playing the piano, faultless but not stirring you in any way? Whereas someone playing the piano with stumbles and maybe even wrong notes, sill stirs you, makes you feel all soft and excited inside and you listen with fascination, understanding love?

I can make room for books that may be well written from the heart, but bring story that lies outside my experience. If you have nothing to tie it too, you cannot make it your own in any way. It maybe for example, outside your cultural experience.

I still think that not everyone who writes poems, is a poet. Not everyone who writes story, is a born storyteller. Not everyone who paints, draws pictures, is a true artist. There is a difference, isn't there?

The book I just finished reading and had me under its spell, is,

The Day My Mother Left, by James Prosek. It's a novel, based on th author's own experiences. He's also an artist and loves the natural world.

Of course that may be an indication why his story telling grabs me so much.

Wild Thing

Mystery

I inhale deeply. This cool autumn morning smells spicy. Can you smell colour? It is overcast. Sometimes the colours seem more intense then. There is something mysterious about the feel, the smell, and the look of this kind of fall day. Again I inhale deeply. Doing so my Mother is with me. Some things you never forget.

I can see her with her auburn hair, in a cheery, printed dress, smiling. We, the family, are biking along trails, through woods and fields. Warm sunshine. The smell of wild flowers, grass, and woodsy floors. “Breathe in deeply,' mom would say, “expand your lungs. This is the best medicine. The air is healthy.”

My mom loved nature. She would have liked not to live in Amsterdam. She always longed for a home in the country. She always hoped that after the war, maybe that wish could be full filled. My dad was a city man. Amsterdam was fine with him. But I believe, had they lived, when things turned better after the war, that he would have found her such a place, maybe not too, too far from the city.

It stayed a dream. After troubled times, after working hard, after caring for others, they lost their health, would not find their reward on Earth. They are no more. But still they are. They are in me at such times, when I inhale deeply, expand my lungs, and drink in that healthy air. And not only that. In so many things I do, my parents and other people I lost, live on in me. That is the mystery of life.

Wild Thing (The Lone Blogger)

NO QUOTE TODAY

Hey
O do not know a quote today
Not today
Nay

Should I then write something
To entertain the blogger bunch,
Like what I had for lunch
To munch on? Not!

I write old fashioned style.
With capitals, and comma's,
And periods and all that stuff,
And rhymes, but without reason.

My fountains run, my candles burn.
I'm not burning them
On both sides, though.
I'm not that dumb.

But surely this poem is.
At only 4 o'clock , I'm out of energy,
And used up all my inspiration,
Imagine that.

Day is falling,
Leafs are falling,
Rain is falling,
And I am falling ... short.

No quote today.

Wild & Corny Thing

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Allow me two for today. To me they are related.

"We are ourselves only part of the whole, and we can conceive and speak only of parts, but not the whole."
Jacob Boehme


"He listened attentively to what I was saying. But there was nothing in his intellectual or emotional equipment to which he could connect my words. He possessed no frame of reference for such concepts."
Chaim Potok

Wild Thing

OUOTE OF THE DAY

My brand new find. From "The Pocket Muse" by Monica Wood, my birthday present from Leslie:


"You can't write without living fully, and you can't live fully and still find time to write."


She calls that the writer's paradox, and suggests different ways to get past that delemma.


Wild thing

SPOOKY DRYER

I emptied the washing machine. I put the clothes in the dryer. I went about other daily tasks. The dryer stopped. I started to unload, folding items while I was at it. In the middle of it, with a shock, I remembered I had to vote today. Better do that first, I thought, like a good civil citizen. Looked for my voters card. Sjee, must've put it in a “good” place. That's when I always am in trouble. Can't find things in “good places”, when you are a slob by nature. So I gathered Ids and off I went across the street. I showed my ID. The ladies behind the table seemed not amused. It took them ages to figure out that I really, really was Antoinetta Meyer who came to have her say in the processes of government. I joked about my misplaced voters card. Not one smile, not one word of recognition. Very seriously,almost
with a frown, they pointed me to the right table. Ha, a man. He was friendlier. He smiled. But still I had to sign a document to proof that I really was Antoinetta Meyer. He asked what language my name came from. “Dutch,” I replied, but correcting myself and saying that in fact it really is a French name. He didn't listen to the second part of my speech. “Dutch” was the key word. “Did you come in wooden shoes?” he chuckled. “No, I replied, “but I sure could have used them in this rain.” He nodded seriously in agreement.

Anyhow, I filled in, (or out?) my ballots, slid them into the ballots box and returned home. After puttering around for a while I remembered my only partly emptied dryer. It felt still warm inside. I reached in and... the towels moved. I pulled my hand back. What was going on? Towels don't move. Must be my imagination. I reached in again, and sure enough there was a motion like waves in there. Very carefully I kneeled down and peeked inside. Just dark clothes. I pushed down on them a bit, and,
“prrr,” two eyes opened up, and looked at me. Yona, all rolled up in the warm towels, blinking his cozy cat eyes at me. I stroked him affectionately and left the towels in, and the door of the dryer open.


For those of you who wonder who brought you her quote of the day, it was me, Wild Thing. Forgot to sign it. And sorry about the two titles. I don't know how to correct things still after publication. Larry explained it once to me, but I forgot.

Wild Thing.

OUOTE OF THE DAY

QUOTE IF THE DAY


Collecting quotes is what I like to do. The quote I found today, in the book I am reading,“TheWhale Rider” by Witi Ihimaera, I like a lot and will share. (Larry does “Song of the Day, in his Mental Blog.) Here's my quote of the day:

“Man might carve his mark on the earth, but unless he's vigilant, Nature will take it all back.”


A bit more eloquent than what I used to say, seeing a flower come through the crack of asphalt or a cement wall,: “Cement doesn't have the last word. Nature is stronger.”

Dove Tale Takes to the Street

A crowd gathers around our Dove Tale Writers' booth at Word on the Street in Kitchener. One lady scans through the names on the white board underneath the caption "Support Local Writers. Buy Our Books."

One name in particular captures her attention. "I want stories by Netty Meyer," she says like a dehydrated man in the desert thirsting for water.

The lady has already read Netty's stories in our anthology, Many Women Two Men. The copies of our most recent anthology, Stones Turned, have already sold out - a hot WOTS item.

So I give the lady a Dove Tale propaganda handout, and send her to our website to quench her thirst for more Netty. "Check out our Story Archive," I tell her. "And our on-line magazine, Tale Spin."

It continues like that all day - oh, just not demands for Netty, Wild Thing that she is! Some people want more Veronica Ross, and others know Leslie Bamford, and then there was the young man who came back TWICE looking for Matt Bin to find out more about his upcoming book release, "On Guard for Thee." Told that the book isn't yet out, the young man filled out an order form right there and then and paid upfront - he wants that book!

Other hot sellers were the surprise gift bags containing three new books, with at least two of these books by Dove Tale writers. Bob Paul's "Sandcastle Memories" was popular, and one astute reader even noticed that the author of "Tending Memory," Marianne Paul, had the same last name. Are they related?

So it was a good day for the Dove Tale clan. Thanks to John Boulden, Matt Bin, Veronica Ross and ME (Marianne Paul) for manning (and woman-ing) the Dove Tale booth at Word on the Street. We should definitely do it again.

And thanks to Leslie Bamford for being our Dove Tale photographer.
~Marianne

Word on the Street

Did anyone catch yesterday's Record article about Word on the Street? Our own Marianne (not to mention the Dove Tale Writers!) were mentioned, and quoted at length!

Check the link soon (it'll expire in two weeks) to read the whole article, but here's the relevant portion, with the hope that this falls under fair use provisions...

Besides bringing publishing companies and bookstores together, The Word on the Street also brought in local authors to interact with readers.

Local authors had gathered under the canopy of Dove Tale Writers for the first time at the festival.

"It's a great first time," said Marianne Paul, author of Tending Memory. "People are fascinated with the process of writing. "Our interaction has been really fruitful."

Anyhow, great stuff -- we're really getting out there!

Wereld Dieren Dag

Word is confused. Doesn't recognize Dutch words in its English program. But the thing is, that I was wondering about a supposedly world wide day for animals. “World Animal Day?” I have never heard it mention, here in Canada. (And I've been here for a while,.LOL!) Still, tomorrow, October 4, is “Wereld Dieren Dag.” I decided to look it up on the web. Since I did not know a name for it here. I typed in the Dutch words. Sure enough I found some info on a Children's Center where they celebrate the above mentioned day. I read it all in Dutch. The funny part is, that it took me a while before I realized that I was actually reading Dutch. I was just taking in the information.

So, is there anyone who knows about a day for animals that's celebrated world wide? With special programs? You are supposed to be extra nice to your pets, farm animals, etc. Like you are supposed to be nice to your mother on Mother's Day, to your father on Father's day, to your secretary on Secretary Day, to your nose on Nose Day... oh no, that hasn't been invented yet.

Wild Thing