Nature Altar - Daughters Home

A walk through the moments I am living through. A new year upon us on this day. The creatures are stirring in the brambles. It has been a year of slow moving and wide wondering. I wonder why we are all trying to make our lives more. More busy - more scheduled - more striving. There is something to a slow way of living. If the opportunity to reflect upon our lives is something we are given - then perhaps we might look into what things matter the most to us. I think for me - it is a self-study of self. This is always present. Will I get it right or understand? More often than not - no, not so much. The everyday of living is such a rich opportunity for reflection and deep study. What will I study this year…

Shaker Firewood Box

Home Ways. Home is my place. A sacred place of becoming each day. I am more myself as the years go by. I am more the brightness that lives inside of me. Is it perfect - there is no such place. I think though - that all of the many imperfections allow a more natural and comfortable way of living at Home. This Shaker Firebox settles in here. The lovely ash floors hold it up - laid down by my husband. Look at all the work there is to do in putting new oil down to protect the floors. It is hard to fit all of it in. Home is not a museum of keeping. It is a tableau of living out the moods and ways of our ever evolving humanity and personal development. Are the floors not finished? It might just mean that I am not finished.

Wood Haus

Helping. Here is Rand helping Pat with building of a Firewood Haus. There are always things to build in our lives. Building a life means the activities are generally the making and creating of things. Projects - structures - repairs - redoing - a life of making is in our own hands. Do we do everything for ourselves or do we help one another? If we build together in all the ways - the Hand Built Ways are stronger on the handmade foundation of togetherness. I am glad filled that we make many of our living ways.

Cultural Emergence Design Deck - Looby Macnamara

Design Ways. As we make our way through the days - designing with intention with our hearts and our minds gives us a creative way of moving through the world. This new Cultural Emergence Design Deck by Looby Macnamara is an offering to help us create in imaginative ways. I like that designing can be interesting and shaped by layers of understanding and openness. It makes our Living Ways feels so much more intentional to focus into Design Ways that have been developed over years of study and exploring. Feeling stuck - in need of a new framework - taking a moment for reflection, joy and creativity - brings about a whole new perspective. It is there for our taking. An offering of beauty and flexible opportunity is a blessing that we can take up - leave behind stale thinking. Designing into the New Year feels like an exciting story to be looking into.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - Oxford World’s Classics

War and Peace Ways. I read War and Peace last year with Benjamin McEvoy and The Hardcore Literature Book Club. There isn’t another Book Club like it. Ben is a wonderful guide and mentor in the works of classic literature. I am joining in again this year with the wide variety of books that will be read. You can find more about it here in The Hardcore Literature Book Club. I am reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - this time with Simon Haisell of Footnotes and Tangents in his slow read with people all around the world. We read just one chapter a day for the entire year. He ran this last year and this is the second time he’s hosting it. If War and Peace feels too big a task to take on all at once then perhaps a chapter a day slow read is the ticket you need. My entire family is reading it this year. I highly recommend this book! Until you discover it you do not know what you are missing out on. It’s all of life in one incredible story.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I am ending this year with Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It is a good mood read with a fascinating cast of characters. Here is Ben McEvoy speaking about it.

Freight Train

Finally - here is a freight train coming through this week while I was out driving. Trains coming through seem filled with significance, romance, hard work, story, travel and mostly the picture of going from here to there. It seems a good final image to share with you as the year is moving into the next calendar year. It can feel suddenly expectant and exciting - like a party inside of a longing for change. To me - this train feels like a moving forward in a solid way. Life feels like it can be similar in the day to day - and yet - wrapped in the continuous journey of walking forward in the best way that we can.

I wish for you the best beginning of this New Year of 2024. The movement holds you in its arms. I hope you feel wrapped and surrounded by a sense of grounded belonging. We need you here in all the ways. I am sending you tender care. May all good things find you.

Sending All the Love Your Way…

Woodstove Ways

Hearth

Life surrounds fireside - eclipse worldly time
Slow light enters corners - cobwebs need not be swept away
Dust of life lingers against hard edged granite -
Dry air cause heat fluctuations - measure the room -
Imagined mountain flakes off into baked brick -
As I look upon material gained - a world is seen past -
Hauled by most likely a man - inside - outside toil -
Reward not seen immediate - held together by hope -
Infused particulate - stone - wood - metal - elements molecular -
Wind past the forest whisper of - fell the trees - warmth stands tall -
Is it simplicity - work of matter and muster it up -
As seasonal light transforms hardened worry - glow exists -
Edge of granite quarried - hard enough to know better -
Sharp sees along a geometric encounter of - pattern -
Hang clothing cut from material somewhere grown -
Field of wearing ripples in a wind song - howl of winter -
Everyday sound - feet on wood - clothes on wooden hanger -
Creak the door open - creak the bones that grown worn as years go by -
It is a task of keep - the fire going - the warmth arising -
Gaze into a woodstove window - recollection ancient ancestors - carry out -
As moon rides a curl of sky stars - arc of star asters shine into my eyes -
Walk past iron stove - holding heat - feel warmth of comfort -
Safety comes in panels unfolded - is the work sufficient -
Meaning found in a study of wood - wood work - present day -
See into growth of tree - heart of labor - an etched life -
Winter light casts a hope of glimmer seen - back through all the years -
Solstice ways found in the slant of sun - revealed tale eternal -

By Linden of The Bone Lines

Otto and the Secret Light of Christmas by Nora & Pirkko - Liisa Surojegin

Children of the Northern Lights by Ingri & Edgar Farin D’Aulaire

The Christmas Eve Tree by Delia Huddy illustrate by Emily Sutton

Here are three lovely children’s books for you to track down at your library or in a bookshop. I am a great lover of children’s books. I have saved some books over the years from my daughter’s growing up days. However, I still do occasionally purchase children’s book because they are beautiful. These three books are magical and you might enjoy sitting down in a quiet moment to read them this week. I hope you love them!

Lisbeth Zwerger Artist - Library Books

Lisbeth Zwerger is one of my favorite artists. Lisbeth Zwerger is an Austrian illustrator of children’s books best known for being a recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award due to her exemplary contribution to the field of children’s literature. Born on May 26, 1954, in Vienna, Zwerger studied at Vienna’s Applied Arts Academy from 1971 to 1974. Though she left before completing the course, her first illustrated book was published in 1977.  Zwerger has worked as a freelance picture book illustrator in Vienna, specializing in fairy tales and classic stories. Zwerger is considered one of the most accomplished illustrative artists in the current century.

Here are some of her books that I got from the library. A local patron donated a pile of her books to our library. I myself have owned a number of her books which are scattered about here and there. Another one of my favorites is her Gift of The Magi - this is the edition that we have. When I got married to my now husband - we each gave one another gifts on our wedding night. He gave me combs for my long hair and I gave him a pocket watch. We both love that story. Lisbeth Zwerger has many other books and art that you can find as well. I hope you’ll search a few out to enjoy. Sitting down with her books is a magical world filled with beauty and wonder.

The Nutcracker illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

Aesops Fables - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

The Selfish Giant - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

The Selfish Giant - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

The Canterville Ghost - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

The Canterville Ghost - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

Till Eulen Spiegel’s Merry Pranks - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

Till Eulen Spiegel’s Merry Pranks - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

The Legend of Rose Petal - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

The Legend of Rose Petal - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

The Legend of Rose Petal - Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

Lisbeth Zwerger has said that the most difficult task for her now is choosing material to illustrate; at first she gravitated toward childhood favorites, but later she tired of traditional fairy tale end­ings, which often seemed sexist or overly moral­istic. Her work has continued to be published in Austria; in addition, she is published in more than sixteen other countries, and her work has been exhibited worldwide. Zwerger has been honored several times at the Bologna Interna­tional Children’s Book Fair, at the Biennial of Il­lustrators at Bratislava, and by library organiza­tions and literary publications in the United States* She is among the best illustrative artists to have emerged in this century.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) did not see any of her almost 1,800 poems through the process of publication, but she did copy more than 1,100 poems in fair hand onto folded sheets of stationery, binding the majority of the sheets into the booklets Dickinson scholars call fascicles.

Although only a small minority of Dickinson’s manuscripts contain a large number of alternatives or revisions, her recurring use of this compositional, revising, or copying method suggests that at the very least she thought of her poems as always open to new formulations of her thought, or new thinking. In this she resembles her peer, Walt Whitman, who frequently revised poems for later publication. Dickinson’s variant versions of many of the poems she circulated also underline her sense of a poem’s fluidity. Writing a poem without alternatives in one copy did not prevent her from later recasting that poem in an equally stable but variant form. Dickinson’s alternatives resemble multiple performance options for a single production: variation is potentially unlimited, but when performing - in Dickinson’s case, reading a poem aloud or circulating a text to a friend - the artist chooses a single version.

Dickinson’s poems thus range along a continuum of resolution. Some scholars believe that Dickinson composed with attention not just to language but to the visual space of the page, and even to the kind shape of paper she chose to write on. They read a poem as a visual structure in which the slants of her dashes, the placement and shape of words and letters across the space of her writing surface , and the material characteristics of each scrap of paper or embossed stationery page all signify as elements of the poetry. Consequently each writing out of a set of words constitutes in effect a new poem.
Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved Them by Christanne Miller

Images of Dickinson’s poetry manuscripts are now available online in the Emily Dickinson Archive (edickinson.org)The archive gives readers the opportunity to explore the ways Dickinson might have played, brilliantly with the space on a page or the shape or previous use of some reclaimed paper scraps.

Dickinson knew by heart much of the Bible and many poems by her favorite authors. In some of her poems she quotes such sources exactly, with or without quotation marks. More frequently, she alludes to or echoes other work.

Estranged from Beauty - none can be -
For Beauty is infinity -
And power to be finite ceased
Before identity was creased
c.1879

Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them by Christanne Miller

Pamela Coleman Smith:The Untold Story by Greer, O’Connor, Parsons

Pamela Coleman Smith - The Untold Story

Today, I share the tapestry of a biography, a long hidden revelation titled Pamela Coleman Smith: The Untold Story, where prose and poetry waltz hand in hand, orchestrated by the soulful words of Mary Greer, Elizabeth Foley O’Connor, and Melinda Boyd Parsons.

As I read this comprehensive volume, I found myself whisked away to the sepia-tinted days of the early 1900s, an epoch tinged with artistic fervor and societal metamorphosis. The biography, akin to a spellbinding sonnet, paints the canvas of time with vibrant strokes, breathing life into Pamela's existence. The poetic biography of her life is a feast to savor slowly.

This narrative deftly unravels the tapestry of Pamela's talents, revealing her not merely as the artist behind the iconic Rider-Waite Tarot deck but as a poet, a playwright — a luminary of the arts. The artist’s art unfurl like tendrils, delicately tracing her journey through Bohemian enclaves, entwined with the shadows also present in Smith’s life. The authors wide ranging narrative is comprehensive while also being academically rich.

Within these pages, the biography unearths Pamela's spiritual world - a dance between mysticism and the esoteric. The author’s guide us through the labyrinth of Pamela’s soul's exploration, unveiling the symbiotic embrace between her spiritual sojourns and the kaleidoscopic symbolism that dances through her tarot canvases as well as her rich and varied other works of art.

Pamela emerges not only as an artist but as a phoenix, resilient against the tempests of a male-dominated artistic sea. Her struggles, a poignant melody, resonate through the narrative, echoing the spirit of a woman who dared to carve constellations in the night sky.

The author’s, interlace the narrative with epistolary sonnets, love letters from time, whispers of Pamela's soul painted onto the parchment of time. These artist works, woven like threads of gossamer, draw us into an intimate pas de deux with the enigmatic artist.

And what is a lyrical odyssey without a visual sonnet? The biography, a gallery of dreams, presents a myriad of visuals — a kaleidoscope of Pamela's artistry. Her illustrations, like verses in an ancient manuscript, unfold before our eyes, inviting us to revel in the intricacies of her creativity.

In summation, Pamela Coleman Smith: The Untold Story is not just a biography; it is a sonnet of ages, a melodic exploration of creativity, spirituality, and the uncharted seas of a woman's soul. So, adorn yourself in the cloak of anticipation, brew a cup of moonlit tea, and let the enchanting artistry of Pamela Coleman Smith fill your senses. This is a poetic journey whispered through the pages of time — an artists mapped journey - awaiting your eager steps.

Biography Work
I plan to write poetic pieces while reflecting on Coleman Smith’s life after reading this book and examining her art work. There are many creative ways to come to this work. One exercise might be to pick a tarot card and write prose or poetics - what this card brings to the surface for you. Try not to measure your writing in any way. Simply - write from a place of curious exploration. The influence of her art in The Tarot is immeasurable as a body of deep influence. Utilizing The Tarot in Biography work is a life long journey filled with rich imagery and inner reflections. Have you found resonance with The Tarot or Pamela Coleman Smith’s life body of work?

Mary K Greer’s Blog