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!

Letter Writing Workshop

I hosted a letter writing workshop at my local library this past weekend. We had a small intimate group attend which gave us the opportunity to share in our small group. People shared the letters they wrote - memories about writing letters - what writing letters meant to them personally.

I used the framework of More Love Letters - which I have been writing letters with for years. In December More Love Letters brings us 12 Days of Writing Letters. This time of year is challenging for many people. Writing letters to people who have had letters requested for them allows us the gift of sharing ourselves - reaching out to bring some comfort and care to others that are in need of encouragement at this time of year. The secret to writing letters is that - you as the letter writer receive just as much personally as the letter recipient.

Letter Writing Supplies

I provided materials that were for the taking. This is not necessary as you can use whatever letter writing materials that you have on hand. It does not need to be expensive at all. I choose to offer up holiday themed paper and cards as inspiration. I also did this as a holiday gift to the community. Going forward it is best if people provide their own writing materials. This way people can pick out what most resonates for them and also keeps the cost down for any one person as a host. I wanted to offer up ideas of things that might be used in letter writing. In the middle of one display was a vintage holiday puzzle that I did in keeping with the theme of sending hand written letters by mail.

Letter Writing Workshop

More Love Letters - founded by Hannah Brencher has a book she wrote about the founding of her organization. It is a hopeful and inspiring read showing us that a small act can in turn offer so much care to the world. Your library can most likely get a copy for you!

Letter Writing Workshop - My daughter Emma and Myself - Handmade Hat by Emma

My daughter Emma came to join me which was a great surprise and delight! We did not plan our color scheme of clothing. This often seems to happen to us through the years - most likely not by accident or chance. I made kite paper stars that were on all of the tables for people to take home with them. I made the Christmas Tree book from an old Charlotte’s Web paperback at a craft workshop at our library the day before. We had a Holiday Tea from Harney & Sons with gingersnap heart shaped cookies for the theme of More Love. We all decided that we had such a nice time writing letters together that we will do it again soon in another upcoming workshop. Have you enjoyed writing letters in your life? I hope that you might find that you also begin or renew your letter writing practice.

I opened the workshop with the following poem by David Whyte

Everything is Waiting for You

by David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you courage.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the

conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

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.

“Before the ice is in the pools—
Before the skaters go,
Or any check at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow—

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!”

— Emily Dickinson

The Farmers Daughter

Come on a full holiday season tour of The Farmers Daughter with me. A complete picture of all of the holiday decor to tempt you as well as give you inspiration for your own holiday decorating. Whether or not you celebrate Christmas time - does not matter. This festive season offers the simplest ideas from a tiny bell to hang on a nail in your home to full out fantasy decorating in the myriad of ways offered here. What I love about The Farmers Daughter is that each vignette sparks an imaginative scenario that one might carry out in your own particular home setting. A walk through of the seasonal delights is a bit like a museum of imagination. It always feels like a storybook trail - with a satisfied sigh at the end of the visit. I hope you enjoy your magical time here.

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

The Farmers Daughter

That concludes our festive tour of The Farmers Daughter. I hope you enjoyed your time here. Perhaps you found some inspiration or a simple idea to carry out in your own Home Place. I came away with two candles and a small little bell. It was just right. Thank you for walking with me…

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