October photo essay

This is the last day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge, and I am happy to report that I have met the challenge. I have managed to post to my blog every day for the entire month. I am glad that I did it. It was a great experience for me to share pieces of my story, as well as some bits of creative writing, some journalism, etc.
October is truly a golden month, caught between summer and winter. At the start, the leaves are still green and the sunflowers are still in bloom. Then everything becomes bright and beautiful, with reds and greens and browns and yellows. All warm colors. And now, at the end of October, some of the trees are now close to naked, well on their way to dormancy. Below is my photo essay for October.

Tea time at River Lea. October meeting of the Grand Island Historical Society, where Jackie Albarella told us, through story and pictures, all about the restoration of Louise Bethune's downtown architectural masterpiece, The Hotel Lafayette.

The apple tree in front of my house was loaded with apples this year. I enjoyed collecting apples and have been making applesauce and apple pear sauce. Apparently, not only humans enjoy apples.

Opening wings, looking radiant.

Eveline at the World on Your Plate event at Daemen College. It's all about sustainable living and good stuff like that. 

Lots of color at World on Your Plate. This stuff came from El Buen Amigo in Buffalo.

It's not Ming Dynasty but it is a beautiful vase, displayed at a table at World on Your Plate.

So much color. 

I found this leaf... colorful and a wee bit torn... 

I saw this in mid-October. Halloween is only one day but it's fun to have the decorations up for several weeks. Fun holiday.

Decorated lighthouse.

Someone is looking very bright. It gives real meaning to that light bulb moment in cartoons, where there is this light bulb displayed over someone's head.

Woods Creek in autumn...

Trees at different stages...

Sweet Suzie Bear, our "guest blogger," enjoys resting in the pumpkin patch.

I found this rose near the pumpkin patch.

I went out to search for raspberries. First I found a few, and then I hit the jackpot! The raspberry bushes are still producing. I went back to pick more raspberries and found that there are still quite a few unripe ones.

Sweet Suzie Bear and the raspberry collection.

Sweet Suzie Bear enjoys visiting a farmers' market at a nearby community garden. The people running this stand said that they would continue to sell produce "until the snow flies."

The sharpening stone that was donated to the Grand Island Historical Society.

The original gates at River Lea. 

Another view of the gates at River Lea.

Ricky Hoover arranged the donation of the stone to River Lea. He planned and carried through the unearthing of the stone. He also built a base for the stone. He did all of this as his Eagle Scout project.

Sweet Suzie Bear and sleepy friends at River Lea.

Curt Nestark, president of the Grand Island Historical Society, talks about the stone and about local history.

Ricky Hoover and his troop leader Scott Swagler and the sharpening stone.

Sweet Suzie Bear is ready for a party. "Mmm, punch," she says.

Sweet Suzie Bear with autumnal cookies at the book club meeting at the Grand Island Memorial Library.

Some apples from the very productive tree.

Colorful ghost is ready for Halloween.

Pumpkin and late season flowers.

This is my dancing girls painting...

I had fun painting the not very scary scarecrow.

Author Greg Swiatek came to a book club meeting to talk about his book, The Weed Killer. It's about the homeless problem in Toronto and it featured a serial killer who was determined to get rid of the "weeds" (homeless people) by killing them.

Father Earle gets ready to carve a pumpkin during his sermon!

Busily cleaning out the inside of the pumpkin.

It has a face and a light that shines from within.

Father Earle's pumpkin.

I made my Halloween jewelry from a combination of new and old materials.

Cannon at a town memorial.

A closer view of the pumpkins near the cannon.

Two years ago, I helped to paint this mural. I painted the sailboats and part of the water and the lawn. 

Here we are at the pumpkin patch and at the end of October. It has been a fun experience to document the unfolding of October from beginning to end in this blog.

This yellow beauty may very well be the last rose of summer.

Alice and companion in costume at the Grand Island Dance Center after zumba class.

A Halloween tale in blank verse

It was a chilly October morning
when the ghosts and the goblins came to town,
causing the scaredy-cat lady to scream
and the skittish cat to run for cover.

The ghosts did not need anything to eat
but the goblins favored dark chocolate.
Goblins visited a confectioner
who disappeared into the moonless night.

The ghosts and the goblins wandered the streets
in search of friends and something sweet to eat.
Loneliness haunted them with ev'ry step
until one small person stopped to say "hi."

"Will you be my friend?" asked the tiny girl.
she smiled sweetly and offered her hand.
The goblin lifted up the little girl
and whirled her around 'neath the silver moon.

The goblin showed the girl the land of dreams,
of sprites and unicorns and magic things.
A special gift on a Halloween night
for a girl who was not easily scared.

Fun creative writing exercises

Time for a little fun with writing and story telling!

I found a website that offers a variety of opportunities for creative writing exercises. You can find the website by clicking onto the words "creative writing exercises": creative writing exercises That's a fun way to help ease or eliminate the frustration of writers' block. So I decided that, today, I would try two of these exercises. 

I will take ten minutes for the first exercise, which is a timed writing with a prompt.


The prompt is a "random line generator." The bolded words are the words that were given to me by the random line generator. 

She kept checking her phone and email, wishing someone would make contact with her. But no, nothing happened. The phone was completely silent. The email was nothing but spam and fake job offers and notes from men who wanted to date her but who were completely unsuited to her. They were half her age and wanted to do inappropriate activities. Those were the easy ones. She simply deleted their comments without response. Then there were the old guys. They wanted the same things as the young guys but they were more subtle about it. They said things like "companionship," but they didn't want to be mere companions.

Well, she wanted to have someone who was more than companions but she didn't want someone who was so crude about it. Ugh. Reading all of that gibberish was a complete turn off.

Anyway, she wasn't really focused on her next boyfriend, paramour, or whatever at this moment. What she was focused on was a job offer or a hoped-for job offer. She was looking for a job as a cake baker. She had finished her apprenticeship and she wanted to be hired by a wealthy family who were looking for someone to bake a very extravagant wedding cake for their young daughter. The young daughter had gotten engaged to someone from overseas. Royalty maybe. She wasn't sure of all of the details. She only know that the family was ready to spare no expense in holding this wedding. And the cake was no exception. This would be her piece de resistance. She was going to make the wedding cake of all wedding cakes.

If only she got the job. The wedding cake job. And while the rich family was at it, they could hire her to do all of their baking. But was she getting greedy.

Aha! An email was coming in. What was this about? She was going to check it out when both the telephone and the doorbell rang at the same time. What to answer first. She raced to the door but tripped over a pile of papers. She also knocked the telephone to the floor, which irritated her. She picked up the receiver.

"Hello?" she said breathlessly.

"Don't vote for my opponent on November 4th. He is scum and belongs in jail."

She hung up. That was irritating. Why would someone who belongs in jail run for office, where his crimes would be obvious? She decided that the phone call was stupid.

At that point, the...

Ten minutes have expired so this story ends in mid-sentence. Now for a second creative writing exercise. 

This exercise is called a random plot generator. The program provides the following elements for a story: a main character, a second character, a setting, a situation, a theme, and character action. You click buttons for each element.

I pressed the buttons and got:
main character: an adventurous 50 year old woman
second character: a sensitive 45-year-old woman
setting: the story begins in an airplane
situation: someone hitches a ride home during a train strike
theme: it is a story about terror
character action: your character gets into competition with another character

OK. So here goes. At least part of a story.

My name is Andrea. Recently, I celebrated my 50th birthday properly, with black forest cake and loads and loads of wine. OK, so maybe too much wine. My friend Freda reminds me over and over again that I guzzle too much wine and that it will make me fat and unattractive. Well, you only have your 50th birthday once in your life so why not do it right?

Poor Freda is just too sensitive. She thinks that I am suffering because I am 50 years old and am no longer a youth. She has five years before she turns 50 and, at that point, I will throw one heck of a party for her. I'll bake a cake and I'll decorate her house which, for some reason, always appears dull, drab, and decorated like the thrift store show house. I can't tell her that she needs to redecorate her house because she would get mad. She is very sensitive about her house and its appearance, also. It's probably because she has been divorced like about five times. Well, maybe not five but it seems as if she goes through husbands like most of us go through clothing. We change our clothes every day. She changes her husband almost every day and I don't think that is an exaggeration.

But I digress. Freda was good enough to agree to go on a birthday trip with me. We both like to travel so we had plenty of frequent flier miles. I travel for adventure; she travels for business.

So here we were sitting on the airplane. It's kind of annoying because I got stuck with the middle seat and Freda is sitting on the aisle seat. There is a snoring man sitting next to the window. He keeps trying to reach to the aisle with his foot and his hand. The first time that he reached to the aisle with his foot, he stepped on me, which caused me to yelp. After he fell back asleep, I thought that I was in the clear until he reached out with his hand and hit my face. This man was definitely a menace on two legs.

After an overpriced and barely edible airline meal of pseudo chicken, mushy vegetables, and tea, I settled in for a nap. Unfortunately, Mr. Snoring wouldn't let me sleep because of his windmill arms and i-sound-like-a-lawnmower-in-need-of-an-oil-change snore noises. I chose to watch the in-flight movie because the nap wasn't happening. The movie was a cute little chick flick about a woman who fell in love with five men at the same time... or something like that. Freda watched the movie. At the first kiss, Freda's eyes were full of tears. By the tenth kiss that the woman bestowed on one of the men that she loved, selected randomly, Freda was weeping copiously, to the point that the flight attendant came running with tissues and a glass of water. Freda sniffed loudly, thanked the flight attendant, guzzled the water, and absent-mindedly wiped at her eyes with the tissues that tore immediately upon contact with human skin.

At last, we arrived at our destination. The plane landed and we turned on our cell phones and exited the plane. It didn't take too long for us to get our luggage. We noticed that snoring man, who stood near us. We didn't think much about it. He grabbed his luggage and walked away slowly. He seemed to just hang around without any real purpose in mind. Freda wondered out loud if the man had anyone to pick him up or if he needed help.

"That's his business," I said to Freda. "Why don't we go and catch the train and go to our hotel. Most of the tour group is there and we don't want to be late or we will miss the exciting climb up the volcano."

"That does not sound like fun. Why did I agree to this trip?" Freda asked, smiling. 

We walked out of the airport, barely noticing that Mr. Snoring was right behind us. As soon as we exited, we saw a bunch of people marching in circles, carrying signs. Railroad workers on strike. Don't ride the trains. They are unsafe. All of the safety workers got fired in a big purge because the railroad wanted to save money. Oh, and the employees were underpaid and have had their pay cut and their hours increased and were forced to work mandatory overtime. The worker exhaustion also contributed to the unsafe nature of the trains.

We couldn't ride the train. We don't cross picket lines. How were we to get to our hotel on time.

Just then, Mr. Snoring approached us. He said that he would give us a ride. How did he know that we had no transportation without the train? We suspected that he was up to no good but we were too desperate to get to the hotel to meet with the tour group that we agreed mindlessly to ride with a stranger.

Mr. Snoring pulled up his car, which had dark tinted windows. They made the car look like some sort of gangster mobile. That should have been a hint that we should not get into the car but... we got in anyway. 

The man asked us where we were going. He went in the wrong direction, which frightened us a bit. He told us that he knew a shortcut. Unfortunately, it was not a shortcut to our hotel; it was a shortcut to a nightmare...

Here I stop because I need to set the table, but this is the start of a story with the elements chosen by a remote plot generator and the names of the characters chosen by a remote name generator. 

So how about it? Writing prompts and remote generators could add the pizzazz and the fun to your writing exercises. Go for it and have fun.

Catching Courage

catching courage in unusual places, when we least expect it...

In Kathy Kelly's book Other Lands Have Dreams, she talks about "catching courage." She says that we catch courage from each other, from being around other people with courage. Our courageousness does not come from being fearless but from dealing with our fear.
I believe that to be so.
I am not by nature a courageous person but I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who have shown courage in the face of insurmountable difficulties. And not just people. I've seen courageous dogs and cats, as well. Animals facing terrible odds against them simply persevere. Smokey was a cat who taught me about courage. He had lymphoma. As his illness make him weaker, he continued to try to jump on my lap. And he failed, every time. I picked him up and cradled him and, despite the pain that he must have felt, he purred and kissed me. 
It is hard to be as graceful as that cat while suffering as much as he was.
Here are some of my experiences of catching courage:
Witness Against War Walk in 2008: One of our walkers was an Iraq war veteran named Paul. Not long after 9/11, Paul joined the U.S. Army. He wanted to express his patriotism. At first, the army was great fun for him. He was sent to Hawaii and had a great time, hanging out on the beach during his free time. 
After the Iraq War started in 2003, life in the U.S. Army changed dramatically for Paul. He was sent to Iraq, where he spent fourteen months. He said that he was never told what the mission Iraq was. The soldiers' missions changed erratically, and no one had a clue as to why they were fighting.
Paul spoke before groups and told them about his experiences. One day, when we were in Madison, he talked about the firing. It was aimed at places where there might be insurgents. Paul described it as random barrages that hit whatever and whomever might be in the way. The goal was to provide enough firing to prevent the insurgents from doing anything.
"We fired in an area," Paul said. "There were no insurgents, just a shepherd who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We killed him... We killed a family in their house... a family..."
Paul was reliving the horror as he spoke to the group. He left the room in tears. A few of the walkers followed Paul outside. We cried with Paul. He said that it was hard to talk about the war and that there were things that happened that he not told anyone. We told Paul that we were proud of him and that we loved him. 
A man named Will came out of the building to talk to Paul. Will is a Vietnam veteran.
"It took me years to talk about the war," Will said, explaining that Paul showed a lot of courage for speaking out.
"You are 37 years ahead of me," Will said.
Later, Paul rode away on a bicycle, with Helene seated behind him.
That day, Paul sent out a lot of courage, and I'd like to think that I caught courage from Paul.
Federal Prison Camp, Danbury, Connecticut, 2007:
In Danbury, I was fortunate enough to have a best friend named Anita. She kept me laughing by giving me books to read about a bounty hunter named Stephanie Plum. My roommates got to hear all of the giggling and squealing as I read about yet another car that Stephanie had managed to wreck. Anita worked as the mechanic in ground maintenance. When I went to work there, it was still snowing so the boss didn't send me out to pick up litter. Anita taught me how to do cool stuff, like change spark plugs. I crawled under large lawnmowers and unscrewed things so that the lawnmower parts could be cleaned and made ready for the mowing season. 
Anita persevered in prison despite health problems. She had to have her blood pressure medication adjusted because it wasn't working. That took a lot of work because health care in prison was a nightmare. At one point, Anita became very ill and had to go to the hospital, where she had gall bladder surgery. She recovered pretty well from that.
Two years after Anita went home, she suffered a debilitating stroke that affected the left side of her body. In fact, her stroke was so severe that the doctors did not expect Anita to survive.
Anita did survive and she learned to type with her right hand, which was challenging for a left handed person. She is a strong and determined person who has overcome some massive obstacles.
I'd like to think that I caught courage from Anita.
I'd also like to think that I caught courage from a woman in prison who said that, at that point, she had been drug-free for 25 months. She said that it was the longest amount of time that she had been drug free since she was six years old, when her mother gave her cocaine.
There are so many more stories that I would love to tell and maybe will, once I start writing that book that I've decided to write.
I hope that I too have sent out little pieces of courage for others to catch.
Maybe one of those others is you?
And now, my question to you:
Tell me about some experience when you caught courage from someone else. What was that like for you?