Sep. 28, 2011: Grandma’s laugh

Growing up, I had two wonderful grandmothers: Beatrice Travis-Ridings or “Granny Bea,” who passed away just a few months before Amelia was born in 2001… and Eileen Darnell-Houser or “Grandma Bam,” who left us in 2009. Back in 2010, I wrote about Granny Bea, and this post on Grandma Bam is long overdue.

My life has been keeping me very busy lately. Outside of my daily activities focused on taking excellent care of my family and clients, free time has been extremely scarce. This week, my father celebrated his 70th birthday — and with my stepmom, their 36th wedding anniversary — while my big bro arrived at birthday number 48. As I thought about things I could do in their honor, I remembered the video interview I did with Grandma Bam back in 2004, and decided to share some of its contents with them and our other friends and familymembers on Facebook. Read more

Arc of the Poet, Part 7: Home Stretch

Nearly a year after our spectacular wedding, May of 1993 found me, Beth and pretty much everyone else in our family continuously thinking about my brother, his daily perseverance in recovering from his July ’91 diving accident, and his successful return to a more normal lifestyle. By then, he and his girlfriend had their own place, on my dad and step-mom’s farm and within earshot of their home. From every angle, Scott was making us all very proud, and showing the kind of resounding inner strength we all hope to have when faced with unimaginable adversity.

At one point right after the accident, my mom wondered aloud if we would ever be happy again. Illinois has always provided a powerful attraction for me around my birthday in May, and I was especially thankful while driving there on May 6, 1993, that I was feeling real joy. You can find a poem I wrote back in 1988 about those annual treks to my native homeland here. Read more

Arc of the Poet, Part 5: Wake-Up Call

We kept the afterburners on and blasted into 1991, with me clawing my way forward professionally and growing up further alongside my sweetheart. I wrote an original short script for producer/director Bill Waxler, and his plans to produce it brought together a very talented group of production professionals and friends. Entitled “Bumper Crop” that project gained steam through the Spring, and by June 29, we were on location, ready to shoot it on 16mm film. I’ve written about this project in the past, beginning with Feb. 22, 1991: Bumper Crop, Part 1.

Part 2 of that series recounts the unforeseen drama of June 29. Read more

Arc of the Poet, Part 1: Life Poetry

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure that I’m capable of summarizing my childhood in just a few lines, but I do want to paint enough of a picture here to be able to show the ways in which poetry factored into my early life, and came to be something I saw as my ticket to success. Here goes.

Like all kids of the late 1960s, I was exposed early and often to Dr. Seuss, and those fantastic rhymes of his really made deep impressions on me. But there were other rhymes my older brother and I were exposed to, which had accompanied my mother’s upbringing in a rural setting in Southern Illinois, at the hands of her Tennessee-born parents. From early ages, we heard this favorite time and again, inspiring our many adventures in the woods, and framing them in our minds.

May 9, 2010: Granny Bea Photo Tribute, Ramble #7

I’ve written here before about my “Ramble” creative writing project. On Dec. 30 of 2009, I sat down to write a Ramble entry for my late grandmother Beatrice Ridings, who was widely known to many as Granny Bea, Aunt Bea, or Ms. Ridings. I had two wonderful grandmothers who have now passed on, and luckily for me, Grandma Eileen Darnell, who we called Bam, was also tight with Granny Bea, so on more than one occasion, I was able to enjoy them both simultaneously. At long last, I have published a separate collection for Grandma Bam, and below, I am very proud to share my tribute to Granny Bea. Read more

February 1, 2009: Brother a keeper

Ramble
January 17, 2008: #17
January 18, 2008: #16
February 1, 2009: #10
April 27, 2009: #9
October 3, 2009: #8
May 9, 2010: #7
August 18, 2010: #6Arc of the Poet, Part 14: Ramblings (#5)
Arc of the Poet, Part 15: Being (#4-#2)

January 17, 2008: Ramble #17

The ‘Bumper Crop’ series has at least one more entry, but requires a bit more work on my part before I can post the rest of the story. In the meantime, I wanted to share something from a more recent work. After we moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains almost exactly seven years ago, I found my creative writing energies more or less depleted. Soon, being a father added a new dimension to my life, and the one creative project that stayed on my agenda was to write an epic poem for Amelia, detailing the first day of her life from my perspective. That took over a year, and eventually it may find its way on here. After finishing that, in the moments when life and work settled down, I began to wonder what should come next. The answer found me in the form of a new project I conceived, and dubbed “Ramble.” Read more