She was 20 years old the first time she heard him sing.
It was a normal weekend day. She was in her senior year in college and was studying for exams, sitting on the sofa in the living room. He walked into the living room with a Budweiser beer in his hand and carefully sat it down on the coffee table. He was in his work clothes, dirty from working overtime as the town electrician with a five o’clock shadow on his face and tired eyes.
She was hard at work at her books and had just looked up to say hello. There was no music playing, no television interrupting the quiet. She looked back down and continued to read.
Her head shot up when he started to sing. She listened for a moment. He wasn’t singing just anything. Without preparation, he was singing…..opera? How could that be?
Through her shock, she tried to place the opera and it was easy. He was singing a part of Don Giovanni in a beautiful baritone voice.
She had never heard him sing anything as simple as a lullaby. She couldn’t believe her ears.
Somehow, she knew not to go to him. She just listened. He sang the most beautiful music for what seemed forever but must have been just a few minutes.
”I don’t know what got into me,” he chuckled, as he started to walk off.
“Daddy, that was beautiful. Sing for me again,” she said as tears rolled down his face.
Good morning and come on in! Join me for #weekendcoffeeshare #160! I”m so glad to be blogging again. I really enjoy the writing, but I also enjoy my interactions with all of you. Grab a cup of coffee and please join me for a catch-up.
Wild weather in my part of the world again this week. Terrible thunderstorms and wind. It’s spring here and the weather is always unsettled, but never quite as unsettled as it is this year.
The week started with the solar eclipse! We did not get totality here. We got about 96%. It was quite cloudy that day, but most of us still got a pretty good glimpse at the eclipse. I was surprised because it did not turn as dark as we expected. Quite an event! The University here has a space science division and very nice facilities including a large telescope. They invited the public to come take a glimpse and that was fascinating!
I’ve done a lot of work this week. A lot of writing. What is your current WP? I’m looking at ideas for two books. I don’t know, for sure, if I will pursue these ideas or not, but I like them both. It’s not about me, however, it is about the potential audience for my work. I have to undertake some market research to find out if there is a potential audience. I feel like I’m out of touch with what the public is reading for pleasure since, until recently, I was writing on contract in my field.
What do you feel the public likes now? I’d love your opinions!
I have some pics of my garden although Mother Nature seems determined to make this gardening year difficult. Our last frost date isn’t until May 15, so there is plenty of time left for her to kill it! I used to grow vegetables, but not now. Living in the forest does not let you have access to enough sunlight. There is also a tree here, the black oak, that drips sap that is poisonous to veggies. So, now it’s flowers for me!
Speaking of flowers, allow me to show you the progress of some of my favs in my flower garden! Here are the perennials just starting in my shade garden.
Siberian Bugloss (top) and fern (bottom)
Ajuga – a great shade groundcover
Coral Bells
Here are a few of my plants in another flower bed that get partial sun/partial shade.
From the front:
Hosta. Left of the hosta is a clematis. Immediately behind the hosta is two peonies. Behind the peonies and to the right, climbing, is another variety of clematis. Behind the peonies/clematis is an iris bed. The irises are slowly coming up. I have both Siberian Iris and Louisiana Iris.
Other flowering plants are in this bed that have not come up yet. It’s early spring here in the Kentucky mountains.
Thanks for having coffee with me and have a wonderful week!
The two boys hopped on the freight train as Cadot, the old Ojibwen man, watched. It was a dry, windy day, typical for these Dust Bowl days of the 1930’s in America. Even though the most profound effects were in the Midwest, most of the country was affected in some way.
The two boys were from a poor white family in town. They came out to the area around Cadot’s cabin near the railroad tracks to pick blueberries. Northern Michigan was renowned for its blueberry crop. The boys picked the berries for money to support their family.
After picking as many blueberries as they could carry, the boys would hop on a passing freight train and sell their blueberries at every stop. They would ride another freighter back.
One day, the older boy came to pick blueberries alone. Cadot asked where his brother was, and he replied that he had left home after they had fought. The boy was 15 years old.
Almost ten years passed. The Dust Bowl was over, and World War II was firing up. Cadot had a visitor, and it was the boy who left home. He had come home to join the Navy. He had been sending his family money from Baltimore. When the boy left, Cadot grieved and didn’t expect to see him again.
After the war was over, there was a knock at the cabin door. There stood the boy, now a man, home from the War. His seven-year-old daughter was with him.
The old house was going to be destroyed. Industrial development. She barely got there in time before it became a victim of the wrecking ball.
They stopped work for her so she could retrieve what she wanted. She had to be quick. She ran from room to room, snatching and grabbing.
She ran into the nursery and there were her books. Her childhood lived in those books. One of the workers helped and she packed them up. Nancy Drew. Huckleberry Finn. More.
She loaded them in her car as the memories battered her brain. Thinking of her family, she cried.
Good morning and welcome to my April 6, 2024 #weekendcoffeeshare 159! Please come in a have a seat. I was hoping it would be warm this morning, but it isn’t, so we will be here in my kitchen.
If I were having coffee with you this morning, I would tell you that this has been one of those weeks. By the end of it, I didn’t know if I wanted to scream or if I wanted to climb back in bed and pull the covers up over my head!
The week started, last Sunday, with three and one-half or four full on bad weather
days. Here in the East Central U.S., we had flood warnings, tornado watches and warnings, severe thunderstorm watches and warnings,, and warnings about hail. In addition, we had warnings from the National Weather Service about high winds, perhaps hurricane force.
Where I live, we got all the weather, but we were spared any real damage. There was one evening where we had 70 mile per hour winds and a terrible thunderstorm, but they weren’t tornadic. The road flooded at the base of the mountain where I live and no one could get in or out.
After the stormy weather, it turns cold here. Really cold for April where I live in the US. I have two perennial gardens and all the plants had to be covered up – for four nights in a row. I think, today, the weather is finally back to something approaching normal and we can take the covers off.
Even in the cold, the perennial gardens are just starting to thrive.
The end of the week held an event I went to. One of my best friends lost her husband a month ago. She had a Celebration of Life for him instead of the traditional visitation and funeral. It was at a local bar where he worked off and on. Although we all paid our respects, it was really just a big party in celebration of Jeff’s life. It was nice to be able to see a lot of friends all at once. I was able to see some of my high school classmates which I always enjoy.
I’ve been doing a lot of writing for this blog. I’m gradually getting comfortable with it again and may start back to work on my book. I had been sort of blocked for a while, but seeing friends and writing with friends here has helped. Thanks to all of you!
I’m currently reading the book, “Commonwealth,” by Ann Patchett. I like her books sometimes, but not always. I’ve only just started this book and the jury is still out. Has anyone else read it?
Thank you for stopping by my #weekendcoffeeshare today! I’m off to read some of your’s. Will you watch the solar eclipse this week?
She never tired of this view. Every night, she came to the lovely, long pier on the bay to watch the sunset. The sky turned to watercolors.
The sun was down now, but she stayed on the pier for the companionship of the locals and to watch the nighttime water birds.
It was her last night on the island. She thought she would be back next winter. In the coming summer, the hurricane made a direct hit on the island. It caused destruction to both the island and to her. She knew she would never see the magical island again.
*I cheated a little this week. This is a true story slightly fictionalized.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to #weekendcoffeeshare #158. Help yourself to one of several brews or a cup of green or black tea. Grab your beverage, have a seat in my writing room, and we’ll catch up!
As Natalie points out, it’s the end of one entire quarter of 2024! I can’t believe three months of 2024 are already gone. The older you get, the faster time flies! If we were having coffee this morning, I would tell you that this last quarter has been one of the busiest I’ve had in a long time. I’ve had several projects that I’ve tackled but not necessarily finished.
The first quarter has been my time to break back into to blogging and I’ve surely enjoyed blogging with all of you. My fiction skills were rusty (or non-existent) and I’m trying to hone them a bit by writing for the excellent Challenges here on WordPress. I’ve also written a few non-fiction pieces on topics near and dear to my heart. My Appalachian series, for example. Stories here and there about other non-fiction topics, rescue dogs and hunting dogs. Politics. A little travel writing. These areas in which I write will continue on into second quarter 2024.
One project is a novella, perhaps an e-book, that I’m working on. The genre is fantasy which I’ve never written before. I find it fascinating and quite difficult. I have enjoyed the world building phase a great deal. I’ve found that fantasy is challenging. My novella is set in a particular time and I want the details of that time accurately depicted. It’s required a lot of research and I’m still not quite there yet, but I’m gaining on it! This WIP will extend into the second quarter of 2024 and probably beyond. What’s your latest WIP that will go on for some time this year?
On a personal note, busy is an understatement. It’s just barely the beginning of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. That means outside work like cleaning up the yard and flower beds. I love in the forest so no vegetable beds, I’m afraid. We get our spring, summer, and fall vegetables from local farmers’ markets. We are starting, but just starting, to see signs of spring here. We’ve had warm weather early and I’m afraid my plants will be killed back by frost. Our last frost date isn’t until May 15.
These crocuses and ferns will be fine if it frosts, but I have peonies, iris, clematis, and hostas that may not be fine.
On another subject, my husband has spent the last six months dealing with medical challenges. We hope that he is now stable and maybe even getting some better. We’re had a lot of medical paperwork and doctor’s appointments to attend to.
Another activity I will be involved in during the second quarter of 2024 is dog training. Our German Shepherd, Sophie, is both obedience and protection trained. She just needs some brushing up on her skills. If our Corgi, Hazel, can stay well, she needs obedience training. Hazel doesn’t understand (yet) the concept of obedience since she has been sick. She seems to be getting better!
The only travel we have planned, to date, is short trips to Kentucky State Parks. We take Sophie with us and she has a blast. She always gets a hamburger on the way home.
What is everyone reading? I am reading the new novel by Kristen Hannah, The Women. It is about a girl in her early 20s, back in the 1960’s, who is a nurse and volunteers in the Army to be an Army surgical nurse in South Vietnam. Believe me, it is worth a read. If you weren’t around during the Vietnam War, you’ll learn a lot. If you were, you will remember a lot.
Thank you so much for coming to my #weekendcoffeeshare #158 this weekend!
She liked bars. She didn’t drink or smoke. She didn’t go home with strange men. She was simply a people watcher and some of the best opportunities were in bars, but these were the boring 2020s. Everything was so politically correct, so sanitized that nothing was fun anymore.
Back in the 70’s, when rock and roll and women’s rights were shiny and new, everything was fun. There was no such thing as political correctness. Men and women were busy experiencing live music in bars and relating to each other in a way that had never been possible. They were high on life. The downside was that they were high on other substances too. They didn’t know much yet about the downsides of those substances, including liquor. Those were the Glory Days.
She looked around this bar stuck in a corner of the airport. Bright lights, men only except for her. She couldn’t hear the music over the intercom because it was too soft. The men were quietly talking to each other, but certainly not to her. They even looked like they were practicing political correctness. She preferred to laugh. She didn’t think she’d have much fun people watching in this place.
Even people her age had bought into the whole new sanitized world notion, except when it came to politics. That was where you found the passion, but none of the fun. The entire world was at stake.
Time to go. She would put on her headphones and drift away.
The Write Scribe 