Without much thought, I would answer true. Then I read what
Carla Sonheim, author of Drawing: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun, and who dreamed up that crazy idea to draw 30 cats that I accepted as a challenge, has to say about having too many options.
“Even though I love drawing and have completed hundreds, each day I have a little mini war with myself when I face that blank page.”
To get over that hump, she has what she calls an arsenal of starter exercises – rules, restrictions and challenges to work within – to get herself going.
I immediately understand.
Carla’s starter exercises for her art are the same as prompts writers use to start their brains. “It’s a paradox: when you have complete freedom, you often freeze up and do nothing,” she says.
OK! Back to drawing cats. I’m actually having fun with the exercise.
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
About the Cat: It’s my version of one of the cats given as examples in the art book: Drawing: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun. The goal was to quickly draw 30 cats from imagination while lying in bed. I guessed that the goal was to get the reader/artist to stop feeling like they had to be perfect, because the cat illustrations were certainly not drawn realistically.
Learning to accept that I wasn’t perfect, somewhere in my mid-30s, was one of the best moments my life. Remembering this got me thinking about other lessons learned during my 81 years on Planet Earth. I decided to make a list of 10 things, but only got to eight before my brain shut off. They are:
No. 1: Accept that you’re not perfect and be happy about it.
No. 2. Don’t take anything personal unless it makes you feel better.
No. 3. Realize that people are more concerned about how they look than how you look.
No. 4. Get a dog and walk it daily.
No. 5. Find your passion in life, and follow it.
No. 6. Get back on the horse when you fall off.
No. 7. Learn something new every day.
No; 8: Get enough sleep most nights. I say most nights because us old broads still gotta have fun once in a while.
Perhaps readers can lengthen the list by sharing things life has taught them.
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
I moderate a writer’s chat group called Writer2Writer for Story Circle Network, an international writing support group for women. Each Wednesday, I provide a writer’s prompt.
This week, wanting to inject a little silliness into the life of writers, who like all of us are living on Covid time, I asked them to have a conversation with an animal who could respond with words instead of just a nodding of the head.
Below is what my oldest daughter, Deborah, who is a member of W2W, wrote. I laughed all the way through. So, to give a bit of time to dog lovers to go along with my promised 30 artful cats, I decided to share it. I hope reading it brings a smile to your face.
Nightcap with Whiskey and Kahlua
By Deborah Bean
Welcome to the world of a new senior citizen (me) and my two lovable dogs. Whiskey weighs in at 25 pounds and is a Schnauzer/Cocker Spaniel mix — a Schnocker that you have to imagine with a Scottish accent. Ten-pound Kahlua is an energetic, sometimes frenzied Jack Russell/Chihuahua mix – a JackChi. Ironically, re names, I’m a teetotaler.
Whiskey:(Opening one eye) Harrrrumph. (Then he closes that eye)
Me: Whiskey, it’s time for bed.
Whiskey: Your bed be much morrrre comfortable. Just leave me be.
Me: Whiskey! Time for bed!
Kahlua: (Scampering back upstairs and starting to bark) Hey it’s bedtime. Time to go pee and then I get a treat! I like treats. Treats are good.
Whiskey: I be in a bed, ye frrrenzied Kahlueless. And it be comforrrtable. And Mistress, if ye please, get idget down tharrre to be quiet.
Me: Whiskey, it’s bedtime. Coooome ooon. (Grabbing his hind legs and pulling slowly, I work his body off the edge of the bed)
Whiskey: (Still not getting up) Hey! What be you doing? And keep yerrr bloody hands offin me prrrivates! (I gently slide him off the bed so his hind feet touch down before I pull him all the way off) And how, the now, did I get down herrre. Ye bloody well tricked me, ye wench.
Kahlua: (Racingdownstairs and back up a second time) C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Time to go outside – then I get a treat! Treats are good. Don’t you want a treat Whiskey? And we’ve got a comfortable crate with pillows and blankies.
Me: Alright. Downstairs now.
Whiskey: I be strrrrretching. And yawning. And be ye sure ye don’t want me back in that tharrrre comfortable bed. I’d be keeping you warm all night.
Kahlua: (Racing up and down the stairs a third time) Time to go pee. I’m a good puppy. I know what to do. Go outside, go pee, get my treat, and then off to bed in our crate.
Me: Whiskey, let’s go. It’s bedtime. Come on.
Whiskey: (Grumbling all the way down to the kitchen door) And it’s a crrruel human ye be. Forcin’ me out of me comforrrtable spot. And now you sends me out into the darrrk to be a’peein.
Kahlua: (After making several circuits of the yard before stopping to go potty) I’m done. See, I went potty. I’m a good puppy. You love me because I know what to do. I’m loved, I’m loved. (Then races up the stairs to see the husband, barking all the way. He sends her back down as Whiskey saunters in from the yard. Kahlua is panting)
Me: Okay, into the crate, both of you.
Whiskey: (Giving me the evil eye, again) And, I be askin’, what will ye be givin’ me? Kahlueless over there may be willin’ but she be titched in the head.
Me: Of course. Here’s your treat. Now into the crate.
Kahlua: I got a treat. Treats are good. Now I’m in the crate. I’m a good puppy!
Whiskey: I’ll not be likin’ this a bit, but since thare be a treat, so shall it be.
Me: (Sighs) Why do I put up with this? It’s a good thing you’re such a snuggle bunny.
Whiskey: Hey! Who ye be besmirchin’ wit’ your bunny talk? It’s a fierce fighter I be — at least five minutes of the day. Hmph!
Me: Night puppies. Love you. See you in the morning.
Whiskey: Hmph! Well, at least there be comforrrtable blankets. Scootch over ye idget. Give me space.
Kahlua: (Snuggles between Whiskey’s legs) I did good! I said goodnight, peed, and went to bed with a treat. I’m a good puppy!
Whiskey: Quiet little beastie. I be tryin’ to sleep here.
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Although I love cooking, and am reasonably good at it, I never bake cakes these days. I tried in my younger years but almost always they were dismal failures. They drooped, didn’t rise, had raw centers or a dozen other mishaps.
That’s because I can’t ever seem to follow rules. While I can successfully add or subtract to my favorite one-pot dishes, leaving out or adding something a cake recipe calls for rarely works.
I thought about that as I was drawing one of the cats for the first assignment in Drawing: 52 Exercises to Make Drawing fun. I sort of fudged yesterday when I wrote that the first exercise was to draw 30 cats.
The exact words of the exercise were: “Draw 30 cats from your imagination while sitting or lying in bed.” But that didn’t seem fun to me. I’m not a daytime bed person, rarely even taking naps. So, I simply snipped off the end of the assignment to suit my style.
The truth is I’m one of those people, whoever they are, who only read instructions when all else fails. And telling me I must do something is like waving a red banner in front of an angry bull.
My journal writing has helped me understand these and many more of my failings — or strengths if you look at things from an opposite angle. I doubt I’m going to change at my age. But I am going to eventually draw 30 cats.
More journaling and cats to come …
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie (Available free on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
First assignment from Drawing: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun. Draw 30 cats. This is Cat No. 1
When I was in my early 20s, I wanted to become both a writer and an artist. Writing won out. For over half a century, writing was as important to me as breathing. Actually, it still is.
As a newspaper journalist for 37 years, I felt what I wrote was important – because I was keeping people informed of what was going on in the world and what they needed to know. Thankfully, that was the priority goal of the newsrooms I worked in from 1967 to 2004.
I cringe today when I read, or hear, so many journalism personalities (certainly not reporters) editorialize their version of events. I belong to the days of journalists like Walter Cronkite, who ended his news shows with “And that’s the way it is.” I’m not sure when demonizing and hate-mongering to win readers and viewers became so prevalent.
Ok. Enough of that. I didn’t plan on a soapbox rant for this blog. I was going to write about how these days my writing mostly consists of journaling. It’s helping me, at the grand age of 81, to connect the dots of my life. I find it quite enjoyable and rewarding, as well as helping me better understand who I am.
But I’ve also begun to piddle more with art, and finding it also rewarding. I’m too old, however, to take it seriously, which is why I picked up Drawing:52 Creative Exercise to Make Drawing Fun.
The first exercise is to draw 30 cats. Above is my first one.
More journaling and cats to come…
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
A Few of Story Circle Network’s Writing Sisters during conference in Austin, Texas
“In the cookies of life, sisters are the chocolate chips.” (I dedicate this blog to my writing sisters.)
Sisters of My Heart, If Not My Blood
I’ve belonged to Story Circle Network for 11 years now. It’s an international writing organization that supports female writers in many ways, like giving me the voice I needed to publish my book, Travels With Maggie.
I met a half dozen of the women in my circle at an SCN writing conference held in Austin, Texas back in 2010, when I was still traveling around the country in my small RV. Over the past decade these same women have become the sisters I never had.
SCN members range from prolific writers like Susan Wittig Albert, who founded the organization, to women who are trying to get published, to women who write only for themselves. Most feel the same about writing as I do: To write is as important as to breathe.
The prompt for my writing circle this month was the question: How has Covid changed your life during the past year?
I answered that question in my previous post, noting that because I was retired, didn’t lose my income and was already nesting, the changes to my life were few.
While I’m still puzzling over what to write for the circle, others in the group responded immediately. The piece submitted by Nancilynn Saylor, whose memory of hugs I hold dear from attending five SCN writing conferences with her, delighted me so much that I wanted to share it with others.
So, here goes.
End of the Line
By Nancilynn Saylor
A cold snort from old man winter
Today, does not deter
This aging woman holding
Her broom. No
Quite the contrary
She props the front door open with
Deliberation, determined to finish
Her task with
No dust pan needed.
Each speck and loathsome particle
Sails with precision across threshold into the blustery abyss.
Au Revoir
Auf Wiedersehen
Adiós
Adieu,
Ciao
Sayonara
Then, remembering a phrase from her long ago youth:
“Make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here!”
She wiped her hands together, then slammed the door
Firmly against the jamb.
The scent of black-eyed peas simmering on the stove,
Enticed her back to the kitchen.
Good riddance,2020!
Nancilynn is a Texas girl who knows that eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day brings good luck for the coming year. I had mine. Did you?
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
A two-week safari in Africa was certainly a mile-marker in my life. Here I’m standing at an overlook of the Ngorongoro Crater in front of a sign with mile markers to various cities around the world. — Photo by Kim Perrin
My Story Circle’s writing prompt this month was to write about life’s mile markers. I chose to create a 10 point list of people who helped get me through some of those times. Here’s my list – which easily could have been much longer.
1: My grandmother. During my early years, the only person I was for sure loved me was my grandmother. Our dysfunctional family lived with her. She was not a sweet granny, although she cooked like one, but a woman with strong opinions and standards that she expected to be met – and she favored a supple switch to the back of the legs if they weren’t. But I could outrun her and she had a quick-to-forgive nature. Sadly, she died when I was 11.
2: My mother, although I wouldn’t realize or accept it until I was in my mid-30s. She, too, was a strong woman, one who took what life allowed her before equal rights was even considered. She loved her four children but was not vocal about it, or a hugger. She was the rock that made sure the family had food on the table and a bed under a roof to sleep in at night. She was not a complainer but a doer.
3: A cadre of “village” women – Dorothy, Louise, Jeri – who took a too-young woman with five children under their wings and supported her until she could get her own feet on the ground.
Kim and I shared Africa together, and here is a photo of us after a very long, but wonderful, day of bouncing in the back of a Land Rover over the Serengeti.
4: Roberta, the city editor who pushed a wanna-be writer and would-be reporter over and over again to the crying point, teaching her how to become a professional and ethical journalist who would go on to have a successful 37-year award-winning career in the newspaper industry.
5: David, a gay man and my reporter colleague at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, who supported me during the hardest two years of my personal life, which included divorce and family failures.
6: Cliff Cheney, a managing editor who believed in my journalism potential. He hired me for a very difficult job, and when I whined after undertaking it, and asked him why he had done this to me, he sat back, put his feet on his desk, and said: “Because I knew you could handle it Pat.” He died in a car accident that very night, but his words empowered me for rest of my career.
7: My friend Kim, who has been in my life for 40 years now. We fill each other’s holes because we are two very different people. We have worked together, played together, celebrated birthdays together, hiked together, argued together, traveled together, gotten lost together, and these days Zoom together because we now live in two different states. My life is richer because Kim is part of it.
A recent Facebook picture of my friend Jean, who is a teacher and having her own mile-marker moments of learning to teach online. She makes me smile and laugh.
8: All the wonderful, talented women in Story Circle Network who helped me find my personal, non-journalistic voice after I retired. Without the support of this group, my book Travels with Maggie would never have been published. This group also keeps me daily in touch with like-minded, caring intelligent women who encourage this old broad to keep writing.
9: My friend Jean, who like Kim is as different from me as night and day. It is the best kind of friend to have because it ensures that life is never boring. Jean is part of my daily life here in Tucson, the kind of friend this old broad needs to stay on her toes. Jean challenges me to continue thinking outside my comfortable box, brings the world into my apartment where I’ve tended to get too comfortable, and makes me laugh. She’s my Happy Hour a couple of times a week, and the person my kids call when I go missing for more than a few hours.
10: Last, but certainly not least, is my family. I have five children and their families, 15 grandchildren and their families, and seven great-grandchildren. I have a different relationship with each, am closer to some than others, but all have a place in my heart. I regularly learn from them. They fuel my life and make it feel meaningful.
Into every life, flowers should fall. So here’s mine to you for today. — Art by Pat Bean
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. John Adams
When I was city editor, I attended a daily meeting to decide what five or so stories would go on my newspaper’s front page for the upcoming edition.
The men – I say men because except for me the only other people in the room were usually all male — and I pretty much agreed without much discussion on four of the stories.
The fifth story, however, almost always prompted disagreement – even among the men. It came down to news judgment, although I must admit that my choice of the last story to be chosen was often gender based and I would end up being the lone holdout for one particular story or another. Sometimes I won the argument and sometimes I lost.
But I was always a proponent of the policy that a newspaper was obliged to print what readers needed to know, not what they wanted to know. And although my colleagues were of a different gender, with perhaps a different outlook, we all still shared that sentiment.
And then the Internet came along and took newspapers’ main source of funding away, advertisements. The after effects were just beginning to be felt a few years before I retired in 2004. I will always remember the day it affected my newspaper’s coverage.
An assistant managing editor proposed that a Britney Spears story be placed on the front page. In my mind that was equal to blasphemy. Only “real” news belonged out front. Celebrity news belonged inside on the entertainment page. But only myself and one other editor in the room that day felt that way — and we were overruled.
That one move, in my opinion, downgraded the newspaper. But similar moves were being made all across the country, the idea being that if you give the readers what they want to read, they will continue to buy the paper, or whatever product is being marketed.
It was a sad day, in my opinion, for journalism.
But it’s a practice that is prevalent in today’s world. For example, what you read online is a good example. The number of times a story is visited – it’s called hits – the more likely you are to see more and more similar stories.
So, if a story on what Brad Pitt has for breakfast gets a million hits and a story on global warming gets only a thousand, that should explain why there is so much celebrity gossip being written and talked about than the kind of news we should know.
My brain follows that idea by thinking about the zillions and zillions of people who are clicking on Prince Harry and Meagan Markle stories. We are getting what we are asking for.
As Pogo said: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Just something to think about as you read today’s news online.
My canine companion Scamp
Bean Pat: To all the media outlets that continue to stick to facts and write about what readers need to know. And yes, there are still some, and I hope you are daily reading or listening to one.
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
I always felt more at home in a newsroom than at home. This was my little working corner at the Standard-Examiner for the 10 years I was the paper’s environmental reporter. While I loved everything about my 37-year journalism career, this was my favorite assignment. — Photo by my journalism colleague Charlie Trentelman.
“It is necessary to write if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten …That is where the writer scores over his fellows: He catches the changes of his mind on the hop.” Vita Sackville-West.
I started writing my memoir just about a year ago. I wrote two chapters that pleased me. Then I read the beginning of a memoir by another author and suddenly was not so happy about my own. I realized what I had written ignored common writing advice to begin with the action. My first words lacked the hook to make the reader continue reading.
Since that illumination, I have written zero on the memoir, questioning even if I want to do all the hard work such a project requires – from dredging up memories I’d rather remain forgotten, to rewriting and rewriting to make the words sing like they should, to the agonizing nitty-gritty editing required that I know and understand perfectly from publishing Travels with Maggie, to the relentless task of finding a publisher or self-publishing and marketing, etc., etc., etc.
I think I have an important story to tell about journalism in its heyday, and how a high school dropout and mother of five became an award-winning journalist who interviewed U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, military generals, governors, homeless fathers, astronauts, Irving Stone, Robert Redford, and Maya Angelou, just to name a few highlights of an exciting career that began with me sneaking in the backdoor of a small Texas newspaper as a darkroom flunky.
If I write my story, I would call it Between Wars, as my first significant byline story in 1967 involved interviewing a mother whose son had been killed in Vietnam and one of my last articles was an opinion column in 2003 that argued against going into Iraq the second time.
To write, or not to write? That’s this writer’s dilemma. How do I want to spend the next three to five years of my life if I’m blessed to still be around that long?
I retired in 2004 and spent the next nine years traveling this country in a small RV with mt canine companion, then wrote about some of the adventures in Travels with Maggie, now available on Amazon. .
Bean Pat: Dorothy Gilman and her Mrs. Pollifax fictional protagonist. I’m currently rereading the books, and am now on Book 8 of the 14-book series, and loving the hat-loving senior citizen’s upbeat outlook on life. I recommend the books as relief from all the nastiness that is going on in the world today.
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
“She drew herself up to her full height—it was a little difficult on a donkey—and said primly, ‘I have found that in painful situations it is a sensible idea to take each hour as it comes and not to anticipate beyond. But oh how I wish I could have a bath!’” – Words spoken by Dorothy Gilman’s fictional Emily Pollifax, a white-haired senior citizen who decided she wanted to be a spy.
A Series Quite Worth Rereading Today
I discovered Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax books back in the 1970s, which marked some major turning points in my life. I was influenced by the character’s upbeat, adventurous and realistic attitude, and her efforts to make her life more meaningful than garden club meetings. I was, in a different way, trying to do the same.
Angela Lansbury played Mrs. Pollifax in a 1999 CBS TV Movie. And Rosalind Russell played her in a 1971 movie. Angela fit the role much better than Rosalind.
Gilman’s The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax was the first book in the series, written in 1966, and Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled, published in 2000, was the 14th. On discovering the books, I quickly read all that had been written at the time and eagerly awaited the next to come out.
Given that I have been a bit out of sorts with the current coronavirus and world situation, and my decision to stay isolated, I decided I would reread the Pollifax books. I finished the first of the 14 in the series at 2 a.m. this morning, and am eager to go on to the next.
Perhaps you would like to join me. Here are a few Emily Pollifax quotes so you can judge for yourself.
“Tragedies don’t interest me, tragedies and heartbreaks are all alike, what matters is how a person meets them, how they survive them.”
“It’s terribly important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality.”
“Everything is a matter of choice, and when we choose are we not gambling on the unknown and its being a wise choice? And isn’t it free choice that makes individuals of us? … I believe myself that life is quite comparable to a map … a constant choice of direction and route.”
“I have a flexible mind—I believe it’s one of the advantages of growing old. I find youth quite rigid at times.”
Dorothy Gilman
“Because lately I’ve had the feeling we rush toward something-some kind of Armageddon-set into motion long ago. There are so many people in the world, and so much destructiveness. I was astonished when I first heard that a night-blooming cereus blooms only once a year, and always at midnight. It implies such intelligence somewhere.”
Gilman was born in 1923 and died in 2012 at the age of 88. Her Pollifax series was begun at a time when women in mystery meant Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, and international espionage meant young government men like Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Emily Pollifax became a spy in the 1960s’ and may be the only spy in literature to belong simultaneously to the CIA and her local garden club, according to Wikipedia.
Bean Pat: A tribute to Dorothy Gilman for the many, many hours of pleasure and contemplation she has given me for nearly half a century, and to the hundreds of other writers who have done the same
Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Looking for a supportive network? I found mine at Story Circle Network. Check us out at: https://www.storycircle.org/
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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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