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Posts Tagged ‘books’

Keep Moving – And Writing

Posted in aging, Art, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , on September 25, 2024| 1 Comment »

Life is full of flowers so keep moving and enjoying them. Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

My fight to make my days meaningful during these latter pages of my life, which is already a long book, paused for a bit this past week. While I can fight to keep my own self moving, I had to come to grips with the fact that I can’t do it for others, no matter how much I desire to do so.

A feeling of helplessness when a loved one attempted suicide caused me to pause doing the one thing that for more than 50 years has given meaning to my life. I stopped my daily writing, including journaling. What does it matter? I thought.

To be truthful, this wasn’t the first time I had stopped writing, especially when hard times hit. But my job back then as a newspaper reporter kept me writing, if not journaling. And my busy, active, engaged with life world meant I didn’t miss, or even notice, that I had stopped any writing in my journals.

What’s different now is that at 85, my days are my own to fill. And since I can no longer dance through them playing tennis, white-water-rafting the Snake, hiking new terrain, or working at a job I love, writing has become more meaningful.

Being a writer is an honor, a title I was reluctant to even claim until I finally published a book. Now living in a world so different from the world I was born into, has filled me with stories I want my children and children’s children – and if I were honest, the world – to know.

These latter years have given me time to connect the dots of my life. And perhaps there is a person or two out there who can learn from my mistakes, or that it’s OK to follow their dreams, or to realize they are not alone in who they are or how they think.

Others’ words do that for me. Like those from Maggie Smith, whose book Keep Moving, I picked up, not for the first time, again this morning.

The title of her book says it all. Keep moving. I intend to do just that, and hope with all my heart that my loved one will do so as well.

I also intend to keep writing. Perhaps that second book that still resides within me will finally decide to come alive.    

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Getting Unstuck

Posted in aging, Art, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , on June 12, 2024| 3 Comments »

Having writer’s block is like being stuck up a tree with no way to get down. — Art by Pat Bean

The Write Words

I moderate a small email chat group called Writer2Writer for Story Circle Network. Recently I asked participants to name their favorite author and then write about why.

I started the chat off by quoting Mary Oliver, one of my favorite authors, whose instructions for living a life is to “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” And since Mary was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, when Mary said tell, I’m sure she meant write about it. The words responded with me because that’s what I’ve been trying to do for most of my life.

But lately, I’ve been rather stuck. And that leads me to comment on a response to my writing prompt. It was from Stephanie Raffelock, who wrote: “A battered, dog eared, highlighted and underlined copy of May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude sits on the table next to my chair. I can quote the opening line without opening the book: “Begin here. It is raining.” 

“Such simple lines,” wrote Stephanie. “Crisp and real. Who knew that they would lead to years of journals, which in turn would lead to a first short story and later, essays. Begin here. That’s all I have to do to start writing on any day,” said my writing colleague.

And those words from Mary, Stephanie and May were exactly what I needed to get unstuck. I immediately sat down and filled a couple of pages in my current journal, and then started writing this blog.

Thank you, Mary, Stephanie and May.  

So, who, my treasured readers, is your favorite author and why?

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Schadenfreude

Posted in Art, Books, Journeys, tagged , , on January 14, 2022| 7 Comments »

Thistles look pretty but are prickly, just like us humans.

The Meaning of a New Word

I was scanning through the New York Times this morning in search of something to write about when I came across the word schadenfreude. As usual when I come across a word I don’t know – and this has been a habit even before I hit my teens – I stopped reading and looked the word up.

Schadenfreude means taking pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. Now who in the hell would want to do that, I instantly thought. But then I remembered how much pleasure it gave me over the years when I heard my narcistic ex-husband was having a bad time. So much for my momentary feeling of superiority.

And I knew if I thought about it longer, I would come up with other instances in which I took pleasure from someone else’s pain. We humans are not a nice lot. I’ve long known this, but it was confirmed in my head even stronger after reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It’s a book I highly recommend, by the way.

The book concluded that we humans were the cause of most extinctions and that groups of more than 100 humans quickly found something to go to war over – beginning with religion and politics. The big item in today’s news that has everybody disagreeing is Covid. Masks, no masks. Vax or no vax. Isolation or herd immunity.

I wonder how humankind is still managing to survive?

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning 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.

 

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Morning Coffee Thoughts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 7, 2020| 3 Comments »

A scene from the 1978 BBC series A Horseman Riding By.

Delderfield and Steinem Jiggle My Brain

          I’m currently reading A Horseman Riding By by R.F. Delderfield, which was first published in 1966, and which now has a 2017 edition available free on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. The book begins in 1902 and follows an English, land-owning family adjusting to world changes.

          One focus of Delderfield’s book is about the Suffragettes, who protested hard to gain women the vote, and were persecuted because of it.

       On Monday, I watched The Glorias, an Amazon Prime video about Gloria Steinem, who fought for equal rights for women back in the 1970s and is still fighting for them today. As a journalist for 37 years beginning in 1967, I reported on the equality issues, while at the same time fighting for equal rights and pay for my own work.

          What struck me during my own fight was that my fiercest competition to gain equality weren’t men, but women, including females working beside me. I know it’s hard to believe, but one early-on colleague told me to cool my fight for equal pay because she didn’t want to work as hard as the men. At the time I felt I was working harder than them to prove my worth.

          Then when I was hired to update a newspaper’s “Society” section into a modern day “Lifestyle” section, two women on my staff posted a note on the newspaper’s bulletin board saying they didn’t approve of my decisions to drop the required Miss and Mrs. titles in front of women’s names and to run pictures of both the bride and bridegroom in wedding announcements.

          Steinem, meanwhile, was up against Phyllis Schlafly, who conducted a national campaign against equal rights for women. I actually covered an event in which Schlafly spoke. It took the life out of me to report her comments. If I were to hold a grudge against anyone, it would be her.  I considered her a hypocrite as she was not the meek, stay at home mom she preached women should be.

          Anyway, all of these memories were brought together this morning while I was reading A Horseman Riding By as I drank my morning coffee.

The first wife of Delderfield’s protagonist scandalized everyone by leaving her husband and child to become a Suffragette. Several years later, the protagonist decided to back the political party that favored the women’s vote. But first he talked to his second wife, whom he feared might object. As part of the discussion, he showed her photos of Suffragettes being dragged down stone steps and force fed when they wouldn’t eat in protest.

          His wife didn’t object, but her belated response sent shivers down my body because it so squarely hit the bullseye.

          “I must be as far behind the times as any woman alive. I’ll use the vote if we get it, but I can’t work up much enthusiasm on the subject. Is that why they have to fight so hard do you suppose? Because so many women like me are satisfied to trot between nursery, kitchen and double bed?”

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.

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I liked What He Said

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , on March 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Another of the Greek poets I liked was Horace (65-8 B.C.) because he appeared to enjoy nature. — Photo by Pat Bean

 

Every cloud has its silver lining, you just have to go through all the darkness to get it.” – Stef Railey

Euripides (480 B.C.-406 B.C.)

As I continue to read quotes from the ancient Greeks in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, I finally came across one of the writers who didn’t raise my blood pressure. It was Euripides.

He was, according to Wikipedia, identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

More important, in my mind, is that he didn’t demean women as so many of the Greek poets so frequently did.

A bust of Euripides

A bust of Euripides. — Wikimedia photo

.

 

Euripides’ written thoughts also agreed with many of mine; and this morning when I was looking back through my writing notebooks for something to blog about, I noted that I had saved many of his quotes, such as:: “I have found power in the mysteries of thought.” And “In this world second thoughts, it seems, are best.”

These appealed to me because the years have finally given me time to think and connect the dots of my life, something I am finding fascinating.

“Waste not tears over old griefs,” he wrote, and “Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.” Both actions seem sensible,  I believe.

And his advice: “In a case of dissension, never dare to judge till you’ve heard the other side,” was always an important task of my journalism years.

Thank you, Euripides, for being the silver lining among the majority of those Greek macho old farts whose anti-female words are still being repeated today.

Bean Pat: Glorious books https://isobelandcat.wordpress.com/2020/03/04/books-glorious-books/

available on Amazon

Any blogger who loves books as much as I do deserves a Bean Pat.

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.

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Book Moments

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , , on March 22, 2017| 5 Comments »

“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion in Athens. Wikimedia photo

A New Word for my Vocabulary

I love analogies, especially ones that are as fresh as the smell of baby powder, as bright as the shine on a new car in a showroom, and as unused as a heavy wool court on a summer day in the desert.

Austrian Parliament Building. … Encyclopedia Britannica.

A writer can say a lot with a few words and a good analogy. But I recently came across one that left me puzzled because it contained a word that wasn’t yet in my vocabulary. The phrase that threw me was: “as straight-backed as a caryatid,” which was part of a sentence in Rosemary Mahoney’s Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff.

What in the heck is a caryatid, I wondered, then copied the word down in the notebook that is always beside me when I read.

Usually I can guess what a word means because of how it is used by the

Intricate hairstyle of Caryatid, displayed at the Acropolis Museum in Athens. — Wikimedia photo

writer, and I usually discover I’ve pretty much hit the mark when I finally look the word up in a dictionary, but caryatid had me fully stumped. I used to actually have a dictionary by my reading chair, but these days, having kept up with the computer age, I use an online version.

When I finally got on my computer, I learned, according to Wikipedia, that a caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support that takes the place of a column or a pillar, and that the karyatides is a Greek term that means “maidens of Karyai.”

Who are the maidens of Karvai, and who are what is Karvai? This wondering mind of mine never seems to stop.

Karvai was an ancient Peloponnese village with a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis, where maidens held dances in which they carried baskets of live reeds on their heads, as if they were dancing plants.

But, as a good journalist always does, I went to a second source. And the answers here were a bit different. According to the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica:

A Caryatid, in classical architecture, is a draped female figure used instead of a column. They first as appeared in pairs in three small buildings at Delphi  (550–530 bc), and their origin can be traced back to mirror handles of nude figures carved from ivory in Phoenicia, and draped figures cast from bronze in archaic  Greece. According to a story related by the 1st-century-bc Roman architectural writer Vitruvius, caryatids represented the women of Caryae, who were doomed to hard labor because the town sided with the Persians in 480 bc during their second invasion of Greece.

And so went my morning of research instead of writing. But I did add a new word to my vocabulary.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Something to Think About http://tinyurl.com/lmab4qh And do — in a world gone mightily mad.

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Necessities of Life

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged , , , on May 12, 2014| 11 Comments »

I was driving across West Texas before dawn last month, when the sun began to rise. I stopped on the side of the road to capture it. I drove on with renewed energy and a heart full of thankfulness. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I was driving across West Texas before dawn last month, when the sun began to rise. I stopped on the side of the road to capture it. I drove on with renewed energy and a heart full of thankfulness. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” – Dalai Lama

“A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.” – Henry Ward Beecher

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.” – Mark Twain

These Are Mine

A Southern Idaho sunset.

A Southern Idaho sunset.

My online writing circle’s recent writing prompt was to write about what we considered necessities.

So after taking away air, food, clothing and shelter – which are really the true necessities – I came up with this list:

Sunrises to let me know I’ve survived another day.

Hugs from family and friends.

Interesting conversations from any and all.

Books to make me think or simply escape.

Time to myself to ponder and wonder.

Daily walks to keep my old limbs moving.

Hot baths to ease my old joints and make me feel like I live in luxury.

Art to bring out my creative side.

Travel to explore new places and to learn new things about myself.

Transportation to get from one place to another.

My canine companion, Pepper, to keep me from ever being lonely.

Daily writing, which is as important to me as daily breathing.

Sunsets so I know I’ve made it to the end of the day, and simply because of their wondrous beauty.

Sleep so I can enjoy all of the above.

So do you think I want too much? And what do you consider your necessities?

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Swimming with Green Sea Turtles http://tinyurl.com/kqqd4gp  I once swam with sea turtles, off Buck Island in the Caribbean. What great memories.

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Travels with Maggie

Posted in Books, Dogs, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2014| 6 Comments »

   “Do or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda

Fall was in full progress when I arrived in Maine, and followed me on my southward return. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Fall was in full progress when I arrived in Maine, and followed me on my southward return. — Photo by Pat Bean

Is Finished

For all of you who have stuck with me for a bit, and followed the writing journey of my book, “Travels with Maggie,” I’m delighted to inform you that it is now ready to go out to the world.

Maggie claiming the driver's seat during a stop for gas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Maggie claiming the driver’s seat during a stop for gas. — Photo by Pat Bean

The 75,000-word travel book/memoir is about a six-month journey my canine companion, Maggie, and I took in 2006. The title is inspired by John Steinbeck’s  “Travels with Charlie,” and I’ve been telling prospective agents it would sit nicely on a book shelf between his book, and Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road,” with Tim Cahill’s “Road Fever” nearby, but that its uniqueness lies in the fact that it was written by an old-broad, wandering-wonderer.

I’m currently in the process of looking at ways to get it published as an e-book, and getting a cover designed for it. Next will come a printed book – I’m hoping.

The journey began in Camden, Arkansas, where my youngest daughter lived at the time, and ended in Rowlett, Texas, in time for Thanksgiving dinner at my oldest daughter’s home. It was a trip of 7,000 miles that took me to Maine and Acadia National Park that wriggled its way through 23 states and Canada.

Any advice those of you who have self-published a book is welcome. Especially helpful would be experiences any of my readers have had with Vook or Bookbaby.

Meanwhile, this is my way of yelling from the mountain top that the third rewrite of “Travels with Maggie” is now behind me.

The Wondering-Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Two short videos. Footloose and Kevin Bacon fans will enjoy this one, even if they saw it on the Jimmy Fallon show: http://tinyurl.com/oldwfxj And old broads and anyone who loves life will enjoy this one. I smiled all the way through it. http://tinyurl.com/qz8btq6

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The Pain of Living

Posted in Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , on November 20, 2013| 3 Comments »

            “Find a place inside where there is joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” – Joseph Campbell

Life is full of rainbows, and life is full of storms. The first without the second wouldn't be as sweet. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Life is full of rainbows, and life is full of storms. The first without the second wouldn’t be as sweet. — Photo by Pat Bean

You Can’t Escape 

            I’ve been reading books for a female memoir writing contest. Several of them deal with surviving the pain of losing loved ones – and most of these books left me feeling a bit cynical. Everyone who lives to a ripe age loses loved ones. It’s part of life’s journey.

If we're lucky we get to smell the flowers along the way. -- Photo by Pat Bean

If we’re lucky we get to smell the flowers along the way. — Photo by Pat Bean

Sure it hurts. I’m still hurting from the loss of my mother, and I can only imagine the pain I will have to live through if one of my children dies before I do. That’s not the order in which life is supposed to be lived.

But why, I asked myself, did some of these authors act like their suffering was the only loss in the world? Get over it, I wanted to tell them.

But one of the memoirs involving death got to me. It was written by a woman whose activities included research involving hospice patients nearing death. She spent time with these people, recording their feelings and coming to care for them.

The researcher became especially close to one woman on the verge of death. This was a woman who had lived a hard street life, and admitted stealing, lying and prostituting herself to get the drugs she craved. “I cared for nobody else but myself,” she related.

And occasionally simply have time to sit and let the world go by. -- Photo by Pat Bean

And occasionally simply have time to sit and let the world go by. — Photo by Pat Bean

Before this woman died, the researcher herself found herself with cancer, and facing possible death.  The news upset the former drug addict so much that she bullied her hospice attendants into transporting her in a wheelchair to the researcher’s side in a hospital.

When the researcher apologized for causing the dying woman pain, the woman thanked her instead.

“For the first time, I know what it feels like to care about someone besides myself. It makes me feel alive in a way that I never did before,” she told the researcher

These words caused tears to flow from my eyes. I, too, in a moment of sorrow had once been grateful for pain. While it was a love that was rejected that had given me the pain, it was this same pain that let me know I still had the capacity to love.

In my book, that was treasured knowledge.

Bean’s Pat: Grateful for one more day http://tinyurl.com/kcnd7fa And hopeful for many more

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Just a Reminder

Posted in Books, Journeys, tagged , , , on July 13, 2013| 6 Comments »

             “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C. S. Lewis

Some say the Mourne Mountains in Ireland were Lewis' inspiration for the land of Narnia. -- Wikipedia photo

Some say the Mourne Mountains in Ireland were Lewis’ inspiration for the land of Narnia. — Wikipedia photo

The Chronicles of Narnia

            One of the nice things about growing older is the opportunity to go back and reread the books that you loved reading as a child. I recently did that with the “Chronicles of Narnia.”

What fun!

And this is how film makers pictures it in one of the Narnia movies.

And this is how film makers pictured it in one of the Narnia movies.

As a child, I read for the love of the adventure, not being able to turn the pages fast enough to satisfy my need to know what happens next. I still do that. But I also sometimes take time to look for deeper meanings.

It was easy to find them in Lewis’ Narnia, which he wrote about in seven fantasy novels for young people. The books sold over 100 million copies, and are now being made into movies that  have hit it big at the box office.

I guess I’m not the only one enchanted by Lewis’ imaginative mind and words.

More C.S. Lewis

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to earn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

            “You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

            “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”

            “We are what we believe we are.”

            “Reason is the natura order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Being Present http://tinyurl.com/pxzl5nk Something worth remembering.

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