Out on a Limb

We are just about a week away from Halloween, my least favorite holiday, especially this year. I’ve been watching in horror over the past twenty-two months as the country I thought I knew falls apart. America has never been perfect, but for much of our history we’ve been at least trying to live up to the founders’ ideals. Apparently, that is no longer a thing.

The house across the road stands empty. I am not sure what to think.

I Googled myself this morning, something I haven’t done in a couple of years. Wow! The quest used to find very little information. That is no longer true, now that AI pops up at the top of every search.

Persimmon Tree ran another of my pieces in their literary magazine. It's timely.

Either I’m becoming less mentally and emotionally nimble or the pace and furor of the world around me is increasing. Maybe it’s both.

September 11 remembrances have been flowing all week, online and off. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years since that awful day. The anniversary seems especially poignant this time, given the wearisome animosity that increasingly plagues America and the world.

Since the recent passing of Dolly Parton, the airwaves and internet have been bursting with stories about her amazing life . . . from poverty-stricken Appalachian roots to a standout musical career to her generosity of spirit as she shared her blessings with the world.

Are differences among generations insurmountable?

Okay, I’m a word nerd. I love playing with words, examining multiple meanings, putting nouns, verbs, and adjectives into paragraphs, stories, articles, and even an occasional poem. But some words run deeper than I give them credit for. “Cove” is one of those.

Sometimes nature literally throws a haiku at me during my morning walk. This happened today:

Last Sunday my husband and I learned that Christine passed away July 22 at the age of thirty. She is the second of our eight former foster children to die. Montoya’s life ended at the age of 31 on June 11, 2021. The mother of two of our other kids left this earth in 2007 at the age of 38. Their brother passed just a few years ago, in his early thirties. I am heartbroken.

There’s been a lot of construction traffic lately along the streets in my neighborhood. It’s noisy and sometimes dangerous.

July 2026 is turning out to be the strangest Independence Day celebration I’ve seen in my 71+ years on earth. My country seems turned upside-down and cattywampus. I’m worried but still have hope that the America I thought I knew will pull together to make it through these trying times and continue to strive to make our nation a better place: one that embodies the ideals of those who signed the Declaration of Independence.

After the Persimmon Tree literary journal picked up my short contribution to their summer forum, I reworked the piece into a longer essay and presented it last Thursday on the Cherokee County Arts Council stage in Murphy, NC. The event, Poetry, Prose, and Pie, is a series sponsored by Common Ground, a grassroots organization dedicated to peace, justice, and community building in Western North Carolina. Their efforts emphasize education, advocacy, and bridging divides within the local mountain communities. This is the third PPP event I’ve participated in, where local authors share their work around a theme. This time, the theme was “Found,” and here is my essay:

The hostas have fully recovered, three years after we fenced out the deer, who thought this garden was their personal candy store. Come dormant season, we'll do some transplanting to spread them out a bit. The astilbe plants in the lower terrace are recovering, too. They all love the shade under the oaks.

It’s nice to be back home after two weeks on the road. More about that later, but for now I’ll just share my homecoming haiku:

When I first looked outside this morning, I saw a red fox trucking along the edge of the yard, apparently wrapping up his nighttime hunting expedition. He paid me no mind, although I stood less than 20 feet from him. Any day that begins with wildlife is a good day. Here is the haiku I wrote about it:

Several of us in the Ridgeline Writers group received medals in the Literary Arts division yesterday at the Cherokee/Clay Senior Games Silver Arts awards ceremony. I won gold for a fiction story, and silver in the essay and life experiences categories.