Thoughts for 2023

After what seems to be a long wait, the new year is here.  During the past month, I mulled over my past "one words" to guide my new year. As I listened to news reports and read articles on New Year's resolutions, I wondered why the one word phenomenon was not mentioned. After all, since 2014, I have changed my thoughts on resolutions that come and go. Instead of temporary, well-meaning thoughts, I add one word to guide my journey. This word follows me throughout the year and opens possibilities for me. I look back on my list and realize that each year's one word seems to build on the next. In 2021 AARP stated, "Picking a word of the year can bring clarity and focus to who we want to become and what we want to accomplish in life." Below is the digital art with all my one words created in Buncee: openness (2014), listen (2015), believe (2016), joy (2017), hope (2018), embrace 

(2019), balance (2020), begin (2021), and appreciate (2022).

By chance, I found a Dolly Parton song, "When Life Is Good Again", that she wrote with Kent Wells. The song with its lyrics made me think about life. The past few years have been a difficult journey for most people and now with the resurgence of another strain of COVID, plus the violence that has occurred, people need to rebuild their faith in humanity. Please listen to the song and 

Below is my prewrite, a poem to usher in my one word for 2023. It just so happens that nature played a role in uncovering my word on a day, unlike other New Year's Day. Instead of winter-like weather, we enjoyed a spring-like day. Spirits were high. Life felt good again.

Enter 2023

wrapped in sunshine

feel spring breeze through trees

design a baseline

as darkness fades into light

life feels good again

sit in stillness, prewrite

fill my space with zen

be more humane and kind

find ways to right wrong

leave heartaches behind

rejoice in birdsong,

then, snuggle into winter

energizing my soul

breathe in sprinter

heart-whole

©CVarsalona, 2022

Join me this week when I reveal my one word for 2023. 

If you have chosen one, please share it.

Let 2023 be the year for change, renewal, and peace!

Thank you for reading my Slice of Life. I am once again sliding into the midnight hour at Two Writing Teachers blog site, a place where teacher writers meet and share their stories. 

Happy New Years to All!

Journey On With Heart - SJT

Feeling overwhelmed and somewhat unbalanced by a series of too many clustered events, the time is right to explore a burning question from Linda Mitchell, this month's Spiritual Journey Thursday host. Where is your heart on this spiritual journey we are all on? Pondering this question can unlock not straightforward, rather winding path that starts with my one word, appreciate. 

In order to unravel my thoughts, I backtrack to years ago when I let my Endless To-Do List drift into the abyss. It was too heavy a load to carry daily. In the aftermath, I decided to try to simplify my printed notepaper but life kept interrupting and the list became cumbersome once again. Now, clustered events climb on the backs of each other to make a rather messy-looking calendar. Sleep habits are disturbed and deadlines need to be extended. I question myself. How can I appreciate life if I don't have time to slow down? Ah Ha! Positivity rises!

So where is my heart on my spiritual journey? I need to balance my personal, family, and professional lives. Yes, this is true. I need to slow down-another truth. Then, there is the medical issue of cataract surgery. Obviously, I need to have cataracts removed. There still is a small window of time between now and the first operation in March. 

Journey on, I say without buts or negatives. So where do I start? Just because it is winter does not mean that I cannot cultivate a garden or appreciate the shifting landscapes.  

Several Ways to Energize the Heart:

• Strengthen the physical aspects by continued exercise, eating healthy, relax before sleep time
• Continue feeding my soul with inspiration (reading and writing poetry)
• Believe in Psalm 37:4: take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart
• Build a garden of love

Author of Quote Unknown

Psalm 37:4

Take delight in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

💕💗💞

My heart desires blessings for these little grandgirls so they can grow

with love, faith, and hope for a peaceful world and brighter future.

💕💗💞

"To all of the grandmothers who make the world more gentle, more tolerant, and more safe for our children: Never doubt your importance.- Mary-Lou Rosengren

Ponder Linda's question: 

Where is your heart on this spiritual journey we are all on?

I have more thinking to do to make my spiritual walk a peaceful one this year

despite life's interruptions.

It's time to visit the Spiritual Journey Thursday community at Linda Mitchell's blog here.

The Color of Kindness

Each Monday the educational Twitter community brings inspiration in the form of the hashtag #CelebrateMonday thanks to the leadership of Alyssa H. @ABEducational and Sean Gaillard @smgaillard. I began this week with thoughts on kindness and developed this theme through a digital inspiration and poety for National Poetry Month. Below, you will find my Buncee creation for this week's celebration of Earth Day 2021 with its call to action, #RestoreOurEarth. Spreading the seeks of kindness is important more than ever as hate crimes are 

It's Poetry Friday with our host, Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core. Catherine spotlights poet/children's author, Padma Venkatraman and shares her original poem based on Padma's challenge to write a "short poem dedicated to hope in defiance of hate". 

My micropoem in response to Padma's challenge:

Earth Day Message

This week, I also created another Buncee for Earth Day. You can find that here.

Bunceeing a Thought on Earth Day

Each year, I look forward to Earth Day as a day of celebration. This year, I celebrate the bounty of the earth in a new location. What better way to enjoy nature than with flowers and blossoming trees lining highways and garden beds. Tucked away in Gainesville, Virginia, I am eager to plan my new garden. A cherry tree and azalea plants arrive from the landscape team for the front lawn and my new gardener is ready to dig backyard garden beds to spend time contemplating the blessings of my life move.

like flowers we bloom

with radiance in springtime-

mindful practice

©CV, 2021

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Today is Slice of Life Tuesday at Two Writing Teachers. The artistic expressions: #haikuforhope and inspirational quote created with Buncee, are added to celebrate National Poetry Month 2021. Enjoy springtime and celebrate Earth Day this Thursday in your own way to give homage to Earth.

Veterans Day Gratiku

WKBN.com

The City's Oldest Known Survivor of the Great War

by James Doyle

marches in uniform down the traffic stripe 

at the center of the street, counts time

to the unseen web that has rearranged

the air around him, his left hand

stiff as a leather strap along his side,

the other saluting right through the decades 

as if they weren't there, as if everyone under ninety 

were pervasive fog the morning would dispel

in its own good time, as if the high school band

all flapping thighs and cuffs behind him

were as ghostly as the tumbleweed on every road 

dead-ended in the present, all the ancient infantry 

shoulder right, through a skein of bone, presenting arms 

across the drift, nothing but empty graves now

to round off another century, 

the sweet honey of the old cadence, the streets 

going by at attention, the banners glistening with dew, 

the wives and children blowing kisses.

Remembering Living Veterans

We wave to hometown heroes going 

past us on streets by 

the park. We stand at

full attention,

filled with pride as the

veterans hold banners 

of red, white, and blue.Their glistening

smiles shine with

hope full of morning dew.

©CV, 2020

Using the highlighted line in the above poem as a strike line, I created a golden shovel poem honoring living veterans of WWII, in particular, the one remaining living veteran in my family, my Uncle John Mosca. As a very young man at the beginning of WWII, he enlisted in the Marine Corp. He returned home after the war, proud of his achievement but keeping stories of his duty as a private matter. Today, I pause to honor his service to America with hopes that he will hear my phone call wishing him a Happy Veterans Day.   

"The willingness of America's veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude." - Jeff Miller

a silent flag

waving on a dim fall day

hope for America

©CV, 2020

November is #GratitudeMonth. 

Be grateful for those who fought for our country and freedom.

An Abundant Dose of Gratitude-SJT

October's grandeur ushered in November's crispcool breezes and multicolored leafcovers this week. I step onto a blanketed earth with burgeoning feelings of gratitude. Despite life's stressors, I start the search for gratitude moments that will change my outlook and bring back a positive spirit. 

With the election as a key topic in the world, I feel unbalanced as do many others. The above photo shot by my daughter reminds me to be grateful for the beauty of nature this year while the following inspirational quotes are quick gratitude snaps that bring peace and harmony into focus. I hope these thoughts allow us all to find common ground and grow into wise individuals who do not grieve for things we do not have but rejoice for things we have in front of us (paraphrased from Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher).

• "I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." - Robert Brault
• “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good. - Maya Angelou

From the above quotes, I created a found poem to lift my thoughts:

morning thanksgiving

for little things,

gratitude, and

faith to 

welcome

good

©CV, 2020

With internal thoughts comes quiet time and reflection. The following psalm I found holds a positive action step. I thank my friend, Ramona Behnke from the state of Washington, for her gorgeous nature photo that she offered for my Abundant Autumn Gallery. It has a tremendous calming effect.

Today is the day to take my anxiety down and change my perspective. I have been on a long journey of building a new house in Virginia, selling my home on Long Island, dealing with disability paperwork for my son, along with coping with #QuarantineLife during a pandemic. Stress levels are high so peace and resolve are needed to continue the next leg of the journey. 

An "awe walk" (a stroll in which you intentionally shift your attention outward instead of inward) will help me lessen anxiety down and boost my outlook. Life does not pause for our stressors. It moves on and so I look to the psalm for guidance and family and friends for support.

I send autumn thanks to this month's Spiritual Journey Thursday host, Ruth Hersey from Haiti, for suggesting the topic of gratitude and to my SJT community of friends for supporting my long journey. In thanksgiving, I created a Buncee Gratitude Snap for my faithful and supportive friends.

Building an Autumn Nestling

Imagine a brisk, sunny spring day with a bit of wind. I search for the osprey nest at the nearby Marine Nature Study Area. It can be seen from far away because it's built on top of a huge pole in the preserve. A lone guardian pensively stands by the huge bird-crafted nest of twigs. While I have never seen the birth of the baby ospreys, I know that their nest is visited often and photographed by many. 

Last Thursday, as I reviewed Irene Latham's new book, This Poem Is A Nest, on Stop #8 of the Blog Tour, my thoughts returned to the osprey nest I saw during spring. Irene's poetry book takes the reader through the building of a nest (poem) in spring and its development up to the winter season. Using Irene's source poem, Autumn, I am on a hunt to find nestlings, small poems, within the original nest poem. With the help of Buncee, I captured what I saw at the nature preserve but added a touch of autumn to bring an imaginative flair to the scene. 

    With faith, ospreys fly solo in autumn.

I follow their wordless flight to build my own nestling.

- Irene Latham, 2020, "This Poem Is A Nest"

Autumn:

 crispcool air leaves clouds still,

time another wordless flight,

whisperweight faith tucked beneath memory

©CV, 2020

🍁🍂🍃

🍁🍂🍃

Thank you, Irene Latham, for your unique new book, Poem Is A Nest, that sparked my imagination and allowed me to create my own nestling from your source poem. Not only was I able write a poem but design a Buncee with a creative background.

🍁🍂🍃

And now for a Special Announcement that I saved for the end of the holiday weekend:

Winner of This Poem Is A Nest Raffle Is

Jayne Hartnett from New Jersey

Boyds Mills and Kane, publisher of Irene Latham's book, will send Jayne a copy of This Poem Is A Nest. Congratulations! I know that this teacher and her middle school students will not only enjoy reading  Irene's book but will have fun creating their own nestling poems.

🍁🍂🍃

Coming up is Slice of Life Tuesday at Two Writing Teachers. Join me there.

Spring Fling Virtual Party_SOLSC 21

Life continues to amaze me these days during the quarantine. I think many people are feeling "cooped up" and restless and it has only been one long week since COVID-19 has really shaken the world. When Leigh Anne Eck wrote, "Since our lives have been turned upside-down, I thought a self-care party was something we could all use right now," I quickly accepted her invitation.

Invitation from the Hostess with the Mostess

RSVP to Leigh Anne

Created with Buncee

Three self-care ideas/items that I will bring to the party for #quarentainment fun:

1. A necessity during the days of COVID-19: a roll of toilet paper since it is so difficult to find
2. A treat for all: a festive array of homemade cookies with baking tips
3. A dollop of creativity to engage everyone in an artsy endeavor: creating Buncee poems, inspirational posters, or fun photos for a scrapbooking page

Are you interested in being my guest at the party? It's time to start preparing! This will be a wonderful distraction while we New Yorkers are guided by Governor Cuomo's mantra, Shelter and Place.

☵

Each year since March 2015, I have engaged in Two Writing Teacher's Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge. Slicing allows me to ponder life, literacy, and learning, capturing small moments poetically through writing, photography, and digital art. Welcome to Day 21 of 31 days of writing with Two Writing Teachers. 

Thoughts From the Road

Winter's Gray Day

Breezing along the highway, catching the sights in fast motion, life moves on. A jumble of thoughts maneuver in and out of traffic as cars pass by. Conversation snakes around turns, pauses, and starts again. The motor hums in tune. Mystically, a structure appears in a cloud of mist, rising like thoughts, spiraling to new heights.

As darkness approaches and our destination nears, I reflect on what is and what is to come, a weekend with my little granddaughters, in the endless stream of life in motion. 

🕶

I write in the middle of the night when the house is quiet, reminding myself that sunrise will soon start a new day of thought with my little ones.

🕶

I am offering these thoughts to Poetry Friday, hosted by Canadian host, Cheriee Weichel at Library Matters.  Cheriee introduces a marvelous Candian poet, Avis Harley, and shares Avis' new poetic format, the intravista.

Special Thanks To:

Thinking back on the week of writing, I am excited to share a new poetic form to me, the Scupham stanza. Thank you to David L. Harrison and Matt Forrest Esenwine for sharing their Scupham poems. Mine is below. I added a digital element with a Buncee template.

Because I am always delighted to notice and wonder about the beauty of the season, I am sharing a stunning photo that was sent to me by a Twitter friend, @Math912Teacher. Her nature photo called me to create a haiku.

Evening Balance

dreams dangle on threads of silken thoughts

luring us on to capture each one

evening shadows blanket each dream
©CV, 2020

created in Buncee

It is in the noticing and wondering stage that creativity sprouts seeds. The potential of the creative mind is limitless. I need to know that my sweetest dreams can grow into thoughts that dangle on silken threads waiting to be realized. I write to capture each one, balancing them in the pendulum of life.

My #OneWord2020 Balance in evening light

I send my Slice of Life on to Two Writing Teachers

and #EduBlogYear.

Inktober's Digital Magic

When autumn meets my digital brush, 

the screen lights up with colors that suit my mood and noticings. 

Poetry often flows from the wonder of what I see but lately, I have been intrigued by #Inktober's word prompts. While not following each day's prompts as one would expect, I have played with digital tools to create as many #digitalinspirations/#imagepoems as time allowed. My #digipoetry offerings were created using @Buncee, @Fotojetapp, @PicMonkey and showcased at my blog or on Twitter and other social media sites. 

A listing of what I accomplished this month for #Inktober and #Poemtober follows.
Today, I finished the revision of my combined Inktober Day 7 & 15 animated poem, Enchanted Forest, that I created on Buncee here.  The still version is below. 

Inktober Day 17 showcased at my blog post, Apple Picking Memory.
Inktober Day 21 showcased at my blog post, Autumn's Treasure.
Inktober Day 22 showcased at my blog post, Ghosts Night Out.
Inktober Day 27 showcased at my blog post, I 💗New York in Autumn.
Inktober Day 30, showcased at my Buncee dashboard, Halloween Fright Night.
Poemtober digital poems showcased at my Buncee dashboard, Pre-Halloween Poetry Fun and 
Howl Chant.

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You can find these digital inspirations and many more from the at the Abundant Autumn Global Gallery of Artistic Expressions. 

🍁🍃🍂

Now turn your attention to the amazing Tabatha Yeatts, host of Poetry Friday this week. I can't wait to see what poetry goodness she has in store for us.