Honoring Tradition

During my married life, every Palm Sunday my family would attend Mass and return home with beautiful blessed palms. My family would watch my mother take the palms and lay them in damp paper towels for crafting a bit later. When she was ready, my mother would carefully uncover the paper towel and start working in silence. 

My mother's hands were gifts from God. She used her talent to deftly craft long light yellow and green colored pieces of palm into beautiful handmade crosses and crowns of thorns. Each piece was different. Some were decorated with miniature roses made of ribbon; others had felt glued to the back of the crosses. All were created with love. As sacred signs of Holy Week, these treasures adorned my house. They were constant reminders that the Easter Triduum was approaching. 

My family attended Mass last night so I would have time to decorate the house for Easter today. My first step was to carefully take out a box of Easter treasures, palm crosses and hand-crafted eggs, some of which were either made or bought by my mother. Next,  I turned my attention to my palms. They were dry because I was too tired last night to place them in the damp cloth. I attempted to make them pliable so that I could craft the pieces into something other than a piece of palm. I cut the leftover pieces of palm and placed them in a plastic sealed bag to be used at Christmastime with the 1940's manger set. After years of family use, the straw for the manger needs replacing. The blessed straw pieces will be another reminder of the 2015 Easter season and a woman who was totally devoted to her family.

Since I am interested in preserving family memories, I turn to digital tools for the preservation of my artifacts. I successfully use PicMonkey as evidence by the first photo, but am a newcomer to Nutshell. Clearly, I need more work to be able to say I can utilize this tool with ease. No matter how many times I repeated the process, my narration was cut off in the beginning and at the end of every short video I made. If anyone can give me tips on how to master Nutshell, I will be an eager listener, or if there is an easier video tool that adds text please let me know.

I honor the tradition of turning the palms from Palm Sunday into living creations that highlight the significance of the Easter Triduum and I honor my mother's memory today. 

This post is offered to three different writing communities:

• Margaret Simon's DigiLit Sunday
• Cathy Mere and Julie Johnson's Digital Maker Playground 
• Day 29 of the March Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers

Finding Inspiration

In ordinary, day-to-day living, there is a story to unfold. It may be in the quiet moments or in an interaction. It may be in your exercise routine or an event at work. If you look and listen inspiration for a story can be found. As I prepare the Gallery of Winter Whisperings, I am amazed at the range and breadth of perspectives revolving around the topic of winter. I have found inspiration in the writers' poetry, their voice, and the photographs that have taken. 

Below is a sequence of images that I created to illustrate the opportunity to be inspired by nature.

On the first night of spring, I returned home to Long Island from a conference at the state capitol. I knew that snow was approaching but I did not expect the image below. You can read my thoughts about this here.

This image of a small park draped in white caught my eye as I explored the area. I must have crossed paths with this gazebo many times but it never triggered an inspiration. On the first day of spring it did. 

In order to capture its essence, I tried various digital transformations to decide which one would be the most interesting. Unleashing the power of digital software allowed the following transformations of the original scene. Creativity led to further inspiration. 

Three scenes, all beautiful in their portrayals of winter's grasp on its season, are unique as compositions. All three allow me to dig deep to find inspiration to tell my story of the entrance of spring on Long Island. 

Since it is DigiLit Sunday at Margaret Simon's site and Day 22 of the March Slice of Life Story Challenge at Two Writing Teachers, I am offering this post to both blogging communities. Lastly, I will post this to the Google+ Community, Digital Maker Playground, created by Cathy Mere and Julie Johnson. 

Continuing to Grow As A Digital Writer

Today opened with a look outside my window, a ritual I engage in everyday. From my vantage point, I can look out onto my world as I know it. Some days during this winter season, I found raging storms and heard whistling winds. This morning was different. I saw green grass and barren trees. Most of the snow that turned a dingy color was no longer visible but the sky was gray. My little corner of the neighborhood was devoid of sunshine. The weatherman reported a high of 46 degrees so I thought winter is transitioning. This image inspired me to create today.

It also reminded me that as winter moves into spring so does the gallery that I am designing. Having attended Mass last night, left me free to engage in reflective activities today and gather the poems and photos for Winter Whisperings.  After yoga, I came home to my office and began the ritual of designing and writing. I started with collecting some offerings for the gallery. With the assistance of PicMonkey, I was able to create some digital designs and send them back to the original writers for their approval. Next, I turned my attention to this post that I am penning for DigiLit Sunday hosted by Margaret Simon and the March Slice of Life Story Challenge Day 15 hosted by Two Writing Teachers.

SOL #15 

DigiLit Sunday 

I invite you to join these two writing communities today to read the posts from various writers. 

Since Friday was Digital Learning Day, I have been playing around with different options for photo editing and the enhancement of images. I believe that a visual is the first lens that attracts readers into a text. Therefore, it has to be an inviting visual. In order to draw readers into a winter whispering I wanted to change daylight into night. With several adjustments in PicMonkey, I was able to achieve the desired effect. Perhaps, you can leave a comment to tell me what your impressions are of this image.

Lastly, I joined Cathy Mere's and Julie Johnson's Digital Maker Playground community for those interested in exploring new digital environments. An opening project was to show your maker space. I saw that Deb Frazier was using Nutshell and although I was unfamiliar with this app, I decided to create with it. My first attempt using Nutshell does not have the audio portion but can be viewed at WATCH NOW! Clearly, I need a few tutorials on how to use Nutshell to capture video but at least I made an attempt. 

Today's quote on Two Writing Teachers, "Writing should be the settlement of dew on the leaf," inspired me to continue my work on integrating literacy with technology. May each piece of writing that you engage in be seen as a fresh start to a new thought.