A gentle reminder for all of us from leslieannemadeit on Instagram: #dowhatworksforyou. Maybe today that’s sewing masks and working out. Maybe tomorrow it’s Netflix and a nap. Don’t make harsh comparisons! Pandemic productivity is not a competition. pic.twitter.com/60BfQcAFf4
— Rader Ward Foundation (@RaderWardFound) April 23, 2020
happy earth day!
mental health break: enjoy the wave organ
Photo of the wave organ from the Exploratorium website
The long version (possibly more info than you really want from me): today I found an article about the wave organ, on the Mercury News app from the Bay Area News Group. I read the Mercury News every day, although I live on the opposite coast, because they publish several advice columns I like. The article included a video, but because the iPad Mini 2 I use with the app is ancient (2013), the video wouldn't play. So I looked it up on YouTube and found this one (same link as I included in the tweet). It told and showed me what I wanted to know, in a manageable package. When I tried another method of viewing the Mercury News video, I found that it was 40 minutes long, which is more than my attention span can handle right now. Please enjoy this lovely video. It will only take up three minutes of your time! If you happen to be desperate for more time fillers, check out the 40-minute one and let me know how it was.
Here’s the explanation from the Exploratorium, the “public learning laboratory exploring the world through science, art, and human perception” that originated the project. (Poke around their website to learn about lots of other stuff!). And here’s an Atlas Obscura article about the wave organ.
Mario Monday: dress yourself in Mariowear
hark, the opuntia
poem-a-day challenge: six words
Write a poem every day of April with the 2020 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. Write a six words poem.
For today’s prompt, write a poem that uses the following six words:bump, embrace, fixture, howl, lonely, resolve
How did I come up with this list? Actually, it’s a tie-in to our Shakespeare Week that starts today, because the Bard is actually credited with inventing all six of these words. Pretty cool, eh? For sestina fans, I kind of intentionally made it six words for a reason. So let’s get writing!
(33 lamentable words coined by William Shakespeare.)
Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want. In other words, it’s more important to write a new poem than to stick to the prompt. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest
six words
I remember believing
the struggles brought on
by your depression and anxiety
were, while serious,
just a bump we would have to get over
in raising you
to the happy and successful adulthood you would have.
To the life you would embrace
when you could leave behind the petty pedantry
of compulsory education
and learn what you wanted to learn
and do what you wanted to do
create what you wanted to create
beholden to no one.
But the dark clouds
became a fixture
and your increasing discomfort
a howl, as they blocked out the moon
until there was no light at all
and you, lonely in the blackness
lost hope
even as we
with parental resolve unrelenting
and a love beyond explanation
tried to reach you.
Our every effort still failed
to illuminate the solitary place
in which you found yourself trapped.
In the end it didn’t matter what I believed,
what I still believe:
that you would somehow have found comfort
and ease
and satisfaction,
a life worth living,
if you could have held on.
When I read Robert Lee Brewer’s initial direction of writing a six-words poem, at first I thought of the idea of six-word stories. This poem was going to be pretty fast and easy (and short)! But then I clicked through and read the real instructions. Hmmm, it would likely be much harder than I thought.
After I worked the first two words into the poem, and realized they were in the order presented, I challenged myself to include the other four words also sequentially — not a requirement, but something I wanted to see if I could do.
The title, six words, obviously refers to the prompt. But I’ve also included my six-word story as the last line.
reframing helps navigate self isolation
notOKApp founders to host virtual prom, cash giveaway for teens
out of the darkness walk supports suicide prevention
I made my donation and walked 5 km in my neighborhood on the date the Out of the Darkness walk was originally scheduled, April 19.
speaking the truths of grief
Mario Monday: Casual Bowser vs. coronavirus
April flowers!
love is louder is here for you, right now
it's okay to have a dark side
I don’t think I have shared anything with you before from Tim, who draws these insightful mental health Instagram comics at @iamsitting. I love this one especially, but go take a look at his others, too. ❤️💙💛
poem-a-day: community of women
For today’s prompt, write an ekphrastic poem. An ekphrastic poem is one that’s inspired by a work of art, whether that’s a painting, photograph, sculpture, or some other creation. I’ve included five ekphrastic prompts below. Look them over and choose one (or more) to prompt your poem today. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest
Ekphrastic prompt #3
We found each other
We were bright girls who loved books
we were fellow scouts in your mom’s troop
we were freshmen in the same dorm
we were going to save the world: idealists at 20.
We were pregnant at the same time,
seeking connection in
the brave new world of online message boards
(still together as our babies turn 21).
We worked out at the same Curves
we were moms of Montessori kids
we were ladies learning tae kwon do, or yoga, or indoor rowing.
At every stage of life,
whomever we needed,
one best friend or an iVillage,
we found each other.
April is National Poetry Month, and I’m writing a poem a day based on prompts from Robert Lee Brewer of Writer’s Digest. Today he gave us five photos from which to draw inspiration for an ekphrastic poem. I chose the third photo because the women looked so happy, and I wanted to think about and write something happy for a change! So I wrote about my community of women, and how we find our friends, starting when we are small.
All my daily attempts at poetry this National Poetry Month can be found on the “writing my grief” page, raderward.com/blog.
for now, just be
Someone reposted a thank-you illustration from Tori Press of Revelatori. I’m always grateful to come across new sources of encouragement. So please check her out!
💗
Posted @withregram • @revelatori. Tori says:
“I’m not doing that well.
I can tell, because DOING is a struggle.
DOING is a little too much for me.
So I’m remembering that that’s okay.
That I don’t have to DO, not all the time.
That right now, maybe the best thing to DO
Is just to BE.”
enjoy: poetry month student poster contest finalists
Here is a video of U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo reading the poem that inspired the students’ posters.
Mario Monday: wash your hands!
one daily realistic goal
You are not required to be productive with every moment of the time you have right now. Maybe you’re starting up some new projects. Or maybe you’re struggling to even find the energy for self care. This pandemic is a traumatic experience for all of us. I like the idea of one realistic daily goal. Read on to see what Bridgette Zou of This Feels Nice has to say about it. And then follow her!
💙
Posted @withregram • @thisfeelsnice: “Tiny Hope and Lil Beb are trying to find ways to take things day by day and practice balance in their daily routines. It can feel like there is so much pressure to make amazing things or be productive all the time now that we are at home, but the reality is that we cannot and aren’t always being productive or even feeling our best 100% of the time- and that’s okay! Instead we are going to try and give ourselves tiny daily realistic goals. These help us do one thing a day without being overwhelmed. Whatever it is for you, tiny steps help us build something bigger. For us, we like to write down a list and cross things off as we go along. Maybe it’s drink 9 glass of water a day, sketch for 1 hour, or make our bed every morning. Any accomplishment, no matter how big or small, is an accomplishment” 💙✨🤍
poem-a-day challenge: wishful thinking
For today’s prompt, write a wish poem. The poem could be about making a wish or granting a wish. It could focus on the fallout from a wish granted or denied. Or think up a wishful scene to share in your poem. — Robert Lee Brewer
Wishful thinking
I’m sorting through wishes in my head.
Which are worth wishing?
And which are just trouble
masked by hope?
What if Rader were still here?
The longer it’s been, the harder it is
to know what that would be like
he’d be 18
and if he were home from college —
that is, if he went away to college,
another thing we’ll never know —
what would young adulthood have brought him?
Who would he be now?
What would be the challenges
of having him back home with us?
The wish only lets you see
the best parts.
‘Wishful thinking,’
after all,
draws its power from delusion.
I wish I knew
what it would be like
for him to still be with us
the most primal of wishes:
wish you were here.
Betty White reads Harry the Dirty Dog on StorylineOnline
A couple of weeks ago, when links to virtual museum tours and the like were circulating on social media, as we all tried to figure out how to occupy ourselves at home during the pandemic, I clicked on a YouTube video where Betty White was reading aloud one of my old favorite picture books, Harry the Dirty Dog, as part of a project called StorylineOnline. After watching Betty, I watched another one I have fond memories of: William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, read by Reid Scott.
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is a wishing book, since the magic pebble Sylvester finds is a wishing pebble. I didn’t remember the plot specifically, but the climax of the book is Sylvester’s mom and dad wishing to have him back, because he’s disappeared. Watching the video and listening to the story was bittersweet for me in that sense, because I deeply understand their sorrow and longing. Since today’s theme was wishing, it seemed apropos to mention Sylvester too.
StorylineOnline has dozens of YouTube videos. I bet some of your favorite children’s books are there as well. They’re also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.