Catching Up In Year's End

       I'm slicing with the Two Writing Teachers community today. It's always a pleasure to read what everyone writes about their lives.

         

        It has been quite a chaotic time this fall in politics, no surprise to any of you I know. Among all my other activities I've continued to read as widely as possible, and tried to find ways to challenge our president elect's way of being. Never will I accept that his behavior toward people and toward America is acceptable. I am tired and still will not stop, but I also am going to take the next couple of weeks away from blogging (after this week), to try to get my holiday life in order so I can be with myself, with my family and friends, catch up on some writing goals, and other needed things, like bake and wrap gifts. I love blogging and connecting with all of you, but need a break. I know that all of you do not celebrate Christmas, but do wish everyone a safe and joyous final days of 2016. 

         I'm sharing a book I shared yesterday because it is a book just discovered, and includes many of the holidays that bless us in this season of light. If you don't know it, find it. It is lovely. It also is about poetry and quilting!

My Review

        Anna Grossnickle Hines not only wrote the poems and illustrated them but created the quilts that became part of the beautiful pages. In the backmatter, she writes about the importance of light in the deep winter months, including the holidays that are celebrated with some kind of light and ending with the light we all share, the moon. And she gives detailed instructions for creating the quilts. The quilts are exceptionally gorgeous, glowing brightly in a sea of dark, just like the candles of Chanukah and Kwanza, or the lights on the Christmas tree. There are poems for each special time and they glow too, like the one about farolitos, lines of paper bag lanterns symbolically lighting the way for Mary and Joseph. The book will delight everyone in this season where light is needed and celebrated, and might inspire quilters too.

        I have a favorite quote from Charles Dickens that gives me a smile every time I read it.

        There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. 

        At the school where I worked, each classroom created some kind of artistic light production, and one morning before winter break, we all traveled the school viewing everyone's art, light and memorable words. One year, we used Confucius' It is better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness, and created small lit memorials to people all over the world that had lit that candle.  

Enjoy your celebrations with your families!