A Shout Out to All A to Z and IWSG Bloggers

From our Ninja Captain Alex J Cavenaugh:
In memory of Tina Downey, the A to Z Team is hosting a sunflower tribute on
September 8, 2014 – Remembering Tina Downey.
Prior to that date, for those of you who are members of the A to Z or the IWSG and want to participate, please purchase or plant a sunflower in her honor. (If you have to resort to plastic, that’s cool.) Take a photo of your sunflower and post it in her memory on Monday, September 8 on your blog. Tina loved her sunflowers, and we want to splash the blogging world with sunflowers that day and honor a truly amazing woman who was friend and family to so many. You can sign up HERE or HERE now or add your link when you post your sunflower.
Please help us spread the word! Let’s brighten the Internet with sunflowers the way Tina brightened the lives of so many.
Tina’s blog was at http://kmdlifeisgood.blogspot.com/

Tina Downey

For those of you following this blog who didn't know Tina, the name of her blog says all there is to say about her. She was a loving gifted woman/blogger who touched many of us, whether we just found her yesterday or knew her for years. A major team player on the A to Z Blogging Challenge, she brightened a lot of lives with her positive outlook on life even when it was beating her down. Check out her blog if you'd like to see what we all will miss...

The Coyote Experience- WEP August Post-Taking Chances

 

http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/

I know this probably isn't what our lovey Aussie host had in mind this month, but this was the mood I was in! Hope you all enjoy it. 620 word count. Make sure click on the link below the photo to visit the other blogs for more great stories...

Coyote slunk down to watch the three deer cross the high trail. Alone, as usual, he surveyed carefully and kept his ears alert to any sound, his nose to any scent. He didn’t need any bears or wolves to surprise him while he hunted this mother and her two offspring. He only needed one baby. Experience had taught him that the weaker prey yielded easier, tastier dinners, if one could avoid the mother. Coyote knew himself to be smart, more apt than the others in his pack and so he hunted alone and never shared with anyone. Idiots all of them, he often thought to himself.

Coyote crouched, still, like a desert pine, waiting for the right moment. The three deer moved past the high trail and, not catching his scent, fairly moseyed toward the barren expanse just past the growth of stunted pines in which he hid. Muzzles to the ground, they rooted for anything worth nibbling on, ambling close to each other, yet not too close for him to take a chance. He had to watch for the mother’s hooves, which were sharp and could cut and bruise him.

There, now, the smaller of the two young ones had moved almost within range. Coyote tensed, focused his senses. He ignored the rest of the world, fading it out until all that remained was the small spotted piece of meat now approaching on brittle spindly legs, which held juicy marrow in their slender bones. Coyote trembled with anticipation. He inched his paws forward just a tad, his haunches wound tight, ready to spring. Just a little closer. He spared a glance at the mother. She raised her head, quick, like a darting rabbit, and stared right at him. Frozen, as he was, her shiny doe-eyes pierced his concentration as if to say, ‘I see you. Don’t even think about it.’ Yet he knew he was invisible to her. He had to be. He was downwind from her. He lay so low his belly scrubbed the clutter dropped by scrappy pines and other debris.

When she continued to stare, when she didn’t move even one eyelash, Coyote tore his gaze from the mother and concentrated again on the young one now even closer to him. It was now or never. One second he scrunched his muscles into full spring mode, the next a heavy weight landed on his back pinning him to the ground. A great roar shook the world, made the short trees tremble, the clouds in the blue sky shudder. Animal dander, the heavy scent of thick fur and pungent odor of bear invaded his senses. How had he not noticed it before? That could have been his last thought, but the weight lifted slightly and Coyote rolled to one side before the great rough paw could pin him again.

Deer forgotten, Coyote scampered away, and then plowed into a full run, getting as far from the horrible bear as possible. Later, when he slowed at what he hoped was a safe distance from the mistake that had almost cost him his scrabby life, Coyote turned to look behind him. No bear lumbering after him. But no deer either. The tantalizing image of the young deer, so very close to him only moments ago, made his stomach growl. He took one tentative step back the way he had come, and trod on a scorpion that promptly stung his ankle.  Backing away and shaking his leg at the same time, he put his back to the scrubby pines along the high trail and the dinner that might have been. Oh well, he thought, that’s the way it goes sometimes. Some chances just weren’t worth taking.

 

Images from:

http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/

http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/coyote

www.pbase.com

www.wunderground.com

Eulogy for Lewis, My uncle

A. Lewis Wight, Father, Brother, Uncle

Death is a part of everyday life; the end of night, the end of day, a flower fading and falling. Little deaths happen around us all the time. Then there are the big ones. Yesterday my mother lost another brother. She has lost two in this year, one in February and now this one, who was closest to her in age. My sister and I lost another uncle.

With my Uncle Lew dying yesterday, in a tragic and beautiful way, I felt the presence of what was happening all day long, like waves lapping on a shore in a never-ending cycle. I didn’t moan and wail or cry an ocean. Grief didn’t pour over me or take me over. I just lived and breathed and felt every moment that his life would end this day. I was pointedly aware of it. I did weep, yet knew I mourned the man I’d known years ago, not the man dying now. I wished him peace. I sent positive loving thoughts to not only the two children of his who were with him and making hard choices, but to their siblings as well, knowing this day I wasn’t the only one deeply aware of what was happening. I felt wrapped in a blanket of impending death/release/love and family. I felt we were all in one place even though we were physically spread over the US. Hearts and minds blended together, focused on Lew making his way out of this world into the next in the best, kindest way. The awareness of regrets, of past mistakes/judgments/losses remained, but took a back seat to the necessity of honoring his life and how he touched all of us.

Because my uncle was not an easy man. We often felt he was born two centuries too late. A cowboy, rough and opinionated, he wasn’t a man at ease in his own skin. He made terrible mistakes and paid terrible prices for them. The one thing I know in my heart— that we all know/knew, even if he couldn’t express it the way we would have liked—was that he loved his children beyond mortal love. He lost them a long time ago because of his own actions, but losing them didn’t make him stop loving them. In the end, yesterday, two of them stood with him, amongst American Indian Prayer and Willie Nelsons’ crooning, to honor his love for them and to be present with their own; his first son, his last daughter, together representing all their siblings before, in between and after. Lew loved each of them with the same fierceness, wildness and catastrophe with which he lived his life.

I will miss him as I have long missed the man he once was. I grieve for my mother losing her brother. I grieve for his children and the opportunities he wasted and therefore they missed. But most of all I hope he is at peace, that he’s riding that far range with a six gun on his hip, a rifle slung under his leg, and his buckskins flying in the wind of the open prairie, his steed taking him to where he should have been all along.  

Gun collector/historian extraordinaire

IWSG Wednesday August

http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/

“When it don’t come easy…” Title words to one of my favorite songs by Kathy Griffin. My writing life is often this way. Lately I’ve wondered if I’ll ever really finish this novel I’ve been working on for too long now. 

“Time keeps moving from a crawl to a run…” My daily time seems to crawl and I feel I can’t lift my feet. My yearly time is running away without me. I can’t keep up.

“If you break down, I’ll drive out and find you…” So, whenever I’m trying to get my gears going again I sometimes read other writer’s books on writing and this time I chose “Zen in the Art of Writing” by Ray Bradbury.  I can’t believe I’ve only just found this book of essays. RB’s total being is consumed with writing, and the joy he finds in it almost makes me feel ashamed. Well not almost. It does. I cried.

“I don’t know nothing but that change will come…” Ashamed of my seeming cowardice, lack of enthusiasm and general grumpy complaining, got me to thinking after reading and absorbing his total commitment to his craft and his joy in that commitment, that it is far and away time for me to find my joy in writing again. Because I’ve lost it.

“You're out there walking down a highway, and all of the signs got blown away. Sometimes you wonder if you're walking in the wrong direction.” I’m walking in the wrong direction. I must find my joy again. I’m going to test RB’s advice to look inside, listen to my subconscious and remember memories. Associate words with my imagination and give in to whatever I find there.  It’s time to move and dream and find joy. It’s time to reassess, even… “When It Don’t Come Easy.”

If you care to hear the song, here it is....