unweaving the nest

How to Subscribe to Unweaving the Nest Weekly...and Why :)

Not so long ago I received an email from a dear friend encouraging me to take some of the things I love and combine them into an online magazine. I looked at different options, different ways of publishing, researched the securest ways to offer subscriptions. I made long lists of things I would like to share, content that would be interesting, ways to make it interactive and even ways to have give-aways for my subscribers. After lots of planning and creating I have my magazine, Unweaving the Nest Weekly.

Here are just some of the things that we will be included in the image-rich issues:

• A feature story about something that I love that I think you might love, too.
• An inspirational essay, kind of like the things I've written about here on my blog since 2007.
• "The Last Straw" last-page essay from columnist Rick Ohler.
• Guest artists, poets, writers, photographers, chefs, and just plain old great people....
• Simple recipes that I have created. Fast, fresh and made with things you probably already have in your pantry and fridge.
• Candid interviews with interesting folks I'd like you to meet.
• Reviews of books I am reading that I believe are worth sharing.
• Poetry.
• Downloadable versions of my photographs that you can print or use as screensavers.
• Links to fabulous Web sites that I have discovered.
• Links to playlists I have created...music to discover and listen to, free, from your computer.
• and more!

It's kind of like a big love letter filled with things that inspire me, make me think, and that I want to share with YOU!

It takes time to put these things together, to create a beautiful presentation of them, to write and gather. Instead of putting ads on my blog, or filling the magazine with sponsor ads, I have decided to have a subscription rate and keep it to a minimal dollar amount. It's $4.00 per month, the cost of a fancy cup of coffee...and you get it once a week, for as long as you are a subscriber. It's easy to subscribe by clicking on this link and paying securely through Amazon.com. You will be billed automatically for $4.00 per month until you choose to unsubscribe. There is a link at the bottom of every magazine to easily unsubscribe.

If you would like to refer some subscribers to me, please send me an email at kateri.ewing at gmail.com. I have a special thank you gift for anyone who refers three friends that subscribe.

Unweaving the Nest Weekly celebrated its one-year anniversary, and is now onto the second volume of 52 issues. Here is a link to the one-year anniversary issue, where many readers sent in their comments about the first 52 weekly issues: CLICK HERE.

I sure hope you'll join us.

 

 

meet constance.

 Please click on the links below to read the post :)

Page One

Page Two

Itty Bitty Very Short Page Three

 

 

sun shine

 

 I read something by Sy Syfransky, creator of the The Sun Magazine, that validated something I have written about over and over again. I'd like to share it here, for those of you who court the blank page every day, and for those of you who use your creativity in any truth-seeking way. It's never any easy road, almost never a lucrative one as far as money goes, and this excerpt from Syfransky gives us a glimpse as to why, and how, we keep at it anyway.

I TELL WRITERS that there’s a world of difference between attending a workshop called “Into the Fire” and actually summoning the courage and perseverance to sit down, day after day, and write honestly and skillfully about an intensely personal event. I should know, I tell them, because I shy away from that fire, too.
    Once I asked the poet Jimmy Santiago Baca how he keeps going into the fire. “I think if anybody stays close to their loneliness,” he said, “they’re always staying close to the edge. So when I’m by myself, which is a necessity when you’re a writer, I have to constantly deal with that bleak, despairing feeling. It’s a funny thing about loneliness. No matter what you try to do to fill it, you can never fill it.

At the end of the day it looks at you and measures you exactly. We do an awful lot of things — at least, I do — to try to escape it. But when I can blend and merge with the loneliness, there’s an extraordinary feeling of fulfillment nothing else can compare with.”

    I’ve learned that loneliness isn’t vanquished by living in a quaint Southern college town or marrying a beautiful woman or starting an independent magazine. For me, going into the fire means confronting the loneliness. It means confronting my own harsh judgment that I’m not up to the task, that I’m unable to tell a story the way it deserves to be told. Another writer once confided in me that when the critical voices in her head get too loud, she stands up and curses them, then shouts at them to get the hell out of the house. Then she goes back to her writing.

It really comes down to that sometimes, doesn't it? At least for me. It's the only weapon I have against the infinite human ache that we all possess. Attempting to dive into the fire is where the treasure lies. Sometimes it may take a lifetime to get there, and we may spend a lot of time hobbling over hot coals, but if we believe in it we keep at it. Even when the fire is but an ember in the ashes.

stuff to do when you can't snowshoe

This is one of my favourite trees at the farm next door. I went for a snowshoe there the other day, if you can call it that. Really, boots alone would have been fine all across the fields and even in the woods. We just don't have enough snow for my taste yet. I love me a harsh winter. While many folks dream of living someplace warm or at least temperate, I'm pretty much set on being somewhere that gets piles of the fluffy white stuff. Never mind inches...I'm talking feet.

Western New York has that reputation, but in the past few years it's been a little disappointing for polar bears like me. Today it snowed, though it certainly could have been more generous. I went to the city this morning for a doctor's appointment and decided to meander the snowy avenues for a while before I came home. Nothing like our gal Buffalo all adorned in white. :) I stopped in a little Middle Eastern joint to eat falafel, then walked to Main Street and paid a visit to my friends at our incredible local art supply store. Pardon the cliché, but every time I go there I'm like a kid in a candy store. There is one guy who has worked there forever who loves to talk about colour as much as I do, and so we stand in front of the Holbein watercolours and drool over swatches of alizarin crimson, indathrone blue, aureolin, rose carmethine and then some. Just saying the names out loud is delicious. I found a new love today, quinacridone red orange. He opened the tube, took a drop of it on his finger and spread it on the heel of his palm. 

"It's the closest colour to blood you'll find."

Well, he was right. It was gorgeous. Made my mouth water. Not for blood, but maybe for a blood orange. I was just saying to a friend the other day what a beautiful colour blood is. Rightfully so...it's the essence of what keeps us alive and ticking. My art store friend also explained the difference between modern and traditional pigments and why you can't find the colour sepia in oil or acrylic paints, only watercolour. I won't bore you...but it was fascinating to me. The folks at the art store are geeks about colour and texture just like some folks are geeks about math. I guess I'm one, too. Fine by me.

But what this brings me to is that I've decided I want to learn how to draw. I've done it my whole life, but I'm really not very good at it. I especially want to know how to draw the human face, and eventually how to paint it. Sure, I've tried, but my efforts always feel flat or have that deer in the headlights look. So how happy was I when I saw this on my friend Misty's online journal? Pretty damn happy. Class starts in just over a week and I'll have plenty of time during my long nights at work to give it the old college try. Maybe I'll even share some of my efforts here. It's an online class that utilizes blog technology and streaming video, and I tell you it's a great way to learn. You can really take your time, stop, rewind and attempt the lessons as many times as you need to (a bonus for, a-hem, slower folks like me). Misty is a sought after teacher and travels the world to share her talents, but it's never been convenient for me to attend one of her workshops...this way I can do it in my jammies if I need to!

There are some other online classes that you might want to know about. My friend Rick Ohler has a fantastic array of online options for those of you out-of-towners who can't attend his Tuesday and Thursday classes here in East Aurora.

An Online Visit With Your Grammar is his newest addition. Here is the course description:

Learn to correct the most common mistakes in English; and have some fun at the same time. Why lay around this winter whilst Lake Affect snows ravish your drive way why not put that time to good, use. In "An Online Visit With Your Grammar", you'll receive each Wednesday, an email with a Word attachment from moi. The attachment will contain a story which is full of mistakes, there will be errors in Punctation, Grammar, Spelling and Useage. You'll make corrections during the week. Everyone can work at their own pace. On the following Wednesday I send along the corrected version with explanations. Its good fun and cheap $twenty-two dollars. By the way there are no less than 20 errors in this course description. Maybe there's more. 

Another class that he offers is Online Creative Writing:

In this course writers will write from the comfort of their own homes, in their PJs if they like. They can work on weekly assignments provided by instructor Rick Ohler, OR, they can continue their own writing projects already under way. Using email and telephone, writer and instructor will set an eight-week goal and have weekly communication. Beginning and experienced writers of family histories, memoirs, fiction, essays and non-fiction are welcome. 

For more information on either of these classes just email Rick. He'll be more than happy to let you know how to get started.

I also have an online course starting this winter. Here is the course description from the East Aurora Continuing Education Web site:

Whether you're already filling notebooks with poetry or just have a longing to try, this 8-week workshop with Kateri Ewing will offer guidance and gentle criticism on how to craft your words into poems. We will meet in a virtual classroom filled with inspiration and instruction on the basics of craft. There will be introductions to schools of poetry, to poets both well-know and obscure, as well as a place to exchange ideas and post your own work for group discussion. During our final week we will meet face-to-face for a group reading and celebration at the Roycroft Inn. Students will leave with a greater understanding of poetry and some of the subtleties of craft, all from the comfort of their own home and with the convenience of their own schedule. Kateri will check the Web site daily for discussion, and provide weekly lessons and assignments. Please email Kateri for more information.

Of course if you are participating from far away and can't join us for the final celebration, there will be something special at the end for you, too :) 

Hope you are enjoying the winter no matter where you're sitting, and that you've made learning something new a priority for this brand spanking new year! And don't hesitate to wish for snow up here in Buffalo. The plow guys need it, the ski resorts need it, and my snowshoes need it, too :)

The Gift of a Letter

 

As published in the East Aurora Advertiser, May 2009

  

“What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call.”  Liz Carpenter

What a lot we’ve lost, indeed. With newspapers going out of print and the decline of postal mail, sometimes I wonder if we’ll have any tangible written record of our existence when my grandchildren are adults. I have loved writing and receiving letters throughout my life, and while I appreciate the advent of email and use it every day to communicate with friends and family all over the world, it just isn’t the same as a handwritten note delivered door-to-door. 

While you can reread an email, once deleted they will be lost forever unless you take the time to print them. How many are really worth the paper and ink? It seems most of them are not unlike the “instant message,” without much thought, sometimes even impulsive, and there is something to waiting the days for a letter to be received and returned. I give more consideration to what I say when I write a letter; I’ve sent some emails that I have regretted the moment I clicked the send button. Sure, I’ve sent some letters I might regret, but the process alone requires more attention—I am less likely to send something in haste.

Consider the historical aspect. What would we know of the human side of our history without the personal correspondence of the men and women who lived it? Think of those letters written by Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln; they give us real insight into the minds and lives of the men who shaped our country, things we would have never learned from just the facts.

 

Some of the most fascinating books I’ve read are compilations of personal letters. Those between Henry Miller and Anais Nin not only give us the intricacies of a lifelong love affair, but also the inner scoop on literary life of the 1930’s. And what about our own family histories? I can’t see passing our correspondence on a “disk” to future generations. What a shame to not hold the handwriting of our ancestors in our own hands to read again and again. Letters contain the human side of things—the day to day of what came before us.

 

 

 

There are not nearly as many letters passing through my mailbox these days. I’d like to change that, set a goal for myself of one letter sent a day. I’ve stocked up on paper and envelopes, “forever” stamps. I like to use a fountain pen when I write, and sometimes I’ll even tuck in a small treasure that I found on a walk at Knox Farm. Friends who are living in those southern states that don’t have the beauty of a Western New York fall love to receive a bright red maple leaf in early October, but what they like most is holding in their hands a little slice of my life here—and I always eagerly await a crisp envelope containing a bit of their own. These days it seems like I wait far too long. Even if I do get a daily email, it is not nearly as meaningful as the news that comes when their hand is put to page.

 

 

why

Every so often I tend to check myself. You know, question why it is that I have this compulsive love of words. I truly love them. I love the shapes of letters and I love how they look on the page, on a keyboard, on a chalkboard. I adore how they fan out and lift one at a time to strike the paper over the roller on an old typewriter. I love how they parade across a computer screen, one at a time, as I touch the keys. I love to read them, left to right, top to bottom between the covers of a book. I love the way words sound all on their own, or in careful, or even careless combinations. I love them. And I love to write them...much more than I love to say them.

I think it's only natural to want to write when you love to read. When you love letters and words and sentences and paragraphs...and stories. But there is more to it than that. And every so often I check myself as to why.

I have written about this very thing countless times in different ways here in the nest. But this time I am thinking more about why I love to read...and the answer to that is quintessentially why I need to write.

I love to read, I NEED to read, because it is a way to see how things work out. Life is a never-ending roller coaster ride of uncertainties. All stories, whether fiction or factual, are like a guidebook to almost every life situation, every uncertainty imaginable. It's all been lived before, folks. Like all the beautiful emails I have received from women who have walked the breast cancer road...I read those wise and generous words absolutely hungry for the wisdom of the journeys already taken and how it all turns out. Stories, good, true stories, make you CARE about how things all turn out. They make you want to find out how things end up. And that is what writing does, too.

Writing is a way to journey through something, on my own, for writing is always a solitary endeavor, to at least ATTEMPT to explain in words the things that I cannot sometimes even begin to explain to myself any other way. And I can make things up, things that may not have anything to do with my own uncertainties, and I can try to follow them through to their endings and maybe in that magical way that stories have, maybe I will sometimes find even a glimmer of truth in my own story. And another thing, perhaps the most important thing, is that when I am writing the world seems to fall away and the only thing that matters is the inexplicable mystery of putting letters down on the page, one after the other. It can be the highest form of bliss I know. Because...the visceral and even the physical act of writing is its own reward. Not the story at its end, not even the sharing of it, or the publishing of it, or hearing it read aloud...it's the very moment of doing it. Over and over again I can enter a space where the letters form words and the words make sentences and the sentences grow into paragraphs...

An escape? Yes. And the sanest way I have to attempt to understand. The act of writing is its own reward. And if I am very lucky, I'll have a story to share.