Searchlights & Signal Flares
A Writer's Holiday Newsletter
December 2005
This month: Charlene Bunas, Debra Birkinshaw, Laurie Lessen Reiche, Paula Matzinger, Marlene Cullen, Susan Bono
My usual letter is not coming this year. This year I'm not describing how adorable are our grandkids, how successful our children have become, how healthy Gary and I are. I'm also not describing our wealth via trips and excursions. I certainly am not glowing with our newfound happiness in the togetherness of retirement. No indeed, this year, I'm talking about cookies. You'll find my shortbread piece below.
Charlene Bunas
Christmas Cookies, 2005
My Mother set the standard for baking holiday traditions. She started in October, giving her fruitcakes a chance to mellow. She baked and froze, tucked each variety of cookie or candy into its own tin box. Each was labeled. She did not have to write “don't open.” We kids knew better.
The day of the unveiling would arrive and we strained like leashed dogs, waiting for the “OK” command to gobble the goodies.
When she died, I took on the mantle. I mean the apron. But no matter how I tie it, it just doesn't fit right. This year, for example, I overbaked the fruitcakes and changed the part about wrapping in the cheesecloth I didn't have and “besides,” I thought, “old flannel sheets would do just as well.” The cake isn't absorbing the liqueurs and I'm considering putting squares of tasty material on silver platters at Christmastime.
After the fruitcakes, I made Mother's Orange Pastries, rolls of pastry wrapped around orange-rinded marzipan. Sounds good? It is. It was. When Mother baked it, the rolls were crisp and flaky on the outside, chewy sweet on the inside. My version of the same recipe turned into sticky crumbs. I think I'll save the savory nibbles to top scoops of ice cream. My persimmon cookies were overgingered and the fudge seemed to notice that I'd left out three of the six ingredients.
Holidays are laced with tradition. Not all of us can bake. All of us can smile.
Gary still sings in the church choir. He still belts out a great Hallelujah chorus; and, he still appreciates good cookies, the kind Mother used to bake.
Gary and I send our best wishes that your holidays bring you delicious cookies, spirited singing and ever special memories.
Charlene Bunas is baking in Santa Rosa, CA.
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Prophecy For The Vernal Season
All the creatures of the glen
are just beginning to stir,
emerging from a soft grey blanket
of valley fog.
The air, on this damp, fresh morning, is fragrant with the
redolence of new growth.
Trees, stripped of their resplendent fall plumage
are nonetheless elegant, weaving their delicate tracery
of branches and twigs in homage to the sky,
like capillaries pulsing with the quintessence of life.
Buds cluster among the twigs, replete with the promise
of leaf and blossom.
The persimmon tree offers a bountiful feast for the winged flock,
with blushing skin that mirrors the robin's scarlet breast:
the tree paints a banner of color across the subtle hues of the morning sky.
Felled oak, once vigorous and stately, surrenders to the earth,
furnishing provender to the denizens who find refuge therein.
Earth, while fallow, gathers the rain, nurtures the seed, provides
sustenance,
in the ongoing process of regeneration.
Favorable auspices for the coming Spring are made known to me.
December truly is a season for giving.
Debra Birkinshaw is an artist and poet in Sebastopol, CA, who is currently showing a watercolor painting in the exhibit "Drawn From Life" at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. It is a figurative work, entitled "Shelter From the Rain."
For info: www.sebarts.org.
January 1, 2006
I will not be careless with this year. Not once will I mistake it for another. Carefully I will listen to the music only it can make. I will attend to this year as if it were my last. I will buy a thousand pens to fill the year with words---that will be my offering to the Mystery of me. For if I am not the Mystery, itself, how could there be a Mystery at all? How could there be the pulsing Mystery of the luminous green trees outside the window, or in the God I imagine watching over our world?
I will attend to this: Satie's fingers strolling across a piano's keys composing the melodies of the constellations; Virginia Woolf swimming the nib of her pen in ink readying herself to let loose the waves; Lee Miller swirling photographic paper in chemicals in total darkness until Hitler's bathtub appears before her eyes, she herself there in the image in the tub rinsing the filth of war off her porcelain skin and the world outside the bathroom trembling with the War's end ; Gertrude Stein's belly jiggling as she laughs at her own coded messages scrawled in her notebook; Sylvia Plath's heart skipping a beat as she watches winter encroach on the Devon trees.
I will attend to my own music, images, messages, reportage, and heartbeat. Who am I anyway but everyone? In attending to the Mystery I polish the surfaces of everyone else's reality---I clarify you---no, I mean I make room for you in me and me in you; I expand my consciousness, and in that spaciousness allow you your own omnipotence; make you single, whole, alone in the spheres of being, connected to me and to all-that-is-in the air and the airless sea of being. In not being careless--- in paying attention the Mystery enters the new year and I vow to attend.
Laurie Suzanne Lessen-Reiche hates writing bios--- they make her wonder who she is and who she was and who she's going to be and never fail to trigger an obsessive-compulsive existential episode of philosophic confusion. Needless to say, she's been many things and continues in that vein. The one thing she is sure of is Words. Hers have appeared in many publications such as The Princeton Review, Kingfisher, The Southern Poetry Review, and this and that. She lives in Petaluma, goes to school at Dominican University of California where she is getting her Masters in Humanities with an Emphasis in Creative Writing. She loves to hear from people whether she knows them or not. Anyone can email her at p.reiche@comcast.net.
A WRITER'S HOLIDAY NEWSLETTER
I fell into 2005, over the line,
49 to 50 and kept falling
tumbling over
Dave's ankle surgery
dropped
into a poetry class, an essay group
friends,
after six years,
slipped out our cottage
another, from high school,
plopped in,
out of nowhere,
5 months through summer
she lingered
with Dave and the kids
in meadows
bordered by Spanish sage,
smell of barbecue,
I lost
my pens
in the yellow grass,
we visited the vortex
on Shasta,
leapt into autumn,
then she was
gone
termites came
Elise and Robert's
soccer games, report cards,
cavities, a couch
I flew
through a few poems,
some essays,
need to return and revise
scurried into
a watercolor class
Robert is buffed
and it's almost over
my 2005
ride
I'm still not published!
Happy Holidays
Paula Matzinger, Sebastopol, CA
It has been a fruitful year, full of tangy tidbits. I found myself at my desk, pens aquiver as I melodiously put pen to paper and composed eloquent missives. I must say I do write every day as my housekeeper will attest. Unfortunately, too much of my dribble resides in, around or near the wastebasket.
As my housekeeper brings my midmorning tea, she clears the debris with a tsk-tsking sound. I don't know why she complains. I pay her handsomely.
I take a break for the noon meal and venture forth to the nearby pub. I'm happy to report that I always find good cheer and a flowing tap. Never at a loss for words, especially the verbal kind, I spend perhaps too much time there. I usually make my way back to my office around 4 pm, just in time for afternoon tea. As I have my own entrance, my housekeeper shouldn't know my comings and goings, but she somehow always does.
And so, dear reader, perhaps you are wondering about my accomplishments. Have I been published, you might ask. Oh, yes, my dears, I have. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
My entire year has revolved around my literary efforts. Although I submit and face the possibility of rejection everywhere I submit, there is one exception.
Yes, Virginia, I have been published, in Searchlights and Signal Flares.
December Greetings
Dear Ones,
Oh, ho ho. Life is good these days here at the Sanatorium. It's amazing what the right drugs and a little peace and quiet can do for your writing. For a few hours a day, the attendants loosen my restraints just enough to let me at my laptop, and by golly, I'm already on page 278 of my latest psycho killer mystery! Some will accuse me of indulging myself, especially in my portrayal of the murderer, but I just say, “Write what you know.”
Yes, it's certainly inspiring out here in the middle of nowhere. These private clinics know how to do it up right. I can look out my window at brooding expanses of trackless snow, and the howling of wild animals lulls me to sleep at night. Doctor Bruno says the snowplows will get out this far in another month or two. Then, I can send my finished manuscript to my agent and this wish-filled greeting to you.
Be merry and bright,
Susan Bono
Susan Bono is making every attempt to write what she knows in Petaluma, CA.