Writing Your Memories

Writing class at my studio a few years ago. We like small classes so we can all share our work.

Pass the word!

No matter where you live, you can attend my next writing class on Zoom. Online classes help us reach writers in distant areas who cannot attend in person. 

Beginning May 17 for six weeks I will teach a course on writing your life stories. The classes run weekly through June 21.

Because many work during the day, I am offering this class Tuesday evenings.  6 PM - 8 PM. Fee: $40

Writing Your Life Stories for Your Family or for Publication:

Our life stories are a precious legacy. Putting them in writing is a gift to all who know and love us—they can be treasured and enjoyed for generations to come. Facts bring us knowledge, but stories bring us wisdom.

If you are interested in writing family/personal life stories – those significant tales of adventure, transition, love, loss, and triumph, as well as the lovely everyday moments shared with loved ones from the past or the present, come learn specific tools and techniques to retrieve and record them. 

Your questions about writing your memories will be answered.

Students will write a short piece each week and receive feedback from their peers. Each student receives personal attention from Glenda. This class is structured for beginning and intermediate writers.

This is my story so far.

Geraniums, red or pink, are favorites for the deck

My cousin told me, years ago, that it is no fun having to take care of two houses. 

She lived in Florida and in the summer she and her husband came up to their cabin in Franklin, NC.

She said they spent most of their time cleaning and repairing things at the cabin. 

I will be going back to my home in the mountains very soon and I know there is much to do there. My ongoing downsizing project will keep me very busy, and getting help for the little things that need repair or replacing is always a challenge.

When we first moved to the mountains we still had our house in south Georgia. For almost two years trying to maintain that house and the big yard was overwhelming for me. We tried renting it and that turned into a real fiasco. We found the motor for the garbage compactor in the kitchen missing. We were shocked about that and never found out who or why that happened. My bicycle was stolen. I think because my house on the farm was fairly isolated and not easily seen, thieves found it ripe for picking.

At this time, I have some friends watching my house and checking on things, while I am away. My new neighbors said they would keep an eye on it, also. And when I leave this apartment in the city to go back home, I won't have to worry about it at all. My sister and BIL will take care of it. So having two homes will not be such a problem as it was in 1995.

I know people who come up to the mountains every summer and go back to Florida for the winter months. I think it would be easier if there were two people instead of just me making these trips. A friend who bought a cabin in the region of my house about the same time Barry and I moved in just sold her place. She is also alone and I think it probably became too much to care for. A house owns us, we don't own the house. The house demands we paint, repair, and keep things running. 

The husband of one of my cousins said, "We used to like to travel, but now it takes a U-Haul just to carry all our medications."

I thought that was funny at the time, but I am beginning to understand his comment.

City living is hard to get used to. I have learned the hard way that I should not get on the city streets after 3PM unless I want to wait in long, long lanes of traffic. And I don't try to make a left turn between 3 and 6:30 PM. I have had to make many right turns to get to a place to make a left turn. In Hayesville,  the only time I deal with much traffic is when the summer residents come. I will never complain about that traffic again. I might have to wait for two or three cars before I get on Hwy 64 to go east or west, but that is not a problem. 

I have enjoyed the restaurants in Roswell and the change of food choices from what I have at home. It is easy to order and pick up meals when I don't feel like cooking. Although Slopes Bar B Que is under new management now, I can still order a good vegetable plate to go. They cook southern like my mother did, not the new fancy-pants southern cuisine most Atlanta restaurants serve.

I really like my little kitchen so new and clean, but my Frigidaire refrigerator has not worked properly since it was installed. After calls and more calls, I had a repairman come out. He took the freezer door off and re-installed it, but I still have icicles hanging and frost on all that is in there. I guess I will start the phone calls again.

What I look forward to:

Thursday, April 28, Carroll Taylor will host Mountain Wordsmiths on Zoom at 10:30 AM. I will speak that day about my friends, Kathryn Stripling Byer and Nancy Simpson, both gone now, but I will read some of their poetry as we celebrate Poetry Month. 

We will have Open Mic and everyone who is attending is urged to read a poem, one of their original, or a poem they like by another poet.  I hope poetry lovers everywhere will join us. To receive the link for the meeting, contact Carroll S. Taylor, at vibiaperpetua@gmail.com  

I am also looking forward to seeing my friends in the mountains again. I miss them while here, even though I love being with my family members. I want to have a get-together with people I trust to have had their vaccinations and who are following the CDC guidelines. I still wear a mask when out in public and I will continue to wear one until CDC says I have nothing to fear. I had my second booster today.

In May I will teach another memoir class on Zoom. I have had a number of writers who want to take the course, so that will be enjoyable. I will post the dates and times in the coming weeks. 

July brings us to festival time in the mountains of North Carolina. In our little town of Hayesville, there is a huge festival held in the town square. NCWN-West, our writers in western NC and Georgia, will have a booth for two days where we will meet people from far and near. We will hand out brochures and fliers about our organization, about our local writers and hopefully sell some books. I enjoy meeting all the people who come by and chat with us. We also give away a number of books.

I have been invited to speak to the Kiwanis Club here in Roswell in September, so I will be back then. I look forward to meeting more folks here in the city where I will be spending time this winter. I am contemplating teaching writing at the local adult recreation center. I stopped by today and they don't have any writing classes on their schedule. 

The big event I will be attending soon is the 50th-anniversary party for Gay and Stu. It was originally scheduled for January but had to be postponed due to COVID. It will be fun to see so many of my family and Stu's family plus their friends. I think it will be a wonderful way to start the summer. 

Let's go forward with hope and joy, with friendships and plans to help others where we can. While we are faced every day with the horrors of war in Ukraine, we must be grateful that bombs are not falling in our country, and I hope everyone will support our president and our government as they do all possible to stop the killing over there. Those who support Russia are not true Americans. 

I hope you have things you look forward to in the coming months. If you want to share them, I would love to hear them here.

Poetry Month and my poetry here

I have decided to share more of my poetry on my blog. We always feel we must not share a poem online because then the poetry journals won't accept it. But, I have many that have already been published and I am happy for other eyes to see them.

So many of you emailed me about the poem, Stop the Trees from Growing, and how you related to it.

You might like this one, too. I wrote it about six years after Barry died.  Forgive the spacing. I know better but my computer is acting up tonight.

Shot into the Future, Clutching the Past

 Sometimes I forget the years before spiraling

darkness took its toll. Now aging wraps me in

silken threads, squeezes me into a box.


I forget until a whirlwind, half my age,

delves into my life. Her purpose, unclutter

my house, my life, set me free of the past.


I forget until she tells me 2005 was long ago.

It’s yesterday to me. She brands my computer

an antique, like me, I suppose.


Floppy disks? Does anybody still use them?

She tosses them in the trash. What can she know

of such things? I saved precious words on those disks.


I am saddened by the pain she has yet to face.

Her biggest loss so far – a breakup with her boyfriend.

Six years gone now, I kept his voice on the answering machine.

                        By Glenda Council Beall

Published:  - Main Street Rag,  Volume 21, Summer 2016 issue

Stop The Trees From Growing published by Your Daily Poem

Stop the Trees from Growing

by

Glenda Council Beall 

Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again,
But I came here today, to where Mother nurtured
my spirit and where Daddy kept the roof over my head;
where the fire warmed my bed at night when winter winds
howled ‘round the corners of the old frame house –
when this flat farm with ponds and pines was home.

The road that once the school bus traveled
taking me to spend the day
with someone who was not my mother,
looks like a highway to a place I’ve never been.

It’s not the buildings all torn down, the homes of friends
that now hold dreams of families I don’t know –
It is the trees.
Nothing stopped the trees from growing, growing ever taller,
till they dwarfed the house, the barn, the backyard –
now a tiny garden towered over by a lilac tree,
an oak, and one longleaf pine.

I traveled from what is and has been home for fifteen years,
to visit that which was but is not my home anymore.
Like you, Thomas Wolfe, I can’t go home again.
I can’t go home because that place I once called home is gone.

Forever gone, except in memories that linger like lazy chimney smoke
spiraling through my mind, thoughts that surge a yearning deep within
to hear the laughing voices, see the kindly eyes – stilled voices, loving eyes,
closed under sod upon a quiet hill.


This poem was published in 2019 by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer who is the owner of Your Daily Poem. 

She has published six of my poems and if you want to read the others, go to her website and look for my name.

You can subscribe and she will send you a poem every day in your Inbox.  Some poems are new and some are old. Her goal is to prove that all poetry is NOT dull or boring. She wants to bring poetry to the folks who don't think they like poetry.
Jayne does a great job, too. 

a Poem by Scott Owens

 On The Days I Am Not My Father

by Scott Owens

I don’t yell. I don’t hold inside
the day’s supply of frustrations.
My hands stay open all day.
I don’t wake tired and sore,
dazed from senseless, panicking
dreams. On the days I am not
my father I hold my son
when he cries, let him touch my face
without flinching, lie down with him
until he falls asleep, realize
that just because he has a sharp tongue,
just because he’s sometimes mean,
just because he’s smarter than me
doesn’t mean he’ll become my father.

On the days I am not my father
holding you is enough until
holding you is no longer enough
for either of us. I listen well.
I let things go unfinished,
in an order I didn’t plan.
My mouth is relaxed. My teeth
don’t hurt. My face stays
a healthy shade of pink all day.
On the days I am not my father
I don’t fill the silence with my own
irrational rants. I don’t resent
the voices of others. I don’t make fun
of you to make myself feel better.

On the days I am not my father
I don’t care who wins
or loses. The news can’t ruin
my day. I water plants.
I cook. I laugh at myself.
I can imagine living without
my beard, with my hair cut,
without the fear of looking
too much like my father. On the days
I am not my father I romp
and play, I don’t compare myself
with everyone else, the night
is always long enough, I like
how much I am like my father.

Great small writers' conference near me

Writers, are you ready to go to a writers' conference face to face with great instructors? Are you ready to be motivated to get out of that pandemic dump and pursue your love of writing?

Then you must register and attend a one-day conference in Blue Ridge, Georgia. This is one of the best small conferences you will find and it is in the mountains of north Georgia. Check it out.

https://www.blueridgewritersconference.com/

Karen Paul Holmes will be there as an instructor. 

https://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2022/02/writers-conference-blue-ridge-ga-april.html

Poetry Month - April

April is National Poetry Month, and what better way to celebrate than by joining us at the North Carolina Writers' Network 2022 Spring Conference on Saturday, April 23, where poetic programs abound?

If you've already registered, thank you! If not, registration is open at https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncwriters.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7C%7C83297dd6d3ae421963c908da0b85ac60%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637834965998917244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=FIoBCTyoeewUA2yKALjNo6pfXOr4BEZw3EHcgS2H9i4%3D&reserved=0.

Poets can choose from the following course options:

Public, Private, and Poetic Place with CHARMAINE CADEAU
Filmmaker Peter Greenaway stated, “I’ve always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going—in a sense, it’s three tenses in one.” This generative writing workshop focuses on exploring our literal and conceptual worlds. How might a poem map a geographical place? A memory? A body? Using exercises that play with the idea of mapping, participants will draft new work that explores real and imagined places.

Born in Toronto, Charmaine Cadeau now lives in Lewisville. She is an English professor at High Point University, where she teaches creative writing and literature and serves as the advisor for Apogee Magazine. She has published two full-length collections of poetry, What You Used to Wear (Goose Lane Editions) and Placeholder (Brick Books), the most recent of which won the Brockman Campbell Book Award and the ReLit Award. Her newest book, Skytale, was handmade with the support of JackPine Press.

Talking the Talk (poetry) with STUART DISCHELL
This class, open to poets at all levels of skill and experience, will focus on the use of dialogue as a strategic device in poetry.

Stuart Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking), a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues (Penguin), Dig Safe (Penguin), Backwards Days (Penguin), Standing on Z (Unicorn), Children with Enemies (Chicago), and the forthcoming The Lookout Man (Chicago). A recipient of awards from the NEA, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is the Class of 1952 Excellence Professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Finally, LAURA MULLEN will lead the Master Class in Poetry, "River of Time and Art." 

We feel ourselves to float now, precariously, uncertainly, in a river of time that seems rapid, forceful, and unruly—it’s all too easy to fear we’ll be thrown out of the boat and submerged. “Poetry,” writes Joy Harjo in her memoir Poet Warrior, “is a tool to navigate transformation.” What better way to move through these straits than with(in) art? This workshop will be generative, there will be exercises and prompts, productive of new poetry, and then (looking at previous work) will also offer strategies for revision, grounded in a recognition of your singular and special powers, with a focus on self-awareness and self-acceptance, as we learn to go with the creative flow and move fearlessly toward the wide open.

Potential Master Class attendees must apply to be admitted; a few spots remain. Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.

Laura Mullen is the author of eight books; recognitions for her poetry include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award. Recent poems have appeared in Fence, Together in a Sudden Strangeness, and Bettering American Poetry. Her translation of Veronique Pittolo's Hero was published by Black Square Editions, and her translation of work by Stephanie Chaillou has just appeared in Interim. A collection of poems is forthcoming from Solid Objects Press in 2023. She teaches at Wake Forest University.

Spring Conference is a full day of courses and programming on the craft and business of writing, offering both on-site (in-person) and online sessions. North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Carole Boston Weatherford will give the Keynote Address. Other sessions include faculty readings, open mics, and the popular Slush Pile Live, where a panel of editors gives feedback on anonymous submissions in front of a live audience!

The online track offers several options for writers in all genres. Online registrants also will be able to watch livestreams of the Keynote Address, Faculty Readings, and Slush Pile Live!, and participate in an online-only Open Mic.

Register here: https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncwriters.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7C%7C83297dd6d3ae421963c908da0b85ac60%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637834965998917244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=FIoBCTyoeewUA2yKALjNo6pfXOr4BEZw3EHcgS2H9i4%3D&reserved=0.
Manage Your Subscription:
https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapp.icontact.com%2Ficp%2Fmmail-mprofile.php%3Fr%3D11387037%26l%3D19357%26s%3DX7PH%26m%3D1365466%26c%3D240123&data=04%7C01%7C%7C83297dd6d3ae421963c908da0b85ac60%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637834965998917244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=%2BDexh7NgYJltnyqvl74kklwqNOikVt%2FK%2F5dt1yERAqI%3D&reserved=0

This message was sent to glendabeall@msn.com from calendar@ncwriters.org

The North Carolina Writers' Network
North Carolina Writers' Network
North Carolina Writers' Network
PO Box 21591
 
Winston-Salem, NC 27120

I'm Back

A reader wrote to ask if I was well since I have not blogged in a while. To explain my absence, I have to say that this has been an awful year for me. I had COVID in January and my brother died in February. Meanwhile, I am dealing with lots of post COVID problems. I hate to write when I have nothing positive or helpful for my readers.

Also during these times, I am trying to learn how to live in two places. I have spent most of the time in Roswell,GA where my sister lives. I am grateful I was with her when I had the virus in January of this year.  Although I had all my vaccine shots and a booster and although I was careful to wear a mask when in public, I caught it at a restaurant where none of the staff wore masks and others did not either. They say that masks are about 85% successful in keeping the virus from escaping into the air. So masks would have helped. 

The fatigue I am having now keeps me from doing many things I want to do. However, my work has helped me with my grief. Keeping busy with something I enjoy has always been a good way for me to get through the worst of mourning. I try not to dwell on my sorrow for long, but I still cry when I think of my brother and realize he will never call me on the phone again. He will never sing his songs or tell his stories. It makes no difference that he was in his nineties or that we all knew it was going to be soon. When we lose someone we love, we miss them and that makes us sad. There is no shame in that and it should be accepted by others who care for us.

I am in Hayesville this week, back to my mountain home that I love. Every day is filled with either a doctor's appointment, a hair appointment, or getting my taxes to the CPA. 

Cloudy day in the mountains 

Time passes so quickly and with the time change that has just occurred, I find my days seem shorter. My body did not recognize a time change. It is still on the one it was used to. 

The cold weather here with snow has shut down the early spring we were enjoying. My forsythia looks damaged and the pear trees that were a beautiful white are now yellow. Japanese magnolias that were blooming so pretty a few weeks ago are done for now.

As I prepare for my writing class I will teach for the Carl Sandburg home historic site, I am amazed at the large number of people who have registered. I hope I feel well and am at my best for this class.

I hope you, my dear friends, are having good weather and enjoying good health as we anticipate the next season in our lives.