Why My New Book Celebrates Farmers

There is a strong, instant connection when you meet other people who grew up on the family farm.

Even if you’re just briefly acquainted with haying, shucking sweet corn or feeling the thrum of a tractor under your hindquarters, farming sticks to you like meadow muffins on your barn boots.

When I hear the phrase “work ethic”, I can’t help but think of a plaid flannel shirt hanging on a wooden hook; or maybe I picture a crate of homegrown tomatoes, oddly shaped and impossibly sweet. I see Ford flatbed trucks and John Deere mowers, worn suspenders and Carhart jackets.

I see knit hats pulled down over sleepy eyes in crazy hours of the night, preparing to assist a mare in foal.

It’s ingrained in my very skin, this legacy of farming. When I drive past a newly turned field, I feel a swell of pride. In my county, I know every hamlet, ditch and pond where the peepers sing their noisy anthems to welcome the growing season.

After settling in for some ag research, I felt uneasy about the current plight of the farmer – particularly the dairy farmer. For instance, for every dollar spent on a grocery item, the farmer behind that produce or milk is earning six cents of that dollar. That’s why buying directly from the farmer is so very important to the financial health of the farmers; the middle men suck up all the profits.

It jolted me in my gut to learn the rate of farmers committing suicide is more than double that of war veterans.

It’s sad to imagine that kids born in rural communities today will, less and less, be immersed in farm life. Our pastoral landscape, once dotted with barns, silos and grazing cattle, will be replaced with more industrial behemoths called CAFOs.  It’s a whole new type of livestock farm: the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. 

In a heartbreaking blog titled “ On the Death of My Family’s Dairy Farm” Abe Voelker writes, “This probably shouldn’t be a huge shock. Ever since I can remember there has always been a steady drumbeat of family farms going bust. Sometimes the tempo would increase, when milk and/or crop prices would hit new lows, but the drum has always beat on as the industry never seemed to turn a corner”.

Abe refers to his family farm’s demise as “the end of a long battle”.

But I don’t want to end on a gloomy note. As long as there are seedlings in sunny windows, there will be hope for agriculture on some level.

As long as there are red geraniums spilling out of loamy clay pots at Home Depot, there is hope.

As long as the purple sky darkens over a silhouetted tractor driver on a breathtaking June evening, there is hope.

As for me, I will always roll down my window when motoring through my beloved Warren County and beyond – drinking in the smells and sounds and the altogether satisfying buzz of activity that heralds this season of new life.

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The Port City of Denver

Denver is a port city — yes, I’m referring to that pioneer town in Colorado and yes, I’ve consulted a map. While there is no harbor welcoming incoming ships, there is, in fact, a symbolic harbor: the soothing warmth of the sun; the genuine hospitality of the people; the irresistible lure of ever-present mountains. I see the mile high city as a place to sail toward and drop anchor. I always know there will be people waving me in from the docks: my friends, my family, my author tribe. Eagerly I lean into the arrival, knowing these lovely, loving people will securely moor my boat and invite me in.

Later, when my journey calls me back to the open sea and sails to distant shores, I carry a treasure trove of memories to sustain me until the next voyage.

I did that recently - sailed in a flying vessel that swooped down into the spectacle of plains and mountains, cityscapes and golden sunsets. I never tire of it.

My odyssey of authoring began mostly in the rolling Allegheny mountains of Northwestern Pennsylvania, my home of origin.
The honing, the polishing, the unromantic task of edit-edit-edit, has largely happened in Colorado, near the hogback or in the watchful shadow of Vail Mountain.

Long evenings hunched over our laptops, my publisher and I, chiseling the rough draft into a sculpture of words. Edit. Edit. Edit. Checking for accuracy, leaning into art. Typing, retyping, waltzing with words.
This is how it’s been with my latest project in the Breath of Joy Series. This one’s titled “Singing Spring”.

How ironic that we put the finishing touches on bursting buds, blushing brides and babbling brooks while outside the temperatures plummeted; the snow teased and blustered.

Spring emerges out of the dormant hard ground. It’s a labor, a process, a feeling of arrival followed by a sudden plunge back into the cold, unfinished business of winter. It’s a rogue breeze. A hint of earth and rain in the air. A swell of anticipation followed by a dance of freezing rain. Spring is a watery promise, a temperamental season of joy and uncertainty, mud and glory.

And so it is with writing, editing, crafting, honing to the finished work: so much like Springtime with its fits and starts and buttery sunshine chased by capricious winds.
What a heady mix!

How grateful I am, that the rough drafts born in my home state of Pennsylvania have found their true voices in the untamed West, under the vast blue skies of Colorado.

Breath of Joy! Singing Spring is humming an anthem that I hope and pray will stir the imaginations of my readers.

Let’s sail into port - wherever that may be - with a good book, a song, and a new season on the horizon.

To Serve and Protect

I'm doing the only thing I know to do when you've been sucker-punched by a painful comment from a trusted place -- I'm blogging about it.

Church should never be a place that sends you spiraling back into the vortex that is grief.
But it was, and it did.

I'm still in the vortex, clawing at the walls to gain altitude and breathe fresh air.
And so I write.
Grief, I'm told, is more bearable when you share your story.

It's about a good man, gone too soon. Not a perfect man, but a man with a sincere heart and an unwavering moral compass. A man who wore blue and prayed for angels to surround him and handed out junior sheriff's badges to kids who still held the law in high regard.

My husband.
My late husband.

Imagine what it feels like to have his life's calling bashed in a sacred space called the church.
From a voice who never knew my Roger, but who painted him anyway with a broad brush of fear and distrust.

Not all cops are bad. 

Roger served the public with a blend of reverence and pride; he often came home, tired but satisfied because he'd helped a man locate his car in the vast mall parking lot. Or maybe he'd deputized a youngster at a lemonade stand, swigging down the tepid mix and encouraging those kids to "keep the neighborhood safe", giving out those plastic badges like they were the real thing.

Maybe, on some particular day, my no-nonsense policeman husband had noticed a couple of  joy riders burning up the highway and reprimanded the youngsters they were not, in fact, invincible and that speeding puts innocent motorists at risk, too. Possibly he left them with only a warning and a solemn charge to go home safely to their families.

However his day unfolded, mostly a collection of routine bits, my Roger was grateful he could serve and protect the public. He'd often say, "I can't believe I get paid to do this". And he meant it.

Sure, there were dangerous days and there were soul-crushing days, like the afternoon he found a newly-minted driver, a 16-year-old girl, slumped over the steering wheel, in a ravine. She was dead. The memory haunted him.

"Maybe I could have gotten there a few minutes earlier," he lamented. "Maybe I could've saved her."
I'd reminded him he, too, was not invincible and he wasn't Superman; he was a good guy with a big heart and a badge, and he patrolled in a world filled with poor decisions and imperfect traffic patterns and impaired drivers and broken, defeated people.

That's where he shone his brightest light, his unfathomable hope: into the cracked and shattered lives of broken people.

There was the elderly widow in the most remote part of the county, who lived alone. He had answered her frightened report of a possible burglar on the property. After discovering no intruder, Roger noticed her window panes were sorely inadequate against the cruel gusts of November -- large cracks had been covered up with cardboard, which shuddered in the wind. Quietly and without fanfare, he went to Home Depot and bought new windows with his own money. On a Saturday while off duty, he drove to her home and replaced her windows.

With a playful spirit, Roger took holiday work assignments in stride: Stuck working on Christmas morning, he sported a Santa hat and gave out candy canes at traffic stops. He was all about peace on earth and good will toward men. He personified it.

And then there was Columbine.

The mass shootings re-configured the entire face of law enforcement, causing some officers to give up their badges. No amount of training had prepared them for the unfathomable. For Roger, the event shifted him into someone with a more steely edge, a shadow of wariness, a hint of sadness, a festering wound that could not heal completely. It was as though a mantel of steel rose up around him, cautioning him, obscuring some of the joy.

He retired to what would be five great years on a farm property, driving a tractor, hauling horse trailers to 4-H shows, putting up hay and reconnecting with family back east.

His heart, his generous and boundless heart, burst in one last effort to stay with us. On the death certificate it reads "Acute Aortic Occlusion".

"His heart exploded," the coroner explained.

And it did. It discharged light and detonated arguments. It was big enough to hold so much love for me and the girls.

So much love.

His big German-Farmer-Policeman heart was beating for us at his final breath.

In a Legacy Book my niece crafted for me, there are condolence letters; many of them from the Sheriff's Department. I'll leave you with a snippet, a brief glimpse into Roger's lawman legacy.

Not all cops are bad.

I'm actually grateful, for once, that he was not sitting beside me on that Sunday morning, his large hand dwarfing mine in a warm grip. I'm glad, because the comment would have built yet another layer of steel around that huge heart of his.

Breakfast With a Side of Inspiration

It's the kind of opportunity you hope for as an author -- the unplanned moment when you get to connect with a young writer. 

The moment snuck up and tapped me on the shoulder in a most ordinary way: I was getting my bowl of oatmeal at a breakfast buffet in Colorado.

The woman next to me commented she loves the rugged west, and that she is from Pennsylvania. "Where in Pennsylvania?" I ask, and we are off and running. She's South of my hometown, toward the middle of the Keystone State. She's a grandma, visiting with family. We bond over the fact that we are both widows.

Soon I am introduced to Daniel, her 9-year-old grandson. She is thrilled to tell me Daniel wants to be a writer when he grows up.

I weigh the situation, guaging whether I am intruding on a family's breakfast; my instincts tell me it's okay to have a seat. 

I'm at eye-level with a young writer. It's a heady feeling. The first thing I tell Daniel is he's not "going to be a writer" ... he IS a writer, present-tense, because he wants to create stories. This unique and driving desire to write is the magical entrance into the very realm of creativity.

Daniel and I connect. Instantly.

I ask him, "Do you like to be alone? Do you prefer it?"
"Yes!" he nods. 
"This," I tell him, "is going to be one of your biggest challenges: seeking out solitude to write, yet needing to be fully immersed in people and things and events, so you have the ideas to launch from.
"Yes!" he so gets it.

I ask Daniel what he's reading now. 
"All kinds of things," he enthuses. "Mostly enchanted stuff, mysteries. Harry Potter. A Series of Unfortunate Events." He rattles off a few more titles, including books he means to get to soon. This kid already knows, to write well is to read. Voraciously. 

Understanding this is a wonderfully orchestrated appointment, a fleeting moment, my mind is racing. I remember the classifieds: "Daniel. Do you know a great place to find writing ideas? The classifieds!"
He looks mystified. "The classifieds?" he says. 
I give him a brief rundown of the classifieds, and how they are spring-loaded with story and character ideas. 
His parents nod in agreement. They agree the classified ads can be a treasure trove of intrigue, humor and drama. Such as: Why would this person get rid of all their action figures? Why do they need the money? It's a story idea just waiting for a pen and a premise.

Daniel wants to go as a writer for Halloween. We talk about pocket protectors, reporter's notebooks and maybe a pencil behind the ear.

I love this rich exchange between the generations and I truly hope young Daniel carries something - anything - from this conversation into his writing life. 

He is so blessed to have his parents and grandma -- his biggest fans. I'm also hoping the teachers and mentors in his life will catch the vision and point the way. 

The window of time narrows; it's time for me to cut away from this table of light. 
I leave a business card with Daniel and his family, so they can look up my books. They are grateful for this impromptu meeting, seemingly enamoured with meeting a published author. 

But I'm the one keen on this lovely encounter - beguiled by a young creative, just getting ready to grace the world with his unique style.

Follow your own voice, Dear Daniel. I'll be watching for your byline.

I invite you to look for my books, Breath of Joy! Simply Summer and Breath of Joy! Ah, Autumn.
This blog supports www.booksforbondinghearts.com/shop, timely gifts for Autumn and Christmas.

  

Memories of Squirrel Hill

The Squirrel Hill mass shooting near Pittsburgh has sickened me. I could spend many paragraphs describing the depth of my outrage, but we all share it as we try to comprehend what has just taken place inside a haven of friendship and fellowship —  the very place many of us seek out for refuge.

Having cut my broadcasting teeth on Christian radio in Gateway Towers, I spent a couple of culturally rich years learning to appreciate the ethnic diversity that is Pittsburgh. WPIT-AM and FM reached the Tri-State area with Christian programming; they still do.

Squirrel Hill brings back fond memories of learning to drive in the city, after having grown up in rural Russell PA. My late husband, Roger, wanted to acclimate me to the busy network of highways. On Sunday afternoons, we would leave our Wilkinsburg apartment and drive to Squirrel Hill to begin. From that historic community, we would wend our way closer down into the labyrinth of one-way streets that used to frighten me; with his help, I became more and more confident, eventually joining the ranks of the most assertive Pittsburgh drivers.

My station manager in the 80’s, Michael Komichak, honored every cultural community-group in the listening region by programming Saturdays to a wonderful array of programs heard nowhere else: The American Slovene Hour, The Ukrainian Radio Show, The Carpatho-Rusyn Heritage Hour, the Slovak Hour and The Blarney Hour, to mention a few. In those days the hosts would pre-record their programs, including everything from polka music to Irish ballads — it was a melting pot of old world heritage, a gathering-in of listeners from every background and country of origin. We aired news from home and music for listeners with roots in Slovenia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Truly, it was an audio feast of language and music, even if one didn't
understand it all.

I’m sure, if they wanted a spot on the program, the Hebrew community could have done so. That was Mr. Komichak’s heart.

Mr. Komichak looms large in my memory as a leader always looking to fill a need; promoting the surrounding neighborhoods was his idea, and it was not always popular with the folks crunching algorithms and measuring target audiences. After all, they said, ours is a contemporary music format — why put on shows on the weekends that sound so different from our programming Monday through Friday?

But Mr. K kept at it until his final broadcast days in the 90’s just prior to his death. To this day his legacy continues, on-air and in the grateful hearts of the diverse communities that nestle tightly around Pittsburgh.

What happened Saturday at Tree of Life Synagogue has now been tagged a hate crime: lives stolen and families left devastated because of a heart filled with hatred. Let’s pray for the loved ones struggling to comprehend what has happened in Pittsburgh; a city that will continue forward and lead the nation in healing the unthinkable.

This blog supports www.capturemebooks.com
I invite you to look for my books, Breath of Joy! Simply Summer and Breath of Joy! Ah, Autumn.

Hello, Gorgeous

As it happened, I flew to Denver on my wedding anniversary; it would have been our 32nd. Ten years ago, all such celebrations were suddenly halted when my husband, Roger, suffered a massive heart attack while watching his favorite TV show, Gunsmoke.

That first year without him, on the occasion of what should have been our 22nd year of marriage, I wept. Not the Hallmark Movie kind of pretty weeping — it was ugly crying with deep guttural sounds I didn’t realize were coming from the depths of my aching, broken heart.

On what would be our 23rd, I posted pictures and wrote pretty words; a shaky facade of bravery over a still-jagged heart.

Fast-forward to our 25th ... I was resentful and jealous of my friends posting their mile-marker anniversaries as still intact, living and breathing couples.

This is the part where I dearly wish I could tell you I finally came to terms with one-sided wedding anniversaries. But I’d be lying.

I will never come to terms with one-person wedding anniversaries, even if I live long enough to carry our torch to our 50th.

And this is why: We had something significant. Honest. Gritty at times, messy always, with intervals of stony silence between us.

Still, it was a rare blend of stubborn love, failing, trying again, loving under the protection of a sacred promise and showing up every day.

We had planned to grow old together.

Instead, I was left to soldier on without my 6-foot-4 German policeman-farmer. Left to raise two daughters, find jobs, lose them, quit them, start over again.

Move away. Move back.

Sell the farm. Endure what would become a family rift over a piece of acreage.

Live to tell about it, but never quite recover from family rejection.

Eventually, the anniversaries sort of tiptoed in cautiously, unsure of my response. My friend and fellow sojourner had reminded me of the necessity of putting a vacation or some kind of special occasion on the calendar, in place of the abyss of an important yawning date. Like an anniversary. Or his birthday.

Eventually, I made a truce: celebrate the happiness of others instead of lingering over my loss. That simple, small act of the will has resulted, over the years, in a genuine, deep sense of joy over my friends’ anniversaries.

Because each and every arrival at another year is an affirmation of the vows; a collection of timeless memories; a demonstration to the young people that they can stay together, if they’d just slog through the hard parts.

And so on this, my 32nd remembrance, I am flying over my beloved Rockies and coming in for a landing in the very place we kept our promises and raised our daughters and went to work and found lifelong friends.

On this flight my heart swells with gratitude at the sweet sight of an elderly couple grasping for each other’s hands during liftoff. “Hello, Gorgeous!” He says, as though they’ve just met.

Upon touchdown I notice the same couple instinctively reach across the aisle again to clasp weathered, wrinkled hands in a grip of graceful knowing.

At the gate my heart is warmed by the sudden glimpse of a young man holding a large bouquet of roses, scanning the travelers for his beloved. I like to think they are anniversary roses.

So, dear Reader, I have not lost love; I have sustained a love that mattered. I have carried my memories into a treasure vault of love I can experience again and again, because what we had was enduring.

And in that moment of knowing, I can look around and be exquisitely happy for the couples still within physical reach of each other; still slogging through, still showing up, still growing old together.

On this, my 32nd, I have quietly realized this one thing: my story is bearable if I tell it.

This blog supports www.booksforbondinghearts.com/shop, timely gifts for Autumn and Christmas.

 

 

Although I didn't sign up for it, I have become well acquainted with the grief journey; you can read more of my journey toward joy in the books, "Breath of Joy! Simply Summer" and "Breath of Joy! Ah, Autumn".

THIS IS YOUR DAY AND IT COULD TAKE YOU ANYWHERE

It's been a rough week, a roller coaster ride of emotions. I'd had a promising meeting packed with dare-to-dream possibilities. I rode high on the crest of that wave for an entire day.
On Day #2 my hopes were challenged but not dashed.
By Day #3 my natural optimism began to waver.

Day #4: I am a lump of misery, belly crawling across a cold indifferent floor.

Hugely disappointed. Feeling pushed to the margins, overlooked; undervalued.
Fragile.
Fragmented.
Furious.

A wise friend came alongside and re-framed my sad story: "Love people, trust God."
What?
Love people? When they promise BIG and deliver SMALL? Love people, when they say they will call back, and I tether my phone to myself day and night for nothing but echoes of silence?
Love people?!
When common courtesies and professional behaviors are profoundly missing? Seriously?
Love people.
Trust God.

Exactly.
Because, she explained, people are not trustworthy -- that's why they desperately need to be loved. God is the One Person you can always trust, and trusting in Him enables you to love people.
When you choose to love others, you learn that you, too, have dropped the ball. You have missed the mark, forgotten a promise, overlooked an appointment. And you hope against hope you will be forgiven.
Human beings simply cannot maintain a trustworthy track record; we are goofy, ravaged shadows of our best selves.
Which is why we need God, who is our Constant.
"He's got this!" she affirmed.

I'd love to report here that Love showed up and I rose triumphantly from my puddle of gloom.

It hasn't been that tidy. After fits and starts, tears and residual anger, a slow infusion of truth began to pulse through my veins: Placing my trust in The Sovereign re-calibrates my story and deepens my capacity to love.

This is Day #5.
This is my day and it could take me anywhere. 
The possibilities are tugging at my sleeves, pulling me back into the sunshine.
I will risk.
I will show up.
I will believe.
Speed bumps will slow me down, with odd and unseen bends in the road.

Sometimes it's not a path through enlightenment; it's a numb slog through the muck and mire.

I may have to learn it again and again: Trust God, Love People. Embrace their shortcomings in much the same way God embraces mine.
Watch and learn.
Choose not to send negative ripples into a world already quivering with acrimony.
Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.

Whenever necessary, call my dear friend who gently nudges me back into the Light.

This blog supports www.booksforbondinghearts.com/shop,  timely gifts for Autumn and Christmas.
Although I didn't sign up for it, I have become well acquainted with the grief journey; you can read more of my journey toward joy in the books, "Breath of Joy! Simply Summer" and "Breath of Joy! Ah, Autumn".