• Third-person narrative

    I have an interesting writing exercise for you. It is one I use to stimulate creative word use. Take an everyday happening and describe it in a third-person narrative. The length does not matter. It can be one sentence to 250 words. Have fun! I look forward to seeing your stories.   For example, the following is a writing exercise I did while in Malaysia:   Though she missed the opportunity to spend a few more minutes with her husband, keeping him company down the elevator ride from the 24th floor to ground level and following him through the hallway,…

  • Fuzing glass

    Have you ever fuzed glass? I hadn’t, but I recently took a class and found out how easy it is. Actually, getting out of South Minneapolis was harder than the class. Artistic creativity, which is a big deal to me, has been sneaking in through the cracks of my busy life. In the last couple of months, I took a painting class and a glass pendant class, both through the blessing of Groupon discounts. I had a hard time finding the host of the pendant class, Glass Endeavors, in South Minneapolis. It is on 31st Street in an unfamiliar area.…

  • Walking With the Great Apes

    By Sy Montgomery (Published 1991) The first time I read “Walking With the Great Apes” was on my way to Malaysia. I was fascinated with the relationships between Dian Fossey and the gorillas she studied, which was depicted in the movie “Gorillas in the Mist”. My quest was to learn about the?relationships between the women and the primates they studied. The stories are what stuck with me. The book is a triple biography of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas, protegees of the Anglo-African archeologist Louis Leakey. Each woman was selected by Leakey to study the primates most closely…

  • They Thought For themselves

    By Sid Roth I don’t know how this book came into my hands. It was mailed directly to me by Sid Roth with a letter intimating that I am Jewish, though I am not. My heritage comes from a variety of places, with none being Jewish that I am aware of. That being said, I read this book about “Ten Amazing Jews” who, instead of following tradition for tradition’s sake, thought through religious tradition and came to the realization that Jesus, or Yeshua, is the son of God. The New Testament is a Jewish book. The back of the book…

  • Date night

    I had a date last night! Actually, it was yesterday afternoon. Since I get off work early in the day, my husband, Ron, met me at work and took me to the IMax theater at the Minnesota Zoo to see Born to be Wild. It’s a movie about Daphne Sheldrick and her lifetime of saving orphaned elephants in Kenya, and Birute Galdikas and her work with orphaned orangutans. I was so excited that I spent the day at work telling everyone about the date! I love elephants and orangutans, but part of the excitement came from going to see a…

  • Morning work

    The sky is dark as the balcony door creaks open letting the cool breath of morning air filter into the bedroom. It is early, earlier than I should get up considering I closed the store last night and didn’t get much sleep. I’m not one of those who can come home from work and go directly to bed. Anyway, my mind would not let me sleep as it tossed around the projects I could do on my day off like stones in polisher. A smile crossed my face as the breeze brushed my skin while I dressed in the dark.…

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