My Uncle Bill (Wilson Sawyer) was a symphony conductor and composer. Thus, ORCHESTRA was an early word in my vocabulary, and I can’t remember a time in my life when music wasn’t a central joy. I wasn’t very old when I realized that to be a good musician you have to have a gift of physical…
Wild Word Friday! My niece Amy and I had a little conversation a few weeks ago about the aggravation of trying to fit a word into a poem when that word has nothing that rhymes with it. Of course, the word ORANGE was the first one Amy mentioned. It didn’t take me long after our conversation to decide…
Wild Word Friday! In spring 2010 I gathered my courage and bought a LAVENDER plant for my garden. The reason that the purchase was brave (Or maybe foolish – have you noticed that sometimes bravery and foolhardiness are mistaken for one another?) was because I live in a Zone 3 to 4 area for plants and LAVENDER is a…
Wild Word Friday! Once I was interviewed for inclusion in a how-to book about writing. A few days later, I reread the interview and came across a sentence that I was afraid I had read elsewhere. I went through all my books on writing (and that’s quite a stash) but couldn’t find it. Finally I contacted the author of the how-to book…
Wild Word Friday! This summer when I was reading some poems to my youngest granddaughter, we came across that old favorite The Owl and the Pussy Cat. You probably remember that “The owl and the pussy cat went to sea/in a beautiful pea-green boat”, and that “they took some honey and plenty of money/ wrapped up…
Wild Word Friday! If you are fortunate enough to live or visit where city lights don’t mask the night sky, you probably spend portions of your life like I do – looking up and being amazed at the Milky Way, an earth-based view of part of our GALAXY. In one of his poems (written pre-1385), Geoffrey Chaucer writes, “Se…
Wild Word Friday! As I’ve mentioned in a few other posts, our summers are hectic. Maybe I should say crazy. It’s not unusual for us to extend our table to seat more than twenty for multiple meals. It’s a great time, but to tell the truth without SPAGHETTI I’d be lost! A meal of SPAGHETTI…
Wild Word Friday. I could tell you that our English word HEART (the actual physical heart) comes from the Middle English herte and the Angle Saxon word heorte, which springs from the very ancient Indo-European base word kerd, and that all of them mean HEART. But you won’t find a better definition of HEART than this…
Wild Word Friday! You have to admit that some of the names of states in the United States are pretty wild, at least in sound and spelling. The name, ILLINOIS – a state in the central portion of the U.S. – is of Algonquian origin. ILLINOIS translates as man – in the sense, “We are men, not deer, not…
Wild Word Friday! The elders in our little community often refer to a porch as a STOOP, and, when I hear that word, I visualize the daub-and-wattle huts of ancient times where a hard, swept-dirt pad fronts a small low door. You had to STOOP to get into the hut, and thus the first word for…
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