Colleen Juri has A Lesson to Be Learned

Navigating childhood is a challenge at the best of times.

Who would have known?
No one could have seen what I was hiding
Everyday.
I sift through every drawer in the house.
No clean underwear to be found.
Mom is sick and I cannot bother her.
I do what I must do, chin up, I go to school.

Table Prayer for the Christmas Season

A Christmas get together among friends in Naples, California.

The Christmas season is a time for family and friends to get together. A time for joy, reflection, love and food. Over the years we have shared poems, carols, songs and memories. This Christmas we give thanks at the dinner table.

Library Way: John Milton and Areopagitica

Censorship interferes with the pursuit of truth.

Areopagitica is a polemic on the right to freedom of speech and expression by an impassioned John Milton. It was distributed via pamphlet in 1644, in defiance of pre-publication censorship.

On the Eighth Day of...

Strawberry Fields forever.

I would write you a poem
As full of love as Frida for Diego
Souls entwined as John and Yoko
But all I have is a pen and a memory

Cap Sawade's 'The Fateful Day’ in Pearl Harbor

USS Arizona leaving Pearl Harbor, 1940. Tai Sing Loo photo.

‘Twas the day before that fateful day,
December Sixth I think they say.
When leave trucks passed Pearl Harbor clear
The service men perched in the rear.
No thought gave they, of things to come.
For them, that day, all work was done.
In waters quiet of Pearl Harbor Bay,

George Wither's A Christmas Carol Written Centuries Before Dickens

Let us all be merry.

So now is come our joyful feast,
  Let every man be jolly;
Each room with ivy leaves is dressed,
  And every post with holly.
    Though some churls at our mirth repine,
    Round your foreheads garlands twine,
    Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
  And let us all be merry.

Liz Parkin Gets Personal with SELF

More fruit is the answer — make sangria!

Great expectations
Lead to Great disappointments
What in the Hell is the perfect mother anyway?
Is there a perfect child?
Prozacked, whacked, drooling in a corner
That IS someone’s child

First-Ever Costalegre Book Fair Announced for 2020

Authors wanted for Costalegre Book Fair...and crowds.

The Centro de Arte y Cultura (CENAC) Melaque is hosting the first-ever Costalegre Book Fair on January 27, 2020. We are looking for published book authors who are willing to speak about their craft, their inspiration and to speak of their output — their books. The afternoon-long event will be held at Las Cabanas #15 — the cafe at CENAC — from 11:00am to 5:00pm.