New Year's Eve 2024

Glenda

It is New Year's Eve in Roswell, GA and I am having a quiet time at home. 

I will be preparing Lexie for the fireworks that will begin soon. It terrifies her. She usually hides under my bed, but I am going to make her hiding place more comfortable tonight. I will put her bed and her cozy blanket there. I will play quiet music that I hope will drown out some explosions and shrill sounds. 

I am excited about the coming year. As I recover from the past two years, I hope for more interesting things in my "city" life. Over the holidays, I was included with Gay and Stu for a couple of parties where I met women who told great stories about their lives and the lives of their ancestors. Everyone has a story, and a unique story, to tell. I hope to do some readings and programs in this area.

Beginning in February, I plan to schedule writing workshop classes again, on Zoom. This year I want to include my writer friends as instructors for Writers Circle Around the Table. For ten years I had a writing studio, with that title, in my house in Hayesville, NC. Almost every week, we held a workshop in poetry or prose. We had outstanding writers come and teach at my studio. I had a guest room in the studio with a private bathroom. There were some kitchen necessities. The visiting men and women said they enjoyed staying overnight and sitting on my deck in the morning listening to the sounds of nature as they wrote down their thoughts.

Joseph Bathanti, NC Poet Laureate from Boone was a favorite. Robert Lee Brewer of Writers' Digest publications was another welcome instructor. Scott Owens, a good friend, came over from Hickory NC to do a reading and teach a class once or twice each year. 

Poet Scott Owens

I feel sure more writers and poets of their caliber will take part in an online class. I will share a portion of the profit of these classes with the NC Writers Network-West.

Remember, with Zoom, it doesn't matter where you live. You can participate from your own home or school or anywhere you have access to a computer and WiFI. 

If you want to be on my mailing list for announcements of classes, please send an email to me using this info: gcbmountaingirl(AT)gmail.com. Write Classes in the subject line.

Wishing all of you a healthy and happy New Year. Be grateful you have another year in which you can reach out to others, share your time and talents, and maybe change a life for the better.

Busy but Better than I Was

From Left: Joan Howard, Janice Moore, Carroll Taylor, Glenda Beall, Marcia Barnes

I am behind in my goal to post each week and especially on the weekends. The past few weeks have been very busy, for me personally and for NCWN-West.

Last week we held the first Coffee with the Poets and Writers since everything closed two years ago. We met at the Moss Library in Hayesville, NC. We all tried to get the word out and we were happy to see about twenty people show up. Many of them were new. But many of our steadfast writers came and were happy to be together again.

Marcia Barnes and Joan Howard, facilitators of CWPW, honored me with a large vase filled with roses and an inscription on the vase, Glenda Council Beall, founder and keeper of Coffee with the Poets and Writers, 2007 - 2022. I was surprised and touched.

In 2007 I became the Program Coordinator for NCWN-West with about 50 members in nine counties of NC and bordering counties of South Carolina and Tennessee. Today we have over 100 members in our mountains. The pandemic shut down most of our meetings, but we continued with some on Zoom. Now we are trying to open up again, but we were sorry to hear that someone who was at the CWPW meeting came down with COVID  a few days after. We plan to continue to meet once a month at the library as we did before COVID hit our area.

Thursday evening, Mary Ricketson and Janice Moore held the Netwest Critique group meeting at an outdoor facility in Hayesville. It went well and that will be continued as long as poets want to participate. 

Marcia Barnes, Janice Moore, and I were published in a beautiful literary journal Mise en Place from Negative Capability this past year. The theme is food.

Marcia read my poem that was in the publication and I will share it with you.

Two Buttermilks for Pamela

I knock but know she can’t hear me.
The TV blasts through the door. I turn the knob,
walk into the kitchen calling Meals on Wheels.

I set her institutional lunch on the counter.
In the other room, like a gray mourning dove,
she’s perched before the screen.

I approach gingerly, afraid I’ll startle her.
She looks up with a wide smile. Don’t get up,
I say. I brought your lunch.

Ninety-four years old she lives alone,
in a mobile home on a twisting mountain trail,
her son a stone’s throw down the road.

Struggling to her feet, she pushes her walker toward me.
Oh, thank you. A hundred times thank you. I enjoy it
so much, especially the buttermilk. I get two, you know.

It keeps me going. We inch our way to the back door.
Hope you enjoy it, Mrs. Livingston. She takes my hand,
speaks to me as if I’m an old friend, Call me Pamela.


If you like poetry and if you write poetry, you might like to visit Mountain Wordsmiths on Zoom when Joseph Bathanti, poet and author, will be the featured guest.  Contact Carroll Taylor at vibiaperpetua@gmail.com for the link to the program.

Sign up for Table Rock Writers at Wildacres Retreat

Last year I had the great pleasure of attending Table Rock Writers Conference at Wildacres Retreat, Little Switzerland, NC just off the Parkway. They are preparing for the 2013 workshop, September 9-13, 2013. I urge you to go if you want to have a great week with great writing instructors and the opportunity to meet interesting fellow poets and writers. 

I took Darnell Arnoult 's classes on memoir. Abigail DeWitt  teaches novel writing. This year Judy Goldman, author of the wonderful book, Losing My Sister, is teaching “Writing Memoir and Personal Narrative."  

Joseph Bathanti, Poet Laureate of NC will teach poetry. More outstanding presenters are on the roster of this excellent workshop.

Visit the website  http://tablerockwriters.wordpress.com/