Four random writing prompts

1. Do you have any aunts or uncles who never had any children? Tell about the impact they had on your life.

2. Who were you named after and what do you know about that person?

3. Introduce any pets you may have had or wished to have.

4. Introduce your siblings. Name the most endearing quality about each.

Mining Mountains

Click the above image to view it larger on your screen.
Note where it points out a "valley fill." It explains how it effects the small streams and headwaters, but it doesn't point out how these valley fills are weakly supported. When a terrible rainstorm comes along, the sludge and debris of the valley fill escapes and causes even more damage to the homes, towns, farm life, and wildlife below.
Some folks would say "well just don't live there." How would you feel if someone came up to you on your land which you and your family before you owned for decades since the first adventuring of these mountains? Or maybe you just built your home, finally a place to call your own, all paid for, no more debts, and a mountaintop removal mining company comes in dismantles the nearest mountain to you, not only disrupting your restful scenic view but also creating massive cracks in your new home's foundation, a layer of blasting dust, and explosions going off every day?

Enough is Enough

Click the image below to go to the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to read more about this issue and to learn how to take action.

Prompts

1. "Poetry is language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree." - Ezra Pound.
What did Pound mean by using the word "charged"?

2. List 10 things you think of when you hear the words "bedroom" or "tombstone." Pick the most interesting one and write about it.

3. Write and include these words: oven, lines, oregano, florescent, light, and hum (or rum)

4. "Each corner of the world holds miracles." - Harriet Arnow

5. "Delicious to watch." - Harriet Arnow

6. "distance of opposites" - Charles Wright

7. "which fear is our consolation" - Charles Wright

8. "climb into light" - from Richard Hague's "Finished with the Poetry of Coal"

World Without Tears prompts

Pick one to inspire you and write.

If we lived in a world without tears:

How would bruises find the face to lie upon

How would scars find skin to etch themselves into

How would broken find the bones

How would heartbeats know when to stop

How would blood know which body to flow outside of

How would bullets find the guns

How would misery know which back door to walk through

How would trouble know which mind to live inside of

How would sorrow find a home?

Lyrics taken from a Lucinda Williams song, "World Without Tears."

August prompts

Quotes for writing prompts...

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

"What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call." - Liz Carpenter

"Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer." - Susan Sontag

"For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity." - George Orwell

and...

"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun." - Pablo Picasso

"when there is no more
story that will be our
story when there is no
forest that will be our forest"
- W. S. Merwin

quotes for writing

You must kill all your darlings.
William Faulkner

You must fly your 35 missions again.
Richard Hugo, “In Your War Dream”

She does not desire her children,
Or any more children.
Ezra Pound, “Clara”

I like doing it if one gets into it; it is something quite different.
- W.H. Auden, New York Quarterly Craft Interview, Number 1

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.
Vladimir Nabokov

Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood?
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

To tell you the truth,
I’d believe in anything
If you’d just turn me loose.
Langston Hughes, “Ku Klux” from The Panther and the Lash

Oh no, no that’s only in America, Europe would never have such things.
W.H. Auden

Love the art in yourselves, not yourselves in the art.
Stanislavsky, My Life in the Art

There never was a war that was not inward….
Marianne Moore, “In Distrust of Merits”

Sugar Babe on Fretless Banjo

This guy plays the tune "Sugar Babe" on a fretless banjo he made with the help of a friend and Foxfire 3. This is the tune I want to learn on a banjo (with frets). I love this sounds also, though!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVpYTUaNj2o

Pretty Polly

I found this online and thought I would share here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB-W3pygCsg

Arts! cartoon by Cartoonage.de

Here's another one from Elie in Germany. This one is sure to make ya smile.

ARTS ! (cartoon+music)

Painting Inspiration

part 1: Consider a painting filled with many characters engaged in a central action, like Bruegel's "Peasant Wedding." Think about the focal point and perspective of the work of art, the effect of the setting, colors, shapes, textures, the story that the painting is telling, the relationship of the characters and what affections and tensions are developing.

part 2: Take the voice of one of the characters [if you want] and invent that character's past, his/her feelings at the present, and
possibilities for the future." [I also mention that you as the writer can describe the effect viewing such a painting might have on yourself or a character.]

Quoted from:
"The Peasant Wedding (For a Group), Mary Swander." /The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach./ Edited by Robin Behn & Chase Twichell. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Clifftop, WV

4th Annual Sunday Morning Melvin Wine Celebration Jam, originally uploaded by blueathena7.

This was the 4th Annual Sunday Morning Melvin Wine Celebration Jam. A few years ago Melvin Wine, a well known and respected West Virginia fiddler, passed away before the Appalachian String Band Festival that year. Erynn and friends rallied up some friends to play Melvin Wine tunes early Sunday morning to pay tribute and respect for his talent and influence. Ever since then old time musicians have looked forward to the "stump session" or jam. This Sunday was no exception though many had left early for fear of the coming rain.

Fiddletunes.com bio of Melvin Wine
Melvin Wine Obituary
Remembering Melvin Wine
Melvin Wine tells a story about his dad's fiddle (recorded by Audiographer Joe McHugh for American Family Stories)
Wikipedia's entry for Melvin Wine (needs expanding!)

Erynn Marshall and friends

Erynn Marshall and friends, originally uploaded by blueathena7.

On Saturday August 4, 2007, around 3 pm, there was a CD release party for Erynn Marshall's "Meet Me in the Music" at "Camp Canada" of the tent section at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia. Erynn jammed with a bunch of friends, most of the songs being ones on the new CD and some songs being other favorites. There was a small flat-foot dance board on the ground, which is why the lady on the left is in the picture.
I have to say this was one of the best trips I have had and I quite enjoyed myself at Clifftop. One more picture on the way.

Videos to learn Clawhammer Banjo

This is awesome!
I will certainly be using this along with DVDs and websites to learn at first.

The Reader

THE READER ( cartoon + music )

Elie (cartoonage.de) is in Germany and is a cartoonist. His videos on LiveVideo are a joy to watch.

Fools Gold

These folks up in Morehead, Kentucky, are an awesome bunch. Brett Ratliff's a great banjo'r of the Appalachian string band variety, old-time persuasion. He's in the Clack Mountain String Band (CMSB) and performs around Kentucky a good bit. Check him out here on his myspace or their website, clackmountain.com.

Happy Trigger prompt

Think of something that uplifts your spirit and write about it.

When you're walking at night and spy fireflies, does your bad mood seem to disappear momentarily? When you hear a train whistle does it make you wax nostalgic and feel suddenly happy, maybe even youthful? Does the feel of old rocky walls make you feel excited? Does freshly cut grass or the cold first snow awaken you? It could be all or any of your senses that has what I call a "happy trigger."

Write about it in detail. You may want to recall a specific moment and describe it in detail:
How did it uplift your spirits?
How did you feel afterwards?
How long did this feeling stay with you?
Do you go out to seek these encounters or wait for them to happen?
Have you ever told about these happy triggers to anyone else?