Sweater Weather ~ by Kristine Raymond

I love this time of year.  Cooler temperatures, bright azure skies, colorful leaves floating gently down to blanket the ground.  In other words - sweater weather.

© Depositphotos

That's what we called it when I was a kid growing up in New England.  It began in mid-September; a morning chill in the air that lingered during trips to the apple orchard or farmers' market.  A crispness that accompanied walks along a sandy stretch of beach devoid of summer tourists, when the mercury hovered between too-cool-for-a-T-shirt and too-warm-for-a-coat.  Sweater weather.

© Depositphotos

I love sweaters.  Bulky cables, lightweight Henleys, soft cashmeres.  As with most of my wardrobe, I tend to stay with muted, earth-tone hues, but every now and then, a brightly-colored knit catches my eye, and I succumb to temptation.  


One of my favorite memories is of visiting the Fall River Knitting Mills factory outlet in Fall River, MA and picking out a new Fair Isle sweater or Shaker knit.  

After 25 years, autumn in Kentucky is still a bit of a shock to me.  While I enjoy the mild winters we experience here - nothing like the Nor-easters I've endured - September in this southernly state is more akin to summer climate than fall.  In fact, as I type this, the 'feels like' is a balmy 94° and the forecast for the rest of the week is even hotter; not quite inspiring me to pull my cozy woolens from the drawer.  (Sadly, I donated all but a few of my favorites to charity years ago to make room in my dresser for shorts and tees.)  

But that doesn't stop my yearning to bundle up and lie amongst the fallen leaves, relishing the arrival of my favorite season.

© Depositphotos

 

Top 5 Writing Tips Writers Must Know ~ by Patrick Bohan

You know, I’m pretty much addicted to writing advice. I mean, psh,

I devour writing advice like I'm at a cheap Vegas all-you-can-eat buffet. I’m basically drowning in fiction tips.

But over the years, these 5 pieces of advice stuck with me. #1 even completely transformed my life. I see these 5 tips as the absolutely most essential, especially for aspiring authors. I’d feel terribly guilty if I didn’t share them with you.

Essential Advice #5: “Get the story moving fast!
Novels today are competing with a lot of other entertainment. I think it’s important to grab a reader with the first 25 words or so.”
                                       —Deborah Chester

Essential Advice #4. "Read your writing ALOUD
Don't read in your head, don't mumble - actually read the entire piece aloud, projecting. Reading it to another person? Better."
                                      —Ernesto Quinonez

This is writing tough love. No avoiding awkward writing when speaking it.

Essential Advice #3. "Keep conflict coming!
It’s not enough to get your protagonist in some kind of trouble on page 1; you have to keep building complications into the story. If everything is easy for your characters, the story will stall out and die."
                                       —Deborah Chester

Essential Advice #2. Things must get WORSE
“You’ll hate me. But in 6 months, you’ll be a better writer
From this point forward, you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Loves, hates.
Instead of characters knowing, you must now give details that allow readers to know them."
                                      —Chuck Palahniuk

*Drumroll please* 

Essential Advice #1 (The GOAT tip):  “Writing is Tireless and committed collaboration. We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation."
                                     —John Green

Courtesy: YouTube

In short, BE OPEN TO FEEDBACK! Take advice. Your work can always be better, you can always be better. It’s other people, especially our audience, who help us improve most. Listening, (not accepting everything you hear, mind you!), but really listening to feedback had been the best way for me to improve, from writing to life. It sounds dumb, obvious, silly, even. “oh, of course, I listen!” But I know for the longest time, I didn’t. I heard, but I didn’t listen. I’d qualify the advice, or make it less seriously based on the advice-givers credentials, or think that my work was the exception to rule because of some obvious detail the advice-giver had missed. But when I started really listening to all my audience feedback, that was when I produced work my audience really loved. It was also when my writing went from meh to muy bien. This simple John Green tip saved my work.

I like to review these 5 tips every day before writing. They’ve changed my writing and my life, and I hope they help you, too.

Patrick Bohan is a writer and actor in a committed relationship withcaffeine. He grew up in San Francisco, and studied at Cornell with a major in Economics and bottomless coffee cups. Patrick has sold his own bone marrow, been in fist fight with a llama, and briefly held the world record for most yogurt eaten in a minute. He still sees Yoplait in his dreams. He's rep'd by Stacey Konlda of The Rights Factory. Patrick writes his bios in third person because it makes him sound important. If you want help getting published, getting an agent, or just want to get to know me, check out my website and twitter. I don’t bite. Err, unless there’s cake. Then my sweet tooth gets shockingly aggressive.

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Perception Part 1: Criticism ~ by Andi Lawrencovna

photo: pexels/jami jari

As a human being, each day we are prone to receiving criticism
from our fellows who walk the world around us. The media is full of the hype of who gained weight, who lost it, “Oh my God, Jason Momoa’s dad body!” and the other multitude of ridiculous critiques that do nothing but serve to show how shallow and cruel we can be to each other. In the Starbucks line: “I can’t believe that woman bought an espresso for her daughter!” Behind the driver doing the speed limit in the passing lane: “Who taught you to drive, you idiot!” To the coworker at the office: “My gosh, you go to the bathroom a hundred times a day!” 


We don’t know what’s going on in those other people’s minds or lives or hearts, what their needs and wants or what-nots are. But we judge them all the same. 

We don’t think about doing it, a lot of times it just happens because we are so indoctrinated into this mindset of critiquing. 

Think about it, from our earliest memories, we’re being told “Don’t be like Tommy” or “Don’t do what Jessie did.” We compare ourselves to each other, and against each other, and our entire perceptions are based on the critiques that our subconscious makes every time we’re put up against another person. 

In every walk of life. 

Truthfully, we all deal with it and don’t think anymore about it than

photo: Pexels Edu Carvalho

that. The comments affect each of us, but we’re so used to being commented upon, that “it” just “is,” and the people who can brush off the critiques are the high-ranking politicians and businessmen and women of the world. The rest of us get by, constantly subconsciously trying to change other people’s views of ourselves by redefining who we are based on their comments. 

Subconsciously. We don’t even know we’re doing it most of the time. Until it’s pointed out to us. 

My volleyball teammate, an older guy, and by older I mean he’s 50 to my 30, commented to me when I was around 25 or so: “I can’t believe you still bite your nails.” 

Innocuous. Who the heck cares? It’s not like he was saying: that’s a dangerous habit to have as we tend not to scape beneath our nails every time we wash our hands and so whatever has gotten under them, when you go to bite them, you are then ingesting…

Nope, he was just saying: “That’s a disgusting habit” which, in my mind, translated to: “You’re disgusting for biting your nails.” 

(I’m proud to say I haven’t “really” bitten my nails since! But that’s besides the point…ish.)

He said that, and I took care to make sure my nails aren’t bitten anymore, that he can’t ever say it to me again.  He’s like an older brother teasing a younger sister, and yet one comment made me change my life. Granted, it was a healthy change... 

Photo: Pexels Natasha Daher

I went to a doctor for a problem and instead of dealing with that problem, she told me, condescended to me, about a different problem, one that I’ve struggled with all my life, namely, my weight. She made me feel so self-conscious and “gross” by her comments and her, what felt like to me, disgusted diagnosis, that I left that office and spiraled down for over a year after what she said. (I haven’t been back to her, and my new doctor is freaking AWESOME from that standpoint, working with me, not at me). 

These are all critiques. The perceptions of other people that make us look at our own “senses of self” and redefine ourselves by those other opinions. They are the perceptions that color the judgments of other people around us. Baby boomers think of millennials as pansy pushovers who never had to work for anything. (Gross over generalization here, just to make a point!) Millennials swear that the boomers don’t know what we’ve had to deal with because “our world” changed faster with the internet. 

The boom of social media made criticism skyrocket, and perception become dependent on popular trends. Is there a way to overcome it? No. Not entirely.

We all criticize, even at the smallest levels. 

“That nail polish color does not look good on you.” Not gonna change the world or ruin a life, but it’s a criticism, and that person probably won’t wear that color again.  

What we can do is try to change the dynamic. 

Let’s criticize the good things about people. Let’s try to ignore the negative tropes and focus on the positive. 

You don’t like that nail polish, but dang, it looks like you got it professionally done, so why don’t you say: “Where’d you get your manicure? It looks great!”

Photo: Pexels Tim Mossholder

Compliments are just positive criticisms, but we’re so trained to focus on the negative that the good gets pushed aside. 

So, for this first blog post about perception, I challenge you to go a day without negatively criticizing something or someone. 

No, I lied, go one hour. Let’s make it manageable for you…oops, there I go criticizing and judging already. Guess I need to work on my own lesson a bit, too, right? 

Through the Years Part 2 ~ by Grace Augustine

Last time we visited music through the years. Today, I thought it might be fun to take a look at kitchen gadgets.

Photo courtesy Pinterest

As early as I can remember Tupperware has been a staple in my home, and I'm sure in many others. These handy plastic storage containers, morphed into glasses, cereal holders, colanders, and even graters (which blew my mind at how plastic could grate anything!) Tupperware, which then patented, was invented, believe it or not, in 1946 by chemist, Earl Tupper. It certainly has gone through its share of aesthetic changes through the years. The one piece I still owned (from 1968) finally met its death a couple months ago.

Photo: cheapism.com

1954 saw the invention-by-mistake...Tefal...Teflon coated cooking pans, when French engineer, Marc Gregoire, had been using Teflon to remove glass fiber moulds. His wife suggested he try to fuse the chemical to aluminum pans...and voila...a new product was born. Domestic dishwashers also went on sale in many appliance shops in the 1950's.

Photo: ebay

The pressure cooker (you say "Say what?") was popular in the 60's. It was the to cook, and can (again, you say "What?") everything from meats to vegetables and fruits. Although this little gadget was first invented in 1679 by Frenchman and Physicist, Denis Papin, it wasn't a household item until the 1960's. The pressure cooker uses steam to raise the water's boiling point, therefore cooking food more quickly.

Photo: ebay

Put on your bell bottoms, love beads, and rose colored glasses. You're invited to a Fondue Party!!!!!! Fondue has its origin in Switzerland. Chef Konrad Egli introduced fondue at one of his Chalet restaurants and later developed chocolate fondue as a marketing tool for Toblerone chocolate.  

When you were done with the appetizers the fondue pot offered, you may feast on a meal that was made in a Crock Pot, one of several brands of slow cookers that hit the market. These wonderful gadgets are still used today because of convenience of one pot, hands-off cooking. You can put all of the ingredients into the ceramic 2-4 quart crock, turn the dial to low, medium, or high, and in 6-8 hrs have a complete meal. (Thank you 1970's.)

Photo: ebay (Amana microwave)

The 70's also gave us what every home now owns...the microwave oven. Raytheon, a company which had just acquired another company, Amana, (headquarters is 35 minutes from where I live) introduced the first home model, which cost around $500 (today's market would be over $3,200.) Over 40,000 units were sold in the 70's and today, it is a staple in households all over the world.

photo: ebay

Carl Sontheimer, an American engineer and inventor, tweaked an invention by Pierre Verdon, and the Cuisinart food processor was born. In the 1980's infomercials you could hear..."it slices, it dices...it julienne's and cuts French fries in under thirty seconds." Many variations of this gadget were made including the Vegematic and the Salad Shooter.

photo: ebay

The George Foreman grill, allowed many to become instant grill masters in the 1990's. The Lean, Mean Fat-Reducing Machine was a definite Christmas list item for many men and single women as the world became more health conscious. The automatic bread machines also made their debut in the 90's.

From 2000 to present there have been many gadgets that save our time in the kitchen: iRobot, Roomba, Juicers, Electric Steamers, Spiralizers, Air Fryers, and Coffee Capsule Machines to name a few. As technology advances, so do our appliances and gadgets. 

I wonder when we will have a Jetson vehicle? 

Photo: Pinterest/BryanSuperfreakMagnum

In case you missed Part 1 of my series, you can read it HERE

 

The Four Yogic Virtues Part II ~ by Cynthia Land LMT RYT

Welcome to part two of our look at the yogic view on the virtues. The yogis of yore believed there are four things that can get in the way of our relationships with others. Last month we discussed getting caught up in others happiness and letting another’s suffering negatively effect us. This month we take a look at ambition and nefarious characters.

This is an excellent time to explore the arena of ambition.  Numerous political candidates have come onto the field to test their mettle and share their ideas about how they think they can make our country a better place.  Maybe we don't agree with them but we're in no way about to jump up onto the proverbial soap box to take their place.  Is it possible to look at our emotions and our motivations and understand why we might feel strongly against an ambitious person?  Are they doing something we couldn't possibly ever do and we're jealous about it?  Are they doing something we feel so strongly against that we want to jump up and down and shout them down?  Take a pause and look deeply.  Understand what's motivating your feelings around that person's ambitiousness.  Is it possible to simply have joy around their energy and cheer them on?  

Alternatively, there are those out there doing things we believe to be downright wrong or maybe even evil.  Be especially careful here.  We may want to run out and right the wrongs.  Is it our place to do so?  If an act is truly unlawful perhaps the best we can do is report it to the authorities and step away from the results.  Is there a possibility that what's happening has nothing to do with us?  Can we then merely be neutral and walk away from the drama?  Some of us are attracted to drama like a moth to the flame and look what happens to them.  If you truly want change in your life, then you must walk away from the drama.  

As I said in last month's entry, this may take practice.  Relationships take practice.  This is merely a guide.