Creative Dubuque

As I mentioned in the previous post here, I finally, after long solitude, met the man I want to spend the rest of my days with. I didn’t realize when I was looking for him that his presence would necessitate a new season of my life, one in which I prioritize lying around and touching and talking. All good stuff, when you’re nearly 50 years old. Unexpectedly, my relationship pessimism has brightened, and since the sentiment of people around me seems to be “go for it — life is short,” I’m doing just that.

Managing my time has become even more of an issue. So, after contemplating reducing my online presence, today I deactivated the Dubuque Novel Writers site and Facebook page. For now I plan to keep the site you’re reading active, albeit my updates have been rare. I’ve even been Twittering less, so even 132 characters are tough to squeeze into my days. Although I think we’ll eventually both start answering the phone again, for the past 5 weeks we’ve been relishing our love cocoon, and that’s a good thing. Just so you know.

Well, I didn’t get through all the ruminations over the past year that I started in the previous posts, and now my life has brought change. Funny how the presence or absence of one individual can carry such significance. Unforeseen, someone new has stepped into my life, a man who, at this point in time, to me is the handsomest male that ever strode across the planet. I think his eyes are the most beautiful part of him. Is that not romantically sappy or what? And it’s 100% true. Here are pictures that I took on the day we met. He drove me across the river on an exquisitely sunny and not-too-cold January day, and we talked and looked at nature. What a great beginning to something that I hope will continue:

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As part 3 of a year-end reflection on my experiences in 2011, here are highlights of my volunteer efforts for DubuqueFest. The festival happened in late May, and starting in Feb. I helped with online social media marketing and wrote a couple of feature articles for the website.

As 2010 rounded into 2011, I was struggling with the heartache of yet another man fading from potential life mate into “friend.” I spent a lonesome Valentine’s day sewing a pair of heart themed quilted wall hangings for my bedroom. When another local blogger & webmistress, Kristine of A Website to Love, suggested that I contribute to the online social media marketing of the annual DubuqueFest celebration, I threw myself into it as an unforeseen opportunity to blot out my aching solitude with work.

Suddenly, I clutched at the chance to be a real “writer,” with imminent web content to create. Although my regular work as writing tutor and proofreader/editor has given me plenty of theory, I often need the extra push of deadline in order to actually write. I bounded into the new role to prove myself and dull my heartache at the same time. During this exciting yet stressful time, I met up with and wrote feature articles on several area artists and one musician. For guidance, I relied on these books:

Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life, by Philip Gerard
Writer’s Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing (2nd ed.), edited by Michelle Ruberg

My First Interview

My first interview was with a 20ish local artist who met me on the ground floor of a huge old building in Dubuque’s Main Street district. It was being used as a studio by Dubuque Art Center artists in residence. I entered through a rear loading dock entrance into a massive room fresh with light from incredibly tall windows, and smelling of open oil paints. Katie’s easel was perched in one corner, and the building’s heating and cooling system roared and hummed in the dimness farther in the vast space. Continue reading »

Hail in April

Dec 222011

This is part 2 of my year-end synopsis of some of my memorable experiences of 2011.

A second climate related catastrophe was an April hailstorm that did serious damage to my roof. In a way, that was a blessing. When my ex-husband and I bought the house about 7 years ago, the roof was on the wanna-do list. The idealistic idea (at least it was my idea – he never tuned in) was to fix up this 1870ish fixer-upper little by little. A couple of windows here, a new roof there, etc. Getting divorced and being plunged into financial singledom, the pace of potential home repairs slowed to a crawl that was driven forward only by the most pressing necessity. God sent the hailstorm to enable even people like me to fix stuff.

The night of the April hailstorm, after the hail stopped falling and you could safely go around in the air without getting bonked in the head, everywhere you heard the excited voices of people outdoors with flashlights and yardsticks, measuring hail. I was out there too, with my camera. Yep, the average size hailstone was probably an inch and a half in diameter, with many measuring 2 inches. No lie, I took pictures with a ruler. For a couple weeks, we kept some of the biggest in our freezer.

I never imagined that I’d benefit from the catastrophe. After all, tornadoes had just blown through the south, doing tremendous and dramatic damage, with photos on the Internet showing far worse than a few blown away or disintegrating shingles. My house was still standing. Yet a few days later, I happened to be outside when my next door neighbor’s insurance adjustor was calculating damages. And politely he suggested that I call the office (it happened to be my insurance company too), because as he said, it was common knowledge that almost every house in the neighborhood had experienced hail damage. Continue reading »

The Long Winter

Dec 212011

This is part 1 of my year-end recollection of a few of my most memorable experiences of 2011.

When I look back through my 2011 calendar for the memorable moments of the year (those I recorded on the calendar, anyhow), I recall 12 months of dramatic experiences, many of them worrisome and difficult to face, with some crises overcome only because the act of living propels a person forward. Even when you think you can’t face something alone, there’s actually no choice about it, because life moves on, dragging you with it. Kinda like trying to walk a big untrained dog on a leash.

The Long Winter

We had massive snowfall the winter of 2010/11, with 2-3 feet blanketing the ground most of the winter. I’m not sure how people with dogs to walk got through the season. I remember more than one morning when I despaired of the heavy burden of snow to shovel from my driveway, even though I parked closer toward the street so I didn’t have to move as much to get the car out (where I didn’t fancy going anyway, with my lightweight, low-to-the-ground 4-cylinder car). My teenage son, always loathe to get out of bed on any morning, did not exactly spring to help. Sometimes I wish we could just stay at home as in pioneer times, stay snowed in for a couple months without the need to go anywhere.

One night’s snowstorm, in particular, blew so fervently that when I opened the doors in the morning, both front and back entrances had snow piled up between the screen door and the interior door. It had blown in the cracks. It took me a half hour just to clear a path from the back door across the small porch and down the few steps to the ground. The snow was waist-high in many spots and the front door could not be opened without strenuous labor.

I felt like I was living “The Long Winter” in Little House on the Prairie. You remember, where they have to twist wheat-straw for the fire, they’re grinding their seed wheat for flour, and after a while, Almonzo and a couple other guys are heroic and go off and try to shovel the train out of a North Dakota drift. Continue reading »

Creative Dubuque

Flowing into a new season of the heart

Icy river views and a warm heart

Posing as a Real Writer

Hail in April

The Long Winter

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