So many different ways to publish. What's a writer to do?
There are, for example, my *In the Spirit* columns in the Sentinel. Here's the first part of July's:
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES
Two campfires in as many weeks. We sing with lips sticky from some-mores, a multi-generational crowd searching for songs in common. Little children bounce around in the dark; cherubs with glow-stick halos. In Big Sur, we sing popular songs: Beatles, James Taylor, Eagles, and some song about a skateboarder not being good-enough-for-her, which the twenty-something girls know every word to.
The next week at the Gerard Family Camp in Oakhurst, we major on goof-ball songs around the fire — the kind of songs you can pickup in a verse or two: What to do with a drunken sailor, what happened when the rooster came into the yard, and that perennial battle of the bands: Second Story Window. After singing in worship three times a day, we're ready for anything.
Suzy Gazlay, the music leader for Family Camp says that she grew up the youngest in a singing family. She remembers trying to figure out harmony. Was it a great secret you could grab onto? She’d hum a note and ask, “What’s the harmony to this?” Drove her sister nuts.
My birth family also sang, sang driving from Colorado to Indiana many a summer. We would lie on the back seat, our heads resting on sleeping bags piled on the floor and our bare feet keeping time in the rear view window. The ants would come marching in one by one; we'd launch into 100 bottles of beer, just for the pleasure of hearing my father groan. My mother made up verses — I was over thirty before I realized that there is no official verse about the long-horned cow-els / shivering on towels / Deep in the Heart of Texas.
My husband’s family didn’t sing. When we started attending church I listened as his strong voice gradually honed in on the key most people were singing in. You learn to sing by singing. Singing with others is one of the greatest gifts around.
"Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.” — Winnie the Pooh — A. A. Milne
And then there is the little piece I published on Linked-In:
Rivers to Do Saturday morning. Big Sur Camping and Crawdad Society kicked off with a rousing 38 people last night. Another 20 or so are expected today. I am settled at the lower, quieter, shady beach with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce in my lap. So far I’ve read the first sentence 4 times. It’s a good first sentence. . . More
So should I post these on my web? Links? Whole content? And why wasn't there a newsletter for July?
Blessings,
Alliee +