Staying Home, Writing, and Wondering if Anyone's Listening

 

Three of the guys on the Oregon coast in March.

I haven’t flown anywhere for a month!

Slowly,  the doors and windows in my mind are opening, and the breezes are blowing through. As we speak, I am sitting in my Sparrow Nest looking at the purple camas blooming and listening to birds in the trees by the creek.

It is calming all the turbulent seas in my head.

This past year has been full of travel and a new book. It’s a little alarming how impossible it is for me to do anything like blogging and hosting when I’m traveling and publishing. Even though I love to travel and to see family in faraway places, the energy it requires is enormous.

So the absences from Life in the Shoe have been long, and I kind of wonder if anyone is still out there, listening, or if they've all wandered off to TikTok.

God willing, I won’t take any trips by plane for four months. The next venture involves going to Kansas in August for my Uncle Johnny’s 100^th birthday party.

So I’m preparing my dahlia beds and a straw bale garden, filling book orders, and cleaning forgotten corners. And, I hope, blogging regularly again.

For the next few months, I’d like to post on Tuesdays and follow this schedule:

Week 1: Travel—I’ll tell you about somewhere I’ve been in the past year.

2—Ask Aunt Dorcas—I’m still learning and growing, but I’ve accumulated an astonishing pile of experiences, and I do love to dispense advice and inspire discussion. I’d be happy to add your questions to my stack. Life, mothering, writing, relationships, moral dilemmas, all kinds of things: email them to dorcassmucker@gmail.com. I’ll see what I can do.

3. Random rambling about a subject of my choice.

4. Book reviews. Some of you have been waiting a long time for me to deliver the review of your book. I hope to catch up. I might have some random recommendations as well.

5. On writing—how-tos, questions, and information on this broad subject. Updates on projects and conferences. Maybe a rant or two. Again, send questions if you have them.

6. Mr. Smucker speaks—Paul has sort of consented to write book reviews and other posts for me. He’s been doing a lot of speaking about how to help the poor with dignity and ethics. I hope he’ll share some of it with you.

If I get permission from the right people, I’ll really resurrect the Old Days and include a Quote of the Day.

Thank you for staying with me through the long silences. Scroll down the page if you'd like to subscribe by email. [Note: I'm told you can't subscribe if you're reading this on your phone. If you message me with your email address, I can sign you up. You'll get an email from FeedBlitz to confirm your subscription.]

Quote of the Day:

“Wow, you guys live a long time! Too bad for you, I guess.”

--a Smucker relative, when I told her about Uncle Johnny’s birthday. I told her living a long time isn’t so bad when you can read books and weed flower beds at 100.