Business Plan: Meet the Robert Frost and Mary Oliver Goals

"I can buy myself flowers" -- Miley Cyrus

This morning I carried my painfully totaled business figures -- income, expenses, proof of everything, except I forgot the documents for the college savings accounts for the grandsons -- to the careful and smart woman who's minded the math for me since a few years after I married my Dave. Before that, I copied the numbers onto tax forms myself, but Dave had more complicated details, and we needed her help. I still immensely value her careful stewardship, and it's worth every penny of her fee to see the neat and professional results of her work.

Along the road today, I met some "my" deaths in this community, the ones that matter so much to me. One that's still raw is the murder of a young mom, who worked two jobs, had a toddler, was targeted by a truly insane and cruel murder plot. I took time to picture her smile, her attentive gaze, her quick movements, as I passed the place where she was taken prisoner. It's important to me to remember her.

 In that moment, I felt as though my dead are always attached to me. There are the terrible tragedies, like the not-yet-sober woman whose body was found in a snowbank, the crib-death baby, the Covid-stricken aging mother who could not hold the hand of her grown son as she passed, because the virus was still new to us and there was no vaccine at that point. And there are the gentler ones, the heartache of friends whose health signaled the approaching end. At this season, I also walk again toward the death of my husband Dave, because with deep snow still around the house at the end of one February, we asked for a hospital bed, to physically assist us through his steady loss of mobility.

 But this is also a time when spring begins to tease. I won't even start tomato seeds for another month, but I'm thinking about rotating garden beds, moving the strawberry plants (which month?), fertilizing the plum trees that began to bear fruit last summer. The seasons, like the night sky, provide an arc of reliable change. 

So it is that holding death as a long chain behind me -- or perhaps a slowly dissolving hard sweet candy on  my tongue? -- also means holding life, and love. It is a marvelous thing to be able to say, "I have loved and been loved, with all my heart and all of his."

 But I was going to tell you about the poetry goals. I told them to the CPA, as proof that even my poetry writing has an organized nature to it. Here you go:

 I have a casual friend in the next village who often posts snippets of others' poems, especially Mary Oliver's. I know others who post Robert Frost lines. It is my goal that one of these days, they will post words and images from the poems I've written.

 In case you are moved to help me toward that ambitious goal, here's a set of ten of my poems in the newly published issue of Ginosko Literary Magazine. I hope one of them, as my Quaker mom would say, "speaks to your condition."

Here's to a life of love for each of us.

Poems Published in 2024: "Body in a Box"

What joy it was to enter the pages of Cathexis Northwest Press with this poem, reflecting on how Dave seems often very present, even though his "remains" are buried at the beautiful Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. See the poem and the rest of the issue here. (The poem is on page 43.)

Apples and Autobiography

Cortland apples.

This is a classic "writer's autumn" for me: bringing out a novel in print at last, while also working on a book version of the Vermont memoir I began after Dave's death. (Segments piled up on Medium; if you're curious, read them here.)

In writing the memoir as segments that I placed online, I excavated a heck of a lot of trauma. That turned out to be healthy for me -- but only, I think, because I grew through it, and now I'm in a stage of life that I loosely label "getting off the trauma merry-go-round." Life is good, and I want to pull the pieces together and show how that happened.

So the working title for the book is LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT, and today in chapter 2, I'm writing about apples and related recipes and reasons.  Here's a scrap:

Today I still rely on a shelf of traditional cookbooks, but it’s leavened (that’s a baking powder term!) with vegetarian ones, a paleo gem, international and ethnic compendiums, and, most important for this region, the Bentley Farm Cookbook.

This astonishing volume, eight and a half by twelve inches across the front and more than an inch thick, contains the hand-lettered recipes of one of the region’s beloved home cooks, Virginia Bentley. When I complimented a slice of pie at a community dinner last year and (as we do here) asked for the recipe, the baker said, “Oh, it’s Virginia’s, from the book. You have the book, of course.” She wasn’t asking me whether I had it—she knew I must.

Here's the cookbook, with a bit of the apple portion of the index, and a recipe to show you how different Virginia Bentley could be in how she talked about cooking.

 

Now I Know What It Is -- What It Lives Like

One of my earliest stories.

I started to "write" -- that is, to put writing in front of everything else, no matter what kind of writing, and in the beginning it was reporting for a little weekly "shopper" newspaper -- I started at age 22, while I was still working as a chemist in New Jersey and living with R, the man who'd become my second husband.

In that first breathless savoring of writing-by-choice, instead of writing for school or writing work reports, what exhilaration I found! Nothing else mattered as much. Fortunately for my partner and my income, at that point I wrote something once a month for the paper. Life could go on, in between.

Poems, those were different. I grew up writing poems; my mother wrote them, not the deep kind but the happy rhyming ones that were for children or to enliven an evening party. By 1972, when I graduated from college, I'd write a poem any time; if I liked you, I'd give you a poem. I didn't revise. I didn't re-think. I didn't think a whole lot, really, just scribbled them down. Thanks, Mom.

In 1996 I wrote The Adventure Guide to Vermont, for a plain fee, for Hunter Publishing; the editor said "it's your book" but it was work-for-hire in my life.

Then a Vermont novel seized me, and I wrote The Darkness Under the Ice, was told I'd written the wrong book, and started over, writing The Darkness Under the Water (published in 2008). With that, I discovered the heady sensation of creating characters and their world, and marveled that in one day, something came alive that hadn't existed before.

But I'll tell you now -- it was always Work. Triumphant when done, but ... Work.

What would it be like to be obsessed, compelled, by something I was writing? To breathe it in, around the clock? To find my life's core, the way I did when I found DK and gave him my heart and received his?

Now I know.

I'm writing a book that is always on my tongue and in my pulse. At night I turn the bedside light back on, to write a note about something for the next chapter. In the morning, I am impatient with breakfast and dishes and ordinary earning a living, because I have more notes all over my desk and they all involve what I will write when a pocket of time opens, later today or early tomorrow. (I meet commitments to others, before I indulge.)

It's waiting for me. I miss my DK, of course, always. But he'd understand what is happening, probably better than I do, and if there's a sort of post-life cheering section, he's standing at the front of it, pounding the air with a fist, and singing something by Arethra. He really loved Arethrea. Also Alicia Keys. I'll tell you about that, some other time.

Right now, there's a new segment waiting to be written, and I'm in love.

PS Don't expect me to vacuum in the corners. As I said: There's a new segment waiting. https://bethkanell.medium.com/

Writing to Save the World: A Project With My Grandsons

Broken shell (at left) and label from my blessedly optimistic sister-in-law Cheryl.

My grandsons' mother is doing a great job getting her sons educated, and each youngster is moving to a new school in the fall. This careful parent is already thinking about college as the long-term goal for her sons, and she's brought me into the process this summer because she wants them to write more often and with more attentiveness.

They travel in summer, which raises the challenges -- but of course, thanks to the pandemic, we have all learned to cope with that sort of distance. So the boys and I are writing something each week on a topic that I propose (although I'm open to them raising a topic; for now, they prefer that Grandma does this).

This week, I offered the website https://www.oceanoptimism.org, which I learned about through an On Being podcast. I thought it provided a good change from the doom and disaster we've all been discussing -- and the boys did, too. Each one wrote a really good piece on why we can harbor optimism about cleaning up our oceans. Each also indicated some level of personal commitment. They "get" why we are all trying to reduce our use of plastics, for instance, and they are "on it."

The same day I offered that challenge, I also received an email from Seth Godin that included promotion for his Carbon Almanac -- subtitled "It's Not Too Late." I think that's what we-who-want-to-save-the-planet need to internalize: Our choices matter, need to take place now, and are effective.

Here's the piece I wrote with the boys. I'd proudly share what the grandsons wrote, but ... that's THEIR writing, and they'll find their own way to share it. (That will have to be a topic for the end of the summer.)

Hope this gives you a boost today.

When I first heard about the #OceanOptimism tag and website, I felt skeptical. Ocean pollution seems so out of control! And every time I purchase a piece of fish to eat, the price reminds me that there is a crisis in ocean fish, as desperate as the crisis of America's western lands burning (not to mention the fires in Italy). With such a global sense of catastrophe, does optimism make any sense at all? Then I looked at the "tweets" that are tagged with #OceanOptimism, and other things came to mind. For example, one of the featured items right now quotes a scientist who is successfully bringing about change. She reminds us: "Take advantage of the unexpected. Trust your intuition. Learn to tell your story. Don't neglect the positive." None of those are spoken often by the people around me, but they reflect the best moments of my life, the times when I've felt that I enabled good results among people and organizations. They remind me also of the work of business guru Seth Godin (I learned about his work from my son Kiril), whose new Carbon Almanac is subtitled "It's Not Too Late." I learned from his writing, and from some examples around me, that people are capable of enormous amounts—if you help them to focus on their strengths and celebrate their achievements. Go positive ... go with optimism. Let's help our oceans recover.

-- With love from Grandma

When Love Overflows in the Northeast Kingdom

Paul and Bernadette Berthiaume Chouinard

Look at the greatest love stories that your English teacher pointed to: Romeo and Juliet. Casablanca. Wuthering Heights. If you are hearing a bit of sad music as you reflect on these, you're not alone.

True love, in real life, however, rarely steps onto the stage or the movie screen. It persists through challenges, and it overflows in ways that brighten and enrich the lives around it.

A ready example of how this works: Bernadette and Paul Chouinard, of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.

Duchess, Paul, Duke.

This gracious couple celebrated 51 years of marriage this week. In addition to parenting and grandparenting with determination and grace, they continue to add to the richness of life in this region. Bernadette posts Facebook images of artfully plated meals she prepares, with the clear intent of nourishing both spirit and body. Paul retrieves images of the region's history and posts them in several Facebook forums that celebrate growing up here and the strong and creative people who've shaped the Kingdom. He annotates them with history from his own research, as well as a wider scope from his career as a teaching historian. 

Retirement is a fullness for this couple, rather than an emptying. Each day, they promote beauty and the ability to treasure what others have built, whether in the momentary beauty of a flower or the enduring resonance of architecture and photographed celebrations.

Paul and Bernadette treasure their Shih Tzu dogs, who are their babies now, curling on their laps, trotting around the lakeside home, and riding carefully along on automobile excursions. "Duke" and "Duchess" enjoyed a loving relationship with each other, as well as with their people.

So it was a terrible, heart-breaking shock when Duchess abruptly died on February 9. Nothing had prepared the Chouinards for such a drastic change. Most of all, they worried about Duke — how could he understand and how would he adapt to the absence of his small, sturdy companion?

There seemed no time to lose in finding a comfort for Duke. And when Paul asked online for word of another Shih Tzu to enter their home, blessings in the form of people who love pets came forward right away -- the next day, young Scarlet entered the family. As Paul explained, "She is not a replacement for Duchess, who will always be in our hearts. She will help to heal our pain and to reduce Duke’s anxiety."  

Duke, Bernadette, Scarlett

Small reports of the interactions of the two dogs -- who wagged a tail, who ate or refused to eat, who slept or could not sleep -- followed. And on the second day of Scarlet's presence, this report came:

"Duke seems to have experienced a day of mixed emotions. There are times when it is clear that he is looking for Duchess and feels confused by her absence. He did not eat this morning and was lethargic for a large part of the day. He and Scarlet have done well in adjusting to one another. They are respectful of one another and they are good about sharing their time and attention with each of us. We have been very aware of Duke's emotional struggle and we have given him lots of love."

The two little dogs were there as Bernadette and Paul marked 51 years of marriage on Sunday. Their most recent year held health challenges for both adults, as well as the tragedy of Duchess's passing. As Paul reflected on 51 years ago, he wrote, "We were married at the Church of the Nativity in Swanton, Vt, by Bernadette's cousin, Father Spear. It was a memorable event for many reasons. Our wedding took place in the midst of a major ice storm. We survived that challenge and many others related to our wedding and emerged as a married couple. Bernadette has been a major blessing in my life and in the life of our family. This past year, given the incredible health challenges that I faced, I would not have survived without her loving care. She has been a wonderful wife, mother, teacher, daughter and friend to all who are fortunate to know her. This week has been a particularly challenging week for both of us with the loss of our beloved Duchess and the adjustment for Duke with the acquisition of our new baby, Scarlet. Once again, we are weathering the 'storm.' I feel confident that with Bernadette's love and support we will emerge from it."

 

Bernadette marked the weekend of long-term romance — from wedding to mutual support to today's Valentine celebration — with a love-themed raspberry pie for Sunday's dinner.

As we who receive the daily Facebook photos and writings from the Chouinards continue to marvel at the beauty they infuse into their lives and those of the "babies" in their laps, I'm reminded of a "proverb" from the great writer William Blake: "The cistern contains; the fountain overflows."

Clearly, the Chouinards continue to craft a fountain of love. May this next year be an easier one, with many friends to appreciate the love they share. 

R.I.P., Duchess -- well loved.

 

"Wrap Yourself Up in Art": Clarinet, Accordion, Percussion, Voices, and a Father's Love, from David Chevan

This letter reached me recently, and the video gave me such joy that I figured I'd better share it! So, with permission from David Chevan, here you are (don't worry about the YouTube link looking like it's to a very long piece -- it's actually cued to a shorter portion):

LETTER:

Since you can’t go out to hear live music, I thought I’d share a live music recording with you.

Last year I premiered a new work that I composed using letters written by the artists Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro.  What I’m sharing with you is a song I composed from a couple of letters written by Camille Pissarro. 

One thing that attracted me to Camille Pissarro was how many of his letters were about his love for his family. He and his wife, Julie, had 8 children, one died at childbirth, while two others, his daughter Jeanne and his son Felix both died at relatively young ages. I was moved by a series of letters he wrote to his oldest son, Lucien, as he shared with him first the news about Felix contracting tuberculosis and then only a few days later a letter about his brother dying from the illness.  If that wasn’t enough, Lucien was, at the time of his brother’s death, recovering from a brain illness that had almost cost him his life.  In those letters I saw a father struggling to console his son while dealing with his own grief.  And in those letters and in this song, I see a parallel to our own moment.  How do we deal with our sadness and our love when we cannot be with one another?  For Camille Pissarro the answer was art.  Pissarro urged his son to use his art as way to recover from his illness and as a way to deal with the death of his brother.  “I want you to wrap yourself up in art,” he wrote.  I was so taken by this that I shaped those words into the chorus of one of the songs of the work. 

Singing the words of Camille Pissarro is Cantor Malachi Kanfer.  He’s accompanied by members of the Afro-Semitic Experience including Adam Matlock on accordion, Will Bartlett on clarinet, Jocelyn Pleasant on percussion, and Alvin Carter, Jr. who both plays drums and has the part of the narrator.  If you’re interested, you’re welcome to watch the whole work (which means you’ll also get to see Cantor Martin Levson who sings the words of Edgar Degas), but this link is cued up to the song, “Wrap Yourself Up in Art.”

https://youtu.be/XL2Uipt05lQ?t=1878

I hope you are staying safe. I hope you all stay healthy. And I hope you can find something meaningful and satisfying to do with this time apart.  “Wrap yourself up in Art.”

Looking forward to seeing you all on the other side of this.

All my best,

David

www.davidchevan.com (http://www.davidchevan.com)

It's Been Almost a Year Since -- Well, I Love Him Always

There isn't a way to measure mourning, the long process of missing someone vital, important to your heart. At least, for me there isn't. And with each day closer to March 23 -- the Jewish calendar 1-year mark since Dave's death -- and to April 3, the calendar date last year when the husband I adored gave his last breath, I become more of a spashing sea of saltwater. Be careful, this week I weep or holler at the drop of an emotional moment, and I don't expect to "get over" it. But on April 4, I promise to take a deep breath and focus on what's ahead more than on what's unreachable to hands and lips.

Just for perspective, here's the electric company's graph of how the year has gone. No dueling TVs drawing power as Dave keeps tabs on the 24/7 news cycle. No air conditioning. One person's lighting use, minimized as much as possible. Still bread being baked, but far less laundry to wash and dry.

So here's my wish/prayer/petition of the day: Let me take all that "saved energy" and all Dave's love that I know is still with me, and infuse it into some darned good writing coming up. To life. L'chaim.

Luck and Faith in the Writing Room

Old-time authors used to say the bare necessities for writing were paper and pencil (or pen). That's where I started, some 40 years ago, when I wanted to move from writing poems for myself, into writing stories and novels for others.

It wasn't enough.

And in 1984, when my home caught fire on a harsh subzero December night, one of the unexpected benefits of losing all our possessions was the ashing of a couple of really bad novel manuscripts, as well as old poems written more to please myself than to reach out to others.

Today, I'd say there are three things that keep me writing:

1. Seeking fresh experiences. Some are small and almost routine, like climbing the ridge here and asking questions about the plants and animals and weather along the way. Some are life-shifting, like a course in how character development meshes with plot, or an afternoon spent listening to poets read their work aloud and talk about how their writing connects with what they want to give or receive.
2. Making lists. I know that sounds odd, but there are many moments—a muggy afternoon, a frustrated morning, a tired evening—when I don't actually itch to sit down and write. Having a list of what I expect from myself helps a lot. And if I can't summon up the energy and enthusiasm for item #1, I may find it's still a good moment for item #4.
3. A place that's intended for writing.

For me, a writing room includes scraps of knowledge that resonate for me ("Can you be grateful for everything? No, not for everything. But in every moment. It is a chosen response." -- Brother Steindl-Rast), objects that have meaning (a quilt; a special seashell), and work by others that I want to live up to. I keep relatively few books in the room with me, just the ones that seem to mean the most for this time. The rest sit in the next room, the "research room." And beyond.

My house is on the market now, because many of the outlines of my daily life are shifting. I'll carry the objects and confidence of this room with me, wherever I go. And with those, I'll tote a sort of faith that's come partly from experience, partly from determination to listen for and work with a Higher Power that gives meaning to my actions. For me, that's a combination that's effective and joyous.

What about luck?

Six full-length books came to life in this room, and five of them have publishers. (I haven't given up on the sixth and I'm still revising it.) If luck is a matter of considering the odds, this place has been lucky for me. I suspect it will give the same kind of track record to the next person who jumps into creative labor here.

But I'd rather say that "luck" is a shorthand for the results of something else: Long-term love. From the quilt on the wall to the seashells to the paintings and to the quotations treasured, and even the computer here, most of what surrounds me is evidence of love ... from my husband, sons, brothers and sisters-in-law and sister, friends, and colleagues. (And that Higher Power.)

I know there's a New Family who'll discover this house and its blessings sometime soon, and I'll move on to a smaller place and my own next chapter. Maybe they'll move here because they already love the place, its many rooms, wide vistas, ample gardens, eager apple trees.

Maybe they'll fill it with their own love. And get lucky.

[Here's the link for the house.]

Stepping Into the Next Chapter

Since I last posted here, I've walked hour by hour, minute by minute, through the final days of my husband's life. Seen his body buried. Shared his passing with friends near and far, and wept with many. And learned how the loneliness of being "half a marriage" brings sobs, tears, and sometimes screams of grief in the various darknesses.

Then, of course, you make your feet take the next steps and you extend your arms in that darkness, feeling for what's hidden. A flashlight comes in handy now and then.

I'm writing poems again, more than two months into the "After" that I long realized would some day arrive. I also wrote recently about Sam Wah, the historic figure whose murder sits at the center of my novel COLD MIDNIGHT; about the three Lee brothers who went to war in the 1860s -- and only two came home to their parents' arms (certainly connected to my ongoing Winds of Freedom novels); agreed to begin a Vermont history column for the magazine Vermont Views; researched a Vermont Supreme Court justice of the 1800s who grew up near here; and, painfully but inevitably, packed much of the house and placed it on the market. (Five bedrooms, mature apple trees, a permanent aura of love. Ready for its next family.)

The writing life goes on. I have a couple of poetry collections to polish, am in the research and plotting stage for Book 3 of Winds of Freedom (Book 2 went to the publisher in mid February under the working title This Ardent Flame; Book 3 has a rough working title of O Fierce and Kindred Heart but I suspect it will go shorter). Although I'm writing poems of mourning, I'm not sharing all of them at this time -- some, however, go onto my Facebook writing page. So do some joys.

There. That's the next chapter. Complicated, isn't it? I think it needs an index of its own.

Most of all: I could not keep walking this journey if it weren't for the supportive love of so many friends. Thank you. Let's see what's up ahead.

Thinking Pink, A Happy Year from My Last Radiation Treatment

Last weekend the Boston Globe ran an opinion piece that said people shouldn't have to crowdfund to pay for their health care. The piece described a man with critical diabetes who fell $50 short of his fundraising goal -- and as a result, the piece implied, he died.

I'm not sure the article made complete sense. But I get the point: Health care should be better than this. Sick people shouldn't have to go out and ask their friends and total strangers to donate, to save them. It's terrible.

Equally shocking, a quick Google search shows that crowdfunding is now supporting cancer research (both breast and prostate, say the articles, showing gender equity).

Wait, does that mean if the lab falls $50 short on donations, it doesn't get the testing equipment or microscopes? Sheesh.

I'm happy to celebrate a year this month since my last radiation treatment for very ordinary, very treatable, and still very scary breast cancer. Great treatment doctors and teams, top-notch support. And thanks to waiting until I was over 65 for the diagnosis, my health care insurance (part Medicare, part gap coverage) took me through this, brilliantly. Without added health care debts. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! (I try not to remember that if I'd dared to get the diagnosis a year before 65, which might have been wiser in terms of cancer's action, I'd be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Truth.)

There is one other small downer, though: Since I'm self-employed, even though I worked really hard and completed every assignment last year, I didn't have the extra energy for a while to go chasing extra work—and these days, the routine assignments don't cover all the living expenses. Fact of life. For 2019, I'll do better. But gosh darn it, I've still got to make up for that slowdown in 2018.

So I've taken a tip from the Big Research Labs and the little uninsured and everyone in between who's running behind these days financially, and done it my way:

Crowdfunding publication of my awesome (and already award-winning!) Vermont mystery, ALL THAT GLITTERS.

It's simple: Pre-order a copy of the book (click here to see it and browse). You get your money's worth as the book goes to print (we need 750 pre-orders for that), and I'll get a share after that happens, which ought to make up a chunk of the difference in what I needed last year, versus what I earned.

Oh, and if you pre-order three copies -- you get your name into the book as a sponsor. (So, like, you could sign the book next to your own name, really!) One thing I especially like about this route is, you can read the book for free on the website and make sure you're going to like it. (Sure, click here.)

This crazy notion comes via Inkshares, which is printing some really lovely books, on nice paper, well bound, well made ... and without a fuss. I love it!

So if you're in the mood to "Think Pink" may I suggest buying this mystery? You'll have a lot of fun, and you won't have to walk five miles or make people sign your pledge page or call the radio station or any of that. Just click here, and sign up for a book.

Then tell a couple of friends about it. That's how the real "crowdfunding" works. Because getting through modern life takes a lot of help. And trust me—I'll be signing up for YOUR crowdfunder next year.

Hugs and hope to you all!