Tag Archives: Canyon Texas.

NEEDFUL THINGS

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NEEDFUL THINGS

by Sharon Stevens

 “Stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given objects subjective value can actually be measured objectively.”

Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker

Several years ago Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker came up with a brilliant idea. They would purchase an object then pair it with a writer to create a story linking the two. This became a social media experiment connecting people on the internet. Their hypothesis was: “Narrative transforms insignificant objects into significant ones…to acquire not merely subjective but objective value.”

I was reminded of this endeavor when I opened my Facebook page and clicked on Bonnie Derby’s store “Needful Things” next door to the Blue Bird Restaurant in Centerville Iowa. A beautiful glass swan was being displayed alongside the iridescent jewels following behind. Who could possibly need a swan when there are so many needs in the world? For that matter, who would need the aprons, or the ironing boards or the sewing machines? Or, to go even farther, what worth is there in biscuits and gravy you could order next door.

What about biscuits and gravy you ask. What about them? Seeing them on the computer screen on Dann’s blog at the Blue Bird brings up the most wonderful thoughts of family time, Christmas mornings, Sunday brunch, late suppers after a hard day of chasing fundraisers and child hood passions. Of course there is cholesterol and fats and salt, and…and…and…this is a given. But on the other side of the coin there is the sizzle that comes with bacon or sausage dancing in the cast iron skillet, eggs over easy, potatoes fried in leftover drippings. But the most powerful image has to be with everyone sitting down at the table together sharing a simple meal without drama or pain. Isn’t that worth something to someone today, tomorrow or yesterday?

None of these are needful things. Life cannot be sustained by treasuring inanimate objects. Nay, coveting is an offense decried in the Bible. But then again, what if someone wanted to live their story instead of writing it down. Couldn’t the tangible objects they- purchase fuel the passion, or sooth their tender heart? Whose law demands everything they spend their hard earned dollar on to be worthy and justifiable on the expense account. This is not prideful or Biblical, but merely a reminder of all that is good and wonderful in all that surrounds us.

So don’t feel silly about writing a story on an insignificant object. Make it a significant treasure. Celebrate and be joyful that as writers we can we take such tiny moments of human interaction and set it to words, even if it is about pink swans and how it connects to biscuits and gravy.

On another note, Jason Boyett sent a Facebook note about his friend and author Shawn Smucker and his family coming to town. He will be in Amarillo next week and at the Palace Coffee Company on the courthouse square in Canyon Texas on April 26, 2012 from 6:45 to 9pm. A free event (it would be nice to make a purchase), this will be an evening for conversation about books, writing, blogging or anything else. Smucker writes a blog, “Writng Across America.”

I wonder what “needful things” he and his family will find while they are here.

THE GREY

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THE GREY

by Sharon Stevens

“Once more into the fray,

Into the last good fight I will ever know..

Live and die on this day.

Live and die on this day.”

Ottway

from The Grey

I have a pet peeve, one that is not black or white.

Let me explain it this way. Here I am watching a movie and BAM right out of the blue, I see fingernails attached to hands, attached to arms, attached to a body pop right up to my line of sight directly into my psyche. Within seconds an entire mood is gone, vanished, vamoosed, disintegrated and destroyed forever and ever amen, and all because of fingernails..

My husband and I were watching, “The Grey” with Liam Neeson at the Varsity Theater in Canyon. What a powerful movie filled with the most tremendous scenes of beauty and savagery in each frame. The story comes from the novella, “Ghost Walker” by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers with the screenplay co-written with director Joe Carnahan.

This night in the theater, the cold of the Alaskan wilderness permeates the air around us even with the heaters going full blast. On screen the silence of the deep snow and roar of the bitter wind fill us with frozen dread. The sense of the snarls echoing deep within the spirit of the wolves pulls us to the heart of the struggling men on their desperate journey.

And this brings me to the peeve.

A movie MUST be consistent with every frame. Nothing can be left to chance. Every second needs to be seen through the eyes of both those who critique a movie from every angle along with those who treasure a good story. There can be no in-between, no understudy, no rest for the weary. Everyone from make-up, set design, technical crew, costumers, directors, actors, musicians…they all have to come together for one common goal, with the final destination of the craft, the gift, the movie. No if, ands or buts.

This is where the fingernails come in.

To me there is nothing worse than to be watching a war movie with fighting men, farmers plowing the fields of their family farm, or construction or oil field workers out on the job site miles away from a shower or toiletries of any kind. Lo and behold a close up reveals the actors with perfectly manicured fingers, with every cuticle and every pore obviously softened with high dollar lotion, and perfumed with expensive scents.

At that moment, when I see this egregious error I know instantly that these are simple actors paid for playing a part. After the scene is over they will return to their million dollar homes, solid gold bathroom fixtures, and trillion dollar lifestyle.

To see perfect fingernails is a terrible distraction that pulls me out of the movie, breaks the mood, and destroys the meaning.

But let me be perfectly clear. This was not so with “The Grey”. You can tell from the first to the final scenes that Liam Neeson once had nails that were trimmed and clean as he kept himself groomed not only for himself, but also for the love of his life. In the end his hands are torn, stained with blood and dirt, the past embedded deep into his skin.

Those of us in the audience knew that these hands were attached to the same arms, the same body, the same scars, the same spirit all the way from the first frame to the ending shot after the credits. There was absolutely nothing that pulled me away or distracted me from the depth of the story.

Each of us as writers should always stay true to everything we set down in our writing. We can never be distracted while trying to fill our characters with the visions we imagine in our minds or what we seek for them in our hearts. We MUST cherish each word with clarity of what our readers will perceive. This is just an extension of the show don’t tell equation. And even though we know nothing is ever black or white, but every shade of grey, we owe our readers at the least that much.

All the way down to the fingernails.

Sharon Stevens

THE GREY

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THE GREY

by Sharon Stevens

“Once more into the fray,

Into the last good fight I will ever know..

Live and die on this day.

Live and die on this day.”

Ottway

from The Grey

I have a pet peeve, one that is not black or white.

Let me explain it this way. Here I am watching a movie and BAM right out of the blue, I see fingernails attached to hands, attached to arms, attached to a body pop right up to my line of sight directly into my psyche. Within seconds an entire mood is gone, vanished, vamoosed, disintegrated and destroyed forever and ever amen, and all because of fingernails..

My husband and I were watching, “The Grey” with Liam Neeson at the Varsity Theater in Canyon. What a powerful movie filled with the most tremendous scenes of beauty and savagery in each frame. The story comes from the novella, “Ghost Walker” by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers with the screenplay co-written with director Joe Carnahan.

This night in the theater, the cold of the Alaskan wilderness permeates the air around us even with the heaters going full blast. On screen the silence of the deep snow and roar of the bitter wind fill us with frozen dread. The sense of the snarls echoing deep within the spirit of the wolves pulls us to the heart of the struggling men on their desperate journey.

And this brings me to the peeve.

A movie MUST be consistent with every frame. Nothing can be left to chance. Every second needs to be seen through the eyes of both those who critique a movie from every angle along with those who treasure a good story. There can be no in-between, no understudy, no rest for the weary. Everyone from make-up, set design, technical crew, costumers, directors, actors, musicians…they all have to come together for one common goal, with the final destination of the craft, the gift, the movie. No if, ands or buts.

This is where the fingernails come in.

To me there is nothing worse than to be watching a war movie with fighting men, farmers plowing the fields of their family farm, or construction or oil field workers out on the job site miles away from a shower or toiletries of any kind. Lo and behold a close up reveals the actors with perfectly manicured fingers, with every cuticle and every pore obviously softened with high dollar lotion, and perfumed with expensive scents.

At that moment, when I see this egregious error I know instantly that these are simple actors paid for playing a part. After the scene is over they will return to their million dollar homes, solid gold bathroom fixtures, and trillion dollar lifestyle.

To see perfect fingernails is a terrible distraction that pulls me out of the movie, breaks the mood, and destroys the meaning.

But let me be perfectly clear. This was not so with “The Grey”. You can tell from the first to the final scenes that Liam Neeson once had nails that were trimmed and clean as he kept himself groomed not only for himself, but also for the love of his life. In the end his hands are torn, stained with blood and dirt, the past embedded deep into his skin.

Those of us in the audience knew that these hands were attached to the same arms, the same body, the same scars, the same spirit all the way from the first frame to the ending shot after the credits. There was absolutely nothing that pulled me away or distracted me from the depth of the story.

Each of us as writers should always stay true to everything we set down in our writing. We can never be distracted while trying to fill our characters with the visions we imagine in our minds or what we seek for them in our hearts. We MUST cherish each word with clarity of what our readers will perceive. This is just an extension of the show don’t tell equation. And even though we know nothing is ever black or white, but every shade of grey, we owe our readers at the least that much.

All the way down to the fingernails.

Sharon Stevens

SEUSS

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SEUSS

by Sharon Stevens

 “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.

 You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.

You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

 “Oh The Places You’ll Go”

                                                              Dr. Seuss



When our daughters were small I took them to the Canyon Public Library for storytelling every week. What an adventure it was to hear the stories and share the activities. As a young mother, (young is such a relative word), I had thirty minutes of peace to browse through the library as they were picking out their books.








We read every night, every naptime, and throughout the day. To me reading is such a treasure. In fact our girls tell me that this is one of their most precious memories growing up.








Everything was glorious in our little world. That is until they brought a Dr. Seuss book home. Try as I might I could not read his books aloud or even to myself. No matter which one it was I couldn’t make heads or tails of the way the sentences were supposed to go. I never admitted it to the girls and I still let them check his books out, but I just couldn’t make it make sense.








The next week at storytelling I admitted to Mary Huntington, the librarian, that I just couldn’t read his books to the kids.








She looked at me sweetly and kindly and said the words I carry with me to this day.








“You are trying to READ his stories and with Dr. Seuss you don’t read them, but let them take you where you need to go.”








Of course! Something so simple!








From then on I relished his stories and celebrated his gift. Seuss could take any word and pair it with another word and make it sing and dance to celebrate life, or the life of whatever creatures he conjured up in his imagination. Thing One and Thing Two come to mind.








I admit I still have troubles with the behavior of “The Cat in the Hat”, and can barely stomach “Green Eggs and Ham” as well. Nevertheless I love, “Horton Hears A Who” and “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”. And I can’t wait to see “The Lorax” on the big screen at the Varsity Theater in Canyon, Texas.








Thank goodness I never let on to my girls my struggles, and they enjoy Dr. Seuss to this day. In fact our daughter, Andrea Keller, will Skype with her classroom at Sally Elliott Elementary school together with Dyane Smokorowski in Kansas  for a worldwide celebration of his birthday March 2, 2012. What fun!








One of Dr. Seuss’ favorite quotes is: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” I think admitting to Mary Huntington about my struggles helped me to understand one of my dilemmas in writing up to that point. Since then I have taken HER words to heart. We don’t have to be poets or make our work rhyme. Of course it should make some sort of sense, but not in the fashion of fitting a square peg into a round hole.


So many times as writers we try to make our words fit into the mold we have pictured in our minds. If we would just step back and let our story find the rhythm on its own, taking a leap of faith, never doubting that the next step will be there beneath our feet…in our shoes.


In that way our READERS will treasure when they READ our writing.








“Oh The Places You’ll Go”!








Sharon Stevens

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
WORDS

			
						

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WORDS


by Sharon Stevens




“If we want their attention to tell them stories,we need to shout something riveting in the first few words.” – Nandy Ekle


Post Cards From the Muse – Wordsmith Six Blog







When I read Nandy’s blog regarding “underwear” I was instantly jolted back in time to a memory that jogged my heart.


When our daughter, Andrea, was attending WTAMU she worked part time at In His Hands Preschool at the United Methodist Church in Canyon. Her group was studying the alphabet and each day was devoted to a different letter. One day the class read U and the accompanying image had to do with underwear. Of course the kids hooted and snickered. They didn’t know why, they just knew it was funny.


I have no idea what the symbol for V was the next day, but I remember quite clearly that the letter for W represented Washington…George to be exact. The kids didn’t really care as much for this visualization as they did the underwear until Andrea connected it locally. She asked them if they knew what color George Washington’s hair was. Of course they all thought it was white, representing his age as well as the powdered wigs they saw in the picture books. Andrea informed them that the actual color of his hair was closer to a strawberry red and she could prove it.


Our daughter had been volunteering as a Girl Scout at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum for several years. She knew that the archives housed a lock of George Washington’s hair along with a letter of authenticity and also the provenance.


Andrea arranged with the preschool and the museum for a field trip to check out not only this, but some of the other treasures housed there. I don’t know how many kids remember this almost twenty years later, but doubtless there are some who can connect the trip to the museum to Washington himself.


Andrea has led hundreds of tours in her teaching career since then. Just like any other teacher she loves to recall bits and pieces of those who have touched her life, brightened her heart, and strengthened her path. And with her years in Girl Scouts she has become creative in using any item as a teaching tool.


We again used the story of Washington’s lock of hair when Andrea asked us, her parents, to come speak to her class at Stipes Elementary in Irving Texas as part of her Flat Stanley project. (She is now at the Sally Elliot Elementary School). After years of volunteering at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum we knew the history of our area and loved to share our heritage. My husband and I were in our costumes from the 1890’s and encouraged to talk about pioneer life in the panhandle of Texas.


To our delight several other classes came to hear us speak, and it was wonderful to have input from Margie Stipes. We learned from her the true meaning of a “Baptist Pallet.” Stipes Elementary was named after Margie and John Stipes. They were both long standing members of the school board and influential in supporting teachers and schools.


But back to our visit…that year celebrated the 275th year of Washington’s birth, and I presented Mrs. Stipes and principal Marty French a George Washington dollar coin along with the story from the museum about his lock of hair and a picture of Flat Stanley showing it off.


This past Monday we celebrated Presidents Day commemorating the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. When this holiday rolls around every year I remember the time that our daughter who was going to college to become a teacher arranged a field trip of young children to visit our local museum to see a lock of history.


Andrea was able to take a letter of the alphabet and give it meaning and make it tangible. She made it just as real for the kids as the image of the U in underwear. Like every teacher from time immemorial she helped those students to take this symbol and make a word, and then connect it to an idea, and turn it into a story.


Isn’t this what we as writers try to do?


Several years ago I found a quote from George Washington on the back of a medal presented from the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge that I think says it all.


“Impress on the mind of every man from the first to the lowest…the importance of the cause and what it is they are contending for.”


Sharon Stevens

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
ESTATE

			
						

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ESTATE


by Sharon Stevens


A couple of years ago I attended an estate sale at the home of D.A. and Muriel Shirley and their daughter, Louise. Dr. Shirley was a professor and Vice President at WTAMU, a distinguished and handsome man, truly treasured as an educator.


I walked away that day with a broken down Radio Flyer wagon, bits of tattered quilt scraps, a box of Literary Digest magazines, a rusted liberty bell wind chime, AND, last but not least, a framed letter thanking Louise for her contribution to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty in 1983 on the occasion of her one hundred anniversary.


October 28, 2011 marks the 125th anniversary of the dedication of this wonderful monument as a beacon and lighthouse to everyone in the world. To celebrate they will be installing webcams in Lady Liberty’s torch. Afterwards they will close down the statue itself to remodel the inside, leaving the grounds open for visitors to still enjoy the experience.


I have always kept the letter to Louise as a memory and reminder of the simple contributions of those around us. Louise lived a very private life. She must have treasured and protected bits and pieces of these moments of recognition. With further research I am sure I could find copies of her correspondence, but there doesn’t need to be. I would much rather imagine a letter attached describing her family, the college, the community, or maybe even the lineage of the Shirley name. There also may have been notes about her passion for snow skiing and the Swiss Alps or the mountains of Utah as a ski instructor for the teams. No doubt her letter contained a check written on a local bank, further evidence of a strong and giving community.


No one knows the trail her contribution followed in renewing the statue. Louise Shirley gave and she gave to a cause she believed in that had to have been close to her heart, never expecting kudos or compensation, celebrating freedom, community and family.


Anyone can write to the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Centennial Commission and receive a report of the actual amount given. On the letter it is written that the value “has been officially recorded and your name entered on a permanent Register of Contributors to be displayed at the museum of the rebuilt Statue of Liberty. Port of New York, United States of America.


I would like to imagine it was used to refurbish her tarnished garments, or to polish the broken chains of freedom encircling her feet, or could have been in restoring the copper sheen ravaged by the weather as well as the passage of time.


In May 1997 our daughter along with the Canyon and Randall High School choir students traveled to New York. They sang at St. Patricks Cathedral and The Star Spangled Banner at Shea Stadium for New York Mets game. The students and their sponsors saw “Beauty and the Beast” on Broadway, shopped at FAO Schwartz, and even got to ride the subway. What a lifetime experience!


One of the highlights of this was the visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Our thoughtful daughter even researched the name of her great grandfather and purchased a historical document listing the heritage of his family crest. At the time we didn’t know that our daughter and all the kids and sponsors would witness a gleaming Statue of Liberty because of a simple donation. Millions of dollars were raised by thousands upon thousands of patriotic men, women and children who shared in their own way for the restoration of a purpose, a dream, a freedom.


It was only until the estate sale fifteen years later that I recognized the significance of the connection between a framed correspondence in Canyon Texas and a choir trip a thousand miles away.


The last line of the Proclamation states, “The Statue of Liberty will be saved, restored, and preserved so that future generations throughout the world will see the symbol of Liberty’s light burning brightly.”


As a writer I never take for granted a simple tangible object and its significance. I treasure how it is linked to the heart and soul of someone that shares a common heritage, a precious memory. And I believe that if I hold onto it long enough the treasure will be revealed. I just know this because Lady Liberty holds her torch high so as not to cast a shadow as I follow my path.


And on another note, I cannot leave this blog without remembering Lois Rice who passed away this week. Lois touched my life in so many ways, as a businesswoman, the Mayor and just a kind human being. I hope when she and Louise look down from Heaven above they will be pleased with what they have left behind.


Sharon Stevens