Online book club and more!
| 5:20 am
Welcome to the DreamTime Publishing blog. We love books, all books, even books not published by DreamTime!
We have two main purposes for our blog: One is to host an online book club, where readers can respond to our thoughts about books by their favorite authors.
Two is to allow readers to post questions about relationships, job issues, etc. We in turn will give a bit of informal input — remember that if you want professional advice, you should seek a professional. We are not holding ourselves out as experts on any of the topics we discuss. Our advice will more times than not be based on books we’ve found to be especially useful, books that will hopefully allow you to resolve underlying, recurring issues.
Thanks for having a look. Comment early and often, and happy reading!
Posted by: — Meg
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The Play’s the Thing
August 27, 2008 | 11:51 am
So if you thought you haven’t heard from me in a while, you’re right: I just spent a week in the Catskill Mountains of New York State — and what a gorgeous place that is! — at what was billed as a playwriting “retreat” so that I could come to grips with a stage adaptation of a novel that I’ve been commissioned to do. Didn’t do any geocaching — no time for it — but there’s a good chance I’ll be back again to check out Slider Mountain.
I placed the word retreat in quotation marks, because it was, in fact, more like a playwriting boot camp. Up early, workshopping all morning, individual meetings with the instructor and writing time in the afternoon, discussions and performances in the evenings, with new material to be written and presented daily. Didn’t see much of the beautiful Catskills, but did get a handle on the play I’m writing. So that’s all good.
This play has stretched my skills and has been the focus of a lot of reflection. It’s an adaptation of a novel called The Pact, written (and wonderfully written, at that) by Jodi Picoult and concerning adolescent despair and suicide. I loved the book and welcomed the opportunity to work with it. I deliberately haven’t watched the made-for-Hallmark-TV movie (though the DVD is sitting on my writing table as we speak) so that I’m not influenced by it as I wrestle the characters off the page and onto the stage.
To quote my stepdaughter Anastasia at a younger and more helpless stage of her development, “it’s hard!”
Capturing an author’s intent in a completely different medium, with different constraints and a different timeframe, has proven more difficult than I’d anticipated. My instructor on the retreat, noted playwright and author Jeffrey Sweet, remarked upon hearing about my task, “You’re really wrestling with a bear here,” and indeed that is what it feels like. But the pages are appearing, so perhaps the bear is ready to take a snooze soon.
It’s taught me something about creativity, this task. About how to find one’s own voice within someone else’s voice. About how to create one’s own “take” on a story that was born in someone else’s mind and heart. And about what, exactly, constitutes a personal take on what is in essence a collaborative work.
None of it was easy. But as I finish the first draft and turn my mind to my next task, I realize that everything we do informs the next project, and the one after that, and the one after that, building up a library of richness of technique, vacabulary, and sensitivity.
The play is, indeed, the thing.
Jeannette Cézanne
Open Your Heart with Reading, Open Your Heart with Geocaching
Posted by: Something completely different, Opening the heart, growth — jcezanne
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Bye-bye broccoli
August 26, 2008 | 7:06 am
8/25/08
Today, regretfully, I chopped down the broccoli tree (see blog entry 7/21).
After 13 months, it was clear the thing wasn’t going to produce any heads or florets. It had become an interesting anomaly and I had more or less decided to see how long I could keep it alive.
But then I returned from a weekend trip and found that the worms had gotten it. Those green squishy worms that munch their way through broccoli leaves and turn up, revoltingly, in the heads when you’re preparing dinner. The discovery eliminated any thought of hand-trucking the plant (now as tall as I am) back inside the house for the winter. So I dug out my loppers and chopped it down.
My broccoli, in general, always attracts these worms, which I believe to be imported cabbage worms. They are the larval form of a pretty little white butterfly that appears in the spring. This year I tried to keep my eye open for the butterfly’s arrival, at which point I planned to follow somebody’s advice and drape the broccoli plants with Reemay (a spun polyester fabric used for frost and insect protection) before it could lay its eggs. However, this year I never saw the butterflies, so never draped the plants, and so lost almost all of them to the worms. They are such a pernicious pest that several gardeners I’ve spoken with have stopped growing broccoli or any member of the cabbage family.
The commonly recommended worm-icide I could use, which is nontoxic to humans, animals, and beneficial insects, is Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis, sold under the trade names Thuricide, Dipel, etc. A cheaper option is to dust the plants with finely ground rye flour. Some experts recommend simply growing the broccoli under Reemay all season — the heck with timing games. Others prefer timing games but don’t agree on which one works: planting early (April) or late (end of May).
I think a physical barrier is the best idea, so next year I will try growing broccoli under Reemay or equivalent. Sun is so scarce in these parts that I hesitate to do anything to reduce it! But it’s worth an experiment so I don’t have to join my neighbors and give up on broccoli, too.
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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Pasta for the Lactose Intolerant
August 22, 2008 | 11:31 pm
Although I can easily get addicted to dairy, I love it but it really hates me. Usually, it’s out of sight and out of mind, but the one thing I really miss: Baked pasta dishes.
Sometimes I use soy cheese, but a few years ago, I came up with this healthy gnocchi recipe that has been making big hits at Summit County parties:
Gnocchi with Sun Dried Tomatoes
if you don’t have any dairy issues, you can mix in some grated mozzarella with the pine nuts and basil to make a pesto sauce. I sometimes add portabella mushrooms to this recipe. Enjoy!
Posted by: Opening the heart — lmercer
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The first flame
August 19, 2008 | 9:13 pm
8/19/08
Every August, about the time the date becomes two digits, a lone branch amid the green backdrop of the countryside will suddenly turn red.
The effect is as arresting as a traffic light, and shocks me out of the complacency of summer. Warning, warning — frost is only a month away!
Already we’ve lost an hour and a half of daylight, and that green backdrop has taken on a burnished tinge. Birds have stopped singing because their young have fledged and the parents are now molting, lying low while they generate fresh feathers for the trek south. Although flowers still abound and the grass still needs mowing, trees and shrubs are in full fruit, already being gathered and stored by savvy critters. Vegetable gardens are at the end of their cycle, bursting with produce.
We’re still running around in shorts and T-shirts, with the windows wide open even at night. But we’re also stacking firewood and calculating what projects must be completed before snow. Unnerved by that inevitability, we’re making time to be outdoors, to stay outdoors, to stop and smell the roses. Our allotted three months are almost over. Time to stop flitting like butterflies and start thinking like squirrels.
I wonder what it’s like to live in the tropics, where it’s warm year-round and things are always blooming. How do you mark time in that environment?
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart — Carolyn Haley
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My New Gig with Examiner.com
| 7:27 pm
So the other day, I’m giving one of my historic tours of this lovely Victorian home in Breckenridge. Suddenly, I am distracted by the clicking of cameras. Our visitors were not photographing the home. They were taking pictures of the snow that was falling outside. Snow in August! You know what that means? Ski season is coming. Are you in shape? Well here’s the good news! I just got a gig writing a fitness page for Examiner.com. I’ll be writing three weekly articles about conditioning for mountain-related activities. In fact, they even gave me a cool name: I’m the Colorado Mountain Fitness Examiner.
So come check it out. It will give you a taste of what’s in my book, Open Your heart with Winter Fitness.
Posted by: Opening the heart — lmercer
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The Shack
August 13, 2008 | 9:50 pm
The Shack has caused quite stir in the world of publication and a little while ago I interviewed the author about his book. He is undoubtedly, a gifted writer and speaker.
I admit that the zeal, with which Mr. Young described his journey and how he came to discover “the shack” and its illuminating role, as he sees it, is quite impressive.
Objectively, however, it is impossible to overlook the fact that the roots of a plant always will tell you where the seed fell and the nature of the fruit it will bear. The Shack is a great example of this. Religion is religion is religion.
Everyone has a story to tell and, no doubt, Mr. Young’s is a compelling one with amplified emotional overtones of intense suffering, including grappling with the age old trap of lack of self-worth. Christianity in all its forms relentlessly promises absolution from this worthlessness resulting in “redemption” which pledges to banish the demon of insignificance to the deepest bowels of the earth, never to emerge again. But think about this, how can self worth be because of another, even if you crossed paths with Jesus, Papa (from the Shack) or the Lord?
The interconnectedness of the universe is the guiding principle to absolute equality and understanding. The only apology is lack of awareness. And that may be a matter of time, not because you’re one of the chosen, or had been overlooked.
There is no greater freedom than the freedom of the mind and we have every right to explore the routes that lead to the gates of truth. But what is fact, and what is truth? The simplest differentiation is that the former is intelligible and the latter is unlimited. How then, are rules, regulations and dogma ascribed to something of which the nature is “unlimited” – if the driving factor is not control and power?
If you want to know, bigoted belief is always under your feet, not in your head.
But devotion too, can be a heady thing. Some believe in a God, who is in heaven, while they wait patiently on earth. Others say they love God, and their god is before them. And then are those who are lost in god. And to the last statement, you must ascribe your own awareness.
The application of capital “G” or not – is intentional, not an oversight.
Elfreda
Posted by: Spiritual issues — epretorius
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Murder, She Wrote
| 12:17 pm
Thanks to Carolyn Haley for her response to my recent post about reading mysteries. And she knows whereof she speaks: our DreamTime author had a terrific interview with mystery author Archie Mayor published in a recent issue of Writer magazine.
And I agree that people “shouldn’t” be judgmental of others—that is, after all, part of the whole essence of DreamTime. Part of personal growth is letting go of judging others. That said, however, the literary world is full of literary snobs who will attack anyone who doesn’t consider War and Peace a cozy read for a winter’s evening.
But it’s not winter now, and I’ve been delighted every time I cycle down to one of the numerous beaches around here to see numerous mystery novels on beach towels and peeking out of beach bags. Not a bad way to pass a summer’s afternoon, working on a devious puzzle in one’s head while paddling in the gorgeous water of Cape Cod Bay!
So for now Murder, She Wrote is just fine with me!
Jeannette Cézanne
Open Your Heart with Reading
Posted by: reading, reading books, Words, Opening the heart, Being Peace — jcezanne
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Lasagna means “large”
August 12, 2008 | 11:44 am
8/12/08
It’s official: Lasagna gardening really works!
We’re now into harvest so I can finally compare results between my gardens over the years. By far, the lasagna garden has outperformed the soil beds, containers, and hay bales — so much so that a crowding issue has developed. I employed the spacing recommended in the Square Foot Gardening Method, but that needs to be changed to two-foot units or larger. Also, I placed my vegetables according to companion-plant compatibilities without considering height, which created a shadowing effect in spots. So my yield is uneven despite record growth and vigor for my short-season locale.
This, however, is a problem I’m happy to live with! Already I’m planning revisions for next year, meanwhile hauling in copious amounts of peas and beans, and wondering what to do with all that celery. (Carrots and lettuce, which I planted from seed, did not do well this year in all sites, so I’m not holding the lasagna garden accountable for poor germination. But all the seedlings and transplants I put into the lasagna bed are thriving. I anticipate my best crop of tomatoes and red peppers ever.)
One plant that exceeded expectations so radically that I’ve got to relocate it is jerusalem artichoke. This was an impluse buy that I failed to research properly. Jerusalem artichoke is a relative of the sunflower and makes edible, potato-like tubers with a starch safe for diabetics. I bought a dozen and planted them around the yard to see where they’d do best. They’re doing well everywhere, but especially the lasagna garden, where they’re passing 5 feet tall and blocking hollyhocks and sunflowers behind them, while overwhelming neighboring peppers.
I have since learned that they tend to spread vigorously and need to reside where they can run amok. Reference sources disagree on whether you have to replant them in fresh soil each year or leave them in a dedicated bed — probably depends on whether you’re growing commercially. This creates a new head-scratcher, because I’ve run out of garden space. Where can I put them?
If anyone out there has experience with this plant, please chime in. In the meantime, if you’re wanting to start a garden or considering an easier or more productive alternative, try lasagna gardening. It really works!
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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August 8, 2008 | 1:46 pm
Posted by: Opening the heart — epretorius
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