Great party last Saturday! Close, intimate gathering to celebrate the "birth" of "Julia’s Quest" and, well, "rebirth" (I guess) of "Light at Summer’s End"! Tremendous fun and wonderful to be supported by everyone. Of course, being teachers mostly, many friends were doing the summer travel vacation thing and I certainly missed them! Thanks to Chris and everyone for great wine, great nibbles, and great chats!! Wish I had pics to upload!

by the sea I wait;
longing comes like ocean waves...
my heart comforts me.

home is the ocean
found only in lover’s eyes.
I long to see you...

Okay this is really exciting!  Finally finally, it looks like the novel will be OUT THERE for you to read in about 3 weeks (let's say June 2008) from www.captstonefiction.com. 

"Julia's Quest" has had a rough time of it...life kept interrupting my progress and...well i'll spare you those details.  The important thing is the novel is now completed (though I have since even reconsidered some things...oh the torture of editing) and ready to be read.

After you have a chance to read it, let's talk!

oh, go to www.storykim.com and (in three weeks) I'll have posted the press release...

Just because I've had a blog for a year doesn't mean I've known the first thing about how to optimize it!  I invested for the main purpose of generating interest in the stories.  And finally I've gotten a little friendly feedback and so ... here we go.  If you have ideas about how to better communicate through this cyberworld, I am listening with all my digits (okay that was supposed to be a joke related to the digitized world we live in...but...i digress).

"Light at Summer's End" is considered young adult fiction because the main protagonist is a teenager, but the "heroic" character is a retired English teacher.  I wrote this novel in the late '80s and it was published in 1990 by Harold Shaw Publishers outside Chicago.

Then last year (2007) Capstone Fiction asked to reprint and ...so it goes.  hopefully you have also seen the website (another venture of mystery) www.storykim.com that tells more about the story and has a link to a press release...  find a copy on www.capstonefiction.com or www.booksamillion.com and i think there are other places.  Some salesperson I've turned out to be.  Slowly but surely?

but HERE is where I can "hear from" you about the story...so...talk to me.

In a waiting room crowded with chairs along the wall and in the room’s center, there were only five of us who peopled it. Cumbersome it was to move across the space. An elderly man cautiously made his way through with a polite, "‘Scuse me," wherein the elderly woman moved her foot for him to get by, acknowledging with a songly "Mm hmm," as he passed. Oddly touching in its simplicity, the connectedness of all human beings through polite exchange of consideration, each "bowing" to each, as it were.

I wondered, why be considerate? I imagined the question coming from a child. Clearly the answer came: Because it’s how we each long to be treated—even at its most simple and basic, cursory and easily forgotten fraction of a second. Because acknowledging the other is acknowledging self. Showing respect is commanding respect.

Order is called out of the chaos of the otherwise complicated realities of our lives—waiting in doctors’ offices, attending to paperwork, meeting deadlines, assessing and being assessed—inherently there are difficulties and challenges and opportunities to be hurt by situations and circumstances. Surely it is a great relief and tour de force to show simple kindness, simple politeness, a smile, acknowledgment, verbal affirmation of the presence and significance of other. To do to other is to do to self. So charity, consideration, begins at "home," inside our own souls and "right thinking."

(Would that always my deeds reflected my words, that the power of my actions would draw from the power of my words. This is my prayer.)

We are living in an increasingly violent world—gratuitously violent in our media and relationships. Just look at the Oscar winners for 2008. Just watch the news. Just listen to your colleague reflect on his or her situation at home or the office. The world is disintegrating. Dis - integrating. The root of the problem? Forgetting our connectedness to each other. Losing touch, touch, with our Source. Peter Travers from "The Rolling Stones" quotes the sherif (Tommy Lee Jones) from "No Country for Old Men": "It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Anytime you quit hearin' 'sir' and 'ma'am,' the end is pretty much in sight."

Is there hope? Check out "The Web of Life" posted on www.inwardoutward.org.  (http://www.inwardoutward.org/index.php?s=web+of+life) 

I found hope there. A scent of fresh-tilled earth...a glimmer of morning sun on the trembling leaves...

tree frogs dance tapping

on my window panes at dawn

thin crescent moon smiles

030208 Lenten born

The baby was born at 2 pounds, 2 ounces. Life impossible. Yet the baby pulls through minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. The parents are young. Terrified. Their first-born son comes with unimaginable challenges, should he survive. Should he survive?

The prognosis seems better with each difficult day. Today the doctor says the child will have cerebral palsy. Something about lack of oxygen to the brain, underdeveloped brain function. Cerebral palsy.

Word spreads. One friend tells me about a family member with cerebral palsy because of extreme premature birth who just completed college, lives on his own, has a good job. Is a sweet and caring young man. What more?

I had a student years ago with cerebral palsy who has many friends, and whose family seems well adjusted—her accommodations are in place, but she is not pampered, she is extremely independent and strong-willed. She’s also an average but hard-working, good student. A delightful human being with a great sense of humor.

Lent is a difficult time for some of us who come face to face with our greatest fears. We come face to face with our deepest needs. We come face to face with the depravity that causes us grief and pain. We come face to face with God who is so bright that our shadows are ever darker and colder. Then we get to choose what we do next, who we want to be.

And notice, in saying "we," I remember that it is about community and sharing as well as reflecting who we are and who we want to be. We are not alone. We are each of us walking a precarious path of discovering self and others.

Today, this baby’s story reminds me that I have in me and innate intention to live—even against certain odds. There is a life-force beyond any obstacle I might fear. There is a reason to try again today to chip away at accomplishing those tasks and dreams with which I’ve been entrusted. There is a great deal of power and force at work to live. To live beyond.

There is always hope...that something beyond ourselves is happening and increasing power for each and all of us. I resolve to face my fears and my shortcomings with courage; perhaps this baby will draw strength from the Whole of us. In turn, I am deeply grateful for his life, having already gleaned vicariously, a bit of his life’s courageous power to survive against the odds, in the face of obstacles, in light of Grace.

John 9:2 And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?"

3 Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him."

Too much time goes by.  Lost track of tracking through writing what I'm thinking and writing.  Fall semester concluded last Friday.  Today is MLKjr day.  His words are poignant today, in the midst of our crisis with Iraq and other places. 

Tomorrow a new semester starts.  I have spent the weekend writing.  I spent Christmas break remembering how to be a person living a balanced life and then put it all aside to storm the last two weeks of the semester. 

Over the last few months, the bits or pieces that I have written have often felt like good little pieces to post...but haven't had the time to find the code to get in!  Now I have found it once again and hope to be more faithful.

I opened this account, and the website, in order to promote my stories.  Still there is only one story available.  I am hoping the proofs and then the final copy of "Julia's Quest" will be ready soon.  I wrote my editor yesterday to ask about proofs.  I should hear from her tomorrow...