Welcome Friends

After many MANY years of thinking about it...and talking about it...and promising friends I would do it, I have finally begun a blog.  FINALLY.

I wrestled with a name and though the title may not seem intuitive, for me it's the best phrase to sum up what I hope this blog will be.

What To Do For an Encore was born out of a desire to write about what I do and why.  Until the day he died, my Dad was my champion. He believed in me in a way that was absolute. If I took on a challenge and accomplished it -- regardless of what it was -- he would always ask me: "So what are you gonna do for an encore?"

His face was radiant, full of conviction that I had done something -- that I WAS something -- and that I could continue to aim higher, bigger -- and do that something more.

In college at the University of New Hampshire, I edited a literary nonfiction magazine called Catalyst. There could not have been a better title for an inaugural editing experience. A catalyst is the thing I most wanted to be -- the one who brings about change and makes sparks. If I can connect two elements and make magic, all the better.

So in that spirit -- and in the spirit of that which moves just beneath the conscious -- I begin this blog.

Where is it going? Good question.

My passions are many, and the work towards social justice is paramount. Of course, it is honestly just too damn much these days. No rights are taken for granted. They never were but now, all bets are off. Those of us who have worked towards planetary sustainability had already been feeling like we couldn't get to our goals. And now? Now we have thrown the crazy-car in reverse and are blasting the health of our planet backwards at breakneck speed. Terrifying doesn't begin to describe it.

Posts will certainly be about my efforts to try and make life better, whether it's writing a sermon for my faith tradition - Unitarian Universalist (look it up) -  to sharing pictures from a garden I help with that grows food for a soup kitchen. I will probably share some simple pleasures of life (recipes, photos, poems) that help keep me -- and maybe, you -- grounded.

Do I use too many ellipses in my writing? Yes, absolutely. I apologize about that, but if you come along for the ride, you are going to have to bear with me on that one. It's a stylistic tic that has stayed with me.

My "cred" for lack of a better word is that after getting an undergraduate degree from the University of New Hampshire, I got an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Am I published? Not yet, though I do like to think I know my way around a sentence. 

Want to share in the conversation? Great. I believe in the strength of community. I am new to this form. If I find that folks aren't being civil, I will respond appropriately.

Until then, thanks for being here. I am eager to see where this venture takes me.

Now, let's see what we do for an encore...