Category Archives: Blog

Life: Sniffing it Out

Dog sniffing green grassSome blogging things I tried lately didn’t suit me or my current life, so I shifted them aside. Oh the other hand, I re-immersed in poetry writing and publishing. Today, taking National Puppy Day as my poem prompt, I created this to share:

PUPPY LOVE poem-Jo LightfootPuppy love applies outside the canine realm, so shift this poem message wherever it suits.

~ ♥ Jo

Photo Credits:
Dog by Alice10 at Morguefile
Puppy Poem by Jo Lightfoot

 

My Life’s Work & Manifesto

write on - graffiti words painted on stone wallThis blog post will be self-explanatory once I explain that it was prompted by my participation in a 7-day blogging challenge given by Jeff Goins. The challenge starts today and this is the first exercise:

MANIFESTO

 

“The work will teach you how to do it.”

 

In my work as a writer, calligrapher,

instructional designer, and poet,

I encountered thousands of meaningful

and wonderfully expressed quotations.

 

The one above—an Estonian proverb—

resonated above all the rest.

I’ve adopted it as my personal motto.

 

Its words also mean:

“Life will teach you how to live it.”

 

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Picking Up the Trail

Books and keyboard indicating publishing

“If you come to a fork in the road,” advised Yogi Berra, “take it.” . . .
Well I didn’t. I stopped right in my tracks (and so did this blog). Why?

I got busy. I got distracted. I got confused and overwhelmed. I got caught up in self-publishing, so as to share poems that come to, through, or from me. I began laying plans. More specifically, I began laying plans about laying plans: doing research, joining groups, making excursions, and so forth. I’m sure you can relate. If not, let me make plans to make plans to understudy you!

I was so sure there was a fork in the road I couldn’t continue the blog as I had been doing, with personal stories, photos, and sharing. I questioned whether I should post so many poems, especially in batches, when they might someday appear in a book.

Cover of Artist and Muse bookEven my daily poem journaling suffered: fewer poems, less attentively conceived, birthed, and nurtured. But. . .

The books were captivating! The design of them. The choosing of the themes and relevant poems. The harmonizing of the covers. The creation of the supplementary texts. The ultimate holding in my hands of the tangible, shareable results! I’m “ordinately” proud of them (this is the author speaking, after all). I do want to help people find them. I do want to acquaint them with my muse and with the writing process as I’ve experienced it—and now, too, with the publishing process as I’m experiencing it.

Thank you for accompanying me on this journey. Yours is a similar one: life and creativity. Let’s continue to share with and inspire each other. Instead of forks in individual roads, let’s align and interconnect our collective roads. I’ll look for you along the way.  ~Jo

Emu Exhibitionist

Doodle-art designs on eggsSaturday’s art exhibition was held in a lovely setting at Promenade Mall. The food court pavilion had a large alcove with tall windoDecorated emu eggws and a central stone fireplace. The artwork set up there was beautiful—and beautifully arranged. Easy chairs and small tables were positioned nearby, which allowed me to continue creating designs all day. In fact, a newspaper reporter photographed me doing just that. During the afternoon, I almost completed the first stage of art-doodling an emu egg:

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Photo “Enhancements”

Why be happy with what you’ve got…
when you can have more, more, MORE?

Yellow tinged iris leavesThose lyrics from a Pinocchio presentation made such an impression on me years ago that they are firmly entrenched in my mind. Apparently, I’ve lost all related details because now I can’t find any connection online between the lyrics and Pinocchio. Did I dream this up?

Pinocchio is a cautionary tale about over-desiring and overdoing. What brought the lyrics to mind was how easy and inexpensive it is to modify photographs these days.

Iris leaves recolored orange  Iris leaves recolored red

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wayaclan

September 4, 2013

Some key steps I’ve taken so far with this blog (learning the process) are:

  • Doing basic set-up
  • Achieving acceptable photo clarity, sizing, and positioning
  • Controlling spam comments (via Akismet)
  • Limiting the number of stored revisions of posts (via Revision Control)

Next, I’ll probably start using the “Insert More Tag” so that long posts come up as abbreviated teasers instead of full posts. (The “Readers” setting might accomplish this globally, though.) I’m also experimenting with the “Status” format in this very post, expecting that this message won’t even have a heading.  Continue reading