coffee

My Mr. Rogers “Happy” Cup

Leave a comment

I loved “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” when I was a child. It was my all-time favorite (it even earned a mention in the “past” scene just after Chapter Four in Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven).

imageThis past summer I was thrilled to find this mug in the gift shop of a theater where my younger daughter was attending a week-long “Broadway Professionals” program. There was a wide variety of eclectic gifts and items, including several mugs and bobble heads.  I also picked up a “Shakespeare Love Quotes” mug to go with my “day job”. 🙂

imageimageimageOkay, so here’s what’s especially awesome about this mug. When you add hot water, Mr. Rogers changes into his yellow sweater!

It’s just like in the TV program, when he’d get inside his house and change his shoes and jacket for sneakers and a sweater.

imageAnd there are quite a few of his sayings and quotes all around the mug, too.

It just makes me happy…much in the same way the late Mr. Rogers always did.

He still does, whenever I get to see something where he is featured.

There is this article, “46 Things I Learned by Making Mr. Rogers and Me”. It’s well worth a look (it also contains links to other articles, videos, and photos that are wonderful too). It’s by Benjamin Wagner, a young MTV producer who, with his brother, premiered a documentary called Mr. Rogers and Me in 2011.

And like this video, where he received an award, but still managed to turn the spotlight away from himself to make us think and feel, and potentially leave us better people because of it.

What a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

Any other Mr. Rogers fans out there?

I Am Cinderella Take 2

Leave a comment

imageI’m at it again tonight…and last night, and tomorrow night, and the night after that. Cinderella once more, likely up until at least midnight all these nights, trying to get caught up with paper work.

Spread over my dining room table is my stack of research papers. There are 50 of them. It’s important, necessary work for students…a process they need for college, to write the papers their professors will require, for presentations their careers may demand,  and even life in general, when they need to know how to ferret out meaningful information from the piles of dreck on the inter-webs, read it, understand it, and use it in meaningful ways.

But it’s exhausting to assess and grade.image It takes me at least 20 – 25 minutes per paper, because I have to check what’s written against the sources used, to ensure it’s used properly and well, without plagiarizing etc. And it’s not the only paperwork I need to accomplish before quarter averages can be tabulated.

I think I’ve figured out how I get so behind, so that each five week period I end up having to sink at least five nights of 6 – 8 hours of grading into my personal life, after work hours. I’m usually just too drained when I get home from my 8 hour school day working with 92 teenagers to manage a grading session once supper is made and cleaned up, laundry is thrown in, a child’s sporting event is attended, and one-on-one parent/child time is eeked out, among other things.

This Cinderella is getting too old.

Love my students (really, really do). Love teaching and feel incredibly enthusiastic about facilitating their insights, inquiries, and learning.

Can’t hack the paperwork anymore.

Such is life, though, until I retire in another seven years or so.

For right now it’s my lot to turn into a pumpkin on a regular basis. 🙂 I have the will, but now I just need the energy and the time…

Happy Sunday, all. Catch you on the upswing tomorrow when I’m more properly caffeinated.!

On Coffee – and my latest book

4 Comments

coffee framed“As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.”

Honore de Balzac (1799-1859)

Oh, how I wish the last sentence of this was true for me. Well, it is some of the times, but not always. Usually, I pour myself a nice cup – like the picture above (I just got that cup this year, when visiting farther north, because of the moose on it…more on that in a minute). I bring it over to my desk. Sometimes, I take a sip, but often I’m waiting for it to cool a little. And then, if I’m writing, like I was this morning, I get so engrossed in what I’m doing that I forget all about the coffee and by the time I look up, it’s stone cold.

So, I guess in that way, de Balzac’s statement is true: I just don’t need the coffee actually in my stomach to make it happen. 🙂

So, I decided to purchase that moose cup because I liked it – and I use visual focal points as inspiration when I’m writing. Coffee cups hold a special place in my heart: when I was working toward publication the first time, way back in the 1990’s when traditional publishing houses were the only way to go, I had a coffee cup of the NYC skyline. I looked at it to set my goal and continually remind myself that I was honing my craft toward signing a contract with a major player in the industry. I did and ended up writing seven books with HarperCollins/Avon. But the publishing landscape has changed and broadened, thankfully, and now there are other wonderful opportunities as well.

But back to this cup;  it plays off the title of my upcoming general fiction/women’s fiction novel Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven. I’ve just added a book description for it to my page of Contemporary books. You can read by clicking on the title above or the link here.  I’m still working on the release schedule, cover, etc. – but the manuscript is finished, being edited, and should be released into the world by next spring. Exciting times for me as a writer, as I haven’t had a brand new book out since 2007 (BTW, the three historical romance novels out there under the name “Mary McCall” are not by me but by a different writer altogether).

My new book is a complete departure from the medieval historical romance I wrote previously and it’s very personal, as it’s inspired by my own background and some personal events and people. There are still more historical novels in me, I’m sure, and I will likely be adding to my title list in both genres…but for now, I’m going to celebrate this book, which was more than five years in the writing! 🙂

A Little Cup of Happy…

2 Comments
vintage coffee

Vintage Maxwell House Coffee ad

I’m not sure why ads like these from the 1940’s and 1950’s make me feel happy.

I wasn’t even born until the later half of the ’60’s. My mother, who was in her 20’s during the 1950’s, tells me her memories of the defined gender roles, limitations in career and other options for women etc. – and I have no desire to live in that context, preferring the freedoms and opportunities available to American women in this decade.

But vintage pictures like this coffee ad still make me feel a little nostalgic. Maybe it’s the (likely false) idea of a simpler time. In memory it looks lovely and easier to navigate, but in reality it would probably be stifling. Still, the era – and everything that came after it – are all part of the fabric of who we are here and now…

I don’t have the same affinity for any other decade of the 20th century – not even my heyday decade of the ’80’s.

I guess I’ll just leave off my efforts to figure it out for now, and just enjoy the way it makes me feel…happy. 🙂