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Sheltering Walls

Bare Trees in Fog

Bragging Rights!


Family!
Family!

Sometimes it feels right to brag on yourself, or your kids or grandkids (all the time), or about a small group of beloved writer friends known as the River Writers! So, here goes.


B.C. (before COVID), I offered a writing spiritual memoir course at Flagler College's Lifelong Learning. Three people signed up. The administration, not seeing any money in it for themselves, called to say the course did not fill and therefore would be cancelled. I asked for the roster. Much to my surprise two men had signed up. Mind you after offering this course in other venues for a decade, I knew that the ratio of two men to one woman was an anomaly. The administrator wasn't as blown away by this, but I knew something different was happening so I went to his office to make my case. He agreed to run the course, this time. Great!


"I will be forever grateful for this", said Roger, one of the two men who faithfully attended the summer program. He said this five years after that summer. By then, the four of us plus one who joined later, had been writing together on a monthly basis.


Our unique combination of would-be authors met at my house to share our works in progress. We were serious about our writing and about our evolving relationship. Hardly a month went by when all of us were not sitting in my living room, or on the screened porch overlooking the San Sebastian River. One evening, a tad late to the meeting, Roger poked his head inside, asking: "Are there any River Writers in here"? The name stuck!


Our stories grew as did the solidarity between us. Our "critiques" were given gently. We knew each other's touch points, and tiptoed toward those rather than around them to offer some help. Care was the watchword by which we wrote and told our deeply personal life stories. We laughed a lot. We made a few out-of-town retreats together. During one such time, Mike had a breakthrough that changed everything going forward in his writing. We honored that moment in silence because everyone knew it was a turning point for the writing and for the soul. The group's bond and total trust allowed for such a moment. We had become a family in the true sense of the word: "the people who support and love you, and the people you can confide in and trust".


These River Writer friends of mine matter more than words on the page, although they were instrumental in helping me to finish my second book, Return from Exile*


Speaking of books!



And, drum roll please:


The second St. Augustine Poet Laureate, is none other than our very own River Writer, Ann Browning Masters! https://annbrowningmasters.com/


"I will be forever grateful", sums it up. The following semesters, the course filled but never again would there be anything like the River Writers! Meet the River Writers here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe5STechJEc&list=PLgEkQClCVY7uyKWLiO-_V1PK2vLaCxx22&index=2





 
 
 

Dots on a Page . . .

Updated: Jun 24, 2025

The composer said to the audience: "Until the music is played, it is just dots on a page". Modest and true. Yet, something mysterious and miraculous happens through creating and sharing music.


Pick your favorite kind of music, it doesn't matter whether classical or rock'n roll, the process begins and ends in the same way. In the first instance, an idea is heard in the mind of someone with pencil in hand moving on a blank page; from that moment on, silent sounds yet to be heard take shape. When the day comes, months or years later, the black markings come alive, even the silences, those rests written to breathe space in-between sound. In the end, our ears will hear what another once thought. Then, music becomes a live entity connecting the dots on the page to our lives and with others' lives. Every audience has experienced that ineffable connection with a stranger through music.


Like notes on a scale, I know not where words come from. Yet I sit at my writing desk looking out the large window framing summer like a photo and wonder what words will appear? Today, I started out to write one thing (music as the antidote to horrors of the world) and wound up here, instead. The writer/composer is also editor-at-will. I could simply hit the backspace and return to that original idea, but I don't want to. My head is full of music that I imbibed the past few evenings at the St. Augustine Music Festival. It lingers. The more I think I want to write about the power of music to heal, the more I want to share something of a moment that defies explanation. Music feels like a cool swim on a hot day; a walk through a garden full of red roses; a homesickness for some place; a longing for someone; a memory out of the blue; a bright yellow painting on a white wall; an old friend come to visit; a lost love; a newborn baby; a smile; a tear; a sigh.


Soulful and heartfelt gifts from the heart and soul of one human spirit to another heals individually and collectively. Granted much hard work is necessary from the process to the performance, yet it is that effort that underpins how meaningful and significant music is for a world ailing under its own weight.


A couple of summers ago while in Berlin, by chance I had a long conversation with an artist in her studio about music and time and Julian of Norwich. She invited me to make a video of our serendipitous meeting. This link is the final result of that process. You will find Suzanne Rikus is fluent in English, but you may want to turn on closed caption or follow along with the transcription.




 
 
 

In Solidarity


I have been given to understand how small this world is and how it torments itself with countless things it need not torment itself with if people could find within themselves a little more courage, a little more hope, a little more responsibility, a little more mutual understanding and love.

The past week in America people found courage within themselves and with that came a little more hope. Millions marched together to say NO to any King, or any dictator ruling over "we the people". Those who stood together from LA to Boston spoke with one voice, out loud, in Solidarity, the word most often associated with Vaclav Havel, dissident turned President of former Czechoslovakia.*


Photos are everywhere of how the Saturday protests looked from the outside. What it looked like on the inside is what makes the difference. If you were there you know the way the crowd kept growing; the signs kept coming; the flags kept rising higher above the fray. June 14 used to be called "Flag Day" before it became NO KINGS day. They are one in the same. Those early days of this Republic were symbolized by the red, white and blue. When I had a Cape Cod home, I flew a "Betsy Ross" flag by the front door. The thirteen stars in a circle and as many stripes fit the locale where pilgrims who sailed across open waters for months on end first made landfall. (Plymouth was the second place).

At "First Encounter"Beach*, the long story of White Europeans encountering indigenous peoples who did not look like them, speak like them, believe like them is said to have begun. This four-hundred-year old narrative brings us to where we are in America today.


In their first efforts to escape an intolerant King on their homeland, these men and women arrived uninvited and claimed the moral high ground over others. This attitude led to violence with those who belonged in the first place. We know how this played out for First Peoples. Yet, we still see this attitude toward who belongs in this Replublic and who does not. But, unlike early days, we have become a mix of colors, languages, religions, and personal identities. There is no "one and only one" who can rightfully and righteously speak for what this country, or any country, ought to look like, sound like, dress like, love like. No! We are all in this together. One for all and all for one, except for any ONE person who would be King.








 
 
 
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