9-14-2024  Dear Readers and Friends,  I owe you many apologies for neglecting this page of my website for so long. Here are a few updates: After publishing a short story and an essay in Hawaii Writers Guild Literary Review, Latitudes, in 2021, I was invited to join the editorial team for the 2022 and 2023 editions. When our stalwart managing editor had to step away, in the summer of 2023, due a family emergency, I was asked to take on that responsibility.  Through the collaboration of a generous and talented team of fellow editors, we managed to publish Edition V of Latitudes on June 1, 2024.  https://www.hawaiiwritersguild.com/litreview-fifth-edition.html Just as the Catholic Writers Guild https://www.catholicwritersguild.org/ has, as noted on my Essay page, completed a major renovation of their website, Hawaii Writers Guild, www.hawaiiwritersguild.com is about to embark on that same project.  Wish me patience and perseverance! A  relatively new organization, Catholic Literary Arts, founded and led by charismatic retired police officer Sarah Cortez, has recently bestowed an additional opportunity for connection with fellow authors and editors. Coming as I do from an academically-oriented family, and having spent my own young adulthood in academe, I appreciate these authors' scholarly approach to both traditional and contemporary literature, as well as their deep engagement with the Sacred Divine.  They are writers who practice the maxim  of "show, don't tell" not just by how they write, but by how they live, amidst our current atmosphere of dissenision and violence, serving young writers and welcoming the disenfranchised to their courses and contests.   Last winter I learned much here from an expert on the history, purpose, and landscape of literary journals. I'm looking forward to exploring  how writers layer "surface and depth" for short fiction, in a seminar with CLA later this month.  https://www.catholicliteraryarts.org/ Kaui Writers Conference has grown exponentially while retaining its island Aloha Spirit. Master Classes and Conference presentationbring together an impressive roster of the most prominent -- and most generous -- writers from the United States and beyond. We were able to return to Live meetings in the autumn of 2022, but the weekly Online series via Zoom has proven so popular that it continues to bring great writers and island spirit right into your own home. Check it out here: https://kauaiwritersconference.com/ In June of 2023 I completed the Advanced program in Fairy Tale Analysis offered by Assisii Institute with Fairy Tale Program Director Kevin Richard, and the Master's program in June. This study of human archetypal dynamic is just as valuable for writers as it is for analysts, and artists of good will are always welcome to participate in beginning seminars at Assisi Institute. A new cohort in the Archetypal Dream Pattern Annalysis begins this fall, offering writers another way to access their inner creativity. Assisi is now an international Institute serving students ithrughout South America and Europe, including both Ukraine and Russia.  https://www.assisiinstitute.com/ In March of 2023, I spent a wonderful Lenten retreat with the monks of Glenstal Benedictine Abbey in Murroe, Ireland,  You can find my version of Glenstal Abbey's amazing story (approved by the monks) here: https://www.catholicwritersguild.org/2023/04/hope-and-resilience/ For more information about Glenstal Abbey and opportunities to pray with the brothers online:  https://glenstal.com/ Like Assisi Institute and Mind Body Passport, the New York Center for Jungian Studies has returned to offering a variety of live opportunities to intereact with international artists and scholars through cultural studies abroad, along with continuing online summer conferences.  www.nyjungcenter.org Jungian Analyst and JRR Tolkien expert Janice Maxwell's online seminar about Jung,Tolkien, and Archetypes of Middle Earth, produced by Mind Body Passport, took a multifaceted but well-organized approach to archetypal patterns in some of my favorite literature of all time. I was as happy as a well-fed Hobbit to have been a part of this adventure!  www.mindbodypassport.com Devoted teacher and resonant poet Ellen Bass presented her sixth session of Living Room Craft Talks this past spring. She's a consummate interviewer, and blesses her students with counsel from her colleagues who write in a variety of styles. Who knew there were so many dimensions of poetry to consider in such depth?  www.ellenbass.com   https://poets.org Many of us, I think, have often approached writing a poem as a vehicle for expressing our own thoughts and feelings. These folks write a variety of word lists, image lists, metaphors, similes, lines, and full drafts -- every day. They open themselves to whatever the collective unconscious is trying to tell them, and the World. Their poems emerge through an organic process in which the poet is the poem's partner and voice.   There's certainly plenty of emotion, technique, and craft that goes into an often extended revision process, through extensively revised poetic drafts. But this fundamental understanding -- that ultimately the poem itself must be in charge -- seems to be what makes the great poets, Great.     December, 2020      I want to offer a profound word of thanks to Brooklyn Public Library, The City newspaper, Reimagine, SquadUp, and so many gifted artists, for the profound event "Missing Them" presented online from NYC the weekend of December 11-13, 2020.            Poetry readings, writing workshops, theater ensembles, and a family testimonial collage, provided a myriad of ways to get back in touch with our Feeling function.             Carefully chosen one-liners from thousands of interviews recognized the individual Humanity of so many real persons who have died a horrific death, alone, in 2020.      This program wasn't about the "movers and shakers," but the grocers, dishwashers, taxi drivers, deliverymen, dry cleaners, waitresses -- the ordinary people who make so many our daily lives possible.          These programs helped me recognize how all of us, myself included, have started to "partition" emotionally for psychological survival.      I was able to feel again, to acknowledge how awful it's been and continues to be.       This outpouring of talent reminded why me NYC stands unique as America's cultural center for the Arts. Arts that can bring us back in touch, help us hold, and eventually, we hope, transcend great tragedy.     Read just one story. Then multiply it by more than a quarter of a million human beings -- fathers, mothers, children, grandparents and grandchildren -- who are all missing from their families this Hanukka and this Christmas.  More go missing daily, on several days lately, than all those who died on 9/11. We've lost to Covid-19 this past year a cumulative cost greater than the entire number of American lives lost through five years of WWII.      We need to let ourselves feel the pain, and really cry.       Because our survival, and our Humanity, absolutely depend on not allowing ourselves to become insensible. Much of my own writing draws inspiration from immersing myself in nature, and the variety of human cultures that I hold dear. I've been blessed with opportunities to explore multiple dimensions of human life on Planet Earth. I've continued my work on two historical novels; I've written some new essays and short stories. I've read several excellent books by authors I admire.  In the end it comes down to doing what you can, every day.  Keep Writing!