altared faces

change the world with cupcakes and stories

February 28, 2012
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A few of the prisoners had never had a cupcake baked for them. I knew this because it is where I taught writing for 8 weeks at a youth correctional facility near my home last summer. I learned that even my sub-standard cupcakes that are sometimes the last to be purchased at school bake sales can [...]

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feeling my way to freedom

January 23, 2012
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Welcome guest blogger Stacia from MyFluffyBunnies! One Sunday last August, I crashed a Vespa on vacation in Florence. My tibia cracked just below the knee, right there on the dusty Tuscan roadside. After four days in the hospital, I had surgery. Four days after that, my husband and I finally flew home to Romania. Home. [...]

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december dilemma

December 14, 2011
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Welcome guest blogger Kristen from Motherese! This year Christmas falls smack dab in the middle of Hanukkah. This fact would have meant nothing to me as a child. Now it means a lot. Growing up, I was a good Catholic girl who went to a Catholic school in a largely Catholic town. I went to [...]

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embrace the pauses

December 6, 2011
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The house in which I grew up was alternately silent and boisterous. At a big dinner table I often found it difficult to ask for the salt let alone voice my opinion. SuziCate is my guest today and she speaks to the crowded dinner tables during the month of December. I hope you find some solace [...]

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can we lead with softness?

September 29, 2011
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I live in a country where a huge number of people don’t want to give a last meal to a person headed to the gallows and it makes me want to barf. What does that say about us? Who are we cultivating in our citizenry?   Texas Senator John Whitmire says, “I have long been [...]

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summer’s sharing harvest

September 12, 2011
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Blogging is a way to meet and make new friends. I find myself sitting at a banquet table resplendent with tales from other lives to nourish me with insight just because I click. It’s a tasty feast to be sure and every bit as bountiful as the most generous garden. Here’s a taste of what [...]

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a river of questions

August 6, 2011
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“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” -Shakespeare   Where we live shapes the narrative of our lives. In Ireland people can afford to be liberal with water. But where I live, in the western part of Colorado, you feel the desert just down the road from the bend in the river and [...]

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laughing into learning

March 11, 2011
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I’m in love with this photo; a star of skis. This is the shape I made falling down the mountain after 17 inches of new powder fell and so did I. I was a snowball star made of skis and arms and legs. Today this lovely shape is my altared space because falling with teammates [...]

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alchemy of order

February 11, 2011
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           I experienced a pleasant transformation after talking with Liz Canavan at Alchemy of Order. That conversation gave me an altared space to eliminate the rules I’ve had about tidiness. As a result, my home has been less cluttered.           I have trouble keeping my kitchen island neat. It piles up with papers. I go [...]

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changing leaves and changing lives

October 12, 2010
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          Today my altared space is this colorful small town where I live and its big appetite. I have lived here now for four years and one of my favorite traditions is Color Sunday when we celebrate the changing aspen trees. The 4-H kids host a big dinner and feed a gaggle of tourists who [...]

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flowers that grow on fences and other art that transforms

August 19, 2010
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        Today my altared space is an urban garden made of yarn. The Ladies Fancywork Society hung these crocheted flowers along a construction fence in downtown Denver. They refer to themselves as yarn bombers, tagging the town with a softer edge of graffiti.           There are 5 women who stitch together the Ladies Fancywork Society. [...]

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