The Traveling Notebook

It’s a new year and my writing is suffering.  So I decided to sign up again for the Post-a-Day 2012 which, of course, begins today.  I really enjoyed the commitment I made in October 2011 to get ready for the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but I did not get my novel finished in one month so I lost the contest.  Winning is finishing.  I’m thinking that if I start now that by the time November rolls around finishing my novel should be a piece of cake….Ha!

My goal for this blog is to write about writing which is not as hard to do as one might think especially if you like to write like I do.  I’m not an educated writer.  I write from my heart and for the love of writing. 

Let me tell you about something that came to me today.  A fifth grade class at Brookside Elementary School in San Anselmo, CA is learning about geography and the regions of the United States.  It is among the few public elementary schools in California to receive a distinguished GreatSchools Rating of 10 out of 10.

Each of the students in Mrs. Leader’s class has created a “traveling notebook.”   After writing an opening page in the journal telling about the area where they live, they get it to someone who in turn gets it to another and so on.  The last person to write about the area in which they live mails it back to the school by April 30, 2012.  One of the students, Oliver, gave it to a friend of his father’s who lives in Phoenix.  He wrote in the journal about Phoenix.  And while my son and daughter-in-law were visiting family in Phoenix this same friend handed my daughter-in-law the journal who in turn wrote about the state of Georgia which is where she lives.

Since I lived the past 16 years in Tennessee and have been living just over the border in Georgia a very short time, she asked me to write about Tennessee and especially Chattanooga.  I have lived in Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Colorado, Washington, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee and now Georgia.  I have loved every state I’ve lived in and would be proud to write in Oliver’s Traveling Notebook.

Tomorrow I will post what I write.

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Journaling

Other than writing, probably one of my favorite things to do is cook.  And even more fun is to write about my cooking.  I found a journal that my grandmother kept when I was five years old.  She was a wonderful cook and although she worked part time in my grandfather’s speedometer shop, keeping the books for him, she found time to cook three meals a day, wash and hang clothes on the line, attend her Monday Morning Book Club once a month, volunteer at her church, entertain on a regular basis, and write in her journal.

In some ways I’m just like my grandmother as I still cook three meals a day, wash and dry clothes, belong to various organizations and write in my journal every day.  My grandmother wrote what she planned to cook, what friends came to her house to polish the silver and help prepare for the party and who attended the party.  She would sprinkle in a recipe for a certain dish or what flowers were used in the centerpiece.  Sometimes she would make a note if the flowers came from her garden or if she purchased them from a favorite local florist, Billy’s Flowerland on Perkins Road in Baton Rouge, LA.

My journals are spiritual and part of my daily devotions.  I throw them out at the end of the year.  At one time I had ten year’s worth of journals packed away in a box.  It took a great deal of courage to throw them away, but I realized they served their purpose when I wrote them and like an old dress not worn in years, I had not looked at the journals since I packed them up.  They were wasting space.

But my grandmother’s journal was personal and intimate and revealing.  She wrote to remind herself what happened that day and by not throwing it out, the journal came to me to preserve.  How pleased I was to read in one passage that she felt it important to write that I had called her on the telephone, not once but at least five times in one day.  She was so proud of me, at age five, to have learned her number.

 I think in some way my personal blog www.prisnasonshartle.blogspot.com  has come to be a journal not unlike my grandmothers; for it is here that I write about the foods I cook, my days with my family, the things that make me who I am. I hope one day my grandchildren will read my blogs and remember me with love as I remember my grandmother.

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