Reverie on Writing
A woman reaches out through a friend of a friend. She wants to write her story. She needs to talk to a writer. I am retired. I don’t teach anymore. I’ve got a manuscript in New York, a six-year project I just revised, again. It's hot there. People wilt in the city and flee to the country. My agent says nobody cares about writing in August. Every day I choose between discouragement and belief in my work. I say yes--to ...
Road Trip: Hello Again, Hello.
Welcome and thank you to the many people who signed up to receive this blog off my new www.christinabaldwin.com website. Over a hundred names have flooded in from the last posting and I am delighted that so many people, whose names (or email monikers) I don’t know, and with no idea how you “found” this blog want to join the growing list. This is a thoughtful community and I hope you will make a comment, pass along the post, and ...
A Sense of Well-Beeing
Several years ago, as I entered this dynamic decade, I wrote a blog called, “Seventy: The Road to Somewhere.” That musing is now archived on the PeerSpirit website and I am miles down the road still aiming for “somewhere.” Hopefully not yet the final somewhere, but the legacy somewhere that comes before my personal exit from the NeverEnding Story. At age seventy, as we transitioned out of a twenty-five year dedication to The Circle Way, and handed over our resources ...
The Dog & the Backstory
I don’t remember when I first met the Cooper family, central characters of the novel I just sent to my New York agent, but I remember how: their dog introduced me. The germinating moment for my ten-year novel project occurred when my corgi Glory died in 2010. I missed her constant watchfulness over me and others. Glory was a public dog, often present in the circle trainings, writing classes, and wilderness work we were doing at the time. After she ...
What shall I do with my old white skin?
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi, BIPOC “If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up. You begin by stopping the torture and killing of the unprotected, by feeding the hungry so that they have the energy to think about what they ...
The Fifth Grade American Songbook
It is 1956-57, and I am in fifth grade at Beacon Heights Elementary, a blond brick school building poised over highway 55 at the edge of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The playground runs alongside and out back. We have already learned that in case the Russians drop an atomic bomb we are not to look down this highway toward the Foshay Tower, which at 32 floors is the tallest building between Chicago and Seattle. We are so proud. Little kids, all of ...
Bones to the Ground
July 15-23, 2019: Ann and I took a 2200-mile road trip around western Montana that held so many layers of significance it is taking weeks to let the heart and soul of our experiences weave into meaning-making. There are moments in this trip I am not ready to share; moments I will probably never have words for, moments that will be transformed into later stories that can only emerge from the perspective of long time. Here is one moment around ...
Writing on
My father died. Leo Baldwin was good at living, amazing at aging, determined to continue contributing up to his last days. He remained cheerful and present even while suffering the pain, indignities, and procedures of his final trip through the medical system. He was 98 years old and had never had an illness that he didn’t fully recover from with a little Tylenol and determination. It took him (and me, and us, and his community) a month to admit that ...