You Have A Kink In Your Attitude

You have a kink in your attitude ... I can straighten that right out for you!

I can't help laughing.

At the moment I'm doing research for Dunnottar - sitting in one of the shelters at our town park.

Sharing this shelter with me are a dozen or so high school kids, celebrating the birthdays of three of them.

Focusing on my research, their voices flow around me like river water around a stone; they have said hello and leave me alone to my own devices - seems to work well.

But this one phrase caught my attention and makes me smile.

#

Time gap of several hours.

I wish I had a photo of this group of young people.

They have done themselves proud on this day.

Not one word of profanity have I heard.

Not one inappropriate remark or gesture or action.

Not one temperamental spark of temper or cross word.

Teasing. laughter, good-humored team divisions for games and competitions ... physical activity ... creativity ... 

And music which they make themselves.

And prayer.

I'm doing research for Mamm of Dunnottar so the Characters are fresh in my mind.

Were it not already so, it would have quickly become so ... because it's as though today has been a gift to me and the Characters I have come to respect and admire were suddenly laughing and joking all about me. 

I kid you not.

These young people are awesome.

Me being my notoriously sentimental self, my heart responds and I thank them with tears in my eyes for having surrounded me on this day with the confident knowledge that yes indeed the Legacy has survived and passes now into hands both strong and capable.

You know, I have never seen any of these young people before, nor do I know any of their names.

Yet in them I see the Younglings of Dunnottar as they will become in a very few years, and I see the adults as they must have been in their younger days - the 'generation between' so to speak, of whom my books have spoken so little  (as in not at all, being as my Characters are all either Younglings or adults/parents).

And here, in this here and this now, they have presented themselves to me, making my tears rise, course, and fall.

They have brought to me, on this day, the very real presentation of the whole of the Legacy and confirmation that all of the elements of the Song yet live.



In them reside Faith, Family, Friendship, Freedom, and the Future.

In their Voices I hear the Song:

Choice
Creation, Life, Death, Eternity
Peace
Faith
Healing
Hope
Love
Unity

They are the Song. They are the Keepers of the Legacy.

WHEW!

Thank God For Backups and Copies!

I don't know what I did but in the middle of revising and editing They Are My Song three quarters of my Characters and most of the place names turned into the letter 'I' in the file I was using.

So there they go, Sass, I, I, I, and I from I to do something or other in I.

UFFDA.

Whatever I did, I hope it doesn't happen again. Having to start over again with the revisions and editing and all that ONCE is bad enough. Having to do it AGAIN is not on my agenda.

Thank goodness tomorrow is set aside to be a day at the park! The editing and etc. can just sit tight for a day or two until the headache it gave me goes away. 

What Is Time But A Wheel That Turns and Turns ...

Phew!

I've been time-traveling again but am back in the present - at least for the moment.

The research for this the 'last' book of the Mamm set has been and remains just as exhaustive as the others, perhaps more so as this one has to cover a lot of territory and pull everything together so as to fit with the beginning of SONG and make the circles of the books link together the way they're supposed to. 

*laughing*

The basic story line(s) are pretty well set, right?

Right.

So what do the Younglings of Dunnottar do?

They do what they always do: jump in and insist on being totally included!

And that's fine by me. I kinda like them, and it gives my psyche a break from the trauma and drama of the rest of it. 

As the story lines unfold, I'm finding that this time they're doing it in a bit of a different way. 

The story lines are completing themselves 'independently' - separately - as in they're not presenting themselves to me in the same 'taking turns' way of the others. It won't make any difference in the end result as they'll be put together the same as the others. It's just that the story lines have been taking me to each time period for longer stretches, getting bigger parts of each line done before going into the 'other' time-span. 

The others, except of course SONG, progressed basically side by side as the books went along - as in the doings of the Dunnottar folk would take up however many pages they took, and then the next set of pages would come along with the Mamm stories, and back and forth they would go until both got done at the same time when each book ended.

THIS book, on the other hand, has requirements that the others don't. 

It has to conclude at a specific time and set up a specific set of circumstances, and it has to follow more closely a timeline of actual events which play a role in the Mamm part of the story. 

Sure it's still fiction but some of the Characters that show up in this book were historic figures. While I'm admittedly free-handed with the fiction part of things, making my own interpretations about a lot of stuff, still the 'history' part of it is important enough to me to make me do my best to at least try to get the timing right. 

Moving out of the realm of legend and mythology and into the real 'history' of the times kind of impacts both the research aspect of these up-coming books (which is truly great fun for me, reading and studying as much as I can find about each era as it comes along!) - and the methods I use to put the books together. 

It makes it easier in some ways, actually. The 'timelines' are already laid out in the 'history' books; the world events are pre-set for me to follow; there's more information and written-down documentation that I can use to get details as 'right' as I can.

And,  you know, fiction is still fiction. The Characters aren't 'real', so to speak. They're free to retain whatever they want from the ones we've already met - and they can change with the times as they go along if they want. 

The Alianora we'll meet in the 700s is likely to be basically the same Alianora we already know, and so will Drustann still be Drustann, and all the others. 

Which is essentially one of the main points that this series sets out to make.

Even SMALL TOWN and VICTOR carry their weight in the overall goal of the books.

Times change, circumstances are presented in different milieus, but people are people.

I could take the people out of SMALL TOWN and VICTOR and put them into the SONG series - the Characters are all both there and here, then and now. We are Them and They are Us.

And it's one-thirty in the morning - time for this woman to be getting some rest.

Playing with Natural Dyes

When I stripped the bark from some elm tree branches (going to use the wood to carve something into) not only was I once again duly impressed at how easily the bark comes off of newly cut branches (learned the phenomenon when I was stripping new-cut ash tree limbs to make myself a 'walking stick') but noticed that the inner surface of the bark took on a very pretty hue of orange.

Me being me, I wondered if I could cook the bark up with some fabric and get orange.

Me being me, I fired up my wood stove and put a bunch of the bark into a big kettle along with a plain white dish towel. Cooked them together for an hour or so before going to bed and leaving them to steep in their kettle on the cooling wood stove while I slept.

Ha!

The one on the left is the light orange I got out of this experiment. The one on the right is an older experiment - concord grapes.

note: the orange color deepened as the fabric dried and has stripes where it hung against the fence. 

I can't believe how simple that was! Now we'll have to wait and see how well the color holds.

Right now I've got a strip of 100% cotton drying - I just dipped it in the kettle (bark still in there with the now-cold colored water) for a few minutes. Another strip of cotton is still in there soaking, and a bit of white felted 100% wool. I think I'll let them soak for another hour or so and see what happens.

I cannot believe I've just been burning this bark along with the wood for all this time!  

Ah well.

Live and learn.

Mamm of Dunnottar In The Works!

Mamm of Dunnottar wraps up the set of five 'Mamm Books' of the They Are My Song series, bringing the dual story lines together.

While life on Dunnottar in AD 488 goes on, the past is rapidly catching up to the 'present' in this story of the very Mamm who has been the main story-teller. Will she be able to tell her own story? If not, who will tell it?

Tragedy and triumph vie for dominance as this book progresses; the cost of protecting and preserving the Legacy and the Song that carries it through the generations is brutal - yet Faith, Family, Friendship, Freedom, and the Future (those five interlocked circles) cannot and will not be lost in the battles. The Song must survive, no matter what.

Okay, because I am as I am you already know that the Song survives. There are a lot more books to come in this series; the 'Mamm Books' are the first set. Next will be the 'Alianora Books', jumping ahead in time several hundred years and using the dual story line to fill in - just as Mamm tells the stories of generations that have come before, so too will Alianora. Then another jump ahead and it will be time for Sass to tell her set; then Caileen; then Aine, then Merri; and finally Danann and Sidhelagh bring us full circle to our own time.

At least that's the 'plan' - but if you've met these Characters you know that they're gonna do things their OWN way - it might be one heck of a journey! Especially as the Younglings of Dunnottar will be busily adventuring in their own books along the way ... I can't even imagine what they're going to come up with although I'm very much looking forward to finding out!

Epilogue to 'Start With This One' post

The little old lady stands stark naked on the smooth dirt beneath her feet where her home stood not so very long ago. She stares up at a little white puff of a cloud in the blue blue sky and smiles.

Humming a fragment of a song even more ancient than she is, she straightens her back, tilts her head a little as though listening, lifts her chin, and strides across the dirt, leaving the prints of her small feet in her wake.

To the northwest corner of what had been her yard she strides.

Once there, still humming, she kneels and pokes a slender forefinger into the dirt.

Smiling at the little hole it makes, the naked little old lady pokes another hole in the dirt, and then another and another.

A pattern emerges and she steps back to gaze on it for a moment before continuing with her solitary task.

Along the property line she makes her way, creating her pattern as she goes.

After several passes she stops again and stands gazing at what she has wrought.

Standing as still as still can be she looks and looks at the design she has made in the smooth bare dirt of what was her yard.

The humming becomes louder as tears fill her eyes, course her face, and drop to the smooth bare dirt at her feet.

As she stands weeping, her right hand moves to rest over her heart and she feels the pulsing there beneath her slim fingers.

Alone and still motionless she begins to Sing.

As the Song progresses her Voice becomes stronger, louder, until her very heart is racing beneath her fingers.

'Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?'

As she sinks to the earth with the last notes of the Song on her lips, she murmurs, 'You forgot something.'

And the Stars and Stripes that she has created in the bare dirt of what had been her home waver a little, as though touched by a breeze, through her tears.

'You forgot to take my Voice, and my Spirit.'

And the little old lady, naked, kneels where she is and prays.

Come to the Park on Thursday Afternoons This Summer!

This summer Thursdays at the Park in Fessenden, North Dakota (aka Small Town USA) will be a mite different.

You might hear a background of Celtic Music.

You might see someone wearing unusual clothing.

You might taste something delicious and nutritious.

You might design a special accessory.

You might listen to parts of some very old stories.

You might see a couple of slide shows.

You might learn some very interesting things.

You might find a book you want to read.

You just never know what might happen at the Fessenden Park on Thursday afternoons!

Author Shiela Branson is bringing her books and accessories to the Fessenden City Park on Thursday afternoons this summer. Come to visit and ask questions to your heart's content. 

These informal gatherings begin at around four in the afternoon when local artisans and producers bring their wares for a 'show and sell' time. Then comes supper and music!

Come ready to have fun with some wonderful folks!

 

                           

 

                                      

'Small Town USA: It's All A Matter Of Perspective'