Coming for the librarians (and the books)

Valorie Grace Hallinan2 Comments

“I’m doing a criminal investigation of your staff. Essentially, the librarians are my suspects.” – county chief deputy officer entering a Texas public school library (transcript of body cam footage from The Librarians documentary )

On Friday evenings, I like to have a glass of wine, make a nice meal, and maybe watch some mindless TV with my husband. But not on this particular Friday night last fall.

Our local public library was hosting a showing of the documentary The Librarians, about book banning in America and, obviously, I wasn’t going to miss it. (For those of you new to my blog, because I’m an avid, lifelong reader, an academic librarian by training, a former children’s book editor, and a writer. And because, of course, Books Can Save a Life!!!)

Every seat was filled. At least half a dozen librarians were in the audience, and I had the good fortune to sit next to one. So I had a kindred spirit nearby as we channeled our disbelief and outrage while, on the screen, one hard-to-believe book-banning drama after another played out in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and New Jersey.

“This is not a communist nation. You do NOT get to pick our reading material. It is ours.” – Suzette Baker, former Llano County Head Librarian, Texas, fired when she refused to take How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahesi Coates off the shelves.

Right now we are an embarrassment in the state of Florida.” – The Reverend Jeffrey Dove, Clay City, Florida

I could focus on any number of issues regarding the documentary, such as First Amendment rights, the definition of pornography, the removal of marginal voices from American libraries, or what, exactly, is deemed educationally unsuitable. But what most shocked me was how deeply divided communities have become and how harshly some book banners treat community members they may have known or worked alongside for years.

Our library featured a panel discussion, and at some point, someone used the term “religious psychosis,” which resonated with me. I found the story of Weston Brown and his mother a heartbreaking example of this, difficult to watch. Weston, who is gay, was disowned by his mother, Evangelical Christian Monica Brown, and is not allowed to be part of his siblings’ lives.

After she began publicly advocating for the removal of LGBTQ+ themed books from school libraries in their Texas town, Weston spoke out against book banning at a school board meeting that his mother attended. She then came to the podium and, ignoring her son, spoke passionately (and in crude, offensive language) about banning certain books that had been carefully vetted by librarians.

Another thread in the documentary featured the Reverend Jeffrey Dove in Clay City, Florida, who became concerned about the Llano County library director, who had been slandered by community members and removed from her job. What struck me was the sight of Reverend Dove, who is Black, patiently waiting for three hours to speak while the town council (all white) ignored him. When he was finally allowed to speak, Reverend Dove defended the library director and highlighted the value of the banned titles. His is truly one of the most eloquent voices in the documentary.

It seems to me that some have been blinded by a kind of irrational and dangerous religious and/or political fervor that overrides our common humanity.

On February 9, 2026, The Librarians will air widely across the country on the PBS program, Independent Lens. You can also check the listings on The Librarians website to see if it is coming to your city. Better yet, contact your local library and ask them to host a viewing.

School librarian and anti-censorship advocate Amanda Jones tells the story of her efforts to fight book banning in her hometown of Louisiana Parish, Louisiana. Her life was upended, and she felt compelled to tell her community’s story, which is playing out across the country. She says in the memoir that she doesn’t see herself as a writer, and I do wish that she’d had a better editor. Nonetheless, That Librarian is an important and revelatory testimony about book-banning efforts in America.

Walking for Peace in Liberty, NC

Valorie Grace Hallinan12 Comments

The Walk for Peace is an offering to the community regardless of faith, culture, or background…to promote national healing, unity, and compassion by awakening the peace that lives within each of us. – Paraphrased from the Dhammacetiya website of the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center, Fort Worth, Texas

The nearly two dozen Buddhist monks walking 2300 miles for peace have been making their way across North Carolina for the past several days, with large, enthusiastic turnouts. The monks set out from their home base, a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery in Fort Worth, with Washington, DC, as their final destination.

My husband, our friend Beth, and I wanted to see them, but figuring out their route was a challenge, as it often changes. On Day 88 of their journey, we caught up with them in Liberty, North Carolina. The day turned out to be deeply restorative and unforgettable.

The town gave the monks a full escort. As they approached, a hush came over the crowd.

I’d never set foot in Liberty, a small, rural, and diverse town. When we arrived, the streets were blocked off, and crowds were gathering on the sidewalks and at the fire station, where the monks would have their only meal of the day, give a talk, and pass out peace bracelets.

I spoke with the clerk at the mini-mart, the other customers, and a few of the volunteer traffic monitors, but no one knew the monks’ arrival time. The clerk, perhaps of Indian descent, seemed excited but unsure of who exactly they were. I encouraged her to step outside when the monks passed by, saying she wouldn’t regret it.

There was such a sense of anticipation, and the community vibes were so welcoming. We stood next to a long-time resident, Faye, a committed Christian, thrilled that Buddhist monks were going to pass through her town.

Nearby, a young man with a megaphone and loudspeaker preached about Jesus and how the monks were unsaved, sent by Satan. More than one person asked him to stop, but he persisted. I was relieved to see everyone leave him alone and then forget all about him when the monks passed by a short time later.

Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara spoke about mindfulness meditation and its benefits; he pointed out that meditation has nothing to do with religion or Buddhism, per se. It is something any of us can do to become grounded, centered, and focused in an age of distraction.

Learning to be mindful and in the present moment may sound like a cliché, but it can give us our lives back, he said. I’ve recently become certified to teach mindfulness meditation, and hearing his message confirmed the work I’ve been doing.

“We should feel grateful because we have so many religions in the world to serve all human beings…At the end we are having one religion together, the religion of peace, loving kindness, and compassion.”

Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara

In the midst of Venerable Bhikkhu’s talk, there was a medical emergency in the crowd. As the paramedics arrived, Bhikkhu encouraged us all to place our hands on our hearts, sense our hearts beating, and maintain silence. I’d never seen such a large crowd in deep, meditative silence, which lasted about 15 minutes. The love and caring were palpable. Fortunately, after a time, the woman recovered enough to walk to the ambulance.

Deep silence as the crowd meditated

Some of the monks walk without shoes. They have one meal a day.

The monks say that peace is not a destination, but a practice. Beautiful encounters such as these can touch something sacred deep within a person, which begins to unfold.

I thought about how sustaining a mindfulness practice can be for anyone fighting to preserve freedom and democracy, as these difficult times demand.

Photo by MJ Merwin

I wrote this post as news reports emerged that federal agents shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis.

The world will surely need this great gift that the monks would like us to know about.

Make Good Trouble

Valorie Grace Hallinan4 Comments

make room for wonder….

Renee Nicole Good, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” American Academy of Poets Prize Winner, 2020

Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.

Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow.  – Becca Good

Midwinter Light

Valorie Grace Hallinan4 Comments
A highlight of the Winter Solstice Lantern Walk along the Eno River, NC, 2025.

The fear is ancient and uncomplicated, part of our human-animal inheritance…will the darkness swallow me, will it swallow us all together? Nina MacLaughlin, Winter Solstice: An Essay

Happy New Year to my friends and readers!

Here is a post full of little treasures to light up your midwinter days and usher in the New Year.

Never in my life have I seen the winter solstice celebrated with so much exuberance. Last year, on our first winter solstice in Hillsborough, North Carolina, I assumed the annual lantern walk along the Eno River would be a quiet affair with a few dozen souls. Not at all. Thousands of people showed up with the most inventive homemade lanterns I’d ever seen.

Before you read past this paragraph, PLEASE click the link below to last year’s walk. It will put you in the mood for the rest of this post, which is full of all things Winter Solstice. In last year’s video, you’ll see drone footage of the magical riverside procession, an illuminated spiral, and beyond-belief lanterns, with a poetic narration by our town’s very own Poet Laureate, Amal Kassir. (YES, our town has a Poet Laureate. More about Amal at the end of this post.)

Here is the link. Please turn up your volume, enjoy, and then hop back over here:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bo8a6x7qc/

I’ve sprinkled quotes from Nina MacLaughlin’s earthy, primal Winter Solstice essay throughout this post, because it speaks deeply to writer and mixed-media/book artist Suzi Banks Baum, who created and leads Advent Dark Journal. This is an immersion in art, writing, nature, and daily creative practice that I enjoy during the last six weeks of the year.

I’ll write more about Advent Dark Journal in an upcoming post, because Suzi and her creation are worth an in-depth look. For now, here is a glimpse of the small collage and art projects I’ve completed as part of this experience. You’ll see that my Advent calendar has a religious theme, but Advent Dark Journal is not centered around organized religion; rather, it is a “container” of rituals for participants to explore wherever our soulful arisings lead us during this sacred time of year.

“Advent Miracle”
“Earth Holder”

These small, collaged journals and art pieces were sent off to friends – one in Australia – as soon as I completed them. In addition to the art we create in Advent Dark Journal, Suzi encourages us in new, transformational directions. Since I’ve become a regular in Suzi’s workshop, I’ve added a tradition our adult sons and partner enjoy when they visit for the holidays – a fireside Winter Solstice ritual. More about that in an upcoming post, but suffice it to say, Suzi has shown me how to weave a daily creative practice into my life in ways that promote my well-being and that of others in my life.

It is the animal in us that knows the dark. This season stirs that animal in us, and stirs the memories that live in all of us, submerged so deep, of the ancient dark, of a time before gods, before form and words and light….Winter reminds us: the dark was first.

…maybe death is all potential, a means of moving on. And on we go, absorbed into the wet warm belly of eternity, or the roaring big black void, back here as a robin or a wren, in dusted orbit around another planet’s moon, riding on the light. Winter Solstice

Nina MacLaughlin’s Winter Solstice is stellar writing, moody and mysterious. She reminds us of our primal, animal origins; ultimately, we are bound up in the life web and rhythms of the earth, whether we recognize this or not. I purchased Nina’s Summer Solstice essay as well, which I’ll read come summer.

If you are interested in writing that is more traditional, something you can read in small bits alongside your daily journaling or meditation, I recommend Midwinter Light: Poems and Reflections for the Long Season by Marilyn McEntyre. Each day, she includes a poem with commentary that honors this dark season, when growth seems to stop but germinates unseen, to be manifested as the light returns.

“Winter makes us see differently. Noticing is rooted in desires so easily satisfied in spring we barely feel them—for color, for movement, for the sound of birds, and things that bloom. On a walk in midwinter, we experience solitude in a different key. We are surrounded by reminders of mortality and loss, by the absence of what is lush and vivid. We are clothed in layers and aware of our bodily needs in new ways. And the quiet, sometimes, is palpable. It is a good time for prayer: the veil between this dimension and the next seems to have thinned.” Marilyn McEntyre, Midwinter Light: Meditations for the Long Season

Finally, I discovered an excellent picture book with a poem by Susan Cooper and art by Carson Ellis. Both Susan and Carson have won the highest honors for children’s books, and this particular collaboration is special. Susan’s poem “The Shortest Day” is easy to find online. I encourage you to read it. I think you’ll find that Susan’s half-rhymes and cadence create an incantation that perfectly captures the magic and mystery of this dark season.

If you would like the perfect picture book for this time of year, for yourself, or as a gift, I suggest The Shortest Day, written by Newbery Medal winner Susan Cooper and illustrated by Caldecott Honor recipient Carson Ellis.

Happy New Year!

I will return in January with more about Advent Dark Journal, as well as commentary about a provocative documentary you won’t want to miss, especially if you are an avid reader and book-lover.

As Amal Kassir says in her winter solstice poem you may have listened to in the above-linked video, “It only gets brighter from here.”

By the way, PLEASE be sure to check out Amal Kassir’s website and watch her perform her heartbreaking poem, “Broken Arabic.” Her poetry collection, Scud Missile Blues, is available from Amazon. I encourage you to consider purchasing it. We need to support our young poets, and Amal is immensely talented. Just think of all the poems she has yet to give to the world!

Solstice whimsy

Ingrained

Valorie Grace Hallinan11 Comments

If you have last-minute holiday shopping to do and would like to give a fine memoir as a gift, I have a suggestion.

I spotted Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson in a local bookstore and thought that my son’s partner, who is an amateur furniture-maker, might like it. Of course, I decided to sample a chapter. Two days later, I’d finished the memoir, having enjoyed a kind of bliss through the entire reading.

This is a superb, deeply personal book that is also suspenseful, sensual, poetic, and universal. I could smell the cedar, pine, and oak as I read. Makers will love this story, but I don’t think you have to be a maker to respond deeply to this nature-based memoir.

The neat flat-cut edge of its end-grain revealing the gently arcing lines of the tree’s growth rings. Dark reddish brown, like burnt umber or strong tea…It is a broad piece of one-inch elm…Fine close grain tumbles down the board’s length. And a tracery of spectral green streaks across it, like the northern lights.”

Callum Robinson, Ingrained

The workshop owned by master woodworker Callum and his wife, landscape architect and designer Marisa, is about to go under, thanks to the cancellation of a substantial corporate project. Already leveraged to the hilt, the relatively young business faces imminent bankruptcy.

They must change direction, and fast.

Chapter by chapter, the story expands to reveal Callum and Marisa’s world: the devoted young craftsmen who work for them; Callum’s father, also a master woodworker, who jumps in to help set the business in a new direction; the small Scottish town of Linlithgow, where their little studio and workshop reside; the beautiful Scottish forests that supply much of the timber from which their furniture is made; and the customers who eventually browse their shop and can’t resist the furniture they see.

And with its flowing organic transitions, to me the grand elm table feels more like a sculpture than a piece of furniture. To one edge of its mighty top, among the swirling purples, reds, and greens, there remains just the tiniest taste of the tree’s true form. A handbreadth of live edge and finely sanded bark, still visible in the straight, sharp, otherwise regimented lines. A perfect imperfection – a signature – like the crimped pie crust or the fingerprint in the clay.

Callum Robinson

Callum Robinson seamlessly blends the past and present as he tells of his own coming-of-age and how he found his life’s work. His story is relevant to anyone concerned with living in a deeply authentic, meaningful way. You will be rooting for these singular people who design and make furniture of great beauty that will be loved and handed down through the ages.

This is a celebration of the human-designed and handmade. Callum approaches crafting fine furniture from some of the world’s most beautiful trees as if it were pure poetry. His writing is the same.

I look forward to reading more of him.


Nostalgia is a powerful thing. An ethereal link. An ache for something long ago, something that might never really have existed. No other material I know can hold it, or radiate it, quite the way that wood can. And almost nothing made from wood will ever have as many stories locked inside as a family table. Used so often it’s almost invisible, passed down through the generations, scarred by the lives and ingrained with the memories of all those who gathered around it. 

Callum Robinson

Our ponderosa pine homeplace in central Oregon, where we lived for a few years.

Bringing home the tree

Train Dreams

Valorie Grace Hallinan6 Comments
Mount Index
Mount Index

I first published this post in May, 2012, when we were staying in a remote cabin near the town of Index in Washington State’s Cascade Mountains. I was also reading the novella, Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson. I’m reposting it now because the gorgeous movie adaptation has just been released. (It is currently in theaters and on Netflix.)

Train Dreams is a beautifully filmed, meditative story about an early 20th century Idaho logger who travels to Washington and environs to work on crews that take down the largest trees in the forest. I promise you, the movie will sweep you away, completely and utterly, to another time and place. New York Magazine calls Train Dreams a staggering work of art, and they are right. The translation from book to film is flawless, and those of us who are avid readers know how special it is when the essence of a beloved book comes to life on the screen.

Here is my original post:

Just steps from our front door, the peaks of Mount Index are illuminated in great detail by the last rays of sun.

It’s spring and we’re in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. This is wild, intimidating territory. Rivers and creeks rage as snow melts in the mountains. Along the highway, as we made our way here, we passed by dozens of cascades of snowmelt tumbling down steep walls of rock on either side.

Our vacation cabin is perched on the banks of the Skykomish River. It was raining our first night here, and the rain, together with the rushing river, created quite a din. The mountaintop had been hidden by fog.

We built a fire in the wood burning stove, which took the chill out of the air and made everything cozier. Later in the evening, a dull roll of thunder swelling to a roar overpowered the sounds of downpour and river flow outside our picture window. My first, nervous thought was “flash flood,” but when the high-pitched whine of metal-on-metal joined the mix, we realized the sound was a train.

Train in Skykomish
View from the Cascadia Hotel in Skykomish

We are in high train country. The legend of the Great Northern Railroad is very much alive here, though nowadays the trains that run are mostly on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe line. Twice now, while having lunch at the Cascadia Hotel Cafe in Skykomish, we’ve watched trains pass through, heading east from the port of Seattle with container cars from China, Germany, and Scandinavia.

Several times a day and into the night we hear the trains.

In a kind of parallel journey to my vacation, I’m reading Train Dreams, a novel by Denis Johnson about a logger and laborer who worked for the Pacific Northwest train companies of the early twentieth century.

The Pacific Northwest is surreal and dangerous in Train Dreams, as much a character as Johnson’s protagonist, Robert Grainier.

Photos of loggers
Loggers taking down 500-year-old cedar and fir

I thought about the life and times of Grainier when we hiked the Iron Goat Trail the other day, along the now abandoned Great Northern Railway bed. On plaques along the way, old photographs depicted loggers like Grainier taking down giant cedar and fir trees.

Grainier grew “hungry to be around….massive undertakings, where swarms of men did away with portions of the forest and assembled structures as big as anything going, knitting massive wooden trestles in the air of impassable chasms, always bigger, longer, deeper.”

Yet Grainier also saw the great mountains and forests defeat the ambitious plans of mere humans. The land defeated him, too, in a very personal way, but he learned acceptance and, finally, a kind of reverence for the terrible beauty of the place he called home.

The Iron Goat was the last spur of the Great Northern Railway, crossing the Cascades at the treacherous Stevens Pass. I found Stevens Pass stunning the first time we drove through, going east at sunny noon. But on the late afternoon return trip, when it was foggy with rain turning to sleet, I could hardly stand the vertigo as we tried to avoid skidding on the slick highway.

Disaster Viewpoint on the Iron Goat Trail marks the spot where, in 1910, an avalanche swept two snowbound passenger trains into the Tye River below, killing nearly 100 people.

Snowshed
Snowshed

To alleviate the dangers of avalanches, the railroad companies eventually built snowsheds, huge retaining walls to protect trains from tumbling snow. My husband and I walked alongside an old snowshed on our hike.

We knew our hike would be cut short because a sign at the trailhead indicated an avalanche had made the trail impassable a half mile in.

Sure enough, just a few feet from where the snowshed ended, we could go no further, thanks to a wall of hard-packed, dirt-encrusted snow.

“All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he’d ever witnessed waking—the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving through it making a great noise but unable to wake this dead world.” – Denis Johnson, Train Dreams

 

View from Spirit Lake trail
View from Spirit Lake Trail

Train Dreams, Denis Johnson, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2011.

Inside an enchanting herban apothecary in Portland

Valorie Grace Hallinan13 Comments
herban enclave in Portland

as we round the midpoint between autumn equinox & winter solstice,
the leaves blaze lighting up the darkening sky
before they dance towards the earth.
the moon waxes full as we bask in the light of the beaver moon, a supermoon.
soak in the luminous glow & energies.

times continue to be be unprecedentedly wild
as the cold sets in. this season of release as the light fades
& the leaves fall leaving a bare lacework of branches.
this liminal season, a threshold.

i am reaching out with an offer of winter comfort.
bolstering against both the winter chill & the heartache from the news cycle.

remember always to lean in to the plant allies and the potency of community.

- Polly Hatfield, herban enclave November newsletter

Every CSA (community supported agriculture) venture is unique, but Polly Hatfield’s home-based, herban apothecary in the heart of Portland, Oregon is SO special. You can think of it as community-supported alchemy as well – read on, and you’ll see what I mean.

I was thrilled to have the chance to meet Polly and her teeming gardens, front yard and back, when I was in Portland at summer’s end.

I’d been on Polly’s mailing list for a few years, delighting in her poetic, strikingly visual seasonal newsletter, and occasionally sampling her offerings or sending them as gifts. Every year when I enroll in artist Suzi Banks Baum’s Advent Dark Journal workshop, a packet of Polly’s homemade bath salts is tucked into the envelope of art supplies Suzi sends us. (You’ll meet Suzi and Advent Dark Journal in a future post.)

Portland neighborhoods can be one delight after another: poetry boxes, little free libraries, sidewalk chalk drawings galore, pocket gardens, and other inventive gifts to be shared with the community. But herban enclave stands out. The moment I turned down Polly’s street, I guessed which home was the one I was looking for. Clearly, this was a neighborhood of gardeners, but one lot in particular burst at the seams with late-summer plantings.

No space there is wasted, and I marveled at how Polly and her partner managed to grow and lovingly handcraft so many offerings on this modestly sized patch of land.

For example, in November, herban enclave’s winter csa care package (available to order until November 21) includes:

  • syrup made from aronia berry, rose, and holy basil
  • nasturtium flower finishing salt (with sichuan peppercorns, smoked salt, and rose)
  • a “winter quiet” tincture of milky oats, ashwaganda root, rose, and wood betony
  • a replenishing tea of nettles, raspberry leaf, oatstraw, and other plant allies
  • a soaking salts blend of eucalyptus, lemon, ginger, ashwaganda elixir, and wild rose flower essence
  • A “breathe deeply” oxymel of nasturtium, anise hyssop, holy basil, and aronia berry
hawthorn berries
nettles

(Photos by Polly Hatfield)

Polly’s conjurings have me heading for the dictionary or to my plant and flower identification app because, quite often, I’ve never even heard of the plants and flowers she cultivates that become her ingredients.

By the way, can you tell from Polly’s newsletter sentiments and herbal conjuring names that she is not just a master gardener, but a published poet, too? (Photo by Laura Glazer)

In addition to a seasonal care package, Polly usually has small batch offerings on hand. These enticements and several others are currently available until November 21:

  • nocino (an Italian liquor made from immature green walnuts)
  • a variety of tinctures, topical balms, and salves
  • an herbal gomasio (look it up!) of jimmy nardello peppers, smoked salt, black sesame seed, and rose
  • a douglas fir elixir
Chinese lantern, Physalis alkekengi

The September afternoon when Polly and I visited, the weather was gorgeous. We sat outside in the sun and I soaked up Polly’s earth-based knowledge as she told me the story of how she and her beloved found their ideal home, planted the extensive gardens, and established such a unique CSA.

Before our meeting, I’d asked Polly if a particular book had been her “bible,” one that had contributed to a vision for her work and way of living. “Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate,” she’d said, and I ordered a used copy.

As I write this, I’m two-thirds of the way through Wendy Johnson’s classic book about gardening and Zen Buddhism (published in 2008), still wondering how I got to be my age without encountering this extraordinary title. I’m a middling, on-again, off-again gardener with grander ideas than I know how to execute. I’m an insight meditation student and teacher as well (and I admire the Zen school of thought, too.) So Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate speaks to me on many levels. Turn to any page and you’re likely to find a nugget of wisdom. You’ll never plumb all of its depths.

Author Wendy Johnson is one of the first influential, ground-breaking California organic farmers and gardeners who came of age in the 1960s and 70s. Johnson, Alice Waters, Eliot Coleman and others pioneered the farm-to-table movement. She is the founder of the extensive gardens at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center near San Franscisco and a Buddhist meditation teacher.

In Buddhist texts, consciousness is said to be a field, a piece of earth on which every kind of seed is planted. On this field of consciousness are sown the seeds of hope and suffering, the kernel of happiness and sorrow, anger and joy. The quality of our life depends entirely on which seeds we garden and nourish in our consciousness.

Growing a garden, like cultivating the wide field of consciousness, is original work. Each time we plant a garden we are returning to origin, to the source of every garden ever grown. The word “origin” derives from the Latin verb oriri, to rise, as the sun and moon rise in a cyclical pattern in the day and night sky. Originality has a still older meaning described by the upwelling of deep springwater through stony ground. Growing a garden depends on this double force of originality that is both rhythmic and permeating. – Wendy Johnson, Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate

I’ve learned as a meditator that we can deliberately and lovingly set an intention for our days. We can do the work of our intentions in a way that gives meaning and shape to our lives. I think that master gardener/herbalist Polly Hatfield and her partner are doing this every day at herban enclave. I love how the work of gardening and a way of life inevitably become woven together.

I think about other home gardens we enjoy seeing in another part of Portland when we visit extended family. They have a gorgeous new garden, and another more vintage garden that is a vital part of the Montessori school they founded, where very young folks spend lots of time playing, learning, and enjoying nature’s riches.

Portland is a city of gardens and garden lovers. Here is one of two home gardens created by my niece, sister-in-law and family. (This is the new garden.)

The Montessori garden, where children spend time every day.

As I write this post at my desk, the wind is kicking up, I hear the patter of raindrops, and I’ll need to close my studio window soon. After a balmy Indian summer, the temperature here in North Carolina is expected to drop twenty degrees. We’re entering the cold, dark time, when Polly’s makings (even simply reading about them) can give us warmth and comfort.

And with that, I will let Miss Polly have the honor of signing off:

may you allow yourself to rest.
to sink into a season of dormancy.
& to tend your heart well.

with love & full moon blessings galore,
heal // whole // holy
warmly & always with love, polly

Here is a link to Polly’s newsletter, with ordering information (order by Nov. 21, 2025).

https://mailchi.mp/b57eef719645/rose-magic-summer-spell-solstice-love-12930906?e=b8a80062f5

You can find Polly Hatfield on Instagram, and sign up for her seasonal newsletter on her linktree site:

https://www.instagram.com/achilleaswooning/

linktr.ee/Miss_Polly

The making of a first novel, When Things Go Missing

Valorie Grace Hallinan9 Comments

One of my favorite writers and bloggers, Deborah J. Brasket, will publish her first novel, When Things Go Missing, in just a few days! It’s a pleasure to participate in Deborah’s Book Blog Tour along with nine other bloggers. Please enjoy Deborah’s guest post below, and be sure to scroll to the end to find links to the other posts.

I hope you’ll leave comments here and on the other book blogger sites for a chance to win a free E-book with extra chapters of the novel! Here also is a link to my review of When Things Go Missing.

Here is what Deborah has to say about an important phase in the writing of her novel:

I thought I’d share something that I wrote six years ago about When Things Go Missing when it was still a novel-in-progress. At that time the working title of my novel was From the Far Ends of the Earth, and it was in the hands of an agent who was submitting it to publishers. This post shows how long and messy the road to publication can be and the choices writers must make along the way

Endings and Beginnings, A Writer’s Life

Well, I just finished rewriting the ending of my novel as requested by a publisher. We will see what they think.

Either way, I believe this new ending is stronger–-still hopeful, but less certain. More in keeping with the way things are for most of us when things we love go missing, or when struggling with our own demons and addictions.

I’ve decided something else too. Quite a few publishers wanted to see more of the missing mother in my story, yet I wasn’t willing to do that. It would have unraveled the very premise of my novel, which was, how do we cope when the center holding everything together falls apart? When the person upon which we most depend disappears?

I wanted the mother to be part of the puzzle, not a presence herself, but that “absent” presence we feel, even yearn for, but cannot quite pin down, and never really know for certain.

Do any of us ever, really, know our mothers? Don’t we only know them through our own often faulty and incomplete perceptions of them? What they’ve allowed us to see, or what we choose to believe? All knowledge is partial and open to revision. We may know the facts that lay before us. But do facts a person make?

Yet even while I’ve resisted the call to add the mother’s perspective to this novel, I can understand how a reader might want more of her, to hear about her journey as she travels away from her family and through South America. What does she learn as she discovers the world through the new lens of her photography? Does it lend insight into her past? Into herself as a mother and wife and now an artist? How does it shape her anew?  Where does it take her?

So I’m considering a “sequel” to From the Far Ends of the Earth, if we can call it that, since it will cover the same time-space as the first novel.

I think it might be fun to give the mother her own voice and space, to see what shaped her past and how her journey shapes her future.

It’s the thing I love most about writing, discovering what I never knew I knew before I began to write it, as if the words themselves are drawn from some inner well of insight or vision I never knew I had.

“We create ourselves out of our innermost intuitions,” so writes a sage.

I believe that. And I also believe our characters are created in much of the same way. I wonder if we all contain multiple characters within us that make themselves known to us through our writing? Or are we just writing our larger selves?

Perhaps all the selves of all the people we’ve come to know, to experience, in this wider world, once known, become part of us, at least partially?

I believe there is a collective consciousness that we tap into from time to time, and writers, perhaps, most of all.

Sometimes I don’t know where I end and another begins.

My son says I have boundary issues. No doubt he’s right.

When Things Go Missing BOOK BLOG TOUR

Below are the bloggers, authors, and book reviewers participating in this tour promoting When Things Go Missing. Participants will either be spotlighting the book, posting reviews, or interviewing the author.

GIVEAWAY

Please bookmark this and join us on the tour! Those who leave the most likes and comments on the participating sites will have a chance to win a free E-book PLUS extra chapters of the novel (which the author reluctantly had to cut.)

BOOK BLOG PARTICIPANTS

• Sep. 15 – Sally Cronin, Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – SPOTLIGHT

• Sep. 16 – Valorie Hallinan, Books Can Save a Life – INTERVIEW / GUEST POST

• Sep. 18 – Laura Bruno Lilly, Classical Guitarist/Composer – BOOK REVIEW

• Sept. 20 – Margaret Moon, Book Chat – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

• Sept. 21 – Luanne Castle, Poet/Author – BOOK REVIEW

• Sep. 23 – Dr. Vicki Atkinson, Therapist/Author – BOOK REVIEW

• Sep. 24 – Jacqui Murray, Author, Book Reviewer – BOOK REVIEW

• Sep. 25 – Liz Gauffreau, Poet/Author – SPOTLIGHT

• Sep. 26 – Wynne Leon, The Heart of the Matter Podcast – INTERVIEW

• Sep. 27 – Liz Dexter – Editor, Book Reviewer – BOOK REVIEW

When Things Go Missing will be published by Sea Stone Press September 22, 2025.

PRE-ORDER NOW

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When Things Go Missing

Valorie Grace Hallinan13 Comments

“To all families who fall apart and struggle to find their way home again.” – Deborah J. Brasket

What happens when a mother leaves her family?

Shopping list and coupons in hand, fifty-something Fran heads to the grocery store. But instead of shopping, she keeps driving – all the way to the California border, into Mexico, and beyond.

It is 1997. Fran will not be coming home anytime soon.

With deep pleasure, I bring Books Can Save a Life out of retirement to tell you about Deborah J. Brasket’s debut novel, When Things Go Missing. 

But first, let me say that I have been following Deborah’s blog, Writing on the Edge of the Wild, for many years on WordPress. (She now has a Substack version as well.) I have always found her insights about art, literature, truth, beauty, and the human dilemma to be evocative and profound. Truly, her blog has always stood apart from the rest. So it was with great anticipation that I powered up my Kindle and let Deborah’s story carry me away. 

We witness Fran’s confused, angry, and bereft family as they begin to navigate life on their own, on ground that has shifted dramatically. The family Fran leaves behind, like so many families, was already fractured – I would even say traumatized. Where do they go from here, when it feels like the end of life as they’ve known it?

Kay, an aspiring archeologist, receives periodic voice mails from her mother:

“She’s in mourning, she tells herself, mourning a mother she thought she knew who she now realizes she may never have truly known: A mother who always was the still center of comfort she could turn to in times like these, who is there no more. A mother who held her dysfunctional family together, a family she now fears will fall apart. The grief isn’t only about losing her mother but losing everything her mother represented: family, home, security, unconditional love. It’s like her mother’s absence blew a hole through the center of her universe, and everything is flying apart, including Kay. There’s nothing left to hold onto.”

To her son Cal, a heroin addict, Kay mails her mysterious photographs from various South American locations. As the mother of two adult sons, I was haunted by this passage, as I considered what it must have taken for Fran to let go of her son:

“…he gets sideswiped by this opposing flood of thoughts that gushes through his mind like his mother’s conscience. That’s how he sees it too – not his conscience but some uncomfortable and undesirable feeling that drifts in from his mother’s looks and sighs and follows him around like a fucking rain cloud. Hell, if she isn’t still doing it, even now when she’s disappeared.

He clears out a space on the bathroom mirror so he can look at himself, the image blurry in the wetness, surreal, with the steam all around, his face ringed by a bright halo of light. He thinks if he stares at this face ringed with light long enough, hard enough, deep enough, he might catch a glimmer of who the hell he really is or was supposed to be in another lifetime. Whatever it was, he knows it was good. Whatever could have been, whatever he blew away, it was all unbelievably good.”

Walter, Fran’s husband, a taciturn, sometimes volatile, father, gets Fran’s credit card bills: 

“He’s been taking care of Frannie since she graduated from high school and he got home from Vietnam….He never minded that she didn’t work. Why should she: He earned enough on his own…

He’s never tried to stop her before from doing anything she wanted. He just has to keep letting the rope out more, giving her as much lead as she needs, and then, when she’s ready, she’ll find her way home again. It’s what he tells himself, what he needs to believe to get through the day.”

We get a sense of the kind of wife and mother Fran was and is, as Kay, Cal, and Walter at first simply react to Fran’s abandonment. As each of them barely manages to keep going – largely on their own and isolated from one another – they begin to separate from the mother and wife bonds. They begin to individuate. We are witness to a trio of heroic journeys that unfolds in surprising and unexpected directions. 

When Things Go Missing will stay with you long after you’ve read the final page. To me, this is the mark of a powerful and authentic story, one that is so true for America and for our time. You may find yourself reflecting on your own life path, the choices you’ve made, and the choices that await you.  

What are our responsibilities as mothers, parents, and partners? 

Is there such a thing as the perfect mother? 

Are there limits to the bonds of love and family? How do these relationships change over time? Are they meant to be forever?

What are our responsibilities to our own self-actualization? When do we sacrifice our own desires and aspirations for the good of our families and communities?

How do we come to find our chosen families? Can they ever replace our families of origin? Is it possible to achieve a happy blend of the two?

As a longtime reader of Deborah Brasket’s work, I trust her wisdom and relish the grace and richness of her writing. When Things Go Missing is a beautiful unfolding – a tender, loving portrait of a family contending with grief, loss, and regret, while fully embracing all the joy that life can hold. 

I will close with the epigraph that opens When Things Go Missing: 

“I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” – Jeremiah 31:3

When Things Go Missing, an excellent book club choice, includes discussion questions. Publication date: September, 2025, Sea Stone Press.

When Things Go Missing is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes & Noble.

Cabin 135: A Memoir of Alaska

Valorie Grace Hallinan17 Comments

TIME

“During the Great Depression, the federal government created new agricultural settlements in a number of states, including Alaska. Farmers who had run out of other options applied for the chance to start over in one of these government-sponsored colonies. In 1935, over two hundred families were accepted for the Matanuska Colony.”

***

“She might as well have said, you know you’re going to make an offer. How can you not? A unique house. Acreage for your horse. Exquisite views. A ready-made vegetable garden. A separate plot for potatoes and a raspberry patch in a swale north of the house. Chuck and I glanced at each other with a look that said ‘this is it.’ We didn’t consider there might have been reasons that the place hadn’t sold during a year on the market…

In May 1983 we moved into the house that had been built forty-eight years earlier for the Matanuska Colony. Chuck was returning to the community where he’d grown up. I was yet another person in a long procession of migrants to Alaska.” – Katie Eberhart, Cabin 135: A Memoir of Alaska

Annie Dillard advises writers to “give voice to your own astonishment.” Katie Eberhart does just that in her memoir of Alaska, Cabin 135.

When we moved to Bend, Oregon, I wanted to connect with other writers. I came across Katie Eberhart’s website, and I realized she didn’t live far from me. I hesitated, not wanting to invade her privacy, but sent her an email anyway to see if she wanted to meet for coffee. Katie responded graciously and invited me to join her small writer’s group. Lucky for me, because it was an excellent group, and Katie and I became friends.

Katie was in the final stages of revising her memoir and negotiating a publishing contract with the University of Alaska Press. Cabin 135 was published in December, 2020, part of the Alaska Literary Series. It was gratifying to watch Katie find a publishing home with editors who understood her vision and wanted her book to be part of their distinguished series. A few months ago, I listened to Peggy Shumaker, editor of the series, interview Katie at a virtual reading hosted by Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska. Their rich discussion captured the expansive nature of Katie’s story.

I’ve read Katie’s memoir twice and, with a third reading, I’m sure I’ll continue to glean new meanings and insights. This is a book I can’t fully grasp on a first reading; Katie has a singular, uncommon sensibility, and she explores her fascinations in a nontraditional narrative. Instead of a linear story, you will find in Cabin 135 a text divided into thematic sections such as Time, Cabin, Earth, Terrain, Greenhouse, Migration, Sky, Denali, and Archaeology.

 


Cabin 135, within sight of three mountains: Matanuska Peak, Lazy Mountain, and Pioneer Peak.

Done well, as in Katie’s memoir, this type of narrative has momentum and captures the cumulative, unsentimental emotional power of a life thoughtfully lived. I suppose my reaction is partly personal: Katie and I are about the same age, we raised two sons at about the same time, we have in our histories relationships with older, complicated, quirky houses, and we value nature and place – although for Katie, these passions arose earlier in life, and have been more intentionally explored.

In Cabin 135, you won’t see much of Katie’s husband or sons and their daily lives. But her family is there in the background; I heard the echo of little pajama’d feet bounding down the cabin’s stairs, which reminded me of domestic scenes with our own boys. 

Instead of the dramas of family life, Katie focuses on time, history, imagination, geography and memory – on what we remember and why we remember it. Her story is centered largely on the parcel of Alaska frontier she called home for thirty years, and on her travels, as well. An idea I’ve encountered often in my recent study of eco-psychology is that we are moved by a place – its landscape, flora, and fauna – because it mirrors the landscape of our souls. Katie captures something of this reciprocity in her memoir.

I’m intrigued with Katie’s writing process and how much can be communicated by juxtaposing seemingly disparate ideas. Her narrative pulls me along: where will she go next, I wonder, and what connections will she make? I think, as a reader, if you are receptive to this kind of reading adventure, you will quickly become comfortable and fully committed to going along for the ride. 


The fantastic literary map of Alaska, by Alaska-based artist and graphic designer Ruth Hulbert, and published by Fireside Books in Palmer. Can you find Katie’s memoir? I see a number of other books I’ve loved, or hope to read in the future. Ruth also designed the memoir cover.

 

In the memoir’s epilogue, Katie writes about her process:

“I write interactively, one revision after another. Each version exists, however briefly, as a quasi-meditation…

Writing provided a framework to explore place as both a literary construct and abstraction….The overlap between multitudinous narratives plus motivations, lucky breaks, and weird confluences proved fascinating, but the stories in this book represent only one possible route across a dimensional terrain that’s spatial, biological, societal, temporal, and laced with ideas – and where a small log-built house occupies a certain plot of land. As is the case with any memoir, much has been left out – omitted, ignored, or forgotten.”

A couple of ideas I want to highlight here: that each draft is a kind of quasi-meditation. I have never thought of the writing process in this way, but Katie’s insight helps me better appreciate the richness of our quirky, individual writing paths; our creative instincts, given free reign, possess a kind of logic and aesthetic sense that may surprise us.

And, secondly, across your own life span, which dramas, scenes, and moments stand out? We choose from an infinite number of moments to tell our stories. And yet we each have within us a multitude of stories.

TIME

“I wonder about the future of Cabin 135 and its surroundings. I imagine the house and the well. Or perhaps the town will overtake the house, and there will be city water, not a well. In a hundred years, the raspberry patch will be something else. Or the raspberry patch will still be a raspberry patch, but the raspberries will be different. I hope the startling flavor of the raspberries never changes.

Each summer, no matter where I am, when I bite into the first raspberry, memories flood my mind of city gardens and country gardens – my mother’s garden, my grandfather’s, and mine, but also generations of gardens. Indeed, even centuries of gardens. Gardens that no one remembers, well-tended or gone wild, and that hint at what comes next.”


Ruth Hulbert’s custom-made map of Cabin 135 territory.