Opening Day: Baseball, a rite of spring

By Susan G Parcheta

 (published April 4, 2011 at www.livingstontalk.com)

“For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.” Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (KJV)

Opening day – when the voice of the turtle is heard in the land  — reverberates through the heart of every Michigander who loves the game of baseball.

“Who’s your Tiger!” “Play Ball!” “Talkin’ Baseball!”

No matter how tuned in to the sport we are, or are not, most of us feel the thrill of the first game of Detroit Tiger Baseball season. The Tigers are in our blood; and baseball’s opening day  means that springtime has truly arrived in Michigan. It’s one of those wonderful Great Lakes State traditions.

The Tigers launched the season March 31 in a series of away games against the New York Yankees. Cold northern temperatures greeted them. While losing the first  two games, they managed to pull out a 10 to 7 win in the third, heading off to Baltimore before coming home April 8  to Comerica Park.

Tiger pitcher Max Scherzer

A few days before Opening Day, “For Love of the Game,” — the movie with Kevin Costner — was on TV.  I found myself enjoying it again,  absorbing it in a new way.  We’d just returned from a winter vacation in Florida; and  we’d taken in our first spring training game in Lakeland in early March.

Facebook vacation trepidation

Posted by Susan G. Parcheta

Gone a month on winter vacation, and discovery of discoveries: travelers on the internet highway can get along without me on it just fine. Another discovery? So can I. Well, almost. Get along without the internet, I mean.

"Prairie Flower" (my description of March 13, 2011 mandala by Henry Reed. We'd been exploring the vast terrain of Kissimee Prairie Preserve in Florida that day.

Yes, for my networking friends, it was  long-time-no-Sue-nami.  That’s my Internet nickname, bestowed upon me during Hurricane Katrina — referring to the tsunami effect of my emails, which tend to be long and overwhelming to some recipients. I love that reflection of me, imagining it as a positive wave effect; although I hesitate to mention it when most people are still coming to grips with the devastation  of the tsunami in Japan, which I missed except for brief news headlines, while we were gone.

For me, it was long-time-no-Internet. Because of all the networking I do via emailing and Facebook, plus this blog, it was with some trepidation that I went on vacation, wondering how I could exist internet-poor for four weeks. And how would I catch up once I returned?

Yesterday’s Coffee, Tomorrow’s Muse

Posted by Susan G. Parcheta
 

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” – T.S. Eliot (From the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

Yesterday’s Coffee, as a blog title, has been brewing on the back burner of my mind since last summer, when Maria Stuart of LivingstonTalk.com — the new online community for Michigan’s Livingston County – asked me to blog.  I did, but my blog didn’t have a title; it didn’t really need one at the time. However, that experience got me to wondering. What would I call my blog series, if I wanted to name it?

Last September my husband and I were camping in northern Michigan with his father.  One morning the men got out on the lake early to fish. Of course I’d slept in, so they returned to find only leftover coffee. Our camper has a microwave. We nuked the cold brew before making a new pot; and that’s when my father-in-law suddenly smiled, and came out with some saying about “Yesterday’s Coffee.”

Leonardo and Me: Becoming a Life Change Artist

by Susan G. Parcheta at www.livingstontalk.com

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” ~ Beverly Sills

Get out your paintbrush, prop up the easel, and grab your color palette, sketchbook and pencils. Whether you know it or not, you’re an artist; it’s time to get into the studio — to draw, design, paint your way through your next life challenge.

What? You say you can’t change? Oh, but you must. All of life is change, and the sooner we learn to ride the waves, the smoother the changes become. What? You say you’re too old? You’ve lost everything? You’ve been passed over, your health is failing, the economy has taken its toll on you, you feel totally washed up?

So there you are, on the shore of some strange island. What scenery do you see? You don’t think you can paint your way back to normal? To a new life that pleases you? Think again.

Authors Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan help you navigate questions like these in their new book Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life.

Think like the great artists – DaVinci, Monet, Cézanne, Picasso. With knowledge, effort and diligence you can wield the paintbrush to your life canvas; you can follow their lead, through the essential dimensions of each life transition. You can explore your options in this territory of your creative dilemma, and with the artists’ tools in hand, you have the power to discover what’s meaningful, what works.

Rx at the Box Office: The King's Speech

By Susan Parcheta 
at www.LivingstonTalk.com Feb. 9, 2011

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”  ~ Thucydides

Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter

“Take this movie, and call me in the morning.”

Someday there may be doctors who offer a dose of movies for good health.  Positive, uplifting films, I’m talking about.  Like Oscar-nominated The King’s Speech.

Yes, “take this movie, and call me in the morning.”  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a doctor tell you that?

Well, I’m not a doctor, but I am an advocate of good movies — films with a message, or anything that may be classified as spiritual cinema, i.e. cinema for the soul.

The King’s Speech tops that category for me this year. We finally saw the film; ironically it was when President Barack Obama was to give the State of the Union address. When you think of speeches in that context, a speech — how it’s delivered, what it relates, how it’s received – can be monumental in the grand scheme of history.

The beautiful acting of Colin Firth as Albert, Duke of York (King George VI), Helena Bonham Carter as his wife, and Geoffrey Rush as speech therapist Lionel Logue, kept me glued to my seat. By the time we left the theatre, I was ready to gush over this film, to anyone who’d listen. I certainly saw Oscar mania on the horizon; the film is nominated for 12, including Best Picture.

TUT, TUT: Murder (In Ice), He Wrote

Author Richard Baldwin showcases latest murder mystery at
The Bookman his hometown, Grand Haven, Michigan

By Susan Parcheta (on www.LivingstonTalk.com Jan 21, 2011)

Michigan mystery author Richard Baldwin will be saying, “TUT, TUT” to everyone now.

“Tip-Up-Town, Tip-Up-Town” is the destination location for Michigan lovers of ice fishing.  In this year 2011, The Houghton Lake community celebrates the 61^stanniversary of the popular winter carnival, and Baldwin’s 11^th mystery novel: Murder in Tip-Up-Town: A Cold Case.  

Baldwin, A.K.A. Detective Lou Searing, is in the festival spotlight as Grand Marshall for this year’s TUT Festival, which covers the weekends of Jan.  22-23 and 29-30, with parade at 10am  on Saturday, Jan. 22.

I was mildly surprised to find news of the event plastered all over the Internet — from Frommer’s travel page to the Los Angeles Metro Area News. Somehow I like the L.A. description the best, although mid-Mitt resort might need a bit of explanation to a non-Michigander: “The 61^st anniversary of the landmark winter celebration in the mid-Mitt resort area on the largest inland lake in Michigan.” So, it’s a huge event in Michigan, and Baldwin had better be ready to sign a few autographs.

A resident of Haslett, MI, Baldwin churns out a new mystery novel each year, publishing through his own Buttonwood Press. There you’ll find this synopsis ofMurder in Tip-Up-Town:

“Baldwin’s 11th mystery outing takes you to the outdoorsmen’s paradise of Houghton Lake, Michigan and its famous annual ice-fishing celebration: ‘Tip-Up Town Festival.’  Detective Lou Searing and his assistant, Jack Kelly, are asked to investigate a true “cold case”  — Harry Moody’s mysterious 1985 disappearance during the Festival. Intrigue, interesting characters, and Michigan settings within a profanity- free-tale – all what you’ve come to expect from the pen of Richard Baldwin!!”

Angel Whispers

January 5, 2011

By Susan G. Parcheta

 

Quirky Christmas Angel

Have you ever lost anything that you loved sentimentally, and that you thought you’d never get back, but you did? 

Have you ever loved anyone, and lost them, and they don’t come back, except in spirit?

The first week of January each year I think of Angel Whispers, and I’m reminded of the column I wrote the winter of 2005 for our local paper, Fowlerville News & Views. I was moved by the response to it at the time. I share it again here:

Angel Whispers

Soft as the whisper of angels, the New Year settled in gently this January…unlike last year when my elderly parents were in and out of hospitals…once even at the same time…and my father succumbed to cancer in a valiant fight at year’s end.
He was buried on Jan. 6, Epiphany, a year ago, on a bitter winter day. Fittingly, the cemetery’s name is North Star.

All during December, thoughts of angels whispering tantalized me. It began with a faded and yellowed recipe, clipped from a newspaper long ago, in a box we were going through with my mom.

The recipe title caught my eye as I sifted the box contents: Angel Whispers. Suddenly, I was mesmerized.  Why was it in there? Who cut it out and saved it? And had they ever made them?