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Crescent Dragonwagon

WHY YOU CAN’T “HEAL” WIDOWHOOD GRIEF

WHY YOU CAN’T “HEAL” WIDOWHOOD GRIEF

By Crescent Dragonwagon 35 Comments

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Most of us, before widowhood was thrust upon us, gave little thought to what that state would actually be like.  And when and if we did try to conceive of it, most of us got it wrong. ” … In the version of grief we imagine (before we are widowed),” writes Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking, ”… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Living Tagged With: compassion towards self and others, death, grief & grieving, widowhood, Widowhood Wednesday

INSTEAD OF “HEALING”, GRIEVING TRUTHFULLY

INSTEAD OF “HEALING”, GRIEVING TRUTHFULLY

By Crescent Dragonwagon 1 Comment

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How do we travel through widowhood and grief towards whatever the next phase of our life will be if, as we said last week,  “healing” doesn’t work as a model? And let’s look at a couple of other commonly used phrases that also don’t apply;  “getting over it,” and  “closure.” How can you “get over” the death of someone you… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Living Tagged With: compassion towards self and others, death, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, Vermont, widowhood, Widowhood Wednesday

speaking the unspeakable; accepting the unacceptable

speaking the unspeakable; accepting the unacceptable

By Crescent Dragonwagon 7 Comments

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Why are some saved and some lost? Once a month most months, I make the round-trip drive from Westminster West,Vermont to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York (where I spend a week with my 97-year-old mother, Charlotte Zolotow). Leave Vermont, cross Massachusetts, cross Connecticut, reach New York. And then reverse it. Exit after exit, I read the names of the towns and have… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: appreciation, change, community, compassion towards self and others, Wislawa Syzmborska, writers, writing

uncovering: a yak, a six-year-old, and some witches walk into a post…

By Crescent Dragonwagon 2 Comments

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…that particular morning, that little girl in Atlanta did have a question. A real question, and, as I have said, she asked it with solemnity and gravitas. Her manner made me wonder later if she, literal as all children are, had perhaps been puzzling over it for weeks, as I remember puzzling over why “witches” were in the Pledge of Allegiance. (“And to the Republic, for witches stand…”)
“Do you believe,” that little girl asked me, “that it’s true that you really can’t judge a book by its cover?”

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, Fearless Writing, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer Tagged With: appreciation, artists, Charlotte Zolotow, children's book illustrations, children's book writing, children's books, compassion towards self and others, Crescent dragonwagon, David McPhail, illustration, Jerry Pinkney, Little Brown, writers, writing

elegy for a tomatillo … and Steve Jobs

By Crescent Dragonwagon 6 Comments

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We planned to go for a walk at twilight tonight, David and I, but when we stepped outside the dusk was chillier than we'd anticipated. "I wonder if I should go check the forecast," he said. "Yeah, you should," I said, "because if it's going to get below freezing we probably need to do some harvesting." He went back inside,… Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging parents, beans, blossoms, canning & preserving, compassion towards self and others, Crescent dragonwagon, death, first frost, gardening, gradual transformation, grief, grief & grieving, health, hope, love, narrative, natural world, Ned Shank, potentiality, preserving, resilience, salsa verde, Steve Jobs, story, tomatillos, Vermont, writing

“fixing to” … and a message via indigo bunting

By Crescent Dragonwagon 3 Comments

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The original inventers of twittering have been coming and going from the feeder all day today. Whenever I look out, from the bathroom window upstairs or the french doors in the kitchen downstairs, different visitors are at the cafe. Finches yellow as canaries, finches as reddish-purple as if they’d bathed in grape juice. Sparrows, in tweedy brown-gray-black-white. Black-caped chicadees. Grosbeaks,… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Fearless Writing, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, Writing Courses Tagged With: anxiety, Arkansas, birds, change, compassion towards self and others, cornbread, Crescent dragonwagon, death, Eureka Springs, fear, Fearless Writing, grief, grief & grieving, grieving, hope, indigo bunting, love, natural world, Ned Shank, resilience, spring, Vermont, writer's memory, writers, writing, writing workshops

Part Two, at last! “the rare hare of hope” bounds back in: with guest appearances by Letterman, Aunt Dot, Chou-Chou, Joseph Campbell, Konrad Stanislavski & Sir Francis

By Crescent Dragonwagon Leave a Comment

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I began writing these words on Easter Sunday, as Christians celebrated the triumphant arc of their spiritual year, when Christ rises from death. But resurrection itself belongs to everyone, regardless of belief, or non-belief. Here in much of America, Easter-time coincides with the year's resurrection. The alarm clock set by the spin and wobble of this particular planet on which… Read More

Filed Under: Books, Charlotte Zolotow, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, appreciation, Arkansas, Bounding, bunnies, Bunny, change, change, change of seasons, Charlotte Zolotow, children's book writing, children's books, compassion towards self and others, Crescent dragonwagon, David Koff, death, death, dying, e e cummings, Easter, eldercare, environmentalism, friendship, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, hope, hospice, loss, love, love, natural world, peace, Pixar, rabbit, Religion, spring, spring, Steve Zolotow, Vermont, winter, writer's memory, writers, writing

dreaming, as two decades join: “rare hare of hope,” part one

By Crescent Dragonwagon 5 Comments

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My unconscious, in the dreams it chooses to deliver to me, seems to view my conscious mind as a kindergartner. When it gives me the information that it's decided I need, it does so in very simple terms. Simple, but strange. Like the dream I had two nights ago, just before one decade ended and another began. And, though simple… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: 2010, appreciation, Arkansas, boundin, Bounding, bounding, change, community, compassion towards self and others, Current Affairs, David Koff, death, death, Eureka Springs, Film, films for children, friendship, future, George Bush, gradual transformation, grief, grief & grieving, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, hope, Hope, jackalope, Janus, libraries, love, love, movies, narrative, natural world, Ned Shank, new decade, partisanship, partisanship, Pixar, Pixar, positivity, resilience, Vermont, Vermont, writing

Redecoration, Part One: Aunt Dot contemplates the living room of the future

By Crescent Dragonwagon 6 Comments

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“I suppose you’ll live here one day?” Aunt Dot said. A statement; a question. She gave a quick, birdlike glance at me, then looked away. Waiting, I naturally assumed, for an answer. But how could I answer when I wasn’t sure what the question was? She was sitting, that night, on the wooden chair with the woven seat, near the… Read More

Filed Under: Books, Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, aging parents, appreciation, Arkansas, aunt, cats, change, Charlotte Zolotow, compassion towards self and others, Crescent dragonwagon, death, eldercare, Eureka Springs, Eureka Springs, families, farm, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, home, love, natural world, Ned Shank, redecorating, Strong on Music, Vermont, Vermont, Vermont Country Store, wallpaper, writing

letting an invitation become personally seismic: how I began to grow up

By Crescent Dragonwagon 7 Comments

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Greetings, dear blog-readers! May 1, 2009, is the one-year anniversary of "nothing is wasted on the writer", and I thank you, thank you for your generous responses.  I'm working on an anniversary post: it also happens to be the one-year anniversary of when I stopped using credit cards, as well as the general time of year I begin getting in… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: appreciation, asparagus, change, compassion towards self and others, Eureka Springs, friendship, gardening, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, love, Ned Shank, spring, writing

Part 2: love/ let sleeping cats tell the truth

By Crescent Dragonwagon 14 Comments

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Here in Vermont, there is a moment of exquisiteness in the turning of each year. It only lasts for a few late summer days, days still warm and sun-filled, the outdoors still richly greened with only a few colored leaves, garden still producing. Yet in this charged moment, there's the slightest breath of fall.  These days, close to earthly perfection,… Read More

Filed Under: self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, appreciation, Arkansas, cats, change, compassion towards self and others, David Koff, death, death of a pet, e e cummings, Eureka Springs, friendship, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, home, love, May Sarton, Ned Shank, Vermont, Wislawa Syzmborska, writer's memory, writers, writing

“50 year old shoulder”

By Crescent Dragonwagon 8 Comments

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If I want to eat anything else, I have 15 minutes in which to do it. No solid food after midnight. When I hurt my left shoulder about a decade ago, some now-forgotten person said to me, “Rotator cuff, probably. Rotator cuffs just wear out. You know what they call it in Chinese medicine? ‘Fifty year-old shoulder.’” My friend had… Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, appreciation, compassion towards self and others, cooking, David Koff, getting things done, gradual transformation, health, love, narrative, organization, Surgery, writers, writing

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Read Aloud with Crescent and Mark

NOT A LITTLE MONKEY, by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrted by Michelle Chessaree

"So, the little girl climbed into the big waste-basket and waited." ' Oh no,' said her mother, ' we don't want to throw you away.'"There are many ways to express love and the need for attention. Here, a busy mother and her just-a-bit naughty little girl tease each other affectionately — the little girl making her point without even uttering a word.That's today's story time — read aloud by the author's daughter at Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops, with Mark Graff's "text support" and discussion."Just right for two-to-fours, the humor of this true-to-life story of a mischievous little girl who blocks her mother's attempts to clean house will elicit giggles from the lollipop set." Kirkus Reviews

Posted by Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops on Thursday, June 4, 2020

Read Aloud with Crescent

Read Aloud with Crescent

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

Greek Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon, photograph by Tom McCorkle, Washington Post

March Offering

March Offering

Bean By Bean Cookbooks

#DeepFeast Recipes

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Dinner with Dragonwagon

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A NAPPA Gold Winner
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"... like a warm luminescent blanket at bedtime... softly lulling." -- New York Times


"(With) weary animals, Dragonwagon offers an “alphabet of ways to sleep,” smoothly working in some alliteration..."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)


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read aloud with Crescent Dragonwagon

Until Just Moistened

Until Just Moistened

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