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Crescent Dragonwagon

the deer’s ears: Mose, me, misery & moments

By Crescent Dragonwagon 2 Comments

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Today, coming down to the hill towards the pond, beginning my morning walk, two animals — one large, one small — standing in the middle of the gravel road. I caught my breath, stood stock-still, blinked and waited, blinking a few times to clear my not-so-good vision so I could identify them. Ah. A white-tailed deer, and – what was… Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon Tagged With: aging, aging parents, appreciation, Arkansas, Bounding, cat, cats, change, Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent dragonwagon, David Koff, death, deer, eldercare, eldercare, environmentalism, Eureka Springs, ferns, grief & grieving, home, love, Mose Allison, Mose Allison, mother, mothers, natural balance, natural predators, natural world, photography, poetry, Traca Savadago, Vermont, walking, walking, walks, woods, writer, writers, writing, writing

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

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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

creative discontent: lasting father-wit, & a writer/innkeeper’s ex-files

By Crescent Dragonwagon 10 Comments

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I used to be an innkeeper. I used to be a daughter with a living father. I am neither of these things now. Yet both reside within me. Both come into my present life at unexpected times. They did today, a moist, misty day, one in which I felt slightly out-of-sorts. Perhaps this very out-of-sortness is what brought to the… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Fearless Writing, Maurice Zolotow, self-understanding, personal growth, Writing Courses Tagged With: Ann-Margret, appreciation, cornbread, David Koff, death, Eureka Springs, Film, Food and Drink, gardening, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, Houdini, John Wayne, love, Ned Shank, Ricky Jay, Rumi, Steve Zolotow, T.S. Eliot, writer's memory, writers, 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

Part 1: love / dead cat

By Crescent Dragonwagon 10 Comments

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I sometimes tell my writing students “Start out with a clear purpose, but be willing for that to change in the course of writing. ” Well, case in point. In this post, sparked by an e e cummings quote, I set out to explore the idea of how one becomes lovable… and wound up writing, mostly, about a dead cat…. Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Fearless Writing, self-understanding, personal growth, Writing Courses Tagged With: appreciation, cats, change, David Koff, death, death of a pet, e e cummings, Eureka Springs, friendship, gentleness, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, home, love, Momaday, narrative, Ned Shank, writer's memory, writers, writing

several big “O”s (including, but not limited to, October and Obama)

By Crescent Dragonwagon 11 Comments

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It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. It is October in Vermont. It is an election year (and what an election). It is the month of the year that was Ned’s last full month on earth. The best: the transition of the leaves from verdant to plush flame, fuchsia, gold, ochre, orange, salmon, a hundred… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, aging parents, compassion towards self and others, David Koff, death, eldercare, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, love, natural world, Ned Shank, oyster mushrooms, puffballs, poetry, sexuality, Vermont, writing, Yeats

PART TWO: the political becomes personal (for me)

By Crescent Dragonwagon 8 Comments

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Well-orchestrated? That’s the word with which I concluded Part One of this series: the word NPR used to sum up, in a manner I considered cursory and condescending, the June 27 Clinton/Obama rally in Unity, New Hampshire, which David, my partner, and I attended. My take on that event is continued here: up close, very personal. To see and hear… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: appreciation, compassion towards self and others, David Koff, David Schnarch, death, environmentalism, Eureka Springs, friendship, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, love, Ned Shank, peace

identity gumbo

By Crescent Dragonwagon 11 Comments

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What does it matter if we know, or tell, our personal stories? I wrote, on June 9 post, about buying a lungwort plant at the annual plant sale for the Putney Library, and the extra pleasure that small bit of history gives me each year when it blooms. I love getting plants in such ways, rather than from a nursery…. Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: Arkansas, death, Eureka Springs, gardening, gradual transformation, narrative, natural world, poetry, writers, writing

narrative flowers, garden blues (Houseman, Hopkins, on harmony)

By Crescent Dragonwagon 3 Comments

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The moment: Saturday afternoon, May 7, 2008, 2:11 pm. The place: a house on the top of a hill, not far from the small town of Saxtons River, Vermont. The view: a southeast facing window in which a vividly green meadow, exclamation-marked with a stand of tall silver-white birches, is framed first by woods, then sinuous curve after curve of… Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: A.E. Houseman, appreciation, Arkansas, Brattleboro, compassion towards self and others, David Koff, death, eating locally, environmentalism, gardening, Gerard Manley Hopkins, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, poetry, Vermont, writers, writing

Ohhhhhhh-krahoma: eat/be eaten, “write naked” , vegetable chameleons

By Crescent Dragonwagon 2 Comments

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Ohhhhh-krahoma! (Or, the color purple). On Thursday I found actual okra plants, starts, seedlings! (If this doesn’t seem like big news to you , please go back and read the post for May 27). So maybe I will get some honest-to-goodness non "curiosity" okra from my very own garden this year. I’m still going to plant my okra seeds, though,… Read More

Filed Under: self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: Brattleboro, children's book writing, children's books, David Koff, death, eating locally, gardening, grief & grieving, localvore, love, natural world, Ned Shank, poetry, spring, Vermont, 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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Until Just Moistened

Until Just Moistened

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