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Crescent Dragonwagon

DOES IT GET EASIER? YES. DO YOU GET OVER IT? NO.

DOES IT GET EASIER? YES. DO YOU GET OVER IT? NO.

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I would like to tell you, dear fellow members of the Club No One Wants to Join, especially those younger to widowhood than I am, that it gets easier over time. And I can. For it does. It gets easier over time. I would also, so very much, like not to tell you that you never get over it. But… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Living Tagged With: Crescent dragonwagon, gradual transformation, grief, grief & grieving, love, Ned Shank, widowhood, Widowhood Wednesday

GRIEF’S LOVE-LANGUAGE

GRIEF’S LOVE-LANGUAGE

By Crescent Dragonwagon

That last Thursday in November, I had been at Miller Williams‘ sixth or eighth Survey of Western Poetry class, which I was auditing at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.I’d drive over each Thursday — it was about an hour from Eureka Springs — immerse myself in Miller’s world, do any Fayetteville errands that I might have, and drive home…. Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Living Tagged With: death, Emily Dickinson, grief, Miller Williams, Ned Shank, poetry, poetry and grief, The Bustle in a House, widow

A WIDOW IS A REMINDER: IT COULD HAPPEN TO ME

A WIDOW IS A REMINDER: IT COULD HAPPEN TO ME

By Crescent Dragonwagon

“What’s on your mind this morning?” Facebook asked me cheerily last week. As it does daily, to any user who opens it before noon. That morning happened to be September 10th, 2017. What was on my mind? Quite a bit. It was the day before the 16th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. It was the day before Hurricane Irma was… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Living, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: 9-11, death, Ned Shank, widow, widowhood, Widowhood Wednesday

IT FEELS LIKE INSANITY. BUT IS IT?

IT FEELS LIKE INSANITY. BUT IS IT?

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I call it, “the club no one wants to join.” I look back, seventeen years as I write this since I joined, absolutely against my will… so much against my will that when the local paper, reporting on Ned’s death, referred to me as his widow a few days after his death (a bicycle accident), I actually phoned the editor…. Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday Tagged With: Crescent dragonwagon, grief, Ned Shank, widowhood

This is the way it works: reminder from a turkey buzzard

By Crescent Dragonwagon

This is the way it works. You return to a town where you used to live. You go on a short walk, on a street you have walked many times. You are only stretching your back and legs and getting a few more steps in so your Fitbit will be happy at the end of the day. You are only… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, Writing Courses Tagged With: appreciation, Arkansas, David Koff, Eureka Springs, fitness, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, home, hope, love, Ned Shank, poetry, resilience, Wislawa Syzmborska, writer's memory

Keeping the “dead” in “deadline”

By Crescent Dragonwagon

“He cannot be dead,” said Paul, my father’s editor at Playboy. “It is Friday. I am sitting here looking at a pitch letter he sent me on Monday.” Things you don’t realize will be part of your job description: returning voicemail messages left for your father, who has suddenly died. “Well, Paul,” I said, “Maurice always said he wanted to… Read More

Filed Under: Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, aging parents, appreciation, death, grief & grieving, Ned Shank, resilience, Wislawa Syzmborska, writer's memory, writers, writing

Are you a real writer? The sure way to find out…

By Crescent Dragonwagon

It's 9:24 a.m. I have to leave at 10:00 to drive a deeply depressed friend to her therapy appointment. I am in the middle of writing one of my long, thoughtful, typical essay-type posts, which my friend Ronni Lundy calls "blongs." I left it, and began writing this instead. I have a bowl of Irish oatmeal beside me, cooked with… Read More

Filed Under: Books, Crescent Dragonwagon, Fearless Writing, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: fame, friendship, getting things done, Ned Shank, real writer, write every day, writer, writers, writing

elegy for a tomatillo … and Steve Jobs

By Crescent Dragonwagon

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

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

whimper while you work: life-density, writing, very dark chocolate

By Crescent Dragonwagon

First, let me say how humiliated I am that I haven’t done a new blog post since (OH my GOD, this is ETERNITY in Blogland!) … since last July.  Actually, I did do one. It was, juicily, about older babes who are still sex-positive in their late 50’s and onward, sometimes way onward. I number myself, gladly, among this group,… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer Tagged With: appreciation, Arkansas, bittersweet, Burdick, cats, chocolate, cooking, Crescent dragonwagon, culinary writing, Dairy Hollow House, Double-Density, Double-Density Chocolate-Walnut Torte, Eureka Springs, Food and Drink, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, innkeeping, Ned Shank, peace, practice makes practice, sex after 50, 60. 70, sexuality, writer's memory, writers, writing, writing practice, writing process

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

By Crescent Dragonwagon

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

“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

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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

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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