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Crescent Dragonwagon

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

My father, the stripper’s press agent

By Crescent Dragonwagon

After the Los Angeles funeral of my late father, Maurice Zolotow, a well-dressed, chic, trim woman came up to me and extended her hand. She had excellent posture, and her hair — a jet-black that looked neither harsh nor unnatural — was well-styled in a short, flattering, expensive cut. Her age was hard to guess (I figured out later that… Read More

Filed Under: Books, Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, Maurice Zolotow, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, aging parents, celebrity biography, change, fame, grief & grieving, mothers, narrative, sexuality, writer's memory, writers, writing

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

“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

a sound of wings unseen, inadvertent wisdom: a fathering day post

By Crescent Dragonwagon

Walking yesterday, up near Frazier's sugar shack here in Vermont, I heard an animal rustle in the underbrush edging the woods by the gravel road. Though I stood stock-still and watched, I couldn't see what it was. Too large for a chipmunk or a squirrel, smaller by far than a deer, I was left only with the sudden sound of… Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, Maurice Zolotow Tagged With: Aekansas, aging, aging parents, Ann-Margret, appreciation, Arkansas, Audobon Society, birds, Brigitte Bardot, celebrity biography, change, Charlotte Zolotow, Count Basie, Crescent dragonwagon, death, Duke Ellington, environmentalism, Eureka Springs, fame, Father's Day, Film, friendship, great blue heron, great blue heron, Heraclitus, Hollywood, hope, John Wayne, John Wayne, King's River, Los Angeles, love, Marilyn Monroe, Maurice Zolotow, natural world, nature, peace, spruce grouse, Tallulah Bankhead, Ursula Anndress, Vermont, walking, walking, walks, wildlife. writing, writer's memory, writers, 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

By Crescent Dragonwagon

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

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

By Crescent Dragonwagon

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

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

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

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

More Posts from this Category

Dinner with Dragonwagon

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 for children:

A NAPPA Gold Winner
NAPPA


"... 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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