Last night's workshop

Don and I collaborated on this blog - Don did the work and I'm taking the credit.

Writing Group was, once again, a lot of fun last night. We laughed, cried, laughed some more, heard heartfelt writing and vivid childhood recollections.

We also discussed our Cabin-Fever Evening(I can't remember the subtitle, but it's a good one - Mike?) in February. Nola, Nina, Heather and Mike are going to head up this event. Any other volunteers will be welcome - just contact one of the above for the meeting time etc. (I believe it's 7 pm at Heather's house next Tuesday). It sounds like it will be a hoot!

We are looking forward to the workshop this weekend. We have a whopping 17 registrants - yahoo! See you all (who are attending) Friday at the Alpen at 7 pm.

Now back to last night. We wrote about the messages that we got in our Fortune Cookies. A fun exercise provided by our facilitator, Margaret. Next week's facilitator will be Nina, and our writing assignment is: isolation.

Last week's writing assignment brought forth some very interesting results. Here goes (thanks for the notes, Don):

Susan's characters found a message from God in their butter dish, only to have the family mutt eat it. But a message doesn't need to last, it just needs to reach its destination.

Heather A very heart rending story of messages from the past. Clara had died the year before and her husband Charlie took a walk through memory lane, holding history in his hand with a letter from his deceased wife. A jar was filled with mementos such as apple blossoms and one of Clara's handkerchiefs.

Nora A delightful stanza about a message sent in a variety of formats, by blog, Twitter, face to face, email and texted The bottom line "but you still didn't get the message".

Don A humorous array of answering machine messages to get away from the usual boring trite stuff that we are used to hearing, eg The advantage of call waiting. "Hi I'm probably home right now but I'm just avoiding people I don't want to talk to. Leave me a message. If I don't call back it's you."

Nina wrote about a place of healing. "What good is love when it comes at such a high price? Who am I without you? "Who would you rather love, who would rather love you?' The tempo of fhe writing was very musical with great potential for a new song.

Margaret mused about an email from son Daniel on a travel adventure across the province to Tofino where he learned to surf. He was successful in disputing a parking ticket and the response not only indicated a cancelled fine but empathy for his situation. It was a philosophical exploration with a variety of high and lows, finding room and board for $150 a month in Vancouver and discovering that the forest is a place of healing.

Mike received an email message from a friend in England whose dad had recently passed away at the age of 99, but it was not a cause for grief. He died at home surrounded by family at a grand old age. It stirred many past memories for Mike as a youngster with his earliest memory at two and half years of moving to Warminster during the war years and looking for lodging. This is where they found Molly Dawkins and her husband Bert, an association that along with Beret's daughter Aryda (?) that lasted for more than 60 years.