On Excuses, Excuses (and Sexton's Creek)

Well, I fell a little bit short of my original challenge to discover something new everyday posts because I didn't make it the whole month.  In fact, I only made just over half a month.  I won't list the reasons why here, but let's just say life intervened, as it sometimes does.  And here's a discovery I made (which I already knew, but had to be reinforced for me):  sometimes life must take the driver's seat, even over your writing.  The thing is, though, life doesn't know this, but no matter what is happening, the writing is still in high gear.  Because even though I wasn't able to write those discovery posts everyday, the real-life problems I was having that was keeping me from posting were, in fact, teaching me more and more discoveries every single day.  So I'm thankful for that.  And if I learned one thing during my little exercise in trying to discover something new everyday (and posting it online) it is...well, it's two things:  1.  You can discover something perfectly well without posting it online and 2.  the discovery is all that matters.  It's like that line in one of my favorite books of all time, Fair and Tender Ladies, by Lee Smith:  "It was the writing that signified," the narrator, Ivy Rowe says, after she burns a bundle of letters she has written over the past century.  Well, this time the discoveries signified.  

Now I know I can at least post a new blog every month, and before this exercise I couldn't even do that.  Thanks for listening.  

During this post I did want to share a little piece of writing of mine.  Here's a video of the song "Sexton's Creek," to which I wrote the lyrics and my boon companions Kate Larken and Jason Howard wrote the music.  It's my favorite song that I've written or co-written because, like a good short story, I think it works on lots of different levels. The video was filmed by another boon companion, Denton Loving, at the Highlander Research and Education Center's 77th Anniversary Celebration. It was such an honor to speak there, where people like Rosa Parks learned to do civil disobedience and people like Myles Horton and Don West helped to light the fire of revolution and pride in Appalachia. Oh, and if you've never been to Sexton's Creek, in Clay County, Kentucky, then you've missed a little foretaste of glory.  I hope you like it...