Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Make an introspective getaway before the holidays -- journal writing weekend Nov 22-24

I'm leading a three-day Spiritual, Creative and Dream Journaling retreat the weekend of November 22-24 at The Christine Center in central Wisconsin. If you or anyone you know might be interested in attending, see more here, click on the latest newsletter and scroll down to page three.

This hands-on journal-writing exploration can be an introspective, inspiring getaway before the holidays for those new to journaling and seasoned journal writers alike. The Christine Center is set near a state forest with lodging in hermitages, each unique, that dot wooded paths. Delicious vegetarian meals are served in the main building where the workshop takes place, along with optional attendance at morning and evening meditations, chakra-focused chanting, wood-fired sauna, more.

Spiritual, Creative and Dream Journaling Retreat
Three-day journal-writing exploration
Friday, Nov. 22- Sunday, November 24
Christine Center, Willard, Wisconsin


Deepen your spirituality, better understand relationships, foster creativity and delve into your nightly dreams with more focus through journal writing. Over the course of this three-day retreat, leader Cynthia Gallaher will help you uncover the journaling method or methods that best suit your personality. You’ll take part in hands-on explorations of journal dialogs, Japanese haibun (journal entries that end in a short poem) and naikan gratitude journal methods, Leonardo Da Vinci-style notebooks, artists’ journals, modern dream journaling techniques and more.

This retreat provides a stimulating and non-judgmental atmosphere for both newer and long-time journal writers. By the end of the retreat, participants can experience more clear direction toward spiritual, creative and emotional renewal through journal writing, and be motivated to develop a regular journal writing practice. Tuition is on a sliding scale basis. Range is from $85-$125, plus meals and lodging.

* Friday night, November 22, 7 p.m.-9 p.m.: Journal writing introduction, overview personality quiz and getting started.
* Saturday morning, November 23, 9 a.m. to noon: Stepping Stones and Dialogues as the basis of modern journaling.
* Saturday afternoon, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.: Japanese techniques, artist and creative journals, and what would Leonardo da Vinci do?
* Saturday evening, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Dream journaling
What do you do when life gives you synchronicities, serendipity, coincidences or confirmations?
* Sunday morning, November 24, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.: Final thoughts for future journaling.

Cynthia will also present a few PowerPoint presentations, provide handouts and display selected books on journal writing.

At the completion of this retreat, participants will be able to:
~ Focus on the type of journal writing to fit his or her personality.
~ Access their own list of numerous, personal journal writing topics and questions.
~ Use journaling methods of Stepping Stones and Dialogues to address personal and creative issues.
~ Understand and use the Japanese methods of haibun and naikan.
~ Create a Leonardo da Vinci-style notebook, artist’s journal or other type of creative journal.
~ Create an active, personal dream journal.
~ Use journaling to explore and understand personal values, issues and memories.

Retreat leader Cynthia Gallaher is a poet, playwright, nonfiction writer and journal writer. She leads journal writing workshops in libraries, schools, centers and spas throughout the Midwest, and teaches an online course on journal writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Thursday, September 19, 2013

What makes a dream journal different from a waking journal?

Just as creative greats and average folk from the past and present have done, you can use dreams to inspire your own poetry, fiction, painting, jewelry making, music, solutions to global issues – or to simply help understand your personal life and others. Some basic questions remain. How can you better remember your dreams, then interpret them and use your dreams as inspiration or as a tool of insight? One of the best ways to better experience, savor and reflect on your dreams is by keeping a dream journal.

If you already maintain a “waking” journal, you might want to start a separate “dream journal.” Why separate? According to the experts, it’s best to record dreams in a different manner than you would your waking hours in a journal.

In daytime journals, what stands out is the exploration of the “why” of things, centering on what you’ve done or could do, what you feel or hope to feel, and how you respond to others. In your daytime journal, you need to build on the reasons you act and feel the way you do.

On the other hand, since dreams are so weird and wiley to begin with, it’s vital to write them down in a factual, journalistic manner rather than begin analyzing them right away. In dream journals, simply capturing “what” you dream should be the goal, before the dream images slip away. In dream journals, you need to deconstruct, not build.

Focusing on the “what” will help you both gather and organize those loose and far-flung dream images that played in front of you the night before. Your dream journal is first a record of the “what,” and also the “where” and “when” of your dreams. Save the “why” for later, as I’ll explain below.

Dreams, on an ever-flexible time frame, can jump from past -- to future -- to present all during one dream. But surprisingly, you are always right there, in the moment. Your dreams may careen across the spectrum. Again, that’s reason to rivet your journal focus to simply recording your meandering path and not trying to explain it. In the midst of an actual dream, you are not looking back on yourself and saying, “Why am I dreaming this?” Instead, you are totally involved as an active participant in your dream, no questions asked.

In a waking journal, you want to break out of the chronological world of seeming step-by-step reality, by add creative asides, ongoing insights, ironies, memories of the past and anticipation of the future. You want to ask yourself questions, to cross-examine yourself to dig deeply for the “why” or “why not” of things.

Such self-analytical questions should arise in regard to your dream journal only if and when you’ve recorded a good 20 dreams or so. Since you’ve kept your dreams together in a separate journal, it’s now easier to go back and skim for recurring symbols laced through your several weeks or months of dream notes.

After you’ve logged this score or so of dreams, go back to circle or underline repeated images. Do you find two or more symbols that seem to stand out in your dreams? Are they trains, children, stairways, dogs or flying? What are they? Are they things or people – or are they emotions or feelings such as nausea, fear, sexual excitement, confusion, thirst?

Then look at the context in which these symbols occurred. Is there a pattern? What do these symbols mean to you personally? What emotions do they evoke? Do they relate to anything going on in your waking life? Do they represent something from the past you still need to deal with? Do they have any implication for the future? What images give you that “a-ha” moment, that spark or nugget that might serve perhaps to launch a new creative work?

Only you can answer these questions as you become more involved in remembering, recording and making use of your dreams. Your emotions can boil over like a heated caldron of water, can split your world in two like an earthquake, can wash away past hurts like repeated waves rendering a shoreline smooth. Your dream images may relate to something that has or can actually happen, or to an emotional or sheerly symbolic condition. Know that by merely starting a dream journal, you automatically give your deeper self a signal to pay more attention to your dreams.

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Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Meeting Dennis Farina when he was officer friendly; future TV and film star

Before Dennis Farina became a popular, noteworthy actor, and while he worked as a Chicago Police officer, he also moonlighted evenings here and there at area teen clubs as a security bouncer.

My best friend Sue and I were regulars at these clubs and venues when we weren't working our various odd jobs. In 1969, in addition to being a high school student, I personally worked a total of 14 different part-time jobs over the course of the year, at places with names such as Bum Steer Restaurant, Rose Grill and Morrie's Clothing.

During our free time, dancing was what it was all about as far as Sue and I were concerned. I toned down the hippie garb a couple of levels when we danced at the rather collegiate Deep End Teen Club in Park Ridge versus romps through the psychedelic Kinetic Playground in Chicago.

One warm spring Wednesday night, Sue and I walked the three miles from our Chicago neighborhood to the Deep End. By the time we arrived, a long line of people fanned outside, waiting along the tall wooden fence surrounding the patio. The regular entry door where you paid your $1 to $5, depending on who was playing that night, was yards ahead of us.

“Hey, Sue, give me a boost,” I said. I wanted to see if we knew anyone already inside hanging out in the patio. As Sue held my feet, I grabbed onto the top of the fence. I pulled myself up, only to come face-to-face with a handsome, full-grown man in a dark uniform.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, slyly. I made a high, little gasp and reeled back, not from being caught snooping, but because he was so gorgeous. With feet now firmly back on the sidewalk, I looked up. He looked down on us over the fence, which was six feet tall itself. He was taller. Eight feet?

“You’re mighty tall,” Sue called up to him. “I’m not short,” he said. Then he paused and looked as us askew. “What do you think? I’m standing on a box.”

“Sure you are,” said Sue. “You’re probably a midget.” A look passed over his face as if he caught himself, annoyed to have let the banter go too far with teenage girls.

“Are you girls trying to sneak in?” he said, in a mock authoritarian tone. “My friend Cindy here only wanted to see who was in there,” Sue said. “What’s the hold-up getting in, anyway?”

“They just opened,” he said. “I guess everyone showed up at once, including you two.”

I examined him with fascinated curiosity. Deep End hired a number of moonlighting police officers like himself from Park Ridge and Chicago to work as bouncers for a few hours each evening. Parents in the area had complained that their children were coming home from Deep End inebriated. It wasn’t because the Deep End served liquor. They did not.

The Deep End had opened to give teenagers something to do and somewhere to go where liquor or drugs weren’t part of the scene. Nevertheless, certain kids entered with hidden flasks of whiskey or marijuana joints in their pockets. Bouncers weren’t as concerned with kids sneaking in as they were with kids handing six-packs of beer or other contraband over the fence to friends already inside.

Sue and I liked to chat up the cop bouncers. Most had both textured, carefree senses of humor and more mature, polished bearings than most of the silly teenage boys our own age. There was Farrell, a wise-cracking Irish-American Park Ridge cop who often played the grump, but had a warm heart. There was Showalter, a former Taftite who had Miss Marquardt as homeroom teacher. When I told him she was still at Taft High and my current homeroom teacher, he said, “She’s still alive? Miss Marquardt must be 100 years old.” I once told Showalter that he looked like Hugh Hefner, the kingpin of the Playboy empire. He said in response, “Oh no! That fag?”

I looked up again at the tall, beautiful man on the other side of the fence. A newbie. “Do you know Farrell or Showalter?” I said. “Am I supposed to?” he said. “What’s your name?” I asked. “Dennis,” he said. “No, your last name. We call all the cops here by their last name,” I said. “Farina,” he said. “Dennis Farina.”

“Isn’t farina just another name for cream of wheat?” said Sue. “What if we call you Cream of Wheat?” The head disappeared from the top of the fence as he got off his box on the other side. “Oh, he’s mad now, Sue,” I said, turning to her. A huge portion of the fence swung open. I never knew that part of the fence held a door-like panel that opened on hinges. Dennis Farina stood there, at his actual height of six-feet, two inches, holding the panel open for us.

“Get in here,” he said. We entered the Deep End patio and he closed the panel. “Are we in trouble?” I asked. “No, I’m just getting sick of listening to you. Go inside and leave me alone to do my job,” he said. “You mean you’re letting us in for free?” I asked.

He then turned his back, pretending as if he didn’t see us. Sue and I ran up the patio stairs into the club and danced the night away doing the "Funky Broadway," the "Boogaloo" and other dances of the era as local bands covered Motown favorites, or groups like the New Colony Six and Blood, Sweat and Tears played original material.

From then on, when Farina was on duty, we stopped to chat once or twice a night. We tried to behave ourselves and not act too silly, but it was hard. At age 16, “Silly” could often be both our middle names.

Farina grew up in the St. Michael Church, Old Town area, with his Italian father and German mother, by heritage. “My area was a poor, Italian neighborhood before the hippies came in and gentrified the place,” he said. “But it was a solid neighborhood. My parents lived there for decades. Now even they can no longer afford the neighborhood anymore.” They were forced to move to a less expensive residential area far west of Old Town. He was upset that what he once called home wasn’t the home he had once known.

By day, Farina served as a rookie cop on the Chicago police force, then worked at Deep End and at some of the area Catholic church teen clubs a few nights a week. When he’d see us at the Catholic venues, he’d just sigh and roll his eyes. “Not you two, again. Can’t I get away from you for one evening?” he’d say.

On one particular three-mile walk back to our neighborhood after Deep End closed, we spied Farina sitting in a corner coffee shop. He was wearing his police hat low on his head, the glow of the restaurant contrasting both the dark night and his chiseled, rugged face.

“He’s like ‘Nighthawks’ by Edward Hopper,” I said. “Remember we saw that painting at the Art Institute, Sue? The people sitting at the restaurant counter in the middle of the night? Farina’s a work of art,” I said.

Sue answered, “I wouldn’t go quite that far."

Another time, right in front of Farina, Sue said, “Cindy’s got a crush on you.” I was embarrassed, but only for a moment. “But I’m old enough to be your father,” Farina said. He was about 12 years older than I, 28 to my 16. “You might be old enough to be my brother, not my father,” I said. Somehow, that didn’t seem to impress Farina.

One night in late spring, Farina was on duty at Deep End as usual. “Some day I’m going to be far away from here and not a cop anymore,” he mused out loud.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What I really want to be is an actor,” he said.

“And I want to run as Senator for the state of Connecticut,” Sue said.

“I just don’t want to be an actor,” he said. “I will be an actor. It’s going to happen.” Sue just laughed him off, but I could tell he was serious. In the midst of his intensity, his pronouncement seemed prophetic, as if it really would come true.

About a week later, Farina came up to Sue and me. “This is it. Tonight’s my last night,” he said.

“What? You’re leaving?” I said.

“I can’t take these places anymore,” he said. “Too much nonsense for what they pay me.”

We both couldn’t blame him and told him we’d miss him. He picked up his paycheck from the owners and took off early. Sue and I watched as he walked away, headed back down the block to his car, back toward Chicago down Touhy Avenue. Sue looked over to me.

I watched Farina and his elegant long legs move almost in slow motion farther and farther away from us. “Somehow, I feel that man might haunt me the rest of my life,” I said. And as it turned out, in a strange, unexpected way, he did. Just when I thought I’d forgotten him, he’d turn up in living color on a billboard, in TV shows such as “Crime Story,” “Law & Order” or “Unsolved Mysteries,” or movies such as “Get Shorty” or “What Happens in Vegas.”

Coincidentally, Farina’s character’s name on “Law & Order” was the same as one of my high school classmates who was also a Deep End regular, Joe Fontana (who coincidentally also became an actor).

Of course, I got over my teenage angst. When I witnessed various celluloid, four-color process and digital images of Farina, I really wasn’t “haunted” in the strict sense, but happy instead to be reminded of him, delighted to see what a success he had made for himself. Farina’s dreams of Hollywood came true, in a realm as far away from the Deep End of things as you might possibly get. #

RIP Dennis Farina -- July 22, 2013

(excerpted from Cynthia Gallaher's memoir-in-progress: "Year of 14 Jobs")
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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Takeaways from the Health Freedom Expo

The Health Freedom Expo is more than a place to get a few healthy hints. It is a radical, grassroots, compelling weekend convention of dedicated, educated experts who care about our world and how we might survive in the midst of fluoridated water, ubiquitous GMO food, dangerous oil pipelines precariously scurrying over the Oglala aquifer, and a nation of Walmart-shopping, diet-pop guzzling, and Whopper-scarfing Americans.

The good news is that American awareness of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the damage they can do to human health has reached a tipping point (our savvy European siblings got wiser a little sooner). We're totally on to Monsanto's slight-of-hand to take over and make a draconian presto-chango to the seed supplies of the world. And at the Health Freedom Expo, speaker after speaker is convinced we're not going to let that happen.

In one place, I was able to listen to actress Daryl Hannah describe the Koch Brothers plan to drag fracked fluids from tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico with no regard for the fate of one of the nation's largest aquifers or the private property of thousands of Americans. If things go well for these conspirators, an area in Canada the size of the state of Florida will be fracked, broken and ruined in the name of sucking the last drop of sticky oil from its sands.

In one place, I was able to get the latest, informed word from Dr. Joseph Mercola, Patch Adams, Non-GMO expert Jeffrey Smith and many others -- dedicated to turning to organic, non-GMO, untainted real food, clean water, supplements and stress-reducing attitudes for health instead of the symptom-masking, pharmacuetical-juggling, and CAT Scan-happy western medicine solutions. For one, it's imperative we remove useless, and harmful, fluoride from our municipal water supplies, which pose a dangerous level of toxicity, especially for babies. Watch the eye-opening, hour-long Fluoridegate movie online for free.

In one place, I was able to get an antioxidant skin reading that had once been featured on the Dr. Oz show, get an analysis by a doctor who recommended a personalized recipe for my own green smoothie with mixture of fresh vegetables, herbs and healthy oils, learn how to analyze health by telltale signs on the tongue, skin and fingernails, and see my husband get tremendous shoulder relief from a five-dollar massage and energy treatment.

Last, but not least, I was able to meet Coast-to-Coast AM's George Noory, who moderated a fabulous panel of six health experts to a standing-room only crowd. See the proof in the photo! (used by permission from friend and photographer Cyndy Spatafore) So looking forward to next year, or whenever the Health Freedom Expo decides to return to Chicago.


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Friday, June 07, 2013

Create Your Own Stay-at-Home Writing Retreat

If you’ve ever been away from home at a writing retreat, you know how rich and valuable those special days can be in helping push your work forward in a vibrant way. At writing retreats such as the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, I was able to write in one day as much as I would in seven if at home under my usual schedule of a day job, commuting, evening family duties and just living my life. Writing retreats, as well, are enriching experiences by just being in another location, surrounded by different cultural and natural resources for you to experience when you aren’t writing.

Staycation vacations are becoming more popular today as gas prices rise, time away from work harder to pin down and the cost of one-the-road food and lodging pricier. Why not instead create a stay-at-home writing retreat in a similar fashion to a staycation. Writer Beth Barany, author of The Writer’s Adventure Guide: 12 Stages to Writing Your Book, brought up these stay-at-home writing retreats in a recent article.

Stay-at-home writing retreats don’t have to be the week-long to month-long endeavors of away-retreats. Each can be comprised of just a couple of vacation days, a long weekend or even one day a week if that’s feasible with your schedule. If you have children, make it a day when they’ll be at school, in daycare or with grandma. Barany makes progress on whatever novel she’s currently writing by going on such localized writing retreats every Friday and Saturday. She works in three, one-hour writing stints over the course of each day. And instead of doing all her writing at home, she often café hops through her neighborhood, writing for an hour, then changing locations. She may go to another café, or perhaps the local library or diner.

Barany’s readers offered some great ideas of their own on other neighborhood locales conducive to writing, such as a patio with a bubbling fountain, a bookstore or an art gallery where you can sit down, even parking your car where you can get an ocean or lakeview, or at least within earshot of surf tickling shore. One reader said she was just getting ready to take a six-hour train ride (her half-day home?) – which she said “sounds like a retreat of sorts to me!” Another suggested preparing a special home-cooked meal at the end of a retreat day, complete with a celebratory glass of wine.

As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy taking hiking, walking or yoga breaks in between writing stints when I’m away on retreats. These same jaunts or stretch times can take place right out your own front door, as well. I also like taking breathers from my writing sessions with mandala breaks. Anyone can create a mandala. You don’t have to be an artist. Find a nearby table where you can spread out your materials. Draw a circle on a piece of paper using a compass, grab a small set of colored pencils, mark the center of the piece with a bold dot, and work up a colorful world of meditative wonder within your circular border. You can create a small, simple mandala in a half-hour – refreshing your mind by using another part of it that’s devoted to visuals and hand-and-eye connections – before you move back to your laptop or notepad for more writing.

Evenings during your stay-at-home retreats are great times to turn off the TV, close down your computer and get some enjoyable reading done – books of poems you’ve meant to read, how-to books on writing, a bestseller to get lost in. Before I hit the hay on retreat, I like to take a gander through a telescope or binoculars at the moon or planets that may be visible on a clear night, sit by a fire, or loll in a music-enhanced bathtub soak I usually don’t take time for. Retreats, whether at home or away, are times to not only nurture your writing, but also nurture yourself.

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Walking and Writing Join Hands Down Inspiration Lane

“Shall we walk as we talk?” is an old stereotyped line from movies to give the actors some action during a dialog. In a similar fashion, but without such cinematic contrivance, you can actually write as you walk. At least in your head. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m a big proponent of taking walks or hikes in between writing sessions. I especially like to do so if away at a writing retreat, when large expanses of my time are indeed spent writing. To clear the head, to change course, to take a fresh perspective on the last few hours spent writing, nothing beats a no-cost walk down a long city street or a circuitous tree-lined path.

Of course, I’m far from the only writer who believes in a good outdoor walk to stir the imagination and calm the intensity of previous indoor concentration. In his book “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work,” editor Mason Currey talks about some of the formulaic habits that writers, artists and composers – as well as philosophers and scientists -- have plied to aid and abet their creativity.

British novelist Charles Dickens, for one, wrote five hours daily from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in complete silence. Afterward, he’d take a three-hour walk, during which he’d take notes – filled with ideas for the next day’s writings. Danish philosopher and poet Kierkegaard garnered many of his notions during his daily walks. Sometimes when he’d return home, bursting with inspiration, he’d stand at his desk quickly jotting down his thoughts, still wearing his hat and gripping his walking stick.

While some authors, such as Gertrude Stein, wrote only for 30 minutes a day (and remember, she wrote very short pieces), most writers that Currey examined found that two to three hours of writing a day was about right. And as far as time of day, Sylvia Plath and Nicholas Baker were or are crack-of-dawn morning writers. George Sand, Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka, on the other hand, liked to work late at night, if not in the middle of the night.

Yet among all creatives, it seems that walking is the most common way to refresh the mind and offer an inspirational break.

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Sunday, May 05, 2013

Try this friend's e-book on aromatherapy

E-books are out there on every topic, but there are few on aromatherapy. Fellow aromatherapy practitioner Andrea Butje, who runs the Aromatherapy Institute, has come out with a new book available on Kindle. Essential Living: Aromatherapy Recipes for Health and Home is required reading for those who want to lift their spirits, beautify the vibration of their homes and enhance their quality of life (see more benefits below).

Aromatherapy is all about the therapeutic use of essential oils—highly aromatic substances that naturally occur in plants.

Essential Living: Aromatherapy Recipes for Health and Home is convenient as an e-book, since you can quickly turn to certain recipes on your tablet and create your own easy-to-make aromatherapy products to use yourself or give as gifts.

Andrea brings the therapeutic use of essential oils to your home in Essential Living: Aromatherapy Recipes for Health and Home. Her easy-to-follow recipes teach beginners and experts alike how to create natural, safe products to replace synthetic chemicals and toxic ingredients found in many store brands. With a modest collection of essential oils and tools from around the kitchen, learn how to create cleaning scrubs, natural air fresheners and healthy body products. Neatly organized by room and purpose, these recipes give readers the power to replace unwanted chemicals with handmade, effective, aromatic products.

This beautiful aromatherapy recipes book offers everything a beginner needs to get started with simple aromatherapy for health and home. The book includes 60 easy recipes to help you create natural, safe and environmentally-friendly products for beauty and skin care, health, travel, emotional wellness and for cleaning and caring for every room in your home.

~ Build your collection. Learn what you need to build a basic essential oils kit for your home – including key essential oils and carriers.
~ Blending basics. Discover and practice basic blending techniques that you can perform in your own kitchen, at your own table.
~ A safe, non-toxic home. Find safe alternatives to toxic supermarket synthetic cleaners. Blend your own disinfectants, deodorizers, antifungals and scrubs for even your toughest cleaning problems.
~ Fresh, healthy skin. Keep your skin beautiful and chemical free, using gentle, safe and natural moisturizers, cleansers, scrubs, perfumes and lotions that you create yourself.
~ A healthier body. Stay healthy using simple, effective and natural preventative measures against common ailments like cold and flu.
~ Safe kids & pets. Blend safe products for your home and family that are free of synthetic chemicals, common allergens and abrasive chemicals.

Find out more about Essential Living: Aromatherapy for Health and Home

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Wednesday, May 01, 2013

An Up-Close & Personal Q&A with Poetry Slam Founder Marc Kelly Smith

Marc Kelly Smith, founder of the original Uptown Poetry Slam in Chicago, recently answered some questions posed by Frugal Poet's Guide to Life. Starting in the summer of 1986, Marc has held the slam every Sunday night at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge on Broadway near Lawrence. The slam concept has since gone international, with slam events held at venues around the world.

Over the years, Marc has graciously invited my husband Carlos Cumpian and me to be featured readers at the venue, most recently last month when I read from my new chapbook "Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices." Marc himself even performed a couple of times at my place of work, making a sensation at our company's lunch-and-learn employee events.

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Life: Before you started the Uptown Poetry Slam at the Green Mill, you used to hold readings at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago. What was the difference between readings at Get Me High and the Green Mill? What do you think was the key reason the Uptown Poetry Slam took off so spectacularly?

Marc Smith: Actually, once the Monday night show at the Get Me High took hold it had some spectacular nights itself. I started the Get Me High show in November 1984 and ran it like the old-style poetry readings for several months and got frustrated by the self-centered behavior of the poets participating. I quit doing it for a couple months in summer and fall of 1985 and then was pestered by Butchie the owner to start it up again in the winter.

When I restarted the Get Me High show in the winter of 1985/86 I did so with a new philosophy that the audience was the most important element of the show and that the poets should (and must) be in service to the audience. No poet was allowed to belabor the audience with self-centered blathering. Poets were allowed to read no more than two or three poems and if those poems sucked the audience was allowed to let them know how bad they were.

It was at this time that I also realized that performance was the key to the successful communication of a poem to an audience in a public setting. The art of performing had been ignored by poets in the later 20th century, indeed, it was a taboo to most poetry circles to dare to perform poems. I knew that there was no sound reasoning behind such a position and encourage (sometimes demanded) that the poet learn how to perform poems rather than just muttering them on stage.

Of course, there were some individuals in Chicago like David Hernandez and Mary Shen Barnidge who had been performing their poems for years. I sought them out and brought them to the Get Me High as featured guests and examples of what was coined “performance poetry.”

I do not claim to be the one who came up with the idea of performing poetry. Poetry as you know began as a performance art long before the human species scratch a written word into a clay slate. What I did do was to focus a new collective attention to the art of performing poetry and to announce to the world that it was as important an ingredient (performing) to effective communication of poetry to a public audience as the writing of the text is.

And despite all the criticism leveled at me from the old guard poetry establishments then and now I think I was right.

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Life: As a poet and worker in Chicago previous to the slam, did you everdream that life as an impresario might take front and center?

Marc Smith: Very few people believe me when I tell them that I’m for the most part a shy person. I learned how to be at ease on stage by struggling with stage fright and the demons of insecurity and low self-esteem. My success as a performance poet and impresario is a testimony to the fact that performing is an art form like any other that can be learned and mastered.

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Life: What role does drama and theater play in your life?

Marc Smith: I love the stage and the theater. I have had roles in a few stage productions and love the ritual nature of rehearsal and performing the same actions and lines over and over through the run of the play. The same, yet totally different every night. And for shy Marc (unlike nightclub performing) I get to disappear backstage after the performance and become almost anonymous to the public who just a few minutes before saw me (and applauded) in the footlights.

Now that I am a little more financially secure (and older) I would love to do more and more theater production. And if I stop being so lazy, maybe I will. ##

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Monday, April 29, 2013

Spiritual, Creative & Dream Journaling Retreat in November 2013

Save the weekend before Thanksgiving and take special time for yourself before the holidays. Head up to beautiful, peaceful central Wisconsin for my Spiritual, Creative and Dream Journaling Retreat at the Christine Center.

Spiritual, Creative and Dream Journaling Retreat
Three-day journal writing exploration
November 22-24, 2013
Christine Center
Facilitator: Cynthia Gallaher

Deepen your spirituality, better understand relationships, foster creativity and delve into your nightly dreams with more focus through journal writing. Over the course of this three-day retreat, leader Cynthia Gallaher will help you uncover the journaling method or methods that best suit your personality. You’ll take part in hands-on explorations of journal dialogs, Japanese haibun (journal entries that end in a short poem) and naikan gratitude journal methods, Leonardo Da Vinci-style notebooks, artists’ journals, modern dream journaling techniques and more.

This retreat provides a stimulating and non-judgmental atmosphere for both newer and long-time journal writers. By the end of the retreat, participants can experience more clear direction toward spiritual, creative and emotional renewal through journal writing, and be motivated to develop a regular journal writing practice. Tuition is on a sliding scale basis. Range is from $85-$125, plus meals and lodging.

Friday night, November 22, 7 p.m.-9 p.m.: Journal writing introduction, overview personality quiz and getting started.
Saturday morning, November 23, 9 a.m. to noon: Stepping Stones and Dialogues as the basis of modern journaling.
Saturday afternoon, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.: Japanese techniques, artist and creative journals, and what would Leonardo da Vinci do?
Saturday evening, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Dream journaling intensive -- plus, what do you do when life gives you synchronicities, serendipity, coincidences or confirmations?
Sunday morning, November 24, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.: Final thoughts for future journaling.

Cynthia will also present a few PowerPoint presentations, provide handouts and display selected books on journal writing.

At the completion of this retreat, participants will be able to:
•Focus on the type of journal writing to fit his or her personality.
•Access their own list of numerous, personal journal writing topics and questions.
•Use journaling methods of Stepping Stones and Dialogues to address personal and creative issues.
•Understand and use the Japanese methods of haibun and naikan.
•Create a Leonardo da Vinci-style notebook, artist’s journal or other type of creative journal.
•Create an active, personal dream journal.
•Use journaling to explore and understand personal values, issues and memories.

The Christine Center is a natural sanctuary for spiritual deepening and global transformation near Willard, Wisconsin. It is situated in a tranquil forest setting with a guest house, small hermitages (cabins) and camping on 125 secluded acres. Besides the workshop programming, there are opportunities to take part in trail hiking, morning and evening guided and silent meditations, vegetarian meals, a wood-fired sauna and more.

Bio:
Retreat leader Cynthia Gallaher is a poet, playwright, nonfiction writer and journal writer. She leads journal writing workshops in libraries, schools, centers and spas throughout the Midwest, and teaches an online course on journal writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.


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Friday, March 29, 2013

Chicago tattoo artist & muralist addresses urban themes

The Taste of Chicago addresses the palates of visitors with delicious foods distinctly Chicago. In turn, what satisfies the hungry eye with the urban visual wonders, themes and issues of Chicago? A good place to start is at the studio of Camilo Cumpián, Chicago-based tattoo artist, muralist, creator of wooden miniatures and paintings of every size.

According to Cumpián, whose tattoo art measures from the smallest original icon placed on a woman’s delicate ankle to full scenes spanning the arms and chest of the burliest male, such work was influenced largely by the traditions of Chicano art from both the Southwest and Midwest. “I’ve made images that are all my own, put my own twists on subject matter and think of my tattoos as ‘new school’ Chicano art,” he said.

Cumpián also reworks and enhances tattoos on clients who have been unhappy or disappointed with ones they’ve received from other tattoo artists. “A number of clients have approached me with tattoos they’ve had done elsewhere that look muddy, out of proportion and without focus. Sometimes I can ‘repair’ them with more defined, dramatic emphasis and color. Other times, I can create something completely new around and through what was there before. I’m pleased that I can help out so many of these clients, who are thrilled with the transformations,” he said.

Born and schooled mainly in Chicago, Cumpián also spent many years out east, and is now back in his hometown, busy not only taking on clients for his tattoo art, but also creating paintings on urban themes with original characters, and three-dimensional wooden miniatures of spray cans, trains and boxcars wrapped with whimsical creatures.

Crayons2Cans is Cumpián’s signature handle and name of the website where you can enjoy slideshows of his tattoos, artwork and wooden miniatures portfolios. “The name Crayons2Cans comes from my life-long journey as an artist, starting as a child using crayons to a teen and then adult exploring wide-ranges of media and mastering skills in acrylics, mural paint, spray cans and ultimately tattoo inks.”

Visit Camilo Cumpián’s Crayons2Cans website to see his work first-hand. Tattoos at his private studio are available by appointment.

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Remembering Chicago poet David Hernandez

When I first saw David Hernandez and Street Sounds perform in the 1970s, I hadn’t yet graduated from college as an undergrad. I had only written a handful of “contemporary” poems in school in addition to some sappy love poems I kept trying to get published in Glamour magazine (at one time, this fashion mag actually published poetry – and fiction!). Up until then, poets such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were pretty much my reading mainstay, though one of my mentor-like girlfriends had previously introduced me to Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Codrescu’s “License to Carry a Gun.”

Nothing had yet really hit me, or hipped me, to the notion that poetry was and could be more out-of-the-box than I’d imagined right here in Chicago until I went to a cultural extravaganza in what was then called the Midland Hotel on West Adams (now “W Chicago City Center”).

Someone or some group had transformed the hotel’s grand ballroom into an almost pitch black atmosphere. Here, they strung together nonexistent rooms or sections that each loosely housed a different genre – a two-sided film-screening room showed the latest in locally crafted short subject movies, a gallery of abstract and naïve and tribal-inspired paintings hung from temporary canvas banners, a bevy of women in multi-colored diaphanous outfits wound through the crowds performing modern dance movements to pan-pipe music, a collection of handcrafted books climbed the staircases, a magnificent array of mobiles suspended from the ceiling, a bar of headphones beckoned you listen to groundbreaking compositions by Chicago musicians. It was like a haunted house, but an enlightening instead of scary one. It was like a carnival, but full of earnest and eccentric art over cheap thrills.

Then, along the center wall, they fired up. The live band with horns and congas slowly drew every eye toward them as their Latino sound pierced the air like a pop-top then wrapped snake-like around the crowd’s previously distracted attention span. Then the guy in the straw fedora and sunglasses stood up. He was short and stocky like the Mayor Daley Sr. then in office. But this particular mayor was on a tropical vacation, complete with Hawaiian shirt and sandals. He had a few things of his own on his mind that he just had to get off his chest. And without reservation, he did, sparring with the air in front of him, shifting the paradigm of the room by the vibrato of his delivery. Each word was like a song, a truth, an invitation to agree with the urging of the easy-handed, smile-striking opinions of this powerful pontificator.

“Just who is that?” I asked my date. And surprisingly, my non-poet, photographer date knew. “That’s David Hernandez and his group Street Sounds,” he whispered to me as David piped on about pigeons and the Sun-Times and waking up. “They’re a poetry band and he’s the most popular poet in Chicago.”

A poetry band? There is such a thing as a poetry band? And before I could even question myself further, I was surrounded by the sights and sounds of these Street Sounds guys and another poem from this Chi-town Brown, this famous poet, this “unofficial poet laureate.” We stood spellbound until their set was through. I have no recollection what happened afterward that night. That night’s memory is frozen in that time and place and performance. My mind’s eye opened several f-stops during the experience. After seeing David Hernandez and Street Sounds that evening, I realized that you could do anything you wanted as a poet in Chicago...just as long as you were good. ##

David Hernandez passed away on February 25, 2013. My sincere condolences go out to his wife Batya, his daughter Matea, and his brother Eliud.
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Saturday, February 02, 2013

Punxsutawney Phil Groundhog Day Poem

Punxsutawney Phil
Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Weather Reporter Extraordinaire

Halfway between the dawn and sunset of winter,
it’s the high noon of the season.
Will old sol wear sunglasses today
and keep his rays of warmth and wisdom to himself,
or take Punxsy Phil by surprise?

Phil ascends with bleary eyes
from watching “Groundhog Day” over or over
again last night in his public library lair,
and looks as puzzled and ruffled haired as Bill Murray
as he pokes his head out of the tree stump, wondering,
“What did I get myself in the middle of?”

He stands on hind legs and raises his paws
you’d think he were Santa Claus the way the cameras flash,
causing artificial shadows of himself
to loom in every direction,
like a dozen enormous cut-outs of T-rex, vexed.

Halfway between Christmas and Easter,
between the solstice and equinox,
between a native ritual and a European tradition,
between a squirrel and a woodchuck,
Phil’s stuck,
here, with all these people.
He keeps looking over the crowd
for Andie MacDowell, but only faces strangers.

Then Phil sees the sun peeking out from behind
a billowy cumulus cloud,
and hears the sudden roar of the crowd,
because everyone finally notices his real shadow
is what’s on the ground,
and think he’s afraid when he looks where they’re looking,
then exits the other way back down the tree stump hole.

But he’s not scared at all,
just plain tired of all the fuss
and from staying up so groundhog, doggone late,
when any other rodent worth his fur
would know to hibernate.
##

~ Cynthia Gallaher
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