bluecollarartist

Finding Common Ground

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 19:24:31 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

EDITOR’S ARIA

WITH THE ELECTION SEASON UPON US, THE AIR IS FILLED with rancor and divisiveness from both sides. I am old enough to remember the days of moderate Democrats and Republicans who appealed to voters not enamored with the extremes of their party. Now that space is gone. The “blue dog” Democrats have been voted out, and the GOP mods feel they have no party anymore. I say this without judgment, just a (hopefully) bipartisan observation that you can nod to no matter what “side” you are on.

So once again I offer you this issue of TOS. I know art has been and is still used to make political statements, but that isn’t my goal as your humble editor. I aim to be inclusive and offer a space of peace and meditation that is outside the roar of the crowd. Any poet is welcome. Anyone who loves the art and craft of poetry, who loves using language to reveal the human condition and our relationship with God, and to ask questions, will find common ground with fellow TOS poets and readers in these pages.

Speaking of finding common ground, on a hot weekend in September my daughter married the love of her life. She asked me to write a poem for the occasion. I reworked a little bit of Yeats, a little bit of Browning, a little bit of Zill, and some song lyrics to channel the day’s emotions. I not only wanted to create a personal, memorable moment for her and Steve, but a communal moment for the audience.

Writing that poem also reminded me of the glory of inspiration. Words can be frustratingly distant, then suddenly fall into your lap. I was puzzling over an idea while listening to music. A song that my daughter and I love played and it struck me: “That’s IT!”

Such is the power of poetry to capture the moments of our lives, to create meaningful personal and communal spaces. I offer this issue as a retreat. I hope we find those special moments and spaces in words.

Lora Homan Zill, Editor

A Tale Of Woe!

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 19:20:22 GMT

Hackers Doing Their Thing...

EDITOR’S ARIA

THIS TIME, a tale of woe. It begins with a facebook notice: “Did you make this purchase?” NO.

A hacker had added their email to my account and kicked me off. Fifteen hundred friends, gone. I followed every procedure FB offered, codes, update ID, new logins, to no avail. I finally gave up. To add insult to injury, my TOS page was included. The hacker marked it “permanently closed.”

An online pet store notified me that my order was on its way. WHAT ORDER? Another hacker had added their address to my account and used my stored credit card for a purchase. I called and stopped it, and looked up the “new” Reading, PA address. An empty lot.

By that time I was frantic, deleting every stored credit card in every account I could think of. Gone. Gone. Gone. I was up to the wee hours changing bank and retirement account passwords and applying for a new credit card number.

Oh, and did I mention the extortion email? The hackers had my timesing email and an “old” password. I felt a chill until they claimed I watched porn online and had to pay $600 in bitcoin to a bitcoin wallet or they would post the porn online. I turned them in to the FBI.

Not much about creativity and poetry this time. I still haven’t recovered mentally or emotionally. My personal information was stolen in a huge data breach last year, so I had already contacted credit bureaus to stop any fraud. Someone in IT told me, “Wait until hackers use artificial intelligence.”

I hope my story saves someone the anxiety and trauma I experienced. I suggest strong passwords, two factor authentication, and making sure your security question answers aren’t in social media. Update any “old” passwords. It couldn’t happen to me until it did. I admit to using checks more than ever, and they can be altered too…

So if you follow TOS on FB, I may be reopening an account soon. If you get another Friend Request it’s for real. But I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t trust it. Who knows anymore? There has to be a Greek myth or two that describes our relationship with technology. There’s plenty in the Bible that describes it. Technology in the hands of sinners...what could go wrong?

Thanks for listening, and here’s to a fast approaching Spring with all of its God-given promise.

Lora Homan Zill, Editor

Flannery O'Connor and Eclipses

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 17:04:10 GMT

Anticipation for the Solar Eclipse

EDITOR’S ARIA

PROBABLY AROUND THE TIME YOU ARE READING THIS, the solar eclipse of 2024 will have come and gone. The corner of northwest Pennsylvania where I live is in the “path of totality.”

Preparations have been taking place since last year. We are being told to get gas and groceries before April 8. The police are asking locals to limit their travel so first responders can get to any emergency. Interstate highways are expected to be jammed. Schools and businesses are closing. Hotels have been sold out for months. Cell phone service may be limited.

Parties and gatherings are planned all over the region. I am fortunate that I don’t have to drive to see the eclipse. I will sit on my front steps or walk to the lake and probably watch through a homemade pinhole viewer (which really works!)

At the least, this rare, major natural event will be awe inspiring and perhaps a spiritual experience, even for nonbelievers. We will be caught up in the sight of something too big, a phenomenon we can’t control, that will strike us with awe. . . A sight that gives us a glimpse of the wonders and beauty of God. The power and simplicity of the solar eclipse will be refreshing and inspiring, perhaps even a brief respite from the struggle and confusion we experience on earth.

All creation waits to be transformed by the power of God. Because, as Flannery O’Connor believed, “the central Christian mystery” is “for all its horror,” the world has been “found by God to be worth dying for.” ( Mystery and Manners, Sally and Robert Ferguson, editors. See note p. 4)

Feels like I am heading into a much bigger reflection . . . but I must leave that thought for now, and will finish in the Summer 2024 issue. I will “see” you all then!

Lora Homan Zill, Editor

Creating Magic

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 17:00:47 GMT

The Magic Of Grands

EDITOR’S ARIA

WHEN I TEACH WRITING MEMOIR I emphasize how just describing your experience isn’t enough. You have to also include the universal truth your life story illustrates to appeal to the audience. Let’s see how well I practice what I preach.

I have to confess I never “understood” grandchildren. I could appreciate your “grands” and their photos. But I didn’t “get” them. I hoped to have my own but it seemed an event(s) that I would enjoy but wouldn’t really influence my life. WELL.

Now I have two. Olivia is 3 1/2 years old and Micah is on-the-way (October) and I am transformed. Nobody could’ve described the magic. Olivia says “Grandma” and my heart melts. I can’t wait to help with baby Micah, especially since Olivia was born during Covid and my time with her was necessarily restricted.

I am also aware that many of you don’t have children or grandchildren, so my experience, my magic, isn’t helpful. Could I offer this: I wonder if all of us could rediscover a sense of “magic” in our lives. By that I mean experiences that can’t be explained reasonably, that seem transcendent and uniquely inspiring, that have staying power in our imaginations beyond the initial experience.

Maybe for me it’s grandchildren, or kayaking and observing wildlife doing wildlife things that I’ve never seen before. Recently I came upon a merganser and her five babies and she immediately swam several feet away to dive, splash, and flap her wings, making a commotion. Mom Merganser succeeded in diverting my attention. When she realized I wasn’t a threat she rejoined her babies and they swam away. That scene has had staying power in my inner vision. Perhaps there is a poem to be got from it.

Maybe you find magic in other ways. I hope whenever you experience a bit of magic you can also mine its inspiration for a poem. When you do, send it in!

From Tent to Camper

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 16:54:33 GMT

Onward Ho! to the PA Wilds

EDITOR’S ARIA

I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT ME A LITTLE CAMPER . . .

an Aliner hard top “pop up,” 15 feet long and as cute as a button. Bed, (convertible) dinette, storage, counter space. (Oh, and A/C if I pay for an electric site.) A battery runs lights and a fan. This being 2024/25 it has a solar panel plug in to recharge the battery. That’s about it. Pretty stripped down, just the way I wanted. I had to make sure my small SUV could tow it. It does, but I can’t get any heavier.

I have spent the last few summers camping in my Coleman tent. I love that little tent. I would get a site on the water and listen to “lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore” with Yeats. But as the years pass, it is getting harder to get up off the ground without help! So I shopped for campers for a year or so before I settled on this one.

For starters, I plan to hike, explore, birdwatch, bike, and kayak in a central/northcentral Pennsylvania area called the “PA Wilds” that offers deep forests, clear skies, wildlife, rivers and streams (PA has 86,000 miles, second only to Alaska), and state parks. The “PA Wilds” is an outdoor lover’s dream.

An upcoming challenge is backing it into a camping space. I pulled it into my backyard without incident but couldn’t get it into a higher, drier area until my brother visited and backed it in. He tows a large RV, so has promised to help me learn. Plus, I can always check out You Tube for an instructional video.

Buying my kayak opened so many new doors: new friends, new places to visit, new skills to learn. I am looking forward to where this camper will lead and what I will experience. I think God is in this. I think He opens new doors and possibilities to give us new dreams. I think He will use this camper in my life, and perhaps I’ll get some poetry from it as well.

Lora Homan Zill, Editor

Mentorship in Poetry and the Arts

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 21:55:41 GMT

Reflecting on Mentoring and Being Mentored

EDITOR’S ARIA (Published in each issue of Time Of Singing)

To mark TOS’s 50th volume I want to reflect on the relationship I had with former editor Charles A. Waugaman. When I discovered this Conneaut lake pastor was publishing a poetry magazine, I volunteered to help. I wanted to learn more about writing and hanging out with a published author and his journal seemed a good way to do it.

Charles became my mentor, teaching me to read and critique poetry and edit and publish this journal. When he retired he passed it on to me. It seemed a serendipitous circumstance then, this mentorship and inheritance, and seems even more so today.

Many long for mentors in artistic and other fields and so few find them unless it is part of a paid endeavor like teaching, where a veteran is paired with a newbie to act as a sounding board and help them get acclimated to the school culture.

I think mentorship arises from the ground up, from a relationship/friendship with shared interests, where one naturally “takes on” counselling someone who is intuitive enough to receive the knowledge. I paid attention to what Charles tried to teach me, but I don’t know how intuitive I was, not realizing until later the rarity of what I had been blessed with.

My relationship with Charles was a “God thing,” divinely inspired and brought about. To honor him and that relationship, whenever I teach at Christian writing conferences I always end my sessions with reading his best poem, “Revelation.” If you would like to read it, it is on TOS’s website as a sample work.

I hope that we are all open to serendipitous experiences, however they come, and receive them from the hand of God.

Lora Homan Zill, Editor

Parsing Language

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 21:33:20 GMT

Parsing Language

EDITOR’S ARIA (Published in each issue of Time Of Singing)

THE FIRST WRITING CONFERENCE I EVER ATTENDED 25 years ago or so the keynote speaker said, “If you are writing prose, learn to write poetry because it will teach you to choose just the right word.” Of course I said, “AMEN!”

I make it a goal to use poetry to teach prose writing. I use examples like imagery used by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” sound in Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” and sound and images from Christy by Catherine Marshall. I mention Dean Koontz uses blank verse in his novels.

I also use Brian Moon’s exercise from Studying Poetry ( NCTE Chalkface Series, 2001). Moon uses Sylvia Plath’s “Mushrooms.” He deletes a word every few lines and gives three to choose from to fill in the blank. For example, stanza two reads: Our toes, our noses/Take hold on the loam, ___________ the air, with these choices: inhale/acquire/snatch. Students have to consider many attributes: sound, context, imagery, rhythm, and flow. Then I ask “Why” they chose that word and wonderful discussion ensues. At the end I read the original and we see who came the closest to Plath. Getting the “correct” word isn’t important to me, it’s understanding how language works.

Or course, prose writers can’t parse every word in a 40,000 word novel like poets can and should in their work! But I think the more we expose ourselves to language the more intuitive its use becomes. I can often tell if a novelist also writes poetry or at least understands how to use its tools.

I hope you are continuing in your intuitive feel for language.

Wishing you and yours the very best.

Lora Homan Zill, Editor

A Woman Of A Certain Age

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 21:22:38 GMT

A Woman Of A Certain Age

EDITOR’S ARIA

FOR A FEW YEARS NOW I HAVE CONSIDERED MYSELF A “woman of a certain age.” Well, what is that? If you check online you’ll find several definitions. I explain it as “older,” with certain attendant privileges, like speaking one’s mind and expecting people to listen, maybe throwing in some respect too, because one has achieved this …”certain” age. This status also means I am free to make decisions unencumbered by raising children and other earlier responsibilities. The whole world is open to me, as God speaks what He wants in the years I have left.

With this volume marking TOS’s 50th year, I’d say it is a “journal of a certain age” as well. This has influenced my work as your humble editor. It feels like the last few issues have contained some challenging poetry, perhaps more challenging than we are used to. Those are the kind of submissions I’m receiving now. Either the number of submissions has dropped or I am accepting fewer that I used to (or both!) Sometimes I scramble to fill an issue. But like its editor, and like you, my humble readers who grow and change and perhaps have also reached that “certain age,” TOS has to grow and change too.

So besides changes in content, I am also forced to address hikes in postage and printing through increasing subscription rates and levels. (This is the first increase in Sponsor, Patron, and Friend in years.) I worry that I will lose subscribers with any increase but at the same time I have to be honest with costs. I raised the charge for contest entries by $1 each and increased prize amounts. I still think TOS is a bargain for what you get. Hopefully you agree. I appreciate any additional orders, subscriptions, or monies you can slip into your envelope. I know these are challenging times and we are all scrambling. Hopefully TOS enriches your life as much as putting it out enriches mine. My very best to you and yours in the coming year!

Your editor of a “certain” age, Lora Homan Zill

My "Editor's Aria" is published with each issue of Time Of Singing.

Preparing for Authentic Delivery

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 05:00:00 GMT

I thought I'd share something I found utterly fascinating. One of my favorite “old movie” actresses is Olivia de Havilland—she of Gone With the Wind fame, and two time Oscar winner—who is a woman of faith in the Anglican tradition. She lives on, at 103, and has served as a lector (one of the first women to do so) at the American Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris.

The conversation between her and her interviewer, Right Reverend Pierre W. Whalon, centered around why Christians read the Bible in church. I was interested to learn how she would prepare for her Scripture reading for worship. She would print the verses in large type and then mark them up with “underlines, semi-colons, and other diacritical marks.” Ms. de Havilland shared that the punctuation marks help her to “get the right inflection.”

She “wrestles with the text to find its underlying architecture.” “You have to convey the deep meaning, you see, and it has to start with your own faith.” She works to understand what the text means to her and then how to best communicate that to the congregation. “First I always pray.”*

I think the insights for writers/poets and lovers of God’s word are many. Those of us who agonize over where to put a comma or a period (or no punctuation at all!) now have our “why” confirmed. Those of us who engage in public readings of the Scriptures are challenged to devote the time and energy to practicing the language, wrestling with the truths of God’s Word so we can be authentic in their delivery.

I pray you would meet with God and share your discoveries with us through your poetry in 2020. My best to you and your loved ones.

Full Essay on Olivia de Havilland: *”Reading the Bible as a Statement of Faith” by The Rt Revd Pierre W. Whalon, Ph.D. in Anglicans Online: anglicansonline.org/resources/essays/whalon/deHavilland.html 10 February 2012.

Planning with Intention

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 20:20:56 GMT

How do you plan for a new year?

I am shopping for a new planner. Simplicity rules now, with monthly calendars and space for daily “to do” lists. But increasingly I feel like I want to be more intentional in the choices I make in my daily living and setting goals. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of planners, with so many varieties of emphasis.

Monk Manuals seem more spiritually reflective (obviously!). Panda Planners and Full Focus Planners add spaces for goals, habits, and affirmations. I discovered the Bullet Journal which uses simple symbols to distinguish events, tasks, and insights and sort them from “completed” or not. There are lots more. *

I’m looking for ways to focus and not get so distracted. I am organized to a point, but need to improve. Seems counter-intuitive, but I’ve read that creative people function better when they’re organized and operate by a schedule. They don’t wait for the Muse to show up, they show up at their desk and work.

It seems from the Scriptures Jesus was very intentional about how he lived and conducted his ministry. He didn’t have a “planner” as we know it, He was submitted to the Planner.

I think God wants us to live intentionally, too. Do you do your creative work according to a schedule? Why? If you use a planner, I’d be interested in which one you use and why you like it. Thanks for your ideas.

Lora Homan Zill, Editor

*I get no compensation from these mentions.

What's Found in a Translation

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 21:57:04 GMT

The NIV Bible has been my “go to” for study and devotion for 40 years. But I have discovered another translation I also love and heartily recommend to you, my dear readers.

It’s called The VoiceTM (Thomas Nelson, 2008) and describes itself as “A Scripture Project to Rediscover the Story of the Bible.” What makes this translation unique is that it isn’t just a work by Biblical scholars. It is a “collaboration among scholars, pastors, writers, musicians, poets, and other artists.” The heart of the project is to create a version of great artistic value— holistic, beautiful, sensitive and balanced—as “fluid as modern literary works,” while remaining true to the original manuscripts.*

A favorite feature is how the Gospels are formatted like a screenplay. The Voice also renders passages more dramatically, e.g. John 1:1-3: “Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking. The Voice was and is God….His speech shaped the entire cosmos. Immersed in the practice of creating, all things that exist were birthed in Him…” (Italics indicates words not directly from the translation but which may have been obvious to the original audience.*)

voice bubbles

True Confessions, I still prefer the NIV’s magisterial and mysterious Logos (λογος): “In the beginning was the Word….” But The Voice’s dynamic rendering grabs me in a more emotional way and helps me think more creatively about who Jesus is.

If you’re looking for another Bible translation that appeals to the artist and poet in you, give this a try. A NT version is also available. I’d be interested in your reaction.

To Him whom we worship as the Word and the Voice.

Lora Homan Zill, Editor