Mary"s "Maginings and Musings

This poem and the song that follows are about the train that washed off a railroad bridge in Belmont, North Carolina – the result of a catastrophic flood that happened over one hundred years ago – on July 17, 1916. I heard about this devastating flood and the train plunging into the river and thought it might make a good song. So I decided to learn all about it. I nearly went blind reading the 100 year old Charlotte Observers in the Carolina Room at the public library. The bottom right hand corner

An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.

For a number of years, our daughter, Cailin, came up with a daily email treat through the month of December. It was a beautiful, and thoughtful online Advent Calendar. This posting, the last one in the year 2019, was about a cassette tape I’d unearthed. She had recorded many ditties on the tape (which was intended for entertainment on the road) but this particular song is her original work, and about cats, so is a winner. It’s also a little clunky -- a seven year old was doing the engineering after

In 2007 and before, WFAE invited writers in the community to submit opinion essays that, if accepted, the submitter would read on the air. I was very lucky to have had four of those accepted and air. These have since been broomed from the WFAE archives, but luckily my son, Brian, helped me save them on Soundcloud before they disappeared into thin air. This first one, which I call Life’s Toys, was written while I was on a writer’s retreat at Sunset Beach with Maureen Ryan Griffin. She still offers

One of my favorite resources for writing prompts is the Writer’s Digest’s “Your Story” contest. Every other issue, the magazine displays a photo prompt, or sometimes a phrase, and asks for stories based on the prompt, 650 words or less. There is no entry fee, and the deadline is long allowing plenty of time for the seed to germinate, and grow into a fully formed story. This story is based on this Writer’s Digest provided photo of balloons packed into a Volkswagen, coupled with my friend Wendy’s

After my mother, Esther Struble, retired from a career in health care, she took up the hobby of writing. There certainly is some apple and tree stuff going on with this family. The photo you see of her was snapped at a book release party my brother arranged for her in Austin, Texas. I’m sure her holding the big fat book in the picture was their idea of a joke. Her book was only 54 pages long. Because she never was published, beyond this self-printed collection of her stories and poems, I’d like to

This story, entitled Slither, is the first ‘magining I’m recording for this podcast. There’s a reason for that. I wrote it in a class I took with Maureen Ryan Griffin in 2007. It was one of my earliest conjuring. When Ruth Moose, a professor of Creative Writing at UNC Chapel Hill, sponsored a Flash Fiction Contest through the Charlotte Writer’s Club in 2012, I shaped and edited Slither and submitted it. Ruth judged my story to be the first place winner. This contest spurred me to continue dreaming

90 percent of my writing is drivel—this putting pen to paper is the calisthenics I’ve been doing since I discovered the sport about 20 years ago. But here's the thing, I think some of it is really good. If I feel something when I write, isn’t there a chance someone else will too? Frost famously said no tears for the writer, no tears for the reader. But, the truth is no writing has universal appeal. My ‘maginings are stories I’ve conjured up from whole cloth…or from fairy dust. I don’t actually know