My Slideshow

Polyamory

(for Michelle)

I love my partner's golden body,
black hair greying like mine, but
I also feel inside me, butterflies, bees
trapped in a buzz, hum, when I see
long-legged, or curvy women, like young
birds, or deer, waiting for a light, clustered
in giggling groups in a cafe, or smiling
as we pass on many sidewalks, and you
the one with giggle like water running water,
you I remember all the way home, a sweet song
all the way to my toes. 

James Stansberry

WIDOW LESSONS

Take a look at Bridget Clawson's new blog about learning how to be a widow.
IT ROCKS! 

Rings for 3 husbands, twice a widow. Ariele Huff

http://thewidowlessons.blogspot.com/ 

"A Symphony to Love and Marriage"

A Symphony to Love and Marriage

Two hearts in symphonic harmony,

With an intense feeling of affection,

One partner plays the rhythm and the other, melody.

With true heartedness and allegiance to one another,

Evolving in faithfulness and loyalty,

Two hearts in symphonic harmony.

Like a lovely instrumental composition,

Embellished with soft and sweet sounding resonance,

One partner plays the rhythm and the other, melody.

A communion of two souls,

A love evolving in faithfulness,

Two hearts in symphonic harmony.

Playing a melodious tune with compassion,

Their union is a partnership of true love,

One partner keeps the rhythm, and the other, melody.

They harmoniously balance their rhythmic tune,

To the delight of one another, they play on,

Two hearts in symphonic harmony,

One partner keeps the rhythm, and the other, melody.

©2011 Bob Barta

Free eBooks promos

FREE eBooks

Pass these sites along to anyone you want. I look at my eBooks as the legacies I want to leave to family, friends, writing community, and people in general.

Fifty Shades of Graying: Love, Romance, and Sex After Fifty is free 9/23-9/27 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T85X2T4

The Successful Risk Taker is free 9/26-9/30 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y7PT366

 You can download any or all of these to your computer using an app that Amazon offers at the time of "purchasing" the free books. Or you can have them "delivered" to you on Amazon's Cloud Reader and read them right on their website.

Ariele Huff is a writer, editor, and teacher specializing in helping others get their books out as eBooks or publish on demand paperbacks. She is a third generation Seattle-dweller.

Cheap Class--GRAB it!

 Getting What You Want: Winning Letters & Emails 

  

Whether you’re after a promotion, a new account, stronger ties in business, a new job, a better deal, an apology, a refund, or freebies, a few well-placed words can turn the trick. 

Learn the basics of creating persuasive messages 

in this to-the-point class where 

we’ll look at specific student needs as well as general rules.  

9/29-10/27 6-8pm (5 Tuesdays)                                                                           $25.99

SHORELINE CC PLUS 50    16101 Greenwood Ave. North  (rm 1304)       206-533-6706

FYI--This class is available to anyone of any age!   Sign up soon to make sure the class runs. 
                

 

Old website being a bear to update so I'm making a new one. It's with Site Builder and was easy to do. They continuously ask me to purchase the domain, but I'm not motivated for that.
Go check it out at http://arielewriter.myfreesites.net/ 
It's not finished but has events, photos and a fun writing exercise on the About page, plus a couple of poems on the Welcome page.
I also have a new blog about writing. It's a continuation of my Writers Wings newsletter that went online, but I stopped doing in 2006. A blog is easier though. http://writerswingsbyariele.blogspot.com http://writerswingsbyariele.blogspot.com
I'm encouraging people to send written pieces to the blog. Do the exercises. Ask questions, etc. And, yes, if what we do is interesting, I'm going to make it into an eBook (as I did with this blog's contributions, including mine) and then you'll be published (again, perhaps?) and I'll let you know when the eBook is free so that you can tell your friends to read you by downloading on those days. Ah, the writing life. :-D

Ariele

Seasons
People come.
People go.
Blossoms falling,
sometimes poems.
[A haiku dedicated to my good poet friend,
Elmer Tazuma]
Ariele Huff

New Boots

NEW BOOTS

The old cowboy wandered in the store,

Walked past the hats and suits,

Straight to the shoe department,

And was looking at the boots.

They don’t make them like they used to,

They were better in my day,

With hand stitched fancy leather tops,

I heard the old man say,

When my old boots got worn out,

I’d make a trip to town,

It never made no difference,

If I bought black or russet brown.

I’d buy boots, then go out on the town,

Hoping to meet a college girl,

And when I found the one I liked,

I’d give that gal a whirl.

I could do the Texas two step,

My fancy steps were light,

When I took that lady home,

I would always spend the night.

The quality of these new cowboy boots,

Has me close to tears,

I haven’t bought boots that worked,

In over forty years.

 Del Gustafson

Del Gustafson is a cowboy poet from Nooksack, Washington. This poem is also on http://fiftyshadesofgraying.blogspot.com/ --part of the collection for the new Fifty Shades of Graying eBook. Tune in and send your pieces and poems about the joys and woes of Love, Romance, and Sex After Fifty! 

Go to Amazon.com and enter in: Fifty Shades of Graying: Love, Romance, and Sex After Fifty by Ariele M. Huff to see the first anthology of essays and poems. 

KISSES

That don't need to "go anywhere,

 expand softly into the corners of the mouth,
the mind.

Kissing for the joy of kissing
returns the lingering magic and promise
of teenage making out.

Ariele M. Huff

Here comes the eBook, friends and writers! I'm planning to release an Amazon.com Kindle eBook (readable on all computers as well as devices) somewhere in the same time frame as the movie comes out (February 13th).
For those who shared their work for the purpose of being in a book--my initial  purpose in doing the blog was to create a book--the good news is that we now have enough pieces to create a good eBook covering the topic.
HOWEVER, please continue to bring me new things. eBooks can continuously be added to and re-configured. I want your stories, poems, essays, on the issues covered here: Love, Romance, and Sex After Fifty--those Fifty Shades of Graying. We all have different experiences and some different views. Let yours be heard!
Love and thanks from,
Ariele (blog mistress and eBook maven ;-)

Our 27th anniversary

Who loves ya, Baby?

eBooks are my latest fun! Yes, I LOVE them.

They are all only 99 cents and go on FREE promotions once every 90 days. Kitten Love's promo is 1/24 through 1/28. Please download it, loan it to friends, give it good reviews. (If you can't give it a 5-star review, then don't do it! If you have suggestions, please let me know by email ariele@comcast.net or in the blog comments is fine also. Amazon reviews are all about placement on the page and display to as many readers as possible.)

Making Mud Angels: Winning Strategies for Tough Times http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S0JD7M6   Need a fresh start? Help is here. Achieve success when finances, diet, health, or relationships are troubled. Easy Action Plans are gifts from tried and true wisdoms of the ages. Join the fun path to a better life.

Kitten Love: the first journal of rescuing & raising three abandoned kittens & all that implies http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OOHB068

Kitten Love2: Learn from My Mistakes    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PLQNU0K             This is the happy, healing, humorous journey of rescuing three abandoned kittens from a box at the park with over a dozen photos of cute baby cats, plus tips for kitten-saving care & self-preservation during any life changing time.

 

                                                                              

 ROOTS

Ariele M. Huff Published in July 2003

This is an example of love of a parent.

            I have always wanted to see Iowa.  Not because of the cornfields…or the song about it from The Music Man.  Webster City, Iowa was my father’s hometown until he was twelve years old. 

            He wasn’t much of a storyteller, my dad.  My sister and I were never regaled with how it was when he was a kid – not in Iowa or in Washington.  We didn’t hear tales of adventurous doings, big celebrations, or even harsh punishments.  A few facts filtered to us through our aunt and confessions made to my mother in private.  His mother, my paternal grandmother, died when Dad was in high school, and his father was the same kind of tight-lipped guy.

            We had heard some of the family lore: a caravan of Sweazeys had crossed the country all at once, hoping for a better economy and less “dustbowl” conditions.  As they snaked over a mountain pass, a truck had careened into the lead car, killing the parents and a baby, but leaving the backseat daughters injured for life.  This was the kind of story we did hear about my father’s life.

            When my husband and I decided to do a “Midwest trip,” Iowa was immediately on my mind.  I wanted to touch and see the things my father had known during his early years.  I wanted to connect with swimming holes, dusty old school corridors, a malt shop, where the theater had stood, the house he’d lived in.

            I also wanted to track back on the high school annual passed down from his mother…her life and friends.

            When we got to Iowa, the scenery changed.  Even though our journey had taken us through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, South Dakota, and Minnesota, I hadn’t been prepared for how abruptly the landscape changes at the state line.  Suddenly, those green fields – those ubiquitous cornfields – were around us. 

            It was eerily like being transported into that place I’d thought of as being my father’s native soil.  He hadn’t described it, but I’d seen pictures and read stories and seen movies. 

            Eagerly, we sought out spots mentioned in letters and the annual, places that had become part of general family lore.  We were prepared for change and we were prepared for utter failure…it had been sixty years, after all.

            What we hadn’t really been prepared for was the level of success we had.  One old stone building after another yielded up nooks and crannies, class photos, family names engraved, places still recognizable from scrapbook photos.  There were relatives left behind and descendants of friends who remembered my father’s dark curly hair and his older sister’s charming smile.  There were farms my grandfather had helped to build and a store where the family had shopped.

            Almost as meaningful were the era things preserved or left unchanged, at least:   the restaurant with 1920’s crockery in a glass case, the 30’s style dresses decorating a store window, the 35’ jalopy rescued from a field and on display.  Probably, my father and his family hadn’t used any of these…or seen them, but I found myself gazing at them sentimentally as though they had. 

            Then, I realized I wasn’t only looking at these things for myself.  My dad hadn’t been back to Iowa since the move out.  Somehow, I was looking at them for him too.  And then I remembered the poem I’d written right after he died.

HAPPY RETURNS

 

My father died with Iowa

in his eyes.

 

The whole family came West by station wagon

to escape the dust bowl.

 

Webster City was home,

But Seattle was food on the table.

 

He never spoke of Iowa:

At 12, wherever you are is home.

 

But he still twanged on

“sirrup” instead of “syrup,”

And he still remembered hard times.

 

Fifty-six years later,

He peacefully retraced his steps

and died

with Iowa in his eyes.

           

             My father and mother on a date.