This and That

Well, my time in Laramie is almost done, but I have a few more pictures and things to tell about. Last Friday Jane took a day off work and we finally got that photo of the old Territorial Prison building. It was snowing at the time, and the scene is very wintery.

In fact, it has been cold for the last two weeks. One night Jane started a fire in the fireplace in the family room and I enjoyed warming my toes!

The dogs don’t worry about the cold. They are quite spoiled. Here is the black lab society, Krypto and Baron, lounging on the bed. Touchdown the chocolate lab is too old to jump up there, and little Sparky the border collie mix was off somewhere else.

This week has been busy with getting up some of the Christmas decorations. Jane says she should be done by the weekend if she does a little every day and gets at least a little help from the family. They have two trees - a white one in the front window and a green one in the family room. The white one gets only red and white decorations and lights and looks like a big candy cane. Jane calls the green one the “everything tree” and it gets all sorts of decorations on it. They used to have a real tree until Jane realized that the “cold” she got every Christmas started when the tree went up and ended when they took it down. Hmmm….. So now they have two artificial ones instead. Quantity instead of quality, Jane says, but at least they don’t make her sneeze. The first photo is of Pat and Lee putting up the outside lights - always an adventure. The second photo is Pat and Aaron helping with the white tree. Taliesen the little grey canary, had to be moved to put this up, and he isn’t too sure about his new neighbors, the naughty linnies. They keep eying each other from the safety of their cages. (There are four budgies in a huge cage in the back hall, too. The house is full of chirps.)

We went shopping for my next hostess gift. I ended up with a gen-u-ine silk cowboy scarf from Martindale’s Western Store in downtown Laramie, Wyoming. How about that for something western!?

There is one more picture of me here, posing as a cowgirl. I tried to wear Jane’s good hat, but it was a little too big for me. So it is beside me, and I’m modeling the silk scarf. The little fellowon the other side of me is a friend of Jane’s, Jackie the jackalope. The jackalope is a cross between a long-legged, long-eared Wyoming jack rabbit and a pronghorn antelope, which are all over the place out here. You can see them grazing beside the road every where. Folks here like to fool the greenhorns into thinking there really is such a thing as a jackalope, and they still get a few with it now and then! Taxidermists will put together jackalopes to help with the joke. The only thing typically Wyoming missing from the picture is the bucking horse and cowboy, which is on the license plate, the new Wyoming quarter, and everything from the University. I’ll send a window sticker back to Heather with one on it. The bucking horse is Steamboat, and he was a real rodeo bucking horse who lived around the early 1900’s. He had something wrong with his nose, so when he snorted he sounded like a steamboat whistle. He was quite famous, and dumped quite a few riders! Jane says that tumbleweeds and sagebrush are typically Wyoming too, but she doesn’t want them in the house for pictures. They are both quite prickly!

Cowgirl Pris

The Interview: She Wolf

 Priscilla finally nailed me down and interviewed me. I tried to keep her busy with sightseeing and such, but apparently she was sitting up late at night coming up with questions for me. She was probably keeping my offspring company after I went to bed!  She made me think with some tough questions, but I got even by running on even more than usual with my answers!

1. Share the events that led to the birth of Shewolf. In what way is Shewolf different to you? How does she liberate and guide your creativity? I had originally found Soul Food Café several years ago, one snowy Spring Break when I was surfing the internet because we were literally snowed in. I bookmarked it, and began visiting it periodically. When I had a good job change about a year ago and suddenly had more time and energy to put into creativity, I began hanging around the edges quite a bit more. Now, you have to understand that up until this point most of my writing had been done in my head to amuse myself while I worked at jobs that required more physical labor than brains to accomplish. I was very unsure of letting anyone - even my husband - read anything that I wrote, but the ideas were getting pushier and pushier and starting to demand to be expressed in writing. So I gathered up my courage and sent off an email to inquire about joining Soul Food. Less than a week later, Shewolf was born. (I took the name from my last name and from the image a shewolf has for me - strong.) I was installed at Riversleigh and was setting up my blog and starting to write - actually put things down on the virtual paper of my computer. I made myself write a serial (inspired by a Soul Food prompt about the personality of a door), because I knew I would have to finish it, and would have to write multiple parts, not just dump one story and then run away and hide. Then came the hardest part, the part where I told the community to come and have a look at what I wrote. Shewolf was born.

Shewolf is my bolder part. She isn’t afraid to toss a piece of writing or art out there and say, “Read this! Look at this! I created it, and I think you’ll like it!” She is the confident part of me that has the courage to explore, write, create and then present it to the world. As she has success in doing this, the rest of me is following suit, and slowly Shewolf is being integrated into the rest of me - or perhaps the rest of me is being integrated into Shewolf.

2. How has Soul Food and blogging in particular impacted on your writing? What do you perceive to be the benefits of writing within an artistic community?  

Soul Food has fed me inspiration after inspiration, and some of the exercises have taught me how to look inside myself for the wellspring of ideas that is always there. Blogging has given me a platform upon which to present these ideas. The benefits of writing within an artistic community? Where do I start? The audience is understanding. They, too, give birth to ideas and then hold up their offspring for public scrutiny. I think this makes them a more accepting audience. Then there is the inspiration. Ideas feed off of ideas and inspire new projects. A photo by one can make a story pop into the mind of another. There is support, too, when it is needed, and help overcoming obstacles. Another benefit is learning from one another. Without the tutorial on Corel Painter X that one of our members offered, I’d be nowhere nearly as proficient with digital art.

3. Over a period of time it has become evident that your preferred genre is fantasy for children and adolescents. Tell us about the primary source of your inspiration and what special requirements are crucial if you are to engage your audience.

I’m not really sure quite how I fell into part of this. The genre preference I understand. I have loved fantasy since I first read L. Frank Baum’s Oz books the summer after second grade. I didn’t read a lot of fantasy for a few years - the fantasy I read was mostly fairy tales - but then I found it again in college in the 1970’s, when there was a huge influx of new fantasy on the market. I have found a true love in modern urban fantasy. I also really enjoy mysteries, but I’m not finding these as easy to write.

As far as the age group goes, I suppose there are several influences. For the most part, I don’t intentionally set out to write stories for any particular age group.  I do have a degree in elementary education, and I have raised four children so I know how children act and react to things. I still read a great deal of young adult fantasy, largely because it is fun to read; the ideas are good, and the protagonists are usually people I can root for. I studied folklore quite a bit in college, and I like to think that also influences my work. I have been writing a lot of short stories and I think that the same things that make a short story appealing also make a story appealing for children and adolescents. You need a quick draw into the story and a likeable main character that people can identify with. You need an interesting problem to be resolved. The action needs to move forward at a good pace, and you need to include enough details to keep things interesting. If this results in fiction that is suitable for children and young adults, then so be it. I hope adults will read my work too, because I usually try to write for the broader audience.

As for myself, I see myself as a story teller, a wandering spinner of tales. She Wolf tromps through the countryside in knee-high leather boots, and a blue wool cloak carrying a staff with a carved wolf’s head on the top, stopping to share tales by a hearth fire in the evenings. Oh - and let’s not forget her knitting needles and sock wool poking out of the top of her bag!

4. Everyone wants to feel special! How does blogging help a writer feel appreciated and special? Share a moment when you felt the glow that comes when you know you have ‘nailed it.’  Blogging provides a quick audience. You don’t have to wait through a year of revisions, rewrites and publishing red tape to get your work out there to your audience. The comments people leave are instant dialogue about your work. Even with those readers who don’t leave comments, (and you know who you are) there is the tell-tale sign of blog hits. When I put up something new and check the blog hits the next day, I can see that people have come to read my story and that really makes me feel appreciated. As I watch the overall number of hits grow from month to month, I can see immediately that my readership is growing and that is truly gratifying.

I have felt that happy feeling of “YES! They like it!” quite a few times since I began blogging. With that very first serialized story, I received comments asking for the next installment and that was the just first time I felt that glow. Lately, I have felt the glow when I have received comments that express the wish that more people be able to read what I write. I get a great deal of enjoyment from writing my stories and I want to share them with as many people as possible.

5. Can you tell me what Lemuria actually looks like and where I can find the portal to this mysterious realm? Lemuria is Oz, Wonderland, Middle Earth, Faraway and countless other places all rolled up into one. It is wherever your imagination takes you, whatever worlds populate your heart. It is peaceful and soothing, wild and filled with adventure all at the same time. There is inspiration waiting on the underside of every leaf, beneath every stone and at the top of every tree and all you have to do is open your eyes to see it and open your heart to drink it in. The very air sparkles with ideas. Is it safe? Sometimes. But what is there that is worthwhile in life that is always and forever safe? There is certainly a danger of finding more there than you bargained for and forgetting to come home in time for supper. It is as tame or fierce as you let it be. In addition, Lemuria has a cyber community; there is a group of artists and writers who adventure in this world together via the Soul Food Cafe. They support one another, point out the inspirations glowing under the leaves and stones to each other, and generally help one another create things. Where is the portal to this fabulous place? The portal is inside yourself. Just open up your mind and look deep inside to that place where all the ideas flow from. For me the portal was an arched and carved green door with a great deal of personality of its own. For you it might be a rabbit hole, a worm-hole through space and time, or a hatch on a pirate ship. Everyone’s portal is different. Have fun finding yours. Then open it, jump or climb or crawl through and join us. Lemuria is always waiting.

6. Trace your foot and use your toes and sole to express the footprint you hope to leave.  Ah, Pris, you just like to have us do these things so you can chuckle at us! Now I have a ring of blue permanent marker around the edge of my foot! Lucky for you I got my scanner working again!

 7. I have been admiring your digital artwork and progress with designing your own site Jane. Would you have become a digital artist if you had not worked in a virtual community? What is a wacom? Show me the piece you are most proud of and tell us you learned from the challenge? Given the influences in my household (my husband is a web designer and I have four mostly grown children to convince that I’m technologically savvy) I would probably have gone down that road eventually, but not nearly as soon as I did thanks to working in a digital community. It seems like one thing leads to another. Getting a blog led to wanting to change the look, so I learned to upload a header. Then I began playing with the header images in Photoshop. Then came the wacom tablet. Then I wanted to change my blog design still more, so I began playing with CSS to customize things. It just snowballed. Sometimes I look at where I was last winter, trying to figure out how to get my first post up, and I marvel at how much I’ve learned.

What is a wacom? It is a magic scroll, an amazing device of limitless possibilities. Seriously though, my wacom tablet is my new friend. I was intrigued by the idea of being able to draw with something other than a mouse, which as we all know can be very hard to control. The wacom tablet makes that control possible. It is a digital tablet with a specific writing surface on it, and you use a special stylus, or pen, to draw on it. The marks you make show up on your computer screen in programs such as Photoshop or Corel Painter. Within the program you are using, you can choose to have the marks appear as different media, brush strokes and colors. Once you get used to using it, the wacom can be used to create digital art whose only limitations are the ones you bring to it yourself. The piece I am currently most proud of is my snail shell. I did one version when I first got my tablet. Then, after doing some work with Genece’s tutorial on Corel Painter X, I did another one. The difference between the two, with just a little bit more knowledge and practice, amazed me.

8. Can you help me set up a Facebook account Jane? Enchanteur wants me to create an avatar and find out about the benefits of social networking. She wants you to help put together something for the AdventURE Calendar. Such a slave driver that woman! Why do you think social networking is important for a writer? Is this really something worth doing?  Pris, your Facebook account is set up. There are no links to it yet for your friends, but that can be added. Priscilla Cyberqueen is the name on the account. You also have your very own avatar. Some of the other folks at Soul Food were discussing their avatars, so I decided that one of the cute little animal ones would be nice. I settled on Fluff friends. Choosing the individual animal was hard - there was a dragon which I would probably pick for myself, a wallaby and a baby wallaby which would be nice because you’re from Australia, but when I read the description of the raccoon, named Lecoon, the decision was made. His bio read, “Unlike his humble brethren who forage in trash cans for food, Lecoon is an adventurous friend who forages the world for culture, knowledge, and international cuisine.” I thought this was perfect for you, Priscilla the world traveler and Web 2.0 advocate. I named him Webby. His conversation balloon reads, “Let’s learn Web 2.0.”

I do think that social networking is important for a writer. Before I joined Soul Food, I might have answered that differently, but now, I know how important it is. Having a like-minded audience to share your work and ideas with, to brainstorm with, to support one another’s’ efforts, and to just visit with, can really help the creative process. And let’s face it, we’re in good company by having a group like this; authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were part of a writer’s group in Oxford named the Inklings. If it was good enough for writers of their caliber, then I think it is certainly a good idea! We at Soul Food also have the benefit of living in far different places and communicating in cyberspace - this certainly adds some interest to it all.

I would personally prefer to be a part of a group like Soul Food, but a group set up within Facebook or a similar area would work, too. However you can fit it in, a social network for writers is a good idea as long as your group is a supportive one.

Well, Pris, you really do ask good questions. Thank you for the visit and thanks for the interview and the chance to put in my two cents’ worth - I’m always glad for an opportunity to talk!

Priscilla’s Weekend

Well, we certainly had an eventful weekend around here, and I became even more of a traveler. On Friday, Pat, Jane and I jumped into the car (it was too cold for me to fly) and drove down to Denver. On the way.  we drove through the area that Vi had told me about, Vedauwoo (locals pronounce it vee-duh-voo, don’t know why) and I could see why she had been so impressed with it. The rock formations was incredible, and those were just the ones we could see from the car. Then we drove through another area that might be interesting for some of you. Jane pointed south from the interstate highway and said the the horse books written by Mary O’Hara, My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, and The Green Grass of Wyoming, had been set in that area between Laramie and Cheyenne. It was open, rolling grassland, dusted with snow on that November day.

I had flown over Denver when I was going from Arizona to Wyoming, but we actually visited some of Pat’s family and stayed overnight. It was nice to meet more people, and they gave me a big welcome. On Saturday, we started back for Laramie. The weather wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t really bad until we got about 45 miles from Laramie on highway 287 outside of Ft. Collins, CO. Then we hit fog. Then we hit snow. And by the time we got to the border, it was blowing snow everywhere. I didn’t know that snow could fall horizontally! We crept most of the last 30 miles at 15 miles per hour, looking for the next reflector by the roadside and feeling for the rumble strip on the highway so we knew we were still on the road. Jane and Pat were grumbling that the road should have been closed, and I was just thinking that if it weren’t so cold, my broom would be a good idea. But we made it back fine, just late, and Jane and Pat told me that it wasn’t the first time they come into town like that.

The snow was over in Laramie, and it was beautiful and white. I wanted to make a snowman, but they told me that it was the wrong kind of snow. Apparently, it takes wet snow to make snowmen and snowforts, and this was dry snow, called powder. They told me it’s good for skiing on, though.

 On Sunday we just relaxed, and in the evening, the family lit the first candle on their Advent Wreath. Jane said she likes to wait a week or two before getting out all the Christmas decorations, so for now they just have the Advent Wreath.

Yesterday and today the wind has been blowing, which is very common in Laramie. Most of the snow has either drifted or blown away. Around here, they joke about the snow being blown to Nebraska, which is the next state east and about 60 miles away. We did catch a beautiful sunset this evening, though.

The view to the south -  the funny looking fence on the left of the picture is a snow fence, put up to keep the snow from blowing  and drifting onto the road quite as badly as it might otherwise.

The Denver skyline, unfortunately with its brown cloud of smog showing

Advent Wreath

December sunset in Laramie 

Thursday in Laramie

Well, it was another bitterly cold day, so today’s outing was over to the Student Union building for the annual holiday bazaar. We saw all sorts of vendors, mostly people selling hand-crafted items. There were also a few vendors who specialize in selling products at places like farmer’s markets and bazaars. Jane found me a cowboy hat magnet that was just about my size and got me a souvenir from the Wild West. After that we stopped to buy some pasta from the woman that Pat and Jane buy from at the summer farmer’s market, and she wanted to meet me. She ended up getting her picture taken with me!

Later in the afternoon, we went down to the yarn shop where Jane works one evening a week and a Saturday a month to (partially) support her yarn habit. (Please note the word partially. Between you and me, I think she works there mostly so she get the first look at the new yarns when they come in!) On the way down, Jane pointed out a few of the local sights to me. We drove past the Ivinson Mansion, which houses the Laramie Plains Museum. It was owned by the Ivinson family first, and spent time as a girl’s boarding school, among other things, before its current incarnation as a museum for local history. It really is a beautiful building! When we stopped to get that picture we also took one of one of the local church steeples against a wintery grey sky.

Down town was our next stop. The down town shopping area is pretty small - First Street to Fourth Street, and three to five blocks long, more or less. Many of the buildings on First Street date from Laramie’s early days as a railroad town.  The railroad is the reason Laramie was founded; it began as a camp for men building the Union Pacific Railroad and was mostly big canvas tents on wooden platforms. It was a rough and ready frontier town at first, and vigilante justice was all too common. In 1886, the University was founded, and Laramie had something else to help it grow. First Street was still a bit wild all the way up until the 1950’s - it had a well used red light district and plenty of bars. Jane pointed out one of the buildings on First Street, showing me how it had lots of windows placed really close together on the second story - it used to be one of the local bordellos. Railroad workers, tie hacks (men who skillfully used axes to shape railroad ties - this was an actual job), workers from area coal mines and cowboys from the local ranches, as well as some of the University students, all frequented these rowdier parts of town.

Across the Laramie River (some river, it’s not much more than a trickle!) there is the old Territorial Prison. Jane said she’d take me to get some photos of it next week. Before Wyoming was a state, back when it was still a territory, they put the prison here, and somehow the building survived all those years. It was truly the Big House Across the River. For the last few years before it was restored, it was a barn for the University stock farm. About 20 years ago, it was restored and is now open to the public. It once held Butch Cassidy! Imagine that!

I am discovering that Laramie itself is a pretty small place. It only has about 25,000 people, but then the state of Wyoming only has half a million. Lots of wide open spaces here!

At the yarn shop (it’s on Ivinson Avenue - Ivinson Mansion, Ivinson Building on campus, Ivinson Avenue -are you starting to see a pattern here?), I decided to sit down and add a few rounds onto the sock Jane is currently knitting while Jane did an inventory of knitting needles and helped customers. There was an inticing scent of chocolate in the air and it turns out the the adjoining shop is a chocolate and candy store! Jane says she rarely notices that wonderful aroma anymore, but it was driving me crazy!

Finally, we headed back for the house, where we were greeted by happy Labrador retrievers and noisy birds and a tasty pasta dinner.

At the bazaar

A new friend

 

Ivinson Mansion

St. Matthew’s Cathedral against a winter evening sky

Sittin’ and knittin’

 -Priscilla

Day Two in Laramie

Well, I didn’t get my campus tour today. It was far, far too cold out. The wind chill was aobut 8 degrees. Jane did take me across campus (we cut through buildings where ever we could to stay out of the wind) to the main office for her department, Public Relations, and I met some of the people there. Jane’s boss Jim was really interested and took our picture and asked all about what I was doing. He certainly seemed to think my tour was a neat thing. 

While we were over there, we stopped in and visited Pat in his office. They call me Queen of Cyberspace, but he spends all day doing web design so I felt like an amateur. He has two computers on his desk, a Mac and a PC, and each of the computers has two screens that he uses at the same time. I hadn’t seen anything like that before, and I was really impressed.

Since neither one of us wanted to be outside, Jane took me to some of her favorite cold day places. First we went to the geology museum to look at the dinosaur fossils. Wyoming is a big source for fossils and there are some nice ones there. I got to see Big Al, the Allosaurus who had his own documentary on the BBC and a T-rex skull and several other big fellows that I am happy I did not meet while they were alive. The biggest one, an apatosaurus, is down for repairs. Whew! There was also a display where you could actually watch people cleaning fossil dinosaurs that were found while digging a pipeline in Wyoming. That was really interesting. (Jane says to watch for the museum in dinosaur documentaries - sometimes they will use it as a setting for paleontologists who are talking. The green checkerboard linoleum floor and the upper balconies are hard to mistake.)

Next we went over to the conservatory. Blissful warmth at last! We saw all sorts of orchids and tropical plants and I felt right at home for a while.

Then it was back out into the cold, over to Jane’s office. We stopped to grab a quick picture of the front of Old Main, the oldest building on campus, and then walked very very quickly back to the office. Jane’s office is in the Ivinson Building, which was built in 1916 and served as a hospital for about 60 years. When the hospital moved, the University acquired it and now it houses Information Technology, the Campus Police Department, and the telephone operators, one of whom is Jane. Jane said she keeps thinking about taking her camera and taking photos to see if she gets any orbs in them, since it used to be a hospital, but then she remembers that she has to work in the evenings sometimes and thinks better of it.

Tomorrow we will try for the campus tour again. I hope it is a little bit warmer!

Pat shows me his two computer screens

 

This fellow is a plant eater, but he still looks impressive.

 

Now this is the ticket! Warmth and green plants!

 

Old Main - when the University started in 1886, this building was it!

Priscilla’s First Day in Laramie

I arrived in Laramie on Monday, but got a little bit turned around. The flight up the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming was beautiful - the mountains were all frosted with snow. It was terribly cold, though, and I was glad to be wrapped up in a nice warm scarf. It was still cold when Jane and Pat walked down to where I had taken refuge for the night at the Post Office, but they didn’t seem to think it was too bad - Jane wasn’t even wearing her winter coat, just a fleece jacket, even though there was still snow on the north sides of the houses along the way.

Jane took me back to her office for the afternoon, and I watched her transfer calls and look up phone numbers on her computer. She told me I could look around, but I was still cold, so I stayed in her office with her.

We went home about 4:30 and I met the family. I met Pat on the walk from the Post Office. Aaron said hello during the evening, as did Lee and Lyra, who were particularly interested! I will meet Granny (Jane’s mother) tomorrow.

I also met some of the pets. The lineolated, or Catherine, parakeets wondered who I was! Jane said I can meet some of the other pets tomorrow, after I’ve had a good night’s sleep. We are also going to take a tour of campus tomorrow, weather permitting. Jane said she’d try to find me something warm to wear over my dress.

Here I am at Jane’s computer and telephone transfer console.

Here I am meeting Poky the Wyoming turtle, who belongs to Jane’s friend and co-worker, Sara.

The linnies are really wondering who I am. They are cute but very naughty. One of them flew off and crawled unded the buffet and had to be forcibly removed. He seemed very pleased with himself.

All in all, it has been an eventful first day. I’ll write more tomorrow, after my campus tour.

-Priscilla, Queen of Cyberspace