Julie Unplugged

How to Make Simple DIY Postcards with Items You Have at Home Now

 

 

Here you see postcards from Dana Point, San Francisco and in Bakersfield.

It was well over fifteen-years-ago when my now thirty-one year old daughter went off to Summer Camp bringing along her exchange student “sister” from France. Sandra, the student, was a young woman I fell in love with instantly.

It is an unspoken rule that one must send mail to her children at camp, so I decided I wanted to send postcards. Instead of Bakersfield postcards, though, I sent postcards cataloguing Sandra’s visit so far. My favorite postcard was of the two of us with our arms around a street kid on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles near the Chinese Theater. Back then, the homeless teens would pose with you if you gave them a dollar.

Since those days, the characters around the Chinese theater have gotten quite professional. Last Summer they were working in teams and one particularly aggressive Superman told me it was $3 a photo for each of them. I liked it better when it was children working for food.

I’m getting off course, though. What I wanted to share with you is this: if you are like me and can’t find the most picturesque postcards, why not take literally seconds and make your own with items you more than likely have in your home right now.

Choosing Your Photos May Be What Takes the Most Time!

Supplies:

One or more 4 X 6 index card(s)

One or more 4 X 6 photo(s)

Spray adhesive (or other glue, I just like how spray adhesive adheres)

One of more recipient(s) happy to receive your mail.

Here are the couldn’t be simpler than this steps:

1. Line up your index cards and choose the photos for the postcards you plan to make during that session.
2. Spray adhesive on up to three index cards at a time.
3. Carefully line up the photo with the index card and press them together.
4. To feel secure about the adhesion, you may want to put your fresh cards underneath a large reference book just for extra assurance.
5. Write your note and send it off!

Today I am making cards from Jack Kerouac Alley in San Francisco, the beach in Dana Point, Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Mojave Desert and finally some scenes around the town I call home, Bakersfield. The inspiration to make postcards is the February Letter Writing exchange called “Lettermo”. Some of the participants collect and send postcards. Since I like to give people what they want, I figure, “Postcards it is!”

Tonight I am taking a friend to the airport in Los Angeles and I plan to spend the evening there, visiting some places I have never been in the past. As I made my postcards this morning I realized how much my photography has changed over the years and decided to challenge myself to take some uniquely Los Angeles photos I will turn into post cards tonight.

You can even do this when you travel. I use Walgreens to develop my photos, so you could simply upload your photos to the Walgreens website and get them printed in whatever city you are visiting at the time. How fun for your friends at home to have a tangible photo with a handwritten note about your trip to Zion National Forest with your children’s faces smiling back at them?

Sharing online is great, but do you remember receiving your last postcard in the mail? 

If you make extra postcards, you will have plenty for your next mailing or to write while you are the passenger on your road trip. You may have your children decide which photos to use or write a note to Granny or Mr. Lollar or the teen who is feeding your cats at home.

My daughter is at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. I may send her a postcard of my and Elmo soon: yes, I had a photo taken with a life size Elmo the last time I was in Hollywood.

Like most creativity, it has inspired me to make more art.

When will you take a moment to make and send some personalized, artful postcards?

=    =    =  

Julie Jordan Scott is a Creative Life Coach, a Poet Performer, a Writer and a Mommy Extraordinaire. Stay in touch with her via twitter or facebook or you may always call or text her at 661.444.2735 to arrange a complimentary coaching session.

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Your Wisdom, Please - What Does "Love the Questions" Mean in This Circumstance?

In my hand I am holding a book titled Druha Citanka. It was published in 1913. I have no idea what the title means, but  nonetheless I hold the book gently and with great care.

Two previous owners added their name to the front page: one is Pauline whose handwriting I can’t read. The other hand wrote: The Book Belongs to Pfc. Paul W. Boley with a San Francisco P.O. Box. Did he serve in the military during World War II? Was the PO box the place his mail was sorted to the secret destination where he read letters in whatever language this is: Polish? Czech? Slovenian?

I feel so ridiculously American that I don’t know what language this is by looking at it. I can recognize Spanish, I can recognize some French and German. I feel as if I should be ashamed for not knowing more. I have hosted couchsurfers from the Czech Republic who speak almost unaccented English. 

I usually buy old books in other languages to use in my mixed media art, but this book seems so dear to me, I almost don’t want to cut into the pages to make art. If I don’t cut into it, though, it will sit on my shelf – never understood.

I discover the book is written in Slovak through using a language ap. I discover the word  "vdacny" means “grateful”.

How perfect is this? What is my new book friend telling me?

To use it in art?

To leave it in tact?

To parcel it out to others?

To keep it all for myself, even though I don’t know Slovak?

It is like Rilke says “love the questions like a book written in a very foreign tongue”. I

Is this image asking me a question about sawing wood?

continue to hold this delightfully old book. It was published when my Granny wasn’t even ten years old.  It feels sacred, it feels like curiosity and wonder made manifest. Who else held this book? Who else read it? What has made it last for nearly one hundred years?

 

I feel it is calling me to create art with it so that others may know and feel its message, its energy, even if we don’t understand the language. It reminds me of how I have learned to love without understanding. It reminds me how I’ve learned love isn’t about understanding, it is about being open and receptive regardless of understanding.

What do you think?

===

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

At The Corner of Mason & California in San Francisco: Between the Inhale and the Exhale My Past, Present & Future Convened

Reverb Prompt: Which little detail — something you saw… a look… a touch… a fleeting moment — from 2012 would you like to remember in the years to come? The most difficult part of this prompt is remember where it greeted me... ohhh... there. Day 17 from Relish12.

For just a moment I was dizzy with unsteadyness. I looked up and spun around, attempting to figure out where my body was in relationship with the glorious vibe of San Francisco

From the San Francisco Financial District - Can you believe this man is casually texting while leaning on the Robert Frost Memorial? Ay!

Unbelievably for me, I was visiting San Francisco with no destination in mind. I had several possibilities but nothing was in stone. I have sort of learned my way around the City but for some reason I didn’t want to bother with navigation and after a lovely greeting from native son Robert Frost I noticed a cable car had appeared so without thinking, I jumped on it.

A few moments later at the intersection of California and Mason, I jumped off the cable car, feeling an incredible urge. Even with that incredible urge I did the “should I shouldn’t I shuffle” before I leaped from my six dollar seat of a rather short cable car ride.

I scurried across the street and my eyes caught the Fairmont Hotel.

If you take away the Christmas Decorations, the Fairmont looked exactly as it did on that July day in... 1988? I believe?

I actually gasped the forty degree misty air straight into my gut.

This is where Mel and Tom got married on a Saturday in July before I knew how challenging many of the upcoming chapters of my life would be.

From that moment on, I went where I was divinely directed. Every single destination I found had some personal connection with me, as if my past was reaching out to massage my ever tense shoulders, saying, “You are a survivor, you are one who loves a lot and loves well. Continue your journey knowing that you are love incarnate.”

I will remember this “eye-to-eye” glance from my past, present and future for a long time to come.

Now that I have written it, I will more than likely remember it forever.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Women in Literary History: Alice Corbin Henderson, Poet, Mother, Activist, Curator

It has been a while since I have written a biographical sketch about a woman writer in literary history. Today I went through my file filled with photos of these women and randomly selected Alice Corbin Henderson as the subject of today's sketch. Enjoy!

I adore this portrait of Alice Corbin Henderson!

 

"I saw the world go by and laughed as it was going."

Alice Corbin Henderson.

I knew when I first saw her photo that poet Alice Corbin and I would become friends. Now, I could tell she was also long gone – a revered woman poet, critic,  an early associate editor of Poetry Magazine – I knew she belonged in my women in literary history knowledge bank.

She was an avant-garde poet, an imagist,  who was originally from St. Louis, joining the ranks of Kate Chopin and Zoe Akins as late 19^th and early 20^th century women writers from that city.

She studied at the University of Chicago. Her first collection of poetry, The Linnet Songs, was published in 1898. In 1904 she rented a studio in the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago,  where she met her future husband, visiting professor. William Penhallow Henderson. He was a painter, architect and furniture designer. Together they had a daughter, Alice Oliver Henderson.

In 1912 her second collection of poems, The Spinning Woman of the Sky. She left Chicago for Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1916, after having been diagnosed with tuberculosis. She continued working on Poetry Magazine by long distance until 1922. Later, she was curator at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

When she arrived in Santa Fe, she was not only inspired by the people there, but also the cultures and art from the native Americans she met along the way.  She became an activist on the behalf of Native Americans.

She also was in a group of poets in Santa Fe who called each other “Poet’s Round Up”  and included DH Lawrence, Witter Bynner, Yvor Winters, and several other poets. The group fizzled out until resurrected by Alice Oliver Henderson when she returned to Santa Fe as an adult. The group evolved into "Writer's Round Up" and was quite a big part of the Santa Fe art scene, especially in the  1930's.

 I fell in love with this poem, published in Poetry Magazine in 1916.

Apparitions

A thin grey shadow on the edge of thought

Hiding its wounds –

These are the wounds of sorrow

It was my hand that made them

And this grey shadow resembles you

Is my own heart, weeping

You sleep quietly beneath the shade

Of willows in the south

 = = =

To find out more, here is a fascinating chronology and list of papers held by the library at the University of Texas.

I had better luck searching simply "Alice Corbin" if you would like to do research on your own to get to know this fascinating woman more deeply.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

Writing with Emily: for the Most Creative of You Creative Folks

I bet the very creative among you will recognize yourselves in my words today.

I can’t even tell you how often this happens to me:  the car behind me honks to startle me awake from solving all the world’s problems or writing my shopping list or deciphering last night’s dream.  Does this ever happen to you? Sometimes I am thinking about how to help my children lead their best lives or what I will cook for dinner or trying to remember the details of a story from long ago.

My mind leaps from thought to thought to thought and all of a sudden  the car behind me honks, frustrated because I didn’t leap to go through the intersection because the light just barely turned green.

Actually, in these cases I have no idea how long the light has been green because I am too lost in reverie about whatever is happily holding my thoughts so attentively.

Last night on the way home from an event at the Art and Spirituality Center where I created from a whole new-to-me version of Hansel and Gretl, I wondered how Emily Dickinson might write a poem about a particular intersection here in Bakersfield.

I sat in my car, looking at a street light. I thought, “How would Emily Dickinson see this seedy neighborhood with this high powered street lamp?”

I was having so much fun I almost didn’t see the traffic light turn green.

Are you ready to experience the darkness on a Bakersfield street corner with Emily Dickinson and me?

Street Light, Corner of 21^st and Union

Electric orb

Sharing luminousness with the

Members of the pearly ancient profession

And the shaking, tittering loose toothed

Hungry for the next, next, next….

As well as the cars who have lost

Their way and landed

Underneath you

# # #

Think about one of your favorite characters: fictional, historical, literary, and consider what might happen how they might experience your life through you. Then write as that you-Emily Dickinson character or You-Cat character or You-Green Lantern character.

Whatever it is, whichever or whoever combines with you – have fun and write it.

Just beware of when the light turns green. The car behind you might honk to startle you awake from your poetic word play.

Here I am, writing on the Lawn at Emily Dickinson's House in Amherst, Massachusetts

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

Emily Dickinson Roses + Virginia Woolf Teeny Tiny House + Upcycled Pesto Jar = Word Love Squared

A bouquet of Emily’s Roses mixed with Katherine Anne Porter roses and a vase upcycled from a pesto jar and covered with more books pages painted pink. The house in the photo is a Virginia Woolf house. I thought they looked pretty together.

The roses in the foreground are more Emily Dickinson Roses. I even made teeny tiny roses, about ¼ inch in diameter. These roses will be on a different upcycled project which I officially began with making the roses. J

I bought another used book of Emily’s poetry to paint/dye and use. I decided since she is so well known, I should use more of her work instead of only doing obscure artists, writers and poets.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

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Woolf sightings: Award-winning kids' book, The Dalloway, The Women's Library

My Saturday Night Interlude with Leigh Stein (and she doesn't know a thing about it!)

You never know where inspiration will strike and sometimes it doesn’t strike and you must write, anyway with all the enthusiasm of a slightly hung over snail.

Tonight it was the instant I discovered a young poet named Leigh Stein who has the nerve to have been born the same year I graduated from college. This is impossible.

She should still be in diapers or preschool at the latest.

Somehow I forget that my eldest daughter is studying at the University of Edinburgh and if my firstborn had lived, she would be nearly twenty-three.

Tonight the poetic siren stirred in coming to terms with this young woman who made me blink myself awake to the reality of my age vis a vis her age and I simply had to write a poem in response.

This is what I wrote, straight stream of consciousness poetry:

This is more than slightly surreal this fact, this woman who wrote this very entertaining poem was born the same year I graduated from college

How is it possible she is an adult, writing about getting older even, using Lindsay Lohan in her poem, that she can even have experienced enough of life to have a part Part VII?

Forget I asked that question, please give me that honor as I step into cronedom with my head bowed, my daughter singing Taylor Swift in the background.

I am fascinated. I join her in thinking of Caracas, in Russia, having Fever,  taking leave.

We poets are kindreds. I love-and-hate that because it means time doesn’t even stop for me and the fact Stanley Kunitz lived to more than one-hundred-years-old delights me.

I find gratitude’s hoodie sliding over my right eye to think, “Isn’t it fun that I love words so much and so does she and so did he.”

Before I get nauseas and wonder if the pain in my face is worse because the nerves of the skin moved from that other spot is making its way in my body again?

I smell my steamed rice, begging for salt, butter and my mouth.

As for Leigh Stein, I’ll check in with her later.

This next sentence may sound a lot stronger than my usual writing, but it is what I unapologetically believe. Waiting for inspiration is a ridiculous way to write either poetry or prose. You can’t schedule inspiration, after all, because you never know where inspiration will strike and sometimes it doesn’t strike.

It is time to remind yourself you must write, anyway with all the enthusiasm of a slightly hung over snail.

 

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

This is my twenty second post (of 31!) for the October Ultimate Blog Challenge. Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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The Plucking of a Poem: Giving Birth to "Variation 25"

The raw form of a poem isn't something I usually share, but I felt like this might help people with revising and editing.

The actual poem itself  (you may read Variation 25 here)was randomly woven together from the

Lines of this stream of consciousness write waiting to become a poem.

threads here in my stream of consciousness writing. I was hoping when I imported the writing from my document you would see the yellow highlighted portions.

It would actually be interesting to see what lines you would have chosen to weave together!

I would rather drink coffee and eat chocolate bars than write about this, here, at 9:19 in the morning.

I need to capture with words what I felt this morning, what it was that drove me to being so ready to just let go, to just succumb to your luke warm status. To agree with your earlier laments that “this” wasn’t going anywhere in the future so why invest more time in it now.

It seems as soon as I felt that, as soon as I said, “You don’t have to get up, just stay there,” that you got up to walk me to the door. Your kiss actually felt like you cared instead of my lips meeting yours practically begging for some form of response.

No lights on for me, flashlight from my cell phone lit the way as I dressed in the dark.

I didn’t feel as if I had it in me anymore, not right now, to fight a one sided battle to save our love while you were so busy running around shouting “my sky is falling, my sky is falling,” never seeming concerned if anyone else had a cloudy sky or a thunder storm or a drought in our sky.

You stopped letting me love you unless your maleness was pushing inside me, deep, and I was surrendering to your power.

If I  wanted you sexually, you were happy, if I was offering to come alongside you, you push away.

I want to call a time out, I realize.

I want to give you space to decide what you want and what you don’t want.

We can try it a week at a time, revisit and decide again – longer? Shorter? Return to the way we’ve been only better?

My fingers stop moving, spent.

These last few chapters have been erattic and unmappable. That isn’t a word. Colonial Surveyors wouldn’t be able to tell where the stops and starts were, where dangers lurked, where sunshine would find her way through.

You warned me long ago you were not an easy person to love.

Maybe I am finally choosing to agree with you.

Let you prove to yourself once again just how unloveable you actually are.

Let me find my way, differently, without leaving your rubbish in my gutter, for my trash man to take away when I just refuse to do it. Not anymore.

Is there enough here to pluck out for a poem? Are there enough words and phrases and catchy tones to do something with them? I think, possibly…. I will soak through the words to see which ones are flammable and which ones are soggy and which ones hum contentedly on the page, flirting and waiting for me to see the possibilities.

More words, threadworn.

More words, electric

More words, satin, lace and polyester

I remember my first unhappy-but-in-love poems

I used fabric metaphors

I will I still had a copy

There was a time I could almost recite it

Must be around the time we went to

A darkened coffee house in Stockton

Where there was some form of attempt at

Performance. Mel’s friend whose name I have forgotten

Had a boyfriend who smoulder (after the blaze coal look about him and played acoustic guitar

I vaguely recall it. Just vaguely.

But I do recall it outside the many other

Nights I spent out with friends in Stockton,

A few strange ones remain.

Editing/Building/Stacking/Sculpting a poem

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot  

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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You Know You Might Be a Poet when....

You know you are a poet when you gather material while in a medical office waiting room.....

You know you might be  a poet when you sit inside the Kaiser waiting room writing poetry about ponytails and scrubs and taking photos of the stack of books you just took out of your bag to review during your fifteen minute wait.  I created a whole world about a woman today in navy blue scrubs with kites on the top and a high swinging pony tail a la Marcia or Jan Brady.

 

Seriously? She must have graduated high school in 1987. Put away the high ponytail at work. You may wear it if you are cleaning or decluttering or holding your miracle baby who constantly grabs any hair within grabbing range but please, that Marcia-Jan swing must leave the building now.

You know you’re a poet when you sit among storytellers and two use the word “periscope” and two use the words “inner sanctum” and you vow to consistently stay away from those words. Do these people not own a thesaurus? Did they not hear the person so close to them in our performance line up that they didn’t come up with an alternate version of their piece with a different phrase for inner sanctum  (why not exclusive hideaway or hidden room or private bunker) or something else that reaches up in order to “see” like a periscope does (perhaps an elephant’s trunk reaching to the top of the palm tree.)

You might be a poet if Used Book Sales make your heart beat faster...

 

You know you’re a poet when the phrase You know you’re a poet begins to sound like a more than a fender bender car crash in a major intersection or like Jeff whatever-his-surname-is repeating “You might be a redneck if….” And I immediately flash to my visitor from Austria last night, explaining about the term “redneck.” I pointed to a guy as he got out of his pickup wearing wranglers and throwing a bud light can into the trash: “Do you see how his neck looks?”

“So leathery and red.”

“Exactly. “

Even so, let’s think about more original ways we might say, “You know you’re a poet when….”

How about ….

It finally comes clear that you are not an ordinary lover of words when….

The light comes on: you do not think like every other person who calls herself a writer out there when…

The word-vault creaks open to reveal you are not an ordinary writer when….

Alice Rawsthorne wrote “Cliché is an ugly word and seems all the uglier when applied to something that is thoughtful, original and ingenious but has come to seem clichéd through no fault of its own.”

“You know you’re a poet” or “You might be a poet when…”  reminds me of a ringing phone lost in the bottom of your purse. You have to find it and answer or shut it off before everyone in hearing distance looks at you as if you are an old banana someone forgot to throw away.

 I would love to hear some of your creative ways to say... whatever cliche or overused expression you are completely sick of hearing.... let's get the laughter ball in the air....

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Writing at Emily Dickinson's Home in Amherst, Massachusetts

 

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

   Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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One Question to Live and Share Freely Today -

Reflect, consider, act....repeat, examine, share freely...click on the image to see it in a larger size. Copy, post and use as will be of most service to you and anyone who you think may gain from the image and the message.

 

This is my twenty-first blog post (of 31) for the Ultimate Blogging Challenge!

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!) 

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

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