Friday, November 23, 2012

A Chance of a Lifetime


I know this blog is dedicated to poetry but seriously.. what could be more poetic than a chance of a lifetime
Such an exciting opportunity! My oldest daughter whom for web purposes I refer to as Word Girl has been given the opportunity to spend her summer in Peru. Yes Eight entire weeks discovering the mysteries of the rainforest! She will be traveling with Operation Wallacea




Where she will be PP101 Biodiversity Monitoring in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve

Research Assistants on this project will be based on the research ship and will need to be prepared for the hot and humid conditions of the Amazonian rainforest. Whilst some respite can be found on the boat where the fan-cooled cabins, showers and food provide a retreat from the tough working conditions, the main reward is the opportunity to see and work with such a huge range of birds and animals, including the larger, and more rare, animals such as pumas, primates and tapirs.

 There is a large team of mainly Peruvian researchers based on the research ship with nine different research programmes running. Research Assistants signing up for the various projects will help on all the projects over the course of their stay. There is a strong research atmosphere on the boat with teams coming and going at all times of day and night on various research tasks.

 Research tasks which require volunteer manpower include:, spotlight surveys for caimans and diet studies of this species (which necessitates capture of the caimans through noosing), transect surveys for the abundant Pink and Grey River Dolphins and an elusive population of manatees at this site, mist netting surveys of the bird communities utilising the forest understory, transect counts of wading birds, point counts of macaws as indicators of forest fruiting, gill net surveys of
fish communities, standardised searching surveys to characterise the amphibian communities, land based transect counts of primates, large mammals and game birds as indicators of levels of exploitation, checking 20 camera traps run at a variety of habitats and depending on water level. In addition to these surveys there are dissertation studies where assistance may also be required - for example assisting with behavioural data observations on the primate species.

After her "official" trip is over she will be stopping in Machu Picchu to explore the ancient ruins..

Does this sound like the most fantastic of trips? Well I am sure it will be.. Of course there are expenses involved and we have started a fund raising push to help her cover those expenses. If anyone is interested in donating.. please click on our donating button.. It will show here in this post as well as on the side.. Thanks for all your support whether it be verbal or financial

Shauni

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!



Get off the computer! and have a Happy Thanksgiving

Monday, October 1, 2012

Support Banned Books


Did you know that this week is Banned Books Week? It's a week that has been set aside for the last 30 years to promote reading. To stand up against those who would make our choices for us. It is for those who choose to proudly say I READ..

I grew up in a house where books were plentiful.. where more often than not when we were at sporting events, if you wanted to find my mom, you looked over to the nearest set of trees and there my mom would be in her chair, reading a book. Not watching the game, reading a book. The thought of not having a book on me at all times is inconceivable.

My mom always said, it didn't matter if your child would only read comic books, at least he is reading. Of course that didn't pertain to her children we read classics.. *rolls eyes* She still hasn't forgiven me for my love of romance books.. but that is another story. I do know, more often than not if she had heard that a book was banned and she felt it was age appropriate, we had to read it. I tried to raise my children in a similar manner. I can say with great pride, all four read.. they have unique and interesting tastes but read they do.

Sadly, not all people are afforded that right.. schools, governments, churches all for one reason or another choose to challenge or ban a book.. How can that possible be right? Sure some books are graphic, some books are extreme, some books are *gasp* bad.. but it is not the right of State to make that choice for us. Parents need to guide their children, encourage them to read and question what they are reading.. to make their own choices...in short to LEARN..

I found this list on Rebecca Ryals Russell's Website  and  thought it needed to be shared..

SOME of the 2011 challenged or banned books were:

    The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
    Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
    The Flamingo Rising, by Larry Baker
    The Notebook Girls: Four Friends, One Diary, Real Life, by Baskin, Newman, Pollitt-Cohen, Toombs
    Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs
    My Mom’s Having a Baby, by Dori Hillestad Butler
    Betrayed, by P.C. and Kristin Cast
    Staying Far for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
    Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
    Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
    Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
    The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
    The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
    Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer

In 2010 the top 10 most frequently challenged books were:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson

2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

3. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

4. Crank, by Ellen Hopkins

5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

6. Lush, by Natasha Friend

7. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones

8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich

9. Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie

10. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

But it’s not just contemporary books that get banned, classics get banned and challenged, too.
    *The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    2. *The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
    3. *The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
    4. *To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
    6. Ulysses by James Joyce
    7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
    8. *The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
    9. *1984 by George Orwell  (This one is the most ironic as its theme is suppression of books and thoughts)
    10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
    11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
    12. *Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
    13. *Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
    14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
    15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
    16. *Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
    17. *Animal Farm by George Orwell
    18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
    19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
    20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
    21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
    22. *Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
    23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
    24. *Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
    25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
    26. *Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
    27. Native Son by Richard Wright
    28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
    29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
    30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
    31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
    32. *The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
    33. *The Call of the Wild by Jack London
    34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
    35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
    36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
    37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
    38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
    39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
    40. *The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
    41. *Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
    42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
    43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
    44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
    45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
    46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
    47. *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
    48. *Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
    49. *A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
    50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
    51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
    52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
    53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
    54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
    55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
    56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
    57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
    58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
    59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
    60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
    61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
    62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
    64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
    65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
    66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
    67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
    68. Light in August by William Faulkner
    69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
    70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
    71. *Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
    72. *A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
    73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
    74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
    75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
    76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
    77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
    78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
    79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
    80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
    81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
    82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
    83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
    84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
    85. *The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
    86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
    87. The Bostonians by Henry James
    88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
    89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
    90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
    91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
    93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
    94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
    95. *Kim by Rudyard Kipling
    96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
    98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
    99. *Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
    100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie



To read the entire article click HERE

You want to support banned books, share what books you have read that have been banned.. shout it loud and proud!!

Shauni

Friday, March 2, 2012

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss

Over at Speculative Fiction they are doing celebrating Dr Seuss' birthday by doing Seuss style blog

Here's my attempt


Happy Birthday Dr Seuss
you'd be here if I choose
you'd be here to write a book
you'd be here to meet a zook

If I had my way
You'd be here to stay
writing writing every day
maybe even writing a play

If you were here
I would stand up and cheer
wishing you well
with my silly spell

but you are not
things aren't so hot
you've been gone a while
But I still smile

when I hear about ham
and someone named sam
whenever a hoo let's out a shout
or a screech is out and about

I miss you today
All of the way
But at least we know
what you tried to show

that you were you,
that is truer than true
and there is no one alive, who is Youer than You!!

@Shauni

hey don't laugh it's a poem

Friday, February 17, 2012

The Road


The Road less traveled
The Poem does say
The one to choose
To find your way
Until you find
It's been traveled
by many who dared prevail
A torturous path
doomed to fail
Unless
One dares to fly
To chance the faults
To learn to fly
To refuse default
Beware the danger
The distrust and dismay
Avoid the lies and deciet
stay true to the Way
To walk this path
You will oft dispair
You may get lost
The weather not fair
and yet
Once traveled 
You will find 
A joy, 
A peace of mind
A Dream complete
Avoid the pitfalls
step over the faults
A hope to all
is beyond it's vaults
Stop if you choose
to explore the view
Allow life's journey
to empower you
Life is not easy
But the way is true
Just follow the path
Set in front of you
Is life the journey
or the end
It matters not if 
You live it my friend

@Shauni


Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Promises Lost

A Child is born
talented and gifted
full of hope
A Promise 

A Vow is made
a gift of tomorrow
love that lasts
A Promise

A contract is signed
ambition and nerves
hope for something
A Promise

A Friendship is formed
touched by laughter
shared experience
plans for fun
A Promise

The Child falters
The Vows are broken
The Contract torn
The Friendship shattered

Promises broken
laying on the floor
like shards of glass

Sharp, painful,
Destructive
Hopeless

A Promise is broken
no hope of repair
A covenant mocked
complete despair



@Shauni

Monday, February 6, 2012

Invisible


Can you see me
Do you know
that I am here

Can you see me
Do you know 
that I feel

When you walk
past do you hear
me crying out

Do you understand
my plea?

Do you hear me
an almost silent voice
whispering 
see me..

Or to you
am I not worth 
your notice

Silent, lost
alone,
Invisible

@Shauni

Saturday, February 4, 2012

A Rolling Rage

Sometimes when the wind blows 
You can hear the 
Rolling Rage
More than dancing clouds

An internal battle
sound and fury
waiting to erupt

Sometimes the wind calls me
Creating that furor inside
A Twirling Swirling 
Mass of Anger

Contained 
Behind clouds
Ready to Burst forth 
and Release Rain 
Amongst the Heavens

Sometimes...
I dream of letting go
Watching the Damage
Gleefully dancing in the storm

Sometimes...
I want more than sound and fury
I want to see destruction
in my wake

Sometimes...
I think I deserve
to let loose

But...
Storms destroy
Disconnect and Damage
More than what is around me

If let loose
The Rage would 
Destroy Everything
@Shauni

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Tears


I do not cry
Pretty tears
No gentle rain 
For me
No single teardrop
slowly trailing
down an alabster cheek
No soft sigh

No, I sob
A wild Thunderstorm
Wracked with Grief

I Grieve
I sob
I hurt..

No beauty queen 
tears for me
Emotion grabs me
shakes me
controls me

I do not cry 
pretty tears
rather inelegant
gulping gasping sobs

Tears falling off
spiked lashes 
Like a waterfall
Dashing to the rocks

The pain engulfs me
strangles me
controls me
purges me

Leaving me empty
destroyed
ruined and lost


@Shauni

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Words


I love Words
The way they
trip along the tongue

The way the wrap 
themselves around 
you, creating
delight

Wonderful, wicked words
that make you see
new things
 Think new thoughts

I love words 
they create a tapestry 
of delight

showing us images 
in our minds
wonderful, wicked words

I love words
they wreak havoc
and mend souls

they dance on air
and sludge in the mud
the twirl and twist
confuse and bemuse

I love words
Wonderful Wicked Words

@Shauni

Friday, January 27, 2012

God's Eye


Be silent
speak softly
bow down
God is watching

Always aware
always present

Don't dismay
Don't wonder
yet let wonder fill you

God is there
Always

Listen to the wind
Listen to the seas
Listen to the very birds
In their trees

God is watching
God is Here

Be Joyful
Be Awed
Be Humbled

God IS

@Shauni

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

On the Edge


on the edge
insecurity wrapping around
me 
a slow sinuous snicker
taunting
ready to escape

on the edge
of dreams just escaped
promises lost
despair beckons

on the edge
take that step
will the despair win?
or does hope survive

on the edge
a fragile belief
in what can be
not what was
of innocence lost
and found

Of Hope betrayed 
and faith renewed
take the leap? 
will I fall?
or will I fly?

On the edge of laughter
and life
of simple joy

On the edge 
of everything


@Shauni

Sunday, January 1, 2012

A New Dawn


A New moment
A new Dawn
A New Chance Revealed

A New hope 
A New Dream
A New time to dance, unconcealed

Promise of today
Just today
A heart fulfilled

Promise of Fate
A Story untold
A Fear Stilled

Rejoice
Renew
Respond

Every Day
A New Hope
A New Chance

A New Dream
A New Promise
A New Dance

@Shauni

I know sloppy work, but I just needed to get something no matter how amateurish back on paper.. more to come