| Filed under blindness Relationships
Sometimes retirement has it’s perks, like being a guest on a blog or podcast, sharing what it’s like to have been a professional therapist. Check out the Penny Forward podcast focusing on money management and relationships. Shout out to Chris, Mo and Liz for inviting me.
https://www.pennyforward.com/penny-forward-podcast-money-and-relationships/
| Filed under blindness Guide dogs pets and people Relationships
Whoa, pups and people, first of all, this is not a shock jock kind of post. It is my attempt to express the feelings and observations during the events of the past three weeks. We are all okay, so it is safe to keep reading.
🦮
Bailey, my 75 lb. yellow lab raised and trained by Guiding Eyes for the Blind, was diagnosed with a tumor in his lung. It was discovered in a routine vet visit and I am so grateful for the staff veterinarian at Guiding Eyes for listening to me and ordering the Xray and referring us to Animal Medical Center in New York City for a CT and needle biopsy confirming the diagnosis.
We are now waiting for the surgery date to remove it. During the examination of the CT scan/biopsy procedure authorization, I read the DNR clause. It said CPR would be administered unless directed otherwise by the owner. Of course I wanted lifesaving procedures to be performed, my dog is showing very little symptoms and isn’t ready to check out.
I stopped, thinking, OH, shoot, a DNR? And it hit me just how serious this was and how sick my sweet 9.7-year-old lab really is. He showed only a mild cough after playing and slowing down a little when we were out and about. I’m not sure why but Bailey’s diagnosis brought me back to our Mom’s lung cancer and the mind-numbing period of time during her surgeries and treatments. Because of the consultations and speaking with medical oncologists during our Mom’s illness, I believe I have a better grasp of Bailey’s chances and risk factors. I am not saying a dog is the same as a person, but I am thinking that Mom’s passing provided insight and strength for me and my husband to be better equipped to handle whatever comes after Bailey’s upcoming surgery and convalescence. Then again, maybe I am saying a life is worth fighting for, human or non-human. Mom did not differentiate among two or four-footed family, and neither will I.
yellow lab Bailey in our livingroom
Annie Shares News January 2023 Volume 3 Issue 1
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2023 greetings! 🥳 🎉
2022 has been challenging and it’s great to be stepping out more, giving and receiving a hug from friends and colleagues once again. Society has endured and learned how to cope with the physical limitations associated with the pandemic and while we are still being effected by covid, we are adjusting. To hug or not to hug, that is the question.
One mask-wearing phenomenon I’d like to share is the increased level of general disorientation when wearing one. And it isn’t just me experiencing this weird reaction. Whenever I first put on a mask, it causes me to feel dizzy and like I am in a bubble. I can’t hear or rely on my sense of direction, which is usually good. The spatial awareness is the worst and I have spoken with other blind friends who have experienced a similar lack of sensory information from mask wearing. I tried a clear face shield and it was even worse. I hope this is something we can research more to help others.
I want to share some good news about a friend and colleague, Elizabeth Ianelli. She and I worked together and remained friends after we both left the VA. She is one of the most resilient people I know and I am pleased to share the advanced ordering link to her new gritty and powerful book about the troubled teen industry called I See You Survivor: Life inside (and outside) the totally f*****d up troubled-teen industry.
Another author I know, Trish Hubschman, has released her newest book, check it out:
Gayle’s Tales: Tracy Gayle Mysteries
by Trish Hubschman
Copyright December 2022
The book is for sale from Smashwords in eBook formats and from Amazon in e-book ($3.99), paperback ($8.50), and hardcover ($16.50).
175 pages in print.
Full details of this book and Trish’s four Tracy Gayle mystery novels are on her website:
https://www.dldbooks.com/hubschman/
Synopsis:
Gayle’s Tales is a collection of Tracy Gayle mystery short stories.
Everyone’s favorite couple, Tracy and Danny, are still going strong, romantically and professionally, rocking and rolling and solving crimes. The story is a first-person account told in Tracy’s point-of-view, detailing the circumstances as only she can tell it. Through all this, she and Danny are planning their wedding extravaganza at the Plaza Hotel in New York. In the end, she brings long–lost family members and friends back into each other’s arms and lives.
Trish is also appearing on January 25 at 7:00 p.m. eastern time as a guest author hosted by the Behind Our Eyes Book Launch program via zoom. If you would like the Zoom invitation, email booklaunch@behindoureyes.org and make sure you mention it is for Trish’s book.
What’s in store for 2023? Writing, of course! 😉 I am working on a nonfiction book about pet assisted therapy, gathering a third poetry collection, and writing a new crossover novel plus a new chapter of a sci-fi novella. I am reading different genres of books, including an RPG-inspired series penned by Kevin Sinclair, a series by Andrew Rowe narrated by one of my favorite voice actors, Nick Podell and Marshal Arcane by Terry Mancour is waiting in the queue. I also read The Address by Fiona Davis for my local book club. Very good historical fiction/mystery novel. I also must recommend The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. The audio book is performed by a talented voice actor and it is better than Irving’s book, The World According to Garp. It’s brilliant.
Reading is a considerable piece of developing as a writer and I plan to continue the quest. 😈
Until next month, be well and blessings to all.
Enjoy this classic poem about the New Year by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The Death of the Old Year
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.
He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend and a true truelove
And the New-year will take ’em away.
Old year you must not go;
So long you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go.
He froth’d his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But tho’ his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho’ his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.
Old year, you shall not die;
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I’ve half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.
He was full of joke and jest,
But all his merry quips are o’er.
To see him die across the waste
His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
But he’ll be dead before.
Everyone for his own.
The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.
How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro:
The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
’Tis nearly twelve o’clock.
Shake hands, before you die.
Old year, we’ll dearly rue for you:
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.
His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone,
Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,
And waiteth at the door.
There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.
This poem is in the public domain.
Dreya sends her best wishes for the New Year!
| Filed under blindness Relationships
Full Circle
How much do we know about a person? I consider myself a private person but also a person who believes sharing a personal success or a challenge could help someone else. I am sharing the following audio vignette produced by the Hadley Institute called Insights and Sound Bites and hope it helps you or someone you know struggling with depression or vision loss.
https://hadley.edu/podcasts/insights-sound-bites/i-came-full-circle
| Filed under blindness Guide dogs writing
Second place winner! this essay will be in the December 2022 issue of the National Federation of the Blind’s Writer’s Division Literary magazine, Slate and Style.
One Dog’s Life
2011
Verona and my daughter play in the lake for an hour. the funniest thing is the way Verona blows water from her mouth after dropping the stick. It makes a loud, spitting sound that can be heard from the patio.
When the assorted waterfowl horde realizes she is visiting, it waddles in masse from grass to the lake weeds beside the dock. Labrador nose dilates, a front paw lifts, instincts override even an offer of a cookie. for just a little while she is the retriever, the soft-mouthed hunting companion, not a guide dog.
Each and every year we have together is a blessing, a time for me to feel unfettered. I try to think back on the way life was before training with Verona but my mind veers from those dark moments and I let them go. We are here, being warmed by the late afternoon sun. We are dog and woman, partners for however long time and fate permit.
2013
Four humans and two dogs fill the little red sedan. I sit in front, along with Mom, who is driving. In the back seat, Music’s furry butt crushes my sister, who, until now has suffered in silence.
“Thank God it’s a short ride,” I hear her mumble from somewhere behind us.
We reach our destination, extract ourselves from the little red sedan. Verona’s excitement is palpable. Once inside the gate, loose dogs run up to us, but I make her ignore them and sit until I’m ready. With a word she’s off. We claim a bench in the warm California sun. moments later Verona lopes by us, a pack of dogs giving chase. I listen for the pack to turn back and run past us again, Verona in the lead.
California 2013
Pebbles and shells litter the meandering path to the beach. The air resonates with surf and sea birds. I release Verona and she lopes off, nose to the ground
Music, my sister’s Golden Retriever, chases Verona into the water. As she turns to give chase, a huge wave crashes down and for a moment she is engulfed, Sucked away by green sea and foam. my heart skips a beat in arrested panic; The wave spits her out onto the beach and she runs to me, weaves in-between my legs and soaks my pants. I look like incontinence has gotten the best of me. Thereafter, Verona avoids the waves and prefers a safer splash in the wet sand and tidal pools instead.
It’s important that Verona has the opportunity to be a dog; so much responsibility is put upon her when waring the harness, it seems that this is the best way to let her know. As she digs a hole in the sand and flops down to dry off, my heart is content because she is doing just what she’s supposed to be doing, living a dog’s life.
close up of Black lab with snow on her face
| Filed under blindness blogging novel writing
Annie Shares News Volume 2 Issue 9 September 2022
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🌑 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌙
Wonderful Things Afoot
The creative life is often compared to an ebb and flow, like tidal or moon phases. The last two months were a prime example. I barely wrote anything more than email correspondence due to being removed from our home of thirty years no thanks to asbestos contamination in our old floors. During a vacation in temporary housing via an Airbnb to await the asbestos abatement and installation of new floors, no thanks to hurricane Ida, I managed only one poem. I disconnected and it was probably for the best. I read, I soaked in the blessed silence, basked in the sun, brushed Bailey until my arm was tired, took in the evocative smells of country living and scratched my bug bites with complete complacency.
The day prior to our return the stress flared and another two weeks of creative cut-off overtook me, but this time it wasn’t attributed to adjusting to the ambiance of country living and black bears eating the tasty apples from the tree in the yard next to us. It was frustration and disappointment that shut me down. Our home was in chaos. Boxes from floor to ceiling, many of them unmarked. It was beyond dirty, our appliances were unplugged and left to leak all over the kitchen floor. The list goes on but it is behind us now. It was a helpless feeling, for sure.
The lifeline appeared when I attended a few writing-related zoom meetings. The first was the regular Friday afternoon Writing Works Wonders Community Call podcast streamed by the ACB Media Network. It helped me reconnect with my creativity by providing a writing prompt and it resulted in a poem which will be in a sweet little online literary pub called the Plum Tree Tavern. Then, the following week, the WWW hosts Kathy and Cheryl provided a second prompt that resulted in yet another poem, posted below, which was well received by other writers and is looking for a publication home.
Thanks to a fellow author and editor, Robert Kingett, I signed up for an open mic call and I read five of my more recent poems and was thrilled to receive high praise from the listeners. The facilitator followed up with me resulting in an opportunity to record one of my guide dog poems. It will be added to a poetry project for the Chicago Public Library.
While writing is solitary, the sharing of it is not; the sharing is what pushes me to write, to create and keep a productive mindset. Being good at something like writing and hearing others say my writing is good gives me a feeling of belonging and purpose. I’d lost those two aspects of self when I became blind and reclaiming them over the years felt like gluing the jagged pieces of my soul back together.
Opportunities abound, from online writing prompts given by Writing Works Wonders to focused feedback and email lists to connect like in the writer’s group, Behind Our Eyes. One never knows where the opportunities and connections will appear but one thing is sure, striving to produce good writing and sharing it with readers is the goal.
I value you all, it is you, the reader, the listener, the literary compatriots, for whom I write. I will keep writing as long as you keep reading and listening.
Summer’s Book
By Ann Chiappetta ©
August is
A perpetual ending
Of wilting haiku blossoms
Of Heat and drought and rain on wind chimes
Of crisp leaflets capturing autumn’s promise and
open fields of earth’s parchment
awaiting to harvest and scribe
richness into Nature’s book with stories of Winter white.
2022
Dreya sends her fanciful smile your way, what’s better than a book dragon asking her friends to read more books?
Dreya the red and green book dragon smiles and floats in the air with her best friends, winged books and musical notes.
| Filed under blindness pets and people Relationships writing
Hello from Windham and Hunter Mountains, Green and Ulster counties, NY, home of the New York Catskills and summer wildlife. Bear and deer and black flies, oh my!
🐻 🦌 🌄
It took us almost as long to pack for the trip Like we were moving out. In a way we were moving out, at least temporarily.
Let me explain. Remember hurricane Ida in the Fall of 2021? We sustained water damage to our entire apartment. In fact, all the apartments on the ground floor and the lobby area took on six inches or more of flood water. Our lobby was completely under over four feet of it. me we all had to first wait for the insurance and FEMA funding to come through, then wait for a move out date. Since we own cats and dogs, this meant finding a location for two weeks that was not going to mean living in one room together like in a hotel. and the most important part of it was also packing up everything to be stored in a pod while the work is being done. Oh, and to add a cherry atop this shit show of bad timing, there is also asbestos abatement along with the replacing the floors from the old glue used on the original flooring being removed. We didn’t know about that one. Now it is a concern and rightly so. It is also bad timing.
A powerful wave of flood water slamming open your front door and engulfing your apartment is traumatic enough but the asbestos thing is just, like, really shitty. It will delay things a bit more for the installation of the new floors and moving back in again when we return.
We are fortunate to be able to make the bad timing and all the packing work to our advantage. we deserve some respite after so much upheaval. The stress exhausted us. If Jerry and April weren’t there helping me, guiding me around all the boxes, extra workers, and taking charge of the packing prior to the work, I’d never manage it alone. This is our family and I am proud of us.
The wildlife is active. The variety of animals eating the apple tree in the adjoining yard included rabbits, a wood chuck, and two black bears, we think a mother and older cub based on size and attitude.
Annie Shares News Volume 2 Issue 7.5 July/August 2022
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Hello Readers and followers, a blessed and belated Independence Day to everyone. 🎆 🎇 🧨
I wanted to get this out before we break for a vacation. I’ll share our adventures upon our return. Even the cats are coming with us, so it should be interesting.
The ever-expanding tribe of writers and readers means so much to me and I want to share a bit about them in each newsletter moving forward.
I had a great time being a guest blogger for a June Word Crafter blog tour for Hope For the Tarnished. It was a fun five days of getting to know the host bloggers and exposing my novel to new readers. To find out more about Kay Lynne’s newsletter, book blog tours and her excellent blog, Writing To Be Read, go here.
Leon Stevens writes: Looking for my first review for my second poetry collection. Readers can get a review copy through Story Origin or read on KU (Kindle Unlimited).
Receive a free review copy through Story Origin here: Review copy link
Read with Kindle Unlimited: Amazon link
I caught this great review of my novel, Hope for the Tarnished, from mystery writer and author, Trish Hubschman. Check it out:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1134230
m
☕ 🍵
Ms. Liz and I shared some TEA on YouTube:
Please like and share it and follow Miss Liz, she’s the best and she is making a difference one cup of spiritually-infused Tea at a time!
Since I’ve been sharing audio clips of my writing, I thought I’d share one of my short stories, Trolley Ride from A String of Stories from the Heart to the Future © 2020 and narrated by Lilian Yves.
May the summer breeze and warm winds propel your imagination and soothe your spirits!
Dreya the book dragon
| Filed under blindness Fiction Guide dogs nonfiction Poem
The 14th Annual Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale has begun, running now through July 31. Visit my author’s page to order your free eBooks from Smashwords during the Summer sale!
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AnnChiappetta
All my titles are free, a gift to readers everywhere.
Why Smashwords? Electronic choices, of course. It’s simple and get the book delivered to your inbox. Transfer it to your favorite book reading app. It’s great, kindle isn’t the only eBook reading app in town. 😉
Tranquil photo of stacked stones beside circular pattern in the sand.
| Filed under blindness Fiction Writing Life
Those of you who know I am blind might be curious about the assistive technology and software I rely upon to operate my pc and mobile devices. This recording will demonstrate what I hear when writing and editing stories and other written correspondence. Since this story is a mini-space drama — I thought why not record it being read by a synthesized voice? Enjoy!