Why You Should Never Stop Reading Fairytales!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never Stop Reading Fairytales! by Karen DeMers Dowdall

Considering that I am really into fantasy, paranormal, fairytales, and witches, this new blog title suits me to a T…Once Upon a time…. It is far better than just my name (it is way too long). This new blog title really makes me happy. I love fantasy stories that begin with Once Upon a time…Madeleine L’Engles, A Wrinkle in time, however, does not begin Once upon a time…it begins with, “It was a dark and stormy night”…that works too.

I have collected volumes of fairytale books, everything from all of Hans Christian Anderson to all of the Grimm’s Fairytales, Scotland Folk Tales, Irish Myths and Folklore, among many other volumes of Fairytales. Perhaps, one could say, I live in a fairytale world of my own making. So true. I can’t think of a better place to live…especially in the world as we live in today.

Also, my collection of books includes my favorite books of tales about Princesses, Dragons, Monsters, and of course…Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit and all his friends, too. Less I forget to mention, my love of everything in King Author’s Court and the Knights, especially, the Wizard Merlin, and also,the Hobbit’s Gandalf the Grey. So many magical creatures that do often represent the best and the worst of humanity.

These stories tell me that most, that perhaps all of humanity is redeemable, because we are not given an instruction manual for raising babies, toddlers, and especially teenagers – God love them, one and all. Oh my goodness, it can be a real juggle out there for those growing up and with our delicate egos at risk…anything can go wrong.

Perhaps, that is why I love Fantasy, Fairytales, Paranormal, Greek Mythology, and Science fiction too. Quoting the famous words of Albert Einstein, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Well…perhaps it doesn’t work with everyone. I am still learning.

I will add to that quote, if I may, my own philosophy:  “Never stop reading fairytales. No matter how old you are! We are forever learning, and not much teaches us more than a good Fairytale!”

by Karen DeMers Dowdall June 4th, 2019

 

 

Karen DeMers Dowdall20 Comments

A Very Special Book Review: My Vibrating Vertebrae: And Other Poems by Agnes Mae Graham

 

Agnes Mae Graham’s beautiful collection of rhyming poems, My Vibrating Vertebrae, is stunning. Like a brilliant jewel, her poems will take your breath away. Moments ago, I read the last poem, and I couldn’t wait to review this book of poetry, that did take my breath away. Agnes Mae Graham’s brilliant book of poetry gave me a sense of awe, incredulity, of the beauty, wit, charm, love, grace, and sorrow, with tears of joy too.

Agnes Mae Graham brings all of this beauty to each page of rhyme and rhythm with perfect beats that flow like cadence, lilt, and is music to one’s ear; it sets the stage for deeply felt and lived emotions that bring forth memories of a time lost to all, but those who lived it.

I laughed, I giggled, I felt joy and pain as her memories brought back memories of my own; of my father and mother who experienced similar moments in their lives as well, but the stories they once told are now gone forever. It was with great joy that I can now recall them through Agnes Mae Graham’s heartfelt poetry.

Each poem she writes is unique to a place and a time. Three of her poems are especially poignant for me, The Antrim Coast Road, Journey in an Aeroplane, and Panic, yet every poem will touch you deeply and bring you to that place and time.

It is fair to say, that this beautiful, heartfelt collection will be with me always. I give this book of poetry a 5 star review.

Agnes Mae Graham

Karen DeMers Dowdall27 Comments

New Novel by Karen DeMers Dowdall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soon to be published, this historical time-slip paranormal fiction novel, begins with Sara Windsor Knightly, a modern day Wiccan (a mostly herbal witch), who inherits a 17th century colonial manor in a small colonial town in Connecticut. She turns the manor into a bed and breakfast Inn. Sara discoveries that the house is also haunted by Scottish ghosts who mostly behave themselves.

There is also a ghost witch who was burned at the stake, in 1690, and the ghost witch, a long dead relative of Sara’s, Alice Windsor Hall, wants Sara to rescue her small daughter, Clara, from terrible danger created by a wicked Alchemist posing as a minister, by going back in time to 1690. Sara believes she can’t change the past and will not agree to that request. Soon, however, Sara finds herself transported through time with Captain Christian Windsor-dead for 325 years.

Captain Windsor was a gentleman farmer from 1690, who was also a British Captain in the British Colonies of America during wartime. Captain Windsor was killed in the war of 1690 in Colonial America. He was in charge of a British Brigade during King William’s War of the League of Augsburg against the French occupation of land in British Colonial in America. The French, with the assistance of the Abenaki Indians from Maine, who were against the British for taking their ancestral lands in Maine, chose to fight with the French against the British Colonials in America.

 

 

 

 

 

Karen DeMers Dowdall36 Comments

we had wings

This is an exceptional philosophical poem that is unique and bold. It gives a different view of the story of Eve, and gives it wings, blessings, and joy. Thank you Holly for a beautiful view of a time when we had wings.

House of Heart

Then, wisdom grew from fruit

and  time was a seedling.

All creatures spoke the same,

hymns of bats, the breath of horses.

We were winged and freedom

was etched on the soles of our feet.

Pathways in the earth and sky were known,

not charted.

Now we step naked into the blazing sun.

Bare  ourselves  to golden rivers and the

awesome tidal thunder.

Dali and The Garden of Eden

View original post

Karen DeMers Dowdall5 Comments

The Historical Role of Writers and Authors in Society

 

 

 

 

 

I believe our global world is teetering on a precipice or an abyss. However we wish to view our global situation, because there are too many dictators that have now gained power. The supposed purpose of our American Democratic Republic was, and hopefully will be again someday, for religious freedom and economic prosperity. Democracy, however, is losing.

Therefore, in my opinion, writers can and should share their views.  The governmental policies are everyone’s business, because our lives, how we live our lives, are dependent upon on our written and verbal voices.  Writers have a voice, an audience, a vibrant and often collective voice.

Fiction, especially, is a vehicle to express societal needs and wants for a better life. Consider A Tale of Two Cities, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roots, and so many others.  All of these written works represent writers speaking out about the horrors of tyranny placed on people of poverty, of color, of sex, and of faith.

Furthermore, all of the above classic literature, speaks to the appalling human conditions forced onto society by tyranny, greed, hate groups, ignorance, and loathe. The cruelty of mankind is a poison without a cure…unless humankind speaks loudly, writes loudly about injustice, poverty, bullying, hate, fear, racism, greed, and tyranny.

For instance, religion is a set of beliefs based on faith, a policy of doctrine, and religion has changed lives, for better or worse, consider: The Malleus Maleficarum, The Salem Witch Trials, The Trail of Tears, The Holocaust, Roots, and so many other travesties and horrors, based on tyranny or tyrannical religious precepts, basically humans being inhuman. I say this, because some forms of religion do not wholly, truly represent the founding of beliefs that a prophet gave to people of a certain time in history.

All religions are faith and politically based beliefs—by speakers, writers, authors, and preachers. Our lives are based on faith. Faith is what we believe to be a given right: freedom to pray, to think, to express our beliefs, and nothing is more political than the faith of our choice.  It is our right to believe in a higher power or not to believe, and we all believe differently.

Our collective belief in a democratic republic is policy-based, and we came to believe in a democratic republic as written by authors, who expressed their views, their faith in the ability to tell us stories, stories that are based on democracy or tyranny. We, as writers and authors, are at another dangerous point in our humanity.

We should and can choose to write short stories, novels, and commentaries that support our democratic republic; if not, we will fail miserably to defend our right to write stories. Without this right, we may see our written work burned in the fire of a tyrannical and often insane dictator.

As it is today, so many great written works are on the banned books list and are not allowed in libraries. Who knows? Your religion could be next or any and all religious doctrine based in faith, could be banned and our writing banned as well.

Whether tyranny is religious or theoretical, what we believe collectively becomes the law of the land. The voices of our written work: our novels, our commentaries, our short stories, our speeches, all are critically important to our way of life, our democracy.

Our lives depend on the written word that will reflect our collective voice for freedom of thought, of choice, of faith in our union as Americans.  What we allow to endure, without our voices, will be our fall from grace.

 

Karen DeMers Dowdall61 Comments

THOUGHTS ON POETRY

I am reblogging this from something I wrote and posted almost a year ago. It seems that springtime is the time for poetry, when love blooms in the air. 

What is poetry and its place in the human psyche? Poetry and prose, I believe, magically transports the reader to visualize vividly a very personal place in time, bringing to life every possible emotion seared into the psyche that the reader may have experienced in real life, wished for, dreamed of, or feared.

This is what makes poetry so emotionally beautiful and painfully true. We get it and it can be transforming. But, where does poetry fit in, in the whole scheme of our human experience. Poetry reflects our romantic inclinations, our troubled history, our social truths, politics, and the most beautiful of all philosophies – who and what are we anyway, in the scope of all there is under Heaven and Earth.

Poetry is romantic. The great writer and poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley said, “Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”  It is, also, I believe, as Robert Frost wrote, “when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”

Poetry is more than a history of human desires. “Hence poetry”, wrote Aristotle, “is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”

Poetry is often compared to the ultimate in what is truth. “Poetry”, wrote Joseph Roux, “is truth in its Sunday clothes.”  Leonardo da Vinci, believed that, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” John Ciardi wrote, “Poetry lies its way to the truth.”

Poetry is political. “All poets, all writers are political”, writes Sonia Sanchez, “they either maintain the status quo, or they say, ’Something’s wrong, let’s change it for the better.”

Poetry is also philosophical. John Lennon believed that, “my role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”

However, even though all the above quotes bare witness to the impact of poetry and prose on the human psyche, yet, no one has described and defined poetry and prose as beautifully as William Shakespeare, who wrote that poetry is,  “The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.”

Poetry and prose, I believe, represent the wonder of human imagination and all that lies between heaven and earth as we struggle to understand what it means to be human in a world that is constantly changing the definition of what is humanity and what it is not.

by K. D. Dowdall

 

 

Karen DeMers Dowdall35 Comments

BOOK REVIEW: CATLING’S BANE

Catling’s Bane, Book 1 of the Rose Shield series, offers the reader an amazing journey into a world so believable that the characters seem to come alive on the page. This beautifully written science-fiction pulled me into a world that glitters with luminosity. The author reveals this world with descriptions so vivid, so rich in detail, that we forget completely, that it is a fictional world.

It is a civilization very different than our own, yet still, very much the same, with problems of great poverty, injustice, and cruelty, with one exception. There are strange powers of influence, powers that control someone’s intent, beliefs, and thoughts. The poor live their lives in a caste system, while the wealthy and powerful live like royalty, and all others live by hook or by crook.

Yet, even for the wealthy, life becomes a perilous journey, because every word, ever thought, may not be their own.  There are those, however, within this system, who have courageous hearts, make great sacrifices, and if they can escape the Influencers, they may have the opportunity to change their world where everyone can speak their own thoughts and live their lives as they choose to be.

I was completely captured within this incredible world, created by the author, D. Wallace Peach. 5 stars

Karen DeMers Dowdall52 Comments