Tag: A. Catherine Noon

  • E Is For… Easter Cards!

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    I love getting non-bill mail. One of my favorite things to do, is to find offbeat holidays and send cards to my friends and family. Even if you don\’t practice Christianity, the Easter holiday here in the States has become a secular celebration of Spring. We have the Easter Bunny, decorated eggs, chocolates, Easter baskets, and best of all, CARDS.

    You can find inexpensive Easter cards at the dollar store and big box stores. You can find special fancy cards at the fancy card shops. You can find handmade and unique artist cards on shops like Etsy or at local small stores that specialize in gifts or unusual things. You might even find that your community supports artist collective shops where you can go in and see products produced by multiple different local artisans. You can even just use regular paper in an envelope and a stamp – it doesn\’t have to be fancy to say, \”I\’m thinking about you and wish you well.\”

    I need to go find my cards, pardon me. 🙂

    Happy writing!

  • C Is For… Corresponding with Someone

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    When people find out that I like to write letters, a question I often get is,

    \”What do you write about?\”

    Here, then, are some suggestions:

    Start with a Draft

    You can do this old school (on paper) or in a document you keep on your computer. I like to do this on paper because I find that handwriting my ideas slows my brain down. This serves two functions: one, it\’s a form of mindfulness; and two, it lets me see the shape of my thoughts and really sit with them, allowing them to develop.

    Jot down things you want to include in your letter – three things you want to mention

    Why three? I find that if I can get to three, I can get to infinity. One is too few, it doesn\’t leave me anywhere to go. Two is adversarial: this, or that. Dark, or light chocolate. But three, three allows me to suddenly make connections, create a shape, get three dimensional. Try it and see what happens for you.

    Have Three Questions

    No one likes someone who only talks about themselves, right? Then don\’t be that kind of correspondent! Show an interest in your penpal, and ask them questions. One of my favorites: \”What\’s new in your world?\” Another one is, \”Describe for me what a normal day is like for you.\” You can also go on Google and look up \”good icebreaker questions,\” and pick some to include.

    To Enclose or Not To Enclose

    Some penpals insist that one must include something in their letter as an enclosure, and I\’ve seen all sorts of rules for what kinds of things to include – and they rarely agree with each other. Me, I\’m more of the middle way: if I have an enclosure I want to include, I will; otherwise, I\’ll let my words and thoughts stand on their own.

    But what kinds of things work as enclosures?

    • A packet of tea
    • Ephemera like small slices of decorated paper
    • Maps
    • Menus
    • Washi tape
    • Stickers
    • A handmade woven \”mug rug\” that I wove on a pin loom (I\’ve used this as an enclosure multiple times)
    • Bookmark

     

    It comes down to what you feel comfortable including, and how much postage you want to spend. A note of caution: be sure to weigh your letter; you don\’t want the recipient having to pay for extra postage in order to read your letter.

    What\’s the most unusual letter you\’ve received?

  • B Is For… Blogging!

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    If you\’re visiting from the A to Z Challenge, then chances are you know a lot about blogging. Today, I wanted to talk about one blog in particular: the Postcrossing blog. You can visit it, here. Their tagline is, \”Stories about the Postcrossing community and the postal world.\”

    Postcrossing is an international community of penpal afficionados. It\’s an interesting concept: members send postcards to members around the world. The blog discusses news from within the community, and also postal mail in general. One recent article highlighted the Malta Postal Museum.

    The thing I love about Postcrossing is that it\’s not a big investment. Writing a postcard is a tiny bit of text, and a small amount of postage. You can decide whether to mail members just in your country, or whether you\’re willing to write to folx in other countries.

    Each month, they send you a list of your \”stats\” – to which countries you sent cards; from which countries you received cards; etc. I use it as a way to keep the pump primed, as Julia Cameron would say.  In the process, I\’ve even made some friends along the way. Not every person in Postcrossing is interested in a more extended correspondence, but I\’ve met a few. It\’s the best of both worlds: a quick note to someone new, and a few longer, more crunchy letters.

    What about you, Dear Reader? Have you tried Postcrossing?

  • A Is For… A Letter!

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    Welcome, friends! And Happy April!

    Every year, in the month of April, there is an international blogging challenge called the A to Z Blog Challenge. I\’ve done it in previous years, but as with many of my writing friends, the last couple years have been difficult. Between the pandemic; war in Ukraine (Slava Ukraini!); the George Floyd riots and subsequent awakening of the American people to the continuing evils of racism, misogyny, and homophobia; the climate emergency; and the rise of Christo-fascism in the U.S. and around the world, it\’s been a difficult climate in which to be a creative. It\’s easy to feel lost in the midst of all of the onslaught.

    I think it\’s important to remember that we are physical beings. We aren\’t avatars, and we don\’t live in social media: we are flesh and blood beings with physical bodies and THAT is where our connection, our reality, must live.

    And therein I found my theme for this month\’s blog challenge. I decided to join at the last minute; I literally wrote the theme out yesterday and had to ask myself, \”Am I nuts? Do I really want to do a 30 day challenge right now after coming off a severe dry spell?\” In answer, my brain\’s squirrels awoke and not only was the answer yes, but I got ideas for my other sites and themes.

    Thus, here I am.

    Which brings me to today\’s subject: letters!

    What do you get in your physical mailbox? Do you get garbage mail, paper spam, bills, and nothing interesting? Nothing uplifting? Connecting you to people from far away?

    Well, I LOVE getting \”non-bill\” mail. It turns out, you get what you put out there, and that\’s doubly true for receiving letters. If you write letters, you will get letters back. Pretty magical, nu?

    And so my theme this month will be around my love of penpalling. I\’ll share some pictures of letters and postcards I\’ve received (never with the sender\’s address visible), and I\’ll talk about how I meet other penpals and snail mail aficionados. I\’ll even talk a little bit about mail art. While I don\’t consider myself a mail artist, I am fascinated by it and have participated in a couple Artist Trading Card swaps.

    But for today, I\’ll simply close with an invitation. Would you like to be my penpal? If so, please drop me a note at a.catherine.noon AT gmail DOT com and include your name, how you like to be called (if your nickname is different than your given name), and your mailing address. International folx welcome – I just got in a new set of international stamps. 🙂

    Tell me, Dear Reader, what do you like to receive in the mail?

  • Gone Visiting – Join Me!

    I\’ve been visiting around the web again, which feels terrific. On my mind right now is the upcoming Lettermo, or Month of Letters, and that\’s what I\’ve been talking about.

    First, I visited bestselling author Delilah Devlin\’s blog to talk about Lettermo and why it helps to slow down time. Check it out, won\’t you? And drop a comment to let Delilah know you visited.

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    Next, I\’m over at the Lettermo main site today, talking about \”Why Write Letters?\” If it\’s not obvious to you, I hope the post will answer your questions and maybe even tempt you into joining me for the month of February – after all, February IS the Month of Letters!

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    That\’s all for now, Dear Reader. Remember: life is short; write more letters!

    Write on!

  • Lettermo Is Almost Here!

    \"\"I love writing and receiving snail mail, I always have. When I was little, I would send all sorts of things through the mail – doilies from under coffee cups that I colored, travel brochures, beer coasters… Anything that was flat and would fit in an envelope. The habit stayed with me to adulthood and now I send thank you letters to colleagues and business partners (never underestimate the power of a heart-felt thank you note or even just a \”wow, I\’m sorry I didn\’t do that as well as I could have, and I promise to learn better next time\”); greeting cards to friends (Valentine\’s Day is coming up on Feb 14th, remember!); birthday and anniversary cards; and even just a certificate you can create congratulating a friend on a personal milestone.

    What is Lettermo?

    It turns out, there\’s a vibrant online community for correspondents! Who knew? The internet can support our offline lives in creative ways. One of these communities is called \”Month of Letters,\” or \”Lettermo\” for short. Every year in February, participants challenge themselves to mail something to someone every day during the month – it could be to another participant, to a friend, to a public figure, heck – even Santa Claus! We also agree to write back to everyone who writes to us.

    How Do You Join Lettermo?

    Technically, you don\’t have to do anything to \”join\” Lettermo; you can just participate in your own way and in your own time. BUT, if you\’d like to meet other letter writers, you can join the site – it\’s free, and share your address. This way, your information isn\’t just out on a public website (though it\’s prudent to shield yourself by using a post office box rather than your home address). The site allows you to write up a profile of yourself that can include what you like to do, hobbies, and what kinds of things you\’d like to write in your letters.

    If this sounds fun to you, point your mouse over to lettermo.com and get started. Your mailbox will thank you!

  • Artober, and the Power of Putting Your Focus In a Specific Place

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CF0gUpTgP5O/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

    I decided this year to participate in the Instagram art festival #artober. Simply put, the idea behind these kinds of challenges is to practice your art on a regular basis – sometimes daily, as I\’m interpreting it, but not always. You could do #artober weekly or even, if you chose, monthly. Posters put pictures of their art on their Instagram feed and follow others who are doing the same.  That can be a lot of fun because you get inspiration for other pieces and meet a lot of really interesting artists in the process.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CF2ZsaYAjfl/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

    There are prompts, but I don\’t always use them.  As you can see from this post, I chose to go a different direction. The prompt for this day was \”Ecstasy,\” which didn\’t really speak to me. I happened to listen to a broadcast by theologian and scholar Starhawk about power, and voila. My piece.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CF5_-4AgaTU/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

    I decided on Day 3 to play with faux calligraphy, which uses a regular fine-point pen to draw calligraphy, rather than relying on a nib for the characteristic thick-and-thin.

    I do my pieces on the fly, and don\’t overthink them. That\’s one of the key pieces to a challenge like this that works for me: go fast, don\’t think, don\’t edit, just make.

    I also use hashtags connected to my art, such as #calligraphy, #fauxcalligraphy, and of course, I tag each piece #artober and #artober2020.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What are some of the things on which you\’re choosing to place your focus?

  • Welcome To October – 31 New Days, Autumn To Savor, and Two Full Moons

    \"\"Well, it\’s October, Dear Reader! I\’m not sure how it happened either, but here we are. 31 fresh new days, two full moons, and #artober.

    Why #artober?

    Because art for art\’s sake is good for you. Putting your focus on something other than the dumpster fire is also a good thing.

    If you decide to play, please share your IG handle with me in the comments.

    If you want to watch along, go to Instagram and look for the hashtag #artober and follow artists you enjoy.

    Okay, but what is #artober?

    It\’s a daily art challenge designed to help us get back into the habit of daily art practice. I\’m doing mine probably mostly with calligraphy, but I go by the seat of my pants so you could be in for anything. I\’ll be posting it on my Instagram @a.catherine.noon.

    What other ideas have you come up with to keep your focus on your creativity and off the dumpster fire? I\’d love to know.

  • Self-Care September – Everyday Bodycare

    \"\"Sundays are a good day for pampering, and if you\’re in the States and have the luxury of tomorrow off for American Labor Day, all the better!

    Here\’s what you\’ll need:

    • Cornmeal
    • Honey
    • A warm shower
    • A half hour to an hour

     

    Optional:

    • Music (something calm or spa-like would be perfect)
    • Candles
    • Essential oils or a room spray that you like
    • A warm, fluffy robe
    • Slippers or warm socks

     

    Start your shower and let the warm steam fill the bathroom. Start your music and candles, and spritz your room spray. If you have essential oils, you can drop 5 or 10 drops in the back of the shower to create an aromatherapy shower for yourself.

    Set the cornmeal on the edge of the tub or somewhere outside the shower where you can get at it. Also get the honey and set it close by.

    Instructions:

    • Put about a teaspoon\’s worth of cornmeal in your hand and add enough honey to make a paste.
    • Start at your feet and rub in a circular motion. Pay particular attention to your heels.
    • Then, moving up the calves, continuing in a circular motion, massage the skin.
    • When you\’re done with your thighs, rinse your skin.
    • Then starting with your hands, move up your arms toward your shoulders. Pay attention to your elbows.
    • Rub circular motions along your stomach – in a counter-clockwise direction around to the left.
    • Get what you can reach of your back – or, have a friend help. 🙂
    • If you have long hair like I do, the thick goop will make a mess in your hair so you may want to put your hair up for this or just keep it out of the way as you\’re working.
    • When you\’re done, wash your body and make sure you get all the cornmeal off.
    • When you get out, use a light moisturizer and then wrap up in a warm robe with slippers and rest.

     

    If you try it, I\’d love to know how it goes for you! Please share with me in the comments.

     

  • Self-Care September – Saturday Socials: Craft in the Time of Coronavirus

    \"\"September Dates:

    • Saturday, 09/12/2020
    • Saturday, 09/19/2020
    • Saturday, 09/26/2020

    If you are interested in attending, drop me an email and I\’ll get you the log-in info. Email noony AT acatherinenoon DOT com.

  • Self-Care September – Foody Friday! (Yes, I Know, It\’s Sunday…) – Menu Plans!

    Sorry for falling out of flow with my schedule, but Friday turned out much busier than planned. I\’m back to share some ideas about menu planning with you.

    It\’s very easy to get into a rut with our weekly shopping and making meals. Instead of letting that determine our reality, it\’s helpful to get intentional about our daily round. What we eat daily is what becomes our body. We know that, but putting it into practice can be challenging.

    What works for me is to use my favorite cookbooks and pick meals from them that I\’m familiar with. I use those as a generic palette to choose my weekly meals around, and then plug in other things like vegetables and pre-biotic foods.

    If you need a good starting point, I hope you find this useful: Menu Plan. It\’s a word document that uses tables, and I print it out weekly and put it up on the fridge.

    Here\’s how I make it work for me, though: I don\’t just plan the week, I make notes about what worked and what didn\’t. This is how, for example, I figure out when particular meals take too long to prep on nights when I have other commitments. For those nights, we\’ll put in, say, tuna salad instead of roast pork.

    We also plan large meals once a week for Sundays, typically, depending on our hiking schedule. That lets us drag out all the old favorites: roast chicken, pork loin, mashed potatoes, and all sorts of goodies. Don\’t forget desert – with a little planning ahead, pies and fruit crumbles aren\’t difficult to make.

    What\’s your secret for your daily round? What works for you?

  • Self-Care September – Social Media Trackers!

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    To What Do You Pay Your Attention?

    It has been said that attention will be the next most sought after commodity. In the modern world, we have FAR too many distractions. From doctors and psychologists to technologists all warn of the dangers of too much social media consumption. Problems ranging from confirmation bias to truncated attention spans and an inability to concentrate are all blamed on our addition to scrolling.

    It helps to recognize the word \”pay\” in that question.

    Attention is a limited commodity. We only have so much of it before we become fatigued, get bored, need to rest or eat, or have other responsibilities intrude on our time. When we\’re thinking about what we do all day vs. what we want to be doing, it\’s a useful mental tool to recognize that attention, like money, is something we pay – and that once it\’s gone, it\’s gone. Unlike money, where we can theoretically make more of it, attention is something that can\’t be gotten back.

    I challenge us to track our social media consumption.

    Again, there\’s an important word in that statement, this time, \”consumption.\” Just like a steady diet of junk food and soda makes us sick, a steady diet of junk media clogs up our brains and makes us sick. So what if we were to take the bull by the horns and really work to curtail that scrolling? Is there a way to help technology help us?

    Indeed there is, and it\’s called a social media tracker or monitor.

    Available on both Android and iPhone, many are free. The one I use is called QualityTime. It gives me daily reports on what apps consume the most of my time and is directly responsible for me removing Facebook from my phone altogether. I just don\’t need the negativity in my life, and I don\’t want to waste the amount of time I was spending on the platform. I\’d rather be making something and writing books.

    Here are some other suggestions:

    1. Moment, available on iPhone.
    2. Forest, available on Android and iPhone.
    3. AppDetox, available on Android.
    4. Offtime, available on Android and iPhone.
    5. ShutApp, available on iPhone.
    6. SPACE, available on iPhone.

     

    It\’s worth noting that there are multiple apps that help us to accomplish the goal of scrolling around less, which should tell us that many people are – rightly! – concerned about it. Social media addiction is of growing concern to mental health practitioners. Even the venerable Mayo Clinic has sounded the alarm, stating that 25% of youth are addicted to phones.  The mental health impacts aren\’t just on our attention, either: it\’s been linked to increased rates of depression. anxiety, stress, and poor sleep. In fact, they state that it\’s even more concerning than substance abuse.

    Your Challenge, Should You Choose To Accept It:

    Download one of the tracking apps and use it this week. Use it without judgment, just with openness and curiosity. What is your most-used app? How much time do you spend on apps? What would you like to be doing more of?

    And I think you\’ll find, as I did, that there are many benefits to becoming more intentional about our social media consumption.

    Tomorrow, join me for Foody Friday and see what I\’ve got up my sleeve for you!