And suddenly here we are in June! As seems to happen with every year now, as I age the days drag but the months fly by.

The past three weeks have been the first normal-paced weeks for me this year. Work projects had sucked up all of my free time and mental capacity, and the current polycrisis – climate change, wars, politics, the ongoing COVID pandemic – is, to say the least, distracting.

And since I have a little free time, I am celebrating by filling it back up with literary work.

Since late last year I have been part of the Grand River Poetry Collective, headed by Grand Rapids Poet Laureate Christine Stephens-Krieger. There are two parts to the collective: Publishing books of poetry by Grand Rapids poets, and promoting poetry to the community.

We have published one book so far, Melissa Wray’s Small Gestures. We have close to a dozen more books in various stages of completion, and hope to have some of them on shelves by the end of the year.

We are also participating in the Grand Rapids LitFest, which runs from June 16 -22. This is the first-ever literary festival in Grand Rapids, and an event which is long, LONG overdue.

And now on to the monthly question.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for June 2025 is:

What were some books that impacted you as a child or young adult?

Wow. This is a difficult question to answer.

No, I take that back. It is an easy question to answer, but a difficult list to pare down to blog post length.

I think the first books which affected me were those dealing with animals and the outdoors, either as protagonists or as subjects. From the moment we moved to the farm after my mother re-married I dove into books about rural life, the great outdoors, and the (very much glamorized) life of the farmer.

Books like My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford, James Herriot‘s All Creatures Great and Small, and the great animal adventures by Jim Kjellgaard. Then there were the foraging books by Euell Gibbons – Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop.

All of these were books about being in the outdoors, persevering through hardships, and being around animals. Great stuff for a young kid newly arrived on a farm. But I was also a nerd and a bookworm, so the realities of the the rural life were not all that great for me in the long run. And being surrounded by incurious people, both at home and at school, meant that inspiration became escapism. And that pattern continued until I left the farm for college in 1987. So it goes.

Thanks for stopping by!

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