Dear Julie,
It is kind of funny that I am writing you this thank you note right now. I was in the library one night, about six months ago, looking at our books on creative writing. I saw your book, Writing for Wellness, and I immediately put it back on the shelf. You see, I was not ready to handle this kind of intimate story of my life. I also have never had cancer. My mother has had a small lump [ ... ]

A Beautiful Christmas, Decorations Everywhere, Festive Garlands Hanging, Inspiring Joyous Kinder Laughter, Moving Non-believers On-toward Peace, Quieting Restive Souls, Tempering Unrest.
                                                                          Very Worry-free Xmas, 
                                                                                             Your Zitherists  
If you haven’t already noticed, there are 26 words, written in grammatical sentences, each beginning with successive letters of the alphabet, starting with A and ending with Z. Pat Boran, an Irish poet, gets the credit for this exercise our group is doing over the holidays. It’s in his book, “The Portable Creative [ ... ]

                        Marion’s Garden of Hope
                   Last year’s garden was bleak,
                  A few annuals were all she could do,
                  Mammograms and Lumpectomies,  Radiation and Reconstruction
                  They took up most of her time.
 
                 This year’s sun is stronger and brighter,
                 She’s planting perennials now.
                 Gaillardia and Primula, Rudbeckia and Hosta,
                 Perennials for all those years to come!
 
I wrote that poem in 2007. It was written about my wife’s battle with Breast Cancer. Her mental strength through life’s tests, not just dealing with her Cancer, is what keeps me going. Death of an [ ... ]

Dr. Lois Neil-Sambar, 76, former Glendale Unified School District Director of Secondary Curriculum and Instruction and former principal of Rosemont Middle School, a well-known educator and philanthropist in the Glendale-La Crescenta area, died October 11, 2011  in her home in La Canada-Flintridge following a nearly two-decade valiant battle with cancer.
Lois is survived by her husband, Chakib (Chuck) Sambar, former President of the Glendale Unified School District and long-time GUSD board member and former Vice Principal of Instruction at Crescenta Valley High School; [ ... ]

Famous paintings are wonderful to study and admire. They also have another life- as prompts for WFW classes.
At each of our last two meetings I used a reproduction from a well-known artist.
At one meeting it was Edward Hopper’s “Morning Sun”, In Hopper’s painting a woman is sitting on a bed and looking out her window. I asked the group to write about the thoughts going through the woman’s mind.
Everyone responded enthusiastically to the use of the paintings as prompts, and [ ... ]