Words and Pieces

I wrote this poem after spending an hour with a few of my female artistic friends.  We discussed poetry, art, life, and when I got home I felt this overwhelming feeling of inspiration and joy!  Yes!  Joy!  It's like we all shared our energy while we were together.  I just had to write my feelings down.  The words came out of me so easily thinking of my own Sisters and the friends I consider to be Sisters from other Misters.  I wrote the poem in one sitting and a few weeks later I got the idea to record my voice reading it and create a video using photos.  I put a call out on my facebook feed and asked female friends to send me photos of themselves with their Sisters or with their BFFs that they considered Sisters or with women they were inspired by.  The ladies sent me some great images and I used a bunch of my own for fill ins to create this video.  This is definitely one of those labor of love or labor of inspiration times. ...

©Beth Achenbach 2016 Wrapped up in devices. My mind is... burnt out from the wires.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016 I sat on the couch Election Night feeling more anxiety than I had ever known.  I didn’t want to believe what was happening but there it was right before my eyes, the electoral map, on my local NBC channel looking like someone wrapped it in red Christmas paper.  I tried to stay hopeful and kept repeating in my head "Hillary, Hillary, Hillary".  I managed a quick nap around midnight, holding out hope that Lovey would wake me up and say “She did it, Hillary is President!” but it never happened.  I woke up about 15 minutes later and it ended up that I was the one nudging her awake around 1am/1:30 saying “let’s go to bed, it’s not looking good” just after they called Florida to the other side.  So we frumped our way upstairs to bed where I lay wide awake for a long time with my mind all a whir. The next day I was feeling very disappointed so I limited my social media browsing and did not watch the news except to see Hillary’s speech, which ...