Connie DeDona

Author, Photographer, Performance Poet

[corneliadedona]

Today We Pause

Today, we remember those who laid down their lives for our democracy

our way of life, and Eleanor Roosevelt comes to mind.

She said, “You Must Do The Things That You Think You Cannot Do.”

I’m wearing the shirt with that statement, in my mind, and looking out my window on this rainy morning, thinking about how the garden was a huge sacrifice

Much of my youth was spent pulling weeds, back-breaking work with little yield and much cost.

Now I appreciate the wildflowers fending for themselves with their steely determination.

The way they endure, while vicious and self-serving predators

concerned only with enriching themselves,

bark at and devour what they conceive as low-hanging fruit.

Anyone or anything that refuses to bend to their will.

Lives that mean nothing to them or their cronies.

Lives that sacrificed everything for liberty, GOD, and country

Honorable men and women who served

so that they could climb the ladder of success without so much as a turn of the head or a thank-you. The craven who claims his own orbit.

As if they deserved it. And we didn’t. 

Predators who trample the garden amidst those who continue to tend it, as if all that destruction never happened. The sustaining survivors, rebuilding, sacrificing, sowing hope from tiny seeds. So that we may bring a measure of joy to those who cannot.  The ones who paid and continue to pay, slaving and bowing, and hoping for reason, justice, and sanity. 

[corneliadedona]

Betrayal

Betrayal by a mate is wound enough,

but betrayal by elected leaders is another wound entirely.

We place in their hands the keys to atomic annihilation,

and still they turn against us.

Once trust is broken, the ground falls out.

Let them trumpet, bellow, and groan—

there is nowhere left for them to hide.

Silence does not mend it.

The realization strikes the survival instinct like a warning light in a long, dark tunnel.

It asks for adjustment, for healing, for rebirth into a new world.

The question is simple: can you?

Can we grow stronger, restore self-care, set firm boundaries, and learn to trust again?

Yes—

but healing keeps its own time.

[corneliadedona]

The Long Way Home

Gina ran away one fall On nothing but a dare, The promised warmth of southern skies Was waiting somewhere there.

They said that summer lingered on Where ocean breezes roamed, While winter gathered in the north Around the streets of home.

"Bring swimsuits," somebody laughed, "Bring sandals for the shore." But Gina owned no clothes like that A city girl to the core.

She was New York through and through, Just sixteen, wild and bright, And when she crossed a crowded room She seemed to gather light.

Four girls cut class and hit the road Instead of school that day, Chasing freedom down the coast And throwing rules away.

They thumbed their rides through Newark first, Then farther south they went, Living on the kindness found Wherever fate had sent.

Gina prayed that Lucy would Be home when trouble came, For someone had to know the truth

Behind each borrowed name.

The stories spun to hide their tracks, The lies they thought would last, Could never stay ahead for long— The truth rode hard and fast.

And where was Katya on that road? Perhaps she wandered still, Not running from the dark so much As learning how to will

Her way through it.

Three days passed. Baltimore at last. A holding room. A waiting gloom.

Detention walls and anxious hours,

Four runaways shut in, Till someone called and someone came To gather them again.

Lucy did what Lucy could, Steady, wise, and kind. She gave the look grown women give When worry fills the mind.

And had it ended otherwise, Had fate not stepped in then, Gina never would have met The man she'd meet again.

But that comes later.

Back then they rode Like concert kids at play, Certain they could leave the world And simply drift away.

As though four girls could disappear For just a weekend's roam, Then call for help when funds ran low And find an easy home.

As though a parent, scout leader, Or some patient soul could come, To claim them from the road they chose And drive them northward home.

Back through miles of autumn rain, Past every mile they'd flown,

To face the thing all runaways Must someday learn and own:

No matter how far south you go, No matter where you roam, The longest road a runaway walks It's the long way home.

[corneliadedona]

A Kindness from a Stranger

You never really know who will show up in an ordinary moment and keep your day from going completely off the rails.

It may be the customer at Aldi’s who frees a shopping cart from its quarter-based prison,

the driver at an intersection who waves you through as they have briefly been appointed traffic angel,

or the stranger at the beach who saves your umbrella from becoming the fastest thing on the shoreline.

Most of the time, you do not even know their names.

They are like tiny guest stars in the sitcom of your life, appearing just long enough to save the scene and then disappearing before the credits.

Without them, the world would feel a little harsher and far less merciful.

I felt that kindness myself the other day at the end of a hike, when a faint headache started tapping at my temples like a landlord asking where the rent was. A man I had just met offered me an unopened bottle of water from his pack, and in that moment, he seemed less like a fellow hiker and more like a desert mirage with good planning skills. I have not hiked like that in two years, but you can be sure I will carry extra water next time, because apparently, I enjoy learning important lessons the hard way.

Another time, I was carrying my beach umbrella over one shoulder and my bag on the other, feeling strong and wonderfully free of pain for the first time in years. Hip surgery was behind me, and all I had to do was walk in a straight line like an adult, which, in hindsight, may have been asking a lot.

It would have been simple if I had remembered that my eyes and my feet are supposed to be on the same team. Instead, I turned to look behind me and went down so fast it felt as if the earth had been waiting all morning for its chance. One moment I was upright and victorious; the next I was introducing myself to the pavement. Thankfully, instinct arrived before panic, and I managed to protect my new hip, which at that point felt like the most expensive member of the family.

I scraped my elbow and twisted my foot, but escaped with no serious injury, which felt like a very generous final score. The strangers near the outdoor shower kept moving. Still, my sister and brother-in-law, coming up behind me, lifted me and took the weight I had been carrying, proving that family will absolutely help you, especially when you have already provided the day’s entertainment.

Family, after all, can be its own kind of rescue, steady as a railing and only slightly more likely to laugh once they know you are fine.

[corneliadedona]

Lucian

Lucian

was a gentle ghost

who sometimes forgot

that he had died. He wandered Central Park,

that green heart of Manhattan.

A few could feel him there—the painters, the dreamers—

though they could never quite answer back,

and so his loneliness learned to listen for light.

Lucian carried armfuls of stories,

for he had been writing a children’s tale when he left the world.

So he hurried after one child, then another,

offering adventures like bright kites, and for a little while they laughed with him.

Now and then, a day opened like a window, and he made a friend.

Adults could not hear him, and often led their children away, but wonder, once awakened, was not so easily sent home.

Louis was another such boy,

lost in a car accident,

who woke believing

he had only risen out of a hard dream until memory returned

with morning’s light, and yet each dawn grew a little kinder.

When Lucian found Louis, they ran through Central Park as if the wind had claimed them for its own.

The squirrels stared as though the world had briefly sung out of tune,

then blamed it on the breeze—for even doubters sometimes bow to mystery.

There were others, too.

Many drifted through Grand Central Station,

lonely souls still hoping for a conversation,

but most people could neither see nor hear them.

Strangers passed through them

as if they were made only of weather,

sometimes a hundred times in a single hour.

Even so, memory did not only wound them; it kept their names alight.

The sensitive ones still felt them—the poet mid-line, the actor in a pause, the artist turning toward a shimmer they could not explain.

They were rare, but not so rare that hope forgot them.

And when the skies darkened,

the ghosts would gather close in the tunnels,

not only from fear, but to keep one another warm,

wondering whether the hand above them

might still be on its way,

to lead them toward whatever meadow waits beyond,

whatever bright country that may be.

And if they were meant to linger here a little longer,

they would learn, together, how even this in-between world can hold a little dawn.

[corneliadedona]

There Was A Tree

Ode to the Weeping Elm

O, green cathedral of the lawn, Great dome of architecture and grace, You do not reach to meet the dawn, But bend to touch the earth’s embrace.

Praise to the seam that holds your soul— The borrowed roots, the weeping crown. A human hand once made you whole, And taught your branches to cascade down.

An emerald tent where summer rests, A secret room of quiet shade, A sanctuary for the nests, Inside the fortress you have made.

Stand on, great curiosity of art, Where human craft and nature agree. You hold the corners of our heart, O, beautiful and solitary tree.

[corneliadedona]

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger

was a nurse and a birth control advocate

walking the crowded tenement streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side,

where poor women, already burdened by hunger, worked swollen with pregnancy after pregnancy,

and when abortion was beyond their reach, they faced desperate choices in shadowed rooms.

Contraception, once legal in the nineteenth century, had nearly vanished from public life by the early twentieth.

Many women sought out illegal abortion providers, slipping through back alleys and unmarked doors.

Others, with nowhere left to turn, attempted to end pregnancies themselves,

risking infection, hemorrhage, and death.

Margaret knew these stories intimately.

The daughter of a stonemason, she was the sixth of eleven children,

raised in a household crowded with voices, where the strain of endless childbearing was impossible to ignore.

She began to argue that family limitation was more than a private choice—

it was a path to freedom,

a way for working-class women to loosen the crushing grip of poverty,

to reclaim their bodies, their wages, their futures.

She championed contraception and founded the American Birth Control League,

the organization that would later become Planned Parenthood.

In March 1914, after one of her patients died from complications of an illegal abortion,

Sanger launched The Woman Rebel.

Its pages crackled with defiance,

challenging laws and customs that kept women uninformed and powerless.

The monthly newsletter brought the phrase “birth control” into public conversation,

but controversy followed close behind.

Three issues were banned.

In August 1914, federal authorities indicted her for violating postal obscenity laws.

Rather than surrender,

she boarded a ship bound for England,

leaving New York Harbor behind in a veil of fog.

Before departing, however,

she instructed friends to distribute one hundred thousand copies of Family Limitation—

a slender sixteen-page pamphlet

containing plainspoken instructions for preventing pregnancy.

The pamphlet spread from hand to hand,

through factories, kitchens, and crowded apartments,

carrying information many women had never been allowed to receive.

For decades, Sanger devoted her life to educating women about birth control,

arguing that access to contraception was a matter of medicine, public health, and human dignity.

She lived long enough to witness a turning point.

In 1965, the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut made birth control legal for married couples.

A year later, at the age of eighty-six,

Margaret Sanger died,

having spent a lifetime pushing open a door

that generations of women would walk through.

[corneliadedona]

Writing a New Book

The process can feel like a rewrite— a better-edited version of the past. But who would read it?

Time is precious and fleeting, especially lately. They say memory is unreliable. How many people will forget these last several years?

Some say to start with an outline. Others say to write immediately, while it’s fresh, while the anger still burns. And over the years, I have been very angry.

But now it is late spring, and I have a remarkable story to tell—one filled with strange adventures and unforgettable characters: Katya M. Cartouche, a black cat; Tiki, an eight-foot wooden yet mobile Indonesian tiki; Gina, beautiful and innocent despite adulthood; and Anthony—the Roman with the hooded beak—from Naples. There is also a dead ex-husband and a time machine.

Tony used to tell Gina that no one is truly good. He said it often.

What he meant was that no one is entirely bad, and no one is entirely good. People are complicated, unpredictable creatures.

For Gina, letting go of the safety net felt like jumping from a perfectly reliable airplane. The first step was the hardest. After that, she simply had to trust that the parachute strapped to her back would open and carry her safely down.

It did.

And the book clamoring to be written could become a bestseller in some universe willing to accept the truth as Katya and Gina understand it.

Right now, though, they are knee-deep in the swamp, while the ticks cling on for dear life.

…

And soon, all the masks will come off.

[corneliadedona]

How Many Apps Do You Have On Your Phone?

I don’t know

I’d have to count

funny 

like one of my apps professes to be a botanist in my pocket.

I love how simple things can cure all my plant woes

but please step out of my pocket

people will talk

and I’m still trying to live down my misspent youth.

Okay, so I’m counting now—

There are twenty-four per page

times eight plus 3= 195!

Do I use all of them?

I have Parking apps (because most meters don’t take money- small change, what’s that? Pennies are gone, guess what’s next?)

Shopping apps

Banking apps

Weather apps

Utility apps

Hiking apps

Health apps

Airline apps

Games, I have game apps for long flights, waiting rooms, etc. 

Photo apps- I have backups for my backups. 

Mail apps—email spam should be outlawed

Music apps

I even have a Jetpack for my WordPress app.

I have a sleep app that I’ve never used. 

I have a Gym app, also hardly used. (Just do the workout)

National Park app

State Park app

I have Audible

WhatsApp

Open Table ( Anyone need a reservation?)

Marking my calendar app now

Seriously, and you’re wondering why the doctor never looks at you!

So the door doesn’t have to hit me in the ass twice

I’m reserving some time to delete 

and get out of the app trap.

See you next week, maybe.

Geez!

Did I mention the car apps?

[corneliadedona]

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Can you see the light?

I think I can.

After four months of inactivity

I am slowly coming back to myself.

Surgery was a cakewalk

Yes, I was asleep for the duration.

But real healing takes time.

My body must accept the new ball and joint,

reattach and mean it

because I plan to put it to the test.

My surgeon, Dr. Stone,

yes, that’s his real name,

said stay upright, not really, but you get the gist.

Stay upright, my dear, and all is well, plus you won’t have to keep that appointment we set for next January.

Stay upright like a tin soldier and soldier on like the Mailman who delivers the mail in all kinds of weather, or the thief who steals from you and then goes on TV to brag about it.

Stay upright, and you never have to see me again.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and I’m thinking it too

How long will it be before she falls?

Well, don’t take that bet yet

because I already did

back in Florida at my favorite beach

and I’m FINE.

I know how to fall, and it was brilliant

Sorry, you missed it

Well, it’s over now, and I survived.

Try to remember that and carry on.

No bets today or tomorrow.

Go back to fighting over politics and the price of oil.

I’ll be here minding the joint.

[corneliadedona]

Dear Emmeline Pankhurst

“We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers. I would rather be a rebel than a slave! “ Emmeline Pankhurst was a leading British suffragette who played a militant role in fighting to gain women the right to vote. 

Dear Emmeline, 

You dared to go against the establishment

and not in a trite way,

 but with a rebellious heart that came with discipline and extreme focus.

We salute you because it was unpopular and came at a high price. 

We salute you for dedicating your life to the cause.

We salute you for being unwavering and selfless.

We salute you for being willing to go to jail seven times.

We salute you for convincing Churchill to vote in favor of a women's suffrage bill in 1904. 

We salute you for the motto: ‘Deeds not words.’

Your influence and inspiration stretched across the Atlantic to America, and for that, we salute you. 

Signed,

A New Generation of Rebels



P.S. Red Lipstick Rules!

[corneliadedona]

Retaking A Cognitive Test

Retaking A Cognitive Test

is not  typical

This test is not about IQ

It’s MoCA, baby. Google it. 

Bragging about it is dumb and concerning. 

Can you draw a clock?

Make the time at ten past eleven

Determine the correct sequence of five numbers and letters starting with A and 1.

Draw a cube  

It’s not about how artistic you are. 

Identify the camel, rhino, and lion

Name the three objects

Remember the words: face, velvet, church, red, and daisy? We will ask you again in five minutes

Count back from 100 in denominations of seven

Say 742 backwards

Can you repeat three sentences after me in varying lengths?

Do you know where you are:

what city, the date, the time, or are you mildly impaired? What was your score? Do you remember? 

[corneliadedona]

Paying For The Primrose Path

Basil, mint, and oregano are pungent spices that put off pests like groundhogs.

 Rosemary, Sage, Thyme, 

Lavender, Lemon balm, and Hot Pepper spray are also strong deterrents

Nothing seems to daunt a fanatic, though

especially a greedy one, making millions off the taxpayer.

And getting away with it.

The President is running a hedge fund out of the Oval Office

60 trades a day in the first quarter of this year. 

750 million so far

Call the FBI,   padlock the door

Vote to ban elected officials from trading stocks.

Republicans who make 174,000.00 plus benefits and pensions a year

mutiny over slush fund, immunity agreement

illegal wars, threats against Cuba, and Greenland.

The aftershocks are far-reaching.

Gas prices are higher

Grocery prices are higher

Racism is still a problem

Dismantling the black vote is a problem

Diluting the black voice is a problem

Taking away a woman’s right to choose is a problem

State Legislatures dictate many of our basic rights

Where is our middle ground?

There is no room for sidelines or silence.

Does the people’s voice count when the Supreme Court is allowed to overturn the vote in Virginia?

Is everything by this administration rigged?

Are the midterms rigged?

We are not about hate and vitriol. 

We are not misinformed, stupid, or pests.

Keep Fighting Tennessee

Push Back

We can level the field.

The Blue Wave is Coming

Everyone Must Vote.

[corneliadedona]

The Disgruntled Chef

The Disgruntled Chef 

serves breakfast, brunch, and sometimes dinner.

It is an American/ Asian fusion restaurant in Gardiner and

received a 10+ from our group of nine hikers.

We are a senior, discerning crew, and being raised in New York, we can be a bit loud and frightening at times. Fuhgeddaboudit!

Yesterday, my sandwich choice did not disappoint

I picked the curried chicken wrap

The flavors permeated throughout, and it was visually stunning. 

As a photographer, I should know. (Sorry, no pictures this time.)

My evil twin, aka The Food Critic,

would reluctantly agree. Delicious, timely, and

pet-friendly, the tables were spaced like a well-organized trail map,

with no confusing configurations, and plenty of room to stretch and converse.

I’d go back in a heartbeat. 

I  have one question,

who came up with the name?

[corneliadedona]

Trail Mix, Fava Beans, and Lady Slippers

All we need is some Chianti

and I’m checking the mileage

like there’s a truck stop up ahead

a place to fill up on fuel and wine.

Only we’re walking here.

We’re walking, and we’re talking

like it’s 1999, Y2K didn’t happen,

and guess what else didn’t:

You got it:

no wine,

no trucks,

no lines,

but I did get a few lady slippers and fava beans

from the Azores. Go ahead—look it up. I’ll wait.

[corneliadedona]

Can I Get A Pass?

or a little mercy—

the kind that hushes even the shiver in the leaves.

I’ve been laboring since dawn—

the kind of labor counted in acorns, wind, and worry—

said the squirrel, still a quick brown spark in the branches,

flitting from limb to limb like a thought that would not settle,

and the forest answered him with laughter.

The birds, being birds, turned mockery into song—

a bright unruly weather of chirps and shining eyes,

as though all spring had been a rehearsal

for the sweet small privilege of teasing a squirrel.

Hershel sighed for a holiday.

Sally, meanwhile, wanted one as well—

preferably with cake and a patch of afternoon sun,

which seemed, for squirrel ambition, almost courtly.

You’re nuts,

said one voice, and not with kindness enough to make it praise.

Ask again in five minutes, when hunger comes back wearing its old crown.

We all have a stake in this—

if not in heart, then surely in bark and timber.

Then even the deer and mountain lions lost their solemn manners

and laughed as though some ancient burden had skipped them for a day,

and even the trees leaned softly into the joke,

bending in the breeze with that old wooden laughter

that begins in the leaves and ends in the smallest wheeze.

So there it was—

a brief and shining mercy, dressed up as a punchline.

[corneliadedona]

The Power of Story

We each have one.

It defines who we are,

shaping our day-to-day

in a profound way.

Our stories travel with us.

They thread their way

through our lives,

follow us down paths,

to the right and left,

guide our steps,

while our dreams lean ahead.

Our stories are fledglings,

small birds learning the air,

on their own

into the great wide world

to be interpreted by people

who will add, subtract

and make them their own. 

Stories stitched into patterns

of color, history, and skin

changing faces

leaving traces

of greatness from above.

They will explore the vastness

of space

travel to other worlds

throw stones at what they fear

take what is not theirs to study,

then form conclusions,

acting on limited knowledge,

from fragments they mistake for truth,

and then retell the story.