Donora Shaw

Writer of Jeff Bridges (poems) and other things. Happy woman, mom, minimalist, & humanitarian.

[donorashaw]

Dress rehearsal weekend! I got to pose with the performer and hang out with the videographer. ☺️

See you in two weeks when it’s showtime for the spring ballet (and I’m a backstage mom again)! 💃🏻

[donorashaw]

So few of us ever really “get” one another. Sheldon Lee Compton did. He left this review of my book Jeff Bridges on my birthday 10 years ago, saying I hold “a poetic line like a Spartan front.” This isn’t about me, but the understanding is, Sheldon’s simultaneously river deep and mountainous understanding. There couldn’t have been a more perfect reader.

All day I’ve been praying for his family. Just now a honey bee flew into the room where I was working with students, hovered around, not harming anyone. Then it flew close to my eyes, just letting me know it knew. The honey bee is the official state insect of Kentucky, Sheldon’s Kentucky. I have a bee tattoo I acquired with a friend who I later learned wasn’t a friend, so I was planning to have it removed. The bee is my friend now. I’m keeping the tattoo.

[donorashaw]

[donorashaw]

When your faith in humanity is a bit wobbly because we all live in a metaphorical circus, might I suggest going to, well, the circus? (We saw only highly positive treatment of animals, too.) 🥳

[donorashaw]

688K views · 29K reactions | MY FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR!!! HAPPY EASTER FRIENDS! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! HALLELUJAH HE’S ALIVE!!!! 🙌❤️✝️ |

MY FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR!!! HAPPY EASTER FRIENDS! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! HALLELUJAH HE’S ALIVE!!!! 🙌❤️✝️

[donorashaw]

[donorashaw]

For reasons seen and unseen, this has been the most perfect Easter season, from our first egg hunts back in the places where I grew up, to again getting the kids involved in cheerful giving, to Gertrude Hawk Chocolates crosses! He is risen!

🥚✝️🐇

[donorashaw]

Soulmates. ✝️

(📸: The Easter Bunny)

[donorashaw]

It’s always been the most perfect thing to me that my Papa Ron Hillard’s birthday is on the Feast of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of fathers, and on Earth I know I have the best. Please wish him another happy trip around the sun and many more!

[donorashaw]

An unhinged love poem of mine for an unhinged time is in Crying Heart Press’ *new* CHP ZINE: WAKING THE DEAD - ISSUE NO. 1. I’ve said we’re making mischief all week, and this is part of it 🍀!

[donorashaw]

Luck favors the kind. 😉🍀

Making mischief all week!

[donorashaw]

“Welcome to the gun show” AKA Merrin in between ballet and tap on #internationalwomensday. 💪🏻🩰

[donorashaw]

Officially retired from the halls of academe forever to write full-time / beat back the sea of AI and to work for all of you — those I’ve known at the university level, you’re great and if you’re not great, you know who you are and your reckoning is coming — then drank a giant margarita to celebrate with my family.

Power to the youth and to the disadvantaged, strength to the trades, let’s save this country.

❤️🤍💙

[donorashaw]

Let there be tambourines. 🩰

[donorashaw]

Frederick Wiseman Dies at 96: The Documentary Legend Was One of Cinema’s Greatest Masters

Wiseman's 50-plus year career started with a bang, "Titicut Follies," and only got better.

Meeting Wiseman and having the opportunity to introduce more than one of his films is still a God-tier event for me. He’ll never be forgotten.

[donorashaw]

We had a Star Student of the Day, and so I got to go in and read to Merrin’s class in the place where I was also a student 100 years ago, and I took it more seriously than any other reading I’ve ever done (complete with hot husband looking like my security), and I didn’t fumble any of the words in the Fancy Nancy book that she chose for me, and this has been the BEST Valentine’s Week ever. ❣️

[donorashaw]

Final editing privileges obviously belong to him, so here are some stills, but my son is making movies now, really solid dystopian short films. Like his sister and her dancing, the kids push us to be more creative. I’ll pass along words of encouragement — please see the note I wrote him that he has propped up on his sports trophies. 🥹 He’s so rad.