Julia McSherry's Blog

Creating Space

2010-12-09T08:47:00.000-08:00

I create. I create space. I create space to write. I create space to write well.

Moving from South to West

2010-12-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

I grew up in Louisiana and moved to Colorado after living in New Orleans for 30 years culminating in Hurricane Katrina. I have always loved the wide open spaces of the West and am a cowgirl at heart. Now I love living 5,000 feet above the floodline of my previous house. I am writing about moving from a place where there is too much water to one where there is not enough water. Both the South and the West have such distinct sense of place. I am influenced by my strict Catholic childhood, for good and bad. I have been a writer living my life as art. I want to make art.

Planting the Seed

2009-02-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

Stop dreaming of spring and start now to plan the garden of your dreams...http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20090215/FEATURES/902159972/1033/NONE&parentprofile=1033&title=Planting%20the%20seed

Why do I ride?

2009-01-28T08:53:00.001-08:00

"We ride horses for the pleasure of `creating beauty' as the Master Ecuyer (La Guérinière) said. We ride for the pleasure of feeling ourselves transported into different attitudes, drowned into the fluidity of a supple and tranquil back, rocked by the cadence of ample and harmonious gaits. It is a long-haul work, requiring much patience. It takes years for making a dancer or a pianist. It takes as much to make an Ecuyer. But, this work with its disappointments, its discoveries, its successes, is so enthralling that, in the ordinary life nothing matters any longer when one sits on the back of a horse. Classical dressage, when it is well understood, allows getting progressively to the highest summits of this Art."

- Excerpt from `Equitation-La Tradition Classique by Cdt de Padirac(Translation by Bruno Celard)

2008-09-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

This fall, An Open Book LLC in Greeley, Colorado is selling wildlflower seeds for the Master Gardener program as a fund raiser for educational programs. Fall is a great time to plant native wildflower seeds. The store also hosted a Master Gardener opportunity at the store earlier in the summer. See http://anopenbookcolorado.com/master-gardener-visits-an-open-book-llc/225/

2008-09-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Edward Abbey in "Burned Out" for this important reminder:

Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am. A reluctant enthusiast and part-time crusader. A half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the west. It is even more important to enjoy it while you can, while it’s still there. So get out there, hunt, fish, mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the griz, climb a mountain, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and elusive air. Sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness of the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves. Keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive. And I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in safe deposit boxes and their eyes hypnotized by their desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.