As mentioned yesterday, I'm hosting The Motherhood Muse, today, on the occasion of their blog tour.
I will pick a person's comment at random, and the lucky winner will receive one free subscription to the 2010 issues of the Motherhood Muse.
A Challenge to Change the World
Throughout my life I've been challenged to change the world, to make it a better place. The sister and brother living on the streets of Tijuana, begging me when I was seven years old to buy Chicle. The sea animals dying under the weight of oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The Costa Rican boy running barefoot on sharp stones in the street to a home without electricity or hot water in the mountains as I walked along in my college
hiking boots. The Japanese grandmother picking up trash and passing me up the path on the way to the top of Mt. Fuji just a couple of years before I became a mother. And my two daughters, who babble at the cowbirds gobbling the birdseed outside and hug tree trunks while I unload groceries from the car.
Each person, every moment has spoken to me and inspires me to try harder to preserve our world (its nature, the cultures, the languages). We must cross borders, share what makes our cultures so diverse and our families so similar, and explore the land under our toes to make the world a better place.
The Motherhood Muse literary magazine aims to take on this challenge by publishing literature and art (in a digital, green format) to help individuals develop a more meaningful relationship with nature. We feature writing that explores the connections between motherhood, nature, childhood and cultures. Our writers come from every corner of the earth and so do our readers.
We often hear the phrase "Think global. Act local." As a mother I often connect with nature on a personal level but think about how this connection unites all mothers. My own footsteps into nature may be of a local realm, but as I write about motherhood and nature I find a deeper connection across the globe with all mothers.
We'd love to receive your thoughts in writing on how you connect with nature, cultures, and languages and what this means for you and women around the world. Please share your ideas in the comments and submit your writing to our magazine!
Thank you Katia for hosting us here today!
Kimberly Zook, Editor-in-Chief
The Motherhood Muse
You're welcome, Kimberly. Good luck on this new and praise-worthy adventure...
8 comments:
Like many mothers these days, I sometimes have a hard time getting my kids to play outside. But when I do go outside with my daughter, she is endlessly fascinated by flowers and stones, butterflies and ants. I think The Motherhood Muse has a great concept and I'd love to win a subscription!
Kimberly - what a wonderful premise for a magazine! I wish you the best of luck and will look forward to reading your publication.
We have an abundance of large plants in our house (bringing nature indoors, if you will...) and spend a lot of time gardening around our koi pond and in our yard. Watching the birds nest in our bird houses (and an opening in our brick porch....)and the amazing growth as our dirt sprouts flowers and plants, and our trees spring forth with new leaves. The cycle of life truly is a wonderous miracle available for all us to nurture, respect and enjoy!
ps - Hi Katia!!!
Katia thanks for hosting the Blog tour!
I love your vision for the magazine. I've always wanted to write for Green or ecology magazines. Your magazine sounds like fun. Just the kind lot of people are looking to participate.
This year we haven't done anything with our garden yet. Work on redesigning and making raised beds is in progress. When I say that, I'm missing something. One fun thing we do almost every other day is to fill our bird seed cage and watch the birds feed from our feeder.
O! the fun. some day, I'll start a backyard blog and post these pictures.
Good luck with your publications.
Rani
Kimberly,
This sounds like a wonderful magazine. As a transplant from India to the U.S. I've had to relearn the rhythms of both culture and nature. I never imagined I could come to love seasons and people so different from that of my native land, but they are simply two sides of the same earth. Wish you every success with your magazine. Nandini
Writing and reading, to myself, with my children, we find comfort and some fear in the ever-changing seasons, in the places we live and visit. It is inspiring, but huge, godlike, hard to understand. We break things down, sometimes into molecules, sometimes into ecosystems, and go looking. The kids love looking, as much as they love playing; and through this I stay as young as they are, and they grow. It would be wonderful to add Mothering Muse to our work in progress, to explore and process further with the words and thoughts and art of such insightful and people.
What a unique idea for a publication -- I'm looking forward to seeing how you and your writers explore this theme. I've been fortunate enough to find nature in all corners of my many homes -- in Central Park (even red-tailed hawks on Fifth Avenue!), the Swedish archipelago (crab races to the sea!), the Vienna Woods and now we live snuggeled between the tulips fields and dunes in Holland. But reading your posting makes me realize (once again) how incredibly fortunate we are to experience the best of nature -- and not the worst (although we also did just return from Chile where we were caught in the horrifying earthquake -- Mother Nature does have her moments!). Enjoy your new writing adventure and thanks for thsraiung this with us!
Hello,
Kimberly your magazine sounds truly wonderful and I think it will sprout the kind of energy and increased connection to the outdoors and our families that will no doubt lead to more oak trees of effort and energy down the line.
I tried to write a comment yesterday in the middle of allegedly getting my two youngest children ready for 9 a.m. soccer games at opposite ends of town with my husband away and then something went wrong and - poof! - what I wrote went into the ethersphere and I was so upset because I really enjoyed, as in deeply enjoyed, recalling how our family has connected to nature. So thank you for the spark to do that!
Good luck Kimberly. Hi Katia and friends!
Robyn
Well, I wrote each name on a piece of paper, threw them in a basket (not tall hat handy I'm afraid) and Suzanne's name came out. Suzanne, I'll be in touch with Kimberly so you can get the link to retrieve the 2010 issues of The Motherhood Muse.
A warm thank you to all who participated, and good luck again to Kimberly.
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