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From: "karen" <karen@hillhousewriters.com>
Date: Mon Dec 13, 2004 2:24 pm
Subject: delay in announcements

Hello All,

I would like to apologize for the delay in announcing the winners. I’ve been in the hospital for almost a week due to an infection… my lovely stallion decided to take a little vacation in a farmer’s field to visit some new “girl friends” and I had a little accident on my way to retrieving him.

It was a very minor scratch, slipping in the mud and hitting my knee on a rock, but it was probably in the worst environment one could think of. You see, we decided to bring Pahkay through a herd of dairy cows rather than a pasture of mares, and I would slip in the middle of the dairy yard.

Any hey, after a ton of a variety of antibiotics and reading three books later, I’m just fine. Nothing like a big lesson in gratitude for the little things in life. Again my apologies for the delay, but we will be going over the last round of applications over the next few days.

Thanks for your patience,

Karen

The vet arrived today and poor Pahkay is a sore boy, but will be less likely to visit girlfriends in the future.

From: "karen" <karen@hillhousewriters.com>
Date: Thu Dec 2, 2004 7:05 pm
Subject: A note from Karen: Finding the Hole in the Fence*

Dear friends,

The day before yesterday I stood in the pouring rain. Everything in Tennessee was soaked. Weatherbug chirped flash flood warnings all morning, but it couldn’t warn me about a downed electrical line that was in route to the grocery and video stores. As I passed my friend Tommy’s farm, I noticed one of his young cows was running along outside the fence, while its mamma ran along the inside.

I was wearing my rainbow striped bulky sweater from Ecuador that everyone always compliments. With my cell phone and wallet tucked into opposite side pockets like a gunslinger, I stepped into a puddle to knock on Tommy’s door-- just in time for my cell to go off. It’s funny how that phone will ring at the most peculiar moments. Last week, I was riding my stallion Pahkay, when my daughter Galen called at the precise moment Pahkay discovered that Star, the mare that flaunted her private parts just three feet in front of us, was in season.

This time, it was my son Justin calling. Quickly I told him I was standing in the pouring rain and I had a loose cow to deal with, that I’d call him back. Tommy wasn’t home so I called his cell—twice. In between a minor loss of service, I was able to convey to him that his cow was out. Having performed Karen’s cow alert service, Ron and I decided to head to the grocery and the video stores, leaving the cow to wait for Tommy’s return. It wasn’t like traffic would disturb it much. With the line being down, it was running along a virtual dead-end road.

Once at the video store; however, I discovered my wallet was missing. The pockets of my wonderfully warm Ecuadorian wool sweater were not very practical for hanging onto its contents. So we decided we could wait a day longer to buy some “Joy” for our dishes, and went back to find my wallet.

At Tommy’s house the stray cow was still pacing the fence along the road, and my wallet; sure enough, was submerged in the biggest puddle in front of his house. It had fallen out when I had earlier stepped out of my truck, having more important things on my mind than losing my identity. Sopping like a wet diaper, I tossed the leather sponge onto the center section of the console.

Pouring rain was an understatement, but it was a warm 60 degree shower, so it wasn’t all that unpleasant. Ron and I laughed as I pulled my truck up to a paddock close to Tommy’s barn to retrieve a bale of hay. Tommy was storing hay for me and we had an agreement I could just come and get a bale whenever I needed it. Not only could I use a flake to lure a lost cow, but Pahkay needed some hay to supplement his meals. He was pastured in a smaller paddock away from Star, but he had already eaten down much of his grass.

In order to retrieve the hay, I needed to cross a muddy, cow-occupied paddock. My shoes were sucked into the ooze as I walked, and I had to shoo the adult cattle who thought I had come to feed them. Squeezing through the gate with a full bale pressed against my chest I was determined to pass without letting out any additional runaways, or dropping the hay into the mud. With hay sticking onto my sweater like filings to a magnet, I tossed the bale in the truck bed and searched the fence line to figure out how the young cow might return to its home.

Within minutes, Tommy drove past in his pickup pulling a cattle transport. He drove down the road, circled around and came back behind the renegade cow in perfect position to herd it. I parked my pickup across the street on the opposite side, and got out to shoo the thing, in case it decided to head the wrong way. My hair was plastered to my face like a wet cat.

I love this story. I lived it, and I still love it. Can you guess what happens next? It’s classic.

Tommy pulls his truck within a few feet behind the cow, and without getting out or getting wet, he honks his horn three times. In response, the animal frantically runs straight for the hole in the fence-- squeezing back from whence it came, a place where the field fence had ended and a couple of strands of barbed wire could easily be pressed open by a determined animal.

But why does this story find its way into a writer’s newsletter? All day long I kept repeating to myself, like a mantra, “The cow knew where the hole in the fence was.” None of my intellectualizing, discerning, or predicating, could match the cow’s innate knowledge.

I see writers the same way. We are all like that cow. The fence separates us from our creative dreams, while we all know there’s a hole in the fence, somewhere. We resort to all kinds of workshops, critiquing, and “thinking” to find it, bravely enduring the thickest mud and torrential storms. But in a pinch, we already know where it lies. We only need to engage in the act of writing to find it. We need to write, like our lives depend upon it… to allow the innate knowledge, no choice, but to express itself, as if someone was honking at us, telling us to “just go for it, now!” Get back to that greener pasture.

My point being, living at Hillhouse has offered me a life that allows me to jump through my creative doorways through the act of writing. There is always something honking at me, here, telling me to write. My hope is that I can share that with you-- to allow Hillhouse to be the place where your innate knowing can be easily acted upon.

The other day, I received a wonderful letter from one of our grant recipients. In it she states that she can now write without feeling guilty. If I did no other thing for the rest of the year, her words tell me I have accomplished the impossible. I have helped a fellow writer find her hole in the fence… but, honestly, it wasn’t that hard. She already “knew it” the day she arrived. All she needed to do was act.

Recipients for the next phase of ongoing grants will be announced early next week. The applications have been a pleasure to read, I thank you all for sharing them with us and I wish you all the best in your creative endeavors. And remember, just write.

Yours,

Karen Walasek

karen@hillhousewriters.com

*This was not the first time an animal showed me the metaphor for the hole in the fence. For more animal stories ask me about: A Question Of Loyalty.

From: "karen_walasek" <walasek@comcast.net>
Date: Mon Jul 12, 2004 12:26 pm
Subject: welcome to Hillhouse

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Hello Dear Writer,

After a fourth of July fireworks out over the lawn bon voyage, our
middle son Morgan left on Monday for Portland, Oregon to pursue his
degree in computer game design. Our youngest daughter Galen is off to
visit Grandma and Grandpa with her oldest brother Justin. It's been a
busy month, but as the commotion of family has subsided, I've finally
found a quiet place to write to you all. Ron's been taking in
applications, and I've taken the job of newsletter editor. It seems
ironic, with the philosophy of Hillhouse being what it is, that I
would find myself in need of my own sanctuary to write a short
newsletter. But I'm here now, and so everything has its time. And it
just illustrates, even for me, when writing new projects one needs to
create a special space.

First of all, welcome. If you've read our website you know that
Hillhouse is a culmination of a dream that has evolved from a
lifelong pursuit of the arts and nurturing ourselves as artists and
those around us (children, peers). I use the word artist loosely to
include all of the arts: literary musical, visual, and
interdisciplinary. In our household, computer game design is indeed
an art.

But none of these arts endure without a grounded support system and
balance between peer companionship and solitude. I wrote my first
novel at a time when I felt isolated in the coal mining community of
northeastern Pennsylvania, but totally supported in the residencies
at Goddard. At the time the contrast challenged my writing and honed
both the craft and the writer.

I was thinking of these things as I walked out to feed the new
chickens and ducklings. The garden is overgrown in places where I
haven't yet gotten the mulch down, and the Japanese beetle traps—
well, I emptied them last night so they are just flopping in the
wind. Though I've given myself the space to not have "people" guests
this past month, we've a dog guest this week. Toad, Justin's 75 pound
Australian Shepard is visiting while his master is in Florida.
Although he doesn't live with us anymore, he knows all the other
animals; it's been a peaceful vacation for him.

Dogs teach us a lot about simplicity; eat, go out, fetch a ball,
sleep, go for a walk… The clear mown path is wet with dew and all the
dogs will need to be towel dried before they come into the house, but
at least there will be no pond swimming. The brush and hay has grown
so high they can't see over the tops and so Toad, who normally likes
to swim, avoids seeing the pond on our morning walk.

What has this got to do with writing? Everything. Not only does each
detail awaken the senses - tired muscle walking up the last hill,
toad's panting, frogs moaning - but if I am to grow as a writer and
take the ultimate risk of putting it all on paper, exposing fresh new
skin of the creative process, I need to be buffered by the softness
of the hay. The color of the grasses and the movement in the wind,
the solitude, buffers out the world of judgments. There is no one out
here on this farm that is going to criticize, or block the creative
flow once it comes through. That means I can let down all the guards -
bit by bit - even the ones that I might not even know I am hiding
behind. When the writer is supported, we let the risks stay on the
page.
I hope we can all expereince this kind of support.

More later,
Karen