The weekend after Labor Day, Saturday AND Sunday, Sept 9 and 10, I’ll be sitting under my large umbrella at the Rice, MN, Arts and Crafts event,
I’m proud to be counted among this group in Mankato, as well. The Deep Valley Book Festival is an amazing event for published authors. This event is Oct. 7. https://fb.watch/mvf5M_Kvzv/
More events to come but keep November 11, 2023. I’m hoping to launch Where Two Rivers Meet, my prequel to the two other Main Street Women novels. Place, time, and new information coming soon.
hollow cottonwood along the Mississippi at Clearwater’s old steamboat landing.
The doctor put away his needles. I am on the mend. Join me next Wednesday, August 2nd, for a little presentation, a bit of conversation, a few tales, and a tidbit of gossip in my Minnesota Main Street novels and “Around Clearwater.”
Just an update….I hoped to have “Where Two Rivers Meet” launched in August. I am so close to the end and have been for two months. Unfortunately, a twist of fate took place beginning around Easter. My husband, sister, and I were hit with Covid for the first time. We all suffered one way or another, but I think Frank got off the easiest..he took a 3-day nap and woke up better. Both sister and I really came down with it. I ended up at the ENT with a staff infection in my sinuses. That was April. Feeling somewhat better, a few of us went to some antique and occasional sales in Central Minnesota. I fell face down in a chicken coop. Put a lot of stress on my already burdened arthritic body and ended with a nasty shiner. Sometime around Memorial Day, I started having TMJ issues. Went to doctors and even Urgent Care. Lots of medicine but nothing took the pain away for too long. Finally went to the dentist after three weeks. The endodontist found a nasty abscess. Oral surgeon loaded me with novocaine and pulled the very sick tooth. was pulled, only for me to feel well for two days before dry socket took over. Just ended the week of antibiotics for the took infection when I started having severe side pain. We raced to Urgent Care only to be sent to the hospital. I had a temp of 103 and bladder and kidney infections that had gone to sepsis. The worst pain was to come overnight in the hospital. Sat after CT scans, doctors found a kidney stone blocking everything between the kidney and bladder. The staff raced me to surgery to have a stent put in.
I am home and trying to heal, knowing after a month of antibiotics, I face another surgery to remove stent and stone. I am feeling less pain, but working to fight the exhaustion.
I have a number of events coming up, two new I am excited about:
Thurs, July 20, I’ll be selling and signing at Munsinger’s Arts in the Park.
Aug 2, I will be presenting, signing, and selling during Clearwater’s History week. I believe more information will be posted but I think it is at 6ish on the 2nd at the Lyons Center. (Clearwater, MN)
Buffalo Arts and Crafts takes place August 19, 2023 at 9 (Buffalo, MN)
Millstream Arts and Crafts will be Sunday, August 27, in St. Joe, MN. 11-5
I hope to see you there. I’ll have more news about “Where Two Rivers Meet.”
I have to apologize for not writing sooner, but I have been writing like crazy, preparing Where Two Rivers Meet for publication. My deadline has changed, thank you, Lord, and I should be ready to launch in August now. I especially wanted to send regards to all women in March Women’s History Month, but as I said, I had to make some choices, and that was to keep writing.
Of course, in addition to my first two protagonists, Jennie Phillips (Scruples & Drams) and Maude Porter (Pins & Needles), I would have saluted my new protagonist, Abigail Robinson Camp Porter, who became the first woman in our little village. She had the spunk, the style, and the nerve to take on duties as the housekeeper for the village hotel in a wild-west burgeoning town of all men in 1855. She eventually married fur trader, farmer, and future Minnesota legislator–Thomas C. Porter, who also was an earlier settler.
I can relate though to Abigail’s aloneness and vulnerability. I began a new career at what was Northern States Power at the Monticello Nuclear Plant in Monticello, MN, while it was still under construction way back in November 1969. I felt a bit overwhelmed when I found out at the time, the plant had like 3,000 men from NSP and other construction and electrical companies working on site and I was the only unmarried woman. I met a few men and dated a few, but still went to Rapid t City to find the one.
So much news to tell you—I signed a contract with Heritage Books, Inc, out of Maryland, my current publisher of Pins & Needles, Postcards from the Old Man, and Steppes to Neu Odessa. They will now be carrying, publishing, and promoting my first novel Scruples & Drams as well. For those of you who did not realize it, North Star Press, my first novel publisher pretty much cut down on their business after the owner died. Now all of my books except for Around Clearwater, which is published by Arcadia, will be living at Heritage Book, my long-time associates. This will make my life so much easier. I will always have a number of books on hand for selling at various events.
What a surprise! Browsing through some of the books at Target, I found my book, Around Clearwater, along with others like it. I know Barnes and Nobel carry it as well. Don’t forget, I have copies of my books and charge less. It was a treat to see.
I have not signed up for spring events. But my summer/fall/winter are on the docket. I will be sending the information on to you soon with dates and times. But I am excited to add at least one new event in July at the St. Cloud’s Munsinger-Clements Botanical Gardens. I am so excited to be accepted.
If Jennie from Scruples & Drams were still alive, I know she’d have made the same decision to carry DOVE chocolates in her drugstore. Oh, she’d carry Cadbury, Fry’s, Nestle’s, and Hershey’s of course. There is nothing like good chocolate whether you love dark or milk, or with nuts or with caramel. Good chocolate should melt in your mouth. Last year, I made a life-changing that I hope I can continue on for the remainder of my baking life.
My husband and I had stopped at one of our neighborhood grocery stores so I could pick up a quick couple items to finish baking cookies. It was a crazy house with attitudes blaring. Customers caught me every other aisle to announce, “All out of flour, all out of sugar, or all out of salt.” In addition, wire bins stood empty, and shelves glared out of stock, shouting, “Bah Humbug!”
We were coming to the end of Covid, or so we had been promised, but it was the continuation of shortages everyone was facing. I had to think fast, my husband was waiting in the car. I had plenty of staples, but time had grown short, and I hadn’t bought little things like Hershey Kisses for my peanut blossoms, a recipe given by a dear friend, yes, you, Marian K. I don’t mind making changes but what else could possibly top a blossom???? The store had a couple of shelves of different types of sweet delicacies like Old Fashioned Christmas hard ribbons and crystally candy in yellows, reds, and greens, some with sweet fillings, but no Hershey Kisses. They had a scattering of chocolate stars, peanut butter cups, and many varieties of Dove. I grabbed two bags of the milk chocolate Dove and checked out, hoping I had no reason to return soon.
I mixed my peanut butter blossoms–double batch because I felt hopeful. After peeling each little squarish bundle of goodness, I topped each of the dozen freshly baked and still hot cookies with a promise. I finished the job of plopping and pushing down, just a bit, promises. After a cooler bite of the new concoction, still warm and melty-like but one that was kind of deformed and broken, I was sold. Jennie, Maude of Pins and Needles, and Maude’s mother Abigail in Where Two Rivers Meet, the girls of Main Street, would agree. They are the best cookies in the world. They wish you the Merriest of Merry Christmases and the happiest of happy New Years.
Take a few moments during this busy season to focus on Dove’s “promises”: 1. Compliment someone. You’ll feel better than they (he/she does) do. (Sorry, the English teacher in me can’t let it go. 2. Life happens between an inhale and an exhale! 3. When life isn’t going right, go left. And the girls’ favorite: 4. Dare to cross the line. If you remember the messages in the books, you’ll know the line they crossed to help someone or two.
And a word of wisdom from me. Put on a pot of tea, pot of coffee, or even make hot cocoa. Grab a whole cookie, one that isn’t broken or deformed, sit down, put your feet up and enjoy a few minutes of solitude and deliciousness. You deserve it.
Hello. Thanksgiving isn’t here yet, but I am posting my Christmas blog because Stearns History Museum published one of my stories in “CROSSINGS” about St. Nicholas coming to our house when I was a child. Here is the article, following is a nice, but a bit long, and insightful documentary about the start of Christmas. Some of the mythology I taught to high schoolers and college students. So much fun.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Feel free to share my website or my Facebook post with others…..
facebook.com/CynthiaFrankStupnikauthor
UPDATE: I have one more event to share with you. December 3, 9- 2 Makers Market, St. Cloud. at the Regency on St. Germain, across from the Paramount Theater…Artists & Makers | Makers’ Market (makersmarketstcloud.com). This will be the last time of the year to buy my books. I promise they are great gifts, and I’ll give you deals.
Look forward to the SPRING and my announcement of a new book launch…This time for Where Two Rivers Meet, a prequel to Jennie and Maude’s stories.
This post is absolute TRUTH. God blessed me with a few talents, maybe writing is my strongest suit. I love to write poetry and have won a few awards. I have written both creative fiction and non-fiction, and have published and won a few awards as well. But when it comes to real crafting, drawing, sewing, or any other handwork, I’d say I deserve nilche, zero, nothing, even F. I told my husband when we were first married that if he lost a button on a coat or jacket, buy new. While this isn’t as true as it sounds, I have to admit when I was a freshman in high school (is this supposed to be freshperson now?), I earned a D on a blouse I sewed for putting in the sleeve in the wrong direction.). I think I have improved a bit, but not really proving it anymore.
I have recently (like two years ago) taken up a bit of crafting with my own card designs with special sayings or my own poetry. Most or many go back to the earth the tree grew from in the first place.
I’ve copied or posted some of my son, Todd Stupnik’s, artwork. He is amazing. Early in his career, like aged 2 or 3, he showed promise in his field with airplanes and Star War figures. Our other son, Matthew, has equal talent, but uses his talents in woodworking and redesigning his house. Lovely work. My husband who has all sorts of knowledge uses his hands to build, plumb, and electrify what needs to be done. My sister can craft with the best of everyone. She sees color and organization as a delight to re-create. My friends sew, quilt, knit, etc. and these gifts are beyond my realm of thinking.
So if we meet on our trail for developing new thoughts, or ideas to be recreated, let’s greet each other as sisters and brothers. For all of God’s gifts are good and perfect (Dr. Henry Morris). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17).
Today, I came across the post (below) about COURAGE in my feed. I posted prior to responding. Now I am responding because I really took the time to think about it. The original post will reappear below my blog.
I never thought about six types of courage before. I always figured courage = courage. But now I see the six categories and realize I have been tested in all six. I won’t bother with every detail; I know you thank me for it. Some I passed with flying colors, some I passed by the skin of my neck, some I am still working on, and some will be marked by the test of time. In one instance, I feel, my whole BEING was tested in all the following categories at the same time.
Physical Social Moral Emotional Intellectual Spiritual
One time, I felt my whole character had been challenged. I’d never in my life felt so alone. I wallowed in the pit of despair for quite a while. I still wonder if I passed the test completely. Judgment, rationality, emotion, trust, and even physical–because a disability that everyone who knew me knew about–came into play. All of this brought me to my proverbial knees. I called upon Him on throughout this ordeal for He reminded me to “call upon the rock from which I’ve been hewn.” I clung.
When I gathered myself together after the attack, I realized I had to face the enemy, but how? I had to dig deep for the courage I needed to go back to the scene of the crime the next morning as frightened as I had ever been. Unfortunately, at this stage, I trusted no one. I did my job and stuck to it. Little by little, I talked to whom I thought I could trust. I did not go to the top for I do not have a voice that can persuade kings. I used the power I had, my pen, and documented everything and found someone who could be the power behind me. I had to stand straight, be tall, and appear strong. A doll collector for years, I felt as though I was being propped up by one of my doll’s metal display stands.
I went through many emotions during this ordeal but realized my real fight was moral, my character was on trial as well for I had been tested on lies and another’s failings. Again I intellectualized and internalized everything and continued to speak to only those I knew I could trust. Let me tell you, I talked it out and out and out. Thank you to–sister, husband, sons, and true friends–for listening.
Even though I wanted some truth, I never truly found how the ordeal came to its fruition. I heard bits and pieces and knew I had to keep on in peace and quietness (except with those I trusted). Everything I had worked so hard to build had been tested and had come into play. I used John Proctor from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible as an example when talking to my children and students. For those who know the play, they know Proctor has done lots of things wrong. Yet during the groundbreaking events of the Salem Witch Trials, he will confess to being a witch if it means he can save his family from further hardship. Yet, when it comes to signing a confession and hanging it on the church door for all to see, he won’t do it. To Proctor, nothing is worse than a tarnished name. That is–if we are stripped of everything–our names will be all we are remembered by. I was standing in the same place. I did not want my name or my character to be tarnished either.
Dorothy: My goodness, what a fuss you’re making! Well, naturally, when you go around picking on things weaker than you are. Why you’re nothing but a great big coward! Cowardly Lion: [crying] You’re right, I am a coward! I haven’t any courage at all. I even scare myself. [sobbing] Cowardly Lion: [singing] I’m afraid there’s no denyin’ I’m just a dandy-lion A fate I don’t deserve I’m sure I could show my prowess Be a lion, not a mouse If I only had the nerve.
So, am I a mouse or a WOman? Coming out on the other side, I remember how hard it was to stand alone. I suppose I learned I had some courage, but I also realized I can count on my own discernment and insight to call on stronger forces when necessary.
How about you?
What has so unnerved you that you stopped to question your own purpose?
If writing is going to happen, it might begin after my first cup of coffee. I achieve this by pouring dark House beans into the grinder and roaring this until I get a fine powder, dumping it into a paper-lined funnel, pouring in cold water, and flipping on the switch. While I wait for this to brew, I pour water into my Keurig for two cups–to share with my husband. I toss in a House K -cup and press “ON.” The two pots come together and finish together. I take my cup of Keurig and fill it up from the regular pot. Then I slide into my Lazy-Boy, switch on my cup heater, and set the cup of alertness down. I turn on the laptop, wait for warmup, and take my first sip. I know it will take more than this to get all of my lights to start blinking.
I’m usually running empty when I wake. Very few logical thoughts–only intuitive-actions can get me this far in the morning. Family knows not to talk too loudly or, if possible, not at all, “Let me have my first cup of coffee,” before I’m expected to make some decision or sign some legal document. If I were to exaggerate this, I’d be funny. I’m speaking the truth. It will take that first cup of caffeine to trigger the neurons in my gray matter before I get the eye-opening, thought-focusing jolt to begin my day and clog up that great big cavity of nothingness. On a good day, I might start typing, officially brainstorming about and writing on my next project, which is now my latest novel, the third in a series, Where Two Rivers Meet.
But sometimes, I need more than java. I need physical inspiration–whether I am trying to fill in a plot segment, follow the yearning of a poem, or conceptualize a blog, without which I am just a blinking cursor. I feel like the chocolate Easter eggs or bunnies, hollow inside. So on one of my good days, I joined my sister on a trip to the Mississippi River, to wander on the path my protagonist, Abigail, would have walked when she disembarked the steamboat Governor Ramsey below the bluffs at Clearwater.
This is the J. B. Bassett, anchored to the Clearwater side of the Mississippi. A boat that would have arrived in the 1870s, a bit after Abigail arrived in the village.
The date was August something, 1855. She would become the first white woman to come to the village, and she would work as the townsite’s hotel housekeeper. Brave she must have been to come alone from Vermont, via, stagecoach, train, and steamboat to an area wild with male ambition. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Jared Wheelock, the first doctor in Wright County, Minnesota, would be there to keep her company and in the area to keep an eye on her. Her cousin’s husband would be building a bigger and better hotel eventually, but it would be a couple of months before Jared’s wife, Abigail’s sister, would join her in the town. Yet, all this I know and have written about already. While I love the free feeling of nature down here–birds singing and light breezes moving the trees and the river’s current, I need something worthy of writing.
Path along the Mighty Mississippi in Clearwater where steamboats docked.
A two cavity cottonwood tree along the Mississippi at Clearwater’s old steamboat landing.
Read on in Wikipedia to learn that “it may take 220 years for hollows suitable for larger species to form.” So how long has this tree been standing? Would Abigail have seen it in its youthful stage? Had it already developed a small hole? The article provided more. I learned that this hole is never truly empty. Yes, all sorts of creatures may live or burrow inside.
All writers have the block one way or another. Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and others. They give great advice on 13 Famous Writers on Overcoming Writer’s Block. For now, I believe in myself again. I am inspired and feel my synapses firing again.
Friday, my sister and I made our rounds in the St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids areas to honor and remember our relatives and friends. Although I never knew the Atwoods nor Nancy Wilson Atwood Allen, they, or at least Nancy, are characters in my next novel, “Where Two Rivers Meet.” We believe Nancy needs recognition. She came to Minnesota around 1858, settling in St. Cloud, right across from the famous newspaper editor, Jane Swisshelm, her house, and the St. Cloud Visiter and St. Cloud Democrat office. They became fast friends, and Nancy’s oldest and Jane’s daughter married. Nancy was an “artistic” ambrotypist, which included taking tintypes. Her story is truly amazing, but she died young in St. Cloud and is buried in North Star. More to come when my novel is published, which will be third in the series of strong Clearwater, Minnesota, Main Street women.
This post is absolute TRUTH. God blessed me with a few talents, maybe writing is my strongest suit. I love to write poetry and have won a few awards. I have written both creative fiction and non-fiction, and have published and won a few awards as well. But when it comes to real crafting, drawing, sewing, or any other handwork, I’d say I deserve nilche, zero, nothing, even F. I told my husband when we were first married that if he lost a button on a coat or jacket, buy new. While this isn’t as true as it sounds, I have to admit when I was a freshman in high school (is this supposed to be freshperson now?), I earned a D on a blouse I sewed for putting in the sleeve in the wrong direction.). I think I have improved a bit, but not really proving it anymore.
