Recent Local Appearance

On  August, 29, I was the guest poet/speaker at the Sebastopol Kiwanis Luncheon.  I shared my life journey through my poems, stories and song, for a whole luxurious thirty minutes!!  I responded to very provocative and complimentary questions and comments.  I feel great pride as a Redwood Writers member to be featured as a poet.  My first book of poems will be entitled: A Touch of Time, published by Lovejoy Press.

JULY 14, 2014

ELDER WISDOM HIPPIE LADY.........PHOTO BY LINDA SORENSEN...........

Here I am.....under the umbrella of Redwood Writers.....Our booth at the Bilbliophoria Printing Festival, in Sebastopol at the Center for the Arts on Saturday, June 28th.........a truly lovely exhibit of book arts......
I hope soon to begin creating my own Poetry Chap books with my poems and my photographs.......Redwood Writers is an organization that honors you as a writer.......and supports your efforts and ideas.  Sometimes writers......creative ones......need that added poke to produce!!  Summer and gardening for food can be a major distraction...As the fall and winter months meet us head on, it then becomes a more condusive time to retreat and stay inside....taking more time for my writing projects.

In the current moment I am slightly obsessed with zucchinis......Here is my latest poem:

Zuke Soup

Shiny green skinned cylinder,
spermed from lush golden yellow petals.
Female blossom unfurls.
Male blossom births the edible shoot,
shaded under broad tropical stalks and leaves.
Tis not a shy producing squash.
It dominates with a presence
so proud and prolific,
twisted off the vine,
brought into the kitchen
to be sliced, diced, sauteed
with olive oil and soy sauce,
dipped in egg and seasoned bread crumbs,
creamed into zuke soup
with red onion and ginger spice,
concocted to satisfy my hunger,
a culinary reward for weeks spent
intensely watching my zucchini grow.
Praises for my Italian grandma Maria,
whose earthbound passion taught me to know.

Nina Tepedino
First Day of Summer, 2014

WAITING......A REFLECTION

May 24, 2014

written in the middle of the night on April 2, while waiting for my apartment move in at Burbank Heights


Waiting is worth the wanting.
Wanting is for the waiting to end.
The end is the beginning of no more need to pretend.
After the gift blessing is manifested,
the image created is pre-destined.
The scheme, the plan is molded to be
for the benefit of the future that you see.

Waiting is why we live, hoping for the desired outcome and a unique realization that what has been asked of you is deserved by you.  It adds to the power of your life.  It makes the enfolding manifestation surround you.  It creates a reason for radical gratitude to all those who helped in the waiting, who believed strongly beside you.  It gives you thanks for your own efforts, energy and trust for the intended climax and added dimension of decisions tossed and considered.  Waiting engenders wisdom, invigorates the body and the mind to a sense of acute awareness.  It stimulates your ability to survive--to struggle for substance of meaning and the impetus for creative living, that goes beyond survival and increases the quality of your life and the lives around you, who helped to make the journey fruitful and yes....worth the wait!

I have returned to my blog........

IT IS APRIL 30TH........MY SILENCE DUE TO MOVING TO SEBASTOPOL  FINALLY!! 

THE NEW REDWOOD WRITERS POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2014           IS NOW AVAILABLE.  

TWO OF MY POEMS ARE PUBLISHED
TITLES:  ON MY WAY HOME        and   SEATTLE WALK

A Prayer of Urgency to Stop Monsanto

This photo was taken a couple of years ago.  This year the mustard did not bloom.  This memory helps me to feel hopeful and so grateful that we have had some very nice rain.........

For my morning write today, I was still tossing around in my brain....the terrifying news of the loss of the monarch migration numbers......with startling statistics.that were released just yesterday, even on USA Today online news which began to form into a liturgical prayer form, that has always, for me, been the most powerful moment in the liturgy, when collectively we listen to the prayer and we respond out loud....."HEAR OUR PRAYER!
WE PRAY..............

For the monarch butterfly migration and its increase;
For the milkweed to flourish again;
For the farmers to follow the Light of ecologists and earth savers;
For more Percy and Louise Schmizers;
For more collective out cries of dissent and disgust;
For the demise of powerful monopolies who rape and kill living species.....animal and human;
For those leaders and countries and US states, who have put bans on GMOs into place;
For our utmost care of the environment;
For the total ban on all pesticides and chemicals....especially ROUND UP;
For the restoration of the bee population;
For the waning of the cancer epidemic and healing for those who are ill;
For clean air and water;
For the Elder Wisdom Keepers;
For the words of activist poets who write to preserve the nature they so poetically describe and honor;
For those who gather in protest to inform us, educate us and protect us;
For those who refuse to give up the hope for change;
And for these intentions and our own personal pleas.........

We pray, meditate, shout out to the Goddess, the Gods of many faiths, to Yaweh, to Allah, to Buddha,
to Quan Yin, the angels and druids that travel among us, the Christ, the Lamas, the gurus, the nations and their leaders, the Pope and his bishops, priests, vicars, rabbis and to all people of sensibility and sanity

Please add your intentions.......your prayers.........your hopes..........

Tulip Magnolia in the Rain

FEBRUARY  8,  2014     

Tulip Magnolia in the Rain

I walk by it on Brown Street, 
a very ancient Burbank tree,
pink and lavender mixed blossoms,
with those large oval, thick petals.
When it rains,
and it finally does!
the huge mantle of color
struggles to keep its glory,
like a Monet against the sky,
blue or gray
in a magnificent silent humble way.
Does not flaunt its beauty.  It just is.
I stop to give a gratuitous bow
for its annual flamboyant free show.