The books are here!!

Here I am at a local Arts and Crafts Fair displaying and offering  my new poetry book  WOMAN WANDERING 1975-2015  The response was warm and complimentary.  Now I am holding the book in my hands.  I feel its personal power.  It wants to be shared and read.  What an appropriate time of the year to be thankful and grateful for the joy of writing about the memories of my life as a woman, mother, artist, educator and lover of Nature and new places. 

More wandering toward the Tree of Life

This is the photo used on the back cover of the poetry book.  All photos taken by Jessica Rose of Sebastopol, California. 

Nina and the Tree of Life

Woman Wandering.......is a book in print!!!

WOMAN  WANDERING   1975 -- 2015                          POEMS  BY  NINA TEPEDINO

Woman Wandering is a collection of fifty poems spanning forty years of poetic reflection.  It is a memoir in poetry, the new genre, to be considered and honored as my style to chronicle my life as a woman...my life as artist...my life as teacher...my life with Nature... my delights and displeasures and my elder wisdom to be absorbed and heard.  As I walk toward the Tree of Life, an elder Black Oak at the Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol, California, I embrace the living and growth in my life, as my creative force prospers and continues to wander. 

I  Have  Returned...........it is 2015.....it is almost July!! 

May in Portland........Ah, yes......my new poetry book is going to be released soon  called:

WOMAN  WANDERING.....1975  to  2014

A  Morning Response...............June.....28, 2015

Mother Earth

Your skirts are the clouds you shake to make it rain
Your red lips are the blossoms from many cultured gardens
Your hair is braided with vines encircling the sphere
Your tears spill forth from the melting ice caps
Your heart is full like the ocean churning and bubbling in waves of
anxiety and worries  like Mothers do.
With your patience and prayers you give us more time to learn new ways,
like Mothers do. 

Nina Tepedino
copyright June, 2015

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.  

ONE OF MY POEMS HAS WON A THIRD PRIZE!

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

MY POEM:  MIGRATION   has earned a Third Place prize in the NATIONAL AMATEUR POETRY
 COMPETITION sponsored by Eber & Wein Publishing........

MIGRATION

Whale watchers are mammals, too.
We all nurse our young,
expelled from the womb in placenta blood,
nurtured by instinct,
filled with water,
the fluid of life.
The mammals who killed mammals to near extinction,
now searching for spout and breech
to fill the camera lens.
Do the whales watch us watch them?
Do their memories forgive our killing ways?
We gaze out to sea,
braced against the ocean wind
to face forward off the Bodega Cliff edges,
that hold the onlookers
for the annual mammalian migration.

Copyright 2011
Nina Tepedino


Be sure to see the Film:  Blackfish.......which chronicles the early capture of baby Orcas in Puget Sound
for the horrible crime and profit for the Sea Worlds of the world and how some of the original hunters have been asking for forgiveness and expressing great remorse for their actions.  They are now convinced that one of the most intelligent mammals of the sea have experienced great mistreatment, death and the loss of their young whale children with screaming cries of anguish and mourning witnessed by the hunters.  You can locate this documentary film on line.  It is being shown in some theaters, but is not available for live streaming from Netflix.  

VIEW MY INTERVIEW ON WOMEN'S SPACES

NOVEMBER 10, 2013

THE INTERVIEW VIDEO CAN BE SEEN AT http://www.womensspaces.com/

ArchiveWSshow/WS131011.html

Appearing on the cable show, Women's Spaces

Add caption

Community Television, Cable 26, WOMEN'S SPACES   show with Elaine Holtz, producer with Nina

I was interviewed and taped on Friday, October 11, with an air date for November (TBA).  I will keep everyone posted  re: time and Channels access.  It was a wonderful opportunity to share my new children's  book and to answer questions about what it is like to be a creative and active eighty year-old elder in these times.  Hope you will all watch and comment.

POSTED:  SEPTEMBER 21                                                                                                                      

POEM PUBLISHED IN THE NEW 2013 VINTAGE VOICES
 ANTHOLOGY, REDWOOD WRITERS, SONOMA COUNTY.

EMANCIPATION SECTION.....PG 43

POSTCARDS OF DEATH

It was a twenty-first century event.
Images were hung on a Mississippi gallery wall
for an exhibition of black and white
photos sold for a souvenir
of anonymous faces posed in fear.
Images that were mailed as picture postcards
by lynching mobs and tourists,
who gathered to watch and wait
for the moment of entry at Death's gate,
without guilt for the innocent,
without trial by a jury,
with no one to shout:
"Set him free!  Set him free!
from the hangman's tree!"
Emancipation came too late
for those African ancestors,
thought to be less than human
by photographers, who profited 
from their postcards of death.

@2013  Nina Tepedino

Today I read this poem at the Reading Circle venue at the Sonoma County Book Festival, at the Santa Rosa Junior College


Happy Fall Equinox!! 

                                          photo by Greg Pfeiffer

September, 18, 2013

I would like to announce my new sole proprietor enterprise.......LOVEJOY  PRESS.  I will be publishing my own books for children and for my poetry.  I am currently working on a music book for young children:  "Never Too Tired For Singing"  with photos, text and notated songs, resources for the home and school setting.  

I am also creating four or five little books for children, ages 5 thru 10 that center on the character's activities and messages for helping to save our planet's  wildlife and habitats that threatened by climate change and global warming.  So, I will keep in touch with all the latest developments as they happen. 

Happy writing!!

LOCAL CHILDREN'S AUTHORS AT COPPERFIELDS

On July 31 at Copperfield's Bookstore, Santa Rosa......Children's Authors Night......a wonderful evening of questions, reading my "If You Lived In Sam's Neck"  and signing and selling.  One gentleman came up to me and said he really loved my book.  The best open reading and introduction ever.

My Photograph Won a Prize!!

My Bodega Head Ocean Waves Photo was just awarded Third Prize at the Sonoma County Fair for the "In Your Own Backyard"  contest.  Finally, after three years of entering, I have been recognized for my photography creative efforts.  It feels good.  However,  no real blue ribbons this year......just a small sticker type.  Oh, well.........

MAY 18, SATURDAY  2 TO 4PM

AT THE SANTA ROSA CENTRAL LIBRARY

REDWOOD WRITERS AND LOCAL AUTHORS READ

OPEN MIC......SIGN UP

POETRY.......PROSE........

THEME:   "MEMORIES"

COME AND HEAR  NINA TEPEDINO AND OTHER LOCAL AUTHORS.