Please join me in welcoming insightful and talented author Kathleen M. Rodgers to our final installment of the November blog party–all to send books to the military for the holidays. I picked Kathleen to finish our party on the highest note. Kathleen and I have been friends for years, brought together by none other than Debbie Macomber when we both needed a writing friend to lean on. Kathleen is indefatigable in her enthusiasm for life, and a generous friend.
What do you make, bake, create or purchase for the holidays, Kathleen?
Since I’m not known for baking and I’m only crafty with words, I sometimes write holiday themed poems and send them out as Christmas cards. When I was twenty-seven and living at a remote Air Force base near the North Pole, I wrote the following poem with a newborn cradled in my lap and a yellow legal pad absorbing the scribbles of my restless pen. Back then, the days seemed endless and my thoughts came faster than I could catch them. The temperature outside hovered around thirty below zero. Somewhere off in the distance, beyond the Alaska Range, my husband flew his single-seat fighter high above the snow clouds.
The Snow Comes Early In The High Country Of Alaska
The Snow Comes Early
in the high country of Alaska.
The midnight sun
has long since vanished.
The days are now short-lived;
dawn, noon and dusk less than a handful of hours.
The birch are stripped naked;
their chocolate chip trunks
sticking out of the snow.
The hills of Tanana Valley
are like mounds of flour dumped on the floor
from an opened sack.
And we are the inhabitants
in this whitewashed land,
where sixty degrees below zero
can kill even the strongest of men.
But we are risk takers!
Riding the open road of the military…
a journey we often complain of,
but a dream voyage for others
fenced in by fate.
So let us be thankful
when winter sets in,
that we are here, at the top of the world-
Closer to our Maker,
when the snow comes early
in the high country of Alaska.
© Kathleen M. Rodgers — Alaska 1985
Do you have a military connection, Kathleen?
My husband flew fighters for twenty years for the Air Force. Our youngest son is a 1st lieutenant in the United States Army, and he recently earned a Bronze Star during his deployment to Afghanistan.
Kathleen’s The Final Salute has been featured in USA Today and won a Silver Medal for fiction from Military Writers Society of America. Check it out here.
Kathleen’s second novel, Johnnie Come Lately, releases from Camel Press in February 2015. Check it out here.
Thanks for joining us today, Kathleen!
Find Kathleen in the usual places:
Website: http://www.kathleenmrodgers.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KathleenMRodgersAuthor
Twitter: @KathleenMRodger
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2742306.Kathleen_M_Rodgers
Remember, you can do your part in supporting the military for the holidays. Harlequin will send one book for every 20 new subscribers to the Geri Krotow Newsletter. Sign up here.
