Hugged a tree lately?

Trees Are the Lungs of Our Planet

Have you heard about the amazingly ambitious goal of The Nature Conservancy to plant a BILLON trees and restore the forest of the world? From the rainforests in South America to China and even in the Arctic Circle, this hardy group of tree huggers is doing their darndest to recreate the woodlands and rainforests everywhere they can.  I urge you to look at the map to see how far they are getting; it is impressive and gives me so much hope about our future.

I grew up in a deeply forested state, West Virginia and was taught from a child to know and love trees. When I visited last time and drove all around to see relatives in far flung counties, I noticed huge swaths of brown amongst the green and asked what the heck was going on that seemed to be killing trees. That is how I learned about “acid rain,” an unfortunate by-product of coalmining, logging and too many chemical plants. On our 300-acre farm, no trees are cut, only planted so we are doing our part. In the settled of the great prairies and western states, trees were felled to “clean the land.” That is, in part, being rectified by a special effort to protect trees in the “last frontier.” Check out www.americanforest.org to see how you can help. Oh, and start in your own yard. Got room for a couple of trees? Start digging and planting and know you will enjoy years of beauty and leave behind a legacy for generations to come from your own efforts.

With each passing day, as I read in news about 2014 being the hottest year in recorded history, I feel it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to do everything we can to cool down, slow down and give back to the planet. 

12 Dates of Christmas- sweet treats from authors we love (and you will, too)

Cleis has never composed a gift guide before, but we love the thought of spreading a little sexy Christmas cheer. We’ve curated gifts from a number of writers, some of our favorite scribes, ones we think are really brilliant. If you’re stilling looking for presents, why not consider stuffing a stocking with one or two of these.

We’ve handpicked twelve gifts for you and there’s not a partridge in sight.

1. 1) Rachel Kramer’s ‘Sex and Cupcakes’ (in a pear tree)

A collection of essays from writer Rachel Kramer Bussel, reflecting on her years as a sex columnist and cupcake blogger, detailing her dirty and sweet sides as well as sexual adventures, politics, heartbreak, tattoos and more. Sex and Cupcakes reveals the woman behind the stereotype, one far more complex than Carrie Bradshaw and her Manolos, a woman willing to expose herself, on paper and in the flesh, who takes risks and gets hurt and keeps on searching for love, sex, passion and happiness.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OL8LNR6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00OL8LNR6&linkCode=as2&tag=rachelkramerbuss&linkId=YDGYABSIYZ63J4XD

1. 2) Alison Tyler’s ‘Alison on the Rocks’
   

This kinky collection of erotic bar stories is sure to fill your cup—and fulfill your thirst—for BDSM, anal, gangbang, punishment, spanking, and humiliation. The six sultry stories included in this collection are: Last Call, Stirring Up Trouble, Cubed, Bastard, Sitting Pretty, and Prix Fixe. The pieces have appeared in other collections but never all together on one shelf—amidst the tequila and the triple sec. 

http://www.amazon.com/Alison-Rocks-Erotic-Stories-Kinky-ebook/dp/B00OO65HAY

1. 3) ‘Violet blue’s ‘The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy’
   

Social media, online dating, photo sharing, mobile everything… It can make your life a dream - or a nightmare. The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy is the only guide focused on privacy for women. This book helps you hack your way through the jungle of privacy chaos and fight back against sleazy marketers, unethical megacorporations, scammers, stalkers, hacked apps, and thieves. 

http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Girls-Guide-Privacy-ebook/dp/B00JBV3C6S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419295905&sr=1-1&keywords=the+smart+girl%27s+guide+to+privacy

1. 4) Shanna Germain’s ‘Numenera’

Shanne Germain is editor of Cleis Press’s ‘Kinky as you wanna be’. She leads a double life as an editor for a futuristic RPG…

Numenera is a science fantasy roleplaying game set in the far distant future. Humanity lives amid the remnants of eight great civilizations that have risen and fallen on Earth. Player characters explore this world of mystery and danger to find these leftover artifacts of the past, not to dwell upon the old ways, but to help forge their new destinies, utilizing the so-called “magic” of the past to create a promising future.

http://www.shannagermain.com/portfolio_2/numenera/

1. 5) Katie Gilmartin – Fine Prints

Katie Gilmartin is the author of ‘Blackmail, My love’, a smoky murder mystery that follows Josie O’Connor, in search of her missing brother, through the foggy streets of corrupt 1950’s San Francisco. The novel is illuminated by black and white prints created by Katie herself and cut a vivid window into the city’s neo-noir past.

http://katiegilmartin.com/print-galleries/

1. 6) Alison Tyler’s ‘The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica’ Audiobook

Imagine a library - a very special one run by a librarian whose only concern is pleasing her patrons. In fact, this librarian will stop at nothing to service her readers. To that end, she has carefully collected a fantastic and fantasy-filled set of stories guaranteed to satisfy literary lusts in The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica. 

http://www.audible.com/pd/Erotica-Sexuality/The-Sexy-Librarians-Big-Book-of-Erotica-Audiobook/B00QZQQUTI/

1. 7) Tristan Taormino's Top Sex Toys

Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, and sex educator. She wrote our very own ‘The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Woman’. When she’s not writing, she likes to play (among other thngs). And believe us, she has great taste in toys.

http://www.goodvibes.com/display_category.jhtml?id=catalog70002_cat38041

1. 8) D L King’s ‘She who must not be obeyed’

Award-winning erotica editor D.L. King's new lesbian anthology showcases dominant femmes and their submissive partners playing out vivid and unforgettable BDSM fantasies and trysts. Each of these stories is as beguiling as it is demanding.

http://www.amazon.com/She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed/dp/1590211944

1. 9) Saachi Green’s ‘Lipstick on Her Collar and Other Tales of Lesbian Lust’

An anthology like this invites you to a cocktail party of possibilities. You'll mingle with some dykes who are accountants, computer programmers, and scholars, interspersed with the occasional horse-trainer, army sergeant, and drag king. Is there a lover in your life, or is she still a figment of your imagination? You might get a glimpse of her here, among the butch daddies and femme fatales and rogues, because there are representatives of every kind of woman in this book, having every kind of sex you (and twenty-two authors) can imagine. Welcome to the party!

http://www.amazon.com/Lipstick-Collar-Other-Tales-Lesbian/dp/1576122980

1. 10) Mitzi Szereto’s ‘Normal for Norfolk’

Not what you would typically think when someone mentions ’Cleis Press top Xmas presents’, but charming all the same. Thelonious T. Bear, ursine photojournalist, leaves behind the big city life of London to take an assignment in the Norfolk countryside, where he hopes to find the real England. Instead he stumbles upon gastro-pubs, crazed Audi drivers and murder…

http://mitziszereto.com/normalfornorfolk/

1. 11) Kristina Wright’s ‘Seduce me Tonight’

Erotic love is the most powerful force in the world. 'Seduce Me Tonight' explores seduction from lust to long term love, from playful and teasing to dark and edgy. A short story collection perfect for anyone seduced by the 'Fifty Shades' trilogy or Sylvia Day's 'Crossfire' series. "Seduce me." A plea? A command? A need for connection that goes beyond the physical? These are stories of seduction. The anticipation, the tease, the buildup … the promise of what comes next…

http://www.mischiefbooks.com/books/seduce-me-tonight/

1. 12) Laura Antoniou’s ‘The Marketplace’ series

Laura Antoniou is the author of the well known Marketplace series of erotic novels. The Marketplace series describes "an elite and secretive world organization,dedicated to the auctioning and overseeing of the world's finest lifestyle slaves... a world so vivid in sequel after sequel, it takes on a reality of its own, one that's visually hard to let go of once the reader has put down the book." (Libido Magazine).

http://www.amazon.com/Laura-Antoniou/e/B0034PNQ7W

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Write letters and send postcards

The things that make me the happiest have an emotional and physical effect.  And even more so when you do something for someone else.  One of the most lasting of these things is a personal letter.

Being born in the transitional time between letters and computers, many people in my generation have already shunned snail mail as a way to communicate. This makes them rare, but a very inexpensive surprise. My grandmother was one of seven children, and they communicated with a round-robin letter. From mailbox to mailbox, they would add an update on their life and send it around to the next sibling. She taught me that letters are a valuable form of communication, something she’s emphasized as her memory slowly fades.

I got into the habit of writing letters and during the times where I was most stressed, a paper due, a newspaper deadline, or turmoil, I would write a letter. Letters live somewhere between thoughts and stories. They are a confidant and a piece of yourself that you can choose to scrap or share.

When I receive a letter, especially from someone who I haven’t heard from in awhile, I get a rush of endorphins, because I’m holding proof that the friend considered me. It’s the same rush I get when someone is thoughtful or goes out of their way to help me. Most friends reciprocate with a call to say how happy they were to open a personal note rather than another bill or W-2.

I followed epistolary literature in college, often using my break from studying as a chance to write letters. Perhaps letters will go the way of Wells Fargo wagons, but I’ll single-handedly support the post office as long as my friends have addresses and my fingers can write. Letters are my personal therapy, my rush of endorphins, my connection with those I love, and my alone time—my regular serving of happiness.

As the old Jimmy Durante song goes, “make someone happy.” A thoughtful, hand-written letter will do that EVERY TIME!

It's so important to make someone happy.
 

Make just one someone happy…



Fame, if you win it,


Comes and goes in a minutes
.

Where's the real stuff in life, to cling to?



Love is the answer!

 
Make someone happy.


Make just one someone happy.


And you will be happy too.

Commit: Be Willing to Go Out of Your Comfort Zone for a True Friend

Just how far would you go for a friend?

One of best friends in the world is named Lily. She is also the most brilliant person I know (and I know a lot of very smart and special people). Her brain works like no one else’s. When we first met I noticed her (how could I not?) because she was dancing alone in the student union of our college wearing a white lab-coat to which she’d attached letters spelling out schizoleptic. I introduced myself to her and asked what the lab-coat letters meant. “My dad is a paranoid schizophrenic, and my mom is a grand mal epileptic, so I figure I’m a schizoleptic.” See what I mean about her original thinking? That was enough for me to become best friends with her for life. A couple years after I moved from West Virginia to San Francisco she followed, and we had many wild adventures together.

The light behind the darkness

            I knew that Lily had had a rough childhood, with her dad institutionalized and her mother working three jobs to support the family. But I did not know about the pain and guilt that had scarred Lil when she had visited her father in the institution, which sounded like a medieval nightmare. 

Sometimes Lil would “go dark.” On the rare occasions when she did, the pain and fear of it all came spilling out.

            One episode in particular haunted her. It had happened when she, as the oldest daughter, was assigned to visit her father in the institution because the younger children could not handle it. The male patients at the institution had to leave their rooms during the day and wait in the hall of the dank, jail-like ward. They either wandered around like zombies on Thorazine, or they lay down on the cold, hard floor, trying desperately to sleep. When Lil visited, she said she had to “step over the heads” of the men. “Other people’s fathers, too,” she added.

            After a really bad breakup of a long-term relationship, Lil started talking more about these visits, so much so that I began referring to them as “head-stepping episodes.” She would wail and cry and scream about it while I searched desperately for the right words to say. Suddenly it came to me that role-playing might help. So I lay down on the floor, and we reenacted what had taken place so many years before that had cut Lil to the quick. As I lay there and Lil stepped over my head, saying what she used to say to her dad, somehow, I knew exactly what her dad would have wanted to say to her if he had not been medicated to within an inch of his life.

            I said the words for him. “I love you so much. You are my brave daughter and I am so proud that you come here to see me. Lots of the other families are too scared to come, but not you. Even though I am in here, I am okay. I had lots of good years with your mom and you when you were little. I will never stop loving you. You are so special to me and my gift to the world.”

            Lil’s shoulders shook as she cried, walking slowly over my imaginary ward mates and me. That was the last head-stepping episode. Lil

has gone on to become a remarkable success, a hugely talented guitarist and a beloved and excellent teacher. And I learned about what a profound difference we can make when we reach for another with the eternal power of compassion, deep friendship, and love.

Get. Very. Simple.

 A few years ago, I  had the immense pleasure of attending a lecture by Huston Smith, the preeminent scholar of the world’s religions.  Smith first came to the attention of the world when he brought a young Tibetan Buddhist Monk – His Holiness, the Dalai Lama –to America for the first  time. Smith spoke about the continuing impact of religion on our world, most notably the strife in the Middle East over religious differences. He was at his most joyous when he spoke about his own spiritual practices, which he described to us. Smith said, upon rising each day, he did Hatha yoga for some minutes, followed by reading a few pages of a sacred text, after which he meditated or prayed for at least five minutes. He would finish his morning ritual by doing a bit of yard work and some composting. As gardening and composting enthusiast, I was engrossed. Smith extolled the virtues of this service to the planet, which results in rich, dark soil, and a beautiful garden he greatly enjoys.

The entire audience smiled as they listened to this great and humble man describe the spiritual practices with which he began each day. These were Huston Smith’s personal morning rituals and I felt more at peace just listening to him describe his simple steps to serenity. I love the irony that this premiere academic, who has such as deep understanding of all the religions rituals throughout history, had created such an uncomplicated approach for himself. I left the talk inspired to worry less and enjoy more. I saw the deep wisdom of simplicity. Huston Smith rarely appears in public but I never miss a chance to listen to him speak on any subject. I recently saw him again at San Francisco’s esteemed CIIS and heard the one detail he had left out of the previous discussion of morning practices, which I recognized as a  brilliant happiness habit.  He was introduced that night by a dear old friend, who added this delightful detail he knew from their time as college roommates: Upon waking, Huston sits up ramrod straight in his bed, claps his hands together and says very loudly, ”It’s going to be a GREAT DAY.”

What simple activities can you perform to add joy to your life?

Are there any “downer duties” you can delete from your life?

Do you feel a longing for simpler times in your life?

What can you do about it?

Is there a morning “life affirmation” you can speak upon waking?

Wishing you sweet serenity,

Brenda