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Pictured, “Everyday Gratitude Vol 1” – Free at participating outlets.
Small gratitudes found in the day to day living of daily life.
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“the intent of this blog is to incrementally build a body of thought that works toward integrating various topics, yoga, fitness, and the arts – it’s a process…”
Site Areas
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my writing history, the road to my first ebook (sports poetry)
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[note added 061912 – this is still a really nice history of how i got to the current digital ebook publishing age 😉 but so much has changed in what i thought i could produce from my older work, plus new images and verses i’ve developed, it is best for new information on available titles to visit my Books page on this site; thanks so much 😉 ]
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[ note added 101811 – things move fast when one is creating in a new medium, and my first ebook has turned out to be “30 Year Sampler, Stories Poems & Images, Felipe Adan Lerma” and my sports poetry ebook, well in-progress, is now named “100 Sports Poems” – more information is available on this special page, including samples of both ebooks ]
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Article Outline Intro A History Recalled- First Recalled Writing Efforts
- Late Teen Years Efforts
- College Efforts
- The 90’s – Selling Personalized Poems
- Early Online Efforts
- Emergence of the Kindle
- Known
- Unknown But Possible
- Recommended Sites for eBook Info
- Integrating Yoga Fitness and the Arts
- Wishes
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Intro
i’ve often heard myself say i’ve been doing art and arts related activities most my life, including stuff usually thought of as fitness – writing, painting, running, jumping, dancing –
not much sitting still, that would come later 😉
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these activities have held my interest all these decades, though usually in some rotating fashion
writing would alternate with painting, and for many years, music, for my arts attention, creating an undulating art chain –
with dance and other fitness things like baseball and jogging alternating and maintaining the fitness link
more recently, those two links or chains, have begun merge
thus, my blog’s mission statement of :
INTEGRATING YOGA FITNESS AND THE ARTS
it’s been an interesting 60 + years so far 😉
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A History Recalled
a few of my decades, in a few lines of letters –
First Recalled Writing Efforts
i recall distinctly, one summer, i was about 6-7 years old, sitting in the shade on the porch of our parents duplex apt, my younger brother and sister helping me create more of the neat little pictures and scribbled stories the three of us had been chain producing and putting in our neighbors’ mailbox, when the mailman came up the steps
we all three smiled up at the what seemed a tree of a slate blue uniform, fully expecting to be told how “good” we were doing
instead, in a voice, a bit like my first grade teacher, but not in a lady’s voice of course, “is your mother or father home?”
uh oh…
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Late Teen Years Efforts
just over a decade passed by without any memorable writing or art events i can recall happening, though my imagination certainly seemed to keep in full gear via learning to play trumpet, square dancing, track, baseball, running & bicycling through bayous and train yards – generally goofing around 😉
so at about 19 or so, same time i discovered dali and started painting large canvases with nothing on them but an object melting off the edge of some table or chair (which some neighbor girls i remember thought were “really cool”), i started jr college
my first child helen was already over a year old, and i worked full time delivering hot shot packages in my own van, so i attended school at night at south texas jr college, which now is the university of houston downtown campus
it was during this time i also met the folk that introduced me to alice bailey and her idea of the seven rays, the esoteric philosophy society, meditation, and some hatha yoga
this was a busy burst of new exciting things going on in my life
my journalism class would re-open my writing door
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a fluff assignment, meant to make us want to do it, was to review a movie, any movie, we liked
“car wash” was showing then, so it was an easy fit
from that, my first review ever, car wash, sudsy cleansing for the blues, came out; it was pretty good! i’m pretty sure i still have a copy somewhere in one of my stored boxes, probably one of the writings boxes with all the original hand written poems with my son – if i ever find a copy i’ll be sure and post it 😉
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now i was hooked, again, on writing!
but it would take me til now to realize why it’d been so easy to do such a nice write-up –
i really liked the movie!
ie, having a strong or passionate connection, and as i’m learning, creating or enhancing a connection, is the “switch” that turns on creativity
ie, ie, being aware, awareness, expanding consciousness, ala yoga 😉
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i did write more movie reviews, and even some dance recital reviews, and really enjoyed the process, but a couple years had passed, the economy was tanking, vietnam was still going, and taking care of my family was taking front focus
eventually, after going into the air force, and returning to houston with an honorable discharge full of benefits, including educational benefits, i would return to college –
and more writing…
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College Efforts
my preparations to leave florida and the air force in ’76 included registering for the fall semester at my old jr college – it had transformed into what is now the university of houston downtown campus
as a kind of circle completion, sheila and i took our afaa choreography and group fitness certification workshops there, and i got to see the wonderful improvements to that great location down near allen’s landing where i’d pretended to be a hippie “back in the day” 😉
i spent a semester there, transferred to uh’s main campus, then discovered their clear lake campus, where a build-your-own-degree-of-interests type program was offered
freedom to explore my interests, and express them, was something i desperately wanted, and needed…
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my creativity exploded –
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with, within a range, freedom to choose classes and create a major suited for me, i’d take 2-3 required basics (which i loved, mostly humanities related) and 2-3 lets-see-how-i-like-this electives
i’d worked most my life, including summers since i was 12, and to take classes full time, courtesy of my GI benefits, and have 2+ weeks off between each semester, well, i was in study-hall heaven sunk into finding everything i might enjoy learning about 😉
literature, comparative religion, history of ideas, cultural anthropology – oh, and the arts 😉
pottery, painting, poetry, short stories, novels, stage scripts, screenplays, readers theatre, live theatre, community theatre –
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i wrote a science fiction stage play as part of my BA in Theatre
I wrote short stories, i wrote poems
i wrote a novel for my first Masters in English Lit
i wrote another novel for my second Masters in Humanities
one of the novels i wrote initially in first person, was asked by my masters committee to re-write into third person, and did – though most everyone agreed the first person account was sharper, even if much shorter
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i moved to galveston for the first of many times, destined to stay this first time for over a decade
the fog, and a girl (sorta in the fog too i guess 😉 ) initially attracted me to the island of jean lafitte
something of the grit and sense of having to move carefully to find one’s way, fit me
i started painting again, using dry watercolors the way i’d use oils later
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my first published poem, when it ended, was published during these college years
eventually, when i have time, and re-access my stored writings, particularly my novels
i’ll review then e-book (i think i just created a new verb 😉 ) them
i sent out many inquiries and manuscripts
a few standard rejections trickled back
my need to express shifted
marrying sheila in ’81, we found ourselves dancing more often, and my eye hungered to express things more in texture and color – i started nearly a decade of working in acrylics
[ late note added 10-01-11 : sheila found a small box with an envelope of short stories from about ’81 & ’82, that escaped being stored, so sometimes in the “relatively near future” i’ll see about transcribing them to digital; but this’ll be after my current ebook, and now also e-article, projects are done 😉 ]
[ late note added 10-08-11 : new decision : will epublish 3 of the short stories first, at a great incentive price point, then the sampler poetry collection, and then the sports poetry ebook (which keep growing 😉 ) ]
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The 90’s – Selling Personalized Poems
i’d begun showing in art shows, festivals, and malls in the early 80,s –
dickens on the strand, mardi gras in galveston, the houston international and montrose festivals in houston, town square festivals around texas, street fairs, churches, barns, and community centers – you’d think i was doing guerilla yoga!
maybe i was 😉
art shows, of any kind, are rarely quite busy for the whole duration
busy spurts are common, dead periods too
so i began handwriting poems
in my booth
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somebody asked what i was doing
“writin’”
“can i see?”
“sure, just a poem”
“not bad, reminds me of my dad too”
“yea? thanks (i guess)”
“can you fix me one too, but from me to my dad?”
“uh, sure!”
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within the year i’d bought the cheapest portable printer (this was the early ninety’s remember, way back 😉 ) – it only printed black in
experimenting, i found a decent parchment tone paper i liked, used the same foam core sources i had for my art prints, sized everything to a standard size for easy framing, and wallah! i’d added a personalizing “arty” portion to my booth’s “artsy” offerings
slow periods i kept writing, still using pen or pencil on a small stencil pad of paper
it saved room, cost little, and i like the “feel” of it all
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somebody new asked what i was doing?
“are you writing more of these?”
“tryin’ to,” i smiled
“do you have more?”
“naw, just these”
“can you write me one for my mom?”
“oh, i’ve got some, they’re -“
“i saw those…while you were on break”
“oh…”
“she’s a teacher”
“ohhh…”
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and i started writing occupations
then more family stuff, uncles, aunts, grandma
anniversaries, sports, special requests like graduating from nursing school
once i got started with some subjects, like baseball, i’d create a poem for everything i could think of; these, the whole range of something like baseball, will be in my first poetry ebook, on sports
sheila started joining me at certain shows we felt i couldn’t handle
some shows we couldn’t go to the bathroom or eat
some shows we shoulda stayed home 😉
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we went to the national stationery show in ny at the javits center, where almost a decade later, i’d go to art expo
both trips were great fun, and both trips found us finding great contacts and opportunities
but when we returned to galveston (or austin), and the momentum ended
the internet, by the late 90’s was, we thought, booming 😉
so went online
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Early Online Efforts
both in the late 90’s, then again in the late 2000’s, a decade later, we tried some sort of online offering of the poems, but with only minimal success
in the late 90’s, most of the effort was toward fulfilling wholesale orders of unpersonalized writings to gift and card shops, and had some success
in the late 2000’s, though technology and the internet had advanced light years, success was still minimal, though a bit more was accomplished via google’s adsense program
both experiments involved a great deal of face time selling, and left little time for creating
also, neither attempt allowed for a full representation of the scope of our titles
that has now changed 😉
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Emergence of the Kindle
after apple, with the mac, the closest continuous companies i’ve consistently stayed with, are netflix and amazon
it is with amazon’s enlarging of the publishing field, beyond anything possible or imaginable before, that the future has circled back to the days sheila and i would set up in a mall, lay out half a dozen tables, place our hand-made containers on them, lift the handmade lids we’d made for those containers, and present hundreds and hundreds of titles that people told us they wanted…
my ebook, Sports – Original Poems, is the first evidence of that….
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Future Content
Known
the e-publication of over a thousand poems
the addition of quality features only now possible
the opportunity to have a body of work “out there” for myself, my family, and others to benefit from
novels and short stories waiting to be reviewed rewritten and released
paraphrasing real estate : content content content 😉
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Unknown But Possible
new opportunities to expand from what i can offer :
audio / visual presentations of my poems
visual projection of images from cell phones onto walls and the air
enhanced awareness and creativity on my part from the stimulus of being heard
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Recommended Sites for eBook Info
first, i need to say these will be added to my links page (tab at the top of each page)
now, in no particular order, for you to enjoy exploring, links to online sites i’ve found so far that have helped me technically or inspirationally or in some unknown way that feels right 😉
- http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
- http://www.bloggingbookshelf.com/
- http://www.amazopia.com/
- http://ibisreader.com/
- http://www.onespoonatatime.com/
- http://blog.threepress.org/
- http://www.kindleformatting.com/
- http://kateharperblog.blogspot.com/
included is an all-things-amazon blog info site, epub reader site, formating site, how to make money blogging site, a publishing epub writer’s site, and more! 😉
as i find more that interest me, i’ll be sure to list them on my links page under “arts” links
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Final Thoughts
Integrating Yoga Fitness and the Arts
if there is a thread in my life, if there are threads that make the best of a rope to hang onto when you get to the end of your rope (an idea expressed by thomas jefferson), then yoga, the conscious knowledge of the awareness from yoga, has been the thread that’s tied my two life long interests – fitness / sports & the arts
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Wishes
do i wish i’d known more about epublishing when it’d first started, and gotten started a year or two years ago?
sure…
do i wish all this today had been available back in the late 70’s and early 80’s when i had my first deep burst of writing creativity?
of course!
but does that make me any less happy that it is possible today?
nope 😉
namaste – con dios – god be with you
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[ note added 101811 – things move fast when one is creating in a new medium, and my first ebook has turned out to be “30 Year Sampler, Stories Poems & Images, Felipe Adan Lerma” and my sports poetry ebook, well in-progress, is now named “100 Sports Poems” – more information is available on this special page, including samples of both ebooks ]
[ note added 111111 – much progress has been made epublishing, please see links below for more information 😉 ]
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Other Yoga-Adan Links You Might Like
101 Sports Poems Vol 2 – Dance, Yoga, Martial Arts, Drill Team, Twirler, Ice Skating
Photography Plus : Digital Photos, Photo-Poem, Photo Essays, Artist Commentary
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“Yoga is a Sport” – Original Yoga Poetry
Texas to Vermont – Have Yoga, Will Travel (New Beginning)
Adam Light Creations, Parent DBA of Yoga-Adan, a History
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INTEGRATING YOGA FITNESS AND THE ARTS
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