Greed. Just thinking out loud

I've been involved with some business deals lately and I'm finding greed to be quite a scary thing. Normal everyday people turn into these green monsters and you don't recognize them anymore. Your best friend, or business partner will disclaim you for a half a percent. It's really ridiculous. Sure I like money as much as the next gal, could always use some more. I find it very helpful in accomplishing things, and paying your electricity bill and eating is always nice.

But, the greed, lies, and money hungry deceit are no joke. Sometimes it's the people you thought would take a bullet for you that prove to be the worst. Where does human relationships fit in with all this going after the mighty buck? Why would anyone trade in a good relationship for something as fleeting as money. So what if it's a few hundred, thousand or million; should the number matter? There are a lot of things money can't buy. It can't give you health, it can't fix a broken heart (sure you can drown emotional pain out with drugs or anything material or flesh you like for a price) but the effects wear off. Then what happens when you have everyTHING you want at the expense of everyBODY?

I seriously could go on for at least a half hour, but I'll spare you the sermon. Just thinking out loud.

In the Sound Booth

I have been recording all the poems from my book "Poetic Prescriptions for Pesky Problems" for the audio book. Wow it is a lot of hard work! I'm thinking I need to take some voice lessons, or more so, swiming lessons, whatever kind of lessons will teach me how to have more breath control. We have hours and hours of footage to go through, sometimes I had to do 10 takes, multiply that for 77 poems!

My First Book

So, I wrote this book, out of a need... maybe a Florence Nightingale need to see people healed. I see so many people these days dependent on drugs. Drugs to wake up, drugs to go to sleep, drugs to calm down, to stay awake, for anxiousness, depression etc... But I know there is a better way. I put together these 77 poems addressing, really just everyday regular stuff that people go through, and the answers to those questions. The way to dig yourself out of the ditch. Order from any bookstore or go to www.KatherineNorlandPoetry.com there you can read excepts ( 1 from each chapter). It's meant to strengthen your faith and give you true hope!

Photo by RT Norland

The baby that changed my life

Wow, so much has happened since I blogged last. I haven't written in the blogs, but I have been keeping up in my journal writing. It will probably be in a book sometime. I had a baby nearly 4 months early, he almost died a couple of times, it was pretty scary. My hubby has put a personal site together for the relatives so they could be updated. We just didn't have the energy to keep calling everyone for updates, it took all that we had just to stay in faith and pray for his health and healing everyday. If you want to find out more about his story you can check out www.myspace.com/timothyjohnnorland

He's been out of the hospital for 3 months now, and here is our first day at the beach.



Photo by RT Norland

I'm reading one of my poems in Pasadena .

Twice a month they hold poetry readings there. This group is led by Don King-Fisher. (He is the one sitting at the table up front near me). He puts out a chap book every quarter. I've been published in several of them. He calls it the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly. Yes, that's a mouthful.

This is a scene from a short film I did earlier this year. It's called "No Greater Love" The title and film is based on a scripture that says "No greater love hath any man than he lay down his life for his friend". Kathy and I wrote this film in the back seat of my little car on the way back from Las Vegas where we had our film "On The Fringe" playing at a film festival.

This is me with my friend Anthen. I met him at a poetry group a couple of years ago. He is a Rabbi, and a linguist, he speaks 7 languages and has lived all over the world.

He usually comes over every Wednesday and we work on poetry together. He actually edits my poetry, in the sense of looking for grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors.

He is really great. He's from Israel. And he loves animals.