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Welcome to Rebecca’s Reading Room.

Stories & Poetry Given Voice.

Reading rooms are a place for exploration and connection. Books transport us to new worlds and brings us back safe home.

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About Me

Welcome to My Reading Room blog & podcast!

My goal is to encourage a deep and profound awareness of our personal journeys. There is always a story to be read, an adventure to be imagined, and an idea to be understood.

Words give meaning to the present while expressing the universal hopes and aspirations of humanity, past and future.  Gertrude Stein once said, “A masterpiece…may be unwelcome but it is never dull.”   For me, books that challenge my “status quo” and test my firmly held beliefs may be uncomfortable, but they are anything but boring. 

The bond between writer and reader gives relevance to the exchange.  My goal is to understand the message in the spirit in which it was given and to embrace the diversity of accepted wisdom. In the end, it is about connecting with others, whether they live in our century or 2500 years ago.

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Rebecca


Welcome to Rebecca’s Reading Room, a quiet library of words and reflections. This is a place to pause, to linger with books and poetry, and to let stories become companions. Some books walk beside us for a season, others stay for a lifetime — all of them leave their mark.

Here you’ll find gentle meditations on poetry, thoughtful book reviews, and explorations that wander from Emily Carr’s artistry to Goethe’s Faust, from the hidden corners of literature to the voices of poets who still speak across time. Every post is an invitation to slow down, to listen, and to rediscover the joy of reading as a lifelong journey.

You are always welcome in the Reading Room.

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October by Robert Frost Rebecca's Reading Room

S5 E17 October By Robert FrostO hushed October morning mild,Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,Should waste them all.The crows above the forest call;Tomorrow they may form and go.O hushed October morning mild,Begin the hours of this day slow.Make the day seem to us less brief.Hearts not averse to being beguiled,Beguile us in the way you know.Release one leaf at break of day;At noon release another leaf;One from our trees, one far away.Retard the sun with gentle mist;Enchant the land with amethyst.Slow, slow!For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—For the grapes’ sake along the wall.October: A Celebration of Quiet ResilienceWhen I first recited “October” in 2020, the world was standing still. Streets were empty, gatherings were postponed, and even the air seemed to hesitate. Yet in that pause, poetry found its voice again. Frost’s gentle invocation to ‘retard the sun with gentle mist’ became a kind of prayer. Not for escape, but for endurance.Resilience does not always roar. Sometimes, it whispers ‘slow, slow.’ It asks us to hold on just a little longer, to find beauty even in uncertainty. In Frost’s world, the falling of each leaf is not a loss but part of the rhythm of survival. Each pause, each delay, each quiet act of attention becomes an affirmation that life continues in tender, imperfect, and enduring ways.Looking back now, “October” reminds me how we learned to adapt: to find comfort in small rituals, to connect through words when touch was forbidden, and to let art and poetry become our gathering places. The mist that Frost imagined became, for us, a shelter with a soft veil through which we could still see light.So today, as leaves again turn to gold and wind stirs through the trees, I read “October” not as a farewell, but as a renewal. It is a reminder that even in seasons of loss, resilience grows quietly, leaf by leaf, word by word, morning by morning.Until the next page turns,RebeccaMusic by Epidemic SoundSnow In June by Martin Landhhttps://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/6a1b6e6b-a192-3195-9c4b-fa9f1e322cdd/
  1. October by Robert Frost
  2. Celebrating Halloween with Carl Sandburg
  3. Letting Go – A Reflection on Sara Teasdale’s Poem, “Leaves”
  4. Happy Birthday Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  5. “Benediction” by Georgia Douglas Johnson