This is a book of poetry and photography by the author Gianina Sipitca. It is a collection of materials written during the period 2013-2015. The photographs are more or less from the same period, taken always by the author, with a Nikon camera or with the smart phone. While on vacation or during weekend outings, Gianina likes to take simple photographs that show the details of what she observes and enjoys, just as any other person would do. A professional camera never interested her, since it is not what people generally use. She likes to see if she could spur the audience's interest in what captures her imagination for the moment and do it in a simple way, with her inexpensive 'toy'. She calls it a toy, not a tool, since although now dedicated full time to writing and publishing, she still enjoys it as when only a hobby several years ago.
About the Author: I was born and raised in communist Romania in a loving family, together with younger brother Catalin. We had what I considered to have been the most wonderful childhood. Catalin was tragically lost in 1989. Coming with an engineering and business background, I stumbled upon writing poetry and later on pairing it with photography sometime in my late forties. While downloading some of my vacation photos, I got the idea of publishing a book that would convey both my love of poetry and photography. Whether I try to rhyme or not, what I usually do is try to tell a story and make it in such a way as to attract people's attention. Metaphors are an easy choice for getting things done. I have a poetical nature and am drawn to metaphors. I do not like to be constrained in any way and my poetry is generally free verse with some rhyme, inspired from love, spirituality or politics. I would not consider myself an erudite and my poetry is simple. My poetry is fictional, inspired by life. Hardship, pain, love, despair, sheer joy or anxiousness, they all inspired me at one point or another. I have lived them all and all those experiences made me what I am today. After Catalin's demise at 20 years old, my spirituality became more and more apparent to me through my internal struggle with and while fighting and questioning God's plans...Thirty years after, poetry helps me find and express better and better my inner peace, the understanding that my fate is in the hand of the Creator. My husband and I spend our lives between San Jose, California during the week and our cottage in the mountains in Arnold, California during the weekends. We vacation twice a year, generally in the North American National Parks or abroad, in Europe. Besides travel, poetry, photography, and digital painting, I enjoy cooking in my kitchen in Arnold. I never use a recipe. I start gathering whatever I have in the pantry and create a meal. Before 'Lessons for a new generation', I have published two poetry books: Poetry in Color and From That Place In My Heart and several others are ready for print. In March of 2019 I also published my first novel a Sci Fi book entitled The Big Thought Reading Machine/Fiction Or Not, This Is What I Got, about the superhero The Tsarina, with an IQ of 7000, who is a messenger of God. The continuation novel, almost like a volume II, entitled Dystopian, is about a novel written by the same superhero, and was published on June 16th of 2019. I hope dear reader, that you enjoy reading my books and my poetry. Be kind and assume that I always had something I wanted you to know about, even if the words seem sometimes out of place, maybe even in the wrong sequence. With love, Gianina Sipitca