[Subject line from Grace Paley's "Having Arrived by Bike at Battery Park," which also includes the lines "Day! I love you for your delicacy / in appearing after so many years / as an afternoon in Battery Park right / on the curved water..."]


Abby inspecting the larkspur and basil I brought home from the fields

I spent the bulk of yesterday weeding beets and onions. I brought home beets, onions, fennel, basil, a mix of lettuces, and larkspur.

Three notes to myself, and an observation:

(1) Bring gloves next time. Yes, you hate wearing them, but you have business meetings on your calendar, and disguising trashed nails = pain in the ass.

(2) You need something rated higher than SPF 15 on your shoulderblades.

(3) Pulling up thickets of weeds a hair too quickly = faceful of flying dirt.

(Observation) In spite of publishing an entire poem about thinning plants, I still find it to be a process with pangs attached: am I pulling up (and leaving behind) the right ones? is there really not enough room for all the roots?

... but I also now have a pan full of culled beets to roast. And Mavis Staples on the stereo, and my beloved White Sox are leading the Indians at the top of the 3rd inning, and I have sheaves of work to plunge back into. (Yes, it's technically a holiday weekend. I'll probably make pesto for a cookout...)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/18211.html.

Deadline is Friday, May 25, 2012 at 11:59 EST. Winners can choose to receive either 30 dreamwidth points (= 1 month paid time) or a poem written for them by alee_grrl.

For Writers:
Challenge #11: This week ysabetwordsmith [Elizabeth Barrette] introduced us to some lovely examples of sacred poetry. Sacred poetry can reflect many religions and spiritual traditions. This week's challenge is to write a sacred poem.

For Readers:
Challenge #12: Pick one of the poems shared [last] week [at poetree] and write a comment about that poem. What struck you particularly, what did you like? Doesn't have to be a long or complicated comment.

.

More details at http://poetree.dreamwidth.org/58575.html, which is also where to post links to entries.

---

I'll heading to the farm today. I have missed it. Past entries about working there:

http://journalscape.com/mechaieh/2011-05-21-23:02
http://journalscape.com/mechaieh/2011-06-01-05:58
http://journalscape.com/mechaieh/2011-06-16-14:35
http://journalscape.com/mechaieh/2011-07-14-09:04

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/18089.html.

My dog:


A bunny next door:



And never the twain shall meet. ;-)

That kind of sums up how today felt, truth be told -- even though, objectively speaking, I can recognize that I got a fair bit done (one article written, one shift at the hospital, various drafts and notes and what-have-you, etc., etc., boom). It just was one of those days where there was a lot of barking at windows (both literally -- the entire household got woken up to the sound of tumbling glass in the middle of the night -- and figuratively, aka me swearing under the hood of M$Word while trying to extricate bat skeletons out of its chassis) and me getting in my own damn way.

Fortunately, there is also the love of friends and doggies and the BYM. And clean sheets and strong tea and running water and city libraries and fireflies. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and YES. :-)

---

I just sat with my fear. I connected with its energy, and it felt sickening. I felt my throat begin to close and could hear my heartbeat through my chest. I watched as my mind filled up with dreadful, detailed thoughts about how inadequate I was. ...

I sat with myself in this way for about an hour. Many times I thought, Okay, that's it, I feel better now, back to work. But I waited a little bit longer, and the fear uncoiled like a snake at the base of my spine and moved up and down, up and down, until the energy of fear seemed to fill the room. Although I still felt tremendously uncomfortable, I also noticed a kind of growing warmth. I was paying attention to myself. I was sitting with myself as I would hold a still sleeping child twisting from a nightmare. I wasn't angry with her, and there was no sense in trying to talk her out of it. All I could do was hold her gently until she was awake enough to know where she was. The Zen teacher and poet John Tarrant says, "Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed," and that seemed really true.

- Susan Piver, How Not To Be Afraid of Your Own Life

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/17911.html.

From the May Mid-South District (of the Unitarian Universalist Association) newsletter (should've posted this last week, but note that it takes place every Saturday, in Atlanta):

Atlanta Area Mobile Library Project Update

Join us Saturday, May 19 at Plaza Fiesta to celebrate the official launch of the Mobile Library - Fiesta de Libros! The library project had its soft opening April 14 and has been received with great enthusiasm and appreciation by the children and their parents. We are very proud of this UU project and we want to celebrate the launch with our UU community. The celebration will be from 1:00pm to 2:00pm in front of the playground by the food court. We will have musical entertainment, community speakers, including Rev. David, and a Ribbon Cutting ceremony. Bring the family and friends, celebrate with us and enjoy all that Plaza Fiesta has to offer!

The goal of the mobile library project "Fiesta de Libros" is to expose children to age-appropriate bilingual literature at Plaza Fiesta (a Latino mall off of Buford Highway). The idea of the program is to create a library-type setting where the children will be encouraged to browse the book selection, sit down and read, take a book home or exchange one of their own books for a new book. Fiesta de Libros will be set up every Saturday from 1pm to 5pm at Plaza Fiesta.

If you are interested in supporting this project, there are three ways in which you can help:

1) Donate books - Bring books for children up to the age of 12 written in Spanish, English or both languages.

2) Sign up to be a Saturday volunteer - You, your family, friends, or organization can sign up for one of the Saturday shifts to staff the library. The shifts will be from 12:30pm to 3:00pm and 3:00pm to 5:30pm.

3) Join a committee - Join one of the five committees to help administer the program.

Please contact Laura Murvartian at Laura_Murvartian@Bellsouth.net or 770-841-9672 for further information or to sign up as a volunteer.

My tribe: we set up libraries and "smuggle" books. Onward!

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/17612.html.

Don't worry about the "professional" feeling -- you may never have it. I haven't after all these years. That is, if the feeling of something new, fresh, difficult, and strange which comes to you with each story is the mark of the amateur spirit, then I still have the amateur spirit. The excitement comes from what's still to be learned at least as much from what's been struggled with before or partway, for the time being perhaps, mastered.

-- quoted in Eudora Welty: A Biography by Suzanne Marrs (p. 251)

[Side ramble: in this book, and in Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters; Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence (ed. Emily Herring Wilson), there is a lot about women coping with the care of aging parents. I am witnessing friends and clients coping with being those parents or children. I find myself praying about it: be it 1952 or 2012, the solutions are rarely easy and too seldom acceptable to all involved, and sometimes the conversations veer into comfortless territory.

Two more books on my kitchen counter: This is Not the Life I Ordered (found on sale at a Franklin Covey store some years ago) and Crucial Conversations (mentioned by Havi Brooks in a recent post that has already done me some good). I can only handle a few pages a time from either book, but y'know, a little bit at a time can add up to good things.]

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/17218.html.

There be so many roses to see in Nashville right now. I've glimpsed people photographing themselves with the gigantic roses in front of the Frist Center. ( more roses behind the cut )

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/17106.html.

From a New York Times report of protests in Moscow (emphasis mine):

An encampment in a Moscow park ... is modeled on Occupy Wall Street. ... On Thursday, the police detained eight young women in pig costumes. A cow appeared over the weekend, evidently to protest Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization.

Olga Romanova, a longtime opposition activist, said she had given up trying to explain the situation in letters to her husband, who is in prison.

"I started to write, 'There's a wedding taking place here right now, and now a cow has come,' " Ms. Romanova said. "Then I understood that I have to cross it all out because he'll think that I've gone crazy with grief or something is happening with me. How will they explain to Putin? There was a wedding. A cow came. How will they explain that?"

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/16653.html.

I had modest expectations for my birthday last Wednesday, but it ended up being a terrific day: the White Sox trounced the Indians, Roger Federer squeaked out a win on smurf clay, Barack Obama leapt off the marriage equality tightrope (I was among those who didn't think it would happen until November), the BYM and I dressed up for a late dinner at The Southern (I can't manage steak yet, so I contented myself with gumbo, butternut squash, and bourbon-soaked bread pudding), the sun was shining, and I had time for a walk.

And there were gifts and messages -- I was especially tickled by a friend's note about her son's newly revealed enthusiasm for writing poetry: "I think partly it's because, while most of his classmates think poets are boring dead guys, [he] thinks they're people with interesting houses and big dogs. And CAKE!" Hee!

(I wasn't in the mood to bake or buy a cake for myself, so I improvised a spicy chocolate blancmange instead. In fact, there are a few mouthfuls left in the pot in the fridge -- they ought to go well with this cup of tea I just brewed...)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/16450.html.

I'm in the thick of reviewing a client's responses to copyedits, a process that has included some muttering under my breath at Microsoft Word (which I get along with for the most part, but there have been a couple of spots where a random style seems to have suddenly imposed itself -- on random phrases, of course -- and that is Not Okay).

That said, it is so nice being able to deal with all the slicing, deleting, and repositioning by merely tapping and scrolling and clicking (and swearing). Here's another look at Miss Welty at work, as described by Suzanne Marrs:

By the time she was at work on Delta Wedding in 1945, Eudora had become an ardent revisor, using a method she would ever afterward follow--typing a draft chapter, spreading it out on the bed, or on the dining room table downstairs, cutting paragraphs, or even sentences, out of a page and attaching them with straight pins in new locations, before preparing a new typescript and starting the process again.

And here's Eudora writing to Bill Maxwell in 1953, after reading a draft of one of his stories:

I do see from this how elegant rubber cement is. I'm so used to writing with a pincushion that I don't know if I can learn other ways or not, but I did go right down and buy a bottle of Carter's. The smell stimulates the mind and brings up dreams of efficiency. Long ago when my stories were short (I wish they were back) I used to use ordinary paste and put the story together in one long strip, that could be seen as a whole and at a glance -- helpful and realistic. When the stories got too long for the room I took them up on the bed or table & pinned and that's when my worst stories were like patchwork quilts, you could almost read them in any direction. No man would be bemused like that, but Emmy [Maxwell's wife] will understand -- and on the whole I like pins. The Ponder Heart was in straight pins, hat pins, corsage pins, and needles, and when I got through typing it out I had more pins than I started with. (So it's economical.)

What There Is To Say We Have Said (Houghton, 2011)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/16319.html.

So far, so good. The Beautiful Young Man occupied himself at the dining room table while I dozed...



...and Abby (as usual) made sure nobody would leave the room without her noticing:



There are three new pieces up at unFold: "Lickety-split," "The Season So Long," and "Tacky."

The bibliography is sort of updated (still some gaps).

My book (and also 140 and Counting) has been added to Operation eBook Drop (i.e., it is being made available free of charge to deployed soldiers).

Here's a bit from the Eudora Welty biography I've been reading, by Suzanne Marrs:

In her upstairs bedroom at the Pinehurst Street house, when she had no eight-to-five job, she established a pattern that would typify her writing career, devoting most mornings and early afternoons to composing, taking time off for reading and gardening, perhaps, but often not changing from her nightgown until she had reached a stopping point in a story. She had positioned her typing table so that she did not directly face the windows overlooking the large front yard, but so that she might look over her shoulder when she needed a glimpse of the outside world.

(I'll likely continue quoting from this and What There Is To Say... over the next couple of weeks. The books have been good company the past few days.)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/15973.html.