Snowtruckless in Seattle
It’s the rainiest November on record here in Seattle. Last night around 4:45 I heard a weird sound against the window – it was ice and sleet hitting the glass. I called husband G to leave work early. An hour later we had two inches of snow, and then three…we decided to try to go to the grocery store, which was a huge mistake, because all the streets were like parking lots. On the news when we got home, we saw that the neighborhood we lived in when we first moved here, Issaquah, was unavailable – literally, you could not get there from here – people spent seven hours on the highway in unmoving traffic, cars and trucks littered the sides of the rode. Downtown was just as bad. Today, for the first time in the seven years I’ve lived here, Microsoft closed its campus. The roads are nothing but ice. Luckily G and I grew up in the Midwest, surrounded by ice and snow. But here, there aren’t enough salt trucks, no one knows how to drive in this weather, since it never does this, so G is staying home (Snow day!) and I will have to cancel my errands (Christmas shopping!) around town. Thank goodness for the internet!
In the Mail
Yesterday I received the Winter 2006 issue of Rattle, which has a lovely one-page review of Becoming the Villainess. Thanks, Rattle and N.K. Moni! Also, Tom from Steel Toe Books wrote to let me know that yet another teacher has adopted my book for a class! Thanks, again!
I watch TV like a boy?
I just realized recently that all of the marketing/commercials/ads I consume are for males 18-30. I am so strongly in their demographic in the shows that I watch, the music I listen to, and movies I go to, even the web sites I visit, that when I rented an art-house flick the other day I was shocked to see advertisements beyong “Girls Gone Wild,” the latest shoot-em-up XBox Game, and “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Wrath of Taj” etc. I don’t know what this says about me, or about advertisers. Do they just not care about women 18-30, or think we all spend out days watching “Desperate Housewives” and reading Redbook and don’t actually buy or do anything ourselves? Or am I so outside my demographic in my reading, television, radio and motion picture activities? Have any of you girls out there noticed this too?
Musical Zeitgeist
I’ve been working on my second book about Japanese fairy tales and popular culture, including a poem called “Crane Wife” about a crane who transforms into a human and marries the man who saves it, and recently I read about a band who did a vaguely-folkish-alterna-rock(TM) album called “Crane Wife” about the very same Japanese folk tale. The band is called The Decembrists. If only I was a vaguely-folkish-alterna-rock band, I would have beat them to this! It’s a decent album, but the first track is the best. Isn’t that always the way?
Dustup at Foetry: Tupelo Press and form letters
The recent trouble a-brewing over at Foetry over the fact that the entrants to Tupelo’s Open Submission period received form letters about their manuscripts instead of personalized critiuqes makes me realize how thankful I am for the few editors who, when I was first sending out the MS of Becoming the Villainess, really responded to my manuscript, when I was a finalist or semifinalist or whatever, with specific comments about the work, about whatever poems they liked or what they thought worked. Even a one-page letter makes a huge difference, even a scribbled note in colored pencil at the bottom of a form letter, it took work on the part of the editor, and yes, proves that someone out there actually read your work.